The Open

Last weekend, Gerald and I went to Manchester for The Open. The Open took place at Royal Lytham & St. Annes in Blackpool, England. Blackpool is about an hour drive from Manchester, so we used Manchester as a base and rented a car. We flew into M'chester on Friday afternoon and didn't really have anything planned. We arrived to the hotel and with it being the DoubleTree, we got the infamous cookie upon arrival. I think the cookie is worth staying at the DoubleTree for, haha. Gerald probably ate about 5 of these during our 2 night stay. Oh yah, we brought the bears along for some golfing fun!

We wandered around town looking for a lunch spot and stumbled upon Jamie Oliver's Italian, which is housed in an old bank, and decided to eat there. I think the I was more fascinated with the building than the food, but both were great! The basement of the building had a vault room that is used for special dining occasions and all the toilets had the original style Crappers, very vintage looking.

We had a variety of different dishes with inspiration from the Almalfi Coast, where Jamie studied culinary under a good friend. Per the waitstaff, a lot of the ingredients are flown in from Italy. My favorite, the Tuscan pecorino cheese with chili jam and Gerald, the meats!

Okay, enough about Jamie. The golf tournament was a blast. We got awesome weather and it was a great course. We spent the first half of the day roaming around the grounds and hanging out by the practice grounds for autographs. We got to see most of the big name golfers walking through, but unfortunately, I was only able to score one signature, Hunter Mahan, which was fine by me.  We weren't allowed to take pics, but I did anyways, everybody else was =)

The second half of the day was spent following Tiger Woods and Adam Scott play.  We were lucky to score great spots at every hole we decided to watch. Looking back, even though we were following Tiger and Adam, we still got to see the Champion,  Ernie Els,  play a lot since he was just a few games ahead of them. Overall, we had an awesome day on the course and hope to be able to go to next year's open in Scotland, if we're still around.  Still sad that Adam didn't win, but I had great eye candy for a day =P

We did a little bit of exploring around China Town on Sunday before heading back home to greet our visitors, Nessa and Gennie! I've spent a good 5 days with them so far, and we've had lots of fun around Scotland. Tomorrow we are off to Berlin for some more fun! Here's a sneak pic of what we've been up to....

 I'll catch up with ya'll soon! Have a great weekend!