Holiday in Europe. London Paris Manchester.

Day 1. 16th Dec 2002

Left Qiuwei's bday party abruptly to catch a flight to Manchester via Brussels. There were hardly any Singaporeans on he flight, mostly British returning home for christmas perhaps. Yes! After one whole year of slogging, its finally time to get out of this place for a while.
Arrived in Brussels after an agonizingly long flight....standard of airline food is dropping. Only consolation is the huge bars of kit kat and hagendaz ice-cream.
The irritating thing in this post september 11th era is that you can't get off the plane at stopover points. Can be really frustrating especially after such a long flight and alll you long for is just tog et out of the tin can and into a proper toilet on the ground. Must say that the cleaners are really efficient though. 1 hour is all it takes for them to clean out the trash, load the food, dump the excreta, refuel, arrange the pillows, and of course, fix technical problems. That certainly requires lot off logistics.

Manchester is a pretty decent city though its definitely quite old and full of red bricked buildings. Its just like ur typical western city with nice sidewalks and little shops in old buildings. Don't be deceived though, most of the buildings in UK look old on the outside but the inside is really well refurbished. Nice friendly taxi driver called Tony took us to the Lansdowne Hotel.

Lansdowne Hotel? If u were thinking of a bell boy waiting for u, a spacious lobby to saunter into, a modern elevator to reach ur room, dream on. The hotel basically looked like a single house standing on its on. Not ur modern skyscraper, big building kinda thing. Its really a wonder how they managed to squeeze all those rooms in! Horror of horrors! Our rooms were on the 5th floor and the lousy old elevator wasn't working! grr....

Manchester City centre, Picadilly,