I think this may have been the most festive weekend EVER.
We’ve just come back from visiting N’s brother and his girlfriend in Bristol for a long weekend away, and we basically did all of the most Christmas-y things you can think of to get us in the mood!
We kicked off our weekend with a delicious breakfast of waffles with various toppings (we really did have the best hosts!), before heading down to the Harbourside and the city centre to explore the craft and German markets!
I love Bristol in December. Yes, it’s ridiculously busy, but all the streets smell of cinnamon and mulled wine and it all just feels so… festive!
That evening, we also ventured over to Bath to explore the markets there too (can you tell I love Christmas markets??). I’ve never been to the Bath ones, so I was amazed at how many there were and how many different things each stall sold.
Oh, and of course we enjoyed a £3 mulled wine with a free mince pie before buying a hog roast from a stall and buying gifts for the whole family!
Could it get more Christmas-y than that?
Yes. Because that evening when we got back to the flat, we watched Elf while wrapping presents. <3
On Sunday we travelled to Longleat Park for yet more awesome Christmas adventures!
We drove through the safari park keeping our eyes out for elephants, tigers and wolves, but decided against going into the monkey enclosure with N’s nice car because… monkeys.
This month at Longleat they have the ‘Festival of Lights’, so the whole place is fantastically decorated to light up incredibly at night. Seriously, it was awesome!
Once it was dark, we walked around the park for hours just admiring everything. I’m a huge fan of Chinese traditions, colours and decor so this was right up my street.
This was the perfect way to round off the weekend (followed with some more mulled wine and chocolate truffles back home of course).
So, if you didn’t know what the South West has to offer in terms of festive Christmas fun, you know now. We did all of the things.
We went to a similar festival of lights thing in Antwerp last Christmas! It was also at the zoo so they had some animals sculptures (can you call them that?) and Chinese themed ones. I didn’t see if it was on this year though, but we haven’t had much time to get into the festive spirit between working and sorting out things to go away for the holidays.
Ooh that sounds great! And yeah to be honest we’re the same, and it looks like I’m going to be working right up to Christmas eve so we have barely any time to prepare things (and we’re doing Christmas lunch at ours!). Hence why we decided to squeeze all the festivities into one weekend :) x
Wow what a weekend! This all sounds brilliant, I visited Bristol last weekend and I loved the markets there too, it’s such a good town and the markets were so Christmassy and buzzing! I’ve never been to Bath though, I’ll have to go to the markets there, I love all Christmas markets, the one in York is lovely too (although smaller than Bristol) I really want to visit Longleat it sounds incredible and looks like you had a fab time!
JosieVictoriaa // josievictoriaa.blogspot.co.uk // Lifestlye, Travel and Fashion
Ohh I’ve never been to York! A couple years ago we all went to Paris a few days before Christmas day and did the markets on the Champs d’Elysee and it was AMAZING! The Bath ones are pretty special too though :) would definitely recommend x
Ooh I bet Paris was gorgeous at Christmas!!