Off to Manchester!

Today we left London, hopefully having seen all the bits we should see. On the way out, we passed by Marble Arch and Madame Tussaud's (which had an amazingly long line).


Off to the train station, where we caught a train on the Virgin line. Yep, same Virgin as all the other things. But, more about Sir Branson's insanity later on in this post. We headed off for the 2 hour, 20 minute ride to Manchester, where we saw some amazing scenery:


Also, the train interior was quite nice. If you're ever travelling around England, I'd recommend Virgin for price and quality. Jerry napped a bit on the train, and I got some work done that kind of needed to get done last week.

We arrived in Manchester and took a cab over to our hotel, the Lowry. It's probably the nicest hotel in the city (which costs as much as mediocre hotels in London, and I guess that says something about the two cities). The view out our window is fantastic:


We wandered the city a bit and found the shopping district. There are about a half dozen enormous department stores in a very contained area. Not to mention a mall that takes up a big chunk of the city area, the Arndale. We actually walked under it, since it crossed a large road. The weather kept varying between beautiful sunlight and dreary rain, very British. Here we are between two department stores:


We then found an amazing modern museum, the Urbis. It only has room for a few exhibitions, but the biggest one right now is all about Manga. It was awesome. Not to mention the architecture, which this photo cannot do justice:


There was also an exhibit on urban gardens, which was chock full of actual plants, but of course.

After the museum we wandered back into the commercial parts of the city. We found a few more interesting tidbits in the city. Does this look like anything familiar?


I took a real doubletake. But, I'm guessing it's a different company.

Above I mentioned how Sir Richard Branson has a company for just about everything in this country. For example, we saw ads for Virgin Active, which is a gym chain. We rode in his trains. We would have taken Virgin Atlantic, but BA was more reasonably priced. Harvey Nichols (one of the big department store chains) offers Virgin Adventure vacations, such as a week for two at Necker Island in the Carribbean for a mere $25,000. Well, wandering around Manchester, we found one more Virgin enterprise. Jerry thinks it's somewhat inappropriate:


Sorry for the poor photo. Yep, that's Virgin Brides.

Have a good night! Kylie concert is tomorrow!