Date Night

Earlier this week, Will and I decided that this afternoon/ evening we should go on a date together. Originally, we had planned to go on the "Forgotten Exeter" tour and then to a restaurant, but we decided to forgo the tour in favor of taking the longer "Forgotten Exeter and Tucker's Hall" tour next week.

Instead, we spent the afternoon shopping. Although I made it to England with plenty of skirts and trousers, I needed a few more shirts. We also needed a few household items, which we intended to buy from Woolworths. Unfortunately, though, Woolworths had a fire yesterday and has yet to re-open, so we will just have to wait. I am not clear on exactly how major of a fire it was, but it apparently caused the emergency sprinkler system to activate and thus required a massive cleanup effort.

Over the course of the afternoon, we wandered in and out of several shops around town before eventually ending up and the Oxfam store, one of several charity shops in Exeter. (The British Heart Association and Cancer Research UK are among the other organizations which operate charity shops in town.) Like the others, the Oxfam store is part thrift store, but it also sells Christmas cards, lapel pins, and a number of fair trade items to raise money to fight poverty. We bought several things we'd been needing- a sugar canister, a shirt for me, and a tray in which to put to coins that we want to keep. We might have bought a few more items of clothing, but the store was trying to close and needed us to hurry and check-out. They were quite nice about it, simply stating, "It's time for us to close, but we're happy to take you're money."

After finishing at Oxfam, we proceeded to the Cathedral Yard where a nice store, the Edinburgh Woolen Mill, was having a sale. I managed to buy two very cute shirts for a total of 8 pounds. Then, we headed over to the Ship Inn for dinner.

We chose the Ship Inn because it is our Lonely Planet Guidebook's most highly recommended pub in Exeter. It has a very nice atmosphere and claims to have been the favorite pub of Sir Francis Drake- though of course that is impossible to prove our disprove at this point. Nevertheless, the food there is quite tasty. Will and I both had three bean chili which, oddly enough, was served with Spanish rice. Afterwards, we stopped by Tesco and bought tiny strawberry cheesecakes for dessert.

All in all, it was a very nice day.