was quite nice. it is known for being a university town - boasts two of 'em -- leeds uni and leeds metropolitan.

ingrid kept apologizing how there wasn't much to see - one full day was actually enough. my main purpose in going there was to see her so that was fine with me. though I should have checked with my unofficial travel liaison, ramin, as ing had advised me to fly into manchester airort and then take train to leeds; it was an hour train ride (after three connecting flights from ho chi minh city, spanning a full day and night of travel) what really killed me is the cost - 17.60 pounds for the train - that is close to 30 greenbacks!! i'll not be back in UK anytime soon with that exchange rate. i flew out of leeds airport to get to paris and that was only a 5 pound cab ride and 2 pound bus ride away.

back to the visit - lovely old buildings; bustling shopping centre (and me too poor to buy anything). had a traditional yorkshire pudding - basically just a pie crust - it was filled with chips and gravy though usually there is some form of meat in there - coulda been just like the montreal version of poutin cept for the lack of cheese. we also had a proper tea serving with dainty cucumber and salmon sandwiches, scones and clotted cream. yum!!

hit two pubs at night - the stench of cig smoke is still with me - apparently england becomes a no-smoking area in may and france will follow in july. that will be an interesting development. in britain pub crawls are quite the rage - don't see the appeal of downing a perfectly good drink and rushing to keep up with others but apparently that is the whole point - you can tell how much you've had to drink by how far along the strip you've made it; the obvious aside - in a small town with a large handful of pubs - why would you want to visit so many in one night? i'd want to spread it around else i'd quickly get tired of same old; though there were quite a rowdy bunch of lads dressed in costume and rough-housing - took awhile but realized they were all dressed as wrestlers. at another pub saw bunch of women (un)dressed as bees or fairies or some winged creature -dressed is a misnomer, it was about 45 degrees (F) and they were damn near nekkid - they looked so cold.