Barnard Castle allowed us to explore the English countryside. Now it was time to see what the metropolitan areas of the country had to offer. We shot over to Darlington on Mr. Toad's Wild Ride bus and then hopped a short train ride to our penultimate European destination - Manchester.

I had no expectations of the city when we arrived. It was just a halfway point from Barnard to London but I was pleasantly surprised at the vibe of the city. It's on the small side, you can basically walk across downtown in about 30 minutes, but it definitely had some sites on offer.
Like any smaller city, it has a bit of its own stand apart/aloof/outsider attitude. There are craft beer and coffee bars throughout the city and some quirky attractions. A drunk barista at one place recommended trying a different cafe that he felt made better coffee.

We were told that any town that has the word "Chester" in it used to be a Roman settlement or town. In Manchester, there are Roman ruins on the edge of downtown, under some railway tracks and between a few canals. The whole area around there is pretty neat. The canals that run through the city all collide there and bridges and walkways span the water at varying locations. Bars with outdoor seating and small green spaces dot the neighborhood as well.

Canals run all over the place in the city. Some are really old, like this one from 2001.

After being in several cities that lacked any semblance of good graffiti, we found some in various areas around Manchester. Particularly the Northern Quarter. This is the hipsterist area of the city with the most Indy coffee bars and a wicked fresh music scene. We didn't see any music but we did catch a spoken word poetry session which was actually pretty good. We had to leave early because the paint fumes in the newly redone, non-window having room were a bit overwhelming. But not before I had a tasty glass of plum Porter.

Town Hall is a very neat building, though we only saw the outside. It kind of looks like an old church but not in the shape of a cross. A Spanish festival sprung up in front of it while we were there. It was pretty lame though and the food was just meh.

"Welcome to Manchester" proclaims a gaudy pink sign. Town Hall is a cool building though.

A statue of someone in front of Town Hall.

The oldest library in the UK is located in Manchester. It's famous as a meeting place of Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx where they conceived parts of the Communist Manifesto. At first, we weren't allowed in because we had to wait for a tour to start but the security guard snuck us through. We basically had a free run of the place which, as you might have guessed, is filled with really old books.

This is the table where the two philosophers met and planned the downfall of civilization.

One of only a few people in the library.

The National Football Museum is right across the square from the library. We did not enter this place. We also did not catch a match because tickets were a ridiculous amount of money and we don't care about the Premiere League that much.

This is a museum. For football. That's what they call soccer every where else in the world.

This is the stadium where they play the aforementioned football.

The other big attraction we went to was the National War Museum in the MediaCity area. The architect of the building won some kind of really good building award. I thought it was just OK but I did get a killer picture of it.

The museum itself was also just OK. It focused on the effects of war on the individual from 1914 up to the present. There are many placards to read and tons of personal affects to gaze at but the overall presentation was very lo-fi, especially for a newer exhibition space.

Every hour, all of the lights are turned off and projectors illuminate much of the interior space with video and stills to tell stories of people in different conflicts. It was an interesting idea as a presentation but you must stop your museum browsing to watch it because literally all the lights are turned off. There was a Russian tank, a nuclear warhead missile casing, and a few giant sea mines in the exhibit which are nice articles of war to view up close.

I came away from our visit in Manchester thinking that it would be a nice town to spend more time in. The vibe of the city was good, it felt like things were going in the right direction, and the city was small enough that you could really get to know it in a short time. The city is definitely in transition. Construction zones were spread throughout the area, some for new rail lines and infrastructure, others for modern glass and steel skyscrapers. Taken all together, Manchester is a city on the rise. Alas, a short time was all we had and it was time to pack up and move on to our final overseas destination - the great city of London.

Let's make like a leaf and carry these bags onto a train and get to Londontown.