Loving Liverpool

I woke up on the eighth of August in a quiet hostel bunk bed in Liverpool. The long journey lugging my pack through Venice, the interminable plane flight, and the late-night arrival at the Beatles-themed hostel all floated sluggishly back through my consciousness. I sat up in my bunk, careful not to hit my head on the bottom of the bunk above.

I remembered being slightly worried the night before. Despite the fact that I had arrived at 1am, the room, although containing shoes, backpacks, and rumpled sheets, had been devoid of human life--a fact for which I had been very grateful. It had, however, seemed odd. The whole room had seemed odd. But I'd been too tired to care.

Now it made sense. Because all five other beds in the room were now occupied by lightly snoring males.

I froze, like I'd woken up in a lion's den. I'd planned on just getting my stuff together and leaving when I woke up anyway, and now this sounded like the best idea ever. I locked myself in the bathroom to get ready, quietly packed up my bag, and booked it out the door.

At the reception counter downstairs, I handed in my key. There was a pause.

"You were in 104?" the guy behind the counter said.

"Yep."

"104? Not 105?"

"Yes, check the key."

He stared at me for a second, clearly trying to work out where the disconnect was. "But 104 is a guys' dorm."

"Yes," I laughed, "I noticed that when I woke up."

I finally got checked out as he muttered dire threats of tongue-lashings for the poor guy who'd given me the wrong key in the middle of the night. I left my baggage there and headed out to explore Liverpool for a few hours.

FISH! (World Museum)

I hadn't really expected much of Liverpool. I mean, put "liver" with "pool" and the best you can possibly get is a puddle of reddish-purple ooze. Surprisingly, I found it to be clean, respectable, and in many places, quite pretty. And quiet--uncomfortably quiet. This is because it was Sunday. This turned out to be a big problem, because I passed a BBC office building with an attached store that was, naturally, shut for the Sabbath, which meant I could only drool at all of the Top Gear and Doctor Who stuff through the window. Then again, this was actually probably a good thing.

I stopped first at the Central Library which, though impressive, was closed for renovations for pretty much ever. Next up was the World Museum, a kid-oriented but delightful place featuring a small aquarium, bug exhibit, ancient civilizations bit, and a natural history section. I breezed through it in an hour, but it took all my willpower.

See the cars? Yeah, thing's big.

I'd decided next to head toward the cathedral, but I detoured on the way through the pedestrian heart of the city and dropped into a Greggs for some lunch. (I <3 Greggs so much!) I got directions from some helpful locals and got myself reoriented toward the cathedral, only to get sidetracked by an Oxfam store. Inside, I found a wonderfully well-stocked books section, and only managed to escape after giving up £12.50 for two Clarksons, a May, a Hammond, and a Bryson...to add to the five books I was already carrying. I know, bad idea. But I'm an addict. I can't help it.

Oo!

I finally made it (with a noticeably heavier backpack) to the looming red cathedral. This is one properly massive and intimidating building. It looks enormous on the outside, and then you wander in the unassuming doors and crane your head back for some truly staggering, holy-criminy-this-thing-is-ginormous awesomeness. I hope you can see in the pictures the people that I've tried to include for perspective. Besides the sheer bigness, it's also very lovely, although sometimes it's hard to tell because the stuff on the ceiling is so very far away.

Against my better judgment and time constraints, I took the lift up to the top of the tower for a magnificent view of the city in every direction. I had a nice chat with a couple from Manchester on the way up, snapped some pictures from the top, and then booked it back to the hotel, but I still missed my train by quite a bit. Never mind, I picked up my bags and took the next train to Chester anyway.

Liverpool from above!

I arrived in Chester with just over an hour to kill. My choices were 1) walk into the town with all my bags to sightsee for, oh, half an hour, and risk missing the once-every-two-hours train, or 2) snuggle down in the pub across the street for some late lunch. I chose #2, obviously.

An hour into the second train ride, things started to get interesting. Suddenly there was the sea, unfolding, untroubled, to the horizon, sparkling in the late afternoon sunlight. I disembarked on a tiny little platform in a tiny little corner of Wales. From cramped medieval canalways to metropolitan streets to rolling countryside and seaside in 24 hours...not bad.