Michael's World Tour of England #1: Week 3
Michael's third week here began with him full of a cold and ended with me being full of a cold after he'd so lovingly decided to share his germs. Despite us both feeling rather crappy and under the weather, we still managed to get out quite a bit.
Blackpool
We'd decided last week that as it was supposed to be nice weather-wise that we would go to Blackpool on Monday. Michael was full of a cold but he was still up for it. We made butties* to take with us and I had the brainwave of taking some boiling water in a thermal mug so that Michael could have a Lemsip later on! I'm so clever. We got to Blackpool about half past 11, parked up and went immediately to the Doctor Who Museum. However, when we got there, we found that it was very definitely shut. I wasn't sure what to think because the website said that it was open every day of the year but it was about this time last year when it had shut for refurbishing. One of the stalls a few doors down was open so I asked the blokes on it if they knew anything about it, and they said that it was only open at weekends during the off-season. I was really annoyed, why didn't it say that on their website? We'd paid nearly £4 for parking too so I thought we might as well have a look round Blackpool while we were there.
We walked up to North Pier and spent quite a bit of time there taking photos, and then playing on the arcade machines. They used to have lots of machines that were 2p to play but they're mostly all 10p now which is a shame. A pound doesn't go at all far that way. After half an hour, we'd lost all our money so we walked into the town centre where I remembered is the Who shop. We spent quite a bit of time in there. Michael had been asked to get a present for his cousin's boyfriend so that took some deliberating over and I ended up getting a couple of magazines that I'd missed.
After we'd eaten our butties, we went off to find a rock shop so that Michael could get some rock for his kids. Thankfully they all have fairly common names so they were easy to find. They didn't have my name at all, but that's okay because I don't like rock at all. We wandered round some more and managed to not spend any more money though we did take lots more photos. We'd finally seen as much as we wanted to about half past 3 so that wasn't too bad. It would have been much nicer if the museum had actually been open though.
Sick day
We were up late on Tuesday, we must have been worn out by all the walking we did the day before and all the sea air too. Michael was feeling rather crappy and all bunged up so we decided to stay in and have a nice quiet day. Michael spent the day doing puzzles, first on my DS and then in a puzzle book while I did some work and had fun playing around with The GIMP to make buttons for the Trans website my organisation has. Then we had a nice relaxing evening watching stuff on DVD and hoped that Michael would be feeling much better.
Jewish and Gay
Michael was feeling better by Wednesday so he was feeling up to going out again. I wanted to use Orange Wednesday's 2-for-1 offer to go and see Milk but the only place it was on was the Printworks Odeon. I suggested going to the Jewish Museum first and then see the film afterwards. We set off for Horwich Parkway train station in very thick fog! Michael was quite surprised by how thick it was and said that they don't get fog like that in Boston. Luckily it didn't last very long and there was no sign of it in Manchester because we had to walk from Victoria train station all the way up to the Jewish Museum. It took us nearly half an hour to walk up there, and that would not have been fun in thick fog!
When we got to the museum, I remembered that I'd been to it before when I was at school. I'd not been since so it was nice to go back. There was a school party in and they were quite noisy and boisterous so that was a bit annoying. We had a look at a little art exhibit that was in a room at the back which didn't actually have anything much to do with the museum other than the artist was Jewish. We managed to look round the schul a bit while all the kids were upstairs looking at the exhibit up there. We were able to look in the ark which had a glass front so you could see all the Torahs in there; it's not normally open like that so it's not something that you'd generally get to see and even though the Torahs in there were all pasul (invalid), it still felt a bit sacrilegious. When the kids came back down, we went up into the ladies gallery to look at the exhibits up there which were more about Jews in Manchester specifically. We had a look at those while listening to the kids being told how brilliant Shabbat was because you didn't have to do any homework and you just had to play with your friends all day. I don't think they were convinced, probably being told that they couldn't use any electronics put them off.
We finished looking round and had a quick look in the shop before we left. It was about 1.40 so we walked back to the Printworks. We got there just at 2 so we were too late for the 2 o'clock showing which was a bit annoying. We had to get tickets for the 5 o'clock showing instead. We had a bit of a wander round and then got subs as Quiznos is right in the Printworks too. That pleased Michael; even though it's an American company, he'd never had their subs but he'd heard that they were tasty and they were! We went back to the Printworks in time for the 5pm showing of Milk. The auditorium was practically empty! I suppose many people don't go into Manchester on a Wednesday evening to watch films. It was a really good film. I was surprised with how good Sean Penn was, he's not an actor I rated very highly prior to this. I didn't know a great deal about Harvey Milk beforehand so I learnt quite a bit from the film. It was really powerful and very moving. The amazing thing was how the actors looked so close to the people they were portraying; in some cases, the similarity was uncanny.
I'd expected that the film would finish in time for us to catch the 7.28 train but it was 7.30 by the time we got out. And then the Adventure began. The next train left from Piccadilly at 7.46 so we rushed up there on the Metrolink but we were really cutting it fine. It didn't help that we had to go up to Platform 14 which is sat way off to one side from the other platforms and despite pelting it up there, by the time we got to the platform, the train doors just started to close and we weren't allowed on. I was so annoyed. I was even more annoyed to find out that the next train was not for an hour. Michael decided to jot down our Adventures in Train Catching while we waited. Thankfully we managed to get the next train with no problems but it was well late by the time we got in.
Thursday Things
Michael was feeling a lot better by Thursday, but then I woke up with a dry throat which did not bode well. We did our usual Thursday Things today, starting off with going shopping in the morning. That didn't take too long because we didn't need that much as we had quite a few things to be going on with. Michael wrote out some more postcards once we got back and we posted them on the way to the library later on. We both settled down with computers and I was working my way through all my new e-mails when my internet connection just died. I informed the librarian who logged me off the computer I was on and onto a different one instead. Somehow I ended up with a whole hour again! Michael was not impressed but I was. One thing I'd been desperately wanting to do was book train tickets for my appointment at Charing Cross on February 26th and I was worried that they were going to cost me a fortune. Well, it wasn't far off. They ended up costing £50 in total rather than the usual £30-odd so I was not impressed. If I'd been able to buy them earlier, they wouldn't have cost that much but without internet access, there wasn't anything I could do. At least I had tickets now and could stop worrying about it!
Going Underground
I woke up on Friday with a bad cough and a bit of a runny nose so it looked like Michael had well and truly passed his cold on to me. I felt a bit crappy and on top of that it was pissing it down*, but we weren't going to let that keep us in! We tried to find an indoor thing to do and settled on the Stockport Air Raid Shelters; they didn't open till 1pm either so that gave us chance to get down to Stockport too. The only problem with driving down to Stockport is that I didn't want to drive right through Manchester because it's bloody awful, so I went round the outside instead. I was doing okay, even with the less-than-brilliant map I had, until we found ourselves in Middleton! Finally we got to Stockport and then had trouble finding the Air Raid Shelters because the leaflet didn't have very good directions as to where they were. In desperation, I parked in a convenient multi-storey car park and then found the shelters were right opposite it! How handy.
Basically, the air raid shelters are a network of tunnels that were hewn out of the sandstone underneath the town to provide shelter for the townspeople during the Second World War. I was a little apprehensive about going into them because I didn't know how claustrophobic it would be but it wasn't too bad in that respect. The main issue I had was the air was pretty dusty and didn't do my chest any good, especially with being asthmatic and having a fresh bad cough to boot. They didn't seem to be that far underground, there was no long flight of steps or a lift but it was certainly quite a maze and there was no map or anything! It was also deathly silent. There didn't seem to be anyone else there and it was rather creepy. I expected there to be ghosts and unexplained things happening; even if it was supposed to be a place of protection, it doesn't stop people dying there. We got a huge shock at one point when a door suddenly opened and a woman appeared with a brush. She got a shock seeing us there too because she wasn't aware there was anyone down there! It was quite an interesting place and some of it was down right weird, like the nurses station complete with radio (can you get Radio 4 underground?) and a kitchen with tea urn and large stone sink. I think the 16 seater toilets have got to the one of the strangest things though. I don't think the presentation or anything really does it justice, there was not a lot of explanation about any of the sites down there or much information. I think it's well worth seeing though and I think Michael found it interesting, because obviously the way the Second World War affected the UK is vastly different to how it affected the US.
Blackpool 2.0
Saturday had already been designated Doctor Who Museum day and a cold was not going to stop me from seeing it! I drove us back up to Blackpool and we eagerly hurried off to the museum. Thankfully it was open this time! We had a look round the shop first and then got our tickets. Annoyingly, they've gone up in the past year so they're now £7 each rather than £5. It was absolutely huge though, I was amazed with the size of it and the amount of stuff they had on display. It has a tiny little front and shop, but then behind that is over 5500 square foot of museum. It really is bigger on the inside! A lot of the museum was concentrated on Classic Who and there's very little New Who which might be disappointing if you've not seen a lot of the older stuff because it might not mean anything. There were a lot of monsters that I'd never heard of. The majority of the exhibits were either monsters or the Doctor's and companions' outfits. It would have been nice to have had more props and things, I think. Bessie was there which was nice and there was a very sad K-9 who had spontaneously combusted and destroyed a lot of the older items which was a shame. It was sad to see the state of K-9 though. The only disappointments I found were that some of the display lights weren't working and others didn't have any information in them. And don't get me started on the amount of grammatical errors and spelling mistakes the signs had!
It took us about 2 hours to go round in total which wasn't bad. We didn't hurry at all though so that's probably a good length of time for it, especially with the cost of entrance. It was about half 2 when we got out but as we'd seen all of Blackpool on Monday, there was nothing else there to do! I drove us back via Lytham St Anne's which is a nice quiet little seaside town where people who have a decent amount of money retire. I quite like Lytham St Anne's, it's so much different to Blackpool that's for sure!
Chinese New Year
When we'd been wandering around Manchester on Wednesday, we'd happened across the Town Hall which had a banner up about the Chinese New Year festivities that were taking place there on the Sunday so we marked that down as a prospective thing to do. I'd had a look online to get more details and found out that there was a dragon parade at 12 and 1, as well as stalls in front of the Town Hall. We just missed the train at 11.27 which meant that we had to wait for the next train at 12.14 so that was annoying. By the time we got to the Town Hall, we just managed to catch a glimpse of the dragon before it went parading off into Chinatown. We weren't standing there long but it was really cold and just about then, it started to snow! That was rather unexpected!
We had a wander round the stalls but there weren't that many and the majority of them were selling food and not much else. There was one stall that was doing artwork of people's names in Chinese style lettering. It was absolutely amazing and so beautiful. I thought it would be really expensive but when I asked about the cost, I was told that it was a pound a letter which isn't too bad. Unless you have a really long name. Like... Nathaniel, say. I couldn't resist and got one done with both of our names on and a dragon at the bottom. We wandered round a bit but there wasn't much more to see so we were going to head off into Chinatown when the dragon parade returned. By this time it was getting on for 2 o'clock and we'd arranged to meet ticket_to_zen so we hurried off to Canal Street to find him. I've not seen Ryan for quite some time so it was good to meet up again and we had a nice long chat. After that we went back to the stall to pick up the artwork which is really lovely and will make a wonderful souvenir. As soon as I can find a frame for it and hang it on my wall!
We were going to go straight back to the B&B then but as we walked past Frankie & Benny's, I suggested that we eat there as it's one of my favourite restaurants. It was actually good that we did because when we were walking back up to Piccadilly train station, we ended up walking through Chinatown which was all busy and lit up with lanterns and things so it looked very nice. Then we came across an area that had been sectioned off with railings where people were milling about. I realised that it must be for the fireworks which were scheduled to start at 6pm. We decided we might as well stay and watch as we were already there! We joined the crowd waiting and after a little while there was an announcement saying that they were getting ready to start and were just waiting for some of the buildings to shut their windows. It had been snowing lightly on and off all afternoon but then all of a sudden, it started to snow very heavily. It was really coming down quite hard but after about 5 minutes, it became hailstones and then eased off. And just in time for the fireworks which started soon after. They were being set off in what I thought was some kind of enclosed park area but I've since found out is a car park so not quite the sort of park I was thinking of. The fireworks were absolutely incredible. I've never seen such an impressive display. It didn't last very long, maybe about 10 minutes or so, and generated a hell of a lot of smoke so it was no wonder that all the buildings had to have their windows shut first. It was certainly worth hanging around for and made a nice end to a very nice day.
Foreign Foods
We had lots of yummy food this week. On one of our trips to Asda, we'd picked up a jar of barbecue sauce which I thought was to go with chicken but it actually turned out to be for sausages. I made it on the Monday night and there looked like there was a hell of a lot of sauce, even with 8 sausages in it. It was seriously tasty though. We had it on the Monday with left over wedges from the night before, and then finished it off on Tuesday night with naan bread. That wasn't too bad, but I think my original idea of having it with mash would have been much better.
Seeing as we were ill, we decided to treat ourselves with some ice cream but then we had a hell of a job finding one that was a) cheap, b) a flavour we would both like and c) fit in the tiny freezer compartment in the fridge. We ended up with Carte D'Or's new Amaretto ice cream which I'd not had before. It was actually a lot nicer than I thought it was so that was good. Unfortunately, Michael's tummy didn't agree.
I think the 'let's introduce Michael to lots of yummy English food' plan failed drastically this week. On Wednesday we had Quiznos which is an American sub company. I didn't even know they existed over here but apparently they have a few branches up and down the country. Michael had never had any of their subs but he'd heard that they were very nice. I was happy to try one and it was certainly much nicer than Subway (though not as nice as Blimpie which is my own personal favourite despite the fact that the branch in my hometown closed down a few years ago). Then on Sunday, we went to Frankie & Benny's which is an Italian American style restaurant! Michael went for the Cajun Chicken Pasta Bake which he said was really good and I had the Calzone al Pollo. I was so bothered about pronouncing calzone right, that I forgot to ask about having it with no pepperoni! That was rather annoying, but I picked it all out and managed to eat it. It was really tasty anyway, so that was good. We even managed to squeeze in some pudding and went for the chocolate orange profiteroles which we shared between us. They were really good too but I was glad we'd shared them as I was about full to bursting.
Thankfully, I did at least manage to have not only something typically English, but also something particularly Northern! When we went to Blackpool on the Saturday, I suggested that we got some fish and chips from one of the many fish and chip restaurants there. Unfortunately we didn't end up staying there late enough to have tea so we had to find a chippy in Horwich instead. It was surprisingly difficult. We'd passed a chippy on the way back so when we went out to buy some, that was the first place we went. It had been closed earlier on which I put down to being only 3 o'clock but it was still closed later on despite it being 5 o'clock on a Saturday night! We'd got some addresses of other chippies from the Yellow Pages so we had to look for those instead. They mostly all seemed to be on the same road so I just parked up as soon as we came across the first one. There turned out to be two close together, but we went to Century City as it was closer. It turned out to be a Chinese takeaway and I'd wanted to find a proper English chippy for Michael to try but I couldn't be bothered looking around any more so we went there instead. It wasn't too bad, we got one large portion of chips, two fish and two barm cakes* for £6.70. The portion of chips was huge and the barm cakes were a decent size too. The chips weren't too bad, but the fish was a bit cold and the batter slightly soggy in places so that was a bit disappointing but Michael liked it all anyway. The typically Northern thing he had was on the Friday when we were having our butties before going into the Air Raid Shelters. I spotted a small cafe that had a sign saying it did hot Vimto and as it was pretty nippy, I decided to get one. Michael had some of it and he wasn't very sure about it but did think that it was nicer hot than the pre-diluted stuff in a bottle that he'd had a sip of in the first week.
Entertainment
As we both ended up with colds this week, we didn't do much at night other than watch telly. We watched a lot of QI, Whose Line Is It Anyway? and Top Gear. We also managed to finish off the second series of Red Dwarf and Jonathan Creek. On the Saturday night, we were feeling a bit in need of doing something else so we got out Guitar Hero and played that for nearly 2 hours instead. We ended up beating the level so that was a really fun way to spend a Saturday night.
So it's three weeks Michael's been here now and we're into the last week already. There's still so much we want to do and nowhere near enough time to do it all in. Week four is going to be a very busy one, I can tell.
Lancashire to English dictionary:
* butties = sandwiches, or a packed lunch.
* pissing it down = raining very very heavily
* barm cake = large round flat bread roll big enough to fill with lots of chips
Blackpool
We'd decided last week that as it was supposed to be nice weather-wise that we would go to Blackpool on Monday. Michael was full of a cold but he was still up for it. We made butties* to take with us and I had the brainwave of taking some boiling water in a thermal mug so that Michael could have a Lemsip later on! I'm so clever. We got to Blackpool about half past 11, parked up and went immediately to the Doctor Who Museum. However, when we got there, we found that it was very definitely shut. I wasn't sure what to think because the website said that it was open every day of the year but it was about this time last year when it had shut for refurbishing. One of the stalls a few doors down was open so I asked the blokes on it if they knew anything about it, and they said that it was only open at weekends during the off-season. I was really annoyed, why didn't it say that on their website? We'd paid nearly £4 for parking too so I thought we might as well have a look round Blackpool while we were there.
We walked up to North Pier and spent quite a bit of time there taking photos, and then playing on the arcade machines. They used to have lots of machines that were 2p to play but they're mostly all 10p now which is a shame. A pound doesn't go at all far that way. After half an hour, we'd lost all our money so we walked into the town centre where I remembered is the Who shop. We spent quite a bit of time in there. Michael had been asked to get a present for his cousin's boyfriend so that took some deliberating over and I ended up getting a couple of magazines that I'd missed.
After we'd eaten our butties, we went off to find a rock shop so that Michael could get some rock for his kids. Thankfully they all have fairly common names so they were easy to find. They didn't have my name at all, but that's okay because I don't like rock at all. We wandered round some more and managed to not spend any more money though we did take lots more photos. We'd finally seen as much as we wanted to about half past 3 so that wasn't too bad. It would have been much nicer if the museum had actually been open though.
Sick day
We were up late on Tuesday, we must have been worn out by all the walking we did the day before and all the sea air too. Michael was feeling rather crappy and all bunged up so we decided to stay in and have a nice quiet day. Michael spent the day doing puzzles, first on my DS and then in a puzzle book while I did some work and had fun playing around with The GIMP to make buttons for the Trans website my organisation has. Then we had a nice relaxing evening watching stuff on DVD and hoped that Michael would be feeling much better.
Jewish and Gay
Michael was feeling better by Wednesday so he was feeling up to going out again. I wanted to use Orange Wednesday's 2-for-1 offer to go and see Milk but the only place it was on was the Printworks Odeon. I suggested going to the Jewish Museum first and then see the film afterwards. We set off for Horwich Parkway train station in very thick fog! Michael was quite surprised by how thick it was and said that they don't get fog like that in Boston. Luckily it didn't last very long and there was no sign of it in Manchester because we had to walk from Victoria train station all the way up to the Jewish Museum. It took us nearly half an hour to walk up there, and that would not have been fun in thick fog!
When we got to the museum, I remembered that I'd been to it before when I was at school. I'd not been since so it was nice to go back. There was a school party in and they were quite noisy and boisterous so that was a bit annoying. We had a look at a little art exhibit that was in a room at the back which didn't actually have anything much to do with the museum other than the artist was Jewish. We managed to look round the schul a bit while all the kids were upstairs looking at the exhibit up there. We were able to look in the ark which had a glass front so you could see all the Torahs in there; it's not normally open like that so it's not something that you'd generally get to see and even though the Torahs in there were all pasul (invalid), it still felt a bit sacrilegious. When the kids came back down, we went up into the ladies gallery to look at the exhibits up there which were more about Jews in Manchester specifically. We had a look at those while listening to the kids being told how brilliant Shabbat was because you didn't have to do any homework and you just had to play with your friends all day. I don't think they were convinced, probably being told that they couldn't use any electronics put them off.
We finished looking round and had a quick look in the shop before we left. It was about 1.40 so we walked back to the Printworks. We got there just at 2 so we were too late for the 2 o'clock showing which was a bit annoying. We had to get tickets for the 5 o'clock showing instead. We had a bit of a wander round and then got subs as Quiznos is right in the Printworks too. That pleased Michael; even though it's an American company, he'd never had their subs but he'd heard that they were tasty and they were! We went back to the Printworks in time for the 5pm showing of Milk. The auditorium was practically empty! I suppose many people don't go into Manchester on a Wednesday evening to watch films. It was a really good film. I was surprised with how good Sean Penn was, he's not an actor I rated very highly prior to this. I didn't know a great deal about Harvey Milk beforehand so I learnt quite a bit from the film. It was really powerful and very moving. The amazing thing was how the actors looked so close to the people they were portraying; in some cases, the similarity was uncanny.
I'd expected that the film would finish in time for us to catch the 7.28 train but it was 7.30 by the time we got out. And then the Adventure began. The next train left from Piccadilly at 7.46 so we rushed up there on the Metrolink but we were really cutting it fine. It didn't help that we had to go up to Platform 14 which is sat way off to one side from the other platforms and despite pelting it up there, by the time we got to the platform, the train doors just started to close and we weren't allowed on. I was so annoyed. I was even more annoyed to find out that the next train was not for an hour. Michael decided to jot down our Adventures in Train Catching while we waited. Thankfully we managed to get the next train with no problems but it was well late by the time we got in.
Thursday Things
Michael was feeling a lot better by Thursday, but then I woke up with a dry throat which did not bode well. We did our usual Thursday Things today, starting off with going shopping in the morning. That didn't take too long because we didn't need that much as we had quite a few things to be going on with. Michael wrote out some more postcards once we got back and we posted them on the way to the library later on. We both settled down with computers and I was working my way through all my new e-mails when my internet connection just died. I informed the librarian who logged me off the computer I was on and onto a different one instead. Somehow I ended up with a whole hour again! Michael was not impressed but I was. One thing I'd been desperately wanting to do was book train tickets for my appointment at Charing Cross on February 26th and I was worried that they were going to cost me a fortune. Well, it wasn't far off. They ended up costing £50 in total rather than the usual £30-odd so I was not impressed. If I'd been able to buy them earlier, they wouldn't have cost that much but without internet access, there wasn't anything I could do. At least I had tickets now and could stop worrying about it!
Going Underground
I woke up on Friday with a bad cough and a bit of a runny nose so it looked like Michael had well and truly passed his cold on to me. I felt a bit crappy and on top of that it was pissing it down*, but we weren't going to let that keep us in! We tried to find an indoor thing to do and settled on the Stockport Air Raid Shelters; they didn't open till 1pm either so that gave us chance to get down to Stockport too. The only problem with driving down to Stockport is that I didn't want to drive right through Manchester because it's bloody awful, so I went round the outside instead. I was doing okay, even with the less-than-brilliant map I had, until we found ourselves in Middleton! Finally we got to Stockport and then had trouble finding the Air Raid Shelters because the leaflet didn't have very good directions as to where they were. In desperation, I parked in a convenient multi-storey car park and then found the shelters were right opposite it! How handy.
Basically, the air raid shelters are a network of tunnels that were hewn out of the sandstone underneath the town to provide shelter for the townspeople during the Second World War. I was a little apprehensive about going into them because I didn't know how claustrophobic it would be but it wasn't too bad in that respect. The main issue I had was the air was pretty dusty and didn't do my chest any good, especially with being asthmatic and having a fresh bad cough to boot. They didn't seem to be that far underground, there was no long flight of steps or a lift but it was certainly quite a maze and there was no map or anything! It was also deathly silent. There didn't seem to be anyone else there and it was rather creepy. I expected there to be ghosts and unexplained things happening; even if it was supposed to be a place of protection, it doesn't stop people dying there. We got a huge shock at one point when a door suddenly opened and a woman appeared with a brush. She got a shock seeing us there too because she wasn't aware there was anyone down there! It was quite an interesting place and some of it was down right weird, like the nurses station complete with radio (can you get Radio 4 underground?) and a kitchen with tea urn and large stone sink. I think the 16 seater toilets have got to the one of the strangest things though. I don't think the presentation or anything really does it justice, there was not a lot of explanation about any of the sites down there or much information. I think it's well worth seeing though and I think Michael found it interesting, because obviously the way the Second World War affected the UK is vastly different to how it affected the US.
Blackpool 2.0
Saturday had already been designated Doctor Who Museum day and a cold was not going to stop me from seeing it! I drove us back up to Blackpool and we eagerly hurried off to the museum. Thankfully it was open this time! We had a look round the shop first and then got our tickets. Annoyingly, they've gone up in the past year so they're now £7 each rather than £5. It was absolutely huge though, I was amazed with the size of it and the amount of stuff they had on display. It has a tiny little front and shop, but then behind that is over 5500 square foot of museum. It really is bigger on the inside! A lot of the museum was concentrated on Classic Who and there's very little New Who which might be disappointing if you've not seen a lot of the older stuff because it might not mean anything. There were a lot of monsters that I'd never heard of. The majority of the exhibits were either monsters or the Doctor's and companions' outfits. It would have been nice to have had more props and things, I think. Bessie was there which was nice and there was a very sad K-9 who had spontaneously combusted and destroyed a lot of the older items which was a shame. It was sad to see the state of K-9 though. The only disappointments I found were that some of the display lights weren't working and others didn't have any information in them. And don't get me started on the amount of grammatical errors and spelling mistakes the signs had!
It took us about 2 hours to go round in total which wasn't bad. We didn't hurry at all though so that's probably a good length of time for it, especially with the cost of entrance. It was about half 2 when we got out but as we'd seen all of Blackpool on Monday, there was nothing else there to do! I drove us back via Lytham St Anne's which is a nice quiet little seaside town where people who have a decent amount of money retire. I quite like Lytham St Anne's, it's so much different to Blackpool that's for sure!
Chinese New Year
When we'd been wandering around Manchester on Wednesday, we'd happened across the Town Hall which had a banner up about the Chinese New Year festivities that were taking place there on the Sunday so we marked that down as a prospective thing to do. I'd had a look online to get more details and found out that there was a dragon parade at 12 and 1, as well as stalls in front of the Town Hall. We just missed the train at 11.27 which meant that we had to wait for the next train at 12.14 so that was annoying. By the time we got to the Town Hall, we just managed to catch a glimpse of the dragon before it went parading off into Chinatown. We weren't standing there long but it was really cold and just about then, it started to snow! That was rather unexpected!
We had a wander round the stalls but there weren't that many and the majority of them were selling food and not much else. There was one stall that was doing artwork of people's names in Chinese style lettering. It was absolutely amazing and so beautiful. I thought it would be really expensive but when I asked about the cost, I was told that it was a pound a letter which isn't too bad. Unless you have a really long name. Like... Nathaniel, say. I couldn't resist and got one done with both of our names on and a dragon at the bottom. We wandered round a bit but there wasn't much more to see so we were going to head off into Chinatown when the dragon parade returned. By this time it was getting on for 2 o'clock and we'd arranged to meet ticket_to_zen so we hurried off to Canal Street to find him. I've not seen Ryan for quite some time so it was good to meet up again and we had a nice long chat. After that we went back to the stall to pick up the artwork which is really lovely and will make a wonderful souvenir. As soon as I can find a frame for it and hang it on my wall!
We were going to go straight back to the B&B then but as we walked past Frankie & Benny's, I suggested that we eat there as it's one of my favourite restaurants. It was actually good that we did because when we were walking back up to Piccadilly train station, we ended up walking through Chinatown which was all busy and lit up with lanterns and things so it looked very nice. Then we came across an area that had been sectioned off with railings where people were milling about. I realised that it must be for the fireworks which were scheduled to start at 6pm. We decided we might as well stay and watch as we were already there! We joined the crowd waiting and after a little while there was an announcement saying that they were getting ready to start and were just waiting for some of the buildings to shut their windows. It had been snowing lightly on and off all afternoon but then all of a sudden, it started to snow very heavily. It was really coming down quite hard but after about 5 minutes, it became hailstones and then eased off. And just in time for the fireworks which started soon after. They were being set off in what I thought was some kind of enclosed park area but I've since found out is a car park so not quite the sort of park I was thinking of. The fireworks were absolutely incredible. I've never seen such an impressive display. It didn't last very long, maybe about 10 minutes or so, and generated a hell of a lot of smoke so it was no wonder that all the buildings had to have their windows shut first. It was certainly worth hanging around for and made a nice end to a very nice day.
Foreign Foods
We had lots of yummy food this week. On one of our trips to Asda, we'd picked up a jar of barbecue sauce which I thought was to go with chicken but it actually turned out to be for sausages. I made it on the Monday night and there looked like there was a hell of a lot of sauce, even with 8 sausages in it. It was seriously tasty though. We had it on the Monday with left over wedges from the night before, and then finished it off on Tuesday night with naan bread. That wasn't too bad, but I think my original idea of having it with mash would have been much better.
Seeing as we were ill, we decided to treat ourselves with some ice cream but then we had a hell of a job finding one that was a) cheap, b) a flavour we would both like and c) fit in the tiny freezer compartment in the fridge. We ended up with Carte D'Or's new Amaretto ice cream which I'd not had before. It was actually a lot nicer than I thought it was so that was good. Unfortunately, Michael's tummy didn't agree.
I think the 'let's introduce Michael to lots of yummy English food' plan failed drastically this week. On Wednesday we had Quiznos which is an American sub company. I didn't even know they existed over here but apparently they have a few branches up and down the country. Michael had never had any of their subs but he'd heard that they were very nice. I was happy to try one and it was certainly much nicer than Subway (though not as nice as Blimpie which is my own personal favourite despite the fact that the branch in my hometown closed down a few years ago). Then on Sunday, we went to Frankie & Benny's which is an Italian American style restaurant! Michael went for the Cajun Chicken Pasta Bake which he said was really good and I had the Calzone al Pollo. I was so bothered about pronouncing calzone right, that I forgot to ask about having it with no pepperoni! That was rather annoying, but I picked it all out and managed to eat it. It was really tasty anyway, so that was good. We even managed to squeeze in some pudding and went for the chocolate orange profiteroles which we shared between us. They were really good too but I was glad we'd shared them as I was about full to bursting.
Thankfully, I did at least manage to have not only something typically English, but also something particularly Northern! When we went to Blackpool on the Saturday, I suggested that we got some fish and chips from one of the many fish and chip restaurants there. Unfortunately we didn't end up staying there late enough to have tea so we had to find a chippy in Horwich instead. It was surprisingly difficult. We'd passed a chippy on the way back so when we went out to buy some, that was the first place we went. It had been closed earlier on which I put down to being only 3 o'clock but it was still closed later on despite it being 5 o'clock on a Saturday night! We'd got some addresses of other chippies from the Yellow Pages so we had to look for those instead. They mostly all seemed to be on the same road so I just parked up as soon as we came across the first one. There turned out to be two close together, but we went to Century City as it was closer. It turned out to be a Chinese takeaway and I'd wanted to find a proper English chippy for Michael to try but I couldn't be bothered looking around any more so we went there instead. It wasn't too bad, we got one large portion of chips, two fish and two barm cakes* for £6.70. The portion of chips was huge and the barm cakes were a decent size too. The chips weren't too bad, but the fish was a bit cold and the batter slightly soggy in places so that was a bit disappointing but Michael liked it all anyway. The typically Northern thing he had was on the Friday when we were having our butties before going into the Air Raid Shelters. I spotted a small cafe that had a sign saying it did hot Vimto and as it was pretty nippy, I decided to get one. Michael had some of it and he wasn't very sure about it but did think that it was nicer hot than the pre-diluted stuff in a bottle that he'd had a sip of in the first week.
Entertainment
As we both ended up with colds this week, we didn't do much at night other than watch telly. We watched a lot of QI, Whose Line Is It Anyway? and Top Gear. We also managed to finish off the second series of Red Dwarf and Jonathan Creek. On the Saturday night, we were feeling a bit in need of doing something else so we got out Guitar Hero and played that for nearly 2 hours instead. We ended up beating the level so that was a really fun way to spend a Saturday night.
So it's three weeks Michael's been here now and we're into the last week already. There's still so much we want to do and nowhere near enough time to do it all in. Week four is going to be a very busy one, I can tell.
Lancashire to English dictionary:
* butties = sandwiches, or a packed lunch.
* pissing it down = raining very very heavily
* barm cake = large round flat bread roll big enough to fill with lots of chips