Check Mate--A Continuation of Exploration

I never thought it would happen, but for the past few days we have had temperature in the 70's!
Yeah. ENGLAND. With 70 degree temperature. I didn't even think that was possible.
The sky is cloudless, then sun beating down on us, and people are out in even less clothing than they usually wear: guys in City Centre are literally walking around topless and a girl I saw today was wearing shorts so short I could see her cheeks (not the ones on her face).

Being such a lovely day, I decided to walk to City Centre. It takes about an hour, but the sun was shining and I felt like being outdoors.
My first stop in City Centre was Cupcakes, as usual, to see if there were any new flavors out. As there weren't, I decided to show some restraint and not get one (I know! Me? Not get a cupcake? Maybe I was suffering from heat stroke.)

I went to the Leeds Art Gallery

They had some nice exhibits. My favorite room had paintings from 1800-1900, with huge canvases depicting different scenes: a guy in a fez being attacked by Nigerians,
an androgynous figure holding off a roaring tiger with his/her sword pointed right over the beasts' heart,

a mountain over a lake, reflected perfectly in it,

and, my favorite, The Temptation of Sir Percival:

I found this painting so intriguing I had to buy a postcard of it from the shop.

There were modern exhibits, with a lot of paintings that looked like something that should be in a pre-teen girl's bedroom.

Despite their cutesy appearance, I actually liked these painting because, in most of them, there was a space of darkness in them. It's like the stuff of Tinkerbell's nightmares.

I wandered around a bit, admiring the architecture of the building as much as the art in it.

After I'd gone around the entire gallery, I went outside to the shop.
I found some quotational stuff that I really liked.
One by Thoreau stuck out “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.”

I also found something I thought didn't exist: GOOD postcards of Leeds.
Most Leeds postcards I've found have been complete rubbish, ugly, or have nothing to do with Leeds.
But the gallery's shop had some good ones of buildings that I love to photograph anyway, so I got some to add to my massive postcard hoard.

Leaving the shop, I walked near the benches and saw people playing chess with enormous chess pieces on the plaza in front of the gallery.

I ended up watching chess games for a little over an hour. I learned some new things about chess: when your castle and king are beside each other, they can swap places.
And I thought the pairings were awesome. My favorite people to watch were these two:

It was this young, paunch bellied man taking swigs from a plastic Coca-Cola bottle and this old man with his cane. They would spend minutes sometimes thinking of their next move. The younger guy's friend was watching the game and they'd chat throughout it. At one point, some young, thin women in short shorts came up and watched the game.
"You girls play chess?" the young guy asked, his belly peeking out from under his shirt, they laughed and shook their heads and eventually ambled away.
The young guy won the game, despite my rooting for the collected-looking older gentleman, but when the young guy made his winning move, the older man laughed in appreciation. They shook hands and reset the board.

I moved over to the other game that was going between my next favorite players. These guys:

Both of these men were older, but they were equally entertaining. Their games took much longer than any others as they would extensively think their moves out. The darker skinned man was interesting to watch, he'd step right on to the board and wave his hands around in the possible moves he could make. He was bested by Victor, the yellow shirted man.

I must have looked very strange there. While occasionally passersby would stop and peer at the game, I was the only person that was not a tall, gangly, nerdy looking male/old guy that was sitting there watching the games. I got a few glances from the players and the men waiting to play, they all seemed more-or-less familiar with each other. You got the sense that they did this often.

As I was watching one of the games, an announcement made over a megaphone from a row of cars rolling down the street caught my attention. It was an advertisement for the Circus Vegas. Their little caravan of cars decorated in CIRCUS VEGAS-ALL NEW SHOW! rolled past the gallery. The roofs of their cars spangled with the American flag that made me internally groan.

About ten minutes later they passed by again, making the same announcement, going in the opposite direction. This time I paid more attention to the decorations on their vehicles: on the first one was Mickey Mouse, on the second was The Rock (Dwayne Johnson), and on the third was Elvis. While I was smiling to myself at how absolutely stupid and random that assortment of images were, the french man (I assume French by his accent) turned to me and said
"Isn't Elvis supposed to be dead?"
I agreed that he was, and he continued to talk about what a weird image it was to put on their cars, to which I also agreed. He was nerdy and slightly socially awkward, but we connected over the making fun of stupid advertising.
"All new show?" he said, "I haven't even seen the first one."
"I haven't even heard of Circus Vegas," I said.
Then he said something I couldn't understand with his heavy accent so I smiled vaguely and nodded.

Shortly after, I got up and went to Morrisons for some badly needed groceries: milk!

It was a really great day and although I didn't make it to the gym like I had intended to, I feel that this might have been the best way I've spent my time.