My nearest and dearest know that in the last year I majorly fell out of love with tv. I just couldn’t be a**ed with it anymore, I found it was a complete drain on my time and I found lots more fun elsewhere.
Saying that – there are always occasions where you just fancy veg-ing out on the sofa but instead of getting sucked into some new exciting series or drama (my attention span these days is shockingly bad) I much prefer to watch replays of my ‘feel good’ shows. So I have three go to’s – Modern Family, Big Bang Theory and my all time favourite show in the whole entire WORLD – Friends.
The minute I heard Friendsfest was coming to the UK last year, I wanted tickets. The tickets sold out near enough as soon as they were released and I was insanely jealous watching friends pop up facebook pics of their experience.
So the second I heard it was coming back – well there was no way I was missing out without a fight.
Thankfully this time round it was not only sticking around longer, but also touring, with a location confirmed up North! Hands perched over keyboard at the ready, as soon as those tickets were released I secured four glorious passes to Friendsfest at Harewood House in Leeds.
And what a glorious day it was!
If you’ve never heard of Friendsfest (I’m not even going to ask if you’ve heard of Friends cos if you haven’t I really have no words for you) it’s basically a mini festival celebrating all things Friends with recreations of the set using actual props from the show for you to walk through. Set’s on display include Central Perk, Monicas apartment, the barker loungers and the sofa from the title scene.
There’s a main stage which shows clips of shows and also where festival-goers can take part in games and dance-offs – all friends related of course. My sister and I jumped up during lunch to compete for the Geller cup (which we won!!) and even got up to learn ‘the routine’ for a laugh (no shame us two, will try anything in the name of a good time)
Ok so the atmosphere may be a bit Friends cult-ish, the food and drink is expectedly overpriced, yes you have to queue to look at and take pictures of the different sets but NONE OF THAT MATTERED BECAUSE IT WAS A WHOLE DAY DEDICATED TO FRIENDS!!!
Yes I just broke a writing rule and typed continuously in capitals with lots of exclamation marks thrown in, but you know what that’s the only way I can get across to you just how much fun I had.
I had my fantastic four, my best friends in the whole world and we had an absolute laugh. It was especially nice to be able to share it with my sister, we grew up watching this show together all the way up to now – we’ve had friends marathon days, watched the last episode together, played the game, laughed at the same lines and we got to spend the whole day celebrating our one TV love together!
If you’re a die-hard Friends fan, I would definitely recommend going if you get the opportunity. It was a day of pure nostalgia, and hey the sun even shone the whole time we were in Yorkshire! Perfect way to kick off the holidays.
Have you been to Friendsfest? what did you think? Or do you think I’m a tad bit crazy for loving it so much?
