A Little Getaway

Last week, Andrew and I packed our bags and jumped on a flight to the south of Spain. We'd scored a last minute deal on Living Social (I think I've mentioned them before?), so decided to cash in on some R&R and a little quality time after our months apart travelling.

We ended up in Algeciras, a port town near Gibraltar, and stayed in the Hotel Reina Cristina. Staying in the hotel felt a little like falling into the set of The Grand Budapest Hotel. It had obviously been the place to stay in its heyday, with kings, queens, sultans and other aristocracy, celebrities and politicians (including Winston Churchill and Arthur Conan Doyle!) all taking rooms at one point or another. However, now it seems to have lost some of its grandeur and the level of service that accompanies this and instead just felt a little sad and dated. Saying this, it was a good enough base for our trip.

We spent our week drifting in and out of the city centre, drinking coffee in the little cafés surrounding the pretty central plaza, visiting the shops and taking dips in the hotel pool. One of our evenings was spent at the interestingly named 'La Mafia' restaurant, which proved to be a rather yummy (and luckily not at all life-threatening) experience... I got a little over excited by the menu as you could choose exactly what type of pasta you wanted in each dish, whether it was spaghetti, little shells or a variety of different raviolis. Pasta heaven!

I had a very enjoyable week, although I definitely put this down to the company, not the area. Algeciras is a working industrial port and it lives up to this- the town is by far not one of the prettiest I've ever seen and there is not a huge amount to do. However, if you have sunshine and a pool, what more do you really need?

P.S- Gibraltar is so tiny and pushed for space that their airport runway has a road dissecting it! Cars are stopped like they would be at a rail crossing for planes to land! Craziness! 

P.P.S- the travel diaries shall resume soon! 

Anniversary Weekend Part Two: The Crazy Bear

Saturday morning started early, or at least it did for one of us. M was up at 6:00am to go rowing, while I stayed snuggled up in a lovely warm bed- nothing makes you appreciate a bed more than the thought of having to leave it!
Considerably later I arose to the wonderful smell of sizzling sausages and we got ready to start day two of our celebratory weekend.

Now I'm going to let you into a secret. There's an amazing site called 'Living Social' which is great when you want to find somewhere special to go but don't quite fancy the huge price tags which can accompany it. On this site you can buy vouchers for anything from restaurant deals to spa visits or even various workshops and I love it! Anyway, this is where I sourced our next destination from: we were off to the Crazy Bear, Fitzrovia for the Mad Hatter's afternoon tea!

The Crazy Bear was just so cool! The decor was really cozy but lavish, with massive mirrors everywhere which befuddled your brain. We were in the upstairs restaurant, but on a quick peak downstairs, the bar was equally spectacular and could have easily been something straight out of Tim Burton's 'Alice in Wonderland.'

Our afternoon tea was far from traditional. Firstly, the raspberry cocktails arrived in glass tea pots with a little churn of fresh cream on the side, then our dim sum. I was pleasantly surprised by just how much we were given- the waiter had to do two trips to deliver all the little boxes to our table! It was all just so mouth wateringly good! M and I could barely decide which were our favourite pieces by the end of meal (although we both thought that the dipping sauce, which was similar to, but surely wasn't just soy, was delicious), but in the end we settled on what has been in the past our favourite. Venison puffs. I cannot describe how good these are! I've only ever had the chance to eat them twice in my life, but each time I've wanted a hundred more. The rich, saucy meat combined with the sweet pastry makes you reach for the second before you've even finished the first. (Okay okay, M was a bit more restrained. But they were SO good so can you blame me?!)

We finished off our afternoon tea with some actual tea. (Mine was 'whole rose and china black' and M's was 'Jasmine pearls'.)  More transparent tea pots and interesting tealeaves later, it was time for a quite visit to check out the bathrooms. These are a little on the confusing side. I asked a waitress where they were and was left pushing on a mirror for a good few seconds before I decided to try the wall next to it. It swung around and I entered what could only be described as a mirrored underwater grotto. The whole room seemed to glow. The sink was a long trough with water gushing down from above. This connected through to the men's,  which gave me rather a shock when a pair of hands came through from the other side- it took me a few seconds to work out that they weren't just another reflection! M also met a rather confused man on his visit, who confided that it was in fact his second attempt at finding the right wall to push as he hadn't found it the first time! Anyway, I loved them and would love to recreate something similar in my house in the future!

We both really enjoyed the Crazy Bear- the food was excellent, the venue strangely exciting and the staff polite and efficient- I thoroughly enjoyed myself and would definitely recommend a visit!

After we were stuffed full, we felt prepared to brave the bitter weather outside and so set off to the fashion show....