Despite being in England for almost exactly 7 years now, I’d never truly explored a lot of the big cities outside of London. So when we had friends who were performing a play in Manchester, it seemed like a great opportunity to explore a new place as well. (Especially because Manchester really isn’t that far away from York.)
It was quite a short train ride, and it ended up being on one of the hottest days of the summer. Everyone was lounging around the city, sitting wherever they could find space and having a few drinks. (Or a lot of drinks – we took the last train out of Manchester that night back to York and there was some truly impressive drunken behavior).
Sam and I popped into the Arndale Center for a bit of window shopping. It is the UK’s largest city-centre located shopping centre (aka mall). Malls are fairly unusual (though increasingly being built) in the UK that being in one still feels like a treat. It’s not at all like when I was a teenager and my friends and I would literally spend days just hanging out at the mall and wandering aimlessly from store to store; with the usual pitstops being Charlotte Russe and Claire’s before eating our body weights at the food court. (Panda Express, Sbarro, Dairy Queen).
Sam can barely comprehend just hanging out at a shopping centre for fun, but hey – I guess there wasn’t a lot to do growing up in New Mexico. In fact, Sam got to try his first ever meal at Taco Bell to help me truly relive all my American high school memories.
Anyway, back to Manchester – after wandering around the Arndale Centre we ambled through The Printworks and the Corn Exchange (dodging all the Saturday stag dos). We finished off our evening in Manchester having a picnic dinner in the Square alongside hundreds of other people who were having the same idea, before heading over to the theatre.
We noticed so many cute brunch places in Manchester that I’m really excited to go back and try one day.
Have you ever been to Manchester? What are your favourite things to do there?
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