Cheers Y'all: Great Valentine's Weekend!

Valentine's weekend was a great reminder that we don't have to go on a trip somewhere to experience something new. Friday night was Nottingham Light Night, something the city has been doing for 5 years. This seems to be a very artistic town (even though they have 2 soccer teams, a horse race track, and a hockey team). Light Night seems to be set up to display a lot of that without having to go into a museum to see it and to give a different venue for the artists to show their work in. A lot of things we saw were done by college students. There were so many things going on in so many different places that there was no way to see it all. A lot of the businesses had events going on inside as well. The libraries had readings (one had Dickens readings by the Dickens Fellowship). There are two playhouses here and both had several events, which included performances by their childrens goups. A lot of restaurants and pubs had bands and Cape, which is on our corner, had Salsa dancers for a couple of hours. It was also a great opportunity for the churches in the city. They all had something going on. And they all offered tea and coffee because it was COLD!! We never made it to any of the indoor events. We were outside the whole time. (Hence the almost frost bitten toes I came home with). St Mary's Church had 2 different displays outside, along with a projection onto the church of light drawings. There were light projections onto the City Council building in Market Square and on other buildings as well. One building had red and blue lights with different shapes. One of the shapes in the rotation was stars and made me think of the American flag :) There were street performers walking around the city playing music. The castle had the most in a concentrated area and we spent a lot of time there. They had all the landscape lit up in different colors. There was a high school orchestra set up outside playing for a little while. My favorite, of course, was the heart. Mark had "Mark loves Amy" projected on it for me for Valentine's Day!! (pretty good way to get out of buying a card, don't ya think? I liked it much better!) Overall it was a very neat night and one we will do every year that we are here.

Saturday we went out to Wollaton Park. We have not been out there yet and it's only about a 10 minute bus ride. It had snowed again last week and the castle and the park were both still covered. There was a very nice lady getting on the bus with us and she directed us on where to go and where our stop was. She also suggested other places for us to go visit. The people here are so nice! We pulled up at the 2nd stop and you could see Wollaton Hall up on the hill. Wollaton Hall is used as Bruce Wayne's mansion in the Batman movie coming out this summer. Mark and I had our picture made in front of it. It will be neat to watch that movie over here knowing that we've been in that house! Wollaton Park is also known as Deer Park. I guess I thought they wouldn't be out and about because of the cold and snow, but boy was I wrong!! Of course, I went out to where they were to take pictures. My batteries actually died and I had to use my little camera for the stuff inside :) The deer were so pretty and the one big one was such a poser! He would stop eating and look up and pose for whatever person was taking pictures of him at the time, There were quite a few deer out eating, but there were so many behind the conservation fence! The gate is open for them to be able to go in and out, but people aren't allowed inside the fence. I loved looking at the deer out in the snow with Wollaton Hall in the distance on the hill. Such a pretty sight. The park is HUGE! There were families there sledding down the hills and everyone had their dogs out for walks. We actually went because they were having a Valentine Market, but it wasn't what I expected, it was much smaller. There were some vendors set up outside and some inside. We did buy a cake, some candy, and a Spanish baking dish. Those were our Valentine's gifts. Inside, they had the candy set up and Mark zeroed right in on that! I was looking at some hand made buttons (for my future daughter-in-law) :) and apparently Mark bought his candy AND ate it. He didn't even wait to get outside, much less home! We went back outside and walked around one of the walking trails (which was covered in snow and ice, so it wasn't the easiest to walk on). There is a private golf course at the back of the house and we saw more deer in the distance. There were two groups of them and one group went running across the field to the others. It was such a beautiful sight!! We will definitely be going back in the spring to see it all green and in bloom!

We went to a new restaurant that night for dinner called The Roundhouse. It was very, very good! The exterior is very deceiving though. It is much smaller inside than what it looks like. We had such a great weekend and didn't even leave the city to see new things and experience something great.

Cheers Y'all!!