Last day of travel with Daniel today. I wanted to have a look around Durham (the Cathedral and Castle) but we wanted to get to our hotel in Manchester at an early hour so that we could return the car and have a swim at the great leisure centre at the Marriott Manchester Airport Hotel.
Our B&B very nicely let us leave our car in their garage while we did our sight-seeing. I took a few photos on the walk to the cathedral:
The Cathedral (St Cuthbert’s) is absolutely fantastic. It’s just over 1000 years old. Totally amazing. Its sheer size reminds me a bit of St Peter’s in Rome. Photography was not allowed, for the inside. The inside had been used as a setting for one of the Harry Potter films, as well as for the ‘Elizabeth’ movie. But the outside is pretty magnificent too:
There’s some really nice buildings around these cobble-stoned paths and streets:
The castle is only able to be seen by guided tour, since it’s being used by the university. We didn’t have time to wait for the next tour, so I stuck my head (and camera) in to take a few snaps of the courtyard, after a few of the outside:
We walked back to the car to head to Manchester and our hotel without delay, since we wanted to get there early. The hotel offered me an upgrade from my ‘weekend special’ twin room at 69 GBP to a family suite for an extra 25 GPB. I declined. When they took us to the room, we’d gotten the suite for the 69 GBP anyway :-). It only had one little window though, so it was quite dark and dungeon-ish in the family room section! We dumped our things and headed off to the airport to drop off the car, which took no time at all – give them the key and go. Since it was only mid-afternoon at this stage, we decided to head into Manchester by train for some sight-seeing, since we’d not seen it first time ‘round. The afternoon sun was painting everything gold and shiny by the time we came out of the pub:
We saw a Chinese buffet that was well-attended (and cheap), so we decided to have that for dinner before heading back to the hotel. We got there around 8 and immediately got into our swimming togs to go make use of the leisure centre’s pool, spa and sauna and steam room. It was about time I got some exercise (apart from walking). After getting kicked out at 10pm (because it was closing, not because we were running around the pool!), we went back to the room for Daniel to pack his things ready for his early departure. Not without a couple of goodbye scotches though :-)
