The days in a life of a Manchester tourist part 1

Hello again! It's been some time since we last spoke, I have been having a very busy time in Manchester! I am really liking it here! It reminds me of new York in some respects, but is very compact. And it doesn't have the tastelessness of London (billions of people 24/7, expensive!) So I don't want to leave! Even though, according to my ghost tour guide, mancunians life expectancy is 5-10 years younger than other parts of the country (he gave surrey as an example, I didn't understand the reference). But anyway let me go in order and tell everything that I can remember starting with Thursday: I went to bed at 12am on Wed night because that was when the common room at Ashton closed. So when I woke up to have breakfast, I saw Alex the French guy. We chatted a bit. He was real sweet. I sneezed and he got me tissues from the bathroom. We were having a fun conversation, I was saying something about a story Louis (English guy) was telling me the night before about the Chinese mafia in the Manchester Chinatown. And Alexs English is pretty bad so he thought I said I was the head of the Chinese mafia. So that has been the butt of many jokes the past few days that no one else gets. So after breaky I went to the Manchester museum and was there all day till closing. I saw the ancient Egypt, natural history, Manchester history, and world cultures exhibits. Then I went to the portico library cause it had an exhibit on Alice in wonderland. It took me so long to find the damn place I nearly gave up but I'm glad I found it. They had old editions of the Alice series, and some new adaptations, like pop up books and translated stories and parodies. The library itself was real cool, it was so old, the books were all falling apart and most had to be held together with string! Then I went back to the hostel. Alex was there again and there was this dutch girl. So I got talking to her, her name is Alicia. So we were just hanging out in the common room but since the children in need concert was going on just down the block, I wanted to go to the bars close by so I can ask the crowd how it was once it ended. So Louis is a bartender at the hard rock cafe, which is in the print works, which is very close to the MEN arena. I had wanted to go there anyway to check out the memorabilia. So I asked Alex and Alicia if they wanted to go with me. So we started getting ready and these 2 french guys in the hostel that Alex was talking to asked if they could come. So we all left together. They are casino dealers in France and are going to be working at a casino in blackpool in a month, but they came to Manchester to improve their English beforehand. I told them Manchester is not the best English city to try and learn the language and accents of the locals! So when we got to the hard rock, the concert just ended so there was a mad rush of people. But Louis gave us free drinks all night if we donated to the charity. So we did and we got these bracelets that say imagine theres no hunger. It was a fun night, despite the French guys having difficulty with English. Alicia spoke English well and knew some french so she was the interpretor. At one point I saw a guy waiting by the bathroom with the CIN teddy bear ears so I knew he had gone to the concert. So I asked him how it was. He said it was amazing. I asked who his favorite act was and he said lady Gaga. I told him I was jealous cause I would have liked to have gone to the show and lady Gaga would have been my fav too. So we were chatting about it for a bit, he even took off his ears and gave them to me! And said that way I can feel like I was at the show. How nice! then his gf came out of the bathroom and didn't like that I was talking to her bf and pulled him away and got mad that he gave his ears to me. So they were arguing about that so I offered them back to him and he said "no no you keep them, that way you can say lady Gaga was your favorite act!" So I kept them and wore them all night :-) god his gf and her friends were such cuntrags. I asked them if they could tell me about the show too and they all ignored me. I swear some people just have the worst insecurities when it comes to relationships. But anyway a bit later on in the night, they left and I said thank you again to the guy and he gave me a high five. Now as the night went on, Alex and I were swapping clothing, piece by piece. It ended with me in his shoes, jacket, watch and glasses, and him in my shoes, sweater, purse and ears. Then Alicia and I went roaming around looking at the music stuff on the walls. There was a prince drum and a chili peppers skateboard! So when the bar closed we went back to the hostel. We got along really well, I had a lot of fun. And I was a bit tipsy for the first time in a long time. Louis made me this like milkshake drink with frangelico in it. Mmmmm!! So ok let's move onto Friday: had the usual breakfast in the hostel. Louis never gets up in time for it because he works so late, so I grabbed some fruit and put it next to his bed. Then I went to the whitworth art gallery once I left. It's contemporary art, so I wasn't overly impressed with some of the art. Although they had a permanent textile exhibit with clothes from other cultures around the world, old stuff from the 19th cent and modern stuff. They also had a shadow puppet section which was cool, and another shadowy exhibit with "dark" paintings. There was another small exhibit called air pressure and it was a documentary on the day to day life of a family who owns a farm at the end of a runway in a Japanese airport. The govt tried to kick them out in the 70s so they could build the airport, but they refused to move. How awesome is that! But it was quite sad, seeing them do their farming duties, and loud planes are flying overhead over few min!! So I saw the whole museum then went back to the Manchester museum and finished the world cultures exhibit and went to another Egypt one. Then I went straight to the victoria rail station for a ghost tour. I had time to kill so I ate an apple and a nutella sandwich. I searched all up and down that damn station and I couldn't find the bathrooms or any garbage pail anywhere!! Even outside of the station. I ended up throwing my apple core in a flowered area.so then the tour started. That was really fun, whenever the guide mentioned a story about a head missing from a dead person he would take a fake skull out of his bag and say he stole the head. I thought it was amusing. So I learnt that most urban open spaces are old church grounds. A lot were demolished and there is a law that you can't build on old sacred grounds, so these cities just turn them into little block green spaces. The stories were quite cool, there was this one in particular that struck me. A boat that set off out of the river irwell had sunk, and it was a big event to see the launching of the boat (it was like the first one) so a huge crowd witnessed this. One man from Scotland who came down to see it, stripped off his clothes and jumped in to save drowning people when the boat tipped over. He saved 4 people that day, but when he went back to land, someone stole his clothes, and he died of hypothermia later that day! How awful is that! So the tour went on for 1:40, we went to the  courtyard area of the town hall, where Sherlock Holmes, harry potter and some other movies/shows have been filmed because it looks like a 18th cent setting. After the tour I went back to the hostel cause I was supposed to go out with the new crew to the xmas markets. But apparently Louis got called into work, but I still wanted to go to the markets anyway, so I asked Alex and Alicia if they wanted to come with me and they said yes. I didn't want to be out too late cause I was already sleep deprived for the past 2 days. But Alex wanted to eat so we left late. But it was fine cause I met our new roomies, 2 hot guys from haydock and 1 cute guy from wigan. They were real fun and easy to talk to and I quickly got along with them. The guy Neil from wigan was showing his Canadian/Aussie friends the Manchester club scene cause they never been to manny before. And he brought his 2 sexy friends. So at the end of the convo I tried to recap their names. I was 1 for 3. I thought mark was Matt (so close enough) but I thought Paul was Thomas, so from then on I just called him Paul Thomas. So I went out with alex and Alicia but by the time we went to the markets, they were closed. So we went to a whetherspoon bar close by the town hall but it was very crowded, so then we went to yates. We sat outside at first, ordered a LIT pitcher. For the first time, Alicia was realizing how English girls dress for their nights out. She was completely freaked out. She turns to me and goes "english girls are so trashy!" And sh e just kept making faces of horror all night long, because it never went away. And at one point, 2 got into a brawl. She was not impressed. I'm glad this is just an English thing though, and that dutch and other Europeans have more class (Alex vouched for the French). Attention! I have to interrupt this blog post for an important announcement. I am going to meet up with the crew now so ill have to continue tomorrow!
And its freaking raining!