LISA

Our Australia Day in Liverpool

Hi all,

It's Lisa here. Yes, Paul has finally persuaded me to write something for our blog. It's not that I'm lazy (really), I've just been doing all of my study first, instead of procrastinating :p OK, anyway, enough of that, I'll get on with the story hey?

This Saturday just gone we went on a trip to Liverpool (the European Capital of Culture for 2008) with the exchange society of the Uni. Just as a side note, the Student Union here is absolutely awesome! The Union building has shops, insurance agents, 5 bars and a job centre, and the Union has something upwards of 300 'societies' in it. Anyway, we headed off to Liverpool at about 9am. The two hour drive was really quite a lovely experience, winding through the English countryside past all the little farms with little sheep and little brick walls everywhere. Ok, it may not all be little as such, but it's certainly smaller than Australia. As well as gazing out of the windows we used this time to have a look at the map and the information we'd been given and start to plan our day.

When our 5-coach convoy arrived in Liverpool we were dropped off at Albert Docks. It's quite an amazing place that covers the area of three football (soccer) fields. The docks themselves are wet docks designed basically as a series of big ponds surrounded by warehouses. They had a big impact on the shipping trade in Liverpool when they opened because ships could come in and unload straight into the warehouses rather than having to wait weeks for land-based transport of goods, and they negated the effects of the 11m tidal range in the MerseyRiver. So, with all this great history the MaritimeMuseum which is onsite is a very interesting place. It was our first stop and we could've gladly spent 2 days there but only had time for about an hour and a half if we were going to see the other attractions. Before we left though we did take the time to squash a penny in their machine (1pound cost, and now legal thanks to a legal amendment - phew). They're really nifty. I got mine imprinted with a schooner (sailing ship) and Paul got the Titanic.

Next we headed up Duke St towards the "small ChinaTown" to see the Imperial Arch. We wandered the streets for a little while looking for the feature and managed to find instead the ruins of an old church called St Lukes which we got a good photo of. After some more searching we located the arch, funnily enough on the corner of the street that we originally cam out of - it was hiding behind a building I swear! The arch, while seemingly diminished a little by the surrounding old buildings is 15m tall and is the largest Imperial Arch outside of China. It was pretty cool.

After this we headed uphill to the largest Anglican cathedral in the world (why do they always build them on the top of the hill?). Wow! It is a sight to see! It's really hard to actually get an idea of the enormity of the building, even when you're standing next to it, because the building blocks are much larger than normal bricks and so everything is in a similar proportion to the small churches. Nonetheless it is amazing!! We took lots of photos here of the stained glass and the inside of the building. The experience was enhanced by the choir practicing for a performance that night. The sound just filled the space. Hopefully I caught some of the effect in the video. We planned to go up the viewing tower which would have given great panoramic views but something had happened earlier that day with the lift (to some of our fellow coach travellers) and the tower was shut for the rest of the day. It did save us money though. In fact we got through the whole day just paying for our transport and souvenirs.

While still in church-seeing mode we headed to the new-ish (1980's) Catholic cathedral down the road. It's a really unusual cathedral designed with a circular main hall and small chapels for different purposes branching off around the outside, joined to the main by stained glass. Apparently the locals call it 'the wigwam' because from the outside it looks a bit like a tepee. Inside, the whole place is lit by natural light through bright blue and red stained glass panels which give the impression that they've actually hidden neon lights around the place. It's something else. The photos of that are definitely worth looking at.

Next we found St. George's Hall which incorporates the old courtrooms and cells and a public dance hall, and has now been transformed into an historical centre. Here we got to visit the abovementioned parts, and also read about the history of the building (Queen Victoria visited and liked it apparently) and had the dubious experience of smelling the scents of Victorian England (human sweat, industrial smoke, rotting food and raw sewage). Why did we smell the little bottles? For the experience of course! :D

On our way back to the Docks we wandered through the city centre (mostly taken up with pedestrian mall) and visited the outside of the Cavern Pub where the Beatles apparently originated. Unfortunately we didn't get to do The Beatles Story museum tour which was back at Albert Docks because the line so long our coach would have literally left without us, but it would've taken 2 hours anyway, and we were happy we saw as much of the city as we did.

Finally we went and bought some souvenirs to go with our squashed pennies. Among other things we got a Liverbird pin. The Liverbird was named after Liverpool and I'm not sure if it's only found there, but they're very proud of it. It's everywhere: on signs; on the tops of buildings; and statues in the street.Feeling weary, but satisfied we jumped back on our coach and headed home.

We went out to the Walkabout Pub that night to celebrate Australia Day. The nightlife in Leeds is supposed to be legendary and I can see why. The clubs and pubs are packed out every night of the week. Crazy. Anyway, it was alright, but I don't feel the need to repeat it very soon. But hey, I'm just not cut out to be a partier I don't think.

So, enough for today. Will update you all soon after our trip to Nottingham and Sherwood Forest.