Trips To Manchester is an independent guide to the city, written and maintained by Samer Alqaisi. It is part of a network that includes Trips To The World and separate guides to Istanbul, Madrid, New York, Dublin, Prague, Budapest, Vienna, Edinburgh, Dubai, Cairo, Sydney, Toronto, Hong Kong and Mexico City.
What this site is trying to be
Manchester gets written up as a football city or as a music city, and both are true and both are small parts of it. What the city actually is, is the place where industrial urban life was invented — and where a great deal of the political machinery for surviving it was invented too, usually by people who had been on the losing end.
So this site gives that its own article — The City That Made the Modern World — and treats the practical side seriously: the Bee Network’s fare caps, the fact that a Premier League ticket bought from a tout is a criminal matter, and which of the free museums are actually open on the day you go.
It also says the smaller things out loud: that the Curry Mile is no longer mostly curry houses, that Victoria Baths is not a swimming pool and has not been one since 1993, and that the Peterloo memorial cannot be climbed by a wheelchair user, which is a real criticism of a monument to the fight for representation.
How it is researched
Opening times, ticket structures and access rules come from the venue’s own source and are dated on the page. Where a price is not shown, it is because it has not been checked recently enough to print.
Some things here move a great deal. Manchester Town Hall has been closed for years and its reopening has slipped repeatedly. Parts of the Science and Industry Museum have been shut for roof work for long stretches. Heaton Hall opens on a handful of days a year. This site says check rather than printing a schedule that will be wrong by the time you read it.
Corrections are made quickly and acknowledged.
How it is funded
Advertising and some affiliate links, mainly hotel and flight search. If you book through one, the site may earn a commission at no additional cost to you.
What that does not buy: no hotel, restaurant, tour operator or attraction has paid for a mention or a position here. No sponsored posts, no paid placements, no press trips.
Where something is not worth the money, the page says so — which is why the Christmas markets entry points you at Stockport and Altrincham instead, why the National Football Museum entry says plainly that it will not convert a non-fan, and why the airport article tells you not to book a private transfer for a fifteen-minute train ride.
Photographs
The photographs on this site are not the author’s. They come from Wikimedia Commons under licences permitting reuse, and every one is credited beside the image and again at /credits/.
Corrections and contact
If something here is wrong or out of date — a price, an opening day, a closure — please say so. Specific corrections with a date or a link are the most useful kind.
The contact form goes to a person, or write to [email protected].