A day in Liverpool.

Haiku-a-day:

Jan 30^th

We must live life well,

challenge all fears, and travel

as much as we can.

        Hello all!  Yesterday was the international student trip to Liverpool, home of the Beatles and one of the world's tallest cathedrals.   [Be prepared, this is another long post!]

        Our day began rather early compared to normal days (where we don't have get up until 9:00AM!).  My flatmates and I made sure to leave the flat by 8:25AM to wait with the other 300 kids at the Parkinson building.  (At some point I will probably take more pictures of the campus so you will know what this looks like.)  It was quite a challenge to get all of us together in proper order.  There were 6 coaches lined up to take us and everyone was assigned their proper coach number.  I was in coach 1, but believed myself to be in coach 2, so I waited with all the c-2ers until the guy with the sign-in clipboard told me my name wasn't on his list.  I had wasted almost 15 minutes in the wrong line and was very close to missing my bus!  Lucky for me, I found other people who were searching for coach 1 and we teamed up to find it.  After realizing the coach was not where it had been before, (there was a bit of panic going around between us then), we discovered that the coach had pulled around across the street and behind coach 6.  They were not as organized as I would have hoped, but what can you do?  So, I was finally able to get on the bus!  I sat behind some friends and shared a row with this very nice guy from Hungary.  His name is Peter and we talked for nearly the whole 2 hour bus ride down to Liverpool.  I also met 2 Canadian guys on the bus, only because they had overheard me talking to the Hungarian guy, and recognized my accent as being from the northern part of the U.S.!  Garen, one of the Canadians, politely interrupted our conversation to ask if I was a Packers fan!!  How funny!  We currently have standing plans to meet at a sports bar for the super bowl and watch the game with all the other Americans we can find.  Remember, the game starts around 1:00AM for us here!
       So, when the buses stopped and dropped all of us off at the dock in Liverpool, we gathered ourselves into groups and headed downtown.  My group was quite big.  There were the 2 Canadians and one of their friends, 6 of us Wisconsin girls plus one friend of one of the girls, and 1 guy from Holland who started tagging along with us.  Keeping us all together was hard, so around lunchtime we split up.  However, before that, we all went to the Beatles Museum.  I am not the biggest Beatles fan, but I will recognize their role in many people's lives and how they have still gone on through generations to be widely liked by grandparents, parents, and kids.  So, I went in.
       Since our group was so huge, we got group rates when paying admission.  The tour was an audio tour using headphones and clickers.  You could take your time going through any part of it and just click in the number of the next area as soon as you got there (this is also how Westminster Abbey did their tours).  I learned a lot about the Beatles history, all their name changes, music, inspiration, etc. all the way up to the deaths of George and John.

 Liverpool!

 Ferris Wheel.

 Beatles Museum.

 Kid working in costume.

 Creepy Beatles recreations.

Me in the recreation of an old bar the Beatles used to play in.

Lennon's glasses.


















      After we left the museum, our large group of 11 split up to get lunch.  Six of us went to Barburrito, which is pretty much the British version of Chipotle.  What's nice about this place is that if you have your student ID card, you get a discount.  So we ate, then split up further.  Roxanne and I walked over to the Maritime Museum and the International Slavery Museum while the other group headed straight over to the Great Space Cathedral.  On the way over, we passed the 2nd ride the city possesses: a swing-type ride.  I really wanted to go on it, but it was a little pricey and would have been quite chilly.  The Maritime Museum housed tons of models of old famous ships, including the Lusitania.  The Slavery Museum was extremely interesting, but of course, a little depressing.  They had some very cool interactive elements, though, such as a model of land that contain the fields slaves worked in, their homes, and the owner's mansion.  When you pressed buttons, part of the model would light up and you could read about it and how everything was run.

  Swing ride from far away.  (It goes higher than the Hilton hotel next to it!)
  Closer view of the ride.

  Up again.  Shopping and food area.
  Maritime Museum.
  Artwork in the International Slavery Museum.
  Pump House near the museum.

       When we were done with the previous two museums, Roxanne and I walked over to the Great Space Liverpool Cathedral.  It is one of the tallest cathedrals on earth.  According to Wikipedia, it "houses the highest (219 ft) and heaviest (31 tons) ringing peal of bells in the world."  The tower is even higher.  It is also the longest cathedral in the world.  Approaching the cathedral, you could just tell how wonderfully huge it was, towering over the entire city.  We could even see it from where the buses had dropped us off.  Close to the cathedral, the graveyard lay spread out like a park.  We made sure to look at it after we toured the cathedral.
       The cathedral was beautiful.  It was one to rival Westminster Abbey in my opinion.  Though it was not nearly as ornamentally decorated and showy as Westminster, it had a beautiful simplicity to it that made you want to just sit and stare at it for hours.   When we entered, we saw straight ahead of us a large open hallway that lead to a larger open room and a smaller room beyond that.  To the right lay the chapel area where people sat in chairs.  In front of where the chairs were facing sat a set of choir risers.  We walked down the hall in to the larger open area.  To the left was the gift shop.  Straight ahead were large stained glass windows.  We walked closer to the windows to get a few pictures when we realized that a crowd of men and boys were coming towards us, all dressed in full length robes, hands folded over their music binders, looking straight ahead.  They were the choir!  Roxanne and I quickly followed them back to the chapel area and listened to them sing.  It was an experience I am definitely glad I got to see and hear.  With the size of the cathedral being so large, acoustics were marvelous!  We stood and listened for a few songs, then went over to the gift shop and bought a few things.  I collect magnets from wherever I go (country or city, depends), so I bought a magnet there.
      After we were done in the gift shop, we met up with some members of our larger group and all bought tickets to go to the top of the tower.  It was a long wait.  It probably took us about 25 minutes to get there.  First you had to wait in line to get into the elevator to take you to level 4.  From there, you had to walk across the corridor until you got to the stairs, climb to level 5, then take that elevator from 5 to 10.  Sounds easy and quick?  Well, there were long lines of people wherever you went and they would only let 3 people into the elevators at a time.  Three people would come down, 3 more would get in and go up.  The wait was well worth it, though.  When we reached the top, the view was more than amazing.   My pictures cannot describe how wonderful it was!  We were so extraordinarily high atop the city!  We could see everything.  My favorite picture from the top of the tower is one that shows the shadow the tower casts on the city.
 View of the cathedral from the museums.

   

China town in Liverpool!

  Inside the cathedral.

  Looking up.

  Looking down the hall.












































































































































































  Stained glass window.

  Choir boys/men!
  The bells.
  At the top of the tower.
  View from the top.
  View from the top looking down.  Graveyard on left.
  My favorite.  Look at the shadow of the cathedral upon the city.  It's quite amazing.
  Distance.
  Part of the architecture of the tower.
  Liverpool has very cool architecture.  They mix old and new in a unique way.
  Sunset.
  More sunset.
  Roxanne and I.
  Going back down.
  You can sort of see that across the way there are two people climbing up.  It gives you a pretty good idea of how high and large the room is.

          After we headed back down, Roxanne and I decided to quickly look through the graveyard.  It too, as to be expected, was lovely.  I know that is an odd way to describe a graveyard, but it is just so much like something from a storybook that I can't believe it, with all the grave stones sticking up in rows and along walkways.  Since the graveyard is huge, we didn't get the chance to go through it all (we were running out of time before we had to get back to the busses).  I made sure to take a lot of photos though.

  Graveyard!
  In the graveyard.
  See?  Storybook!


  It goes on way back there.

       On our walk back to the dock where the buses were, we saw a crowd of girls gathered around the garage of a hotel.  Apparently a British boy band was in town.  This is actually my 2nd encounter with British boy bands happening to be where I am.  This happened in London too.  Anyway, we didn't see anyone from the band (not that I would have recognized any of them), but a back-up dancer was there shaking hands and signing autographs.  We passed them by and got onto the buses where we filled in the other group members (that we hadn't seen since lunch) on the rest of our day.  It was a nice ride home and almost everyone decided to use the 2 hours back as a good time to nap!


Our parting view of the cathedral from the dock where the buses are (zoomed in).