Night away to Leeds

On Wednesday Tom went to spend the day and night with Pat and Bob.  Matt and I took this as an opportunity to go away for the night and decided to head to Leeds for the MY Translations Christmas do.  We got the train and dropped off our bags at the hotel (Quebec - very nice too, we got upgraded to a suite with an outdoor balcony which was fab, except it was too cold to enjoy!) and headed to Fazenda for lunch.  We had been recommended it by a friend.  We were hoping to go there for dinner, but it was fully booked, so thought we would try to see if we could get in for lunch.  We were in luck.

Wow, what a place!  It was amazing!!!!!!  It's a Brazilian BBQ - servers go round with kebabs of meat (mainly beef, but also chicken, sausages, turkey, belly pork) and slice bits off for you.  The standard is medium to rare.  Well, it was all delicious and cooked to perfection.  They have a traffic light system so you can let the servers know when you want more or a rest.

Also they have the most amazing salad bar including every type of salad you can think of, lots of roasted veggies, artisan bread, smoked salmon, sushi, cold cured meats, prawns,  4 hot dishes:  a bean stew, mushrooms in a garlic sauce, and two others, lots of dips:  guacamole, humus etc etc.  You could just fill up on salad if you wish and be very happy with what you got.  The servers also brought chips round but we refused them, we were on a meat and veggie diet only.  Think we spent about 2 hours there in the end, slowly working our way through the menu.  We over ate (of course) but it was worth it - it was sooooo yummy.  We will definitely go back again and we think Tom would love it too - mainly for the salad bar.

Quebecs Hotel

We went for a quick look around the shops - the centre was remarkably quiet - we thought it would be hammered, but I guess the Leeds schools aren't out yet as there were only a few children around.  However, we had all finished our Christmas shopping so there was no need to get anything so we quickly gave up and then went for a quick coffee break (Matt needed one - was a mistake as it set his teeth off again).  We then went to the hotel for a quick clean up and then headed to the cinema.  We had booked tickets to see Fantastic Beasts and where to find them at the Everyman cinema in the Trinity Centre.  We were expecting it to be your usual commercial cinema full of plastic food, sticky floors and ok chairs.  We were wrong!!!!!!!!  First of all you entered in via a Turkish / Middle Eastern shop / deli where you had pick and mix baclava as well as Turkish Delight etc etc to buy for snacks and then went upstairs to a bar where we got our tickets and you could order drinks to take into the cinema with you.  You could also order food for your cinema visit - proper food, not the usual plastic rubbish and the the food is delivered to you in your seat.  Lastly the seats in the cinema were ace - they weren't seats, they were sofas!  Very comfy and so far apart you couldn't touch the seat infront of you.  It was very like the cinema in Wanaka in New Zealand which I loved so much.  The screen even had an anteroom adjacent to with with tables and chairs.   It was the most comfortable cinema experience I have had in years.  Our screen only had about 40 spaces, but apparently the bigger one (200 seats) is the same too - sofas and nice food delivered to you.  I didn't really go for the film, but it didn't matter, I was enjoying the experience so much.

We got out of the cinema around 7 and although we were still full, we knew we would have to eat more, so we headed to Bundobust - a veggie Indian restaurant that serves craft beer.  We had two small portions of chickpea curry and some okra fries with beer, all very yummy - a perfect end to a lovely day.

Thursday morning we had breakfast at Wetherspoons (a fraction of the cost of a hotel breakfast - we still weren't that hungry) and headed back home.