Oooh, my feet hurt!

[frostfox]

Xmas shopping in Chester with best buddie Annie, the house smells of Lush and my legs are going to drop off any time now.

Got the 10.17 train in, return ticket for two, £10, what a great deal.

First stop, a hippy shop, sparkly belly dance necklaces were bought. Mostly by me for me. I am a magpie, "Oh look, sparklies!" but I did manage to get Gail's pressie here too.

BHS next, to look at their vast and silly xmas shop and buy me a dark purple velour bath robe - previous glorious purple and gold one is about 15 years old and is all plucked on one shoulder where Spooks would sit and kneed my shoulder.

Next, after wandering past the cathederal and a divine old fashioned sweet shop with all the jars (we resisted) we called in Starbucks for coffee.
Two coffees, sharing a cheescake and a bag of Christmas blend for me. Not bad for £5 - okay, Annie has a discount card as she works there and she gets paid a bag of coffee as part of her weekly wage so that was gratis.

Lush, which I should not be allowed in without a grown up (Annie doesn't count) £18 for three bottles of shampoo is excessive. They will last me over a year but even so. I loved Cosmetics To Go but it wasn't as much fun shopping by cataloge as going in and being seduced by the divine smellies.

Lakeland Plastics, which don't seem to sell much Tupperwear type storage stuff any more but do sell scrummy plain chocolate figs...

More wandering down the Rows (medieval shopping streets on two levels, great when it starts raining) then pub lunch, sausages and mash and gravy and a nice pint of Peddy (Pedigree Bitter). Portmerion shop, another place I should be banned from. I have almost as much Portmerion as they do in the shop, going on holiday there once a year sort of fills the house with the stuff. I need two more pasta bowls but they don't have any remaindered ones in Botanical Garden so I will have to wait for May when I'm back in The Village.

Past Times, selling mock old stuff, having a 20% off sale but I restrained myself. Annie didn't.
Next door, a shop selling real old stuff - Roman jewellery, teeny, tiney real scarabs, coins, oil lamps, all out of my price range but a girl can drool.

5pm, tea and another cake, feet throbbing, tea is life saver. Tea rooms are 1930s decor (so not that old by Chester standards) but they still have piano playing in upstairs lounge 1pm to 3pm daily, sadly we had missed it today and a stunning creaky old lift going up two floors to the toilets, decided to walk up the stairs, too creaky for my tastes.

Brisk walk back to station, calling at Lush *again* to buy pressies for boss and workmate.

Very, very glad I talked Annie into driving down to Northwich station from my house and leaving the car parked there, don't think we would have made the 20 min walk back home.

Great day. Gosh I will sleep well tonight!

FF

Comments

[kateaw]

Oooh sounds like a fun day, worth all the foot ache.

[kateaw]

PS Sleep well

[eleyan.livejournal.com]

That sounds pretty much like my ideal day out, too. Lucky you, Chester is a lovely place, we never go any more.

[blingaway.livejournal.com]

Foxie I thought of you today when I was in Forever 21, a delightful little shop full of hip fun clothes. I found a hip scarf spangled all over with gold sequins and beads and coins that jingled. I may have to go back and buy it for when you give dance lessons to us all in Vancouver.:D

[watervole.livejournal.com]

Lakeland is addictive even when you manage to avoid most of the chocolates/sweets. I came out yesterday with a Yorkshire pudding tin, several wash balls, a knife sharpener for my mother-in-law, liquorice for my son, and a couple of other things besides.

[designgeek.livejournal.com]

I want to go shopping with YOU, you seem to know your way to all the cool places. :-D

[frostfox.livejournal.com]

If you ever find yourself in the northwest of the UK, I will show you all the cool shops in Chester, it's really quite easy, most of the shops in Chester are cool, not to mention the Roman ampitheatre, the City Walls, the cathederal, do a Google on Chester, it's a fabby place.

FF

[designgeek.livejournal.com]

I've already googled LUSH and discovered that they sell in Canada and ship to the U.S., too. :-D

[frostfox.livejournal.com]

Oh, their stuff is fab.
Terribly expensive but it's all organic, some of it's fair trade, all of it not tested on animals and all of it smells out of this world, even their catalogs reek of the shops, I can't walk past the front door, it pulls me in like a book or jewellery shop.

FF

[discodiva76.livejournal.com]

I sooo want to visit Chester....my dad used to have to go there a lot for work meetings...he loved it....

Deeds xx

[library-lynn.livejournal.com]

I discovered Lush through mail order (via Maria) a while ago. I love their body washes, especially Happy for Sad and Narcotic, both of which are being discontinued.

[owlfish]

They have US branches too these days, as of about 8 months ago. But that's only useful if you live in the right places.

[quaryn-dk.livejournal.com]

Yay, Lush! I'm madly in love with Lush, but I don't live anywhere near one. Stockholm has one, why can't Copenhagen? Or Oslo, I go to Oslo with great regularlity! *grumble* Oh, well, going to Glasgow for Eastercon; I'll just have to get a Lush fix then.

[quaryn-dk.livejournal.com]

Happy for Sad is being discontinued? Admittedly, the bottle I have has lasted me well over a year and a half, but I'm still sad. :(

[cobrabay.livejournal.com]

They definitely do, I've been in the San Franscisco, Boston and New York ones. They only added most of them recently, though the San Francisco one has been there a few years.

[davesangel.livejournal.com]

I absolutely adored Cosmetics to Go, but I agree that it's not as much fun shopping via catalogue as it is going into the shop and smelling all the lovely things (as per Lush) :D

[carbonel]

Lucky you, finding a tea shop open at 5 pm. That's one of the most frustrating things about traveling in England for me -- after a hard day of touristing and museuming, I'm ready for tea at 4:30 or 5, just when all the tea shops are closing. And none of the restaurants open for dinner until 7 or so, it seems.