Tag Archives: travel

A night at Babington

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I’ve written before about taking a trip to the wonderful Babington House, it was the first place Richmond Daddy and I went to for a night away 9-months or so after Allegra was born.  You can read all about that trip here.  Well, feeling both in need of a bit of R&R, we took ourselves off there again the weekend before last and treated ourselves to 24-hours of luxury in the Somerset countryside.

Over the course of our very mini, mini trip, we managed to cram in a delicious lunch, a dip in the hot-tub, a full body massage, an afternoon snooze, dinner, a TV movie snuggled on the big comfy sofa, an uninterrupted night’s sleep, a very delicious breakfast of eggs florentine (me) and a full English (Richmond Daddy), a pedicure while watching SATC the movie (me), a dip in the heated outdoor pool (Richmond Daddy), and some general lazing about in the sunshine.  Bliss…

Here are some corners of Babington House as captured by the two of us:

Our private outdoor hot-tub, nice

Our very lovely living room

Pretty homegrown flowers

Complimentary home-baked biscuits

Essential reading

A snuggly robe and complimentary flip flops

A sink for me and a sink for him, bliss

Oversized cups and saucers for maximum tea drinking pleasure

Aaaah Babington, how I love you… let me count the ways…

Our Summer Holiday: Part 3.

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So, the final instalment of our 3-part summer holiday, which now really does feel like a lifetime ago and we haven’t even been back a month!

After our stay in Fiuggi visiting family and catching up on some much needed by-the-pool time in the sunshine, we then flew on from Rome to Olbia in Sardinia, for a 7-night stay near the very beautiful Costa Smeralda.

We didn’t get off to the greatest of starts as on arrival in Sardinia it turned out that one of our suitcases – of course the one containing mine and all Allegra’s clothes and assorted toddler paraphernalia – was still in Rome, sigh, and it didn’t turn up at our hotel until 24 hours later. Big sigh. As a result, Allegra and I had to spend the first day in our rather glamourous new surroundings, wearing the same clothes to the beach/pool/evening dinner/and morning breakfast, oh, and beach/pool again!! The fact that every other woman and child there looked like they’d stepped out of the pages of Vogue/Junior magazine didn’t help: note to self, do not put all your eggs in the same basket in future. Ahem.

Anyway, after feeling considerably less trampy on arrival of our suitcase, we were able to make a start on properly enjoying the “total relaxation” part of our 3-part holiday (well, as much total relaxation as is possible with a toddler in tow that is!).

First off, it was HOT!! Properly, properly scorchio (as Richmond Daddy would say). This was lovely after having left a very rainy GB behind us, but it did mean I was in a constant state of anxiety about Allegra getting burnt and while we layered her up with factor 50 and tried to keep her as covered as possible, it was a bit of a challenge sometimes – particularly when it came to sun-hats (not a fan!).

Anyway, sun protection aside, we enjoyed a lovely and fairly lazy family holiday at the very friendly, relaxed, and rather stylish La Coluccia hotel in Santa Teresa di Gallura, which I would highly recommend (for those both with and without little ones) and most definitely return to in the future.

Mornings began with breakfast on the outdoor terrace overlooking the pool, with Allegra making the most of the fact that Italian hotels often serve cake at colazione! Then we’d usually head down to the beach to play in the sand and the surf – Allegra is a big fan of making sandcastles or rather diligently shovelling sand into a bucket and then patting it down more to the point. Unfortunately she is also quite keen on eating sand on the odd occasion too, but thankfully it didn’t seem to do her any harm!

We were lucky enough to be able to enjoy relaxing on the small private beach that belonged to the hotel and was great for Allegra to play safely on as it was very sheltered and the sea was very shallow do she could paddle happily in her armbands while we observed from close-by positioned sun-loungers.  She wasn’t so keen on going into the sea all that much versus just splashing about at the water’s edge but occasionally she was persuaded to go in with mummy and daddy.

A few days in and after diligently returning to our hotel room at 12 noon to get Allegra out of the sun and allows her the chance to have a nap, we reverted to having her nap on a sun lounger on the beach in the shade. This turned out to work brilliantly as it meant that I didn’t have to spend my afternoons in the dark in a hotel room and we could chill out on the beach, read books and snooze, while Allegra took her nap alfresco.  Genius.  Sometimes she’d sleep for up to three hours like that! Double genius!!

Afternoons were usually spent hanging out by the pool – Allegra became a BIG FAN of the pool and as it was pretty shallow with little steps she could splash about and step in and out of it, wearing her little armbands, by herself under close watch of course!  After lazy days in the sun, we’d then head back to our room to relax – usually in front of bit of Peppa – before showering and going to dinner: we ate at the hotel every evening and dinner was a tasting menu, different every night, and with multiple courses! Mmmmmm…

We did venture out of our hotel on a few occasions – to visit nearby beaches and also to take trip to the Costa Smeralda and hot-spot of Porto Cervo (for the super rich, I mean seriously the yachts on show there looked criminal!), but by and large we were happy to just kick-back and enjoy doing not very much.  And besides, it was too hot to do anything that required any energy!

Allegra did test us with a few tantrums – trigged by nappy changes, clothing changes, sun-cream being applied, making her wash/have her hair washed, putting her to bed, taking her dummy away when she NEEDED it (on the beach?!?), bringing her into the sea, putting her in a high-chair, giving her yoghurt/not giving her yoghurt etc. etc – BUT, on the whole she was a brilliant little holiday companion.  She did incredibly well on all the plane journeys and tantrums aside, she made Richmond Daddy and I both very proud at how she made everyone smile around her and how so many people commented on what a happy, pretty, smiley, and well-behaved little girl we had (most of the tantrums happened behind closed doors you see!).  And given that she was having to cope with the very hot weather and being out of familiar surroundings, she really was amazing.

A wonderful family holiday.

Home Alone

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I’ve been home alone for the past 5 nights.  Actually, that’s not technically true.  Richmond Daddy took a boys trip – well, a married mans trip – from last Thursday to Tuesday of this week.  There were three of them, it wasn’t a stag do, it wasn’t a “boys holiday”, just three grown men, heading out to Vegas (yes, VEGAS!), to play some poker, chew the fat, spin a bit of roulette and, it turns out, enjoy a spot of digger fun - no, that’s not a euphemism for anything, apparently Dig This

Bob the Builder has a lot to answer for

is indeed the #1 attraction in Las Vegas (boys and their toys eh?!). What they weren’t doing, is hanging out in strip clubs and seeing naked ladies – just to be clear.  An important point of clarification, given the destination of their little jaunt.  Ahem.

So yes, the Daddy went off to Vegas and the Mummy and the Toddler remained back home in Richmond.  Not quite sure how/why I agreed to that, but hey ho, off he went with a half-empty suitcase (to bring home presents and winnings no doubt) and a spring in his step.

I mentioned that technically it wasn’t true that we were left home alone, you see my sister kindly moved in for a few days and helped out greatly and then I spent the weekend largely at my parents’ house, before having a couple of nights technically “home alone” before he returned.

It was strange.  Strange not having Richmond Daddy around.  True, it was nice to find that the relatively tidy state of the house remained that way – I don’t know what it is about him (Richmond Daddy, take note!), he’s a fellow Virgo so really he should know better, but lately his version of neat and tidy does not match with mine.  Annoying.  It was also nice not to have sport on the television 24/7 – that was more than nice, that was bloody BRILLIANT! It was nice to be able to lie in a star shape (should I so wish) in our bed and thankfully Richmond Toddler obliged by sleeping really soundly the nights he was away, so I actually had some of the best nights’ sleep I’ve had in ages.  But at the same time it was a bit lonely and a bit weird going to bed alone, nobody to say goodnight to and have a cuddle with before I went to sleep.

I did have a few mishaps without him…

Richmond Daddy has taken on the role of chief Ocado shopper, so it is thanks to him that we always have food in the house.  It may not always be the food I would shop for, but I can’t complain because frankly I don’t get around to sorting out the food shopping myself and if it was left to me, we’d probably starve.  So on Saturday morning, when I went to make pancakes, I was half way through when I realised we had no eggs.  Well, actually we had one egg, but it was out of date, so had to be thrown away.  Disaster.  Well, more a mild inconvenience.  But, what I did discover is actually you can make pancakes without eggs… who knew?!  And they tasted alright too, particularly when smeared with Nutella. Yum, yum, crisis averted.

The somewhat more serious mishap however was my complete and utter failure at setting the automatic cat feeder contraption when we went to stay overnight at my parents’ house.  I loaded it up with food for Pigalle, with cool-blocks from the freezer and everything, fiddled around with the timer – thinking I’d set it to feed him once in the morning and once again in the afternoon.  Fed him before we left that evening.  But when we returned the next day, poor Pigalle’s feeder remained unopened and he’d not had anything to eat at all.  I felt like the worst mummy ever!!  But after lots of food, some fresh ham, and lots and lots of cuddles, he seemed willing to forgive me (although I wouldn’t put it past him to have put a call in to the RSPCA just to be on the safe side – he may not have opposable thumbs, but I bet he could still dial for an emergency).  I still feel awful.  It would never have happened if Richmond Daddy were around.

Thankfully, before I managed to kill off any one of our family, he returned safe and sound back home yesterday and bearing gifts – bonus!  It turns out he didn’t lose the house or the car or the Toddler in card game, double bonus, and instead had a bit of dosh to buy me a gorgeous Marc Jacobs purse (much needed, as I’ve been using a travel wallet as a purse for about the past year and everything just falls out of it) and a cool “Vegas Baby” pink babygro/onesie and a “Girls Rock” – written in diamante, very Vegas! – tee shirt for Allegra, as well as this – my favourite gift – a Vegas Snow-globe.  Too cute!  I think the snow-globe could be the start of a collection…

Bringing home Vegas

Thank you for our gifts Richmond Daddy and thank you for not losing all our worldly goods in Sin City.  And thank you for coming home safe and sound, we missed you and we love you.  Now please don’t go away again any time soon.  That is all (well, not unless you teach me how to use the cat feeder anyway, am not sure Pigalle would forgive me a second time over).