You are currently browsing the monthly archive for May, 2009.
If I’m entirely honest, Liverpool has never struck me as somewhere I’d want to go. I’d seen Brookside and had a pre-conception that they were football mad and hard as nails with an ear grating accent to boot.
We got the train in, which was a short 30 minute journey through towns I’d never heard of before, and without really going through areas that seemed to be getting more and more built up, like the journey into London and through it’s suburbs (although some might argue that the entire area between Manchester and Liverpool is suburbia), we were suddenly there. I had no idea what to expect from this big city, but stepping out of the Victorian station and walking half a block had some shocks.
First off was the strange temporary looking structure wrapped in brightly coloured plastic, which as we walked further around, proved to be a very un-temporary shopping centre. The curvy, brightly coloured plastic with graphics printed on it was a way of hiding a very ordinary 70s mall- the type where all the shops face outwards around a square on a few levels. If different periods and pieces of architecture could be ‘No-More-Nails’-ed together, rather than knocking it down and drawing up new plans, this would be the outcome.
Then, right next to this gaffa taped creation, was this massive square, that wouldn’t have looked out of place in central London. There was an enormous building which steps leading up to the front of it and huge columns all along the front, with a few statues dotted about, and I immediately could sense a feeling of history. Some of it’s uses include being a law court and a concert hall, and the huge square out the front has seen The Beatles play on it, along with many others.
From there, we wandered down to the Albert Dock, where we were overtaken by a DuckBus. For those of you not aquainted with DuckBuses, they are amphibious buses that take you on a tour of many cities, both by road, and by river. We decided immediately that this was the way forward, so we brought our ticket and we were off.
The tour guide was a very friendly woman who gave a very funny and lighthearted tour, packed with information. I saw the two cathedrals- one absolutely stunning, which took more than a hundred years to build, and the other- Paddy’s Wigwam, a weird cylindrical steel structure that apparently has one of Europes largest stained glass windows, but I didn’t get to see that.
I also saw where John Lennon married his first wife (apparently there were roadworks outside during the ceremony and they could hardly hear a word being said) and I also saw the ’streaky bacon building’ where the White Star Line’s offices were (the people that were in charge of building the Titanic). Only up north would they call a building the ’streaky bacon building’!
Once we were on dry land again we went for a wander around the Albert Dock, which houses a couple of museums, a Tate gallery, a few shops and a lot of bars and restaurants. We had some lunch and a drink (I had a pint of Magner’s, much to the dressed up lady on the next table’s disgust- she’d never feel comfortable drinking a pint!) and then we wandered back up into town.
We walked through Liverpool One, the brand spanking new shopping district that has been recently built, which has a rooftop garden and all the big name shops, housed in a half indoor, half outdoor shopping centre. It all looks very swanky, and not at all like I was expecting, and then it was time to wander back up to the station past Dickie Lewis (a famous statue of a naked man, which caused a stir when first errected because of his size- and the size of one part of him in particular!).
I actually really enjoyed my day in Liverpool, far more than I thought I would. The people were so friendly, very well turned out (putting me to shame in my denim skirt and vest top!) and incredibly proud of their city, proud of it’s past and it’s present. They were definitely footy mad, they definitely had a mad accent that I couldn’t always understand, and a strange sense of humour that I understood less than the accent, but they all came across as much friendlier than anyone you’d encounter in London. My pre-conceptions weren’t entirely wrong, but it’s definitely somewhere I want to spend more time.
I’m staying in the north-western town of St Helens for my summer holidays this year, using Rick’s parent’s house as a base for lots of day trips to nearby attractions. A day in Liverpool, a trip to Chester and their zoo and a day out in Blackpool are all on the cards.
The weather is currently lovely, and is supposed to stay lovely, so I might even come home with a tan!
How do you get the cork out of an empty wine bottle without breaking it?
I still don’t know. Answers on the back of a postcard please.
Somehow a whole six months has gone by without me blogging about anything except my honeymoon. Life has been so busy, it feels like my feet haven’t touched the ground, and it still feels like only last week that we were adventuring around Guatemala on flying buses.
Once we got back, it was time to get ready for Christmas, and this year everyone was coming to us for the first time. Then we turfed everyone out for New Year as we went to see the new year in Budapest which was amazing (-ly cold!), I’d reccomend it to anyone wanting to get away for a different New Year- just don’t try the local champagne. Trust me.
Once we were back, it was time to concentrate on work again, which even though exhausting, has proven to be worth it. In our spare time we decided to get a fish tank and slowly add fish to it- we’ve seventeen at the last count- zebra danios, guppies, gouramis, silver sharks and a pleco! It’s almost like diving again, but without getting wet!
We went up to London for an overnight stay for Easter, which was brilliant. We walked from our hotel overlooking Hydr Park to the Saatchi Gallery, went on the London Eye for a gloomy sunset view over the Thames and we had a lovely dinner at the Oxo tower. The Easter bunny even delivered to our hotel room!
Since then, we’ve been enjoying the beautiful spring weather in the lovely Brighton, and throughout May we’ve been out regularly enjoying (or not) the street entertainment, gigs, talks, outdoor theatre and the occasional insect circuses that have graced our town as a part of the Brighton Festival and the Fringe Festival.
So a definite E for effort on the blogging front, as I’ve definitely not done the last amazing six months justice, but I hope to start blogging much more from now on- so watch this space!
After a few more flying bus adventures through the mountains and getting off over 1500m higher than when we left off in Panajachel, we were left feeling slightly shell shocked, and as we had no idea where we’d been been dropped off (actually flung off, as the bus driver didn’t stop for us to get off, or for us to get or bags off the roof of the bus), we decided to get a tuk tuk to take us to our hotel. We were led through a pretty flowery courtyard and up a flight of stairs up to our room, which had a fireplace, I was relieved to see, and a beautiful balcony which looked out over the mountains.
The drop in temperature caused by the altitude was immediately noticeable, and after we had had a wander around the small town to get our bearings before we went to visit the market the next day, we sat on the balcony with a beer huddled up in blankets to try and keep warm. Dinner was the usual hurried affair and we were in bed early tucked under no less than five blankets!
After a very cold night, we were woken early by the noise of the market setting up and trucks revving as they struggled up the steep and narrow streets. We had breakfast right on the edge of the market while we compiled the very long list of presents that we needed to get and a few goodies for ourselves. We had purposefully not brought anything throughout our trip as were were counting on getting everything at the market.
We were surprised at the goods on offer at the market, I don’t think either of us had realised that although it does cater for tourists, it is mainly for people in the surrounding towns and villages that need to get their supplies for everyday life. So there was a huge area dedicated to selling dried fish, fresh fish, dried meat, fresh meat, dried fruit, fresh fruit… the list goes on. Having visited many markets all over the world, I braced myself for the pungent aromas that was to be expected from fresh meat and fish in a hot climate, but I was pleasantly surprised. It must have been because it was so much cooler that the small was much more bearable and the fact there were so few flies about, making it much easier to have a good look at local delicacies though I still couldn’t quite bring myself to try any of them!. The slight downside to the fact the market was more like an open air supermarket (albeit with more atmosphere!) was the fact that we couldn’t get all of the presents we were hoping to find. We still managed to get one of the very brightly coloured blankets, a few Christmas decorations, a beautiful hand-carved and hand-painted ceremonial Jaguar mask, a woven tablecloth (that we wished we could keep for ourselves!), a gorgeous jade and silver bangle for our friend’s newborn baby and some fantastic black jade earrings for myself. It was a hard day’s work and we rewarded ourselves by layering ourselves with blankets out on the balcony again and have a few beers.
Dinner was spent in an empty restaurant looking out over a fast disappearing market and a faster diminishing crowd. I loved Chichi (as it’s affectionately named), but I was starting to look forward to going back to Guatemala City and then back home, as it felt like we had been away for so long, and I was looking forward to central heating again (the promising fireplace in our room never did get lit)!
The last Central American bus ride we took was less fearsome than the previous ones, but what it lacked in excitement was more than made up for by the fact it had the densest human population per square centimetre that we had encountered so far, mainly due to the fact that the bus we first got on broke down and we were squeezed onto another full bus that was headed the same way. It was a long journey which felt longer due to the cramped conditions (people were even squeezing themselves into luggage racks), but we arrived back in Guatemala City all in one piece, and we checked into our motel.
That evening we read up on good places to eat in Guatemala City, as we wanted to spoil ourselves before a fairly hellish few days of travelling back to the UK, so we caught a cab across the city and found a restaurant that the guide had been raving about… and it was empty. After the bland and chewy meal was finished we went to a (German run) bar a few blocks away that actually did have a lot of people in, and a good atmosphere, but unfortunately for us we were no longer really in the mood to carry on drinking for long, so we went back to the motel again for a good nights sleep.
Well, until 4am anyway, which is when the city bus system seems to swing into action and toots and revs its way through till dawn, just underneath our window. It was because of this that we decided to switch hotels so we could get a last good night’s sleep in Guatemala. We dropped off our bags at the hotel so that we could check in later on and went off to do some exploring.
We started off at the city’s main square which had the government palace on one side and the beautiful cathedral on the other, and we spent a good few hours wandering the areas around the square and getting a bit more shopping done (we hit the super-tourist market to get the essential Guatemalan tat) and soaking up the atmosphere. Once we’d had enough of being semi- cultural, we decided to go and see one of the strangest tourist attractions we’d ever been to. The to-scale relief map of Guatemala. Yes, really. It was a strange scale, the vertical scale of the many mountains being of a different scale to the horizontal scale of the land, creating these huge peaks and valleys, and I finally realised why it had taken us so long to travel what I had presumed what a relatively small area of land. Why the relief map had been built however, I will never understand, other than it was 1905 and that there was no reason why not!
After checking into our lovely hotel and walking through the lovely corridors and walking into our lovely room to have a look at the lovely view from our window… I mean the brick wall built less than 10cm away from our window, I decided to have the first bath I’d had since leaving the UK and get ready for the reality of being back in the UK at the end of November.
I wont bore you with the details of our dinner that evening- even though it was a Peruvian restaurant, the food was exactly the same, and we got our last early night.
We were up at some ungodly hour the next day to catch a cab to the airport, where we flew to Flores (near Tikal where we first started our Guatemalan adventure), and then flew on to Cancun, where after a short wait we’d then fly back home. The firs two flights were short and on the cutest, smallest plane I’d ever been on, and Cancun airport was as rubbish and tacky as the rest of Cancun was, and I was actually pleased to be leaving.
I made the comment to Rick in the last week of our holiday that it felt like time had really dragged on since we left the UK the day after our wedding. I didn’t mean it in a negative way at all, I simply meant that three weeks had felt like a really long time away, and I was looking forward to getting back, and starting our lives as man and wife. Rick was definitely of the mind that he could have stayed away a bit longer! I, on the other hand, was looking forward to seeing our cats and our friends, and catch up with our families, and gossip about the wedding and most importantly- open all of the presents!
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