A Day Out in Manchester

 

During our week off in July, we headed to Manchester for the day as we had booked to go and see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at the Palace Theatre. We had initially looked at driving into Manchester, however after trying to find an affordable car park somewhere near the centre, we changed our minds and made a decision to get the tram from Whitefield. It turns out we didn’t pick the best day for my first experience of a Manchester tram as the Ashes were on and there were crowds of cricket fans piling onto the tram heading across Manchester. Despite this, we managed to make it to our first stop, which was the Science & Industry Museum. This museum was free to visit and taught us all about science and industry in Manchester through the ages. Sadly for Nicole, we were only a few days away from being able to go into the Food, Poo & You exhibition, but it was still a good option for a few hours before we had lunch and headed to the theatre.

For our meal options, I had been looking on Tik Tok for some ideas. I came across Salt & Pepper, which sells a variety of salt and pepper inspired dishes. I opted for a salt and pepper chicken wrap, and Nicole had the same but with tofu. These came packed full of filling as well as having a few chips and some salad inside. There is also a chance to choose a dip to go with it, I had the garlic mayo and Nicole had the lemon mayo. As we knew this would be a busy lunchtime stop and we wanted to make sure we had eaten in plenty of time to get across Manchester to the theatre, we aimed to get there as they opened. We’re glad we did, as the queue was very quickly out of the door and didn’t really let up until after we left. This is somewhere we will definitely be going back to again to try some more items from their menu.

We then headed over to the Palace Theatre, which was about a 30 minute walk from Salt & Pepper. We had booked seats in the circle and for the matinee performance. We very quickly realised once we had taken our seats, that the date we chose was possibly a bit of a mistake as we were sat in amongst lots of groups of school children who were attending as an end of term treat! Despite this, we still really enjoyed the show. The story was very closely related to the films, but with some new songs. It was a musical that we hadn’t considered seeing before, but one that we would really recommend.

We had booked a table for our evening meal, however had some time to kill before our booking. Therefore, we decided to try out Junkyard Golf, which was just a few minutes walk from the theatre. We managed to get blue light card discount on the golf which made the games half price, so after realising it wouldn’t take us long to play a game we decided to play on 2 out of the 3 courses. We also treated ourselves to a mocktail whilst we played. The golf was fun, but as each course was only 9 holes it was over quite quickly. When paying half price it was value for money, but may struggle to be if you are paying full price, particularly when you compare it to other crazy golf locations.

We made our way to our restaurant for our evening meal, which was American Pies. This was somewhere we stumbled across when looking for ideas online. We started our meal with some tater tots to share, which were crispy and golden, and very moreish coated in garlic butter. We then followed this with a small pizza each. However, small potentially isn’t the right word as the pizzas feature a robust pizza crust and are deep fill with tons of cheese. I chose the pepperoni and Nicole had a goat’s cheese and vegetarian n’duja, both of which were delicious. I didn’t manage to finish all of my crust as it was very filling and would consider sharing in the future, although this is difficult with our differing tastes and I did still manage to find room in my pudding stomach for a shared ice cream.

After filling ourselves up on our large but very tasty meal, we went back to the tram and made our way back to the car. All in all, a fun and very foody day out.