Leeds

After our weekend in Bath we were pretty tired and took the week quite easy.
Once again we had another weekend away planned. This time it was to Leeds, about 2 hours north by train. We had an early train on Saturday, which was a challenge. We planned on having a quiet one on Friday night, but as often seems to happen, a few beers turns into a few more! The hostel was almost full tonight, with a few people checking in for the weekend.
After a late night we were up early, to take a bus to Kings Cross train station (once again the tube is not running!). We allowed plenty of time to get a bus which was lucky, as we waited about 25 minutes in the rain for a bus that is meant to be every 10 minutes, ugh London…

Our accommodation in Leeds was the Met hotel, apparently there are no hostels in Leeds. It was reasonably priced, and actually quite nice. A big old red brick building. Many of the buildings in Leeds are nice old red brick, a nicer city than london’s monotonous gray! We arrived fairly early but were able to check in which was handy and the guy at the desk gave us some tips on restaurants around town. We dropped our bags and went for a look around town. There is not a lot on the tourist trail here, a couple of public squares, old buildings and art galleries. There is a lot of shopping, which is what we spent the afternoon doing. We also looked at the Henry Moore Gallery, which sadly did not have any Henry Moore in it (one of Christine’s favorites), in fact all it did have was some white walls with pencils lines on it. Not very interesting or artistic!

After a rest back at the hotel, still recovering from last night, we headed out for dinner. We went to a steak house that the guy at reception talked up, I had been looking forward to this steak all day. When we got there we found out that without a reservation it was going to be a 3 hour wait for a table! Maybe in future they should also recommend making a booking! We then wandered around aimlessly for about an hour looking for somewhere to eat. Ended up just eating back near the hotel. Worked out ok, the waitress was nice, service was slow and the manager ended up giving us a discount because the kitchen had taken so long. Heading back to our room we watched a bit of the winter Olympics, which surprisingly hasn’t had a lot of attention over here. Maybe something to do with how bad England is doing, I think Australia even has more gold medals!
Sunday morning we had a bit of a sleep in and a massive breakfast at the hotel. We then headed to the Leeds Art Gallery. This was much better, quite a lot of different works and styles. We also walked around town a bit more and along the river. Then it was back to the train station in the afternoon for the ride back to London.