Manchester

Hi everyone!

My last week at work was really really busy. It was kind of unsatisfying because I had so much work and did not get any reward for it and therefore I was really looking forward to spending the weekend away with my sister who knows me very well!

So I was very happy to meet her on Friday and I really enjoyed the weekend with my sister.

We met in Manchester Picadilly which is like the main train station in Manchester and we spent the whole weekend in this beautiful city. 

I was really suprised because some people had told me before that Manchester would be rather rough and not too nice. Others, especially young people said that Manchester is really cool and that I should really experience the Nightlife. 

So me and my sister, we  were open to experience the city without any prejudices and in the end the city proved the opposite. 

We really had a great time in Manchester!!

We did not only visited the Christmas market (where we drank one mulled wine for 5 pounds:D, tried loads of cheese and bought Baklava), but also the urban and trendy area Northern Quarter, the John Ryland's Library, the Art Gallery, China Town, the city centre and many more sights. 

I would definitely recommend to visit the John Rylands Library which is part of the University of Manchester. The entrance is free and you can just discover the great Victorian artpiece, wander around, listen to the history of this magical place or just study or do research there.

The funny thing is that the Librar was founded by Enriqueta Ryland, John Ryland's wife, in memory of her husband. She wanted to guarantee everyone access to knowledge and therefore she donated the Library to all students in Manchester. It is the third largest academic library in the United Kingdom and it stores over 250,000 printed volumes, and many manuscripts and archival items.

You can wander around and spot books by Descartes, Hobbes, Shakespeare and many more!

But most of all I liked the area "Northern Quarter". It is an area with many nice restaurants, urban bars, cool thrift shops and nice discos and pubs!! We got some good recommendations for this area so we tried the brunch spot "The koffee Pot", the trendy bar "Whiskey Jar" and the thrift shop "Cow". Wow, I would really love to go shopping in this thrift shop again. They sold pieces from Calvin Klein, Adidas, Champion and many more. It was like a little shopping paradise inside.

We also went to "Wagamama" a restaurant with Asian cuisine.

On our last evening we went to the cinema to watch "Murder on the Orient Express", which is a great movie with Kenneth Branagh, Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, Judi Dench, Penélope Cruz. I can only recommend it, it was really worth watching it!

After another nice English breakfast (I had the normal one but my sister tried Vegetarian English breakfast and it was really tasty!!) we had to take the train/ plane back to Lincolnshire/ Cologne but we were both very happy and I decided that I want to visit Manchester again! And next time I will plan one whole day for visiting Liverpool, too. Although I know one day for Liverpool is not enough I really want to visit Liverpool because it is said that the atmosphere is kind of similar to Manchester but even nicer with it's pier.

I am really excited and keep you updated!

But next weekend I will visit Chatsworth (finally) and Yorkshire so that might be very great, too!!

Best wishes,

A.