The Old Trafford Treble

After my last post, Bret and I were low key the first night in Manchester. We were so elated about getting our tickets sorted that we got summat to eat and went back and slept for about four hours in our room before meandering downstairs to our hotel's lobby bar. At first it didn't look like much, but it soon picked up and the next thing we knew we were getting our ears talked off by a couple of really nice blokes from Northern Ireland.

Rick and Steve, both farmers from a remote village, first tried to get us to sing American songs karaoke style sans music, but we refused. They spent the next two hours telling us about their families, their farms, etc. They were in town, basing out of Manc to head to the Leeds match, of which they were both big supporters. Imagine their surprise when Bret revealed that his surname was the same as the star striker for Northern Ireland...David Healy. More on that later...

Saturday we woke up early and headed to Old Trafford. Brom (our ticket savior) met us and we ended up with great seats. Mind, they were a bit high up, but a good view of the pitch and despite a lackluster first half which saw Vidic carted off with a broken collarbone, United rallied to bag four in the second half and the place was humming. Quite a good first match experience to see the home club pound the opposition and sing throughout. Oh and we picked a popular match cause it was a record premiership attendance of more than 76,000!

That night we took it easy again, but ventured down to the lobby bar for a few and found not only Rick and Steve but about 12-15 Leeds supporters singing, "Heal-eyyy, Heal-eyyy, Heal-eyyy" as we entered.

The next day we we did the tour of Old Trafford which included the museum and some pretty cool historical stuff about the club. We got plenty of snaps and decided that at the end of the night, it was time to hit a good pub. We went up the street to a place called Dry Bar, mostly due to its significance as part of the movie, "24-hour party people" as this is where Shaun Ryder from the Happy Mondays walked in and fired his gun into the mirror, leaving him with a lifetime ban. We're not 100% sure, but one of the mirrors still has a bullet hole in it, so we're guessing they left it up.

Monday we went to the LS Lowry museum down at the Quays and that was very cool. It included exhibits by a couple of photographers as well which were pretty amazing, though very depressing as they documented some Northern English towns hit hard with economic woes during the 60s and 70s and led up to major famine and poor living conditions in Africa as well.

Sticking with the 24-hour party people theme, we went by where the legendary "Hacienda" night club was in the 80s and 90s but it is now just a huge complex of flats so that was a touch disappointing.

As coincidence would have it, Arsenal's under-18s were in town that night for a match with United in the semifinals of the Youth FA Cup. So we hit it for a bonus match. It was cool to see Old Trafford at night. They only had 9,000 people in there, but they were pretty boisterous. Unfortunately, Mr. Charmed Life (Bret) got to watch his lads pull it out in extra time to move on to the finals.

Tomorrow we head back to London. As sad as it is to leave Manchester behind, we feel like we hit quite a bit of stuff here and didn't miss out on much. Manchester is a funny town, really similar in many ways to the feel of a Pacific NW city such as Portland or Seattle. I guess 10 years ago it was not in such good shape, but they've built it up quite nicely with modern buildings and such. It was a great time though and we're glad we experienced more than just London. Now on to the capital...

P.S. My English tour of sandwiches is well underway. I think I've put down a good 7 or 8 already! I love sandwiches...