So excited

The weekend has just flow by. I can’t believe how close to Christmas we are now! And how close to Ben and my next holiday – wooo wooo!

At the end of January we’re off to Florida to go and do some theme park craziness (though missing out Disney World as it didn’t rock our world at all the last time we went) for 8 days, and then travelling to Dallas for 6 days. The first part of the holiday we’re going with a couple friend of ours, Kate and Jamie, and they are literally obsessed with theme parks and Florida. They’re going for two weeks which was just too hardcore for us, which is why we’re then going to Dallas.

So this weekend gone we went up to Bristol to stay over at Kate and Jamie’s house on Saturday to get down to the Holiday Master Plan, i.e. where we want to go, what we want to do and more importantly what kind of restaurants and food we like and want to go to. Jamie is a HUGE food enthusiast and loves all the American-style food and, well, food in general. Jamie is like the male version of me basically. Food is important to us!

They cooked an amazing feast of food. Honestly it was incredible.

IMG_8801

There were tortilla chips with dips, oven-roasted hot and plain chicken wings, corn on the cobs, home-made burgers, crispy bacon, ranch dressed slaw and regular salad and my personal favourite RIBS.

IMG_8802

Ribs are one of my favourite meals in the entire world. I adore them. It was such a good spread, but it didn’t end there.

IMG_8803

Pudding!

IMG_8804

Home-made brownie, hot fudge sauce and Hagen Daaz vanilla ice cream. Oh my life. All in a special Mickey Mouse bowl (sink?). The photo above really doesn’t do it justice but as you can see there was a HEFTY amount of ice cream there – a slab I would say.

We all stumbled to the finish line in states of absolute fullness and severe feelings of sick. We literally sat there in silence (I’d like to say a satisfied silence, but it was more a silence of necessity as movement in general was painful at that point). I regret nothing though 😉

What was really fun was we took Alfie with us and he got to meet their pug, Doug. They seemed to get on well – though Alfie refused to allow Doug to sniff his bottom. Not sure what that means in Dog Code. But Doug didn’t mind Alfie having a sniff. I like to think that this is Alfie asserting his Alfa male status 😉 Or just being grumpy!

IMG_8805We had such a fun evening, ending in a random Harry Potter quiz to get us ready for the mayhem ahead. We’re all huge fans of Harry Potter, roller coasters and general silliness that it will just be like being a kid again I think. And we’re staying in the same hotel which is a walk or a short bus ride from Universal Studios so it’s perfect. And we’ve got tickets to an ice hockey game!! It should be mental 😀

IMG_8807

The next morning we all went for a walk with Alfie and Doug to their nearby park and had a nice long walk – the conversation never veering far from the impending holiday. We are all SO excited.

IMG_8809 

We got back and Jamie did a fabulous pancake breakfast for Ben and Kate. I brought my porridge (what did you expect?). My friends know what I’m like (apple obsessed, porridge lover…) so they didn’t mind. Ben was in chocolate chip, cream and syrup heaven though.

IMG_8811He stacked up his three pancakes (first batch) with white and milk chocolate chips in between each layer, coated with golden syrup and then finished with cream. He loved it. I’m actually not a massive pancake fan (or crepes for that matter) so America in that respect is a little disappointing at breakfast for me. I’d much prefer just my regular porridge as the idea of lots of sweet stuff in the morning doesn’t do it for me. When we last went to Florida we had a villa so I could satisfy my porridge need by making it myself but this time we’re in a hotel. It might be time for me to branch out. Watch this space…

And then we were on our merry way back home. It was such good fun and I now have a list of restaurants that I’m subsequently going to peruse through. Does anyone else do that? Find restaurants beforehand and then look through their menus? It gets me really excited about what’s to come!

And so we drove back home, Alfie on my lap. He hates travelling in the car but when he got to look out of the window he was more impressed.

IMG_8812

What do you eat for breakfast on holiday? Do you branch out and have something different? Any recommendations for a pancake un-enthusiast?

What’s the most exciting part about going on holiday for you? For me a big part if trying new foods. But going with friends now is going to add a brilliant new element – and we’re all similar to each other in different ways so it makes things very easy.

Do you enjoy roller coasters?

10 Replies to “So excited”

    1. It’s actually a funny story – we needed to pick a city that we could use the same flight company (British Airways) as otherwise it would become a whole lot more complicated (we were able to do everything online in a very affordable way) – but BA only fly to certain states from Orlando! So it was a choice between New York, LA, Dallas, Philadelphia and I think Phoenix? I can’t remember, but we’ve done NY and LA would have been cool but it’s going further West and it would have been a 5 hour flight mid-way through our holiday so we decided randomly Dallas. We like moseying about random cities and there are a few trail parks we can walk through. Basically we can have some ‘down time’ after the Florida madness hehe.

    1. I’m not sure what to expect at all. I’ll do some more research beforehand to see what places are good to go to (food and attraction/sight-seeing wise). It’s funny to go somewhere you know really well (Florida) and then to go somewhere a complete mystery (Dallas).

  1. I hate rollercoasters- which is why I like Disney so much because there aren’t many rides I don’t go on, whereas we went to Universal once and I didn’t like it as there weren’t many good non-roller coaster rides.
    Getting excited about holidays are the best! 🙂
    I must say, I like pancakes but don’t tend to like American ones- not sure what it is but I find them really sickly and eggy and just bleurgh. Whereas French toast- normally much nicer. Although loads of places do oatmeal so I often have that- I like a normal breakfast most days on holiday, and then every now and then a treat, as otherwise I feel a bit rubbish.
    Maria @ runningcupcake recently posted…Not quite s’mores!My Profile

    1. That’s fair enough – roller coasters are definitely not everyone’s cup of tea! Universal is pretty much all about the roller coasters so I can understand you’re dislike (whereas it was the opposite for us in Disney hehe – but I reckon it’d be awesome with a young child).
      Yep I totally agree about the pancakes – very thick and eggy. Not my thing. I think I’ll probably stick to plain oatmeal this time rather than wasting my time with other stuff I don’t like. Otherwise it’ll probably be eggs!

  2. Ah it’s going to be such an amazing vacation! You will have to keep me posted when you are in Dallas, maybe we’ll be able to plan a trip up there to meet!! I agree, I don’t like the super sugary breakfasts either. I usually stick with omelets or some egg dish, not as sugary! 🙂
    Lora @ Crazy Running Girl recently posted…Dallas Marathon goalsMy Profile

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

CommentLuv badge

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.