I went to bed with every intention of getting up early with Nicky and going to breakfast.  However, not only did I stay in bed and not go to breakfast with her, but, I also totally slept through the breakfast window too!

When I woke up around 9, I text Col and I said, ‘Do I get up now? or, do I sleep in and miss breakfast’, his reply was, ‘sleep in, you’ll probably be out late tonight and sleep will come in handy.  I did what he suggested (for a change! LOL!)

Instead, I got up at 11am, had a quick shower and checked my email, while, in my multitasking element, chatting to Col on the phone.  I had lunch in the hotel restaurant (nothing fancy, just a club sandwich) before asking at the check-in desk for housekeeping to come up to the room to clean it as I’d missed their knock around 8am (this was around 1pm).

I really wanted a bath, but cause I wasn’t sure what time housekeeping was coming by, I decided that it’d be best not to jump in – cause you know as soon as I’d dropped my lush-bomb in the bath, the door would knock!

Instead, I spent the afternoon blogging, chatting to Nicky and Magz on facebook chat, texting some friends and slobbing about really. I had a new Matt Nathanson album to get stuck in to – which, is quite literally what happened, as it’s been ‘stuck’ on repeat since I first listened to it, I love it!  I’m not exactly sure that the other patrons of the hotel would have appreciated my singing Matty Nay (and Adele) pretty loudly but meh, what can ya do?!

Once everyone came home, we all got changed and ready to go out to dinner.  We’d no real idea of where we were going – we just knew that there was a restaurant, ‘somewhere in this area’.

In the end, we went to a place called Bob Chinns, a pretty upscale seafood restaurant.

To start with, Nicky and I tore in to a jug of Mai Tai,

We had the worlds most insane waiter – he was the spitting image of Ace Ventura, spoke like him and had us all in fits the entire night.  I’ve never seen a waiter telling people not to order something, but he was very opinionated – thankfully, his recommendations paid off (for the most part) and we all went with something a little ‘out there’, or, generally stuff we’d not ever tried before.

I had some salmon (well done) which, I was promised was phenomenal (it was!) I got an additional 3 inch lobster tail which I cut up and shared around.  It was my first time trying lobster and it wasn’t as WOW as I expected it to be, Nicky had some chicken parmesan,

Louise tried Tuna (the proper stuff, not from a tin), she ordered it medium (I think, but it looked pretty rare to me!) and then had to have it re-fired to well done (which tasted delicious!), Noelle had crab stuffed shrimp (which she said was delicious), Narashima only had some sweet potato fries and Brendan ordered Swordfish – which, we all thought was very brave until we discovered he was cheating and had eaten it before!

When dinner was over, we asked Ace Ventura, Gary to come and take our picture, to which he replies, ‘do you want Bob in the picture?’, we’re like, ‘uhm, who the hell is Bob?’.  He tells us that Bob is the owner (who, as it happens, Louise had previously handed her tuna to, to get re-fired).

When he came over, we got to talking, when he discovered that we were all ‘over’ from Northern Ireland he was THRILLED.  He lived in N.I for 8 or 9 months, way back when.  He trained in Kilkeel army barracks before heading to Normandy for the invasion.  He had never before met anyone from Northern Ireland and he was almost giddy at having met our group.

He offered us another jug of Mai Tai (but that woulda left Nicky and I on the floor), so instead, he sent us a selection of desserts (on the house) to enjoy.  They were kind of hit and miss, but the key lime pie went down a storm (particularly with Brendan who tried to guard it from the rest of us!) and the peanut butter oreo cheesecake was yum as well!

While this whole dessert free-for-all was going on, Narashima had ordered some coconut ice cream – which, Brendan had originally turned his nose up at.  However, after having tried it once, he decided it was actually quite delicious and kept helping himself – much to my (and Nicky’s) amusement.  Even funnier was the fact that Narashima couldn’t figure out why we were laughing so hard!

Back at the hotel, after an animated brain-storming, list-making team talk about what was to follow the next day (which of course, was right up my organisation-loving street!), most people headed up to bed, or went their own way.  Nicky, Brendan and I, stayed up in the hotel bar having the craic until just after 12.30am before once again konking out!