The next stop on our recent sight-seeing blitz of England was a day in Manchester with our friend Anthony from Pitt. Anthony works for a company in Pittsburgh setting up really complicated testing devices, and gets to do a bit of international traveling for his job. When we found out he was working near Manchester, we thought it would be a great chance to get another English city under our belt. Like most northern English cities, Manchester has gone through some rough times in the last 30 years, but (so a few websites claimed) really woke up when an IRA bomb went off there in the early 90’s and got moving with an urban regeneration scheme. Today there are tons of new buildings and commercial districts in the city centre, and the city commissioned a number of sweet pedestrian bridges to really help the tourism industry out (or at least bridge tourists like me).
We took the train to Manchester Piccadilly station, which was a fun experience in itself. High-speed Virgin Pendolino trains just recently began running on the British rail network, and they are pretty slick. They have about 125mph top speed, and to avoid slowing down on the turns that were designed for 1870's trains, they actually lean into the turn. The whole train rotates imperceptibly, but sometimes you will look out the window and only see sky or only see grass. It's a very advanced system, and it cuts journey times down a lot. It only took 1.5 hours from Birmingham to Manchester.
After meeting Anthony in town, we headed to the Manchester United Stadium, where a game was playing that day. We were early for the game crowds, so we went into the stadium museum to see all of the (hundreds) of trophies won over the years. Then it was off to a newly developed part of the city, near the Imperial War Museum for lunch and a tour of the museum. We finished the day walking around the arts and cultural district to the north, and getting dinner down in the recently-converted canal district. At 9 we said goodbye to Anthony and hopped the train back home. We were exhausted, but for a one-day trip, we did a pretty good job taking in the sights and sounds of the city. We would definitely recommend it for any future visitors to England. You can check out some of our pictures from the trip here.
1 comment:
I have to tell you one of the guys I work with is obsessed with Manchester United and he much appreciated your pictures of the stadium and the trophies. He even asked me to email him the pics!! Glad to see you are enjoying your time over there and taking advantage of all the day trip opportunities! Thanks for keeping us up to date with the blog :-)
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