It's been a busy old few weeks with birthdays, end of term & leaving do's and a weekend away. For my OH's birthday we went away for the weekend to London & stayed in a nice little hotel on Cricklewood Broadway called The Windmill Hotel. It was a lovely little place & pretty well positioned for what we wanted to do. It was very reasonable and came with a cooked breakfast – even a veggie option! If the breakfast is included I'm going to have the biggest one possible so went for the cooked breakfast. It was lush. Not too big that I felt stuffed all morning & more importantly came with a veggie sausage and plenty of coffee! Fantastic.

We had one aim over the weekend – to only use independent places. No chains for us. 

We started this on the Friday evening with dinner at Zeytoon, which is an Afghan & Persian restaurant. Not my usual choice but well worth it. We had a quick peep at the menu & once I'd got over the vegetarian options that contained lamb, my OH and I shared the starter of naan bread and Kashk-e-Bademjan. This is mashed aubergine with walnuts, olive oil, onions and a few other bits and pieces. It was delicious. The naan was made in the front of the restaurant and was thin and very tasty.

For mains my OH had two kebabs – one chicken and one lamb. I went for Chelow Khoresht-e-Baamiyeh which is okra in a spiced tomato sauce. It was so lovely & not something I would ordinarily choose. It came with a load of rice which was cooked to perfection. There was so much that I couldn't finish everything. The service was outstanding & the restaurant had a lovely feel. I would go there again if I was in that neck of the woods. A fantastic start to the weekend.

Unfortunately my iPhone decided to have a hardware problem so I couldn't take any pics all weekend. Fortunately the lovely people at the Apple Store in Reading replaced it for me so I'm back in action! x