Ireland Day 15

Today was a day to spend in Liverpool. We got up and had a big breakfast of eggs, rashers, sausage, hashbrowns and toast, along with Café Americana. Beth decided to provide the mornings entertainment.  Beth orders her eggs over hard or as she likes to say "like hockey pucks". when they arrived on sourdough bread she proceeded to cut into them. Unbenounced to her they were cooked in butter and fairly greasy, so as she cut into them the eggs slipped off her plate , off the table, hit her lap and landed on the floor. Oh would we have known so we could have videoed the episode and tried to wen the $10,000 prize. We then headed for the Albert Docks.

Once at the docks we had a brief look round while we contacted our cousin Lynne and her husband Geoff. They live about an hour south in Wolverhampton and agreed to come up to Liverpool to spend the day with us.

Beth and I took a stroll down to the Mersey to see what kind of boat traffic there would be. Although we saw tugs, a few freighters and the ship building yards we were surprised at how few pleasure craft there were and how few ocean going ships that could be seen. The Mersey seems to be about as wide as the Detroit River but with currents and tides it seemed to move a lot faster than the Detroit River.

After sorting out meeting times we went in to The Beatles Story, a museum about the origins and life of The Beatles.

The museum was well done, it told the story of The Beatles right from John and Paul meeting, through the Quarreymen, to Beatlemania

and finally to the break up in1970. The audio tour provided was narrated by John's sister and was well done. After the main tour they gave an up date of the four lads from Liverpool ending with the death;s of George and John. This is a must do for any Beatles fan.


After the museum we met up with Lynne and Geoff and took a bus tour of the city. While waiting for the bus we walked around the Albert Dock Area. Liverpool has done quite a bit of reno work on the docks filling old buildings with hotels, restaurants, museums and posh shops. Some of the more interesting things were a ping pong table set up on an old boat ramp

 and floating apartments for rent in the basin.

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These examples, the Joker, the Yellow Sub and the Titanic were available for  25 pounds per person per night.  Busking was not as common as I would have thought but as we got into the city more and more buskers appeared on the pedestrian malls. 

 The bus soon arrived and we were on our way.

We started though the old gates to the city from the docks

 by the Mariners Cathedral

 We saw some fine old buildings and interesting eateries, although this one probably needed a name change.

When we got back to the starting point we stayed on for a 1/2 turn longer and got off at Matthew Street. Home of the Cavern. The original Cavern building was had its upper floors demoed and the cellar caved putting in an underground that never happened.  Near the site of the first Cavern is a wall with the names of all the acts over the years that have performed there starting with The Beatles.

Across the road a reproduction of The Cavern Club was built were musicians of all stripes from major players to unknown still play to the public.

From Mathew street we walked by a lovely old church that was bombed out during the war, today many a couple book weddings there as it supposed to bring good luck unless of course it rains.

Liverpool has become quite the place to have HEN PARTIES. These are similar to Stags only the women from the bridal party go out to party one last time. If we saw one Hen Party we must have seen a dozen. Usually the bride to be wears some kind of "I'm an idiot" proclamation on her outfit or head and the rest of the group have "I'm with her" outfits. From the church we continued across town to the Liverpool Anglican Cathedral

Unfortunately we only had about 15 minutes before it closed for the day, hardly enough to do it justice. From the Cathedral we walked to The Quarter, a restaurant were we had another lovely meal. After dinner we said good bye to the Wolverhampton Cousins

and then good night to Liverpool.

Tomorrow off to Lincoln were "I feel a need for Speed" and a much needed jet fuel injection.