I'm in Manchester. A very first impression is that it is quite interesing architecturally. It has that 19th century Victorian industrial (but wealthy) quality about it, with a recent sort of post modern veneer on top of it. The city seems to have managed to have been in such a bad way in the 1950s and 1960s that the city largely missed out on modernism, at least near the centre, which is a clear blessing. Intermittent blogging will occur over the weekend.

Update: A word I should have used is "gothic". But it is a more grungy, industrial gothic than the more ornate gothic you get on 19th century public buildings in, say, Cambridge.