A Meetup in Basingstoke

On Sunday I attended a lolita meetup in Basingstoke. It's not a town I've ever been particularly blown away by but I ended up having a really great time there. It turns out there's a large, picturesque park area about a ten minute walk from the town centre, with a paddling area for little children, and a large expanse of pond for people to pedalo in, and ducks to frolic in (though they mainly seemed interested in sunbathing on the dry land).

The previous plan had been to have a picnic, but it seemed like the weather was going to be terrible so this was called off. On the actual day however, the weather was gloriously warm and sunny.

We decided to walk to a little bridge area to take photos of the group. 

Here's the picture I took of the group! On this occasion, Luna and James couldn't make it so we didn't have the option of using James as the photographer XD A lot of us were wearing more subdued classical coordinates this time. 

I made sure to get some nice snapshots of Ophelia's coord which was, incidentally, my favourite one of the day.

Doesn't she look wonderful? I love coordinates which include red, and I'm forever loving anything with a retro vibe.

Here's my coordinate for the day:

This picture gives me so much fringe rage! I forgot to use my comb before the picture, and a breeze blew as it was being taken so as per usual it split in the middle. So frustrating... maybe next time I'll get the perfect outfit picture. Anyway, I'm wearing Btssb's Alice's Ribbon Kingdom, and a bag I got recently from Floozie by Frost French. The blouse is H&M and the shoes are Bodyline.

After this, we decided to get something to eat, and ended up at Ask Italian, outside in a covered seating area. It was nice to have a private area for our group to eat and chat.

I had this rigatoni meatball dish. It was nice, though highly reminiscent of a supermarket ready meal I used to have all the time! Luckily, it didn't cost too much in the end because Emmy had brought a discount voucher for us.

When we'd gone through the headache inducing task of splitting the bill after using discount voucher, we headed to a wall beside a church where we ate the homemade fairy cakes that Jerusha had brought with her. 

We ended the meet by checking out a shop in the main shopping centre, which sells anime related merchandise, traditional Chinese clothing, loads of Hello Kitty related stuff, and other miscellaneous items. I'm not entirely sure who the target audience of this shop is but it's definitely fun to browse either way! I ended up buying a sparkly butterfly thing which I'm planning on turning into a hair accessory. Rosemary decided it was overpriced whilst Emmy kept pushing me to buy it, acting as the devil on my shoulder! In the end, I decided to treat myself out of the convenience of it. 

At the till, along with my butterfly, I also placed a fortune cookie from the box on the counter. Outside the shop, I snapped open the cookie then burst out laughing as a read the message inside.

Spooky, huh?

Things soon began to wrap up as we all separated in different directions to get home. 

I had a great day, and I'm glad my opinion was changed of this town. It doesn't have as many things to do there as my hometown, but I'm sure it'll suit us well for a summer picnic. 

Until next time, thank you so much for looking and feel free to comment ❤