This piece reminds me I need to re visit Koln.
Haven’t been for about 15 years.
‘The champagne of pale ales’: my search for the perfect kölsch beer in Cologne ‘The champagne of pale ales’: my search for the perfect kölsch beer in Cologne | Travel | The Guardian
Have got friends in Dusseldorf so whenever I visit make sure we have a trip to Koln as I don’t like Altbier but love Kolsch.
He’s from Berlin and his wife is Danish so fortunately don’t play the whole Dusseldorf vs Koln thing.
Anyway it seems that I have managed to coax and friend (who was supposed to be in Munich last weekend) out of his shell with the offer of a curry in Manchester.
So this Saturday the 60th tour makes a violent handbrake turn and heads north.
I’d like to have a few pints and get to the bottom of what the gibbering fuck is going on with his life and if there’s anything I can do other than giving him money. Proud men 
He may yet flake on me but it wouldn’t be difficult to fill a couple of days with the Koffee Pot and the Smithfield Market Tavern.
Your life is so random / complicated / unusual, random is the biggy here, that I can’t keep up. Doesn’t it tire you ? Did you do a lot of drugs as a youth ?
Well yes 
but I also seem to have a knack of finding friends who are uncannily good at pulling the pin on their own lives.
Well, if you find yourself at a loose end, I finish work in Warrington at 17:00 on Saturday
We’re off to Lake Garda for a week, can anyone recommend any decent restaurants and bars, basically evening stuff to do, in Garda? Our Rough Guide reckons there’s a lot of less than stellar places?
I’ll have a word with the old farts, they used to go there every year until fairly recently
Whereabouts in lake Garda I was there a couple of years ago and ate very well, more local than posh nosh mind
Verona at home to Pisa on Sunday afternoon, with a post match nosh-up
We’re staying on the outskirts of Garda itself.
North south west east ,
Last stayed the other side of the lake - Hotel Bella Riva in the Gardone Riviera.
Didn’t have a bad meal and the breakfasts with Buck’s Fizz were superb.
We asked the concierge for recommendations and nothing disappointed. Just avoid the tourist traps?
West, literally a couple of hundred metres outside of the town so wandering into there isn’t a problem.
All the really posh (Michelin guide type stuff) restaurants seem to be on the other side of the lake.
As Steve says, just want to avoid the tourist traps, and find a couple of nice bars that maybe have some live music.
I stayed in the south in pieve vecchia so probably no use, but like Steve said everywhere we ate was great and chilled , no live music though
Back in dat Antwerp.
Absolutely bullshit weather but a couple of tasty ones around town have offset that.
It turns out that between us there’s quite a lot we want to do (and eat and drink) so I think it’s going to be a good couple of days.
Celery salt I hope
Surprisingly clear in Runcorn then. It is a bit wet and windy in Liverpool.
