On the 28th January for the weekend, me and my boyfriend went up to Manchester for the weekend as we wanted to go to the National Football Museum there so I paid for us as his birthday present from November last year. It was nice to go somewhere different as neither of us had ever been to Manchester and we always go to London.
It took an hour and a half on the train from Birmingham New Street to Manchester Piccadilly, then the best way for us to get to our hotel was to get on tram part of the way then we had a straightforward walk past the Arndale Centre to get to the hotel which we found very easy to find
We stayed in the Manchester Central Travelodge as our budget hotel of choice is Travelodge and always will be because we love their hotels and have always found them to be the best even after we've tried out other hotels. We had a ground room floor for the first time ever which meant there was more space and the bathroom actually had a bath in for the first time ever. The hotel inside was lovely the lady on the desk Emily was really helpful and told us to contact her if we needed anything which was great to know.
The National Football Museum was only 10 minutes walk from the hotel so was quite easy to get to because also the building is quite noticeable. The museum is free to enter but you can book guided tours and they ask if you can make a donation to the museum. I liked the museum but it was much smaller than I thought it would be so we started with the ground floor which had the FA cup, Premier League trophy, George Best's mini and a walk of fame as well as a little studio set up for the Premier League show which the BBC do. We then decided to work our way back down so we started with the 1966 exhibition on the third floor which I thought was amazing with the way it told the story of how England won the World Cup and all the out of the ordinary merchandise they had on show. I particularly liked the dressing room set up and the time line. The second floor had all sorts such as history of the laws of the game, managers, teams, kits and one of my favourite things in the whole museum was an interactive table with a skeleton where you touched different parts and it would explain injury that can occur there. The first floor again had all sorts of stuff such as a history of football, about fans, all the different competitions, stadiums, specific players of influence, the media etc which we made our way around. We then visited the shop which was small and then we went to the café and had a pie each which I thought was a good price of £3 however mine was cold because it was so late in the day and the last one so I accept that.
After this we went for a walk around the Arndale Shopping Centre which I thought was lovely with the array of shops they had and very open and bright place. However, with it being a Saturday afternoon it was quite busy but that didn't stop us from having a look around. I only bought one thing and that was a pair of plain black Converse ready for my Disneyland Paris trip at the end of the month.
We had a dinner reservation for a buffet place which was about 5 minute walk from our hotel called Red Hot Buffet Restaurant. I found this place by chance when looking at Manchester on Google Maps and from there had a look at their website and we decided to book it because we don't eat at buffet places very much. We were greeted and asked to wait in the bar area where we'd be called when a table was ready. At 7pm which was our reservation time we were called and went up the stairs to be seated. However, we were stood in the upstairs waiting queue at the front for 10 minutes before anyone wanted to seat us. The problems with this was that some people just completely ignored the queue and proceeded to sit down which is wrong when there is a system in place but the amount of staff that walked past us and noticed we were waiting and that there were tables of 2 ready was ridiculous. Once we were seated we had the problem of that the girl assigned to us struggled understanding English. However, on the plus side the food was lovely and was organised into different dishes that you could go to such as Oriental, Indian, Tex Mex, England and a corner for dessert. We had 3 lots of food and one bowl of dessert, with another round of drinks cost us about £20 each which I thought was such good value. So I'd give it 5/5 on the food but only a 2-3/5 on the service of the staff.
Overall, it was a whirlwind 24 hours in Manchester and we could have done much more because there are museums there but my boyfriend isn't a history museum kind of person so we couldn't do that. Also, we could have done stadium tours of City and United but at the time back in November last year we didn't know who was playing at home because it was FA Cup 4th round so next time hopefully we can do that. I would definitely go back and explore some more but it was nice to go away for a weekend.
Until next time,
Stacey x
It took an hour and a half on the train from Birmingham New Street to Manchester Piccadilly, then the best way for us to get to our hotel was to get on tram part of the way then we had a straightforward walk past the Arndale Centre to get to the hotel which we found very easy to find
We stayed in the Manchester Central Travelodge as our budget hotel of choice is Travelodge and always will be because we love their hotels and have always found them to be the best even after we've tried out other hotels. We had a ground room floor for the first time ever which meant there was more space and the bathroom actually had a bath in for the first time ever. The hotel inside was lovely the lady on the desk Emily was really helpful and told us to contact her if we needed anything which was great to know.
The National Football Museum was only 10 minutes walk from the hotel so was quite easy to get to because also the building is quite noticeable. The museum is free to enter but you can book guided tours and they ask if you can make a donation to the museum. I liked the museum but it was much smaller than I thought it would be so we started with the ground floor which had the FA cup, Premier League trophy, George Best's mini and a walk of fame as well as a little studio set up for the Premier League show which the BBC do. We then decided to work our way back down so we started with the 1966 exhibition on the third floor which I thought was amazing with the way it told the story of how England won the World Cup and all the out of the ordinary merchandise they had on show. I particularly liked the dressing room set up and the time line. The second floor had all sorts such as history of the laws of the game, managers, teams, kits and one of my favourite things in the whole museum was an interactive table with a skeleton where you touched different parts and it would explain injury that can occur there. The first floor again had all sorts of stuff such as a history of football, about fans, all the different competitions, stadiums, specific players of influence, the media etc which we made our way around. We then visited the shop which was small and then we went to the café and had a pie each which I thought was a good price of £3 however mine was cold because it was so late in the day and the last one so I accept that.
After this we went for a walk around the Arndale Shopping Centre which I thought was lovely with the array of shops they had and very open and bright place. However, with it being a Saturday afternoon it was quite busy but that didn't stop us from having a look around. I only bought one thing and that was a pair of plain black Converse ready for my Disneyland Paris trip at the end of the month.
We had a dinner reservation for a buffet place which was about 5 minute walk from our hotel called Red Hot Buffet Restaurant. I found this place by chance when looking at Manchester on Google Maps and from there had a look at their website and we decided to book it because we don't eat at buffet places very much. We were greeted and asked to wait in the bar area where we'd be called when a table was ready. At 7pm which was our reservation time we were called and went up the stairs to be seated. However, we were stood in the upstairs waiting queue at the front for 10 minutes before anyone wanted to seat us. The problems with this was that some people just completely ignored the queue and proceeded to sit down which is wrong when there is a system in place but the amount of staff that walked past us and noticed we were waiting and that there were tables of 2 ready was ridiculous. Once we were seated we had the problem of that the girl assigned to us struggled understanding English. However, on the plus side the food was lovely and was organised into different dishes that you could go to such as Oriental, Indian, Tex Mex, England and a corner for dessert. We had 3 lots of food and one bowl of dessert, with another round of drinks cost us about £20 each which I thought was such good value. So I'd give it 5/5 on the food but only a 2-3/5 on the service of the staff.
Overall, it was a whirlwind 24 hours in Manchester and we could have done much more because there are museums there but my boyfriend isn't a history museum kind of person so we couldn't do that. Also, we could have done stadium tours of City and United but at the time back in November last year we didn't know who was playing at home because it was FA Cup 4th round so next time hopefully we can do that. I would definitely go back and explore some more but it was nice to go away for a weekend.
Until next time,
Stacey x
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