Canadian Invasian - Episode 9

Happy (Belated) Thanksgiving!

So I was a bit worried that I wouldn't get to have a proper Thanksgiving what with being in the UK and all, but this year it turned out to be absolutely fantastic. Of course I missed having it at home, but this was a pretty good substitute because I was spending it with some of my favourite people!

Here's how it all began:

Ambz and Mick left London from Norwich and made their way to Manchester around the same time as me - 1pm - except I left from Rugby of course, but we both got there about the same time and as I walked up to them in the food court, I was so ridiculously excited to be seeing them because really, what are the odds that 3 people from all over Europe (well, 2 from England and 1 from Denmark) would be meeting in Manchester? Not to mention the fact that all of us are really good friends and we'd be staying at our best friend's sister's flat? Pretty awesome, I know.
Anyway, we arrived at Manchester Piccadilly around 4pm and looked around for Chris, Nancy's boyfriend. (Nancy is Cathy's older sister. She came here a few years ago on an exchange for university and found a boyfriend. She then came back to BC to finish school and has since moved to Manchester to live with her bf.) When we found him, we made our way to Salford, a town that's just outside of Manchester and is defined by the river that divides the two cities. They live in a really awesome flat that's so nice, I loved staying there! It's great too because you can just walk anywhere. We didn't use the bus or tram once, we'd just walk wherever and it was all good.

Since Chris had to go to work and Nan was still at work for a couple more hours, us 3 Canadians hung out at the place trying to get some energy back. Actually, I was pretty energized since my train was only 2 hours, but Mick and Ambz had a bit more of a journey since they had to take a train from Norwich to London (2-3 hours), followed by 2 tubes to the next train station and then another train to Manchester (3ish hours). As it turns out, Nancy and Chris have another roommate, Ed, whom we met while the two were out. Lol Ed had forgotten we would be there, so it was a bit awkward at first but really funny since he's a cool guy. Actually, the whole lot of their friends are really cool and we all seemed to get a long well. I guess that's what Thanksgiving does to you - besides putting you to sleep and giving you indigestion.

Finally Nan came home and after ridiculously excited hugs, we decided to go out and walk about the city, stopping first at an Italian place for dinner. I forget the name of the place, but it was really good. You really should try it sometime. Afterwards we walked over to an area called Deansgate. It's part of a street that has 6 or 7 bars lined up one next to another. It was great because they all have different atmospheres so we would just go from one to the other to see what they're like. We didn't go into all of them though since some of them charge a cover and we are too cheap to pay for something like that! The first one and probably my favourite was called "Baa Bar" LOL. I thought it was "Bar Bar" for a while and thought maybe it was owned by Japanese people who worked in the stationery industry because they couldn't translate things properly, but I was wrong. Too bad. But yea, Baa Bar was pretty awesome because they had about a million different kinds of shots and even though I'm not huge on shots, they were pretty fun because they just had funny names and funny combinations and tasted pretty good cause they're not really alcoholic. It was like being in one of those ice cream shops with a hundred flavours. I think I had one called "Dave" which I don't really get why it's called that but it was pretty good lol. Funny story, me and Ambz walk into the bar and we're like, "Geesh there's a lot of guys here" which is really surprising because most of the time there's more girls than there are guys in bars and clubs - at least it seems that way in Vancouver. Anyways, we start to get really confused and wonder what's the deal here, but when we ask Nan about this, she just replies with, "Yeah, it's a gay bar at night." Oh. Right. I knew that! Geeshkabob. This would really make sense too because guys would be staring at us not in the way that they would be wanting to talk to us, but more like "What the heck are you doing in here?" sort of thing lol.

All my guy friends were being checked out. Awkward for them, funny for Ambz and me!

After Baa Bar we went off to another bar, but I don't actually know the name of it either (people just take me to places and I go without bothering to ask what it's called, it's actually really bad because I'll never be able to go back there since I don't know anything about it!). All I know is that the name isn't nearly as cool as Baa Bar, therefore I didn't really care for it. It was fun though and we got our picture taken by some group called Galaxy Music. By the end of our time in the bar, we decided to go home and go to sleep. We had a big day ahead of us!

Pictured above (left to right): Ed, Amber, Mick, Nancy, Me.

Saturday was so much fun and if I had to do it over, I totally would! We started off kind of late in the day (12ish) and went out around the town. Ambz and Nan went shopping at Primark while Mick and I went to the Science and Technology Museum. I had just gone to Primark the other day anyway, and I wanted to see the museums and as much of Manchester as I could. It was a pretty interesting museum, actually all of the places we went to were quite interesting and just so beautiful to look at. We walked around the city for a couple hours and found ourselves in two libraries, one intentionally and the other unintentionally. On our way to the main library of Manchester (that's in the shape of a dome and is absolutely marvelous to look at) we went to the John Ryland University Library which was built a little over a hundred years ago (1890) but is in the style of a Gothic church so it was really fantastic to be in. It also holds some of the oldest remnants of the New Testament which I found kinda interesting. But man, you should have seen the study hall. It was absolutely brilliant. If I were a student living in Manchester, I would be sooo smart just cause I'd be going to that library every day to study.

Exterior shot of John Ryland Library (I didn't take this photo obviously, since I didn't get a chance to take many pics of buildings.)

The study area of the library. Exquisite isn't it?

The other library wasn't quite as cool. I mean it was great in architecture, but it's a fully functioning library, so there's not much there for you to look at except for the people and I don't think they appreciate being stared at.

Manchester Main Library

By mid-afternoon, we were all getting pretty hungry so Mick and I met up with the girls and we went for high tea! We were originally going to go to the Midland Hotel which is very very hoity toity but when they didn't seem to be giving us the time of day, we made our way to the Radisson just down the street and had an amazing tea experience! Both Mick and Nancy have never had high tea so it was exciting for me to introduce it to them. Only I would get excited over something like this lol. After a great experience, we've converted them into the great High Tea World and they want to do it all the time. Mick has told his girlfriend back in Canada that they need to go for tea when he gets back, and Nancy has decided that she needs to go for High Tea every month. ("Come to the dark side...we have cookies.")

It was a bit silly for us to be having high tea right before we were going to have turkey dinner, but it was also something that we really had to do! Besides, we didn't order the full thing, we only ordered it for two, which turned out to be more than filling for the four of us, so I can only wonder what it would have been like had we ordered it for four people. Fortunately we were able to walk it off on our way back to Nan's flat which happened to be in the drizzly rain again. But that's England for you.

Turkey dinner! YUM!!! Chris made most of the meal with Nan helping and it was deeeliiicious! Oishi desu indeed! It was actually the greatest thing ever cause Chris made everything, we're talking the real deal Thanksgiving dinner, and he's not even Canadian! There were even yorkshires! I say that with great excitement because I haven't had a yorkshire at all this whole time I've been here! Crazy right?

Just when I thought I wanted to go to bed or watch a movie, the whole gang of us decided that it would be a good idea to go out. Chris and Nan had invited 4 of their friends to come over to eat dinner with us, so it was quite the crowded bunch but they were all really cool and we all hit it off pretty well. One of them, Morgan, is also an exchange student from Boston so it was cool to hang out with her cause now there's talk of going travelling together since we all have the same ideas in terms of places we'd like to see. Anyway, we ended up going to a club called 42nd Street and it was tons of fun. It's funny though cause it's not a super fancy club and yet it's probably one of the most fun-filled. I guess just cause it's so lax, so you can just hang out with your friends and have a good time, which is exactly what we all did. I have now discovered a new type of cider too called Hummingbird. I was getting a bit tired of Strongbow cider so it was nice to have a change!

By the time the club closed at about 2am, we had all decided to go back to the flat and just hang out cause none of us were actually that tired, but hungry, yes. We went to one of the guy's flat who lived just in the next section of flats but first, I grabbed the turkey carcass from our dinner to snack on. There's pictures of me in the album, that's why I'm explaining this to you because I know you'd all be very confused as to why I enjoy taking pictures with the remains of cooked turkey. After about an hour though, I realized how tired I was and went to sleep. Like I've said before, those Brits have endurance! They stay up all night, it's craziness!

Sunday was a pretty chill day of course. We were all really tired since most of us had only gotten a few hours of sleep. Basically we just packed up our stuff, went walking for some breakfast/lunch at an Aussie pub called Walkabout (where we had the full English greasy breakfast) then walked Amber to the train station cause she had to leave earlier. Oh actually, before we walked her to the station and after we went to Walkabout, we also stopped at another pub called the Temple which happened to be at one time the public toilets. Haha YES, the public toilets! It was very small and just underground and well, it still sorta smelled like the public toilets. It was great though cause the atmosphere was fun and well, a pub's a pub! There was no Strongbow (nor any other type of cider) though so I had a white wine - not exactly something you want to drink after a greasy breakfast, but if I ordered a water I would have been hassled. Then again, ordering a white wine in the public toilets is kind of hassle-worthy as well so...

Finally, we went to rent a movie (Elf starring Will Ferrell) and watched it back at the flat while eating pizza. Can I just say, that Elf is probably one of the greatest movies ever. I've seen it a million times and it never gets old. Oh and plus I saw Brenda Crichlow my old acting coach in it, I forgot that she was in it.

Well, that's pretty much my whole trip in great detail! After the movie, Mick and I got a taxi to the train station and caught the same train since we were both headed in the London Euston direction. It was sad to say goodbye to everyone but also a door opener because now we've all got plans to see each other on other trips now. I really miss them though.

The good part is that Amber texted me the other day inviting me to go to Edinburgh for the weekend. She has family there so we can stay with them. We'll be heading up there on November 6th to 9th so it should be good! I'm so excited! I've really gotten into the swing of cheap travelling. Just yesterday actually, I was trying to book a flight to Sweden to see Yvette through Ryanair. It would have cost me a total of 36 quid too which is pretty amazing I must say. Anyway, I'm hoping to go see Yvette in late November or something like that, but I'll be letting you know!

Apologies for the long entry, but I know you secretly love it lol.

xoxo

Gossip Girl

lol just kidding!

H-Po