Summer Vacation 2023
Day Four
We walked over to a local grocery store for a quick breakfast, then packed ourselves up and Ubered to the train station. Caught a train to Manchester and after about an hour's train ride, we were in Manchester.
Our hotel was soooo nice. We walked into our room and thought they had forgotten to close a connecting door to another room, until we realized that no, we just had an enormous room that was actually two rooms! And there was a free wine "social hour" every evening (uh, more on that in the next day's entry).
Manchester is HUGE. It was so bustling, it had a very New York vibe. After how chilled out Liverpool felt, it was a bit of a shock to be plunged into a very busy and bustling place. We took a long walk, explored a big building that's a giant maze of four floors of indie/alternative stores that really felt like an 80s/90s throwback. Stopped at a little cafe for a refreshment break, then continued walking for a very long time to the Manchester Museum. The museum was fairly underwhelming and completely overrun with tons of kids (it's a free museum, which we should have realized meant that it's a prime summer time hot spot for parents who are desperate to entertain their kids... like we were, LOL).
After the museum we walked back toward the hotel, stopped at a Pizza Express nearby for dinner, then got back to the hotel just in time for the very end of the free wine social hour. Grabbed one reasonable free glass of wine, then we went to collapse from exhaustion in our room.
Day Five
The big plan for the morning was a free walking tour of the city, which I thought would be an hour. Turns out it was a THREE HOUR walking tour! Unexpected, but it turned out to be really interesting, and it was a great way to see the city. That was pretty much most of our day, as it turned out. After the tour we walked to a couple of fancy old libraries and had a little walk-around in them, went to a book store, then found a Brew Dog pub in which to rest our weary feet. Read some books with a few pints and dinner, and then walked back to the hotel. Unfortunately for me, we were in time for the full free wine social hour, and unfortunately for me, I can no longer drink three glasses of wine in an hour, then continue to drink more in our hotel room, and not experience the hangover to beat all hangovers the next day. I was feeling it on day six.
Day Six
I skipped the delightful, lovely, free breakfast from our fancy hotel because I was hungover AF. The boys had a nice breakfast. Finally got my act together enough to go on a family trudge to the National Football Museum. We had a nice hour or so at the museum, West had a good time. Then we collected our stuff from the hotel and trudged to the train station. Started to feel kind of sick of trains by that point, but oh, how many more more trains we still had in our future.
Train to London was uneventful. We finally got to our London hotel, where we were just staying one night. Took a long walk to the Shepard's Bush neighborhood (that's where the band Bush got their name!), and went to a big game store Drew had seen online. After the store we found a Weatherspoons and had a shockingly cheap dinner among the locals, then walked back to our hotel. The big selling point to this hotel (The Resident Kensington, where we actually stayed the last time we were in London a handful of years ago) was that we could leave our luggage there over the weekend for a few nights and then stay there again the next week.