Weekend in Manchester!

I gained a lot from my trip to Australia - confidence, life experience, a new perspective of the world, a thirst to visit new places and time spent with my aunt, uncle and cousins (and their adorable pets!). In addition to that, I made two friends who I am incredibly glad came into my life. The BUNAC group flight was a fantastic way of going about my trip, and I had a lot of fun with the entire group. In a situation like that, you are thrown together and bond quickly because of the intensity of the situation. You are travelling to the other side of the world, leaving your family, friends and comfort zone behind you, staying in hostels and getting to grips with new cities. It's easy to make friends because you need people while you are there, it's just too overwhelming to do it alone. My friendship with Gemma and Emily, however, wasn't like that - they quickly became real, proper, for-the-long-haul type friends. Sometimes you just meet people and know they were meant to come into your life, and I'm so very glad I met these girls.

Top Left - Hong Kong (2013), Bottom Left - Sydney (2013)
Right - Manchester (2014)

Okay, soppy nonsense over for now! Emily, Gemma and I have kept in touch by all the wonders of technology since I left Australia eighteen months ago - phone calls, texts, Skype, FaceTime and Facebook kept us connected, but we hadn't seen each other in person since we were together in Sydney. After months of saying "we have to catch up", now that all three of us were back home, a few weeks ago I booked a trip to Manchester and off I went for a long awaited catch up!

I got the train down on Saturday morning at the very early hour of 6am - this gave me pretty much two full days in Manchester. During the first few hours we completely lost track of time, spending a few hours just talking and catching up properly! We then headed to Media City, which I was so excited to see, and went for lunch in a cool, studenty place called The Dockyard. I ordered a burger and sweet potato fries, which were particularly good. I do love a sweet potato chip.

After lunch we took a wander over to the Imperial War Museum, which had a fascinating exhibition called From Street to Trench for us to explore. You weren't really supposed to take photos in the exhibition, but after that we headed up to the viewing platform where I got extremely snap happy! This sky high platform has an amazing view of Media City, and a slightly unnerving floor with mesh see-through areas to show just how high up you are! I've included a snap of Old Trafford here too - I'm not much of a football fan, but it would have been weird not to! Check out the Corrie set too!!

Then it was time to head home, chill out for a while and cover even more life topics with some snacks, before getting dressed up to head out for cocktails!

We went to three bars in total (the first of which I forget the name of!) but the others were called Apotheca and Hula. In Apotheca, Emily and I both opted for a delicious, strawberry milkshake-esque cocktail, which was amazing!! It was too dark to get any proper photos in Hula, but it was so cool - a beachy, Hawaii themed bar-come-club (there was a dancefloor of sorts, but it was more bar like in atmosphere!), with fruity cocktails that made you feel like you were on holiday, and an actual fish tank built into the wall!

Having finally got to bed some time after half past two, Sunday morning was a sleepy, chatty, tea drinking affair, sitting in our pyjamas as the hours disappeared, reminding me so much of the weeks we all woke up in a Sydney hostel together and planned what we were going to do with our day! The afternoon was planned in advance, and it involved cake - what could be better! We headed to a seriously cute little part of Manchester called Didsbury (forgive my total lack of knowledge of English geography, it might be much more famous than I'm giving it credit for!), which is full to the brim of cute little coffee shops and restaurants. Honestly, I could imagine myself living in Didsbury (not that I have any plans to move away any time soon!) - cute cul-de-sacs, tree filled parks, quirky cafes and vintage shops. Blogger paradise, basically.

We went to Art of Tea - it was what can only be described as the cutest coffee shop I've ever been in in my life! In addition to serving cake, milkshakes, an array of brunch items and an obligatory selection of teas and coffees, this place has a vintage book shop hidden at the back. I went for lemon cake and a strawberry milkshake. It was amazing.

colour co-ordinated shelves ♥

Next up was a walk in some of Didsbury's lovely parks, bursting with Autumn colours...

5pm came far too soon and it was time for me to jump on the train back home! I had the loveliest weekend, and really enjoyed Manchester - I'll definitely be heading down again at some point over the next year! Thank you Gemma and Emily, if you're reading this, for the best weekend! See you in Scotland in a few months!!!

Thanks for reading, hope you all had a great weekend!