Weekend Away To Manchester

[stevethedog 0]

The girlfriend wrote this one up for Bebo and I go along with her sentiments other than that James were even better! Well i'm just back from Manchester, where I had a great time with Chris!Our hotel was right opposite Canal St, which is like the center of the gay district! We walked up it a couple of times, i even saw a tranny. It was a very exciting moment in an otherwise vanilla life.On Saturday we explored the city; the Northern Qtr which had loads of funny little shops (like Cockburn St and the Bridges) and record shops that didn't sell anything popular. Then we wandered round the main shopping areas, spent about 30 secs in Primark before leaving cos it's gross and going into Tesco (seeing the tartan of Clan Tesco made my day) where we bought some irn bru.We sat and watched snooker on a massive outdoor telly outside Selfridges near an amazing water feature made out of stepping stones, and got lost and wandered into Salford. We walked past the mental Hilton hotel, and marvelled at the crazy english people; THEY SMOKE INSIDE LIKE SAVAGES!!I had my first experience with Indian food that night and suffice to say, I don't like it! Had a keema samosa to start- I didnt know what keema was and wanted to find out. Well, ignorance is bliss! It was horrible and spicy. I had a lamb dhakan or something for main, and the menu said it wasn't spicy. Well, the little bastard lied to me! OWWWW! And to top it off the naan Chris ordered had spicy in it too! He felt bad for me and said i could finish the wine, but from the look on my face i think he knew- the wine was disgusting too! We both for some reason found this hilarious, but i dont think the waiters did.At night we went to the MEN arena which was fuuuulll of people. We drank cider out of plastic pint glasses and bought long sleeve tshirts to commemorate the event. We wandered into the Arena about halfway through The Twang's set. Chris thinks they're distinctly average but i like them.James were, however, fantastic! A marching band with flags piped them in to their hit song "Come Home" and it was really emotional. There were millions of people there! I kept getting annoyed cos folk in front and beside us kept getting up to walk about. WTF you pay so much money to go to a gig, then wander off?! My favourite was when they played "Laid"On Sunday we were going to get up early and go to Old Trafford and tour the stadium, then go to the Trafford Center and do some shopping. However we slept in cos we were knackered, so instead we walked up to China Town which was an adventure in itself. The Chinese supermarket was crazy, live crabs and lychee flavour pudding. The maddest part though was a family with little Chinese kids- with broad Mancunian accents! So cuteWe got some random cakes from a Chinese bakery, i had a sweet melon cake which was really sickly, and Chris had a spring onion fritter which was nice, and oddly, a bit sweet. We also had a red bean cake but i was drunk when i ate that and thought it was lovely- certain people might remember an incident last summer involving a spring roll supper with salt n sauce after a night at Mood- so who knows what it was actually like!We headed to the Trafford Center, but by the time we got there the shops were almost closing. They have an amazing food court though, where it's decorated like different regions of the world (New Orleans, Italy, China..) and then hit the arcade. I let Chris win at air hockey then he wanted to go on the Dodgems but no one else was playing and i had a heavy bag with me. We stayed at the center til about half 8 drinking cocktails, then headed back into town and had a lovely, very reasonable, meal at an italian restaurant just round from our flat.We stumbled back to our flat, feeling very full, and fell asleep after watching a wee bit Graham Norton. This morning we got our bags packed and wandered around the town. Chris bought more stuff from the Chinese bakery but i was low on dosh so didnt bother, then we had a beer at a Bar 38. Hopped onto the train and annoyed the wee old ticket man cos he couldnt believe we got tickets from Manc to Edin for ?1.25 each.Our journey home was subdued, we read some Dave Gorman and looked at the sheepies. I was so excited to see my car when we got back to Dalry!I have some photos up just now so you can see what we got up to. I'm currently waiting for Chris to upload his (cos he's got loaaads!)xxx