Weekend in Durham with Amy
Last weekend it was Amy’s birthday, and seen as I had yet to go and visit her at university, she invited me to go up and stay with her. So I booked some train tickets to Durham (tis nice and cheap and fast) and yay, I was going to see dear Amy again!
Despite getting progressively more ill through the weekend, I had such an amazing time. It was great to just see Amy again, I miss her so much! We write to each other all the time though, so much nicer getting a hand-written letter through the post than a ‘you have 1 new notification’ on Facebook 
Anyway… I’ll try to keep this short and not too boring.
Okay, so Saturday morning I woke up nice and early (though really, I wanted to lie in and sleeeeep, but no, must get ready/finish packing) and I walked 2 miles to the bus stop with a lot of bags because for some reason I seemed to have brought a lot of crap with me. Hmm. Anyway, I took 2 buses and one train to get to Leeds, was a wee bit early so I decided to hunt down some sushi. That failed, cos I couldn’t remember where the new Sisushi take-out place was, and Yo Sushi is a longgg trek away when you’re carrying lots of stuff. In the end I just bought a salad from M&S, healthy and all (and yummy!).
Had some fun with the ticketing collection machine, but before long I was on the (crowded) train, sat next to a girl fast-asleep and snoring… but still, I was on my way!
The journey is quite quick, about 1 hour 20 minutes which was cool, though it stayed crowded and I didn’t have a window seat (I like window seats) 
Umm… Amy was waiting for me at the station, looking lovely as always. We went straight back to her place at the college so I could dump my stuff off. I met some of her friends and we sat in her room and watched a DVD her brother Lucien had made for Amy, it was really good! After that we headed into the town which was very closeby (how handy) and went to the ‘Continental Cafe’ to meet lots of people for a late lunch. It was nice in there, but way too pricey. And I couldn’t really see what was so ‘continental’ about. The menu looked nice, lot of variety and had stuff like paninis, soups, baguettes, etc as well as slices of yummy-looking cakes. But yeah… um… continental? Plus, £4 for a slice of cake? No thanks, go to Sainsburys and buy a whole cake for half the price!
I wasn’t hungry anyhow so I just had a drink (of the non-alcoholic variety) while others ate and we had chatted and stuff. We left just before 5 and people went their separate ways. Amy and I went to the bead shop!!! Ohh wow this bead shop was so fantastic, I think it deserves it’s own little paragraph!
Okay, so, um… in Leeds there’s a bead shop called Yum Yum Beads, which is not a chain-store or anything, totally independent (I think there may be one other branch of it, but I have a feeling it’s in France… so yeah…) and that is awesome! It’s where I took this picture:
And yeah, I’m not sure exactly why I’m obsessed with beads like I am, but they’re just so PRETTY. I always buy a nice random selection when I go there. Anyway, this shop in Durham makes Yum Yum Beads look rubbish! Well, not rubbish, but way inferior. Yum Yum Beads is really small, which is a big drawback, when it’s crowded it’s hard to move around and find exactly what you want etc. This place in Durham was about 6 times the size and way more spacious. I think because the walls were lined from floor to ceiling with jars of beads it helped with the space - in YYB they’re just layout out in trays on the tables: here in Durham you pick the whole jar off the wall and take it to the counter etc.
Also what was fantastic was that in the middle of the shop was a table and comfy chairs where you sit and MAKE SOMETHING 
Such a fantastic idea, the staff would sit there and help you if you wanted, and there were leaflets and booklets for ideas and help on how to do stuff. I desperately wanted to make something and Amy and I wandered the shop for about an hour looking for some suitable beads (I had a perfect image in my head of a necklace, but I was after a really specific shape of bead and what I found none seemed to be quitee right. Eventually it was late and the shop was shutting so we had to leave, but we vowed to return the next day!
That was adventure #1 of the Bead Shop!
From thereon we returned to Amy’s room to relax and, later on, get ready for her birthday do. The plan was to go out for a meal at half 8 with lots of people, then come back to Amy’s and get changed for the party, go to the college bar first, then a club in town. It was fancy dress, with a theme of Fairytales - I was to be Puss in Boots (excuse to wear new dress + boots + cat mask). We had lots of time to kill so Amy and I watched The History Boys in her room while she made some last-minute adjustments to her costume (Little Red Riding Hood) - I’ve been meaning to watch this film for ages, and I’m glad I did, I really enjoyed it.
And that was that. We went to a Mexican place called Chiquitos in town for a meal, was very yummy. Then back to Amy’s to change, everyone’s costumes were ace, though Daniel’s probably won, he was a fully fledged Captain Hook. We had a drink at the college bar which was too small and too overcrowded. Alex was trying to make up his mind whether he should stay over and go back to Newcastle that night (he had come down for the meal, but had planned to catch the last train back). In the end he decided he would stay as Amy and I reassured him it would be entirely possible to fit 2 people on the floor in her room… ha yeah right, her room is tiny! But despair not, we would find a way, it may involve sleeping curled up in a ball, or perhaps sleeping in the corridor, but yes, there is a solution.
I’d been having a sore throat/cough all that day, so I wasn’t feeling especially great. After the bar we went back (yet again) to Amy’s room, while she (and most others) drank some cocktail involving wine, whiskey and milk (I tried it and yes it’s every bit as disgusting as it sounds) and got hammered. Then we walked to a close-by club called Revolver and went to the downstairs room and danced to Blondie and The Clash. Drinks were a right rip-off in there, have decided alcohol is rubbish anyway so I bought one drink for the night and that was it. Everyone else (well, except Alex) was pretty hammered, was funny watching them all.
Here we all are looking stupid:
L-R: Emilie, Lucy, Daniel, Sophie, Amy, Moi, Alex.
We stayed til 2am when it closed. I was pretty exhausted, full week at work, not much sleep, been walking all day, and not feeling well, but I didn’t want to be boring or anything on Amy’s birthday, so I said nothing 
Didn’t matter really, this was her night! Back in the room I phoned Bob for a while while Amy and Alex sat around drunk discussing random stuff.
After that we curled up in bed/sleeping bags and somehow managed to talk until 4am. Alex decided he wanted to get up at 7am to get an early train back to Newcastle, and so we set alarms for 7… 3 hours later he refused to get up haha. We eventually did get up at 9ish, packed up and had a nice cheap brunch at the college. Then we walked into town. Alex left to go up to the train station and Amy and I wandered round a bit more.
We went back to the bead shop where I took lots of photos and Amy found lots of beads to make a pretty necklace, but we couldn’t get it to work right on the chain/cord, so we gave up in the end. Later on we met some people to go visit the Cathedrale with which was fun, but then time was getting on, so we went to the train station.
I left at half 3 and was so exhausted I slept most of the way back. I get dead scared I’m going to miss my stop when I sleep on trains, so when we got to York (stop before Leeds) I made sure I stayed awake to ensure I didn’t miss it. I then got on a very overcrowded train back to Huddersfield and I waited in the cold for my dad to pick me up cos I was too scared to get the bus (cos at this point I could barely speak and I had this vision of a big bus driver looming over me and shouting that he couldn’t hear what I was saying when I ask for a ticket… yeah…). So I was cold and tired and ill, but happy. And I went home and ate some tea and had a shower. And I went to bed at 9pm and had a lovely nights sleep.
That turned out a lot longer than I expected/wanted.