Corinne CrawfordThe area in Manchester where my hostel was located is called Northern Quarter. Apparently, no one in the Northern Quarter had dirty clothes because the closest laundromat was a total of 20 minutes on a bus and 20 minutes walking. But as I mentioned in a previous post, I had no clean underwear and I I had my dirty hiking clothes from the day before so laundry was a necessity. Manchester has lots of buses and trams for transportation all around the city and it is possible that I could have gotten to the laundromat on the other side of town faster using some of these modes of transportation, but Manchester also has a free bus that has two routes circling two different parts of the city. Rather than figure out any transfers or getting a bus pass, I settled on the free bus and walking as the laundromat was well off the route of the bus. But it was thankfully a nice day without rain.
I was pleasantly surprised with the private room I moved into at the hostel. They put me on the top floor which was a little more peaceful farther away from noise of the busy street below. The room was quite large with a comfortable queen bed and private bathroom. This room almost made up for the issues I mentioned before with the hostel, but the morning of my departure, someone must have severely burnt their toast because before 8am, the fire alarm started sounding. The alarm was piercing both inside my room and the hallway. I peaked out into the hallway and did not see anyone else leaving their rooms or heard any sort of noise indicating that an evacuation was necessary. I could smell the burnt toast smell so I suspected that it was kitchen related and made my way down the stairs to the first floor to the kitchen to see if there was any reason to be concerned. There was no fire, the burnt toast must have just set off the alarm for the whole building and it soon ceased.
As I walked around the different parts of the city, I kept noticing references and illustrations of bees. It was on the buses, trash cans, posts and many businesses. I wondered if there was a bee cult here in Manchester but on my visit to the public library, I observed a display that explained Manchester’s connection with the bee motif. Many businesses adopted the bee as their brand and even if they didn’t have an actual bee on their walls or part of their logo, you could notice the hexagonal shape on walls, decorations and even the shape of some tables at cafes.
