England, part 2

Monday, 19 October 2009

Although the kids and I have the whole week off, Patrick has to leave for work early, around 8 am. After a very English breakfast the kids and I stroll around Leeds city centre and find lots of wonderful shops!! Manon is delighted to find "Claire's" her favorite accessories shop where she buys some Halloween earrings (skeletons) and hair clips (red devil's horns). The next stop is the Disney Store!!! Yeah!! Even I love that store! Mats buys a "Woody" doll (from Toy Story), Timothy buys the whole "Mr Potato Head" family and Manon buys a pinguin from "Club Pinguin". Around the corner I find W.H.Smith where they sell scrapbook magazines and a little bit further down the road we find Starbucks, where I buy a white chocolate mocca coffee.


We return to the hotel for a much needed break (sore feet): swimming! I actually hate swimming, but what I think doesn't count so we swim for about an hour (and because the water is fairly warm it's not too bad....).

Because the kids get hungry we retreat to the room where we collect our coats and leave within 5 minutes for MacDonald! After some chips (or is it fries?) and a milkshake I get the kids to accompany me to Borders, the bookstore!! Here I buy some books (buy 1 get one half price) and leave quickly before I spend all my money....

As Patrick returns around 5.30 pm we make sure we're back at the hotel by then and as soon as he arrives we leave for a stroll around the centre again. We have dinner in a Spanish restaurant and watch the salsa dance lessons which are being tought downstairs (from where we sit we have a relatively good view of the dancers and it actually looks quite nice). We return to the hotel soon afterwards because the kids are very tired by now. As soon as we're back in the hotel the kids go to bed and I follow soon.

Around midnight we're given quite a fright!!! The fire alarm goes off!!! Manon and I jump out of bed and wake up the boys (not very easy). Patrick is nowhere to be seen and it turns out he's still working in the lounge with his colleagues. I get dressed (jeans and sweater) and we rush down the stairs (from the 8th floor). Timothy is dressed in his pyjamas and walks on one shoe, Manon is dressed half in pyjamas and half in jeans, no shoes but with her and Mats' cuddly animals and Mats is dressed in his pyjamas and I carry his shoes but as I have no coats at all we're freezing!!!! Luckily as soon as we're outside we find Patrick and his colleagues soon and they share their coats with us!! The fire brigade arrives within 3 minutes and Mats starts to like this adventure... LOL! Of course there appears to be nothing wrong and soon we can go back into the hotel.....where it takes ages before we fall asleep again.

Tuesday, 20 October 2009

Today is much the same as yesterday. During breakfast I propose to take the train to York but the kids don't want to, they'd rather stay in Leeds and do the same as yesterday. As that's fine with me we go shopping (see the Xmas decorations???) and swimming once more.

In the evening we have dinner in an Indian restaurant where Manon and I receive a flower "for the lovely ladies".... upon which Mats asks us totally astonished " why does that man call you "lelijke" (= ugly) ladies??? Don't you just love kids???? LOL!!