We decided a weekend in Manchester would be an appropriate goodbye to the city and a good opportunity for Grigoria to finally understand what the MIB building actually looked like.
So we got ourselves some cheap Virgin train tickets, £34 return ticket and with the company apartments booked, we were all set for a good weekend ahead.
In some ways this city has become my second home over the past three years and the completion of our office’s MIB building project will certainly leave a void in my life.
Shortly after we arrived in Manchester it was off to the site. Grigoria’s chosen career, as an economist, has not given her the opportunity to spend much time on any sites – as you’d expect! So it was a bit of fun getting her required hard-hat, steel toe-capped boots, and fluro vest on. She almost looked like a real site veteran, in fact in was my clumsy head, which kept hitting the scaffolding!
With this building only seven weeks from completion it was a good opportunity to look around as you could get a real feel of what the final building would be like. This £26m academic biocentre will be a landmark building for the University and possibly the city when completed. A basic palate of stone (French limestone), glass (double skin climate wall) and copper cladding, it provides a fresh approach to the campus.
Refer to the link to follow live construction progress:
http://www.2020cam.co.uk/cgi-local/cam.cgi?c=mib&n=1Following the visit we headed to the apartment for a well-earned break. Grigoria was quite impressed with the company apartment, which was very spacious and modern. It was depressing to think that this lovely, centrally located and affordable apartment in Manchester would be completely out of our budget in London :(
Later that evening we headed into town for a nigh time glimpse of the city and to enjoy some Mancunian cuisine – our choice was the Old Wellington Inn. The pub / restaurant is one of the oldest structures left in the city. Built in the 1530’s, it has survived both the 1940 blitz and the 1996 IRA bombing. Today it provides a nice dinner space overlooking the “shambles square” in the cathedral gates area of the city.
Saturday we awoke to some typical Manchester
weather so we decided to spend time discovering
the city centre. On our trails we visited the Urbis
building, had lunch in a nice French bakery, then sat in Waterstones book shop for a couple of hours. A perfect way to spend a wet early September day.
Later that evening a cycling buddy of mine, Paddy & his wife Karen from Leeds came over to enjoy some dinner with us. We started off in the apartment chatting before heading out to a local Italian restaurant (Cocotoo's).
On Sunday morning we decided to tear ourselves away from the TV (and the final Ashes Test match) and go to the Imperial War Museum (
http://north.iwm.org.uk/).
Grigoria has never been there before and we both really wanted to see it.
What makes the Imperial War Museum – North so unique is not so much the collection it houses (it is significantly smaller than the London collection but still very interesting) but the way it is displayed and the building itself.
The Museum is designed by architect Daniel Liebskind and is split into three shards representing earth, air and water.
The museum collection is housed in the earth shard, the restaurant in the water shard and the 55m tall air shard houses a viewing platform.
We started with the main museum collection which looks at how war has shaped lives from the 1st World War till today.
The floor on the earth shard is sloping (representing the curvature of the earth) and there are no straight lines at all, creating a feeling of confusion for the visitor. Every hour there was a Big Picture show, a 15 minute slide show with narration, focusing on aspects of the war (children and war, weapons of war etc). What made it unique was that all the lights in the exhibition area were switched off and the slides were projected on all the walls. This forced everyone to participate reinforcing the message that war affects everyone.
After a couple of hours in the main exhibition we went up the air shard to the viewing platform. The view from there was amazing but the nature of the platform (the floor was basically a metal grid and you could see the whole 55m drop!) made us glad to get back into the elevator!
From here we headed back to the apartments before using the return part of our super cheap virgin ticket to end a very nice and relaxing weekend.
Labels: Travel
I knew the decision to leave Anshen Dyer wasn’t going to be easy and at least I was right on that one. This company has given me many opportunites over the past three years not to mention the biggest chance to stay permantly in the UK which I have temporialy passed by.
