Avril and I booked our usual hotel, the Doubletree at Tower Hill, and asked Richard to join us for what was largely going to be a crawl within the confines of the hotel. We arranged to meet him in the Sky Bar and he duly found us there, and we had a good time drinking expensive drinks, people watching and admiring the view on what was quite a nice day for the end of January.

Down in the lift and there is a very open and a bit shit lobby bar at the hotel, called City Café Bar which allowed us the opportunity to drink more expensive beer whilst reclining in comfortable chairs. You've got no walls or anything like that and it literally is just in the lobby, so only fit for a pint at most. Much better than expected was the Natural Kitchen, a huge vaguely rustic dining room of a place which actually has some very good seats at the bar where we sat and drank nice tasting Pilsner Urquell. The tables are a bit like in a school so I think we made the right choice there.

After sneaking into the executive lounge for some food and a few more drinks, it was out the back door for the 20 second journey to the Crutched Friar, which was open it being a Saturday night. It was quiet in there and we sat near the bar having a couple of rather good pints of beer.

Also, just around the corner is the Grange City Hotel with a most unfortunately named Isis Bar. We stopped for a pint and like most other mid-range hotel bars, it was plastic and pricey, with over cooled lager on tap, and we were pleased to find nothing untoward happening whilst we were there. Mind you, it's a bit of an expedition to the toilets.

An ill-advised walk was then taken to the Alchemist which was really more of a club and filled with twats so we quickly changed tack to an area much closer again to the hotel, and grabbed a cab to the Draft House (Tower Hill) which was open and pleasingly not busy. As one might expect with such an establishment, there were a shit load of beers available along an enormously long bar with plenty of pumps including an irritating of craft offerings selection on pissflow. All quite impressive for such a quiet pub. In the end we had a few and such was the state of inebriation that a photograph of me wearing a wig was taken...