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-
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| Pretty flowers |
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| 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
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| Hotel Football looked quite fancy! |
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| 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 :)
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| Back to Little Clarendon Street, Oxford |
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