On Friday we finished packing up and checked out of our hotel. They allowed us to keep our bags there while we spent some time doing a few more things before it was time to catch our train back to Manchester. We walked to a bus stop and rode a bus to Westminster Abbey. From there we walked to St. James Park and through the park to Buckingham Palace. It was fairly busy because people were getting ready to watch the changing of the guard at 11am. We continued walking and got some pastries and drinks to walk with. Then we walked through Hyde park and back to our hotel.
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| Bus Stop |
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| Top level of a double decker bus |
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| Sitting up front on the top level |
Westminster Abbey
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| Statue and Traffic Circle Outside Buckingham Palace |
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| Buckingham Palace |
We got our bags and rode a tube to the Euston train station and then waited for our train. There had been 2 more train strikes that week (3 during the time we were in the UK) and that meant that the trains were extra busy. We got some lunch and waited. They were only showing the platform number about 10 minutes before the train's scheduled departure time, which made it feel a little stressful. The station was full of people watching the monitors and then when the platform was announced for a train a big group of them would run to get there. As our time approached we positioned ourselves close to monitors in the direction we thought our platform would be. Sure enough the platform was announced and we were swept up with a crowd headed to the train. Managing luggage and everything made it a little difficult, but we made it and sat pretty close together on the train. We settled in, more relaxed now that we were headed in the right direction.
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| On the Train |
Once we got to Manchester, we got another train to the Airport and then walked to our hotel from there. We opted to stay our last 2 nights very near the airport because our flight out on Sunday was at 7am and I couldn't find any public transportation options that would get us there early enough. We thought about taking an Uber or Taxi, but decided staying close would be the easiest option. The downside to that is the airport is quite a ways out from the city and that added a lot of transportation time to our next couple days.
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| On the tram |
After we checked in and got settled in our room we headed back to the airport to catch a tram into town. The tram takes a winding route and we saw a lot of the town that way. There were some teen boys that got on that had terrible language, a bike (not allowed) and smoking e-cigarettes (also not allowed). Luckily they weren't on long...another cultural experience. We stopped at the Piccadilly train station and got dinner there. Then we rode a tram out to the National Cycling Center. From the website it looked like the Velodrome had been closed for refurbishment but one thing I saw suggested that it would re-open in October and I was hopeful that they were having some racing there. Unfortunately the Velodrome was still closed. They did have some kids practicing in a giant indoor BMX track and we went and watched that for a while.
Then we made our way back to our hotel. Along the way I saw a sign that said there was an interruption in service due to a 3rd party accident. We hoped they would get things back running by the time we got that far, but unfortunately they were diverting tram passengers to busses, and you sort of had to know what bus number would get you where you needed to go. We ended up taking the tram back into the city and getting a train to the airport. It was a little crazy because it was getting pretty late at night and the airport is a ways out so we were starting to get worried about how it would work out.
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| National Cycling Center |
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| BMX practice |
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