Today, after getting practically no sleep, I arrived in Manchester.
From Ireland, if you catch the bus, you spend 4 hours on a ferry, then another 3 hours on a bus. Not great if you usually sleep on the transport!!
Despite the lack of sleep though, I made it, and met up with a friend I met in Hong Kong back near the start of my trip. He wanted a shoutout on the blog, so here you go – Hi Jonjo! His mum let me stay in the spare room, so I am going to get a few good nights sleep in my own room!!
We spent all day exploring the city. He had a whole list of things for us to do, and we ticked off more than half in this first day! A few of the places we went, I don’t think any of the locals have ever even seen!
We started off in the town hall, which was surrounded in Halloween gear, where they were already putting up the Christmas display, and headed to the library. Some of the books were over a thousand years old, and they had fragments of books from 2000BC!! The building itself was really beautiful too.
From there, we went to the Cathedral. There was a lady working there who pointed out dozens of things I never would have noticed, like small carvings and where the war had destroyed parts.
We then headed to Old Trafford, home of Manchester United, and I got to see the cups and trophies they currently have, as well as just seeing one of the most famous sporting arenas in the world.
From there, we walked around the canals and ended up at Media City, where so many iconic British shows have offices. Saw a couple of Dalecs, but no Jeremy Kyle.
There was a great sunset on the walk back, through Salford Quays and everything was lit up green for Halloween! I even got to get dinner from the chippy.
Despite being a Monday night, it was Halloween, so we went out partying in Canal Street – the gay district. Met a lot of great people, but the winner was probably a couple, one who was a Scouser from Liverpool who was dressed as Regan from the Exorcist, who spoke mostly in Spice Girls movie quotes, high kicks included.
Tomorrow, more exploring x