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-
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!! :)
No comments:
Post a Comment