Showboat is one of many tiny gambling arcades based in and around the city centre and often…read morefrequented by pensioners. This is one of the bigger ones and has bingo machines, roulette machines, fruit machines and digital slot machines. The biggest jackpot's that you can win here are £500 on the digital machines and £70 on the fruit machines. They offer various promotional offers from time to time to entice customers to stay longer in the hope of winning free plays. It's quite dark and dingy in here and quite disheartening that these places are dotted all over the city, especially given a time of recession. That said, I suppose this offers certain groups of people a community where they can gamble at their leisure without joining a casino. They offer free hot drinks and snacks to anyone using their machines, and the staff are friendly and obliging throughout!

Edwardian Amusements is another of the many arcades dotted around the city. This one is located in…read moreWalton Vale and open daily apart from Sundays. These types of amusements always seem to attract the older generation whenever I visit one. Absolutely nothing wrong with that as most people see it as a place where they can socialise and have a flutter at the same time. Plus, customers are entitled to free drinks, sandwiches and biscuits; of course the cost of this food is negligible compared to the amount of cash inserted into their slot machines! This branch offers a £10 cash draw each day at 3pm for those who want to push their luck a little further. Personally, I'm not the type to gamble on fruit machines as they're designed to eat up your cash with hardly and little winnings (if any). However, Edwardian Amusements is a decent little arcade which is clean and tidy in appearance. Staff are always there to invite you in a friendly nature and offer free refreshments.

Based near Queens Square, Quicksilver is a place that we went as students to try and gamble for…read moremore cash on a night out. It's full of bandit machines, digital slot machines and old grannies with bags of pound coins whittling away their pensions. They entice you into the venue with offers such as £3 or £5 free plays when you play that amount on a machine, and occasionally they give out scratch cards which offer cash prizes in machine credit. Some of the machines have £500 jackpots, which we won one day, after playing with about £20 between two of us, which was very lucky. We were then told that the venue had no pound notes left to exchange with us, so we had to traipse through town with £500 in pound coins! As a student, it's worth popping in for a laugh with a couple of quid, they give out free crisps, chocolate bars and hot drinks, so if you're a top scav, go in and spent 50p, and you've got a cheap, unhealthy lunch!

The Olympia was once a grand forum for all sorts of live performances and until recently was the…read moremecca for the city's proud boxing tradition. My feelings on the place are not nearly as warm as they once were as the venue now mainly plays host to Mixed Martial Arts fighting which to me is not really much of sport. Ex bouncers beating each other up in a cage is nothing like boxing but the times move on and this stuff is very popular. The place will still host the odd gig but the glory days of the venue are long gone.

The Liverpool Olympia is an old, slightly decrepit, very dirty music and event venue located just…read moreoutside of Liverpool city centre. Outside of the slums of LA, I've never in my life seen so many boarded-up houses and buildings and empty, grass-filled plots outside a cemetery as I've seen in Liverpool. Yet there's something about the dirty, unkempt streets that seems to pulse with energy. Not nearly as good as Brooklyn, but if you're in the UK, it's interesting to see. The Liverpool Olympia continues this theme and doesn't disappoint. It's over-the-top, Victoriana gingerbread soffit and fascia, and it's gorgeously gilt gold and white finishings are completely contrasted with burnt orange walls straight out of the bar from the beginning of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The floors are black, sticky and dirty, and the meandering, ten-minute walk to the bathrooms is filled with plastic-covered ancient sofas and chairs with cigarette burns and flower patterns your grandmother would covet. Everything about this place is sad, worn-down and creepy. The vibe would perfectly suit a Halloween haunted house, or a Madonna concert. Something nightmarish. The "food" offered was a metal stand the size of water closet consisting of mushy chips with curry sauce or "hot dogs" shaped like pigs intestines. There are loads of bars -- three just on the floor where we were standing, and at least one on each balcony level. The prices for drinks are ridiculous -- £3.50 for a can of beer in a plastic cup -- but the service is so bad there, the waitress just dump your beer straight into the cup, resulting in over half a cup of foam, and no top up. We saw The Specials there, and the concert was outstanding, despite the venue. For an even odder flavouring to the night, all of the bouncers were from Northern Ireland -- a privately hired-in company. OK. Two words that rhyme with Liverpool Olympia? Never again.

Ok, this theater is AWESOME. We go to reclining theaters all the time back in LA, but sofa…read moreseating?? Never seen that before. It's ridiculously cozy and honestly made our date night feel extra special after running around doing touristy stuff all day. Parking was a breeze--literally across the street and only £1.50/hr after 6pm. Can't beat that. We saw The Roses, which was funny because we had joked back home about how cool it would be to watch it in the UK since both Benedict and Olivia are British... and yep, it happened. Totally surreal moment. Also loved the little personal touch: right before the movie started, a staff member actually came in, reminded everyone to silence phones, and had a quick word with the audience. Felt very film-festival-ish, like Sundance vibes. Bottom line: if you're in the city, definitely check this place out. And whoever designed those seats--you're my hero. Let's be friends.

Well, rather a lot has changed since the Everyman was last reviewed on Yelp...not least that the…read morebuilding was completely razed to the ground in 2011 and rebuilt into the magnificent and award winning (The Sterling Prize for Architecture 2014 no least!) creation that now resides in exactly the same spot as before. Not only is it a stunning piece of architecture but it is also a brilliant piece of environmentally friendly design with, amongst many other recycled elements, 25,000 bricks from the old Everyman and huge chimneys creating natural ventilation. There are even nesting boxes for swifts and bats. Bless. The ethos of the theatrical content remains the same though with a dedication to inspiring and engaging a wide variety of audiences by producing a huge variety of shows, a passion for delivering new writing, a flare for giving a contemporary twist to classic pieces and generally to producing world class theatre. I have hugely enjoyed the shows I have been to see since the re-opening in March 2014 and absolutely love the new auditorium; I immediately felt hugely at home in somewhere that feels so familiar despite looking so different. The new Ev Street Cafe is absolutely one off my favourite places to meet and eat in Liverpool and the food and service is always lovely. The downstairs Bistro had a shaky start (but then it had big shoes to fill...) but is definitely getting there and I really enjoy heading there for aftershow drinks and have had a couple of excellent pre-show meals there too. The only teeny weeny complaint I have is that sometimes the service in the foyer bar before shows and during intervals can be a little slow (it feels like they need one or two extra members of staff behind the bar but maybe there just isn't room!) but it really is a small complaint and has never majorly impacted on my enjoyment of an evening in the theatre. It was such a thrill for so many people in Liverpool when the Ev re-opened and certainly for me that thrill hasn't gone away. Long Live The Everyman Theatre!!

Best boling company in England And the food only cost 10 or…read moreunder pound I'm sure if you don't go here, you are the worst person ever

Proper nice place staff are lovely was having a great night, until I got mixed between my bag of…read moremalteasers and a oddly shaped brown bowling ball, made an appointment at the dentist hopefully they can replace my teeth

It seems rather strange that a city like Chester doesn't have a decent cinema closer than this,…read moreanother cloned multiplex in an out-of-town retail park in the middle of nowhere, but there it is. Actually I say the middle of nowhere, that's just what it felt like during the 20 minute drive in the dark - it's actually on the edge of Ellesmere Port, but that's hardly a hub of civilisation in itself. It's the typical retail park scenario, you know the kind of thing - windy roads, lots of roundabouts, a steady breeze sweeping the tumbleweeds past as you're dazzled by the neon glow from Burger King, Nandos, Pizza Hut, Frankie & Benny's, Bella Italia, and the other usual suspects. The cinema experience itself was just like any other Vue, I just hate this universal trend towards corporate blandness that insists on building these huge conglomerate retail parks in the middle of nowhere.

This is really the only choice of cinema in the Chester area if you are looing for decent screen…read moresize and a good amount of leg room. It's annoying to get to without a car as the buses can be quite bad and sometimes don't show up at all. If you can get there then it is a far better venue than any cinema nearer to the city. With a large number of screens there are a lot of films on offer at any one time. In fact last time we visited, my wife ended up watching a different film to me, and this worked out great with only a 20 minute wait for one of us. The food is obviously a massive rip off, but that is true of every cinema these days. Luckily the rest of the retail park offers a range of restaurants to suit al tastes so it is worth eating before or after the film rather than spending a similar amount on a drink and some ice cream.