We spent our last day in Ipswich exploring the town. First stop after breakfast was Waterstones, which is split over three levels, one being a mezzanine, and the shop has some lovely reading seats on the top floor with ornate ironwork Ws at the back. It’s quite large store, with an escalator in the middle and feels quite open and airy. The first floor is larger than the ground floor but unfortunately I cut the photo of the shop off so you can’t see the full extent of the top floor!
A friend who lives nearby (more of her later!) suggested we should visit Christchurch Park so we headed there and discovered a rather lovely museum on the site which includes plenty of works by artists associated with the area including Constable, Gainsborough and Airy. The museum is free (donations welcome!) and definitely worth a visit.
The park itself is also a must, especially on a sunny day. They have plenty of wildlife including cormorants and turtles and even a resident owl although we weren’t lucky enough to see her on the day we were there.
We also visited the Ipswich Museum. It has rather a lot of stuffed animals and birds, a World War Two exhibition and an interesting history of the town on the first floor gallery.
Ipswich Waterfront
We found a couple of blue plaques – one for Charles Dickens who stayed in the Great White Horse Hotel and one on the waterfront to Edward Ardizzone, a children’s author and illustrator who is a particular favourite of mine.
We met up with our friends for dinner and went to a Pan Asian restaurant called Aqua Eight. The venue has a contemporary feel and really pretty mood lighting. The food was delicious and the company great! It was lovely to see our friends and we had a really good evening – the perfect way to round off our stay in Ipswich.
Janet's Adventures in Waterstones 