Saturday 5th: Leeds, Devin Townsend concert.

I went to Leeds on this day. The travel society sold tickets for just 5 pounds. Pretty good deal.

The bus left the university a bit after 8am. Journey to leads took a little over an hour. We went up the M1 motorway the whole way. It's only about 80km I think. We arrived a bit before 10. On the bus I saw Billie who is a girl living in the same hall as me. She was with a friend of hers who is doing some of the same modules. I decided to walk around with them for the day.

We got there and found a close by toilet. Then we walked through an open market and then an indoor market. Then through some arcades in a shopping area.

Nice arcade.

Another nice arcade. That is Billie and her friend Chris.

Another one.

A blue and white arcade. All the arcades were very nice.

Then we got a snack. We're in the county of Yorkshire, so they have Yum yums here like they do in York. I got some pastry thing with lots of cream in the middle. It completely squashed apart while eating. But it was great.

 We walked around for a while. We went inside a church that was fairly ordinary. Then I spotted an art gallery with a free exhibition, so we went in. They had a whole lot of sketches by the sculptor Henry Moore. He does those abstract sculptures that are probably supposed to be people. They also had a lot of letters written by others to him. He had a lot of prestige around him, so lots of people were asking him to write to art schools saying how great they are, or offering their services to him in whichever way he might deem useful. It was quite entertaining. Either he was a really nice person, or these people were mightily sucking up.

We crossed a little walkway into the main gallery. There they had lots of sculptures by him. They were interesting. He was born in Yorkshire. Then I went into a room with some great paintings. I noticed they all had very nice effects to capture the outside light of the depicted scene. Billie and Chris waited outside. I think they were a bit tired of the gallery, so after I'd finished with that room, we left.

We walked over to the Town Hall. They had a sci fi comic and card fair happening on the 5th at 11am. It was 11:05 on the 5th, so I had to have a little look. We went into the entrance and the lady apologised saying that we can't see the inside of the main hall today because an orchestra was rehearsing. So we went downstairs to the sci fi thing. They wanted 2 pounds entry. I wasn't interested enough that I wanted to pay for entry, so I started heading out. Then they realised we were just kind of interested tourists and they said that we could enter for free and decide if we wanted to stay around and pay the entry price. This was good. I had a look through. There were a lot of people selling various things like comics and books etc. Interesting. Quite a big range. Then I headed out.

After heading out of there we waited briefly by the town hall entrance for Billie who needed to go off somewhere. While waiting, some of our fellow travel society people were inquiring about looking inside the hall. The lady told the story of how they can't and then offered them a city map. I asked if I could have one too. She was quite friendly and was showing me how some of the attractions were indicated on the map. I asked her about this building I'd read about on wikipedia. Harewood House. The Queen's cousin lives there, or used to live there and it looks like it could be impressive. But it's 10km out from the city centre. I asked her if she thinks that's worth seeing. As a local I thought she could have a few words to say. Then, her colleague behind her seemed to think we were being frustrating, as she told us that we *have* to go to the tourist information place, in a slightly snarky tone. I think the first lady resumed being helpful, and the second lady reminded us again that we really have to go to the tourist information place. The first lady then gave me a huge book filled with tourist information for the area. I thanked her a bit, and then we left.

I feel sorry for the snarky lady, because I'm fairly sure that the four coach loads of students who came with us will all be going in there through the day asking the same things. It was still quite early.

We walked up a little way to an outdoor ice skating rink the nice lady had told us about. I really had to see it. It was +6 degrees at least, so I couldn't work out how the ice wouldn't melt. They must have had underfloor cooling. I took a better picture later in the day. It was 9 pounds so we didn't ice skate.

This was right next to the museum. Chris didn't want to go into the museum just yet because he wanted to eat first. He was a bit particular that the food had to happen precisely at a certain time. He also seemed to think that since the town centre was a bit smaller than some (still large in my opinion!) that we should need to spend some time eating to pass the time. I was a bit disappointed with this logic. I also wasn't keen on his idea of a buffet restaurant. In my experience buffet restaurants charge a lot expecting one to eat an unhealthy amount of poor quality food. In response to my concerns about quality the counter-argument was put to me that it seems to be popular. Terrible way to argue the quality of something. But in the end I decided I'd risk it. While we ate, Billie did some shopping.

The museum.

The food was actually pretty good. This was the best buffet restaurant I've ever been to. First plate. A few slices of pizza, naan bread, wedges, a mexican wrap thing.

Third plate. I forgot to take a picture of the second. There is a guy that will make any kind of pasta for you. You can tell him what you want in it and he makes it right there in front of you. I just went for spaghetti bolognese. It's a classic.

Dessert. Various stuff...

After that I was very full. The restaurant is world themed. There are different sections in the food place for different regions. Each region has a very wide choice of stuff, and at a few of the places there is someone that will make something to order for you. 9 pounds, so it was pretty good value.

We met up with Billie again. She'd bought some boots and a whole lot of other stuff. Then we went to the museum. At the museum they were celebrating some kind of 'read a book day'. They had free books they were giving out. It was a bit later in the day so they were running low on supplies. They just had copies of two books to choose from. I chose 'All Quiet on the Western Front'. Billie got the same thing and I think we are going to compare our experiences of it.

We had a look at the african room. Billie tried on some african outfits. There are some funny pictures which would go here, but I'll her first before including them.

This guy is superviser at certain social customs.

We went to the upper floors. Up there I saw Mareike and some of her friends. I chatted with her for a while about how she is liking Leeds etc. Then I talked with some of her friends. There was one from France and quite a few from Spain. The girl from France, Arian (not sure of the spelling, but it is said with a kind of silent 'r') had a very interesting way of speaking. She ignores the normal rules of what should be said. She had very interesting observations of things. I really like breaking from the social rules, so I thought this was awesome and intriguing. I also talked to one of her friends from Spain. They were cool people.

We walked around together for a while. On the top floor they had an exhibition for the spice girls. Arian was very hyped and spent a long time reading everything. I thought the exhibition was not very impressive. But it was a little funny.

Afterwards the other spanish people wanted to get coffee somewhere. We went too. It quickly became clear to me that there would be no coffee shop holding an empty table that could accommodate 10+ people. So we split in two and found two fairly close cafes.

Mareike, Chris, Billie, and I sat at this one. Billie has some trouble pronouncing english words. For example, won't will sound like want. We had a funny conversation trying to get her to say the right sound to make it sound like won't.

I ordered a hot chocolate. The others ordered an espresso and two cups of tea. It took longer than 20 minutes for them to get it out to us! We had to kindly remind them twice. It wasn't too good because it was 4pm when we got there and we were supposed to be at the bus by 4:45 to get back.

Eventually we got it and we walked back to the bus.

We got back to Nottingham by about 6:20. The Devin Townsend concert had a venue opening time of 6:30 in the city, so I think I had enough time. There would be a support band and some time changing equipment over.

I walked with Billie back across the campus to the hall and then got my ticket and stuff. Then walked quickly to the city. I got there and there were lots of people outside looking fairly casual. So obviously Devin wasn't due to start for a little while. The support band were still playing. I caught the ending of a song and then got a can of Carlsburg beer. Then watched the rest of the support band.

The support band, looking more like a yellow blur.

I then found a really nice spot right behind the mixing desk. The ground was slightly raised above the mixing desk and there were only 3 people inside the large area dedicated to that, so I had unobstructed views for the whole concert and the sound quality was pretty good.

I'm holding the camera at chest height, so I could see over these short people in front of me easily.

I saw Devin a year ago in Adelaide, so I was riding off that a bit. He did his usual pre-show background music hosted by Ziltoid the Omniscient.

Devin came out and they played a pretty epic show. They're classy musicians. Devin likes antagonising the audience a bit. I took just a few pictures to capture the vibe, and two very short movies. I didn't really want to be that guy who stands there filming the whole song.

Devin told a great joke. "How do you get 30 canadians out of a swimming pool? Alright guys. Time to get out." He is Canadian.