Leeds Markets, The Royal Armouries & Round the Roundabouts to Morely

Today we traipsed off to the Leeds Markets. For those in Sacto area - think Denios times 2, for those in San Jose - think Capital Flea Market times 2 as well. This is where people do a lot of their main shopping for vegetables, fabrics, electronics, fish, meat, etc. Butchers and Fish Mongers row is active as are all the vegetable stalls. The Leeds Market opened around 1908 and was the main shopping place for many years. Today a lot of stalls are empty due to the economy and the fact that imports from Asia have taken over quite a bit, and large grocery stores like Morrisons, Safeway, Tesco and Sainsbury's have replaced the need to go into the Centre of towns anymore.

After meandering around the Markets we headed to the main shopping area down Briggate, Kirkstall, Vicar and Boar Lanes. These all used to be main drive areas, but the City of Leeds has now closed them to autos and has become a nice pedestrian open shopping area. All the biggie's are there; Harvey Nichols, Debenhems, Marks & Spencers - and of course all the cellphone companies, shoe stores, hair cutting places, womens boutiques and McDonalds! Can't be in one city without a McDonalds! LOL. Tim and I just wandered around. He went into Curry's and PC World which are similar to Best Buy's in the UK. He found they are still selling Packard Bell PCs and was shocked. I said yeah I think NEC still markets them under PB in Europe.

We met Mom, Sue, Dave and David about 3 hours later - of course mom has now purchased her second pair of shoes in two days, making it 4 pairs to bring home. *Sigh* David is also now battling my cold.

After the Markets we headed to the Royal Armories. That place was amazing. They have rifles, raipiers, hatchets, spears, armour, etc from Medieval times through today. This stuff has come from England, America, Netherlands, Germany, France, Turkey, Persia, Italy, Austria, Sumatra, China, Japan, Borneo, etc. We went on a lucky day, it was free to get in. Here's a link to the Armouries so you can get a brief feel. They also had some special displays going on right now with the different types of armour which was used in movies such as The Lord of the Rings, The Last Samurai, King Kong and others. Tim wished we had just dropped him off in the morning at the Armouries, went and done our shopping and had come back. He said he could have stayed there all day. As it was, we were there for almost 3 hours and I was DONE. It was amazing to see all of the beautiful craftwork over the centuries, and was amazed at how preserved they all were. Some armour was from the 1200's, rifles from the 1600's, etc. If you ever get the chance to come to England, Leeds is definitely a stop if you're interested in this sort of stuff.

Royal Armouries

Finally, I'm sick of Roundabouts. We went to Pat's again for dinner to say goodbye to the Webster family. Pat made a great meal of beef bourginon and Yorkshire Pudding! (Timmy's fave) We had great laughs and as always, hard to say goodbye to family you only get to see every few years. And...what should have been a 25 minute drive back to our rental house, turned into an hour courtesy of our GPS system, the round abouts and GPS telling us to use LOCAL ROADS, instead of picking the damn name of the route - when there's 6 to choose from and their all local roads. Anyway, its sorted, we're back, we're packed and off to Ireland tomorrow morning!

Until Ireland, Bon Nuit mon amies et familie.