True Blue Manc

Seeing as though Manchester United is one of the most popular teams in all of professional sport, we were kind of torn in coming to Manny and not knowing who to lend our Canadian support to. Neither of us are giant football fans. We just kind of gravitated towards Man City for two reasons: 1) They have historically stunk. Like really bad--especially compared to United, who have won quite a large number of accolades. 2) We are only about 8 blocks from the City of Manchester Stadium.

We went to see a game in mid-October with Dave from my ball team. He is a dyed in the sky blue City fan from way back and he not even a native Mancunian. He is such a fan, he knows the names of the players!

Now it doesn't matter that we won't be living close to the stadium. We are true blue Mancs now.

I've been to a number of live sporting events: Hockey (Ice), Baseball, Football (Canadian and American), and Basketball. None of them have even come close to the atmosphere at the City game we went too (Noise wise--The NFL in Seattle still takes the cake).

The game was a Champions League match between City and Villareal. I think we ended up with great seats, although there was a bit of overhang and I don't think we got the full brunt of things being thrown on us.

Anyway, here is a link to the write-up of the game (click here). It was phenomenal.

Here are some crappy shots of the game:

It was weird that they didn't sell beer at the game. Dave thinks it was punishment for some rule infraction. The other funny thing was I got a meat and potato pie instead of a hotdog. MMMMM pies.

It was so much fun. I only wish we went sooner. I tried to get some other tickets to premier league games and they were all sold out. Bummer. I guess I'll  just have go and watch the whitecaps and take my City scarf with me.

More tomorrow. Later!

CC

A Bit of Manny

Heather and I set a date a few weeks ago to just walk around our neighborhood and take some night photos. We enjoyed ourselves immensely, but our usually mad photo skills didn't really translate in the 'night' setting. Anyway, just thought we'd share. I've also been carrying my camera around more to catch some snaps of our neighborhood. I usually end up taking pictures of bricks or ruined buildings, or ruined brick buildings. There are a lot of 'em here and I will severely miss 'em.

And what are photos of Manchester without Manny cats?

You have to look hard to find Black Willy.

Later

CC

Blogstrations 2.0

Isn't the future rad? I just spent 4.5 hours today writing a sweet post. It is now gone. I feel like Elias.

I'll get it up again tomorrow.
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OK--It's up,  below this post. I should have picked Tumblr.

CC

Oout and Aboot

Hey Ruffians!

With all this Continental travel you might think Heather and I are ignoring the blissful pleasures that jolly olde England provides. Well, you are wrong! After Scandinavia we realized the severe lack of time we had left here and that we had a long list of activities that we wanted to do, mostly all close to home. I also wanted to keep busy with fun things, or I knew I would get to anxious about going home and would pack up our house by the first week of October. Fortunately, I refrained... although our bookshelf has been reorganized in a number of different configurations.

Have I ever talked about Cornerhouse? I've written too many of these bloody things now and I can't remember what I've said. Have I posted any pictures of Manny Cats? They sure are nice. Right...Cornerhouse. So, it's an movie theater with a cafe, bar, restaurant, bookshop, and art gallery--all is one. We dream that Vancouver could have a place like this. Well, a few weeks ago we headed off to our very first quiz night at Cornerhouse. We were graciously welcomed into an existing team of Felica's mates who have been attending the Monday night quiz at Cornerhouse for 10 years or so. Needless to say they are very good at trivia. We ended up splitting into two groups annnnnnnd our team won!!! It was a free quiz, but the prizes were great--beer and movie tickets! The questions were mostly international and not UK specific, which was our biggest fear and reason for not competing sooner.

Example question (answer at the end of blog) What artist created the logo for Chupa-Chups?

One of the strangest feelings for us during the year has been our proximity in Manchester to other large urban centers. We really have nothing like that in BC, unless you consider proximity to the thriving metropolis of Mission to be exciting. It's also strange too that it took us so long to go to Liverpool. It's about the same distance as to White Rock from Vancouver. I like White Rock, but I think Liverpool has a bit more going on. To be fair though, Liverpool does not have a wave pool.

I think it helped that it was a fantastic fall day when we went to Liverpool. We started with tea down on Albert's Dock and that's pretty much where we spent the whole day.

We went to the Tate Liverpool. I really liked this painting. It looked totally different photographed than in the gallery.

After the Tate, we went to the slavery museum. It was really sad. Although the UK did not have slavery the majority of ships that took the human cargo of slaves from Africa to the new world were based in Liverpool and that is the foundation for it's wealth (and of course the shipping of the cotton that was picked by slaves, brought to the UK, and manufactured in Manchester). Anyway, it was an ok museum, but one with a very strong and powerful message.

Strangely, the slavery museum is in the same building as the maritime museum and the customs museum. Here are some shots of the customs one. Can you spot the smuggler?

After all the museums we needed a little tipple and headed to a the pub down the street from the Cavern, the bar where the Beatles first started playing. There was a lot of Beatles stuff around the city. A lot. Too much. I wanted to go on the Beatles tour, but only if Ringo was the tour guide. They take you to all the places from the Beatles songs. The only problem is they are all torn down now, so they tell you a story, play the song, and you have to imagine it. Well, I can still imagine it and not pay 35 pounds too.

Anyway, there were spots reserved for the fab four in this pub. Look at the plaques in the lower right.

We went for sushi, but it was crap (and small, too) so we had to have a bit of pasta at Jaime's Kitchen before we took the train home. Just wait Canada, Jaime's will be invading soon. Interestingly, Liverpool does not seem to be infected by the same "trash everywhere but the bins" disease that Manchester is. It was clean. A nice day trip.

The next weekened we wanted to take advantage of the fantastic autumn weather. It was as warm in the last week of September asin  any week in May or June. After sussing out some intel on where to see the fall colours (thanks Thor!) we decided to have a little walk in a town called Edale.

It's not much of a town per se, more of a railway stop, pub, and collection of farms. It was lovely. It's the start of the Trans-Pennine trail (the Pennines are like the mountain spine of the island) and you can walk a long way from here on trails. Although both Heather and I are fitness freaks and go hiking a minimum of 25km every weekend, we decided not to take things too strenuous this weekend and went for a leisurely 2km.

There was a lot of English wildlife beasts regular animals along the way.

Sheep

Cows

Giant Cows (Rather, Giant Bull)

It was a great area.

Along the way we passed through and English campground. For real. That is some fine paddock livin'. This will be one tradition I'm not taking home with me.

The proper way to end an arduous journey.

That weekend we went to see Art Brut. I had seen them with ol' Danny in 2007 and thought they were fantastic live. Their albums leave something to be desired. They have a new album out and it is not very good, but we decided to check them out anyway based on the 2007 show. Very glad we did. They had a "real" show and everyone was engaged and laughing and dancing up a storm. If they are in your neck of the woods, check em' out.

Quiz Answer: Dali created the Chupa-Chups logo. Buy yourself a beer if you got it right.

Blast-er from the Past-er
Doesn't this seem like yesterday? Is this how it is always going to go?

Manny Cats!
A little nap in the bushes for Narcoleptic Ned.

Get ready for a football blog next.
CC