ReUNIon!

Manchester

This weekend, a few of my old uni friends/ flatmates came to stay to make the most of my current free house. There were six of them altogether, travelling from Guildford, Oxford, Crewe, Northampton, Newcastle and good ol' Stretford. Given the distance, as you can imagine we don't all meet up that often, in fact the last time this many of the group all got together was at Timna's 21st on New Years Eve 2011, which I spent in London so couldn't make, so it was lovely to see so many familiar faces.

Everyone arrived late on the Friday so we stayed in and had a (relatively) quiet one, although that still involved sleeping at 3.30am! On Saturday I woke up earlyish to give Laura a lift to the met stop as she was going to meet one of her bridesmaids in town for lunch. The rest of us slowly surfaced, and had showers etc before Chris made us all a weird egg/pepper/mushroom/salami omelette kinda thing, which was super tasty!

We headed into the city centre at around 2pm, and had some lunch at Font bar, an old fave. I had a chicken burger with cheese and bacon with chips, and a gin cocktail (diet out the window for today...) and then afterwards we moved on to Temple Bar which is a tiny place down some inconspicuous stairs off Oxford Road, and used to be a public toilet! It did loads of the flavoured beers I've had before in the Belgian bar in Altrincham, so I chose cherry Kriek, one which I love.

We stayed in there for a while, and then Joe went off to meet Laura for some shopping while the rest of us went on to Brewdog bar, which is famed for all its ales (lots of which are ridiculously strong!). I had a 'raspberry' beer, which really wasn't good. The rest of the boys chose various concoctions, none of which they were impressed with, so we moved swiftly on. We were heading in the direction of Hard Rock, but time was getting on and it was a fair walk, so we decided to stop in Wetherspoons on Deansgate for a last one before heading back to mine. We met up with Joe and Laura who had done quite a spree, and then all got the met home where we ate lots of pizzas and started getting ready.

By the time I had spruced up it was getting quite late, so we started playing some drinking games to get a bit merry before going out. We got a taxi at 11pm to The Alchemist in Spinningfields, but Geoff didn't get in (casual T-shirt issues!) so him and Chris went to a pub while the rest of us enjoyed some cocktails. I had a Garden Martini which was Hendricks gin, rose liqueur, St. Germain elderflower, lemon juice and was topped with lavender foam and cucumber, and then I got a French Martini which had vodka, Chambord and cranberry juice in topped with pineapple foam and raspberry dust - I could have drunk them all night. Laura and I also got shots of this green stuff called Akwa, which is apparently made from the same plant as cocaine!

At just gone midnight we moved on to Venue to finish the night which was good; decent music and £1.60 vodka mixers - can't complain! We got taxis home at 3am, and attempted to carry on drinking but failed miserably, favouring bed instead.

The next day we were slightly later rising, and enjoyed a cooked breakfast (thanks Geoff!) before everyone started getting their stuff together ready to leave. The last lot went at half 2, leaving me with a very quiet, and surprisingly un-messy, house to myself. I really enjoyed the company and doing lots of catching up; probably the next time will be at Laura's wedding in July, which is very exciting!!