Matt and Ally's Adventures: Week 5: Manchester and Surrounds

Week 5 of our trip found us in Manchester, where we were excited at the prospect of seeing our first bit of snow! Our budget hotel was very close to Old Trafford, with the stadium in sight and about 15 minutes from the city center by tram. During our week we spent two days exploring the city of Manchester, indulging in a couple of top notch breakfasts and quality coffee. We visited Old Trafford Stadium and Museum, saw a football game and took day trips to both Liverpool and Chester. And woke up to enough snow for a snowball fight and a mini snowman :D

In contrast to the pale stone cathedrals we visited in London and Gloucester, Manchester Cathedral was made of a dark, pink-tinged stone. One of their bishops was Australian and as a tribute you could play a game of 'spot the kangaroo'. There were many windows that had been reconstructed in recent years, with brighter colours and more abstract patterns. Also a ridiculous 'modern Christianity' painting - you'll see what we mean below.

Wat.

Kangas (we won the game)!

Manchester reminded us of Melbourne, with its trams, busy shops and independent coffee shops. We walked through the gay village and Chinatown, and found the street of the wealthy with laughingly high priced items (e.g. £240 for a cotton hoodie... Dreamin').

In the center of the city, past the art gallery and Ferris wheel, a large building with a clock looked inviting. Turned out to be the council chambers, complete with restaurant, court room and many offices - luxury! Our tourist manner only let us get in so far, but the parts we saw were beautiful.

While in Manchester we walked passed a cafe made for Ally (but didn't dine unfortunately). We also visited the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry, which was pretty groovy. It had displays of the development of cotton production, including a complete factory-style setup, as well as the development of technology and energy through the industrial revolution. Just opposite this museum was an aeronautical museum - very interesting indeed. We got to see some similar gas turbines to the one in the engineering building of the University of Tasmania.

We also saw this little number on the way back to the city center after the museum:

On our second day, we excitedly woke up to the snow falling!

(Solid picture of the window..)

Old Trafford was our primary reason for coming to Manchester - and it didn't disappoint. The snowy/icy weather made it very difficult to walk with Matt's gripless shoes - quite humorous to watch!

After checking out the external features of Old Trafford we stopped for lunch at the red cafe. I got nice and close to my mate, Radamel Falcao (maybe giving him the edge he needed to later score against Leicester!)

After some grub we went on a tour of the "Theatre of Dreams" - a dream come true (terrible I know..)! The stadium was unbelievable. On the tour we got to see the stadium from peak spots, the Manchester United change rooms, the interview rooms, and walk through the players tunnel! We're so glad we took the opportunity to go. For those of you (like Ally) who don't know, the Old Trafford ground has underground heating to stop frost and allow games to be played in all conditions, and they use lamps like the ones shown to keep the grass growing in winter months.

Took LVG's seat ;)

There was still plenty of snow around after we had finished checking out the stadium, so we made Claude 2.0 - a miniature version that was created a couple of years ago in Mt. Field.

Matt helping to forge a snowman..

On the day of the game, we visited Media City which is located across the river from Old Trafford. There was some great architecture, and the sky was wonderfully clear,

Watching Manchester United play is undoubtedly going to be one of the biggest highlights of the trip. We couldn't help but get a souvenir jersey. #10WayneRooney for Ally and #7AngelDiMaria for Matt.

Despite being pretty much in the top corner next to the Stratford end, the seats were much better than we were expecting. We got to our seats nice and early to check out to ground.

Over 75 350 people!

Despite Leicester currently sitting on the bottom of the Barclay's Premier League, we did get to see new recruit Mark Schwarzer in action - a true Aussie legend despite no one locally knowing who he was...

LVG - the man.

#10 and #7 in action!

Post match we got to see FullTimeDevils conducting live interviews. These guys run a fans' Youtube channel detailing everything Man Utd - great to see them in the flesh!

Following the game we went to a pub for some dinner to enjoy Chelsea play Manchester City, a lot of fans that were at the game did the same thing. We were lucky to get some nice weather and MediaCity was great to see at night. Football galore!

Matt and I love going out for breakfast. We had restrained until now, helped by complimentary breakfasts at our hotel in London, and access to fridges in family homes. In Manchester a google search gave us a list of the top breakfasts in the city, some of which also featured on lists of the best coffees in Manchester too. We had pancakes stuffed with spiced sausage and bacon with eggs and maple syrup and a top eggs benny at Mouse Coffee, Ally's favourite coffee of the trip so far was at North Tea Power, a very hip cafe that did grilled-cheese sandwiches and french toast (stuffed with cheese and pancetta and homg!).

After watching the cracking Australian Open Final (Ally going for Djokovic and Matt going for Murray), we lucked out when we tried to get a very late breakfast on Sunday.. The two cafes we tried could only offer a 45 minute wait with no guarantee that brunch would still be served. When it reached lunchtime we gave up and found an delicious (but overpriced) coffee at a cafe filled with people on macbooks.. at 2pm we were desperate for food and lowered our standards (dreaming of french toast, bircher and bacon..) and filled up on some cheap and nasty grease. Then turned the corner and found a reasonably priced all-day breakfast cafe. Humph.

The next day we re-attempted Home Sweet Home, our first point of disappointment the day before. We stood outside at 5 minutes to opening, and man it was good. Nutella and toasted marshmallow milkshake started us off, with Ally's favourite style filter coffee that came with free refills until 12pm. Breakfast was waffles with blueberries, maple, bacon and scrambled eggs (what more could you want?!) and "Cali" eggs, with salmon salsa, hollandaise and chipotle sour cream on bagels. We left grinning with our bellies very happy indeed.

We really liked Liverpool where we spent most of the day wandering around the harbour, singing Beatles songs and checking out funky statues. The Museum had a great history of Liverpool with a focus on the trading of sugar, slaves and other commodities. There were also detailed displays about The Beatles (from Liverpool, of course), and the Merseyside Darby (football rivals Liverpool and Everton).

Liverpool Museum: Beatles, Football, Sugar, Slavery.

Liverpool Public Library

Another addition to Matt's engineering highlights...

Chester is a walled city, with another dark-stoned cathedral and the impressive 'rows' (balcony upper level shopping) and traditional black and white houses. We walked along the intact walls, (where Matt attempted to pick a combination lock!) and Ally practiced a bit of Barrecode ;) In Chester Ally's Great Aunt Hilary and Great Uncle Maldwyn met us for lunch and a look around the cathedral. It was great to get news from the family and spend some time with them again!