Sunday - Warm and sunny
I’m back! Did you miss me? We had a really great weekend. It was so nice to be able to say that.
We got up early-ish on Saturday morning and finished any last minute packing. We loaded the car and then headed out. Two minutes later, F backed up the car and came back to the house. He’d forgotten to take his medicine. Good thing I knew to ask him if he’d brought it!
We went to Gusto for a quick and nice breakfast, then got on the road. The roads were in good condition and we made good time. We had a couple of breaks for snacks or whatever, and got to Niigata on time. We parked the car and walked to the hotel and checked in. We found out that F had used the wrong type of parking lot, so I stayed in the room and F moved the car.
We relaxed for a little and then decided to head out. I asked F to make a reservation for our favourite Mexican restaurant, he did! It’s so tiny that if they had a party or something there wouldn’t be room for us.
I wanted to do some shopping before dinner. We walked over to the station and were surprised to see that the “front” of the station is completely boarded over. They are renovating the station. When we were here last year they hadn’t got that far. We went to the escalator on the far end and went up that way. We found Jupiter, the foreign food store in a new location…yay! I bought some tea and some taco spice mix.
We continued to the bookstore on the other side of the station. I was looking for something to read that would be light and hopefully good. I finally decided on a book, Kate Morton’s The Clockmaker’s Daughter, and then as I was going to pay for it, remembered I had a book card, so I got the book and I didn’t have to pay for it! We spent a bit of time looking around the book store and then headed to the restaurant.
The sidewalks were icy and F was walking really fast. We were early so I tried to make him slow down, but he wouldn’t. We got to the restaurant 10 minutes early! It hadn’t opened yet, so we did a little more walking in the area. I still wasn’t too happy with him as my shoes had little traction and I was scared of falling on the ice.
We went back at 6 and had a lovely meal. We had their combo meal and it was a good choice since we got a little of everything. They had real tortilla chips and F was amazed at how good they were. As usual, he overdid it on the jalapeños and hot sauce, suffered a bit today. I drank some hibiscus tea with my meal and then had rice pudding for dessert. Yum. Only place I can get it here I think.
When we left, we walked to another place that a friend had written about on Facebook. We Google Mapped it and went to another restaurant. It was a bar too, so we didn’t feel bad about not eating too much. It was expensive, but the food was good and so were the drinks. F had an Australian lager, I had a cider and we shared an order of fries with a black garlic aioli dressing that was very nice. The owner is Australian and we had a nice little chat. His wife could also speak English, so it was nice for me. I think we’ll probably go back if we are ever in Niigata again.
We went back to the hotel. It was quite early, only around 9 pm but we were tired and had both had drinks. At the hotel, F took a shower and I checked out the Video on Demand. I discovered that it was still free and they had Last Christmas on it. I haven’t seen it, but I wanted to.
When F came out of the shower, we both watched the movie. It was fun. It wasn’t the greatest film ever, but it worked for us and we enjoyed it. F went to bed around midnight, I stayed up a few minutes longer and then decided that since I was really tired, I would go to bed then too. I was in bed by 12:30. I know that is hard to believe for me, but I was.
I wasn’t so happy when I woke up around 2 am though. F’s phone was going. Someone was phoning him at 2 am. All kinds of things went through my mind…the house burned down, his mother was sick…the hotel was kicking us out…F slept on! I woke him up and asked him to check his phone.
It was his mother. K had phoned us. F phoned her back to see what was wrong. He was much nicer to her than I would have been. She got the dates mixed up and thought that we were away on Sunday night and she wanted to go and vote in the Prefectural vote. I don’t know why she would want to go and vote at 2 am, I think she got mixed up with the time too. F had to speak really loudly and I was worried that the neighbours would complain, but I didn’t hear anything from them. Honestly though, don’t call people at 2 am unless there is some major problem.
We both went back to sleep. We got up around 8:15 and went down for breakfast. The hotel, not a big expensive place, did have a nice breakfast and even had an omelette bar.
I took a shower and then we checked out. The original plan was for F to bring the car around, but I decided I’d rather walk to the parking place with him. I kind of wished I had waited, but it didn’t matter much. The sidewalks were wet and very icy in places.
We drove over to the port area and had a look around. The space where we could eat outside was gone unfortunately, it looked like it was under construction. F couldn’t do the thing he wanted, buying raw fish and having a donburi from the fish market. We looked at some of the shops in the area, found a restaurant that did sell donburi so ended up going there. F asked me what I’d like to eat and I told him that I was going to let him pick the restaurant since it was his choice to be there and I wanted him to be happy. We went to the donburi restaurant. F had a tuna donburi set meal, I had a sashimi set meal and we shared a grilled buri cheek afterwards. The food was really good, except F didn’t love his as much as I thought he would. Poor thing.
We hit up one more store and I found the tea that I’ve been looking for all over in the shop. It’s an organic tea from Australia. Although I’ve been looking for it, I’d forgotten about the shop that it came from. I got some more, plus we bought a wedge of cheese there too. The woman was giving out samples.
I thought we’d be heading back soon, but F had other plans. We stopped in at a tourist information area that had a museum component. It turned out to be quite interesting. We explored the building, watched some video displays and just had fun really.
On the way out of the city, we stopped at the giant Musashi store and bought some stuff. In the grocery section we got some drinks for the road back.
Finally we headed back to Tsuruoka. We did make a couple of pit stops, but got back around 6:30.
Wonder of wonders, K was up! F took her to go and vote, he did too, and then they came back.
I asked F about dinner since it was 6 hours since we last ate, so we went out. We went to Foodever. It was a little sad as there were no customers and only one of the restaurants was open, but the cook was happy to see us. We both had the same thing, “steak and curry”. We had the pork version and it came with a salad. We both liked it a lot, but F said that my curry was better!
After all of this, we just came back to the house and have relaxed ever since. F is in bed, and honestly, I’m rather tired myself.
This was rather long but it does cover two days after all.
Come back later if you want and hear all about my Monday. Until tomorrow….
No comments:
Post a Comment