Its where I live ...

Apparently, my home city Leeds has been voted in the top five city destinations in the Conde Nast travellers awards. Now that may be top five in the UK, or in Europe, or in the World, but unfortunately the Conde Nast web site appears to be bugged at the moment so I don't know, however the introductory paragraph that Google gives is that Leeds was voted "best value for money" in a world poll - so we'll take that one then.

A Yorkshire city giving value for money ?
Surely some mistake ?

Hint - For those from outside of the UK, Yorkshire people are reknown for "being careful" with their money, a scurrilous accusation I say, but one which might help explain why our hotels and shops are "good value for money".

Hint 2 - For those outside of the UK or those English soft southern nancies who don't know where Yorkshire is...
1. Find map of UK
2. Find London on map
3. Move finger in a northerly direction
4. Further than that
5. Go on, keep going
6. Stop when you get to that gap on the east coast, just opposite Holland
7. Go left a bit
8. Go up a bit more
9. All of this is Yorkshire


Anyway, back to the survey.

Just a year ago I wrote my own guide to the fine city of Leeds, one in which I was less than complimentary after a disasterous shopping trip, and having read it again I still maintain that its by and large still true, and by the way, the large sports store is still there and still having its final closing down sale.

But...

What Leeds does have for the visitor and indeed its residents is a superb and original city centre shopping area.

No I don't mean a shopping mall, I mean a city centre full of shops, like it used to be in the olden days, before shopping malls blighted most of our other cities. If you've forgotten what a shopping trip is like where you never leave a mall and never see an original shop then pay us a visit one day, you might like the experience.

I point now, dear people, to Newcastle, but could just as well point to Sheffield. Both of these cities jumped straight in with both feet in the 1980's when the urge to build huge, gargantuan out-of-town shopping malls was all the rage and within a few short months they had their Metro Centre and Meadowhall (respectively) malls sucking the lifeblood out of their city centres. Within twelve months the centres of both city's were like ghost towns and most of the retaillers had moved to the mall whilst citizens bleated about their city "not having a soul left to it" - repeat the scene for many other city's across this fair land.

But not Leeds.

By some fluke of planning office mis-organisation Leeds never gave planning permission for an out-of-town shopping mall until after central government decreed that they were a bad thing and not to be built anymore - Leeds sneaked a small one through the net and so we got our very own baby mall at the White Rose Centre - you could fit the whole of the White Rose Centre into Debenhams in the Metro Centre.

Instead our city fathers concentrated on our great asset in Leeds - our Victorian and Edwardian heritage of buildings, unique arcades, and our huge, huge market hall, and in a move for which we will always be grateful they told a Dutch development company to fook right off when they suggested demolishing our beautiful terracotta tiled victorian market buildings to repace them with a concrete block with elevated walkways (name one building with elevated walkways that is still in current use, its so 1960's Thunderbirds set).

In the past five years another massive building explosion has hit the surrounds of Leeds city centre - that of hotels and apartment buildings, there are currently more tower cranes at work in Leeds than in any other city in the country, hence the ease in which visitors can find a bed for the night for their weekend shopping and clubbing trips.

Leeds has turned itself into a tourist attraction and every weekend the city centre is full of accents of all shapes and timbres , and in a massively ironic turnabout we are inundated with coach parties from the Northeast who drive right past their own (now very boring) Metro Centre and keep driving for two hours just so that they can come and shop in our gorgeous terracotta facaded streets, drink in our victorian alleyway pubs but most of all haunt our indoor market, shopping malls can't compete with a proper city centre.