Flamingo languages

Great Things to See and Do in Manchester

• Manchester Pride

The Gay Village and City Centre Manchester’s dynamic lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) festival provides 10 days and nights of colourful celebration including film, arts, community events, heritage and entertainment.

• Queer Up North

The UK’s original queer arts festival celebrating everything queer, where art rubs shoulders with smut, puppetry sits side by side with indie-queer music, fierce debate meets gender bending cabaret and soap opera vies with hip hop.
Annual, from the end of the 1st week in May for 3 weeks

• Shop ‘til you drop!

You will find Manchester as upmarket and exclusive as London’s Bond Street, as bohemian as New York’s East Village and as cheap and cheerful as an oriental bazaar. Check out:
King Street – for haute couture designer labels such as Vivienne Westwood and Giorgio Armani.
Market Street – for high street brands including Mango, Urban Outfitters and Diesel.
Exchange Square – for Selfridges and Harvey Nichols.
Deansgate – for House of Fraser, formerly Kendals, the UK’s first department store, founded in 1833.
Afflecks Palace – for retro and vintage alongside funky, up-and-coming designers.
The Trafford Centre – for an out-of-town shopping extravaganza, American style.
The list goes on!

• Clubbing

Manchester has always been at the forefront of club culture. The famed Hacienda is now a trendy apartment block but the best of the rest include: Cruz 101, Manchester’s oldest gay club going strong for 15 years, Sankey’s Soap in Ancoats for serious house music and the Music Box on Oxford Street for a student and mad-for-it crowd.

• Live music, from pop to classical

The likes of Justin Timberlake and Kylie Minogue have graced the large international venue, the Manchester Evening News Arena, and the city whose sons include Morrissey, the Oasis brothers and Take That is proud of its rock music heritage.

For a more refined evening the world-renowned Hallé orchestra has its home at the Bridgewater Hall.

• Performing arts

We have 13 theatres, some of which are in the most unusual venues. Check out the Royal Exchange Theatre, a state-of-the-art theatre located in the Manchester Royal Exchange, a large Victorian building used for cotton trading until 1968.

Or if musicals are more your cup of tea we have the Palace Theatre and the Opera House, two of the city’s oldest and grandest venues.

• Free museums and art galleries

Within Manchester’s urban playground, you’ll find free-to-enter museums and art galleries including Manchester Art Gallery, the Museum of Science and Industry, the Imperial War Museum North (amazing building designed by wunderkind Daniel Libeskind) and Urbis.

• Sports

As an international sporting centre, Manchester is top of the league. Our football pedigree speaks for itself and you can take a tour of both Manchester United’s and Manchester City’s stadiums. The 2002 Commonwealth Games has left Manchester with a range of even more world-class facilities including Manchester Aquatics Centre (swimming and fitness) and Manchester Velodrome (cycling). But we also enjoy cricket, boxing, golf and greyhound racing!

• Experience cultural diversity in Chinatown and on the “Curry Mile”

One of the largest Chinese communities in the UK, Chinatown offers a wealth of Asian eating experiences and celebrates Chinese New Year in style. Meanwhile Rusholme is the centre for Indian sub-continent cuisine and the perfect place for a 3.00 am curry. Manchester also has a big Irish community, reflected in the many Irish pubs in the city.

• The Gateway to the North Country

On your doorstep is some of the most beautiful countryside in the world in the Lake District, home of Beatrix Potter and William Wordsworth, and the Peak District. Pack your boots! Yes, your walking boots as well as your thigh-highs!

• Las Vegas-on-Sea

Welcome to Blackpool! A classic, and at times highly camp, British seaside resort with funfairs, miles of slot machines and shoreline gay clubs such as the Pink Flamingo and the Flying Handbag!

• London in under 3 hours

By Virgin (!) trains…but why do you need to go to London when you have all of this?!