Back in May, Chris and I celebrated our 10th Wedding Anniversary. Throughout the years we’ve done various marriage courses. Don’t panic! There weren’t issues. Think of it like a car. You take the car for a service every year or so to make sure that it runs smoothly. Rather than just taking it when it’s falling to pieces and breaking down. So rather than waiting for the issues to come to light. We try and do a marriage course of some description to keep our marriage running smoothly. Throughout our marriage we’ve gone through stages of trying to have date nights. Sometimes this ends up working nad other times it completely fails and we just end up discussing how we should have more date nights.
With Chris being the kind of guy who doesn’t want to turn down a challenge. He accepted my slightly crazy idea. I had been watching videos on YouTube and one ad that came up was the trailer for the new Kingsmen film that comes out in a few weeks. So I looked up ticket prices and times and suggested to Chris that we go to see it. I realised that the date I picked is 3 weeks ish away. When the topic of this week’s date night came up. I jokingly said that this week’s date needed to involve a place that starts with an A. Chris obliged my idea and found Athena Taverna in Bedford. I’m pretty sure we must have driven past it hundreds if not thousands of times but have never been there.
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.
Since July, when our Community Group stopped for the Summer, Our Sidekick has been an amazing at offereing to babysit one evening a week so that we can go for a date night. There have been a couple of weeks where it hasn’t work for one reason or another (like when I was sick) but we’ve tried to do “at home” date nights on those weeks if needed.
A is for Athena’s Palace
With some searching on Google, Chris found a restaurant in Bedford that began with an A (and wasn’t the pub round the corner!)
We had a little discussion about where the restaurant was as we had both got confused with another Greek restaurant in the town and then both got confused because Athena’s Palace is on the first floor rather than the ground floor (which is a furniture shop at the moment).
For a Thursday evening I had expected it to be busier and actually it was really quiet.
This was our lovely starter. In the middle is pitta bread and then there’s bowls of various bits to go with it. There’s beetroot, seafood (which looked like spiralized crab sticks), humous and potato salad dish.
I had intended to take so many more pictures but I kept getting distracted by how yummy it all was!
So it’s 3 courses that you receive, there’s a starter and then two sort of main courses.
It was a lovely date night and I’d love to go back again.
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.
