A busy but fun place.

Manic Manchester

8/6/2009 10:24:25 PM - Day 508 - Manchester, England

The vanilla sky over Manchester.

I wanted to see a bit more of England and with my time almost running out for this trip I only had enough time for one more city and I chose Manchester. There was no particular reason why except that the name "Manchester" has crossed my radar a couple of times being the epicenter of the dance party scene as well as the home to one of the best soccer teams in the world right now "Manchester United". Not knowing much about Northern England and looking at the cities available to visit there, I chose Manchester simply because of name recognition. That's one of the cool things about traveling on an open schedule, you can go to places with no particular reason to visit except that you think it might be interesting.

Manchester has been an alright place. I was staying in the city center at a hostel called "Hatters Hostel Manchester" (Hatters Hostel Manchester Review) and every time I walked out the hostel door I joined a mob of people who were swarming the city center. Central Manchester is a very busy place. With some research I learned that there aren't a lot of sites to see in the city or museums that I found particularly interesting. The number one attraction seems to be the stadium which is home to Manchester United which I didn't visit because I wasn't interested enough to pay the price of walking around on the pitch. Nonetheless I did a bit of walking around and can say that although Manchester lacks a lot of tourist attractions, you will get to see another side of English culture which was my whole reason for visiting in the first place.

One thing about English culture that I find quite prevalent is their obsession with tabloids and celebrity gossip. I thought it was pretty bad in the United States but they take it to an entirely new level here. I've even seen commercials here by celebrities advertising an upcoming story about themselves in the tabloids. Needless to say, I've gotten quite used to seeing people of all walks of life spending their downtime reading tabloids.

I did manage to make it out one of the nights with a great group of people from my hostel and we all had a laugh. The nightlife in Manchester was a lot of fun and once again some people tripped out on my American accent (in a good way) which is always fun to experience while traveling.

Tomorrow I take a train to London where I will spend a couple days with some friends before I catch a flight back home…the thought of going home still seems so alien.

Comments

Post a Comment

Only post comments relevant to this post. Inappropriate or promotional comments may be removed.

Name*:

Comment*:


'*' Denotes a required field


Subscribe to Posts (RSS)