First off happy birthday Dad!
Now to business. No parkrun this morning because of some event on The Leas, but we are all free today, some rare alignment of diaries. So for a day out! Thought about Brighton, if by some chance Mum and Dad were free and fancied meeting us there, but no, and it's a bit too far for just a day out without another good reason. This is also why we can't head to Portchester, would take too much of the day up to get there. Had thought about Deal, but it's a bit quiet, so in the end we went for Broadstairs. We couldn't quite remember if we'd been there before.
Train there, nice and easy really. It took an hour but being broken up by having to change we didn't really notice it. Yes we could have been in London quicker than this, but we've done London a lot and will go back there again soon. Broadstairs has amusement arcards, which the boys really wanted.
We booked a restaurant and an escape room before we'd got off the train, and walked to the escape room via a cafe. Escape Room really really good, it was Atlantis themed, we had to get on a submarine for the first bit, it was very convincing. Some sort of crazy simulator technology. The boys both really contributed to this escape room challenge, got some of the puzzles that we couldn't get, and there was lots of climbing and things to be done. Really enjoyed this one. We solved it well within time, though the bit "traveling back on the submarine" was tricky and frustrating. Still, we smashed it.
We cancelled the original restaurant after considering it a bit longer and shopped around for something that better suited us all. Then we found a really good pub to sit in and work out what to do next. I was hoping for a micropub type thing at some point, and saw there were at least three in town. Then we passed The Magnet, between the escape room and the arcade, saw there were other families sat inside, so it looked ideal. And it was, I had a flight of three 1/3 pint real ales, Clare had a beer that she liked, nice soft drinks for the boys, and board games to play.
The boys burned through the money in the arcade, then we found a restaurant. Our first choice fully booked, our second choice we could only to sit outside, and the weather wasn't that great. But it was sheltered, and covered, and there were heaters, and it looked really good. Next back to that same pub again as we had a gap before dinner, then to the restaurant again. It's called Posillipo, we've been to a related one in Canterbury. This was great, good choiced, nice atmosphere, everyone got just what they wanted.
Train back was OK too, though we had to go via Ashford. Still took about an hour. Taxi back home from the station and still time to watch some TV.
⬅️ Artists of the week, commencing Sunday 2nd June :: Nicer weather today ➡️
Paul Clarkeʼs blog - I live in Hythe in the deep South. Married + dad to two, I am a full stack web engineer, + I do js / Node, some ruby, other languages ect ect. I like pubbing, running, eating, home-automation + other diy jiggery-pokery, history, genealogy, TV, squirrels, pirates, lego, + TIME TRAVEL.
Yep, deliberately unstyled.