I didn't have an adventure every day (who actually lives like that?!!) but did manage to squeeze a few mini adventures in (although I suppose it depends what your definition of adventure is!).
The planned adventure to walk to Ripley and explore the Nidd Gorge was rained off and instead was replaced with watching a blummin horror movie - which is always an adventure (or traumatic experience to be more precise) for me.
Another adventure was a trip to the ballet. Yes, I said ballet!
Thanks to a great offer on Travelzoo we manged to get half price tickets to the Northern Ballet production of Cleopatra and thought we'd give it a go - and we loved it! The adventure started with a visit to the new Yorkshire Meatball Co. in Harrogate to take advantage of their lunch deal, I'd highly recommend the fish balls (and yes, I'm also aware of how wrong that sounds!), and then a bus ride to Leeds where we had a few pre-theatre drinks before going to It Bar for their fantastic pre-theatre dinner offer.
I'm not sure we'd have enjoyed a traditional classic ballet but this was absolutely fantastic so now we're looking for more offers/deals so we can have another ballet adventure (and now I wish I hadn't just put those two words together - my mind has a habit of recreating at home what can otherwise be undo-able for some reason and I'm really not sure that the sight of John in tights (or me for that matter) is one that anyone should have inflicted on them!)
The month's adventures continued with a weekend visit (and my first meeting) from John's Dad and Stepmum, I was mildly less terrified than I was when faced with the prospect of the horror movie but we all survived in one piece and I didn't scream or jump out of my skin at all so it must have been a success :-)
And the final adventure (although John might argue that the Liverpool game yesterday qualifies as another adventure!) was a mini break to Jamaica - in the living room!
I borrowed some inspiration (and much of the decorations) from Hotter then Hawaii Day and decided that, as John had mentioned that he'd like to go to Jamaica one day, I'd bring Jamaica to us instead! With the help of Bernie's John (this was coincidence honest - definitely not an attempt to simplify things for the parents by just having to remember one name!) I got John out of the house for the evening and then with the help of Rachel (thank you!) transformed the bedroom into the interior of a plane (complete with mini bar and inflight movie (which I slept through))...
...the living room into a beach (complete with sand, sea, tropical forest, palm trees, beach chairs (and towels) and a tropical snack shack - notice the Red Stripe glasses and bottle of Jamaican rum!)...
...and the bathroom into the ocean (complete with sand, sea, dolphins, shark, fish and rustly sea sounding paper around the bath)...
...then I packed a suitcase, grabbed our passports and waited for him to get home!
When he did get home it suddenly struck me that actually he might be a little disappointed on discovering that we weren't really going anywhere but he played along admirably and was suitably amused and intrigued about our 'destination'.
Having warned him that it was a long flight I got up early the next morning, whacked the heating on full blast, donned a bikini and sarong, started the 8 hours of reggae saved to my laptop, sprayed sun lotion (for that authentic holiday smell) and made fried plantains and eggs (well I would have done if I'd been able to find any - sweet potatoes were a good substitute though) for breakfast before bringing John downstairs and welcoming him to Jamaica!
By 10.30 in the morning we were sat on the 'beach' drinking frozen cocktails before a sightseeing tour around the island (via a Jamaican tourism dvd) followed by some Jamaican sizzling chilli prawns for lunch and more cocktails (John's amazing Jamaican Jammers!) to wash down the Jamaican ginger cake. A few rounds of cards and a couple of Red Stripes in the afternoon were rounded off by a dip in the sea (yes, we got in the bath in our bikini/shorts - btw it might seem like a good idea to put copious amounts of blue/green fancy bath oil in the bath to make it look blue but it's not so good the next morning when your bath's like an ice rink!)
The Jamiacan Jammer!
The Snack Shack
Jammer Time!
(I'm sorry, that was so bad)
I replaced the LED lit balloon 'sun' for an LED lit balloon 'moon' and we enjoyed a moonlit evening meal of Jamaican jerk chicken with mango salsa (which was amazing!) and Jamaican rice and beans before settling down (when we weren't getting up and dancing - this is what a day drinking rum leads to!) to watch the history of (inc. the concert) the Bob Marley One Love event dvd.
It was a fantastic day and actually felt afterwards like we'd been away on holiday - I'm thinking India or maybe Africa next (although I've definitely got enough pandas to give China a go!)...
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