The night-time economy of Manchester is popular for hen parties and birthday celebrations and has expanded significantly in recent years. With investment from breweries in bars, public houses and clubs, along with active support from the local authorities, there are more than 500 licensed premises in the city centre and have a capacity to deal with over 250,000 visitors. With up to 130,000 people visiting on a typical weekend night the city centre has a 24 hour culture, it is not unusual for our limos to be sat in a traffic jam at 3am.
Public houses in the Canal Street area have had a gay clientele since at least 1940 and now form the centre of Manchester's gay community. Following the council's investment in infrastructure, the UK's first gay supermarket was opened; since the opening of new bars and clubs the area attracts 20,000 visitors each weekend and has hosted a popular festival each August since 1991. The TV series Queer as Folk is set in the area.
Staying in Manchester for the weekend or just visiting for the day. As well as shopping in Manchester City centre ther is also the fantastic Trafford Centre.
Opened in September 1998, this enormous new shopping and leisure complex has already been designated the "Temple to Consumerism", and is the largest centre of its kind to date in Europe.
Although it contains all the major high street department stores and chains - (Debenhams, Boots Chemists, Burtons, The Body Shop, Dorothy Perkins, W.H.Smith, Top Shop, British Home Stores, etc), it is much more than a shopping centre. Its gigantic dining hall, "The Orient", has innumerable fast food franchises and restaurants, (including a speciality Chinese street), in a dramatically theatrical ocean liner setting with swimming pool and performance stage with a large film/TV screen.
Even when shops close in late evening, the leisure facilities centred around the Orient , which also contain the UCI 20 Screen Megaplex Cinema, continue on until 12midnight.
A covered market area, the Festival Village, is included at the far end of Peel Avenue, where independent trader's stores add a more localised and down-scaled atmosphere than that found in the rest of the centre.
The Trafford Centre is a mammoth undertaking. It covers an area equal to 30 football pitches, has onsite free parking for 10,000 cars and 300 coaches, there are 350 closed circuit TVs in operation, its malls have over 3 miles of covered walkways, use 19 miles of drainage, and its roof bears around 2 tons of water a second in rainy weather. It produces 400 tons of waste packaging every week and uses enough electricity to power a small town. It is eventually expected to raise some £13 billion a year in till receipts.
The Trafford Centre abounds with superlatives; £40,000 worth of gold leaf decorates the columns in the shopping malls. Its 3 massive domes dominate the surrounding countryside for many miles and are a major new feature on the adjacent M60 motorway, especially at night when the whole complex is brightly floodlit. Its central glass dome is about 2/3 the size of that on St Paul's Cathedral in London.
Great reasons to visit Manchester in one of our Luxury Limousines.
