Last weekend, we finally made it to another city for a couple of days and put our manly chests on the train to Manchester.

Sorry.

That one was bad.

So we got to Manchester (can't stop thinking about that incredibly witty pun up there? - Same here) Friday night and went to a house party with the girl Mike knows from school and who we were staying with, plus her friend and housemates. The party was officially the smallest house party we've been to, but, as if for compensation, the place was a great attraction in itself. With a Maserati outside the door, we were expecting to see some luxury indeed, but still were surprised once we got inside.

The house had pretty much everything you'd expect in a yuppie place: a humongous screen instead of a regular TV, a fish tank embedded into the wall

an illuminated shoe rack

and, of course, flat screen TVs everywhere. We spotted five of them, but there may have been more (didn't check under the bed or in the oven, for instance).

Saving the best thing for last, though: the guy had a smoke machine in his living room. That's right: a smoke machine! Unsurprisingly, the smoke in his living room was no less annoying than it is in clubs. Plus, the guy had cherry flavour added to it, which didn't quite make it better. But somehow matched his pink t-shirt:-P

To all this openly displayed wealth we preferred the comfy dosses at Birte's place

On Saturday we went downtown to find out Manchester is a much more urban and truly big city in contrast to the rather provinical Sheffield. Our trip around the city centre confronted us with a number of peculiarities: firstly, a German shoe shop

and secondly, a rather off-mainstream shopping centre with, let's say, rather curious policies towards shoplifters.

sign on 1st floor:

sign on 2nd floor:

(We don't know about the 3rd floor. Didn't dare go upstairs:-P)