A day trip to Oxford

Image from Pixabay

Last weekend was full on; cinema trips, shopping, eating out, celebrations, road-tripping and cake making! On Sunday, we decided to head to Oxford. We visited the University city in 2015 and you can see my post here but this time, we had a different agenda.

First we headed to the Ashmolean Museum, where we discovered arts of the Renaissance, incredible Greek sculptures and a marble staircase of dreams. I love exploring museums and learning more about different countries and cultures, especially when those countries are places that I dream of visiting. I think it's good to immerse yourself in the culture of countries you're interested in, it can really make you appreciate another place.

After exploring the Ashmolean, we headed to Jamie's Italian for a pasta fuelled lunch, complete with a gorgeous praline bomb and a few cocktails. Shopping in Oxford is really good but I only came away with a couple of items; I think online shopping is so much easier, stress free and actually allows you to look at the items you're buying.

We spent our last hour visiting the University colleges, parks and buildings. They're absolutely breath-taking; you really don't feel like you're in a city with the culture and architecture that surrounds you. Oxford is one of my favourite cities and heading there just for the day made my bank holiday weekend so much more exciting. 

If you love Oxford, are thinking of travelling there this year or have some great recommendations for the city, feel free to leave me a comment or tweet me @amie_journalist 

For now, here's just some of the pictures I took on my trip:

Valentine's Planning

Image from paper4pc.com

Valentine's is just around the corner and whether you admit it or not, everyone loves the idea of having someone to share it with.

Whether you go out for drinks, a meal, to the cinema or away for the weekend, it's a weekend to celebrate.

But for girls, most importantly, it's deciding what to wear! The February chill definitely leaves me wanting to wear baggy sweatshirts and stay inside wrapped into a blanket. Finding the perfect outfit just to wear for one night doesn't seem ideal, so here's some ideas of outfits you can put with anything and still wear again on another night out:

Dress: Pretty Little Thing

Skirt: Missguided 

Shirt Dress: Urban Outfitters

Dress: River Island

And most importantly, lingerie! My top choices to make you not only look great, but feel great:

Bodice: Agent Provocateur

Bodice: ASOS

Bellbroughton lunching

My day off work yesterday meant only one thing, catching up with Nan and Grandad after their holiday. I hadn't seen them in ages!

We went for lunch at The Bell in Bellbroughton and I can't wait to go back already - the food was amazing. I had a chicken dish with a lemon, honey and chilli jus and roquito peppers and pea shoots. It was delicious.

For pudding, I decided on the damson, plum and apple shortbread crumble. Mmmmm. I usually go for something chocolatey, but, I fancied something a bit different and this was definitely a good choice. Maybe next time I'll opt of the salted caramel chocolate pot. 

The presentation of the food was very good, and made it even more enjoyable. The pub was quiet and the choice of wine/ciders and cocktails was endless - it's a good job I was driving later, I would have definitely struggled to choose.

Unfortunately, the lighting above me did not do the food justice!!!

After consuming all of those calories, we decided to head to a local country park to go on a walk. Well, that's what we had in mind anyway. It started off well and we followed all of the signs, leading us over the top of a hill and down the other side. 

Grandad, however, decided that we seemed too close to the motorway and picked our route for the way back. After getting stranded in a field full of cows, we started the climb up another hill. It wasn't until we got to the top we realised there were no gates or stiles, and had to climb over barbed wire fences ourselves, in what we thought was the direction of the start.

After nearly an hour of climbing over fences and in my case, getting my foot cut and bitten by insects, we made it back. Just an hour later than planned!

It was a lovely day out and I will definitely be returning to The Bell for another lunch out soon. Maybe I'll just miss the field walking next time...

Worcester lunch date

I finally had a day off work yesterday and planned to go out with my Nan. We had a lovely day in Worcester and bought a lot more than we should have - it definitely didn't help that there were sales everywhere!

She treated me to lunch at Zizzi's. I'd only been there once but she absolutely loves it and practically knows the menu off by heart! I opted for the Pepperoni Campagna pizza and Nan had the skinny Primavera pizza. The choice on the lunch menu was great and even though we were both stuffed, we definitely wish we'd have had 2 courses.

It was a great day for celebration too - Nan's going on holiday on Friday and I've just had a pay rise (maybe a bit of shopping was necessary after all...)!!