as usual...i'm trying to blog things that are exactly one wk ago. i woke up at 0430, met up with edel and jf and we boarded the 0600 train to manchester via leeds and york. need to break up the trip with a few stops to get the cheapest deal. the direct train was almost 3 times the price of ours!
we reached manchester too early in the morning. the streets were empty so we went around taking some photos, while waiting for the visitor centre to open. manchester's chinatown is so small! i dun think we missed anything but it only has a park and 2 buildings?
took a few brochures and the city map before heading towards the city. there are many shopping malls but we din shop of cos! it's only a day's trip so no time to waste in shopping malls with shops that are mostly da4 tong2 xiao3 yi4. cant miss the art gallery..haha all towns haf at least a few galleries, so artistic here. well this manchester one, to me, is better than the newcastlegateshead one but think becos the latter is contemporary arts. too cheem for me.haha. the manchester art gallery houses hundreds of pictures! i like the life like paintings most, particularly the animals. i still remember, after one wk, the life like cheetah, galloping horses and dead lion. omg! they are so real...i thought they were photographs.how did the artists capture the expressions and movement on paper? almost impossible lor..3 levels in total but wow! too bad we cant take pics.
then the manchester wheel, cant compare to the famous london eye la...haha anyway i haven toured london, but from edelene, this one turns much faster than the london one...think it took abt 30 to 45 min there. this one look only 10min?
next is the urbis, very high tech building with all the laser on screens. we printed a free ID (sticker type). and well done, rehana said i look like 13! after that we walked to look for supposed attractions but those 2 are....ermm... nvm. they are the bridgewater hall and G-mex.
next the museum of science and industry. quite interesting...there are many grps of children or classes, seem like gg there for expeditions. an entire room with the timeline of inventions. then a room with all the hands-on gadgets. numerous...but there's one which test our reflexes and reaction time..but the queue is too long. very crowded with kids and parents or maybe teachers.
treking along the expressway to old trafford is next. haha carolyn was saying that it's too far from the city centre and impossible to walk but ya we did. finally saw manchester united! and a full 360 deg view of it! we reached the east tower where the shop is. but we wanted to go into the museum which is in the north tower. so it should be just on the right but it seems like there's construction works there, so we tried the left to the south tower, no way to cut thru the entire building at all! we went on to the west tower then a tower under construction! no north tower? we walked around the entire construction site, thru the carpark then we saw the north tower! arghhhhh...it's just beside the construction work we saw when we were at the east tower. we went in, skipping the stadium tour which was claimed good by fred when we went leeds the next day. that was another 2P plus more to get in! perhaps we should have gone in. lots of trophies and jerseys in the museum. ok now then i know that nike is with man U and adidas with newcastle. but well i dint follow these clubs closely wat.
was alr dark when we passed by the imperial war museum.it was alr closed by the time we reached there. we crossed the bridge and walked towards the lowry, another attraction. the architecture of the building is quite nice but it's just a big place with cinemas. we had our dinner at a foodcourt in the lowry sports mall. guess wat food court is that? yup the setting is exactly the same as in sg but the stalls are fast food stalls. BK, fish n chips, subway, some dunno wat fat jackets etc....sick of fast food. well BK was the cheapest so ya...here it's either BK or mac and mac is becos i got the coupons from erik. but well today 19 feb expire le. that's all for the day, boarded the metro back to the bus station, ready to head for leeds. and we met fred and frens on the same bus.
