The City of Manchester

The city of Manchester is a strange place. Once inside the city center, it gives you a sense of being in London but after walking a few blocks, you realize that it's no where near large enough to compare to the country's capital. Everywhere you look, there's someone exhaling a particularly large amount of smoke or flicking some ash onto the street. And yet there is some endearing factors about it. For one, it doesn't completely shut at 5pm. In fact, M&S are actually open daily until 8 in the evening with the exception of Sundays. Pretty good coming from somewhere like Cardiff. I can live with that. Moreover, there's a much greater variety of shops and restaurants here to choose from. There's even a Korean restaurant just round the corner from where I'm staying. How good is that?! Of course, it's no Myung Ga in Hong Kong but hey, it'll do until I can get home. We went there for the stone pot rice a few days back and it definitely satisfied a craving. :)

Unfortunately, aside from the food, shopping, nightlife and mundane activities such as going to the movies, this city doesn't really have much to offer its visitors. Sure you get the occasional museums like the Imperial War Museum and the city typical Modern Art Gallery but that aside, there's not much to do here. Gaz came up to visit me for a few days and man, was I hard pressed to find stuff for him to do. We spent most of the time chilling out more than anything exciting. Our most adventurous trip was to the Trafford Center although, it is a very nice mall if I'm totally honest.

Nonetheless, if you don't drink, don't shop, there's really not much to Manchester. I think he spent more time in our apartment watching stand-up comics. :P Poor thing... I did try though. I really did.