But you say "That's exactly how this grace thing works"

Reporting continues. Now for the London weekend which was already weeks ago. Shame on me for laziness and sever lack of time to keep this more up to date.

In the tube on the way to Hyde Park

Tourist under the Marble Arch

The weekend started epicly (again). On friday was Marianne's birthday party where I left early to get loads of sleep before I had to catch the early morning train to London. In the end I went to bed around midnight. At 3.10. am our fire alarm went off. The next 15 minutes or so me and everyone from our block spent outside freezing our arses of and wondering what's going on. Turned out that some bloody fresher was cooking in the middle of the night. Very lovely.

Elizabeth was home

Art in the park

Entrance to Saatchi gallery

The other majorly negative moment of the weekend was when some idiot decided to kick Nuutti when I was trying to take photo of him in front of Marble Arch. Now I know that Fluffy Polar Bears fly pretty well when kicked. I might slightly lose my head and do little screaming at the guy who did the nasty deed and ended up being at least slightly sorry for what he did. Or I just ended up to be a funny story going around UK.

Poor bear after his flight

Souvenir from LDN

Camden, newly weds taking pictures on the bridge(!?)

The highlight of the weekend was definitely Mumford and Sons. The gig was amazing, so much more than I ever would have expected. The music really hit me straight in the face. The lyrics, the melodies, the way they performed it. The feelings going inside me, all. They were just pure amazingness. So touching, so realistic and almost ironic, so everything, so life. Very boringly said: no words can describe it.

And otherwise weekend was really nice one. I met loads of nice people (hey to them if someone is reading!), learned modern English ("I could do with a crisp pint of strongbow"), got new shoes (yay!) and had good time. I just love London and everything what's going on there. But in the end it's also very tiring and I was so happy to be back home in Sheffield. It feels like home everytime more and more.

A dreamer dreams she never dies

Now something completely else: Manchester! And without any footballisms!

So last Thursday two Finnish girls and one Slovenian girl headed out of Sheffield early in the morning to explore the city of Manchester (which is a quite difficult name to write! My dear MacBook: I love you and your autocorrection program!).

True. And one part of the solution in uni.

While we were on the bus on our ways to the Sheffield railway station we realized that no one had had the time to do any research about the city and we didn't know anything about the city or how we would/could/should spend the day in there. Fortunately we found a map stand out side of Manchester's railway station and got our first directions from there. Till we found signs to tourist info and got a real map and loads of advice about what's nice in the city.

Nice wall in Chinatown

The first thing we noticed that definition of a park is different in Manchester compared to one in Sheffield. In Sheffield park is green space with grass, trees etc. In Manchester it was more like concrete opening with a fountain and 5 trees. And I'm really starting to realize the greeness of Sheffield when traveling out of the city cause other places are so much more gray when Sheff is really green.

Newer parts of the city, looked really fancy

But back to the day in Manchester. The lovely ladies in the tourist info gave us tips about nice museums and interesting buildings. During the day we visited tree museums: The Manchester Art Gallery - very interesting exhibition on uppermost floor, The Museum of Science & Industry - under construction/renovating and really badly organized and The People's History Museum - very nice and interesting, I'm so going there again!

Tourists playing with art instillation

Entrance to Museum of Science and Industry

The museum was under.. umm.. something and mostly closed.

Funny hats! People's History Museum

For the old times sake: Once member of Lyseo - Always a member of Lyseo

Emma playing with puppets

Mojca and Emma trying to choose a song

We also spotted few nice buildings like the Town Hall and the John Rylands Library. The library was very nice building: they had combined an old building with a new one really nicely. And I like libraries. They're smell nice, are quiet and full of books (lol). People in libraries are focused on what they are doing and they are so calm places. I love to spend time in our Western Bank library, it's a normal library unlike the IC which is library for cool people me thinks.

Nuutti on a statue in front of Town Hall

The Town Hall

Lane on the side of the Town Hall

Inside the library

Fancy windows

The meeting point of old and new

But back to the day in Manchester. Again. After culturally educating ourselves we headed to the shopping district of the city. There was the wheel of Manchester (looked very much alike the one in Sheffield.. just saying!) and the girls wanted to go for a drive. I stayed put and had awful time with too eager pigeons and hence on the next night I had horrible nightmare about huge pigeon in my room trying to attack me.

The wheel

After surviving from the pigeons we went and did little shopping. Everyone bought themselves a pair of shoes. I so needed the new pair: all my shoes have suffered severely from walking the hills up and down in Sheffield.

Before leaving we decided to take the long route to railway station and go and try to find a Banksy from the city. After getting lost once we found it and I saw my first Banksy! Yay!

And again. It was so lovely to get back home to Sheffield.

The water is warm but it's sending me shivers

Last monday me, Emma and Nives hopped on a train and made a little trip to Leeds.

The city seemed nice but somehow very generic. The city centre was strictly on grid, all buildings were tall, big and massive, but it lacked the character and laid back atmosphere that Sheffield has.

The Leeds Town Hall. Massive and scary.

A fancy hotel near railway station.

There was owls all over the place. Loads of them.

Cute pub?

Wise words of Nelson Mandela in the middle of a fountain.

Emma and Nives taking pics in the fountain.

Humangous snails!

But the reason why we went there is here:

MGMT played live @ O2 Academy!

Before the gig started funny thing happened. We wanted to have few drinks but in the bar they didn't believe that we had enough aged and asked for IDs. Here comes the funny thing: they didn't accept European Union driving licence or Slovenian ID card and asked for passports. No one had one. As the girls of actions we decided to go somewhere else for drinks and then come back when the band was starting to play. Did they let us out and promised to let us back in? No. So we whined a bit about the situation to the bouncer and the next thing they called the owner of the O2 Academy Leeds to come talk with us. No, he didn't kick us out, he helped the damsels in a stress and appointed a special bartender for us :D That's what I call service!

Mr. Nice Bouncer

An expensive and loads of work demanded cider.

Nives and Emma before the gig with their ciders.

The gig was okey, the band was trying bit too hard to be a real band rather than just having fun on stage. Only during Kids they started to dance and sing bit more freely.

After the gig we did some epic running through the city to catch the last train to home. And it was soooooo nice to be back home in Sheffield!