The Croft Institute

14 Nov 2005

One Friday morning I was sitting at work, and it being Friday, in a good mood. The weekend loomed, the weather was nice outside, and the possibilities were endless. So I emailed H and proposed we leave work as early as possible and get out of town for the weekend. Well, out of our town and into another. So we did. Took a few hours and then some to drive there, but the spontaneity made it all fun.

The next morning we were wandering round a stylish little shop selling cool and weird stuff when we came upon a bar guide to the local cool spots. In a playing-cards sized pack each card described a bar or lounge with a map on the back. We'd heard that all the cool spots were down dark little alleys you'd never venture down without knowing what lay ahead so we snapped it up and made it our mission to go on a bar-hop/pub-crawl that evening!

Over our first drink in a convenient bar that co-incidentally was on one of the cards, we chose the places that sounded most appealing. This place, The Croft Institute, was down one particularly dark and stinky alley, round not one but two corners. I'm not too bad down alleys but till we rounded the second corner and saw the end wall lit up I really wasn't sure bout it all.

With science-lab equipment as the theme, work-benches complete with taps and sinks, as tables and house brand vodka dispensed from clinical jars, it was certainly a cool place. And the clientele proved the point.

We tried about 6 places, found 5 of them, though one was closed (shame, it was a brew-pub). By the end of the night we were drunk but not pissed, and our feet were killing us.

The Croft Institute, definitely worth the trip.

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