A Buzz through Preston, Lake District and Manchester

fiona and i finally paid a long overdue visit to jane june in preston. what's more, it was quite a surprise to find out that she was good friends with my ex-classmate. it really is a small world.

23 May 2009

we arrived at manchester by bus. oh bus journeys are so terrible...... anyways, our arrival at manchester wouldn't be complete without a picture at the famous 'wheel of manchester' near the shopping complex.

me and fiona at the wheel

streets of manchester

me and jane june

we went on for some hong kong dim sum at pacific (known to be even nicer than the even more famous dim sum shop). anyway... yum yum.. it's been a long time since i've had dim sum.

xiao long bao.. with soup inside, one of my favs

siew mai.. nice!

rice with siew yuk.. delicious!

luo mai gai wrapped in banana leaf, jane june's fav

har gao... a dish we always order

hong kong chi cheong fun with sweet juicy prawn fillings.. finally i got to taste the authentic version

lo pak gou

me and fiona at the arch of chinatown near pacific

after lunch, we hung around the shopping complex while waiting for our food to digest (so that we could eat somemore! muahahaha..). it was big man.. really what i envisioned uk shopping to be like.

outside hard rock cafe manchester

we really couldn't go to manchester and not try the famous egg tart. so off we went after sufficient digestion. i tried the egg tart along with bubble tea. it was nice! i didn't think it was better than those in malaysia though, especially sri petaling's tong kee. gosh i miss that.


after that digested, we went on to eat a spicy dinner at the sze chuan restaurant - red chilli. wow, another fantastic meal. sadly to say, since we've been practically eating the whole day, our MMC cycle had not kicked in yet, and we were bloated... couldn't really eat much even though it was so nice! good thing there's this thing called 'da pao'.

clockwise from left: lao gan ma frog legs, spicy mutton soup and kao lan with lapcheong. even the appetiser was nice - pickled carrot and.. was it papaya? served with salted nuts.

after dinner, we took a bus to preston where we stayed a night at jane june's place. a very nice place. really looked like one of those uk houses in the movies. the view was fantastic too!



24 May 2009

we were headed towards lake district that day. yay! i finally got to go to the much heard about place, kononnya top attraction in london.

preston train station. hmm.. was it the oldest or sth? can't remember.

the quaint little town at windemere, the place where we stopped.

we took a trail from windemere. they advised boots with strong grip. we thought it was just an extra precaution. mana tau.....

we sorta got onto the wrong trail and practically waded through the shrubs. even though the directions said 'with the stones and roots as your path', this was a bit too much. halfway up the endless mountain with my sport shoes slipping against the muddy and steep ground, with a sharp fall (or you can say long roll) behind me, uncertain paths ahead and no more poor grass for me to grap onto with a vise grip to hoist myself up.. you can say that i was desperately wishing i was anywhere else but there.

many stone walls we climbed. where there was no way, we made a way.

finally, we made it to the top! the view was fantastic, worth every shiver on the way up. i don't think i'll repeat this again by choice though. haha.. once is enough.






we subsequently made it to the top, the one we were supposed to reach according to the map.

picnic picnic! scrumptious food for ravaneous people.

after food, the energised us began our descend.







we crossed one big field (duno whether it was actually allowed or not) and guess what we saw??

fat fat rolly polly sheep! hee..

cows with faces looking like hollows (from bleach!)

finally we were out! phew! due to our unintensional 'short cut' where we zooped straight up the hill instead of winding around (as i imagined the real trail to be like), we only took 2.5 hours as compared to the recommended 3 hours. we even chilled quite long for lunch. well, i guess there's benefit in getting lost too!

next we headed toward the lakeside..




i really loved the lake side! so much! what can i say? just staring idly at the water crashing against the rocks make me feel so at peace, so tranquil. it's a good place for people-watching too.






finally, i still had to part from that place. sigh.. we made our way back through another path, passing wide green meadows. they look deceptively small, but they sure take a heck of a long time to walk through. illusion!

sheep again. hehe.. i didn't manage to get one shot of a sheep with black faces though. sigh.

we saw many scarecrows around too, due to some charity reason.

jane june also introduced to us (and succesfully got us addicted to) sweets!

next day, 25th may 2009, we checked into hilton chambers together with yi lyn to spend yet another day in manchester.


we went back to pacific again for lunch. this time with some new dishes such as..

fried rice with salted fish

abalone prawn dumplings

char siew chi cheong fun

wo tip? actually i can't remember what this was. lolz..

picadilly square at manchester - the place where people just hung around, enjoying some performance on stage.

dinner was back at red chilli, since they wanted to try, it was so nice, blah blah blah.. ok, actually it was because we wanted to eat it again. haha..

belacan kang kung, to supplement our repeated order of the frog legs and mutton.

sakai time, as usual

26 may 2009

me and fiona didn't go see the man u stadium, we went shopping instead. haha.. shocking right! yi lyn and hung jen went though. so here's our rep.

we tried some other stuff at the egg tart shop Ho Ho. all nice! sigh.. how come.. it's really hard on our pockets. is it coz we crave asian food so much? haha..

finally.. another agonising bus ride home. the sights were nice though: panoramic views, windmills and gas storage tanks etc.

all in all, it was a really fantastic trip. gosh i miss jane june and xiang ying already. sigh. of course not forgetting their cute housemate fleur, who inspired us all with the dragonball movie - lame but entertaining.

really had a great time. great food, great company, great sights, what more could i ask for? anyways, till we meet again then! cheers.^^