North West England

Eze Restaurant - Wilmslow, United Kingdom
A not very Mediterranean restaurant (17.02.2007 14:44)
In my new job I'm working with a lovely bunch of people but we all live in different areas and all the best intentions to 'go out and do something' tend to drift. So a couple of months before I joined, the group appointed 'Jack-the-placement-student' as the department social secretary and set him the task of arranging a night out once a month. And being a student, Jack specialises in finding [more...]

La Piazza Restaurant - Urmston, United Kingdom
Authentic Italian food in an unexpected place (17.02.2007 14:10)
I've known and loved La Piazza since it first opened back in the 1996. At that time I was living a short walk away in Urmston but a job change took me away from the area until November last year where I'm camped out with an old neighbour during the week. Before Christmas we both realised that there was nothing we wanted present-wise so she offered to buy me dinner as my Christmas treat and I [more...]

Copthorne - Manchester, United Kingdom - February, 2005
The Copthorne has seen better days (04.01.2007 17:04)
I used to live about 5 miles from this hotel and regularly visited the cinema next door which has sadly been closed. At that time - in the early 1990s - Salford Quays was going through a 'boom' and becoming the North West's answer to London's Docklands. The gentrification of the old Manchester Ship Canal docks was an inspirational example of 1990s yuppification and the Copthorne was a 'hot' [more...]