Articles
Manchester and Its Airport | Manchester, England, USA | 2007-01-01
Flying to Heathrow seems to me to get more daunting every day, so I am happy to tell you about another UK airport with which I recently fell in love.
Loving an airport seems almost like a contradiction in terms, but honestly it’s like everything else, once you get to know it, you learn to love it.
I discovered in planning a trip to Wales that flying to Manchester was about half the cost of flying to Heathrow. Since we were going to North Wales, and since I’ve been hearing about the re-born city of Manchester for several years, I thought it about time we paid it a visit.
Arriving in Manchester after an overnight Continental flight, I was a bit disconcerted to learn there were three terminals. (The Manchester Airport that I remembered from the 1980’s was small and inviting.) However, we quickly got our luggage, picked up our rental car, and got out of the airport on the first try (you know how complicated airport roads can be – think JFK) and off we went to Nantwich to friends for lunch, first stop on our journey to Welshpool, Wales and our National Trust house.
We decided to come back and stay in Manchester for the two nights prior to our return to Newark. I agonized a lot over staying in the city or at the airport (who ever stays at an airport, if they don’t HAVE to?) – but I reasoned that at least we’d be on time for our flight, and we could turn in the rental car a day earlier. Then I pondered staying on the airport grounds or just off the grounds at some imaginary charming B & B.
Airport won out, and after much research, we found a good price at an airport hotel called Bewley’s, which I always thought was a coffee shop in Dublin. Well, it is, but it is also now a new hotel chain. The price was 69 GBP per room, per night, every night. In a country where they say any room under 100 GBP per night is a steal, we found this rate most attractive.
So, after a nice ride from Wales through the southwestern exurbs of Manchester, we arrived back at Manchester Airport. By making a couple of mistakes we found the right road to Bewley’s, checked in to a very comfortable room, all brand new, with all the “modcons” except soap! (They had liquid soap in two places, but Jim was unhappy.) We decided to check out the neighborhood and found that getting off the airport grounds and back in to charming English countryside was dead easy. I wanted to get a look at a country inn called Etrop Grange as a possible dinner site. We had a look at the lovely common rooms, but were told by a very friendly head porter that we might not be comfortable there for dinner as they had a wedding scheduled. Instead he told us about a very popular pub nearby with gourmet food, and then proceeded to give us a superb map of downtown Manchester. I would definitely suggest that one could stay at Etrop Grange before or after a flight at Manchester Airport. It is practically on the airport grounds, and I’m sure they would van you over to your terminal.
On the porter’s recommendation we drove off to The Romper at Altrincham, which was indeed a “good food” pub. I enjoyed a duck and porcini ravioli with raspberry balsamic reduction, followed by salmon cake with celeriac salad, while Jim had pork chops with mustard sauce, butternut squash, mashed potatoes and apple sauce. We shared cheesecake with raspberries and blueberries, just so we wouldn’t get hungry in the night. It was an extra treat to get one more memory of English food and countryside before our flight home.
Wandering around some of the little towns nearby we decided that charming Knutsford is the chic shopping destination. If I had had another day in the area, I would spend it in Knutsford, window shopping and eating.
Since the next day was Sunday, we decided to drive our car in to downtown Manchester, though there was a fast train just a hundred yards from our hotel. Driving was a breeze. We found a parking place beneath the new Novotel (good suggestion for a night or two in Manchester, brand new, great location and great prices for anyone who’d like a couple of days seeing this vibrant city.) We were only a couple of blocks from the very attractive Manchester Art Gallery. This gallery is well worth an hour or two. (Ok, I think just about any art gallery is worth a couple of hours.) Here the favorite son is Laurence Lowry, a seascape and landscape painter native to the city. Pierre Adolphe Valette, who could be called a favorite son, was a French impressionist “émigré” who adopted Manchester as his home and stayed to paint the misty, dark and mysterious working class scenes of the city at the turn of the 19th century. He, in turn, was Lowry’s teacher. The gallery is very user-friendly especially for children of all ages. We enjoyed seeing lots of kids with their families, all enjoying several hands-on exhibits. The museum has been modernized in a very pleasing way, with a green glass bridge to the new building, and smoked green glass edged with pewter on the walkways.
We took the Hop On – Hop Off city sightseeing bus, and sat up top of the double decker for a long trip around the city, with a stop at The Trafford Center, The Lowry and the Imperial War Museum. Though we didn’t have the time or the inclination for shopping at the monster Trafford Center, we did want to see the magnificent Lowry Center, full of galleries, theaters, and restaurants. It’s architect, Australian Michael Wilford, won Britain’s Building Prize for the year 2001, beating out the Tate Modern and the Great Court of the British Museum. Not bad. We also wanted to see the Imperial War Museum, since we have seen the one in London. It was less historic and more of a polemic on War, but worth more time than we had to spend there.
There is so much more to say, and more to do than we had time for – but back to our airport lodgings we went – where we enjoyed a very tasty tuna and cucumber sandwich and a glass of Torrontes chardonnay, and prepared to come back home – always a pleasure.