The Essentials of Life: Shoes, Chocolate and Macaroons

This weekend we went on a girls trip to Brighton to look at shoes.

Totally logical in my mind.

Actually, we had given Ellie a voucher for Irregular Choice shoes for her birthday last April, the idea being that we would get to Brighton over the summer to visit the Irregular Choice shop there and buy her wedding shoes.  Unfortunately, for various reasons the stars just didn't align before the big day so we postponed the trip and made it a winter getaway.

I've got a few posts lined up for the weekend's activities but I thought I would start with the sole (geddid?  sole? sole?!  I'll go and sit in the corner now) reason we jumped on a train at 10am on a Saturday morning (urgh) and made the 2 hour journey across the coast to the buzzing seaside town.

That reason would be this little shop buried in the North Lanes

A teal blue shop with the most fabulous and extravagant shoes for sale inside.  Shoes that we may or may not already have a few pairs of between the females of our little group.

We raced into the shop, ridiculously excited and immediately started cooing over the different designs.  We were led upstairs, dumped our coats and bags in a big pile and started working our way through the collection.  The poor girl who looked after us probably didn't realise what she had let herself in for! 

An hour and a half later (really) and I had worked my way through about 6 pairs I think, only to find that none of them fitted me as well as I would have liked them to.  I left empty handed (or should that be empty footed?).

The others stocked up though and we walked out of Irregular Choice laden with shoe boxes. 

Of course just because we had successfully purchased shoes didn't mean that we were ready to stop there.

We made sure we covered the other essentials before the night set in.  First stop - Choccywoccydoodah's.  You may have heard about this place or at least seen the television show.  Choccy's is famous for doing with chocolate what most other places struggle to do with cake.  It takes food sculpture to an entirely new level.  Just have a look.

Utterly breathtaking pieces of edible art in a window display that would give Wonka a run for his money.

Next door to Choccy's was Julien Plumart's, a 'Boutique Salon du The', i.e it does posh afternoon tea.  We were drawn to the windows by the towers of macaroons shimmering in the main window, all wrapped up in a big bow, beckoning us in further.

Inside are stacks of pastel coloured macaroons in 24 different flavours, just asking to be purchased.

There are also pastries and chocolate creations nestled next to tarts and creme's.  A true Parisian Patisserie located in the centre of a very English seaside town.

We tried.  We really did, but we just couldn't resit and bought a box of macaroons to share whilst getting ready for our night out at the Cabaret back in the hotel.  I had the mojito and the raspberry flavours.  Both were delectable.  If you go in, be strict with yourself or it will be all too easy to get carried away!

We lasted about an hour after we got into the hotel before we caved and dived into our little rainbow coloured box of goodies, served alongside champagne in plastic glasses as we couldn't find any actual glasses in our room.

I think that, all things considered, we demonstrated remarkable self-restraint.