I’m sat writing this on the train down to York for the day. In a few days we celebrate our one year anniversary and we decided to seize the good weather and head to one of our favourite cities…
We could do a “re-enactment” of the night we met at our favourite pub, the crown Posada, and then go for an evening walk around the gloriously lit Quayside. Or we could go out to one of the fancier restaurants in town and get a blog post worthy meal?
But whilst I was happily pinning posts to the ideas board in mind, real life stopped me in my tracks. Our anniversary falls in Robs busiest week at work with him not finishing until the late evening and my masters work has started to pick up- meaning that a 6pm lecture finish is when I head home to fire up my laptop to do even more reading and planning. So life decided to throw a spanner in the works. Even my plan for a romantic day trip up to Edinburgh was scrapped due to work and weather! All in all, I was getting a little perturbed by the whole idea of trying to plan something and it was starting to feel like the hassle wasn’t worth it.
I wanted us to mesh these ideas together and have a lovely meal out in Edinburgh, the first city we went away to together for a little city break. It was the place where when we got back we realised we loved each other and I was so happy I’d chosen to date this man. It seemed the perfect idea!
However… the universe intervened and made us a better plan. We were heading back to York!
Back to school
As many of you might already know, I grew up in York. I spent my teens there as a boarding school kid. Right in the city centre, everything was in walking distance. My housemistress was like my second mother and school was just a massive luxurious house with an art room, music school tennis courts and a swimming pool.
But due to personal reasons I hadn’t been back to York all throughout my degree. The city was slightly tainted to me from the odd bad memory and because it’s so small I really didn’t wish to run into anyone from school.
But last December, Rob changed that for me. We decided randomly to head to York for the day. I headed back to school for the first time since I left for university and the whole trip was just pure nostalgia.
So, we decided to pop by school again and luckily my housemistress was in. We stopped for a chat whilst we had a look around.
It felt lovely to show him around my school and the place I grew up and for him to meet my housemistress. It felt so strange but right to walk round the creaking corridors and remember exactly how many steps it took to get from one end of the corridor to the other. Turning the corner through the gate and seeing my old boarding house look exactly the way I left it, made me miss it even more. I can imagine it’s a similar feeling to being allowed into your old house once new owners have moved in, plenty still the same but new changes.
So when we saw the weather was going to be lovely, it seemed a perfect idea to spend our free
Sunday doing an anniversary trip to the first city outside of Newcastle that we visited together.
The Red Chilli
The Red Chilli is possibly my most favourite restaurant I have ever been in. Chinese food is definitely up there as one of my favourite cuisines and I’d definitely have a hard time choosing between it and Italian food.
When I was in school, we found out about it because of a boarders meal trip there. It became my favourite because of the exquisite food and service and just the fact that it’s such a gorgeous restaurant.
So when I knew we were definitely heading to York, there was no question as to where we were going! I was so excited to spend the day in York with Rob but I couldn’t wait to head here for the first time in a few years.
I had my usual chicken and sweetcorn soup and tangy lemon chicken with the most fluffy and perfect egg fried rice whilst Rob tried some Sweet and Spicy beef rolls and sweet and sour chicken.
We both left perfectly full but not sluggish, perfectly satiated. We managed to walk back to the train station quite comfortably and spent most of our train journey reminiscing on how perfect a meal it was, and how affordable it was!
It was such a lovely day out and I’ve already got plans for next year!
