It's a Lovely Holiday With You

We went to Norfolk this weekend - to the seaside! We went to a B&B right on the water, called the Keswick Hotel. It turned out to be a fantastic gem of a place.

The view from the back of the hotel.

 It was all very non-Fawlty Towers-like. The best part was that they had a baby monitor, so Matthew & I had a great date at the hotel restaurant. The owner is a chef, and everything was sooo good, but I think all restaurant food tastes better without a baby at the table. You can savour every bite, as opposed to wolf it all down before Eliz gets bored.

The weekend got off to a bit of a rocky start. Matthew picked up the rental car and got home for 4:30, but somehow we didn't end up leaving until after 5:15. How does that happen, when you are so sure that everything is all ready to go?? No worries, we got on the road, and were about 30 minutes into our 2 hour drive when Matthew looked at me and said, "We forgot the stroller." Well, great. That sentence was followed by a great big "bllleeeecccck" from Elizabeth, and she puked all over herself. Well, double great.

We pulled into a gas station, and while we were cleaning her up, we debated whether or not to go back for the stroller. In the end, Matthew was fed up with weighing the pros and cons, so we just sucked up the hour & a half to go home & grab the stroller. As a result, we drove most of the way in the dusk & eventual dark. Also, we had decided to drive using the directions from Google maps and a regular map of England. No Sat Navs for the Hawkeyes!! So brave!! So dumb!!! Google 'cleverly' took us on these secondary roads, to avoid the major routes around Norwich which could be congested. There were some pretty bendy little roads, and guess what - only about half of them had sign posts on them, so we started navigating only by mileage. Exact conversation: 

Jammy (from the back seat, where I'm reading the Google instructions by the light of my phone, and 'playing' with Eliz who is post-puke-hungry-but-not-going-to-eat-anything): Okay, babe, this is Hare Road. We have to go 0.6 miles and then turn left onto Broad Lane. What's your mileage?
Matthew:  1124.3
Jammy: Okay, so when we get to 1124.9, turn left
(Keep in mind, there are no street lights, and Hawkeye is having to do that thing where you turn on your brights and then turn them off when another car is coming towards you - - - every 15 seconds they were on and off, on and off, on and off....).
Jammy: Okay, Elizabeth, would you like to read this book about puppies?
Elizabeth: No! No! No! No! No! No!
Jammy: (big breath) Okay, what book would you like?
Elizabeth: Puppies.
Matthew: Okay, well, we're at that mileage, but this road has no lights, and no sign.
Jammy: Babe, we're going to have to trust Google, because these roads don't even show up on our regular map. They just have names, not numbers. We are never going to get out of this neighbourhood.

I'm not sure how we got there without (a) fighting, (2) getting lost, or (d) Elizabeth puking again, but we did. And after that, the weekend was carefree. Seaside holidays are really the best with a little one. The sea was less than a minute outside our hotel, so after breakfast both days, we just put our baby in her swimsuit and hat, and down we went. She played with a bucket and rocks, she played in her own ocean that her Daddy made her (ie dug a hole and filled it with water), she ran into the ocean and then ran away from the waves, giggling and laughing.

At one point, Eliz and I were talking:
Me: "This is the beach, can you say beach?"
Eliz: "Beeeeetcch!!" (hahaha!)
Me:"This is sand, can you say sand?"
Eliz: "Ssssssaaaaaaaa!!"
Me: "These are called waves, can you say wave?"
Eliz: "Byeeeee!!", and waved her hands to the water. Seriously, so cute. Also, there were roughly 8 million dogs on the beach, playing and running and swimming. Now Elizabeth's definition of heaven is a seaside with dogs and a pail to put rocks in.

 

I had a total memory-lane moment when all these British families came to the seaside and made little forts with these wind breaker things that you hammer into the ground. My family totally had those. I also had cravings for ham and potato chip rolls. Mmmm...

This is what you get when you Google search "British Beach Wind Breakers". And this is what you see on every single British beach.

On Sunday, Elizabeth fell asleep in her high chair when we were having the Sunday roast lunch - adorable.

She played herself out at the seaside. (Hello, memory lane part II: the lunch was exactly the meal my Mum made for Sunday roasts. Cabbage and everything. Mmmmm...) And miraculously, she transferred into the carseat without waking up, so we went for a drive along the coast, and came back to Cambridge via a different route than on the Friday. I am so proud of my navigating prowess. Screw you, Sat Nav, and your £10 charge! We don't need you! We do need to bring extra clothes for Eliz and maybe even some kind of bucket in the car, because guess who puked on the way home too?? Poor baby! Poor Mummy, crawling into the back seat to clean up puke while we drove...

All in all, it was so fantastic to getaway to the seaside - and yes, seaside is the most British word I say now.