Leeds- wow!

I'm sitting at my desk grinning thinking about my weekend away in Leeds. It's just an awesome city, and I love to be pleasantly surprised by somewhere, which is exactly what I was.

Steve and I drove up with our friend Mac first thing Saturday morning and managed to get there in just 3 1/2 hours, which flew by...we stopped at a proper retro M1 services en route, where the KFC and Burger King were actually built in one of those tunnels over the top of the motorway. Reminded me of holidays as a child. Everyone in there was chain smoking, but then I guess service stations are pretty depressing places.

Anyway, we got to Leeds and checked into our hotel. (Just so you know, I'm going to scatter this blog with links of the places we went and stayed etc, so if anyone ever decides to visit for a weekend, they have some tried and tested places to visit).

The hotel (only £85 for a kingsize double, £49 for a single)was better than expected, right slap bang in the centre of the city at the end of Brigatte Street, the main shopping road, which is complete with every gorgeous boutique you could ever wish for...(and a Harvey Nics thrown in for good measure)

We headed to the Elbow Rooms a fairly run-down, but really homely feeling pool bar and sports club...where we watched the essential footy of the day. We then moved to a great old school pub called the Aldephi, right on the bank of the canal, where we ate homemade cottage pie and consumed cider like there was no tomorrow.

Back to the hotel for a quick turnaround and we were out on the town in our 'glad rags'. Leeds does not appear to do dressed down, EVER, and Saturday night is the pinnacle of glamness. We hit the uber trendy cocktail bar, Boutique, where I had quite possibly the best champagne cocktails I have ever had. The 'Fresh prince of Belvedere'...champagne, some kind of vanilla liquor, strawberries, and finely crushed ice. They also had a great selection of porn star martinis, a big cool black dude on the decks spinning funk and soul and was generally somewhere I would happily have spent the rest of my life.

Shame we had a 9pm table booking at Sous Le Nez En Ville, Leed's bestest French restaurant. Awesome. Based at the top end of the High Street and hidden in the basement of a hotel, this restaurant excelled itself in 'Frenchness'. You almost felt the waiters and waitresses had been told to be as French as possible. You asked for the wine list, they sneered. You ordered your starters...lips curled. You wanted more water, they tutted. It was priceless. But the wine list was 49 pages long, and the food was out of this world. I had scallops, followed by Gressingham Duck, following by gorgeous pongy cheese and port. Plus 2 bottles of Sancerre. It was bliss, and of course, being Leeds, it was awesomely priced. Less than £50 a head.

From there we staggered from bar to bar, some great, some bad, some memorable, most not (hence me not naming them) and then when we reached the height of our drunkness we ended up in some 'Rock' bar. I'm not sure if I'd had far too much to drink, or if it was the surroundings and the sweaty rockers, but suddenly I felt very sick and we had to leave. Funnily enough, when we hit the hotel bar at 3.30am, I found my second wind! :)

It was there Steve and I excelled ourselves with some legendary childish behaviour. We were heading to the 3rd floor in the lift being drunk and stupid and Steve confessed to playing 'knock down ginger' on business trips. I laughed and thought that he must clearly have meant at the beginning of his city career, but no. We left the lift, glanced quickly at each other and proceeded to run the length of the corridor, taking a side each, banging on each door, loudly. What a pair of knobs! Luckily our corridor was full of spritely youngsters, hen and stag parties and fun-time people, who burst from their hotel rooms and chased us down the corridor.

Pelting it down the corridor to room 321, we managed to get the key in the lock and burst into the room, slamming the door behind us, falling about laughing. But we had made a massive error. Well, I had. I'd left our hotel keys in the door.

The rest of the evening was spent receiving amusing prank calls from the room who had held our key hostage. At one point when we'd half passed out, a group of young blokes burst into our hotel room, did a little dance, did some obligatory 'wer-hey-ing' and 'in your face-ing' and then left. At the time, Steve was fuming and stood in his pants in the corridor, waving his fist and swearing like Mr McGregor guarding his carrots. I was too drunk to do anything and just found it all quite funny. We deserved every bit and more.

In the morning when we checked out, we did a great job of pretending to be disgusting by our unruly 'floormates' who 'stole' the key from the door and then harassed us all night. Of course we don't really look like the kind of losers who'd play knock down ginger. Why? Well because for a start we're 28 and 30, fairly smart, I spoke in my best posh home counties accent, and we were off the hook, getting away without any charge for key replacement. So the scallys won. Which proves we are too old, and slow, and easily outsmarted and should leave such antics to the youths!

After checking out we headed to the HiFi club for 'The Sunday Joint' an all day club event with amazing live jazz bands and awesome roast dinners. I had steak pie with chips and gravy and sat listening to some great trumpeting and a sublime alto saxophonist for a couple of hours, nursing my thumping head.

And then we headed home, in the rain, feeling tired, but with that warm fuzzy happy feeling you get when you know you've achieved so much in so little time. Watched Eastender re-runs, ate pizza and had happy dreams of Leeds. I would love to live there. Shame I'd stick out like a sore thumb.

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.....Leeds....

4 days til the Maldives. Last week at work....propensity to do any work? Zero!