Travel note: Weekend in Leeds

A combination of winning a Harpic toilet challenge and birthday present, I got myself a treat to go to Leeds all by myself for the weekend, leaving the kids in the care of their dad.

I left by train at 3pm from Cambridge. One changeover at Peterborough and two and a half hours later, I arrived in Leeds, greeted by smily face of Mita. It has been a while since we saw each other and she hasn't changed a bit. Still as pretty as she was in highschool.

We walked to her 2 bedroom apartment which is only 15 minutes away. She lived quite in the centre of Leeds itself, which is quite handy.

Dinner was lavish. I was treated like a person who had been in the brink of starvation.
Starters: Pandan cake
Main Course: Ox tail soup (my favourite!). She cooked it so well. Correction. Her husband cooked it so well. Served with Onion & Prawn crackers.
They had cheesecake for dessert but dessert isn't my thing.

As soon as I reached her house, I felt I was coming down with something. Runny nose to start with. But a little runny nose didn't stop us to catch up on the goss until about 3am in the morning when we finally felt droopy.

I couldn't sleep well that night due to my blocked nose and the tick tock noise from her wall clock. I'm silly like that. Tick tock noise always drives me mad. And my biological clock always thinks it's time to wake up around 7am. Stupid, persistent, body clock. I slept on and off until 10am, woke up with a sore throat.

After the late breakfast (leftover soup from last night), we talked about anything and everything. Mita played me classical music on the piano. By the time we bothered to check the time, it was 3pm. There went the plan to go window shopping. We decided to stay at home until dinner.

Late lunch menu: Salmon head soup, gudeg (young jackfruit + egg dish - difficult to explain), fried chicken. All absolutely yummy, thanks to our dedicated chef, Imam (her husband).

We had dinner at Little Tokyo, a Japanese restaurant in the city. It was very good. I shared Unagi (chargrilled eel) bento and Seafood ramen with Mita.

I slept better that second night. No sore throat and no tick tock.

In the morning we went to church (very late!), meeting another Mita. This other Mita is my youngest sister's friend while she was in Singapore, and my high school friend's sister too. Small world. We had dim sum for lunch at Tong Palace. I introduced them to the delicious wonder of deep fried cuttlefish cake. They have tripe there. Not as good as the one in Shark's Fin (Melbourne, Australia), but satisfied nevertheless.

I had to wait for 1 hour in Peterborough but all and all it was a fantastic weekend. I came back with cold and exhaustion, but it's so worth it. I miss her already.

Book I read on the train: The Secret Mandarin by Sara Sheridan.
I haven't finished it, but I have only a little bit left. It's good. A bit slow at the beginning but picks up its pace before the middle of the book and I couldn't put it down.

On a side note:
Agastya has been surprising me a lot with his manners lately. When I accidentally took away his colour pencil, he said politely, "Excuse me mommy, I was still using that." No fret, no raised voice.

Whoa. My little gentleman.