Exploring Manchester: Media City, Salford Quays.

'Ello 'ello 'ello everybody :)

How you doing? I can't believe it's almost the end of the week again, where does time fly to? But I'm not complaining, everyday would be a Friday if it was left to me. So my friend Tomi and I are always going on about how we need to explore more of Manchester and really step outside the confines of just the city centre and last week Sunday, we decided to do just that. After a little bit of brainstorming on how exactly to conduct our exploration we decided on a bike ride to Media City, Salford! We were both quite excited because Media City and infact Salford because it's somewhere that we've never really been to, Salford is always in the news for bad things and so I always thought of it as the 'dodgy' end of Manchester. Lol.

So we went online and searched for a bike rental company and came across Brompton Docks; this company rents out Brompton Bikes (the cool foldable ones) for a fee of £5 for 24 hours and a leisure membership annual fee of £1. Before I forget to say this, Brompton has quite a few docks across the UK so if you're interested in renting a bike for the day or maybe longer, head to their website and check if they have any near you.

Considering the price and the fact that we had our hearts set on the bike ride already we quickly signed up and went to pick up our bikes at the closest dock. I must say that following the instructions to unfold the bikes was the most hilarious part of the journey, I stood there staring at the contraption in front of me for a good few minutes before attempting to assemble it but once the hard bit was done it was all smiles as we followed our hastily written down directions to Media City!

Cycling on the main road is actually a very intimidating experience, especially when you haven't been on an actual bicycle in years, those ones in the gym don't count! We felt so unprepared with no helmets or knee pads like all the professionals alongside us but we weren't too bothered. Much to the annoyance of many people on the streets of Manchester, whenever there wasn't a clearly marked cycle lane, we just hopped on to the pavement and cycled there instead. Safety first guys! Lol. Let me just stop this tale at this point and say that Google Maps is a liar. After googling the cycle route from Piccadilly train station to Media City we were told to expect a journey time of 20 minutes. That's reasonable right? Just that in actual fact our journey ended up taking over an hour! Yup, we cycled for over an hour. It didn't help that one of the major roads we were meant use was closed off and that we got lost and kept taking the wrong exit at a massive roundabout but still, I blame it on Google Maps. We stayed in surprisingly good spirits through the whole debacle and just kept discovering new areas of Manchester that we wanted to explore, but by the time we arrived at Media City, our bums were sore and our legs were exhausted which only meant one thing. Food time!

Sadly as it was a Sunday evening a lot of the local stand alone restaurants were closed/closing but my super sharp food detecting device, which some may simply refer to as 'my nose', led us on a short trail straight to the open doors of Prezzo. Technically, it's July and we were meant to be doing a 30 day eat clean, train dirty challenge (more on how badly I failed on that later) so I felt a little bad pigging out and opted for one of their "lighter choices" which was surprisingly yummy and very very filling! Since there wasn't a single pigeon in sight, my fear of them is close to crippling, and we had no bike chains; we ate outside and enjoyed watching young families on the lawn opposite us playing tennis and having picnics. I thought it'd be a bit weird if I took a photo of them so I didn't but there was an adorable little Nadal in the making, left handed and all.

After refuelling ourselves and realising that it was getting quite late, we decided to cycle around a bit more and enjoy some of the scenery that we definitely don't get in our parts of Manchester. I think it's the river that really makes Media City what is is, there's just something so calming to me about water. When I get rich I'm going to live in a swanky apartment with a balcony overlooking a lovely river or better yet I'm going to move to Bora Bora and live my life there surrounded by the gorgeous blue sea.

Photo Credit: awesomeplacestovsit.com

We could see the Imperial War Museum in all its glory, so wonderfully designed:

These three lovely buildings I'm not quite sure what they are called but I love that they are triplets. Actually maybe in one of these buildings lies my swanky future apartment! I'm getting some good vibes from this!

We also found the Lowry Hotel and the Lowry Outlet Mall which sadly was also closed! I really didn't think it through when I suggested going in the evening on that Sunday but the thought of cycling in the boiling hot sun at 2pm was hugely unappealing to me! It sucked that everywhere was closed but it was such a dreamy evening with a lovely cool breeze that really nothing could get us in a bad mood.

We met a lovely couple taking an evening couple at the bridge, the man was quite excited by our Brompton bikes and when we told him we rented them was even more excited, going on about how he had one of those years ago and he recognised them from miles away. We politely asked him for directions back home because it was starting to get dark and no one wants to be cycling about lost in the dark right? And he pointed straight at the Hilton in Deansgate, I love that you can see it from almost any part of Manchester that your in and told us to follow the signs home.

See the three red dots in the sky on the right hand side of the picture? That's the Hilton!

I took one last picture of the scenic view and jumped back on the bike and cycled all the way home. The journey home took us only about 20 minutes compared to the 70 or so minutes it took us before and we felt so silly for it, who knew all you had to do was follow the road signs eh?

It was such a lovely day with Tomi and we vowed to have more perfect relaxing evenings like this one. I can't wait to tell you all about our next expedition! Haha.

Reni x