Day 1 in Newcastle! Our holiday!

Last week I wrote about the stress of planning a little holiday but thankfully it all went well and I have a few blog posts all about our break away, this being the first one about our journey to Newcastle and the first day/evening there.

I hate travelling by trains, they stress me out but the journey to Newcastle from Scunthorpe wasn't that bad. The first leg from Scunthorpe to Doncaster was ridiculous, the train was packed, the luggage racks were rammed full of cases and we didn't even make it to our reserved seats. lol The 2nd train was so much better apart from the awkward moment when I had to ask someone to move from our seats. It was so nice to see places which were familiar to us. York, Durham and Darlington and we got to see the Angel of the North which meant we were nearly there!!

We got to Newcastle just before 11am and went straight to the hotel, we knew we couldn't check in but knew we could leave our cases there until it was time for us to check in. I couldn't have coped with dragging them around all afternoon. We were staying in the Sleeperz Hotel five minutes from the train station which was a perfect location. I am going to do a whole blog post about the hotel as we loved it and it was a hotel chain that I had never heard of until I was searching for one.

As soon as we dumped our cases we realised how hungry we were. We could have gone to a hundred different, new places to us but we wanted to go to McDonalds on Northumberland Street just for the memories. When we lived in Northumberland it was somewhere we would go to most times that we visited Newcastle. It was so strange going again, last time we were there the girls were little and there were none of the touch screens to order. It was of course just as busy as ever and we chose to get our food and find a bench to sit on.

We spent the afternoon shopping, looking around all the geeky shops and of course Newcastle's massive Primark! They have so many different things than our local one's. I had to keep reminding the girls that our suitcases were just about full, they couldn't be buying loads of new clothes. Ellie did get herself a Nightmare Before Christmas top, we've never seen them before and thankfully she fitted into the 14 to 15 year old one. She said if it hadn't have fit she would have made it fit. hehehe

We decided to go back to the hotel and check in properly just after 3pm. We needed some time to relax, have a shower and get ready to go out for something to eat.

We knew where we were going to eat, a pub just outside the Haymarket bus station, The Junction. It holds memories for us. Stu and I would always stop off there for a drink when we first met and then when he was working at the other side of Newcastle he would get to the bus station after work and have to wait 55 minutes for his bus so he would pop in for a pint. We have the normal type of pub food. Lasagne, scampi and chips, a mixed grill and pie and mash. It was so quite with it being a Wednesday evening.

We then walked back to the hotel via Northumberland Street, I had never been down there on an evening and it's so strange with it not being so busy. The only people on the street were teenagers and homeless people.

We headed back to the hotel after getting lost, everything looks so different when it's dark. We had a cocktail in the hotel bar and headed to bed. We were shattered but ready for the next day when we were going to play at being tourists.