Brizzol

So on Sunday morning we received Tom back from his grandparents.  It was a cocky, cheeky version of Tom that came through the door very happy though - so thank you.

After a quick repack and a stressy moment with my edible printer (it had gummed up which is 'normal' for an edible printer, I had watched a video on how to take the print head out and wash it - which I did but I couldn't get it back in.  Matt couldn't get it back in either.  We both studied the video - we both couldn't get it back in.  We tried and tried with no result.  Then suddenly Matt got it in, but he didn't know how he did it and said he wouldn't be able to do it again!)  I ALWAYS get stressed when it comes to IT problems, I just hate it when things don't work properly - can't help it - it is my natural reaction.  Matt is much calmer and more capable and generally sorts everything out for me, but that doesn't stop me being stressy, which means I have to apologise profusely once it is sorted.  Thank you Matt x

Once I had delivered some choccies at Gingerbugs we headed to Lancaster train station.  We were heading down to Bristol to meet with Hiromi tomorrow, she's in Bath visiting Sachiko.  It is a bit of a journey by train - get the train to Birmingham New Street and then another to Bristol Temple Meads. It took 4 hours but was pretty uneventful (except some trespassers on the line which delayed us a little bit in Cheltenham Spa)

Our hotel was directly opposite Temple Meads (Holiday Inn Express) so we checked in, had showers and headed out in search of food.  Temple Meads, I knew was in the business district of Bristol and as it is a Sunday, nothing was open.  We took a quick walk up and over the river and found ourselves at Brewdog - phew.  We aren't allowed to walk past a Brewdog Bar so a we popped in and had a couple of drinks: I had to have a "Mulled Elephants on Ice" just because of the name (it was a mulled cider and very nice too) whilst Matt had a couple of beers he's not tried before.

We then headed across the road to the Old Fish Market - a rather nice looking Fuller's pub for some food.  It was quite busy, nice atmosphere and had some good sounding food on offer.  Also there was live jazz starting at 7 and they had dominos.  What's not to like?  Matt got me some local cider - one which was rhubarb, very sweet and quite frankly revolting, luckily he also got me a dry cider, so by mixing the two together I was able to drink them.  Tom and I had good meals, Matt didn't do so well - receiving the thinnest sparsly covered pizza he has ever seen.  Oh hum, as I said the atmosphere was good and we even enjoyed the jazz.

We headed home via a Tesco Express to get Matt some more food.

Saturday, after a rubbish night's sleep (too hot?  bed too small?   pillows too uncomfortable?  too much alcohol the night before? we got up to have breakfast - hotel was a bargain £45 for bed and breakfast for the 3 of us!  We then walked up to Park Street to Pinkmans Bakery where we met with Hiromi and Kyokho.  It was a good meeting - they were well and happy.  Hiromi wouldn't let us pay for anything at all - think we were in the bakery (a typical hipster artisan bakery - the likes of which didn't exist when we lived in Bristol) a good 2.5 hours, food was good - had a very lovely lunch of mushrooms on toast, Tom had cheese and ham toastie which had a flood of cheese in it and Matt a meat frittata which he said was good.

We walked down Park Street together and took photos of Hiromi and Tom - trying to recreate a photo from 6 years before of Hiromi tickling Tom!  We then said our goodbyes, it started to rain so we got the bus to Temple Meads, only just making our train on time - bus took an age to get to the station.  We then sat on two more trains home.  A long way for a lunch, but Hiromi and Kyoko are worth it.

Back to work and school tomorrow - got loads to do...