Google City Experts Manchester

On Thursday Mr Thrifty and I hopped down to Manchester’s Victoria Baths for a knees up in the shape of the Google City Experts Manchester launch party. The launch party was held down in one of the beautiful pools, which gave us a great chance to really appreciate how grand the building is. First opened in it houses three swimming pools and Turkish baths which served locals for 86 years before closing to the public in. Surrounding the outskirts of the pool itself you’ll find old fashioned changing cubicles, some even complete with their original red and white striped curtains for privacy.

Look up and you’ll find a balcony from which to watch your friends and family splash, along with a beautiful glass ceiling and some impressive stained glass. In the Victoria Baths building was featured on the BBC programme Restoration and won a national public phone vote to receive National Lottery funding for a restoration project. The baths now open for regular tours, private events and even the occasional vintage market – if you’re local to the area it’s well worth trying to have a look round. I talked more about it here back. But back to the party. Google invited us to join them in celebrating a new strand to their services – Google City Expert. What on earth is it? It’s super simple, basically users of Google+ can leave reviews of their favourite local  places which are then added to Google Maps. As a thank you to loyal reviewers Google then invites reviewers to cool and interesting events in that city.  To be classed as an expert (and invited to events) you must have uploaded 50 reviews and continue to upload at least 5 per month.

Google being the power that they are, they know how to throw a great party. As we descended into the pool they set about filling us up with locally themed cocktails from Manchester mixologists The Liquorists, brisket burgers from BarnHouse Bistro and local ice cream from Ginger’s Comfort Emporium , oh and plenty of sweets from good old Swizzles Matlow. I finally got to speak to some bloggers from blogs I’d been reading for years and it was great to read the reviews of local galleries, restaurants and pubs on the huge map Google had erected at the deep end of the pool. If this physical map is anything to go by, the online version is going to become a really useful resource. Mr Thrifty and I added a couple of recommendations to the map to before hitting up the silent disco.