Cinco de Mayo in Manchester

Ok, for those who don’t know the translation it is the 5th of May. Cinco de Mayo is a regional holiday in Mexico, probably a much bigger deal in the USA. What is supposed to be a fun day. The holiday commemorates a victory of Mexican forces led by General Ignacio Zaragoza Seguín over French forces in the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862. Cinco de Mayo is not Mexico's Independence Day (which is actually September 16). The date is observed as a celebration of Mexican heritage and pride (as it should be!). The celebrations combine food, music and dancing in honoring the culture of Americans of Mexican ancestry, much as St. Patrick's Day, Oktoberfest, and the Chinese New Year do for their respective ethnic groups.

So here were Beth and I at the Hard Rock Café on Cinco de Mayo in Manchester drinking god awful margaritas and eating $125 hamburgers (I swear the bill with tip was 65 pounds - one starter, two drinks and the two burgers!) The service was glacial, there was little food left on the menu (who runs out of spinach?), the Mexican music band pretty bad and somehow it was funny to us. Who knew there were so many Mexicans in Manchester? Imagine a Mexican accent with a Manchurian twists!

This could mean only one thing - today was the first day of the annual mother-daughter trip. We left London around 11:30 am and traveled as far as Stoke on Trent before we made a stop. It was either go through the traffic of Birmingham or take the easier route through Stoke. We opted for easy though Beth didn’t really opt for a bit of shopping. It felt un natural to travel past Wedgwood. Staffordshire, Hartley – Green and the other factories but we only made two stops. The Portmerion on the London Road and Spode. Portmerion by the way was having a tent sale –last day however! Beth was indoctrinated into the sisterhood of Stoke shoppers. She wasn’t impressed but at least she now understands!

We eventually joined the M6 motorway and headed north; planning on spending the night in Warrington before continuing on into the Lake District the next morning. One of the first things we saw while driving on the M6 was a large herd of cows on an overpass crossing the M6. I can’t tell you how odd this looked to our city eyes. 8 lanes of traffic, huge tractor trailers and some black and white cows! I just know that these cows have to go into the title of this trip somehow.

We checked into the rather dowdy Paddington House Hotel with rooms overlooking the car park and went in search of the Hard Rock Café in Manchester. It is some sort of ill defined family tradition to go to HRC’s while traveling. We still laugh about a Thanksgiving dinner spent at a HRC in Rome. I actually have quite a collection of European guitar pins.

Anyway, after some directional difficulties we actually found the Manchester HRC. THE directions we had made no sense and we finally managed just stumble on to it. (We did get to see Old Trafford stadium and the local version of the London eye though!). I paid some guy a pound to protect my car in a parking lot and off we went to Cinco de Mayo!