Manchester

I'd arranged to meet a couple of friends for food/coffee in Manchester on Saturday, so I thought I'd take advantage of the situation and have a wander round the markets - a fellow blipper suggested it, and I wasn't disappointed!

Had a lovely chat on the way over with a lady from Lincoln, who'd come up to visit her daughter while her husband was at the rugby (saw the result, and I hope she had a better day than him!), and then tootled off to find the first market (there are 6 or 7 sites in all, but quite close together thankfully). Of course, I went in the wrong direction out of Piccadilly station, but I had a skinny chai latte in hand and it was a nice morning, so no biggie...

Finally found the Albert Square market and went on from there - it was all very festive and I found a few lovely gift ideas :-)

I also found the "windy man" and a rather large tin soldier!

I had a lovely afternoon wandering around, and went into the city hall to see a few stalls in there. The lads were out in support of Movember too hee hee.

I met up with my lovely friends, and we had buckets of coffee in Costa - and I do mean buckets, they had handles on both sides so you could pick them up! A good long catch up, and we'd missed our reservation for dinner so we had a bit of a wander through the Arndale Centre (well, it would've been rude to not even look in Hotel Chocolat) and then caught our trains home.

That was the less fun part of the day - on a packed train, surrounded by drinkers/drunks with beer breath for 2 hours. But it was lovely to get in and have a cuppa in the warmth then :-)

Thank you ladies, for making the effort to come and meet me on what ended up a dank and dreary evening in Manchester - you made my weekend!

x

ps if the additional photos don't come up, try pressing F5 - it usually works!