It's hot air balloon time again!
It's the annual
Bristol International Balloon Fiesta @Asthon Court Field. It was raining last year when we went there, so this year, hoping for nice weather we took leave from work especially to attend this event again. And, the British weather, without fail, POURED down unforgivingly. What was supposed to be a mass ascent and night glow quickly became deflation of hot air balloons!
After waiting for almost 2 hours for the rain to stop, we gave up and went back to the hotel.
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| Hot air balloons |
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| Special shaped hot air balloons |
Next day, weather was much better and we headed down to Weston-super-mare, to the annual
sand sculpture festival.
A holiday trip can never be complete without trying famous local food. We went to Papa's Restaurant (recommended by friends) for some fish and chips.
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| Papa's Restaurant |
The place is a nice little restaurant with a takeaway front to it and has very friendly members of staff. We were quickly seated and informed about the day's specials which included whole fish grilled and served with salad. It shows that the place is not a typical 'local chippies' serving the usual fried cod or haddock with chips but here they offer a wider variety of fish species!
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| Cod and Chips |
I ordered the lunch specials that included cod and chips, bread roll and a drink for a reasonable price of GBP 7.45. The cod fish was nicely battered and fried to crisp perfection. Very yummy served with homemade tartar sauce!
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| Plaice and Chips |
The plaice was quite nice as well, with more flaky flesh compared to the cod but still equally well battered and deep fried, giving a very crispy coat.
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| Sand Sculpture Festival |
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| Koala Bears |
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| Hunter |
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| Stack of Frogs |
After enjoying the sand sculptures, we thought that we would have a very English afternoon with some cream tea.
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| Cream Tea |
We found this lovely place inside an information centre in WSM that serves tea! The fruit scone with butter, strawberry jam and Channel Island cream was just lovely for an afternoon tea by the English seaside.
After that, we should have headed home but instead we decided to drive down to Plymouth because we missed the Japanese food in
Yukisan! After the first
visit there with my mom in April, we could not forget the taste of the most delicious Japanese dishes we had so far!
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| Upstairs seatings |
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| Pot of Green Tea |
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| Pork chops with Tonkatsu Sauce |
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| Deep Fried Scallops in nest of fried noodles |
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| Seafood Udon Soup |
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| Seabass Sushi |
The food was as good as before. The seafood udon soup tasted very sweet from seafood and Chinese shitake mushrooms they used to cook the soup and the generous amount of very fresh seafood on it was just amazing!
The scallops hidden inside a nest of crunchy deep-fried noodles basket was very delicious. Even the housing of the scallop is very well cooked with attention to details let alone the scallop itself hidden in the nest. A very eye-pleasing and delicious dish indeed!
The pork chop served with rice and homemade salad was also very delicious. The pork chop was deep fried in very nice breaded batter and had very juicy and tender meat. Dipped into the lovely
Tonkatsu sauce, it was a perfect match to be eaten with Japanese rice.
Very satisfied with a lovely dinner, we headed back to Cardiff on a 2 1/2 hours journey! The long drive? Very well worth it!
