J took yesterday afternoon off, just coz it was supposed to be warm and nice. So we decided to start the afternoon with a pub lunch - we'd heard good things about The Ship in Levington but had never got round to going so this seemed the perfect opportunity. Levington is pretty close to being in Ipswich - just on the other side of the A14 near the A12(N) junction. So I was surprised at how rural and "Suffolk" it felt (as opposed to town & "Ipswich") - the view from the pub is lovely, and the pub itself looks like a proper country pub. It's on Church Lane and next door to the church itself (which looks like a proper country church, too). Of course, it is right next to both Ipswich and Felixstowe, and the view from the pub is actually carefully engineered - there's a row of trees on the left and if you move up the road and slightly round the corner (to the church gate) then you can see that they are screening a view of the Felixstowe Docks. That picture is slightly misleading - it's not quite that obvious in person, I both zoomed in then cropped the relevant bit out of the pic. But it's definitely there.

The food (what we actually went for, after all) was pretty good. (Obligatory pictures of us waiting for lunch are here and here ;) ) I liked it more than J, tho - it was a pretty fancy menu and he felt the accompaniments to the mains put him off several of them (like having bonus prawns with fish). We decided to skip starters (not sure we were hungry enough for two courses) and J had the Grilled Chicken Breast, which came with chorizo and some sort of risotto thing that was very creamy and possibly overwhelmed the chicken somewhat. I had the Braised Pork Belly, with a bit of roast apple, a bit of roast potato and cabbage & bacon - all very tasty :) Although I did agree with complainy-woman on a nearby table that the cabbage/bacon mix was quite salty, but I didn't think it necessitated complaining to several different members of staff, and in fact rather liked it ;) In the end we were hungry enough for dessert & J had the chocolate brownie (which was apparently most excellent) and I had the ice-cream selection (nice, but the bonus cream at the bottom was an unwelcome surprise).

After taking our pics of the surroundings we headed home for the rest of the afternoon (driving back past the sign we'd giggled a bit at on the way out). Spent a bit of time inside - J wanted to try out the Mod Nation Racer demo on the PS3. It's a racing game that is going for the Little Big Planet make-your-own-stuff vibe, with a track and character editor. Non-realistic racer, obviously. He took to it pretty quickly, but I took a little while to get on with it - in the end tho I agreed with J that it was pretty cool. So he's bought the game, should turn up soon-ish - it's got 4 player split-screen as well as the online multiplayer stuff, so that might be fun when we've a houseful of people :)

And back out again - as J'd driven us to the pub earlier he fancied going out for a pint, and it wasn't like I was gonna turn down the opportunity ;) So we wandered off to The Dove - taking the camera this time so I got a picture of the deer head they have up in the conservatory o.O No, I've no idea either. And a picture of the beer - J had Adnams Dry Stout first but didn't get on with it (odd, we'd both liked it first time we had it, but I'd found it hard work last time and J wasn't keen this time either). So he abandoned it halfway through and had Deuchars IPA afterwards, I just had a pint and a half of Crouchvale Blackwater Mild (mmm, tasty).

And once home again it was back to more normal Thursday evening things - cooking, Civ IV and zombies for me; more Mod Nation Racers then Critter Crunch for J.