Tuesday, 13 October 2009

Friday night celebrations and Saturday night takeover!

I wrote this post yesterday (Tuesday) but didn't get a chance to send it so here you go!

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Hellooo there! Going to try and sqeeeeeze a quick post in, in between working and nipping to the gym at lunch to do some treadmill action now that I've decided to take a leaf out of TOTKat's book and enter Innovation sport's 10k race on Clapham Common on 25th October.

That's actually only a couple of weeks away (eeek!) so I need to get some training in and hopefully beat my last 10k time of 55 mins I got from the last 10k race I did.

Amusingly, the Clapham Common 10k Series has 4 dates that it's held throughout the year, this'll be my 3rd time running it and it's the same one! I only seem to manage to race it in the Autumn!

So, when I raced this on 03/10/2004 I got 51:33 (yowsers, not going to get near to that but I was thinner, fitter and younger!)

The last time I raced this particular one was on 14/10/2007 and I finished in 55:39... soooo hopefully, if my last race this year is anything to go by, I 'should' be faster, but we'll see, my ankle is still not feeling 100% and I've got a private referral from my doc to see a physio which I need to sort out...

Enough of that now and onto my fabulous...

post-photoshootcelebration

Friday night was a double celebration as not only had I had the most awesome day but Joe's flat (that he still owned with his ex girlfriend!) finally completed that day too. They'd been renting it out for years but, now that she's married, pregnant and not even living in the country, they decided it was time to sort things out. Thankfully they found a buyer, it's a beautiful flat but the market isn't exactly good so the last time they tried to sell it there was no interest and they had to get another tenant in.

So, to celebrate I decided to go to one of my favourite places to eat, and one that I'd promised my son that I'd take him to.

If you like mussels, cooked bloody well in the most delicious of broths and being served by waiters dressed as monks (and why on earth wouldn't you?!) in a place that also sells fabulous fruit beers and whole pallets of schnapps... then you need to get your butt down to Belgo Centraal. They don't *just* sell mussels but it's something they do very well :-)

The restaurant area is underground and you access it via a stairs or an industrial lift ha! You can see the chefs working below as you come in:



We had to wait a little while before we were seated so I had a nice passion fruit beer, it was lush!

Here's me and the boy in the bar area, check out the tan on me! I don't actually think it 'looks' like me, I'm used to being much more pale! You can also see the lovely necklace my adorable boyfriend bought me for our anniversary a lot clearer. I love turquoise :-)



And here's me and Joe at our table with our champagne (pink of course), very tasty :-)



We didn't bother with starters and just launched straight into the mains. We ordered 2 portions of Rye bread which was delicious but too much for the three of us (it comes in a tin with 6 slices!) so we took it home with us in a doggy bag... bread that tasty can't go to waste!

Here's a pic of all food - The boy and I both had Moulles Mariniere whereas Joe had his mussels Provençal stylie.

I ordered a side salad of rocket and parmesan which was v delicious :-)



Mmmmmmussells ;-)



I *had* intended to 'cut loose' last Friday, or at the very least not calorie count/worry about what I was eating/drinking which is why the broth of my mussels was my fave - white wine, cream, garlic and herbs... wonderful if done properly but a bit too sickly and creamy if not. Belgos does it right, which is why I go back so often!

However, in the end I couldn't eat even half my bowl of chips and I didn't drink the soup either!

We also didn't have a dessert, even though the waffles looked splendid, we were all too full!

It's funny how your body adapts to healthy changes and decides that actually, even when you 'can' just blowout, you might not actually want/be able to!

Saturday 10th Oct

The wonderful company I work for took over Thorpe Park on Saturday and Sunday night. The 'general public' were kicked out at 5pm and then we were allowed in from 6pm and had the park til ourselves until 11pm!

It was amazing, firstly because I've never been in a theme park at sunset, and the place looked eerily beautiful:





This is the loop of 'Stealth', more about that later! :-)



First we went on a ride called X No Way Out which was good for novelty value as it was a backwards rollercoaster, inside, in the dark!

It was a great way to get warmed up :-)

Although the boys decided that going on a ride that absolutely soaked you through would be a great way to begin an evening (I didn't, I'm not stupid, it was cold!).

I watched from a safe distance:



Hmm, soggy clothes on a cold autumn night, not 'that' clever ;-) !



Look at this, look how long we had to wait to get on the ride ;-) My son told me that the last time he went to Thorpe Park he had to queue for an hour and 5 minutes to get on this one!!

Entrance to Colossus


We went on it twice! :-)

We went on loads of other rides, including the new one from Saw the Movie... which was okay but not exactly terrifying. Nemesis Revenge was good fun, as was the Samurai :-)

Here's the boy and I outside our favourite ride, Stealth:



As there were so few people in the park we decided to go to the front of all the rides - why not?!

The first time on Stealth there was room for an extra 'one' at the front so my son had the 'honour' of going first... look at his face, the poor lad was terrified ha!



Stealth goes from 0 to 80mph in just over 2 seconds... then shoots up a huge loop, tips you upside down and then comes back again. The whole experience only lasts a few seconds but it's well worth it, it's amazing!

Here's the pic of all of us that we bought the second time we did it... as you can see the *ahem* exhilaration on our faces!



I think the sheer speed of the ride blew all the fake tan from the day before off my face!! ;-)

Here's a pic of Joe and I afterwards. Unfortunately it didn't come out that well as the plonker had put my camera on 'intelligent auto', which doesn't work in low light! I'm pointing at the top of the arch of Stealth, it's pretty impressive!



After the excitement of Stealth we decided it would be a good idea to go nuts with the pick-n-mix... we filled this whole tub to the brim with sweets and were all a bit hyper towards the end of the night as we don't any of us eat sweets very often at all!!



Just before we left my son decided to give his all on Guitar Hero... he was pretty good actually and made 2nd on the leaderboard!

Just look at the concentration on his face ;-)



After that we got the coach back that the company had laid on (only £5 each both ways, fantastic bargain!) and both my son and I fell asleep on the way home, I think we'd come down off our sugar high!

Such a fun night :-)

If anyone can get to Thorpe Park I'd thoroughly recommend going to one of the 'Fright Nights' that they have running over the next few weeks/months - spooky night-time fun with shorter queues, basically the same deal as we had but it's open to everyone!

TJx

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