Exploring England

While being here in England, a bit on and off, for about nine months I want of course to do and see as much as possible. So far I've done a lot and crazy much fun, no talk about it, but I haven't travelled so much as I maybe wanted, although there is plenty of time for it after the exam. But in the last two weeks I've been much better at taking the opportunities to see other cities than Durham, and as they it's said; better late than never.
First I got to see a little of lovely Leeds the Saturday before the last one. Just a bit more than an hour away on the train it is one of the biggest cities in England, and more colourful than grey Newcastle. Had a great day in good company with Italian food and American ice cream, and looked in a lot of shops in really old elegant gallerias with really fashionable clothes but that were of course expensive, but still found some good looking clothes that more fitted my wallet.
Then this last Saturday I did something that is most of the times quite unlike me, and were very spontaneous. At the beginning of the that week Bibo asked around if anyone wanted to go to Manchester the upcoming weekend, and there were some interest but as often nothing really happened in the end. But after waking up from the Informal Ball Bibo rushed into my room saying "Let's go to Manchester, there's a train leaving in one and a half hour and the price is still the same!" So after first thinking in my normal way that it was not time enough and stuff, I thought why not and packed a small backpack, ate quick and took of towards the train station to Madchester where Enrica and Valentina already where on their way to. As I said, it was very spontaneous, so we hadn't booked a room but thought that would be no problem to find. But as we went to the tourist information we were told there was almost not a single bed left in the whole city due to Man Utd playing Liverpool, a boxing fight, and the Irish festival. So in the end we ended up sneaking in and sleeping on the floor in the girls' double room at a hostel in the Northern Quarter. The Northern Quarter is the area of Manchester where you can find a lot of cool small independent vintage stores, book and record shops, and small cafés, bars and clubs. I really liked to hang around there. The rest of the city centre is really nice as well, not as industrial as I thought, with parks and just a urban atmosphere. Even though we were only there 24 hours we saw a lot of the city. We partied a bit in the gay village, then in the entertainment centre, and then in a quite cool basement club near the hostel, passed through Chinatown the day after, went into an art museum where they had a small Da Vinci exhibition among other things, and saw the Irish parade, on our way to the canal side. I really liked the city, and will definitely go back in june after the exams and spend some more time looking in all the great shops, and then head further west to Liverpool. The only bad thing about the weekend was that I dropped my camera quite early during the night so have to buy a new one, but I still managed to take some photos and get the others too. Next stop: London, from Saturday to Thursday, and then back to good ol' Sweden.