Ships, castles and spas – passing through southern England and Wales COMPLETED - Page 14 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
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Seems like quite a relaxing afternoon at the spa! I can't believe those lines as if I saw that I'd turn away. Always good to have a reservation to avoid that situation!
You can only reserve packages and they're only available on weekdays, so on weekends, it just pays to be there early.
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Your room looks absolutely stunning and very Victorianesque in its' appointments. I noticed the bottle of wine on the night table and hope you and Mark put that to good use!
We didn't actually, as a) you had to pay for it and b) it was red wine and neither of us drinks red wine!
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Your lunch sounds really delicious. The massage sounds like heaven with the added bonus of having a lot on common with Jasmine. Your room looks really nice with a beautiful view!
Friday 12 June – part four: there’s so much we want to sample
Just before 7:00pm, we made our way over to the Hare and Hounds, where we were booked for dinner. It’s a beautiful looking place.
Part of the selling point for it are the views it’s got, and despite the rain which we could now feel in the air was coming, it was still pretty impressive…
We headed inside, and were seated immediately, although sadly not at a window table, which was a shame, but we did notice that the regulars seemed to have those, which I can understand perfectly. However, it was a lovely place inside, and I was very taken by this…
We ordered our food, then I headed outside to take another couple of photos of the view…
I ordered some rose Zinfandel, which the menu said was sweet, and given I know my way around rose Zinfandel, when it turned up, I was a bit shocked at how dry it was. There was some discussion about it at the bar, and apparently it was the right serving, but one of the servers came over with another offering that she said would be more to my taste, and it was, so I had a couple of glasses of that.
It was interesting, as she was older than the others, and we thought she was the manager or owner, the way the others behaved towards her, but we got talking to her, and she’d only worked there for seven weeks, so appearances can be deceptive!
After much deliberation, as there was so much to choose from, I eventually went with a starter of grilled asparagus, poached egg and hollandaise sauce. It was beautifully presented, and tasted excellent, and was a wonderful appetiser.
Mark had the flaked ham hock terrine with toasted bread, piccalilli, and mixed leaf salad.
While we were waiting for our entrees, we passed the time by watching the chefs at work. As I said to Mark, you’d pay extra for this privilege if you were at a Disney signature restaurant!
For entrée, I went for the roasted fillet of sea trout with crushed lemon and crab new potatoes, samphire and green beans, and beurre noisette. Honestly, I cannot say enough good things about this dish. The flavours all just combined together beautifully, and as a result, every bite was an absolute joy.
Mark had the roasted rump of lamp with French beans, peas, asparagus, minted new potatoes and cashew nut sauce vierge. All I heard from him as well were good comments about his meal…
When it came to dessert, it got very interesting, as there was so much we wanted to sample. In the end, after much debate, Mark went for the Cointreau brownie, chocolate orange sauce, and vanilla ice cream. That was one of the options I’d been toying with, so I tried a bit, and I’m glad I didn’t have it, as it was very rich, and I think it would’ve been too much for me.
I ended up with the grilled pineapple, brown sugar, rum, mint, and coconut ice cream, and I was very happy with my choice, with the exception of the mint, as I just didn’t think it added anything.
We also decided to share the three scoops of Marshfield ice cream, as I’d been admiring the choices, and it turned out that Mark had too. We ended up with the Champagne sorbet, which was much sweeter than we both expected and very pleasant, the honeycomb ice cream, which didn’t taste much like honeycomb, until you got to the final note of the ice cream, at which point suddenly the honey exploded in your mouth, and the raspberry pavlova ice cream, which was very light, and absolutely to die for.
The service was very good here, and they had plenty of staff, so no table was ever kept waiting for anything. The only downside to the evening was something they couldn’t do anything about. There was a loud hen party of six women, and for the first part of our meal, all we could hear was them being raucous and laughing. I’m sure they were having a great time, but it didn’t exactly make for the refined atmosphere that I’m sure you would usually get in here, especially given how classy the food was.
Apart from that though, we couldn’t fault our meal here. It was a great choice, and even better, we’d been told at the B&B to ask if we could use our reward card there. It’s something a lot of the B&Bs have, as we had it the last time we stayed here, and it offers discounts in local businesses. Well, it got us a £16.50 ($26) discount, which brought our check down to £65 ($100). Yes, that was pricey, but then again, it was good food.
Hare and Hounds
Appetiser 9½ 9½
Entrée 10 10
Dessert 1 10 9½
Dessert 2 9½ 9½
Service 9½ 9½
Atmosphere 8 8½
Value for money 8½ 8½
Average score: 9.29
We headed out just after 8:30pm, and made our way back towards Bath, and ended up getting a very cool view of the beautiful Royal Crescent…
We headed back to the B&B and didn’t last much longer before we headed to bed. I have to say all this relaxing can be very tiring work…
The weather today was cloudy with a small bit of rain and cooler with temperatures in the mid 60s. The best thing today was the Thermae Bath Spa. The worst thing today was the accident on the way into Bath in the morning and the knock-on impact on the traffic. The funniest thing today was some of the women trying to keep their hair dry! Today we tried staying at Cranleigh bed and breakfast And the result was we were both very impressed with it. The most magical moment today was sitting in the rooftop pool with it raining!
That dinner really looked superb. And then a nice bonus to find you were able to get a discount!
It was. I was thinking about it earlier when I was out swimming and how it would be nice to go back for another meal there, whenever we go back to the spa.
Wow, I had a lot to catch up on! I'm sorry to say I just skimmed the Dr Who exhibit, as I don't watch the show, but I'm glad you got to do it! Bath is much more to my liking. Such a lovely city and your dinner spot looks beautiful and tasty!
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What a lovely meal you had and your trout looked especially delicious and much to my liking! Although, you had green asparagus for your appetizer, it's too bad they didn't have white asparagus on the menu as it's in season and can be quite good with a hollandaise sauce. Although, it seems to be available more often in Germany and the Alsace of France (which I had in 2013)
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October 6, 2017-Enjoying an amazing dinner at Victoria & Albert's with PP's Dot and Drew
My TR from my most recent trip is now underway. Includes: Universal Studios Florida, Disney World and Sea World Orlando Trifecta TR -Updated December 10th! TR is now COMPLETED!
What a lovely meal you had and your trout looked especially delicious and much to my liking! Although, you had green asparagus for your appetizer, it's too bad they didn't have white asparagus on the menu as it's in season and can be quite good with a hollandaise sauce. Although, it seems to be available more often in Germany and the Alsace of France (which I had in 2013)
Yes, white asparagus is very rare over here - I've only seen it in continental Europe and America before.
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I can't believe those lines as if I saw that I'd turn away. Always good to have a reservation to avoid that situation!
I noticed the bottle of wine on the night table and hope you and Mark put that to good use! 
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However, it was a lovely place inside, and I was very taken by this… 
Although, it seems to be available more often in Germany and the Alsace of France (which I had in 2013)
And your dinner looks delish! 
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