Liverpool England - August 26, 2010

We arrived at Liverpool early in the morning.  We had not joined a tour as Liverpool is a walking city and we wanted a day off a bus/taxi.

We started the day by walking down the waterfront.  We've noticed in all the cities that we've been that they take great care to make their waterfronts into a place for gathering and remembrance.  Lots of statutes to the soldiers of WWI and WWII.  We walked down to the Mersey Maritime Museum.  It seems Liverpool is connected to the sinking of all three major cruise lines that have sank in the past.  Titanic, Lusitania and Empress of Ireland.  All three sank within a 3 year period.  The museum was quite impressive.  We went through 2 exhibits which took about 2 hours. 

Next we headed out to town.  They have a large shopping area that allows no cars.  It has a carousel and street venders....in addition to the shops such as Armani.  We strolled thru this part of town, enjoying the people and listening to the everyday conversations.  The accents are so much fun.  When the people start talking fast it is almost like a language of their own.  You can't understand anything!  The children though remind me of those on Mary Poppins.  The other item we noticed was hair here.  Children, mainly young boys are 99% red heads.  Just adorable....Josh would fit right in here and in Ireland.  Then there are the older girls (15-25) who dye their hair some bright shade of red/magenta.  Streaks or whole heads, it doesn't seem to matter.  And on a fashion note, if our trends come from over here we will see the tights with long shirts.  No heels.  I think in an 8 hour time period, we saw about 5 women with heels.

Enough of that, next we went off to Cavern Club area where the Beatles performed as well as many other bands.  Those that perform there have a brick in the wall.  During the day it's a nice place to tour, but they say at night it's shoulder to shoulder because of the large number of pubs and bands playing.

I want one of these street benches.  How cool!

We then headed up from the river some more to St. George's Hall.  In the pre-Victorian era this was where justice was dispensed.  Children in this area were subjected to the same treatment as adults including Hangings.  It wasn't until Queen Victoria came to power that children were treated differently including Reform schools.  The gardens here were beautiful as well.

We ended our day on the Mersey River Cruise.  We sat inside and just listened to the history as told by the pilot.  It was a nice place to just relax a bit before we headed back to the ship.  The ship is very impressive to see in these ports.  Locals come from around to see us off everytime. 

Again, beautiful weather, albeit a little chilly today.  The locals that we talk with ask us to leave the weather but we're hoping it follows us every day!

Belfast Ireland tomorrow.