Bristol
Ages ago, Alison and I were thinking about treating ourselves to a night in a swanky hotel over this holiday weekend, and given that there was a comic convention in Bristol which Carlos and co were encouraging me to attend, at one point a night at the Bristol Hotel Du Vin was the idea. TYpically, we left it so late to try and book that the only room available was way *way* out of the price range, so a last minute decision on Thursday led to me booking possibly the only two remaining train seats heading out of Paddington this morning (something to do with some football match or other happening in Cardiff).
Pleasant day - I managed an hour with Carlos, Alice, and James (all mentioned in postings passim), and met a few other people from Millarworld for the first time.
We'd booked lunch at the HDV, which was very cool indeed, and as we were finishing up, a terrible choice had to be made: whether to go out and explore the all-revamped dockside area of town or settle in huge comfy sofas with another bottle of wine for an hour.
I suspect you can guess which option won.
We did eventually manage to stir ourselves sufficiently for a bit of a wander, during which we met this classic woman who was selling her home-made organic vegan sugar-free flapjack on one of the bridges. Apparently I'm not the only person who's ever pondered whether she includes any 'extra' ingredients in said produce. She doesn't by the way, and makes and sells them to help with her bills. Good flapjack in fact.
Anyway, after failing to lure the geeks from their comic convention panels (or one of the geeks from his bed), we took a leisurely walk back to the station and headed home. In many ways it wasn't that much of a day out (we didn't do a huge amount, and what we did was a bit self-indulgent), but in others it was very pleasant indeed.