Rowing Christmas Dinner

   So yesterday saw both the Fresher and Senior rowing teams unite for the Rowing Club Christmas Dinner. After a pretty successful first few months for all four teams, we decided it was time to let our hair down and celebrate together. Our meal was booked at the Slug and Lettuce, somewhere I've never been before, so I was looking forward to trying somewhere new!
   We'd already preordered from the christmas menu, which made the whole event a lot more straightforward. I chose to order Camembert for my starter, turkey for my main, and chocolate and amaretto cheesecake for my dessert. We'd got a special offer on bottles of wine, which allowed us to have 15 bottles between our four tables for £6 each. For someone who's never been a big wine fan I ended up having a whole bottle to myself! They also had cocktails on a buy one get one free offer, so Ruth and I paired up and shared the cost of the cocktails between us. We ended up having 5 each... They were lush though! I find in a lot of restaurants that the cocktails aren't presented nicely or they're not blended properly, but the Slug and Lettuce definitely know how to make cocktails! My favourite cocktail by far was a Merry Cherry - a limited edition Christmas cocktail. It was made up of Absolute Cherrys, Disaronno and Coca-Cola, and came served in a Christmas bauble! I definitely recommend you get one if you're ever in a Slug and Lettuce around Christmas, it's a classic cocktail and the bauble is just such a cute way of serving it!
   The food itself was also really good, especially bearing in mind that they were producing it for a lot of us! The only thing that I was disappointed with was the fact it was fried Camembert, rather than one big one served with lots of bread to dip in! However, given the size of our group that would have been rather expensive to produce, so I can understand why they went for the more simplistic way of serving it... It certainly made me feel festive, as it hasn't really felt like December much this month! Being altogether eating turkey, drinking, pulling crackers and wearing paper crowns just made it feel much more special and much more like Christmas was coming!
   After the meal we went to Revolution on Deansgate to properly relax and dance off all the food we'd just eaten! We all began to sober up pretty quickly, as we'd started drinking so early, which was properly a good thing on behalf of all of our livers! It was raining and being typical Manchester weather, but overall it was an amazing evening, and the perfect way to celebrate a first semester for us new rowers! We've all improved so much over the past few months, and we've become like a little family, particularly since bonding with the seniors. I know that next semester we'll continue to become a stronger team, and I can't wait to race again and to have another rowing social.