Le Westminster

It's been a lovely sunny, frosty day which made it feel very Christmassy.  We had breakfast and then opened our presents, and I was a very lucky girl - from Alan I had a Longchamp 'Le Pliage Neo' bag which has it has a cross body strap, to use as my 'dressy' camera bag ,  a new 45 mm F1.8 prime lens which is equivalent to a 90mm, a lens hood and Coco Mademoiselle perfume.  He's also going to pay for me to do a woodland bird photography workshop with a guy who owns a private wood near Handcross.  He has 6 bird hides and reflection pools and works with a perch and bait method, so the birds are about 10ft away.  He also does a bank vole workshop which you can combine with the birds, and I'd like to do this, but there needs to be a minimum of two people to book that one so unless I can find someone to do it with me, I'll do the birds.

I had money off mum and Alan's parents, a lovely scarf and M&S voucher off Rachel, Scott and the girls, and I had a lovely surprise from work, in that as well as the hamper that I opened before we came away, they bought me £50 worth of vouchers for Park Cameras.  Last year they got everyone M&S vouchers which I would have been more than happy with, but I'm really touched that a lot of thought has gone into buying me photography vouchers.

Once the presents were opened, Alan and I took the boys out for a walk and then we FaceTimed Rach and the girls before getting ready to go out for lunch.  On the apartment owner's recommendation, we booked the Restaurant Les Cimaises which is part of Le Westminster Hotel.  It was a very good recommendation, the hotel is pretty spectacular as you can see, and they even put the red carpet out for us!  The food and service were excellent, we had a buffet for starters, Pintade for our main course, which made up for us not having it last night, and then  a buffet for dessert.  As it's Christmas I treated myself to a chocolate cake which was delicious.

After lunch we had a wander to the look at the ice rink and then after going home so that Alan could call his mum and dad, we went back out to walk off our lunch while Mum stayed at home and did her packing ready for tomorrow.  We walked down to the beach and saw the most amazing sunset and as it was low tide, there were lots of pools of water which looked amazing in the golden light.  

Once home, I did our packing and now we're relaxing with a glass of wine.  I think this has been one of the nicest Christmases we've had and I'm really sorry to be going home tomorrow, we've already decided that it's somewhere we'll come back to, although we'll look for somewhere that has a proper oven!  Interestingly, I've found an apartment within Le Westminster Hotel that allows dogs, so that would be of interest, however we're not going to do anything until we know what the situation is with pet travel after Brexit.

Anyway, I'm going to go and pour another glass of wine and watch Ghost which has just started, and it’s the Version Originale which means it’s in English. So I'll wish you all a very happy Christmas, I hope you've had or are having a lovely day.