Although we have been here for almost two months now, we thought we might recap some of our earlier days here to provide insight into our settling in process. So the next few blogs may be recapping events that took place a little while ago. For instance, here is the story of our first few adventures…. Everybody should have a driver meet them at the airport after a long flight. Going home, this is not a problem. Family are always gracious and giving enough to attend at the airport and meet us. In England, it costs 70 GBP to have someone stand in for family and drive us to our “flat”. In any event, after a long drive from Manchester Airport to Leeds, fighting Monday morning traffic and five times around the block because our crazy taxi driver could not figure out the one way streets outside out apartment (sorry, “flat”) building, we finally arrived. Much to our delight, the place is great. Really pretty swanky or posh or Beckham or whatever you want to call it. Everything we needed was here. As for location, our flat is beside the river, so we get to walk along beside it whenever we leave the house. The only down side to the location is it is right in the heart of the city center. This means it can be pretty noisy at night and there are usually remnants of other people’s nights of drinking on the sidewalk the next morning. I think a good rule for future housing searches is to avoid places where you can walk from the train or bus station within 10 minutes. This is something we probably could have thought of before selecting our place when one considers housing options within 10 minutes of the Hamilton bus station.
Thanks to our taxi tour of Leeds while trying to find our flat on the first day, we spotted a Costco just around the corner from our place. Can you believe it? Costco – in Leeds?! It was one of the first places we went when we woke up from our jet lagged slumber. Luckily for us our Canadian membership card worked, so we were good to go. We strolled the aisles at Costco for a while, finding that as one would imagine it is basically the same as Costco in Hamilton, until that is…..we came across the best aisle ever…..the booze aisle!! Here is a sampling of their inventory: cases of 24 tall boy cans of every beer you can imagine, two litre pop bottles of Strongbow, giant bottles of vermouth for martinis. The Davis family could buy cases of their Lindemans Chardonnay for super cheap. Also much to our delight they also sold giant bottles of Harvey’s Bristol Cream Sherry and a selection of fine single malt scotch. It reminded me of my favourite book when I was a kid: Charlie and the Vodka Factory. This remains perhaps the greatest gift England has to offer—super cheap, super giant alcohol right around the corner from our flat! No wonder teenagers are vomiting on the streets at 3pm.
With our priorities now clearly centered on drinking, our next challenge in a new city was to set out to find our local watering hole. We approached this task methodically. We went in every pub within walking distance of our home. We sampled drinks, we talked to locals, we read the Itchy Leeds guide to pubs. As a result, we have come up with our own categorizing system for the selection of pubs we discovered here in Leeds. First, there is the dance bar. This place plays loud obnoxious music, regardless of whether it is 3pm or 3am, and is frequented by scantily clad girls and boys with too much product in their hair. There seems to be a great number of these pubs in Leeds. In fact, on our Sunday morning constitutional to retrieve The Times, the revellers frequenting such places are just having their last throw-up before finding a cab home. The second type of pub we encountered is what we call an Old School Local. It is so old school that the men (and women!) inside are really, really old and have probably not set foot outside the pub for many years. This is immediately obvious when one enters the pub. After the thick haze of cigarette smoke clears all the old men locals turn around to see what the outside world has dragged in. When it is clear that the person who has entered is not a local, there is sneering and silence. Coupled with the sticky tables, dirty carpet and a bad selection of beer (Carling anyone?) it is a hostile assault on the senses. Fortunately, amid these bleak choices there is the third type of pub. This pub is warm and welcoming with beguiling architecture, people and beers on draft. We have been fortunate enough to find three such gems. One is even stumbling distance from home and most importantly, serves Sleeman.
So as you can probably surmise, we managed to drink our way through the first few weeks. We went from jet lagged haze to alcohol induced haze. It was simply part of the cultural adjustment. If there is one thing the British do well, it’s drink.
