Liverpool – Perfect for a Mama Break!

Last weekend I was lucky enough to get a break away with one of my gorgeous bestie Mama friends. We have been friends since university and decided we’d go back to where it all began in Liverpool where we were students.

Liverpool has always held a special place in my heart, it’s the only place outside Harrogate I have ever lived (not counting a brief spell in Leeds!). It’d been almost 16 years since I had last been in the city and it’d changed enormously in that time for the better. So if you’re looking for a place for a little Mama break of your own I would highly recommend it.

We stayed at the Hilton at Liverpool One. Liverpool One is a 1.65 million sq ft contemporary open-air complex with shopping, restaurants, bars and hotels. It is all integrated into the existing city centre. It runs from the Docks right into the heart of the city.

Shopping was awesome, they have designer brands including Radley, Reiss, Hobbs, Karen Millen and Flannels. It is also home to the first Beauty Bazaar, Harvey Nichols in the UK. There are also all the high street stores you’d expect to see, but nicely placed in newly shop fitted styles.

We lunched inside John Lewis’ espresso bar which is a fruit smoothie specialists and ate some amazing avo/tuna flatbreads. Which stocked us up nicely for a spot of shopping, only stopping for a little Prosecco at Browns where we were lucky enough to sit outside in actual sunshine!

We may have shopped a little more ?before heading to Concert Square, which is our old student haunt area. We took in a little of the local colour and reminded ourselves that we actually preferred our cocktails served in real glasses these days but enjoyed the reminisce!

We stumbled across this cutest book swap right in the city centre and thought how lovely it would be if all towns and cities had such a thing. So pretty and useful!

We headed back to our hotel and enjoyed the sun going down over our room with a view of the docks, we may possibly have had a little rose wine before departing for our evening out!

Our room with a view

Then we taxi’d it to our restaurant of choice the Salt House Bacaro on Church Street. (We could have walked but we did have heels on ;)) It’s a lovely tapas style restaurant (a little like Deano’s in Harrogate) where they serve cicheti on smaller plates to share. We may have over indulged! The food was delicious, the atmosphere lovely and the Prosecco plentiful! (They’d even made such an effort to make the Ladies look fab!)

After that we headed out for a cocktail or two at Turtle Bay, a Jamaican style bar, where we ordered some dubious looking drinks and then realised we had far too many clothes on to be out in Liverpool City Centre at midnight on a Saturday! Yikes, some things don’t change! So we quickly hot footed it back to the safety of our  hotel where more revellers  were just heading out for the night ?.

A slightly hungover nights sleep later we set off towards Manchester to catch up with our other uni faithfuls who are some of the best friends a girl could ask for. We chatted the whole lunch long and could have stayed all day, had the pull of husbands and children not forced us to face real life back at home.

It’s so good for the soul to take some time out just for yourself and even better if you get to chat life through with the people who really ‘get you’. Spending time with close friends is really important for your mental health and physical wellbeing, every once a while it’s nice to be reminded you are still you, even when you are somebodys mum too! Have you got a Mama break or night out planned? I believe it’s really worth planning them in!