Adventures in Manchester

Howdy.

I've been absent over the past few days, you may or may not have noticed. I've been enjoying a child-free weekend away in Manchester, mainly because we got a bargain deal in the Hilton January sale but also because you know, I feel it's important for grandparents to bond with their grandchildren *cough*.

Yes, on Friday we headed up the M6 and hit gridlock as usual and arrived in Manchester at teatime. We stayed at the Hilton Manchester which is you didn't know is situated in the rather large Beetham Tower on Deansgate.

It's a pretty impressive building, it's incredibly tall and from a distance you almost wonder how it stands up as it looks top heavy. The first 23 floors are occupied by the Hilton and above that are apartments and a swanky penthouse which is owned by the Architect for the building, Ian Simpson. Level 23 has a bar called "Cloud" which has a bit of a glass floor. There is a dedicated lift for Cloud and you have to queue in the foyer of the hotel as they can only let 200 people in at a time due to Fire Regulations, although hotel residents get priority. We decided not to queue and figured all we were missing out on were overpriced cocktails, besides which, we had a room on the 12th floor and felt that we had a pretty good view from there.

We mainly spent the weekend mooching, shopping and eating. Specific highlights of our trip included;

• A man peeing up the wall outside Pizza Express in Piccadilly Gardens - standing downwind and managing to pee all over himself in the process.
• A very smartly dressed and posh sounding man with a very tall & skinny one-armed transvestite on his arm in Canal Street.
• A walk past "The Fantasy Bar" which looked a little bit more like the Tower of Terror from Disneyworld rather than the place of fantasies (see picture below).
• An astounding fight between a group of perma-tanned peroxide lumpy women and some rough skin-headed men.
  
• Turning over the "Do Not Disturb" sign to "Please Make Up My Room" this morning when leaving the hotel, on the door of a woman who had disturbed us with her foghorn mouth the day before.

We spent many an hour wandering about the Arndale Centre and came out laden with Toy Story 3 merchandise for the kids and a gorgeous pair of red patent MJ's from New Look for me (£20!) and also stopped in M&S to buy some accessories for my new bathroom. Outside M&S there is a red post box which is pretty insignificant in itself, but closer inspection shows a brass plaque stating that this post box remained pretty much undamaged after the bomb that decimated the area in 1996. It was removed whilst the redevelopment works took place and then put back in it's spot. Amazing!

At the time of the bombing - photo from BBC Archive

Whilst out shopping I stopped to buy some cards for my daughters teachers as it's her last week in the school nursery. Now I think a lot of cards are pretty pointless but this one? This one took the biscuit.

and I had to stop and take a (bad) photo of the window display at All Saints - floor to ceiling, wall to wall vintage Singer sewing machines!

All in all a good weekend was had. On the whole I like Manchester - good shops and nice restaurants, what's not to like? Slightly more oddballs, vagrants, gangster-wannabees , hen parties and badly dressed women than I'm used to but it all makes for an entertaining evening!

Have you been to Manchester? What did you think? More interestingly, are you FROM Manchester?

love & kisses

Mrs M x