Manchester

Tiff had a business trip to Manchester, so I decided to tag along. Actually, her business is in a suburb of Manchester (my guess is it's the equivalent of say Aloha, OR), but the only hotel we could find there made the TripAdvisor list of dirtiest hotels in Europe, so we decided to pass and stay downtown. Turns out that Manchester is GB's 'second city' behind London. The architecture is striking, in particular how different it is from what we've seen of London.

Food

We got in and had a pretty good Italian meal at Piccolinos - we'd recommend it if you're ever in Manchester. The second night we had one of the worst sushi meals I can recall (aside from some conveyer belt sushi we tried in London). Anyway, I knew we were in trouble when they brought the sake in its glass bottle. I then noticed that they didn't have a true sushi chef - rather they had a couple of 'assemblers' that basically took pre-readied rice and wrapped pre-cut fish on top of it with nori. The good news is that they had buy one get one free on 'Morinaga' candies which basically are Japanese Starbursts/Mambas. For all you in Seattle and Portland I highly recommend picking some up at a Japanese market (Uwajimaya has them). Anyway, needless to say I was still hungry so I convinced a cold and tired Tiff to go back to Piccolinos so I could get a dessert I had been eyeing the night before and an Americano with Illy espresso. Next night we went to a cool Indian restaurant called Akbar. Definitely recommend checking it out. Afterwards we went to the sky lounge on the 23rd floor of the Hilton for a nightcap. Here are few photos of me with the naan at Akbar, the Hilton hotel and bar and Tiff on the way back to the hotel.

Activities

The first day, Tiff had to work at a store so I decided to venture out to try and play some golf. I had done a little research and there is a 'municipal' course about 5 miles north of the city called Heaton Park that I was going to play. I strapped on my clubs and headed to find a cab. On the way to the course, I asked the cab driver about the course and other courses in the area. He said that Heaton was probably a good choice, but a few minutes later asked if I was more interested in playing a private course - New North Manchester Golf Club. He then took out his Tom Tom or Garmin, found the number of the course and then called and made me a tee time. You don't get that from an NYC cab driver. Course was nice. It cost me 32 pounds and I'd say it was the equivalent of a $30-35 course in Seattle or Portland. The thought of just hanging out by myself all day in Manchester wasn't all that appealing (the soccer stadium is 20-30 minutes outside the city) so I decided to go back and play NNMGC, both Wednesday and Thursday. If anyone visits Manchester, I highly recommend it. Tell Jason that Greg sent you. After round 3, I appreciated the course a lot more and think it's better than West Seattle, but not in a different league or anything. One of the days, I ended up playing with one of the club members. He was pretty friendly, loved to brag about the course, over-estimated his golf skills, was excited to play with an American and had to leave after 11 holes because his 16 year old daughter wrecked her car. Anyway, I was complaining about the exchange rate when he brought up visiting the U.S. He said he'd only been to Florida and wanted to go back to visit, but he wasn't interested in doing it now because of the U.S.'s poor worldwide reputation brought on by Bush. Maybe he was bitter because he liked Tony Blair (who was serving his last week as PM - and many believe his popularity went from 90% to 20% because of Bush) but I thought that was a powerful political statement. Some random dude in Manchester doesn't visit our country because of Bush? One of those trickle down things I just never would have imagined.