Summer Camp and Manchester

A few months ago, I bought tickets to see one of my favorite bands, Summer Camp, in concert.  The concert was in Manchester this weekend and it was awesome!  Unfortunately, the concert coincided with St. Patrick’s Day, and most of my friends were in Dublin for the celebrations.  So I was faced with going down by myself (which would have been fine, just a bit boring), but my friend Max from Australia took pity on me and came down.  The bus to Manchester is only like an hour so we got in on Friday around 17:30 (<< Brit english!) , and had a few hours to kill before the concert.  We got dinner and drinks and hung out until concert time!  The concert was in a tiny little café so it was really cosy (<< More British!) .  The first band was okay, I can’t even remember their name, but Summer Camp was amazing! They put on such a good live show.  Also, hipster shows are the same wherever you are, but British ones just have way more beer.

After a sleepless night in the hostel (seriously, Russians.. if it’s 4 am please whisper), we had a hostel-type breakfast of toast and more toast, and headed out to explore Manchester for the day.  Manchester reminded me a lot of Boston.  It’s much prettier than Leeds and is a bit of a bigger city.  We saw all of the main sights like the Town Hall and churches.  Manchester is home to the oldest bar in England (I think?) and they tried to tear it down one time, but the town got angry, so they moved its location twice.  The English do love their pubs!  We had a big lunch at an Italian restaurant, and then went to the Museum of Science and Industry.  Then it was time for the bus back on Saturday.  It was nice to see another city, but we were tired at the end of it from all of the walking. 

The grey sky makes pictures so difficult

 

Since it was St. Paddy’s day, so I ignored my aching feet and we went to a surprise party for another international student here.  It was fun to see the town celebrating!  I also learnt that our three biggest American traditions, pinching for not wearing green, eating corned beef and cabbage, and green beer, are simply American.  Why do we make up this stuff? Silly Americans.