Manchester Trip Summer '15 - Part 2

Can't believe how fast time flies! It's been two weeks since I wrote my last post. Really wanted to write part-2 of Manchester trip last weekend but my Saturday wasn't productive at all, and then I had to fly to Vancouver on Sunday for a conference, and it's been hell of a week. However, this was my first time in Canada and I was amazed by how beautiful the city is! I didn't have much time to go for sightseeing, was busy and tired, and out of 3 days of my stay there it was raining two days. But still the harbor view was magnificent and definitely deserves a post on that. But I'll continue with our journey in Manchester for today.

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In the previous post, we left for lunch after visiting John Rylands Library. After grabbing a quick lunch at the Starbucks nearby, I headed for Manchester Museum of Science and Industry. And saw these building on my way. Another example of how old structures nicely blend with the new ones in this city.

MoSI is a great place for family visit with kids as it offers hands-on learning experience as well. There are 5 buildings - Great Western Warehouse, Power Hall, Air and Space Hall, 1830 Warehouse and Station Building. Mainly because it's such a huge facility, I found the entrance to be little confusing. So, I started with the Air and Space Hall first, which is standing on the other side of the road, separate from the main exhibition area. The gallery was interesting with many historical vehicles on display. But I visited Jaxa's Tsukuba Space Centre before, and that was much more interesting. I personally thought they could do a little better with the display and decoration to make the space look more exciting. Here are some pictures of the museum entrance-

Pretty flowers

Museum entrance

Then I moved to the main exhibition building where they have the power hall, textile gallery etc. Manchester being an industrial town holds a lot of history about the industrial revolution in the city. It was great to know about those historical events. But I was a little tired carrying my heavy bag pack around the museum, so was losing my energy to concentrate. And here's one important information - unlike many other museums, the lockers are non-refundable at MoSI. I made a mistake there, I wasn't aware of that fact and put my only 2 pound coin inside and reopened just to check something, and it was gone :-( I was so disappointed (both at my stupidity and the locker system) that I ended up carrying everything inside museum (wasn't the greatest idea for sure..). 

Anyway, here are couple more pictures from the power hall and an interesting fact I learnt. In 1948, Manchester won the race to invent world's first modern computer! Quite fascinating, right? Didn't know about that!

After exploring all the floors in that building I left MoSI and headed for Old Trafford as it was already getting late. It was a bit of a walk and I took bus to go there. Again, when I reached there I had no clue where exactly to go to visit the main stadium. So, I was walking around taking photos at the entrance, browsed the shop and finally asked someone whether this is all or there's supposed to be more?! And she pointed me to the right direction :D

Hotel Football looked quite fancy!

Manchester United Stadium

Now, the interesting part begins here. As I was quickly walking towards the stadium getting all excited about my successful trip of visiting everything on my list, when I reached the counter they said the last trip just sold out and there's no more trip on that day. It was around 4:30 then. There were other people who were disappointed like me and walking back. I started too, then I decided to check out the museum at least since I came all the way here and had 30 more minutes. So, I went inside and while I was vacillating whether to buy the ticket or not, I saw two other guys got special permission upon request to visit the stadium. I also didn't wanna blow up the chance, and luckily got special permission too (Yay!!). In 30 minutes I got a short tour of the stadium and also explored the museum. Though I'm not a huge fan of soccer myself, it was exciting just to be there. Also, another sweet part was, the lady who showed us around was Japanese. So, it was nice to be able to have some conversation with her about herself and Japan. As usual, she was a very sweet person like most Japanese are, and it was a nice ending of the day :)

After leaving Old Trafford I happily headed back to Oxford. The journey could have a happy ending here but here comes the bitter part. As I was traveling back to the O town, I was dead tired and when totally forgot all the souvenirs in the overhead counter (T.T)... I really loved all the gifts, picked up exclusively for my close friends from John Ryland's Library gift shop. So, I got all sad and cranky, contacted the lost and found office couple of times but they never found it :( Hence, the trip was a bitter-sweet experience. But yeah, I enjoy traveling by myself and it was another great learning experience and got to meet random nice people :)

Back to Little Clarendon Street, Oxford

Manchester Trip Summer '15 - Part 1

It's been more than two months since I came back from UK, and I meant to write posts on my Manchester and Bath trip soon after but never made it. Not unusual to happen once the semester starts. But as I was going through the lovely pictures from my trip today, I thought this is the right time that I write about it.

My trip to Manchester was "interesting", it was both sweet and sour. But of course I'll mostly include the sweet part here because there's more of it. I traveled from Oxford on Saturday morning, stayed the night, traveled all around the city on Sunday and came back on evening. It takes around 3 hours from Oxford to Manchester, which isn't too bad from one-day travel. But I was really exhausted by the time I got back on Sunday and there's more to the story. I'll tell about it later.

When I arrived at the station it started to rain like crazy, and my clothes, bag, books - everything got soaked. Also, it was already afternoon, little late to visit places, so I ended up staying at home the rest of the day, was mostly playing with my cousin's kids which was fun, and made list of the places I wanted to visit. I was praying so that it doesn't rain like this on Sunday as well cause I really wanted to see the town. Luckily it didn't, so I went out pretty early on Sunday morning. I couldn't sleep the whole night, felt tired but fresh morning air helped. Here's the list of the places I visited-

• The Manchester Museum
• The John Rylands Library
• Museum of Science and Industry
• Old Trafford

     and all the beautiful beautiful buildings and structures while randomly walking around the city, like the Manchester City Council building and the Midland Hotel below. And I must mention here that Manchester is not a scenic town and doesn't have a lot of green but being an industrial town, it's architecturally stunning! There are both gorgeous old and modern structures everywhere. Even though I love nature, being a student of architecture in the past I always appreciate beauty in man-made structure as well. So, my eyes never got tired of looking around the city while I was walking for hours from places to places.

The Midland Hotel

Manchester City Council

I also randomly found a little Oxford road there! And that cute little beer garden, looked like a scene from '70s movie! Also loved the colorful and cool zombie graffiti.

Oxford Street in Manchester!

Zombie graffiti

So, back to the main places I visited. I've so many pictures and so many memories from this trip that I can pretty much write a post on each of those places. But based on my previous experience I don't think my time will allow me to do that. Also, there's always new things happening. Anyway, long story short, I'll try to include as much as possible here while keeping this post short.

Starting with Manchester Museum adjacent to the University of Manchester, it has a gorgeous neo-Gothic structure and it's more spacious than it looks from outside. It's basically a museum of anthropology, archeology and natural history. When I visited there was a special exhibition on Rapa Nui (Easter Island), a Chilean island in the Southeast Pacific Ocean, which I found to be very informative. I also liked their coin/ money collection from different periods. And the Shabtis (small figures of adult male of female form inscribed with a special formula) collection and jewelry collection from Egypt were very colorful and pretty. Overall, it's nice museum, especially a great place to visit with kids and family.

University of Manchester

The Manchester Museum

Shabtis Collection

My next stop was John Rylands library. I saw some lovely buildings on my way from the museum including the city council building and the hotel that I posted earlier in this post. Here are couple more, don't know the names of those buildings though.

Some palace!

I believe that was a university building, don't know the function

John Rylands library was probably the most favorite of all the places I visited. It's a special collection library with neo-Gothic structure, which is absolutely stunning. I personally think the interior structure is more gorgeous than the exterior. The library has a gift shop and a fancy cafe at the bottom floor, then special exhibition room and the main reading room. I really liked the gift shop, it has many unique stuff such as magnet scrabble for refrigerator, personal library kit etc. I visited the Darkness and Light: Exploring the Gothic exhibition, which totally goes with the gothic feeling and lighting of the building. The exhibition is still on-going, will run till December 20th.
To be honest, the washroom in the library was very unique and pretty creepy. I thought it's a perfect setting for any horror movie! Being a horror fan, I totally enjoyed it but I don't think anyone can stay in that washroom for too long! Last but not the least, the main reading room - a total stunner! It's so beautiful that I thought I can keep looking at it all day long! They even kept a mirror there so that constantly looking at the roof doesn't cause neck/ shoulder ache :p And the pictures-

The exterior

The main reading room

Gorgeous stained glass in the reading room

THIS! So damn beautiful! 

Unique window design

Lovely gothic structure

Loved how they connected the old building with the new one, awesome!

The posh brand shop next to the library, interestingly they don't look awkward!

After visiting the library I took a lunch break before heading to MOSI. And this post is getting too long, so I think I should take a break here too and write about the rest of the trip in part-2. I really hope that'll happen soon!! :)

De-stressing by Painting

Fall's here!

It's been a while that I painted, was dying to paint but barely had any time or scope. Though I've a lot to do this weekend as well, I decided to spare some time for myself to paint. This is the best de-stressing method for me. Since it's already fall, my most favorite season, so it had to be fall themed. The trees have started to change colors here and the temperature dropped very quickly. Pretty soon it's gonna be colorful and lovely like this on campus and I can't wait to read outside and take photos on those days! :D