IN MANCHESTER: LUNCH AT BYRON
Do you ever find that sometimes you pedal your way through life doing the same thing over and over again with no change in pace or activities such that now your life sparkler is slowly fizzing out? Yeah, I find myself in that head space time and time again but one thing I promised this year was that I will not allow my life to lack some oomph or spontaneity for more than 2 weeks at a time. Luckily for me a couple friends of mine that I hadn't seen for a while, Asima and Della, got in touch and we organised a mini get-together in town last Saturday. And boy did I have great time!
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I took my big girl camera out for the second time ever but I actually managed to bring it out of my bag that day- I was well pleased. I totally need to get over my fear of looking like a tourist or at least practise my 'I'm a profession photographer working for a highly reputable magazine' stance hehe. I miss out on so many cool and magical things (read: floating gold painted men) to capture on my memory card and I don't like it.
Whilst bonding over trying on a wide variety of clothes in all kinds of fitting rooms or ooing and ahhing over the newest Mulberry collection or attending to the needs of the beauty guru within are all great ways to catch up with the girls, my friends and I tend to skip that bit and go straight to the part where we eat. And this suits me just fine. We wanted to eat something a bit different from the usual Italian or Chinese food that we adore and could also promise to be very spicy. So naturally we decided to have lunch at Byron haha.
Ok, to be fair that wasn't our first choice. We found a really cute Spanish restaurant, La Vina, which was just over the road but we weren't in the mood for tapas - we decided that we will go there one day. And we had all heard good things about Byron and had been meaning to try it out but just never got round to it. So, real hamburgers it was.
Although their menu was not extensive, I was still overwhelmed. Whilst I was trying to chose which burger to devour as I was quite hungry I decided to make an easier decision - drinks. It had been ages since I had fresh orange juice and since what I would be eating in the next 10 minutes won't be exactly "healthy", I might as well have some natural goodness washing it down and counting towards my 5-a day. And boy was it refreshing! Asima had a glass of fresh lemonade and Della opted for a larger - which was a tad bit pricey for the size :/
I ended up having the Chilli burger (burger: medium cooked- apparently their well done has a crispy feel to it lol), as I was really in the mood for something hot and spicy, with french fries in the end. It was yummers!! And veeeery filling. Asima had the veggie burger which she said was lovely whilst Della had the Byron burger which she said was very tasty. Thankfully, the many chats we had over lunch served as great breaks for us to digest the food and then pick up where we left off. Once we were done eating we waddled our way out of the restaurant and headed towards the cinema to see the much anticipated 'The Wolf of Wall Street' which featured on my Movie Mondays series this week. It was not what I thought it was - I was thinking musical, Martin Scorsese was not - but it was a good film despite the fact it is not my kind of thing as you can probably tell from the films I have blogged about. But I did say I wanted to watch things there were out of my comfort zone this year so I guess my life sparkler has been given a bit of a boost.
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All in all, I had a great time catching up my friends, doing something a bit different and actually enjoying life outside the walls of my bedroom. Although, I will always love catch up sessions that involve a night in munching on takeaway food in our pjs as we watch a bunch of movies and chat about anything and everything. Those are the best!
How do you fuel your life sparkler?
Mo xx