Our day started with a quick breaky provided by the hotel. I really enjoyed my marmite toast, perhaps I was craving Vegemite, but the scrambled eggs were terrible. We caught the train to Liverpool, about an hour away, and once we had orientated ourselves we headed to the Beatles heartland centred around The Cavern which despite being closed & practically destroyed in the late 1970's has been reopened. No matter what Beatles souvenirs you could imagine the sho...

Leaving York this morning at 9.26 bound for Manchester we once again had some interesting travel companions on the train, not least the crazy cat lady who when speaking to her boyfriend managed to bring every conversation back to cats. The trip was only an hour twenty so we were soon at Manchester Piccadilly dragging our bags towards the Holiday Inn Express. We got there about 11am and were lucky enough to get checked in straight away. We were also impressed by ...

Up early to go through immigration (Again!), have our final buffet breakfast & disembark the ship. It was farewell Thomson Spirit and into central Newcastle with a couple of hours until our train to York. Sean was more than keen to get rid of all his formal wear now he didn't have a need for it so we dragged our bags to the little post office which luckily had a helpful lady working in it. After weighing the box numerous times to get a range of prices we end...

We had 2 at sea days to relax & sleep before arrived back into Newcastle. Both days consisted of lots of laps around the deck, even in the wind & bit of drizzle. (I did get a few strange looks from the smokers but b***** them. At least I was doing something good!) Plenty of lunge feeding & catching up on laundry. We watched a short theatre production during the day on the first day (no singing or OTT dancing) & attended some game show entertainmen...

Up early for our immigration meeting at 6.55, as expected it turned out to be quite a pointless exercise. Straight to breakfast then off the ship not long after clearance- no tender after all! It was about a 20 min walk into the centre of town & being 8am nothing was open when we first wandered through the sporadicly designed pedestrian street which was lined with shops. Heading along the water & up towards the fancy looking high school we started the wal...