Brunch, balls and bevvies

Me and Laura have been best friends since college and while we've been on a number of exciting trips (including Wales and Paris), it's London that's always been our thing. But after going twice a year for about 4 years in a row, this year we turned our attention to another UK city starting with L; one a hell of a lot further up north! With neither of us ever having visited Liverpool before, we thought it'd be the perfect girls weekend to go on with lots of girly-goodness bars and restaurants to choose from and plenty to see and do.

We had a jam-packed schedule that generally followed a meal-activity-meal pattern and even though we planned it super carefully (down to every 15 minute window), I'm surprised how amazingly it actually turned out! Mainly because every meal and every activity was alcohol fuelled. And naturally we had to start how we meant to go on, so the first stop after driving up was bottomless brunch! You can't beat a good bottomless brunch but sometimes, they can be hard to find. We like to avoid chains (in general, but especially in another city) and we were finding that places either had a great brunch menu with things you didn't find everywhere but not bottomless option, or they offered bottomless brunch with the more standard options. After a fair bit of googling, we ended up booking the one at Neighborhood, which looked cool and pretty different to anything we have in Nottingham. The bottomless brunch was £35 each and included 90 minutes of unlimited prosecco, gin, vodka, beer and selected cocktails. I got the eggs benedict (extra points since they served it with fries) and Laura got avocado on toast and we alternated between prosecco and the cocktail of the day. Service was super fast and super generous! None of this "you have to finish your drink before ordering another"; they were just free pouring the prosecco all over the place. The venue was really cool too and I loved the mix of the neon signs and girly accessories against the very grand traditional building. In fact that was my first impression of Liverpool; beautiful architecture! Because of the itinerary we had (plus the fact it was due to piss it down all day), choosing an outfit was a little tricky. I went with jeans-and-a-nice-top with these blue skinnies, mesh sleeve top (I saw it first), cream asymmetrical shoes (shein) and lots of gold jewellery.

Next up it was a round of crazy golf at Junkyard! I've been to the one in London before and we were toying with doing either this one or Ghetto golf. And even though our schedule for the day was meticulously planned, it was actually only booked a few days before we went. So when we looked at the golf, Ghetto golf was fully booked and Junkyard just had 1 ticket left in pretty much every time bracket throughout the day. But top tip for you: we arrived late to our slot at the London one and they were really relaxed and just wrote a new time on our band and told us to go through. So we risked booking the last remaining tickets in 2 different time slots 10 minutes apart. I mean, the worst that could've happened would've been us waving to each other from the other side of the course and a funny story to tell later. Luckily, it all worked out fine, again they were really relaxed and didn't even seem to notice the random tickets we'd booked; just wrote down the current time and told us to have fun. So off we went to get some more drinks before playing the scrapyard themed 9 hole course. It was really good fun and while I enjoy basking in the fact that I always beat Ollie at mini golf, Laura swooped in with the win on this one!

The next activity was a bit of a blur and there's a distinct lack of photos to prove it. After drinking non-stop since the time most people were probably waking up, we swapped ice cubes for sugar cubes at afternoon tea at Marco Pierre White's. It's funny that this was the activity where we both felt the drunkest, as it was the classiest and most ladylike one! I think we still managed to pull off the intended vibe either way. Plus the food was really nice with a fab selection of cakes; they must've known I was coming as it included TWO of my favourite treats, macarons and carrot cake.

The last daytime activity was a bit of a strange one in terms of expectations vs reality. One of the best things I've ever done in London was Ballie Ballerson; bottomless brunch at a bar with a ginormous ball pit to throw yourselves around in. Honestly so much fun and so many laughs. So when I found Balls Deep, a ball pit cocktail bar in Liverpool, I was super excited for the same vibe. But looking at their website, they have photos of people super dressed up and the option to reserve VIP tables and bottle service for hundreds of pounds; it gave off a bit of a pretentious vibe. We opted to just book a normal bar entry, plus ball pit entry and even then we had to pre-pay £50 for the two of us (the £5 each ball pit entry fee was fine but I didn't really like having to pre-pay a £40 bar tab). When we got there, it was a lot like the Junkyard golf place with neon paint everywhere, upturned barrels as seats, a very industrial look and sexual innuendo named cocktails. Not at all how you'd expect it from the website but a perfect outcome for us! Plus all the cocktails were 2 for £10 because we were there at a fairly quiet time, meaning we got 8 cocktails on the bar tab (not so bad having to pre-pay it after all). It worked out perfectly with the random timing too as there were enough people in there for a great atmosphere but the ball pit was mostly empty so we were able to throw ourselves around in it to our hearts content! Which we certainly did!

Then it was time to check in to our hotel! We just kept it simple with a city centre Ibis, as hotels seemed quite expensive in Liverpool. It was the perfect location and the room was nice and comfortable and clean, which is all you really need for a 1 night stay anyway!

And then it was straight back out again! We'd both said we were going for trousers and heels outfits so I chose khaki trousers, black strappy heels, black lemon print bralet and a cute little lemon bag to boot! I finished the look with a red lip and then we headed out to our dinner reservation at Dash (a fancy Asian restaurant). It was the perfect choice for a dinner-and-drinks option, especially before a night out. It was dressy, they had lovely cocktails and loud music to get the party going. The food was also incredible. We ordered tempura prawns, mushroom bao buns (the only dish we weren't all that impressed by), king crab sushi rolls, spiced duck sushi rolls, soba noodle salad and Cantonese lamb (the real standout dish). And then after dinner, we were on our own, having been to the last pre-booked thing on our itinerary! We ended up in a really good club though; very girly decor, a mix of RnB and house music and live entertainment including dancers, saxophonist and a steel drum player!

We'd purposely left the Sunday free so after checking out of the hotel, we headed off in search of brunch. Moose Coffee is somewhere I'd been wanting to try for ages and although there was a bit of a wait for a table, it was so worth it! They specialise in all things American and Canadian so I went for a sweet and savoury mix with brioche french toast, sausages, bacon and maple syrup! Absolutely amazing but I'm embarrassed to say I barely managed half of it (I've got the American taste buds but evidently not the American appetite).

Then it was time to explore! I'd gone with a casual chic outfit of dark blue slim jeans (really loving the slim rather than skinny at the moment), navy and white graphic shirt, white trainers, pink handbag and lots of gold jewellery. Liverpool was a beautiful (if very windy!) city and I particularly liked seeing the area around the docks. I was also very glad it had brightened up a bit on the Sunday so we were walking around under blue skies rather than torrential rain.

As with all great trips, we ended it with a drink in the sunshine. We had the most amazing time and it was nice to tick a new city off our list. I can't wait to see where Laura and I will explore next!