Hi!

I will talk with you about the first trip I did in the United Kingdom. It was in Manchester.

Manchester is at approximately 53 miles from Lancaster and it takes one hour in train to get there.

Manchester is one of the largest cities in northern England with Liverpool. This is a rather industrial city with its important past of domination of international trade, especially with cotton during the 19th century. It played an important role too in the Industrial Revolution in England.

Manchester is a city with an important architecture with many monuments that I would put forward later. From a musical point of view, many artists are from Manchester, such as the Bee Gees, Oasis or The Stone Roses, Richard Ashcroft from The Verve or Jay Kay from Jamiroquai.

From the perspective of sport, Manchester is famous for its two football clubs playing in the Premier League: Manchester United that evolves in the stadium Old Trafford and Manchester City that evolves in the Etihad Stadium. 

I went to Manchester twice, in February 11th and in April 7th. The first time to visit and the second time to do some shopping because the city has a big city center and shopping center.

On my first visit to Manchester I saw a lot of things.

First of all the John Rylands Library, which is a neo-Gothic style building built in 1890 in memory of an important textile industrialist. It is the 3rd largest library of England and contains a collection of portraits of famous writers like Shakespeare or Darwin. The library has a large collection of very rare books and manuscripts. For example, it contains a copy of the Gutenberg Bible dating from 1455 and more than 3000 works dating from before 1501. It is open to the public since 1900.

The Town Hall which was built in 1877 by Alfred Waterhouse and its architectural style is neo-Gothic. Its tower is high of 87 meters, its facades were carved into stone and represent people who have had an important role in the history of the city. The floors are covered with mosaics. The ceiling is decorated with frescoes by Ford Madox Brown and retraces the history of Manchester from the Roman occupation until the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century. In the hall are exposed numerous busts and statues of historical characters of the city. Finally, two large spiral staircases lead upstairs.

Manchester Cathedral which was built in 1421 and finished in 1882 has mainly a Gothic style. It has been restored during the Victorian era and then again in the 20th century after being degraded by the bombings of the Luftwaffe during World War II. These bombings have also affected a lot many areas of Manchester which were rebuilt after the war.

As a football fan, I also visited the National Football Museum, built in 2001 over 6 floors. It retraces the important events of the history of world and English football; through videos, paintings and historical objects from the World Cup and English football. It contains several collection pieces as the first international jersey, the one of Sheffield, Pele's jersey, the jersey that Maradona was wearing when he scored his famous goal "Hand of God". It also contains for example the first ball of the first final of the World Cup and the ball of the final of the 1966 World Cup which took place in England and that England won against West Germany.

I also visited the Chinatown which has numerous decorations, frescoes, Chinese gardens, and the Imperial Chinese Archway.

My day in Manchester ended with a visit to Old Trafford, legendary place of Manchester football. It is the stadium of Manchester United Stadium, it was built in 1909, destroyed during the Second World War and then rebuilt. It is the third largest stadium in England after Wembley and Twickenham (76,212 seats) and as it meets the criteria of category 4 of the UEFA, it can host major international competitions games. I went there to see the game for the 25th day of the Premier League: Manchester United vs. Burnley. There was a great atmosphere and end up in this huge stadium full of history was really impressive. The stadium was full and the supporters all thoroughly to support their team. I was also pleasantly surprised to see that everything was very quiet between supporters of both teams before, during and after the game. Hooligans are not anymore, as we could hear a few years ago, violent ultra supporters ready to do break everything. At the end of the game, Manchester United won 3-1. Goals were scored by Smalling (6', 45'+3) and Van Persie (penalty at the 82') for Man.U and by Ings (12') for Burnley. You will find below a short video depicting my evening in Old Trafford!

To conclude about this amazing day, I liked Manchester as a city but I found it a little bit too undustrial: old buildings are mixed with new and modern ones, which removes some of their charm and the one of the city too. A city without colors rather drab and gray; but I was still very happy to have been there and to have discovered it with my erasmus friends. The perfect thing of that day was the game of Manchester United because it allows me to watch playing for real some great football stars such as De Gea, Van Persie, Rooney, Falcao or Di Maria.

I hope you enjoyed this article and that it gave you the wish to discover Manchester, a typical industrial city of north England!

See you soon for my next article about another of my travel around the UK!

Emilie

Source pictures and videos:
Personal pictures and videos