Dinner

In total contrast to what’s happening elsewhere in the world, I grabbed a few things from the shops this afternoon so that we could catch a 19:50 train to Waterloo and, onwards, to Fratton where we were staying the night. Tomorrow we are back on the Isle of Wight for a day viewing a couple of properties and we need to be on the 09:15 ferry which, we concluded, would have meant a far too early start in the morning. We’d booked a cheap room at the Ibis Budget in Fratton which turned out to be a reasonably quick walk from the station. It was, however, in the middle of an out-of-town shopping area near the football stadium: so there was not a lot around by the time we arrived. The KFC opposite was closed for refurbishment and so the only real option for cooked food was McDonalds (although I wish we’d used Just Eat to get something else). 

This is the Chicken Big Mac, which is supposed to be a limited edition menu item. In fact, I’d read reports that some restaurants had dropped it because they had run out. It was, perhaps, the most disappointing meal I’ve had in a long time. It’s 544 calories for the chicken burger and I am not sure it was worth one of them! On the upside it did have the Big Mac taste as it seems to use the same, or similar, sauce but the chicken burgers hardly stayed in the bun and kept flying out. Given the hotel room was tiny (after all it was budget) with only one seat that PY was using, I resorted to eating this while sat on the bed and needed a towel to stop the thing falling on the bedding. But, most frustratingly, given we were only 5 minutes walk from the restaurant it’s not clear how this meal - which I watched being cooked in front of me - was cold by the time it was upstairs.  I now recall why I don’t like eating at McDonalds.  Amazingly, there were 366 calories in the vanilla milkshake which was the highlight of the meal.