The Late Return

After an unscheduled extended visit home courtesy of an abscess on my tooth which is now no more thankfully, we returned to the Emerald Isle. Our first weekend back has been quite a busy time. Friday we went into Belfast to eat our way round the Christmas Market.

Saturday was a visit to Armagh City. Armagh is the religious capital of NI and boasts two Cathedrals both called St Patrick's just to make sure you don't get confused, one for the Proddys and one for the Rice Crispies.

Saturday night was a visit to Clenaghans restaurant up the road http://www.clenaghans.com/ Sunday was very interesting, we nipped into Lisburn to find a gym for us to frequent after Christmas then went to explore Malone, an area just outside Belfast. Malone is full of massive victorian houses so a walk round the area was most interesting. Then we walked down onto the trendy Lisburn Road for a late breakfast (after all we had visited the gym!) Our Lisburn Road favourite is Beanies currently. We have various favourites relating to food, for example our coffee haunt in Belfast is Equinox http://www.equinoxshop.com/ this if a fabulous shop which sells lovely things and has a wonderful cafe hidden at the back. Our lunch venue is Avoca http://www.avoca.com/ For cocktails we like to go to The Merchants Hotel in Belfast http://www.themerchanthotel.com/.

Later in the week we went a walk into our local park.

I expect you will all be downloading these pictures and popping them on your mantlepieces won't you?

On Tuesday we ambled round the streets to judge the Chrissy decorations. There is not as much decorating of rooftops goes on over here and surprisingly few Christmas trees on display?? After the disappointment of having nothing to judge we nipped into the local for a small sherry where I met many inebriated Irishmen all of whom wanted to kiss me? Because My Honey is the shy retiring type who doesn't talk about me they didn't really believe I existed so to see me in the flesh was a real joy to them.