Hot Chocolate Anniversary

This weekend was our six month wedding anniversary, unfortunately Schott’s Almanac was no help at all working out what the traditional six month wedding anniversary symbol is, only starting after a whole year with cotton. Since there doesn’t seem to be an agreed upon six month symbol, I choose hot chocolate after we enjoyed one at the end of a very relaxing afternoon retracing part of our wedding tour of Hampshire. If you’re in the area, I thoroughly recommend The Old House Hotel and the Marriott Meon Valley; they were both superb on our wedding day.

(I was pretty pleased with the results of tinkering with Open Street Map for our wedding invitations although, after stories of some of the detours our guests took, it may not have been worth it!!)

It’s been a mad six months which seem to have flown past with a brilliant honeymoon in Canada, (unsuccessfully) trying to move house and playing in the snow!

Looking forward to the next six months!

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Just married!

Well, married for almost two months but finally got round to posting something after the honeymoon, choosing photos, and post-wedding distractions! After much planning (largely by Jo of course!) the day was fantastic- it couldn’t have gone better. The main thing of course was that we did indeed get married… in Basingstoke. Admittedly not the obvious choice, but being a registry office helped the budget, and it was the nicest one we found:

It even had a park right next door, perfect for some wedding photos, for which we were very lucky to have a photographer in the family! The only slight downside to Basingstoke was where to go after getting married. By some amazing luck we finally stumbled on The Old House Hotel which wasn’t too bad a journey- we didn’t lose any of the guests at least, although I think there were a few sat nav inspired scenic routes along the way!

The next hop on our touring wedding was much shorter: just round the corner to the Meon Valley hotel, where I have very fond memories of an enormous chocolate cake. Special thanks to Jo’s sister’s boyfriend for suggesting ‘The Final Countdown’ as the last song, and Nick the DJ for actually playing it- that’ll teach us not to have a play list! (Well, no play list but Abba and Oasis were banned!)

Thanks to everyone who came to celebrate with us, making it such a wonderful day.

More tea?

We spent a very nice long weekend loafing around drinking tea, mostly at home to avoid any lovely bank holiday traffic. We did end up getting out to two local tearooms over the weekend as well; once before getting lost in the Meon Valley and the second time to catch up with friends from the other side of Hedge End.

Lilly’s Tea And Coffee House, Wickham

This was the first time we’ve been here since it became Lilly’s Tea and Coffee House, and it’s much better than before the make over. It seems quite spacious inside and there was a very tempting selection of cakes, but we both went for a cream tea. My only complaint with the food was the jam, cream, scone ratio: tiny jar-plenty-1! There just wasn’t enough scone to hold all the cream! Nice scone though, and larger than average, but just the one.

There were also a surprising number of staff, most of them looking slightly frazzled though. Despite being a good half an hour before closing time, we had the nagging feeling of not being made particularly welcome. They were all very efficient but Jo thinks they may not have heard of service with a smile.

The Anvil Tearooms, Bishops Waltham

Second time at the Anvil and I was very much looking forward to another slice of Tunisian orange cake. There was a scary moment when it looked like someone was buying the last piece!!! Luckily there was another whole cake ready to go, and it was every bit as good as I remembered. Jo had another cream tea, just for the purpose of comparison of course. Much better jam, cream, scone ratio, with the ideal two scones and bowls of jam and cream. There was also butter here, which is nice.

As before, the service is more unique than the average tearoom, which I like. And the singing chef is still singing.

If you want a more modern cream tea, I’d recommend Lilly’s tearoom, but my favourite is still the Anvil.