Pirates

Last night I stayed in Manchester I stayed at a hotel called The Palace which in it’s former life I'm sure used to be ‘The Crimson Permanent Assurance’

Lovely building and well suited to being a hotel now.

After tour seminar ended I packed up and before going to bed decided to have a few beers in Manc to see what it was really like.

I do this in most of the places I stay. I like to get out of the hotel bars because
A: They are overpriced
B: I am sick of talking to IT professionals about their particular niche

I don’t know why, but every hotel bar seems to be manned on a nightly basis by someone who sells storage area networks or some breed of customer service software.

 This means that it isn’t unusual around 10pm to find me around walking around a city centre trying to find a nice bar that looks friendly and quiet enough to have a few beers in before bedtime.
I have done this in

London           (unfriendly),
Leeds             (loud),
Liverpool        (annoying),                         
Bristol            (peaceful),    
Birmingham    (cultural)
and Cardiff which was closed the night I was there (avoid Cardiff on a Wednesday)

I have walked these city streets in many weathers feeling comfortable not worried about anything but last night in Manchester was a bit different. The whole area seemed really grim, there were plenty of people smoking outside of bars, but there were more who seemed to just hang around on corners, and they watched you as you approached eyeing you like some sort of stalking animal.

There were people hanging around in the many tunnels. They stood around cars that just seemed to serve as some sort of jukebox, each railway tunnel having its own musical theme.

The whole place seemed to be angry and on edge, I was obviously out of place and looking alone as two young ladies offered to spend some time with me. It was nice of them to care so much but I declined.

This was the first time in a UK city that I have really felt scared as I walked up and down a busy street.

In the end I went back to the hotel bar, my company for the evening was a Hewlett Packard salesman and a software developer specialising in order tracking software.
Oh Joy! 

Comments

[Silver Lining]

It's a shame that you headed towards Piccadilly, rather than King Street and Deansgate which is a whole different kettle of coconuts. Manchester is really lovely...