With our Community Group stopping for the Summer Holidays, we had a free evening we were able to make sure we were having a proper date night. I jokingly said that we needed to try and do an A to Z of Date Nights so our first date night in September started with an A. Of course, with Chris being the kind of guy who doesn’t want to turn down a challenge. He accepted my slightly crazy idea.
Throughout our marriage, we’ve gone through stages of trying to have date nights. Sometimes they were trips out in the evening. Sometimes it was a speedy sandwich in a supermarket cafe in his or my lunch break. When Chris worked at The Fountain, we used to go for breakfast when his day off coincided with my late shift or day off. When I was on maternity leave, our date “night” was going out for lunch on Chris’s day off (this resulted in one of my unplanned hospital trips). On other occasions, this ended up as a drink and dessert at the local pub. The main thing was that we are spending time together. This can be a meal or can be an activity, for example going to the cinema.
B is for Bella Italia (Milton Keynes)
Today’s date night at Bella Italia took a bit more logistics because of the extra time that was going to be in the car. While at dinner last week, we’d sat coming up with a rough idea of places to visit, during the week, Chris had found another offer so Bella Italia was added to the list for B – although out nearest is actually in Milton Keynes rather than Bedford.
Part One: The Main Event
So the deal that Chris found was a deal that Bella Italia are running so you have a smaller menu to pick from and it was two courses for a set price (again through GroupOn).
Although it was a smaller menu, there was still a nice range to pick from.
We both went for the Bruschetta for our starter. Chris’s was on gluten free bread (he commented that it was like pizza base). I could have probably have done with some more tomato on my bruschetta but it was still really yummy!
For our main course, I had Spaghetti Bolognese and Chris had a gluten free pizza. I’m not entirely sure what his topping was but I can see mushrooms and some kind of meat. Either way, he enjoyed it and was grateful that it was a “made from scratch” kind of base instead of the frozen bases that you get elsewhere.
We decided we weren’t staying for dessert. When the waiter came to clear the plates, they asked did we want a dessert menu and we said no. They then cleared the plates and vanished. It then took what seemed like ages to be able to ask for the bill.
Part Two: Dessert!
I had suggested that we got some kind of pudding but elsewhere. We went for a wander and discovered that one of the concessions inside the Odeon cinema is a Snog!! YEAH! Chris discovered Snog on a trip to London and it became a bit of a joke. So Snog is a shop that sells frozen yoghurt – think of an ice cream parlour but for frozen yoghurt! I had salted caramel frozen yoghurt with Oreo cookies and caramel sauce. Chris had raspberries with strawberry sauce on plain frozen yoghurt. We sat in the foyer of the cinema while eating our yoghurt. We chatted about how much nicer the cinema was compared to others that we’ve been to.
With the intention that we’ll be more organised about date nights, I jokingly set the challenge that we should do an A to Z of date nights. This post is about our opinions and experiences while dining at the above restaurant, we haven’t received any compensation for this post.
