Liverpool May 18-19, 2017

Things I've heard, seen in Beatles documentaries, in Peter Pan, Charles Dickens stories, and in old Hollywood movies, led me to expect Liverpool to be the sad step-sister of London. I thought we'd see a city filled outdated, smoke-stained buildings with little style. I thought we'd see a slower-moving city with people with a slight down-cast demeanor. I thought we'd see dingy pubs where the city folk gathered to escape their tiny dingy apartments or cottages.

How do I control my wild cackling laughter???

Liverpool is a breath of fresh air. Yes, it has history and it does have has smoke-stained beautiful buildings but they are magnificent. It also has ultra-modern museums and the docks area can hold its own with the Sydney or Cape Town. Like London, Liverpool bears the marks of wartime. But it also has warm, cozy, lovely streets and lanes of buildings housing pubs, shops and hotels built in early 1800's. What a great place!!!

We took the bus from our Wirral apartment (community across the river from Liverpool) across the Mersey River via tunnel to Liverpool. Our apartment host had given us detailed maps with his own personal walking tour delineated. We got into a conversation with a man on the bus and forgot to look for our first stop. Well, that screwed everything up!!! In spite of getting off track, we managed to see almost everything on the list . . . just in backwards order!!! The very first thing we saw was The Cavern where the young Beatles played. Actually, the exact spot where the Beatles played is about 20 yards from the current location. The installation of power station forced the relocation of the Cavern to a new spot just down the lane. No one cares. Crowds flock to the club to hear people performing Beatles music live and dream that John, Paul, George and Ringo actually performed on the tiny stage there. I too want to think that, but I take great happiness in knowing that the Fab Four must have walked down that lane, Matthews Street, many times. Maybe their shoes left a mark in the bricks.

After the Beatles experience, we walked to Alberts Docks. We had heard about the Three Graces, but seeing them was fantastic. They are three old grand buildings; The Royal Liver Building (1908-1911), The Cunard (1914-1916), former headquarters of the Cunard cruise ship line, and then the Port of Liverpool building (1903-1907). Do find them in the photos.

War II Memorials from Norway, Belgium, China, and the Netherlands are showcased on the wharf. But the City of Liverpool also hosts a collection of free-entry museums on the waterfront as well. We visited the National Museum of Liverpool where we saw a 20-ft painting of the City of Liverpool skyline in perfect scale and detail. We walked through a depiction of a 1940's English house as it survived and dealt with WW II, the bomb shelters, the black-out curtains and the rations. One curious question posed there was: "You would be given 2 ounces of tea per week. How would you make it last?"

We made our way to the Liverpool Cathedral - the largest cathedral in England and the fourth largest in the world. It is huge, simply massive, and as we've seen so many churches and cathedrals in our travels, it is difficult to be overly impressed any more. It is truly beautiful, and it is relatively new. It was built on St. James Mount and its construction spanned over 74 years, from 1904 to 1978. It features a 331 foot tower. We went to the top of the tower by way of two elevator rides followed by 108 steps for a clear view of all of Liverpool, including Albert's Docks, the Three Graces and Wirral across the Mersey.

With a little help from our Liver friends, we actually found the proper stop for the bus to take us back to our apartment. On the way to the bus we passed the piafang Chinese Arch, a gift from Shanghai to the city of Liverpool for the Chinese New Year's Celebration in year 2000. Liverpool has the oldest Chinese community in Europe. The arch honors long-time commerce and cooperation between the cities of Shanghai and Liverpool.

Let me talk about our apartment a bit. It is in a very nice house on Holland Road in New Brighton with a lovely little garden in front and one in the rear. The owners live downstairs and there are two apartments upstairs with private entrances. As we came home each evening, the owners, Roger and Gay Haynes, met us at some point in the evening for wine and fantastic conversation. If circumstances were different and we lived closer to each other, we could certainly become great friends.

Some of that conversation explains why there has been no blog for a couple of days!!!

On Friday morning we walked the Promenade along the Mersey on the Wirral side. We explored New Brighton; we took the Ferry Cross the Mersey to Liverpool. Imagine!!! Ferry Cross the Mersey!! We crossed the Mersey River! Remember when Gerry and the Pacemakers sang that song, we hardly had a hint of what the words actually meant—we just knew it was a cool song.

Only visiting St. George's Hall and St. John's Garden was remaining on our list of to-dos. Funny, when we first arrive in a city and begin studying maps, the area seems so large and everything seems to be so far apart but not so. Stan and I walked every corner of the city, once on day one, and again on day two. We visited St. George's Hall and we walked through the disappointingly small, St. John's Garden.

Ok, walking is one thing, driving is another! We took the Express bus from Liver Pool One Bus station to the Liverpool airport. Our purpose was to pick up a rental car for our drive from Liverpool to Lanchester tomorrow. There are very few expressways in England - at least not between here and there - points we need to maneuver. The bus delivered us to the airport. All the signs read, John Lennon International Airport, above us only sky. Is that not wonderful?? It makes me misty.

I thought I might have a stroke riding in the front seat of the car on the left-hand passenger seat, wondering which car parked along the left side of the street might get its rear-view mirror knocked off because we came mighty, MIGHTY close to them. Granted, Stan has not driven a car in over 9 weeks. He had to sit on the right side of the car, drive in the left lane and shift the manual transmission. We had a long drive from the airport to the apartment and much of the drive was through very small streets and roads where we'd have to pull over to the left to let a passing car go by. Plus we were using i-phone navigation. We were re-routed maybe three or four times because we missed our turns. I felt as if we were in a keystone cops car going this way then that and oh, back again on the same street we just left two minutes ago. . . . It was highly unnerving. I can only imagine Stan's stress-level. But he is my HERO!! I can't truly say he was patient, but he certainly held it all together. He got us there. We knew all was well when we reached the King's Tunnel that goes under the Mersey to Wirral.

One last note. We thought it would be nice and rather nostalgic to see Strawberry Fields and Penney Lane but both were said to be a good way from town. Just imagine our shock when we made a turn to a street not far from the John Lennon airport in our newly rented car, looked up and saw that we were in fact on the real deal, Penney Lane!!! Imagine!