Manchester (UK) & Belgium (Brussels, Bruges) Day 1

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It is winter break now and most of my friends has gone back to their hometowns. The university halls of residence is as quiet as the grave, with nobody walking in the corridor but myself. I joined my Malaysian friends for holidays to Manchester and Belgium. It was a 7 days trip dated from 18th to 24th of December 2008.

Let’s get started with Day 1.

I woke up quite early in the morning and had my breakfast before I left to Newcastle Rail Station. From my place, I took Bus Number “1″ which brought me to the rail station at the cost of £1.90 (RM11.40). At the rail station, I met up with Steven and John who were my friends for the holidays. The train to Manchester Piccadilly left the station sharply at 9.12am. Luckily, 3 of us reached the station just in time as Steven and John actually ran to the station from their place. XD

The train stopped for passengers at a few stations and took roughly 2 hours and 30 minutes to reach Manchester Piccadilly.

Next, we checked-in at our hostel located at Newton Street. Since our room will only be ready at 2pm, we decided to leave our heavy bags at the reception and go for lunch. We walked around the city and found a Chinese Buffet restaurant. We were all fine with the price and settled down there at last.

The cost of the buffet was £6.95 (RM41.70) per person. With student discount, we only paid £6.30 (RM37.80) per person. The dishes were great and there were desserts as well. =)

After lunch, we went back to the hostel. At that time, our room was ready. We walked up the stairs to the 5th floor (there was lift but it can only be operated by the workers). The room was quite big and there were 4 beds in total (2 single beds, 1 double decker bed). Showers and WCs are shared among the people staying on the same floor. We took a rest while discussing the trip to Belgium on the following day.

After that, John and I went to Marks & Spencer to exchange Pounds £ for Euro €. It took us a while to find M&S. I used Google Maps on my N96 for assistance. The sky was dark already by then. We had a quick tour around the town and took some pictures before heading back to Newton Street.

Back to our room, we had a short rest (climbing 5 floors up is tiring!). Then, we went to Subway for dinner. Each of us got a 6 inch sub sandwich for £2 (RM12). Besides that, we also shared a Fanta Orange drink.

Next, we watched “Transporter 3″ at ODEON. After student discount, entry fee was £4.40 (RM26.40). Price for a movie is £4.95 (RM29.70) back at Newcastle EMPIRE.

After movie, we met up with Phoebe, Ah Yew and Jason. 6 of us will be going to Belgium the next day.

The end of Day 1!

=)

Add-on: It seems that it has become a trend in OurCoffeestops to state the model of camera that was used to capture those pics. For this post, all pictures were taken with Panasonic Lumix LX3 except the last 4 pictures and video with Nokia N96. Cheers!

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