I had no clue what to expect of Manchester except for the descriptions that my friend Phil gave me while he was on his year in America. Industrial. And no I did not smoke any of the mentioned cigarettes, it was just that the city seems to be host to a smoking competition between those who lived there.
We got into Manchester pretty late, went out for a nice dinner with Tom (same Tom we met with in Edinburgh) and planned to make a day of things on Saturday. So with an early start on Saturday we first had to move out of Tom's house and into our first CouchSurfing experience! And an experience it was. Our host was a really nice guy originally from Sweden who had been in Manchester for a few months and was previously CouchSurfing around Asia. He was able to give us a good tour of the town before heading off to take care of his own business. We went to a Manchester CouchSurfing movie and debate night and watched a film about gang violence in Rio and got to meet a good number of other travelers) If you'd like more of that story please feel free to ask.
But for Manchester, other than the cigarette smoke, it was lovely (and for an industrial powerhouse it was not what I had imagined). The city has kept up with its UK counterparts in having a good amount of truly incredible architecture. Tall and tightly stacked buildings of the same light stone (I think it's white sandstone?) that is the preeminent building material across England. It has an incredible town hall that at the time was the backdrop to the Manchester Jazz Festival (which I got to watch a bit of).
And then there was the library. The John Rylands Library. One of the days of wandering around, I had heard great things about their library so I ventured off to have a look. It was in a building reminiscent of the cathedrals that are scattered around the country, but instead of religion it held Books! I was totally in heaven.
I made my way up to the third floor reading room up stairs lit by what one would assume would be candles because of the warm glow. The reading room was a large wooden hall with cabinets three floors high of old, well-worn books. To each side were rooms with the most perfect study tables-really deep with lots of room to spread out random papers. I honestly think I would have spent all of my study time there had it been an option, as well as any other time that I wanted to be in a cozy and quiet space.
I got to watch some music at the Jazz Festival, the Jeni Lamb Quintet before we made our way back to our place to sleep for the night before we left for Bristol.
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