08.01.06
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| Salford Quays (click photos to enlarge) | Mom and me in the Lowry Plaza |
So I've been overseas for 10 days and I'm losing my Texas suntan... the climate is definitely a lot different here. I was in Manchester, England in the Salford Quays ("Keys", not Qways like Andy might say it :) ) for 5 days and it was mostly cloudy, cool, and rainy, much like the weather here in Germany. The Quays are a bunch of docks with residences, hotels, restaurants and shops in between them to make a nice little touristy area and a great place to hold a race. Mostly everything I needed was in walking distance.
It was my first time in the UK so when I first was picked up at the airport, I walked to the wrong side of the car and got a "you're not driving, miss!" Their roads are all quite curvy with lots of roundabouts and strange intersections which were especially confusing with the driving on the left side thing. I didn't get really comfortable with it until I had spent some time cruising around on my bike. I feel like I was born to live in England because I usually unclip my left foot at stoplights (and on the left side of the road I can rest my foot on the curb) and I'm much more comfortable turning my head to look over my right shoulder rather than my left.
I swam at the Manchester Aquatic Center downtown on Monday and Tuesday. This is a huge facility first built for the Commonwealth Games. It was nice to swim in a good pool and I got a couple good workouts in. Some strange things I noticed at the pool is that they had signs in front of the lanes reminding swimmers to swim "anti-clockwise" and they had community locker and shower rooms. It was a little weird but I guess they do that a lot in Europe.
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| Salford Quays | Ray saved the day..my bag! | Salford Quays |
