The City of Manchester
Originally published Feb 7, 2016.
Today we explored the city of Manchester, the biggest UK city outside of London. Manchester has a long industrial history with ties as far back as the Roman settlements. If you’re interested in more on the history of the city, have a look here. The city is also home to many of Britain’s iconic bands, such as The Smiths, The Stone Roses, Oasis, 10cc, Joy Division and The Verve to name just a few. We caught the train from our local station to Manchester Piccadilly which took around 40 minutes. I still can’t believe how frequent and efficient public transport is in this country. We were lucky to even experience some much needed sun during the morning half of our trip today. Yet as usual, traditional British winter weather prevailed and by the afternoon a small storm front had moved in.
By chance we visited the city during the celebrations for Lunar New Year which meant that many parts of the city were decorated with lanterns. This beautiful clock tower is located at Albert Square and forms part of the City Council building.
Much like Sydney I suspect the feel of Manchester is very different on weekends, with a variety of people from all walks of life inhabiting the city centre over the course of Sunday.
This beautiful building is home to one of Manchester’s several libraries, it is located along Oxford Street and St. Peter’s Square.
More from Albert Square, where a few of the Lunar New Year festivities were taking place.
I was very surprised when we came across this painting, whilst visiting Manchester Art Gallery. Titled ‘La Mort d’Arthur‘ it was painted by James Archer and depicts the death of King Arthur. The surprise to come across the painting was because I actually had used it whilst researching a major history project on the figure of King Arthur, during my final year of high school. It was quite astonishing to have been able to see it in person, given that I’d never ever thought that would happen. All down to a complete lucky accident that I even managed to stumble upon it!
Of course we even indulged ourselves in some tourist delights, we couldn’t have left without a few postcards and a souvenir keyring! We even visited Primark which was kind of crazy, given that I don’t think I’ve ever been in a department store of that size! Well worth the effort though, you can pretty much find all that you need there.
My final thoughts on the city are as follows: To be honest whilst I was excited to visit the city, I wasn’t initially sure what to expect. The city has similar architecture to parts of London but seems to feel much less impersonal. Overall I will say that my initial impression of the city left me feeling a little underwhelmed, though this could be for two reasons. The first being that the day we visited was during the celebration of Lunar New Year, which meant the most of the city’s attention was focused on activities around that. The second reason I will put down to lack of planning, whilst we had a few ideas of what we wanted to see, we also didn’t have particular plans as to where and when we wanted to visit various locations on our list. One of the main reasons for the trip was to see somewhere in the UK that wasn’t London and to explore new surroundings. I would definitely be happy to return again to explore more specific parts of the city, and would recommend having a concise plan ahead of time to follow. I know that I would definitely need to see more of other areas of the city to truly get more from the experience. Ultimately though I had a lovely day and am starting to feel more at home in this beautiful country.
Kathleen Freeman is a graphic designer and freelance writer; she is currently undertaking a Media and Communications degree. In her spare time she continues the search to find the book/coffee shop combination store throughout the globe.
All images, unless otherwise stated, are copyright of Kathleen Freeman, and may not be reproduced without express written permission of the author.