60th Celebrations

My lovely mummy has turned 60 today, happy birthday mummy!!

Daddy took her to London for a long weekend and we all surprised her on Sunday, well my little brother (3 years younger and 7" taller lol) managed to surprise her in any case!  We on the other hand drove first of all to the wrong hotel completely, then the wrong branch of the right hotel and finally arrived at the right hotel 40 minutes late ... although we arrived with champagne and nibbles so I think we got away with it!!

Daddy had been planning this weekend all year bless him and had arranged for us all to go to Gareth's restaurant the Rose & Crown, http://www.roseandcrownhighgate.co.uk/ for an early dinner.

The food was, in all honesty, the most delicious I have ever tasted!  I had the warm goats cheese salad to start followed by the roast sirloin of scottish beef, both were amazing.  The goats cheese was yummy, tart with sweet roasted veg on top of a crunchy ciabatta, plus the Rose & Crown is not one of those annoying restaurants were the starter is either gone in one bite or you feel full up afterwards, as Golidlocks says, it was just right!  The beef was perfectly cooked, the roast potatoes were crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside, the carrots & parsnips were lovely and sweet, the yorkshire pud was HUGE but hadn't been burnt or gone soggy, just perfectly cooked and the gravy was out of this world! I seriously want to go for lessons with Gareth and learn how to recreate that meal!  The service was fab too, no notepad required here the lovely waitress took our orders and just melted away and the right food, served to the right people magically reappeared, I have no idea how she did it on such a busy day but the girl deserves a medal!  Even the wine list got the thumbs up from daddy and we were having such a good time that we completely lost track of time and almost missed the next bit of entertainment he had arranged!

Mummy had been driving herself crazy on the tube whilst we were on our way to Gareth's restaurant trying to work out where we were going, I had to remind her of the lesson she forever tells me (I'm still trying to learn it!) patience is a virtue lol.  So you can imagine her surprise when instead of going straight back to London Bridge off we jumped at Waterloo, again she had NO idea where we were going, brilliant!  Daddy, my little bro and my gorgeous hubby dashed off to pick up the tickets (well the utterly lovely hubby stayed halfway all the time keeping an eye on mummy and I so that we didn't get lost bless him, I am so lucky!) and we followed at a more leisurely pace thanks to our heels! Once we rounded the corner and started heading towards the London Eye mummy squealed, actually literally squealed, she has never ever squealed in her life!!  She has wanted to go on the Eye for ages and was so happy to finally be going, especially as she had suggested it that morning and daddy had fobbed her off lol.  The weather had been very kind to us and stopped raining as we arrived at their hotel and at this stage in the evening it was clear enough to see the majority of London, we all loved it.

We then all headed home, a fab 60th celebration was had and I reckon daddy has earned a couple of year's worth of brownie points with all the effort that went in to it, not mentioning the thoughtfulness bless him.