Vivian had a friend over for a play date, and she wanted to have a special Valentine's Day tea. For this she requested pink tea and snickers bars. I offered blueberry muffins and milk in tea cups. After some thought, she decided that could work too.
After her friend left, Vivian gave her sister some love with special reading time.
They were looking at the baby lit versions of Romeo and Juliet and Jane Eyre. These are actually counting books. They both like Jane Eyre better than Romeo and Juliet, just like their mommy. They looked so cute sitting there, that I made Jeff get his camera and take some pictures.
As is becoming our routine, Young took the girls to Secret Garden around five, and Jeff and I followed shortly afterwards. We got a table with some friends and hung out for a couple hours. It was a nice, family friendly Valentine's Day celebration.
Since Jeff had Monday off for President's Day, he and I had planned a special couple's "retreat" for Sunday night. I got us a room at a nice hotel, and we left the girls with Young. I picked the hotel because it had balconies with a river view, but there was a Thailand twist to our balcony. When we tried to open the doors to go out, they were locked. That was when we noticed the sticker on the window that said due to regulations and safety concerns all balcony doors are permanently locked. It was disappointing, especially since the rooms are advertised as having a balcony. This became our view:
Honestly, I can understand the safety concern. Most kids could fit through those columns, and you could easily drop things over the edge. Still, a little plexi-glass could have solved that. On the plus side, we had the river view, and the sunset was nice.
Before sunset though, we went exploring. The hotel is on Silom road, which is an area we haven't explored at all. There aren't any major tourist attractions there, and it seems to be largely residential. There are also tons of gem stores, and I think it's considered the gem district. There was a breeze, and it wasn't too hot, so we decided to just go for a walk and see what we could see. It was a luxury to take a walk without worrying about a stroller or where to take potty breaks.
The first thing we saw was the cool median topiary. Median topiaries seem to be a big thing in Thailand, but this was the first one we had seen that was done like a boat with people rowing it.
Then we walked by this museum.
When we looked inside, it was pretty small, and there was no one sitting at the counter to sell tickets, so we didn't go further in. Still, it's fun to know that there's a seashell museum.
As we were walking along we saw some interesting stores. I liked this one's name.
And we decided this is where we would buy statues for the entrance way to our mansion.
We walked by this building which was simply called Indian Temple.
There were lots of street vendors selling flower chains around the temple, so the area smelled nice. By that point we were getting hungry, so we started seriously looking for food. Jeff was intrigued by Whisgars, a whiskey and cigar bar.
But, needless to say, it wasn't a dinner option. We ended up at a Lebanese restaurant, since we've been missing that type of food. We definitely got our fix.
For a starter, they gave us pickled vegetables with a container of garlic sauce. The waitress figured out pretty quickly that Jeff is a big fan of garlic sauce, and she just kept bringing him more containers. We gave her a good tip. I wanted a smoothie, and I asked the waitress for one with lemon. She said they had a special lemon, mint, and honey smoothie. The lemonade I usually get at our favorite Lebanese place in the States has mint in it, so I thought that sounded good. What I got was not what I expected.
I didn't taste any lemon. It was basically a mint smoothie. It was fresh mint, and I was hot and thirsty, so I drank it, but I wouldn't order it again.
After our meal, we walked back to our hotel to relax a bit. The hotel has a rooftop bar called Sky Bar. It's the one in The Hangover, and the have a special drink called a hangovertini. The description sounded pretty gross, and it cost about $15, which seemed to be the minimum price for cocktails. We had brought our own beer and wine to enjoy in our room, but figured we would go up for one drink to check it out. What we hadn't planned for was the dress code. Jeff only brought shorts which apparently are not appropriate at a bar on the roof in ninety degree weather, so we weren't allowed in. Jeff had a grumble about skirts versus shorts (my skirt was shorter than his shorts, but was not a problem), but we decided to just let it go.
We had eaten our dinner early, and were planning on getting some kind of snack with our drinks, so once the sky bar plan went bust, we needed to figure out another way to get snacks to go with our beer and wine. The hotel, of course, had a ridiculously over priced mini bar, but in our earlier walk we had noticed one of the ever-present 7-11s, so we decided to go shopping there. We got chips and ice cream for about $4. While we were disappointed about the sky bar, we certainly saved a lot of money.
We got back to our room in time to enjoy the sunset. The view was best at night. There were lots of boats and ships going up and down the river, and they were all lit up, some to a ridiculous degree. We had so much fun just talking and watching the boats.
The next morning, we slept in until a decadent 8:30 in the morning with no interruptions from children. It was fabulous. Breakfast was included in our stay, and they had one of the better buffet spreads we've seen. Jeff and I ate our fill, checked out, and headed home. It was a lovely night away, and the girls were perfectly happy hanging out with Young, so we'll have to do it again sometime soon.
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