Manchester
22nd, 23rd, 24th July 2009

We arrived to a nice sunny blue sky in Manchester. We got off a stop earlier than our tickets said, as I thought it was closer to our hostel. Of course I was right, and it only turned out to be a short 10 minute stroll up to our home for the next three nights, Hilton Chambers. We offloaded the bags, and checked out our new abode. It was quite possibly the nicest hostel we've stayed in. Nice clean rooms, awesome kitchen, TV room and outdoor decking.

First we set off to find the tourist info centre. The hostel was right in the centre of the city so it wasn't a long walk through the central park area, where more kids were playing in the water feature squirty things (I dunno what it is about water and the English, but they don't seem to be able to resist getting wet, even when its only about 18 degrees out!!) We picked up some maps and brochures of things to see and do in Manchester and that's when the rain began. It wasn't a little bit of rain, it was enough rain to break Victoria's drought. We thought that a nice way to spend the rainy afternoon would be to find a cinema and use our 2 for 1 offer that we have on Wednesdays with our phone company. We looked on our newly found map and assumed that there was one not far from us. We walk down the road to find that it was actually a performing arts centre. Whoops. We walked around in the rain for a little longer until I decided that I needed to be somewhere dry, we sought refuge in the closest pub, aptly named the "Rain Bar". It was here that I did something I never ever thought I would do. I ordered a coffee from a pub. Not a beer, you heard right, a coffee!! And it was delicious. It didn't stop Dan though, he enjoyed a pint. While in the pub, the rain did stop, so after our drinks we set out again to have a look around the city. After being outside all of about 2 minutes, the rain came again. My Poundland umbrella was not faring too well; broken arms and bending inside and out, but it mostly kept the rain off me. We strolled along one of the canals, and found a comedy club that we thought we might visit during our stay. From here, I was wet through and we boarded the free city bus to take us back up to the north end of the city where we were staying.

We set ourselves up in the TV room and watched a few episodes of Neighbours online, then watched the current on the TV. We had a chat with our dorm buddy, a kiwi that's been living in Aus for the last 5 or so years, and now made his way to Manchester to find some work. He was pretty fun 'Eh Bro'. We made, sorry heater, ourselves a nice frozen microwave meal for tea; Tesco do make a nice frozen lasagna.

We did eventually find where the cinema's were, and decided to catch a late screening of "Year One", with Jack Black and Michael Cera. It was quite possibly the worst film I have seen in a long time. The complex where the flicks were was pretty impressive. It is called the Printworks, so named because it used to be where the printing of papers happened. It is a massive indoor complex with bars and clubs, but made to look outdoors, kinda. Hard to explain, but it reminded me of Disney studios in Paris.

We got back to the hostel lateish, and found that there was a number of people outdoors having a few drinks, we decided to call it a night though. Our Kiwi roommate was rather considerate when he stumbled back in at some ungodly hour; I think he only woke me up once when he came in stumbling around, and started spraying some smelly cologne around.

Next morning, we thought we'd purchase some bus tickets which would take us out to the sights a little out of the centre. Again, the skies were grey and we weren't holding out much hope for nice weather. We got down to the bus stop and jumped on the open topped double decker. Within 15 minutes it started to rain so we raced downstairs to the bottom level; although the water that filled the top part of the bus came down the stairs also and flooded the bottom of the bus too - we had to fett our feet up to avoid them getting wet). We had plans to get out and have a look around the Quay area, but opted to stay in the dryness of the bus instead. We did the full loop on the hop-on, hop-off tour bus, and it took about an a hour and a half. We saw the Old Trafford Cricket and Football grounds, home to Lancashire County Cricket Club, and Manchester United respectively, The Trafford Centre which is the largest (and most extravagant) shopping centre in Europe, The Manchester Library, and a few other local sights. By the time the bus had done the full loop it had stopped raining, so we thought we'd go around again and get off at the Quays.

In the now sunny weather, our first visit at the still developing Quays was at the Imperial War Museum; a very impressive looking building made out of aluminum. I reluctantly went along with Dan - He knows that I am sick of museums, especially war ones, by now - but it was ok. They had a special exhibition on Prisoners of war, and I went around doing the kids activities, like stamping my prisoner card at the certain exhibits. The main museum, was probably the best set out museum I've seen. Very interactive for simple-minded people such as myself, and every hour they dim all the lights and fill all the walls with images and sounds and stuff - very cool. Even still, I got through the whole exhibition in twice the time as Dan and ended up sitting and waiting for him for half an hour. My favourite thing they had was the deck of cards put out by the Americans with Sadam as the ace of spades!

We crossed the bridge over the Manchester Ship Canal and headed into the Lowry - a big outlet shopping centre for some lunch. It was a bit like DFO, however there was hardly anyone there. We did check out the Cadbury seconds store, but Cadburys over here just isn't as good as the stuff back home so we left empty handed. By the time we headed out it was bucketing down rain again, so we thought we'd wait it out a bit and check out the Nike outlet. Dan needed some new ankle socks, and we found a nice 3 packs for £4. Bargain. It was an ever better deal when they scanned at £1.70!!! By the time we were done, it had stopped raining so we headed out and walked along the ship canal to find some "Skyhook" structures that Dan had seen on a map. We thought we found them, and were disappointed, so we walked up to Man U. stadium to catch the bus back into town. (Looking back on the map, we realized that we didn't go far enough along the canal to find these sculptures - no wonder we were disappointed).

Once back into town we walked into the really impressive looking circular library. The stained glass inside depicts a heap of Shakespeare characters. The library itself inside, was fairly crappy, although there was a cool archives bit upstairs.

We headed back to the hostel for a little chill out time, and to watch Neighbours, before heading out to dinner and the comedy club. We figured we'd eat at one of the nearby restaurants to the club, as we were going to be a bit short of time. We strolled down to the bus stop, and flag the free bus down, but the driver just shakes his head at us and refuses to stop. Uhmm Ok. The next bus comes along and this driver did the same thing to us again! We must have been doing something wrong!!! We realized that we weren't going to have enough time to have dinner and see the show, so we just ended up going to a near by bar for tea, and figured we'd go to the club on the Friday night instead.

After tea, we walked down to the 'medieval' part of town, and enjoyed a pint in the outdoor area of one of the old 17th century pubs. It was a really nice atmosphere, because finally the weather had cleared up a bit! After a drink, we decided to go on the Manchester Wheel; A smaller version of the London eye, with pods that fit about 6 people in them. I think we might have been the only people on it at the time. The other major difference between this and the Eye, is that it flies around really quickly, and the pods shake if you move. Dan was told quite firmly that if he as so much as moved a muscle I would've killed him. We went around about 4 times in about 15 minutes, and after the first 2 loops I started to relax a little and enjoy the sights. We went on just as the sun was setting and it was quite nice to look out over Manchester, a fairly modern city, with plenty of impressive skyscrapers.

After dinner we went down and had a quick look at the Cathedral, and also found a "Welcome to Manchester" billboard with someone who looks incredibly similar to Andy Lee of Hamish and Andy fame on it. We actually thing he is a famous soccer player though! We picked up a couple of traveler beers and ended up spending the rest of our Thursday night out on the back deck having a quiet evening. There were a couple of Spanish teenagers out there also playing some Uno, they insisted that we play with them; but we politely declined. We ended up wrapped up tightly in bed by about 11pm.

At 3am we were all woken by the sound of the hostel's fire alarm sounding. As I was on the bottom bunk, and I think the only person who cared, I put my head out the door, so no one else so headed back to bed. The alarm stopped and started a few times over the next few minutes, and I also started hearing other people walking around so I got up again and headed to the main reception area. As soon as I opened the door, I realized that the room was completely filled of smoke and about 20 other guests, including an old guy strutting round in his little red jocks!! The 2 reception guys were pretty relaxed, one kept overriding the alarm each time it went off and the other was on the phone. I hung around with the others in the lobby; no one really seemed sure as to what was actually happening. Eventually the fire brigade turned up and strolled into the building with some equipment and extinguishers. I figured that we'd be safe with the firefighters in to take care of whatever it was, and I went back to bed.

Next morning we woke up late and checked my emails. There was one there from the hostel explaining that someone lit a fire outside the building and the smoke just filled the building - nothing serious - but they offered us a nights accommodation at half price to make up for the inconvenience. Wahoo! We showered, at some breakfast (even thought it was about midday), and headed out for our final day in Manchester.

The sky looked pretty glum again, so we thought we'd play it safe and check out shopping at The Trafford Centre. We went down to board our tour bus but found that we'd missed it by about 5 minutes and the next one would be about 40 minutes. We decided to go check out the nearby 'Gay Village'. It was a pretty trendy little area with lots of gay pride flags hanging up, and some very risqué posters advertising particular upcoming shows at the clubs. Dan was most fascinated by some of the street names in the area. "Princess St", "Sackville St" and his favourite "Canal St"; he even made a special mention to me to make sure I put them in this blog! From the gay village we walked through Chinatown. Apparently Manchester has the largest Chinatown arch in UK outside of London. It was ok, but nothing in comparison to Bendigo's!

We got back to the bus in perfect timing, jumped on and made the trip out to the Trafford Centre. Apparently, it would cover 46football pitches, and has some ridiculous amount of gold leafing in the statues on the outside. It's also won the "Best Loo" award for the last couple of years. It is also reputedly home to Europe's largest chandelier. We got off the bus and walked around to the main entrance - "The Grand Hall" - with the chandelier and a full marble staircase, and we're blown away at the extravagance of the place. Dan spotted a small time celebrity, some guy (who we found out after getting onto imdb at the hostel) who was in Cold Feet, and currently in the English soap, Coronation Street (Which is filmed in Manchester). We made our way through to the 'dining hall' complete with swimming pool and large screen TV. It was set out in themes; there was the French part, the Italian part, the USA part and so on. We decided on some US style pizza that we got 15% discount on with the coupon book we got on the bus. It was delicious. We didn't have much time at the shopping centre before the last bus back to town left, so we just stopped in at superdrug for some shampoo and moisturizer. We hardly got to see any of the shopping centre at all. I must say though that I have seen better toilets than these ones, so I don't know what all the fuss is about them winning the national awards! Oh, and as we left the centre and waiting for the bus, we got caught in yet another severe downpour of rain. And not only is it wet, is friggin freezing. It would have been lucky to hit 15 degrees. And they call this summer.

Back in town and we stopped off at ALDI to pick up some dinner - we really are going budget! - and I needed a new book, as I finished my first one in record time. Whilst walking through the shopping centre we saw quite possibly the largest queue I've seen whilst over here. Mainly teenage girls, so we were intrigued as to what they were queuing for. We got to the front of the line, which was at a Waterstone's (a book store) - turns out Katie Price aka Jordan (Peter Andre's now ex wife) was there doing a signing. Insane amount of people there to see this filthy, trashy woman - although we have enjoyed watching the reality TV show with both Katie and Peter and their life in the USA. She's not overly intelligent and it makes for enjoyable viewing.

We also went to check out the comedy club again for the Friday night show, seeing as we'd missed the last two nights, but were informed that the club was no longer doing Friday night shows. Damn. We'll just have to wait until we get to Edinburgh!

We ended up just having an easy night at the hostel, packing up ready to head off the next morning to Beatles town, Liverpool.