Trip to Leeds, UK - 13th to 15th April 2007

A very strange weekend, this one - going away for the weekend, but actually staying in the UK - no passport necessary! With lots of different sets of friends in and around Leeds, and with it being an all round decent place to go out, it was off there for a couple of days of fun - starting with an amazingly efficient train journey up there. Being the middle of a working day helped, I'm sure, but I was genuinely surprised that the train was on time, clean, quiet, and a fairly pleasurable experience.

Friday's activities revolved in large part around food and drink, with several drinking boozers visited before it even got dark. Getting hungry, we proceeded to the legendary Akbars Restaurant in Leeds city centre, for some curry. The highlight of this was the family naan bread pictured here - a massive piece of bread that arrives on a stand of its own, and is obviously then promptly demolished by all at the table. I have to say that the Karahi curry was possibly the best curry I have ever had - very evil and chilli-laden indeed, but absolutely fantastic. Pakistani rather than Indian, full of chilli, and bloomin' lovely.

After burning my mouth off on curry, much of the rest of the evening was spent at the Baby Jupiter bar, which was playing some quite marvellous indie music, and serving very nice beer to accompany it. At kicking out time, I was disappointed to see the famous Majestyk club closed down, but then it was a completely tacky dive, and I had no intention of setting foot in there.

The following day was football and Grand National day, spent both picking losing horses, and trying to keep track of the Arsenal vs Bolton game. All of this was done whilst enjoying the sunshine (I didn't think the sun came out up north!) at Harewood House, just north of Leeds. This stately home was built by a business family who got very rich thanks to the slave trade (which they don't mention too much as you go round). Nevertheless, it is a beautiful building, with great gardens, a lake, and a bird garden. The locals do insist on pronouncing the name "Harrwood", which is somewhat distracting, but there you go - a good way to get some culture and to spend a day in the sun. The Northern part of the Wireless Festival is held here, so it was an entertaining thought to imagine the White Stripes playing on the lawn in a couple of months.

More food and drink for the remainder of the weekend was followed by a quite awful train journey home to London. The sun was blazing through the window, and of course the air conditioning was broken, there were a few very noisy and annoying kids in the carriage, and the train was full to standards of overcrowding that third world railways would be proud of! Still, the memories of nice curry managed to tide me over until we got back to London. A good weekend away.