Babymoon Complete!

I am so, so tired but glad for it. Matt and I got home from our Babymoon this evening and while it wasn't exactly how I planned it was still great.
Matt ended up having to work on Friday until 3:30 - by which time we had planned on being in Calgary, checked in at the hotel and seeing the Titanic exhibit at the World of Science. After Matt showered, we loaded up, dropped off Gabe and all, we ended up on the highway by 5:30. After mssing our turn into downtown and consequently taking a 20 minute detour, we made it to our hotel by 7:30. Thank goodness for guaranteed checkins! By the time we got there we were so hungry we wanted anything to eat, regardless of how fancy it was or wasn't. So, all those restaurants we'd been looking at that we would have had to drive to were out. Fortunately we were within two blocks of Eau Claire Market which has a Joeys Tomato. I'd never been there before so we opted for it. It was great! Fantastic calamari. We ate so much for appetizers I could hardly even try my souvlaki and we didn't even look at the dessert menu. The next thing on our itinerary was to hit up a pub with some pool tables to watch a bit of the flames game. When I asked Matt though he opted to just go lounge in the hotel room since he was so tired - and to be honest, I was hoping he'd say that. We turned on the game at the room and when it was done we watched HGTV. We love that channel and since we don't have cable we never get to watch it. We did get to order room service - something I'd been really wanting to do - so we had cheesecake for dessert and then watched more TV. It was nice to just chill.
This morning we got up at 8, showered and packed and then checked out just after 9. We walked down to Eau Claire for breakfast and then went up to The Core to see the shops. The Devonian Gardens were closed which sucked. I did have a pretty good find in one of the shops though. There's this cute little shop called Compleat Cook in Bankers Hall. I used to go there to look around when I worked downtown but never felt tempted enough to buy anything - until today. They carry this line called Sophie Conran for Portmeirion. Her classic tableware collection is so gorgeous I couldn't stop looking. There were three pieces in particular that I adored: the egg cups, the mortar and pestle and her Celadon tea cups with the irregular rim. All of the pieces are textured with an almost faux bois design and absolutely gorgeous. You can see the pieces at www.sophieconran.com. What you can also see there are the prices. Now, in shop the egg cups were $18.95 for 2 and the mortar and pestle was $23. If you visit the link you'll see, not only that it is a UK shop that doesn't ship to Canada, but that the prices are in pounds and work out to more than the prices in Compleat Cook. I didn't buy the pieces there. I did grab the collection pamphlet so that I'd be able to find it in the future but I'll definitely be going back to Calgary to buy at least the mortar and pestle, which at $23 is not a bad price really, especially not for a designer piece. There are two Compleat Cook shops in Calgary - Bankers Hall and Willow Park. Check out the collection sometime.
After walking all over (to Olympic Plaza, Art Central and up Stephen Avenue Walk) we went for lunch at a sushi place called Banzai. It wasn't the best sushi I've ever had, but it was sushi all the same and it certainly wasn't the worst I've ever had. Matt needs a fair bit of sushi to feel full and normally that takes a fair bit of money. Here we ordered their 42 piece Party Tray for $25 and we both more than ate our full. By the time we were done our tour of downtown it was 3:00 and we decided to come home early.
It was a great time to just relax and not worry about having to take care of diaper changes and snack times, but I missed our little boy :)
Today was great, tomorrow is back to reality.

Mrs. Vander Leek ;)