ESCAPE ROOM: The Da Vinci Room (Leicester)

It's a curious thing that we hardly ever go in to Leicester town centre any more even though it's very close by. And when we do it always seems to be slightly annoying, disappointing or down right depressing. But, we thought, it doesn't really matter where an Escape Room is, does it? Well it shouldn't, but somehow it did.

It didn't help that we arrived flustered, having taken longer than expected to park and walk across town to the old Market Place. And once there we were greeted by Grits (I think his name was), who seemed perfectly nice and friendly... but very young. And so the hour proceeded to fall apart, with the Escape Room having a policy of making you 'dance' for the camera to earn clues.

I'm sure this is fine if you have a bunch of youngsters in, but read the room mate. Older (grumpy) people in attendance who don't want to be pissing about for your entertainment while wasting precious minutes of our dwindling thinking time.

The room itself was actually quite good, but if you're not really in the right mood and then you have someone insisting you dance for every clue (Muggins here did the dancing, Rose would have sooner eaten octopus than give this guy the satisfaction) it all turns into a massive waste of time and money.

At one point, Grits had to come in and chastise us for being rough with a bureau drawer that we couldn't figure out how to open. Oops. He's lucky Rose didn't punch him on the nose. 

Anyway, we didn't get out and I don't think we would have even if we (well, I) hadn't wasted time dancing for clues. It was quite hard for a 3/5, but then if you're not in the mood for it that just makes it even harder to concentrate.

Never mind, we'll go back to Nottingham next time.

Afterwards we nipped in to Hotel Chocolat and bought a few things to nibble and then we went to the TAG Heuer boutique and saw the new pastel F1s, which are okay but far too big for Rose's wrist. 

And then after that we took a drive down memory lane (for me at least)...

This is the road where Archways rehearsal studios used to be. Every Sunday I used to come here to rehearse, and I haven't been back since May 1991 (when Cycorax disbanded). It's funny how the railway arches are still there, and still quite rundown, but on the other side of the road there's all these shiny new buildings (which I think are for University students to stay in).