One Night in Manchester

Today I want to bring you my guide to spending one night in Manchester. This city in the north of England is worth getting to know for its mix of industrial heritage and contemporary attractions.

There’s not much to do in Manchester. Or so I was told at my hotel. And by the tourism board. According to the hotel, there was absolutely nothing to do but shop and go to bars.

According to the tourism board website, the top five things to do in Manchester included going to the airport. I wasn’t sure how I was going to occupy my one night in Manchester.

Manchester Hotel

When I wasn’t eating, that is. I traveled to Manchester by train on Saturday evening after spending the day in its rival city, Liverpool.

My hotel, the Malmaison Manchester, was conveniently located just down the street from the station. I looked forward to spending my one night in Manchester there.

I met a friend inside and we had a glass of champagne in the hotel’s lobby bar before having dinner at the restaurant, Chez Mal Brasserie.

Manchester Restaurants

We spent several hours enjoying blackened figs, crab cakes, tuna steaks, and baked Alaska with a great bottle of wine as the restaurant buzzed with energy and the open kitchen was kept busy with a constant stream of orders.

Manchester Bars

After the meal we were invited to have cocktails at the hotel’s Ember Lounge, a reservations-only bijou bar where our bespoke cocktails were made according to our tastes.

Manchester Hotel Room

Back up in our room, which the Malmaison Manchester had kindly offered on a complimentary basis along with dinner and breakfast, we slept soundly.

The room was spacious and decorated in nice soothing grays, and the bathroom was a good size with a range of amenities. It was a great place to rest our heads on our one night in Manchester.

We woke up the next morning to a rainy day outside. Undeterred, we made our rounds at the extensive breakfast buffet, ordered plates of eggs Benedict, and waited for the sky to clear.

Manchester Hotel Tour

While we were waiting, we took a quick tour of the hotel. We saw the conference rooms, the calm subterranean spa, and the small fitness room. By the time we had made our way back up to the ground floor, the rain had stopped.

Things to Do in Manchester

We got a map from the manager, who insisted that there was nothing to do in Manchester even as she pointed out places like Chinatown and the quarter with all the museums and galleries.

After speaking with her, we headed out into the city to see if we could prove her wrong.

Manchester Art Gallery

And we did. We found a lot of things to merit spending one night in Manchester. After a quick stop in Chinatown, we stumbled upon the Manchester Art Gallery.

We spent an hour exploring the museum, which had exhibitions about the city’s history that reminded me of the Museum of Liverpool and the M Shed museum in Bristol.

It also had 18th-to-20th-century-painting galleries upstairs. While small, the collection had some impressive works and we were glad to have come across it.

Lunch in Salford

Back outside, we met up with a local business contact of mine for lunch. He took us to a riverfront pub in Salford, Manchester’s neighbor.

The chef there was a big admirer of Fergus Henderson’s St. John restaurant in London, which offers “nose to tail” dining using all parts of the animal.

As such, the menu was rife with everything from wood pigeon to offal. First we were treated to unique local specialties like pickled tripe, spam fritters, fried sand eels, and bone marrow.

The first three were new flavors for me, although I had tasted tripe soup in Romania as a teenager. The last wasn’t, and it was my favorite of the four.

The small bites were followed by everything from shrimp soup to lamb and cheesecake. We enjoyed a leisurely lunch, then made our way back into Manchester to continue finding sightseeing opportunities.

Sightseeing in Manchester

We walked along Market Street and made our way to Piccadilly Gardens, where local restaurants were selling picnic baskets and other goodies for people to try.

We bought some food for the train ride home, then walked over to the pretty city hall building, the historic cathedral, and a market in St Ann’s Square.

After perusing the goods for sale, we made our way back to the Malmaison Manchester to pick up our bags and hop on our train to travel back to London.