The entire time I was traveling and told people about where I was headed, Manchester and Edinburgh received the most praise, so my last two stops were wrapped in high expectation.
I arrived in Manchester on a humid, cloudless day. Something, I am told, is very rare. Apart from the social draw, Manchester tugged my interests in a few different directions. First, it is the birth place of the Industrial Revolution, and since that is a major part of our curriculum I figured it would be a great place to spend a few days. It is also the home of Manchester United, my favorite football club.
As soon as I had checked into the hostel I was off for Old Trafford. To tour the stadium costs about 18 pounds but, jokes on them, I would have paid 100. The tours are so popular that even though I arrived at 1.30 pm I could not get a tour until 3.10 so, with time to kill, I went to the team store and explored the Manchester United museum (they have an entire room dedicated to my favorite player, Ryan Giggs).
The tour took me all around the stadium, into the changing rooms and press rooms, and I even got to walk out of the tunnel. Our guide was born and bred in Manchester and shared historical facts about the stadium, such as famous matches that had been played there, stories of players who had become legends, and even explained how most of the stadium was destroyed by German bombs during WWII. All in all, my stay in Manchester was off to a great start.
The following day I started working on my list of museums, with stops at The People's History Museum (which houses the desk where Thomas Paine wrote "The Rights of Man"), John Rylands Library, and The Museum of Science and Industry. Luckily, all the museums are free. I got a domestic look at the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution and even stood at the foot of some of the oldest factories in the world (which have now been turned into hotels, mostly). John Rylands Library, which is located in a neo-Gothic building, has one of the largest special collections in Britain, including one of only forty-nine original Gutenberg Bibles in the world.
You would think I was tired of museums after this but, no. The next day I toured the National Football Museum, which put a heavy emphasis on the 1966 English team that won the World Cup (but made no mention of the recent 2-1 defeat to Iceland). I also stopped by Chetham Library, which contains the room in which Karl Marx and Friedrich Engles began writing "The Communist Manifesto" in the 1840s.
The fortunes of the city began to fade after the explosion of the Industrial Revolution, but thanks to a resurgence in the mid-20th century it's the second most popular city in England. My hostel, which was also in an old factory building, was in the northern quarter. Bars and restaurants were plentiful and fortunately my hostel organizes pub crawls every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. I went all three nights.
The pub crawl really epitomized my favorite part of traveling. The travelers. Engaging with open minded people from different places all over the world cannot be mimicked in any domestic situation. Our group was large, and included people from Argentina, Australia, Italy, France, Germany, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, India, Turkey, Sweden, and Venezuela.
No doubt about it, Manchester lived up to the hype.
Old Trafford
Manchester Town Hall
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