Monday 5 March 2012

It's (not that) grim up North

Two very good friends of mine recently got engaged, and to mark the occasion, albeit it almost 2 months later, a few of us decided to go up and celebrate with them. Unfortunately, they live in Hull.

So the Dream Team (previously mentioned in these pages, and the name seems to have stuck), a banker and I got on a train.  The journey was much as you would imagine. Actually, maybe you can’t imagine it. If you have children, you might be able to. One of the Dream Team had a tantrum half way through because he was tired. The other one had inexplicably bought a desktop computer along. The banker won Trivial Pursuit. Eating crème eggs produced a massive sugar high. We saw real working power stations for the first time.

Although it had seemed like the never ending story, in due course the train arrived in Hull. Our friends were waiting and we made our way back to theirs for a cup of tea and a catch up.  Despite most of us being something akin to legends whilst at university (between us we can claim alcohol related kidney problems, gastritis, gout, countless near death experiences and at least one unexpected 2.2), gone are the days when we could start drinking at 3pm and push on through until the next day. We needed something fun and safe to do whilst we waiting for international official drinking time – 6pm – and settled on the world’s first submarium, The Deep.

It. Was. Awesome. We saw feeding time in the lagoon, mini sharks, cute deadly frogs, a blue lobster, the ugliest eel in the world, rays, swordfish, jellyfish, other fish…ooh and there’s a glass lift! Even an incident where hand sanitizer gel was used to imitate bodily fluids and wiped on my arm couldn’t dent the mood.

Cute deadly frog

Our hosts (who you can tell are real grown ups because not only are they engaged but they have things like airbeds, spare duvets, clean towels and chilled tonic water) then decided on a local restaurant for dinner using the dubious skills of Trip Advisor, and after a quick pit stop for a g&t and a clean shirt (boys)/more eyeliner (girls) we headed out.

The restaurant, Brimble's Bistro, was lovely. The owner Dean was quite possibly the friendliest man in the world and the great ‘British brasserie’ food and atmosphere made it a wonderful evening.

I have just seen on the website that their dinner service is 6-9.30pm, in which case it gets an even bigger thumbs up as we definitely outstayed our welcome.  If you are ever in Hull, go there immediately.

3 hours later, we headed back and got stuck into the parlour games and amaretto, which you really don’t need to hear about. Suffice to say that the next day, whilst 4 of us sat around and ate huge amounts of truly excellent home cooked roast chicken and apple crumble, one member of the party was forced to retire to bed for a time out. Older, but not wiser.

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