A very good day all in all, and most of it was spent in the good city of Liverpool. It was great, I heard tons of scouse and also was pleased to be back in this city again. To start, I woke up and went down and had a great breakfast with kippers in it, a very fine and excellent dish of British breakfasts. For those of you who don’t know, kippers are a breakfast fish here in Jolly Old England (JOE for short), and they take a particular skill and ability to eat them, and use specific utensils, but boy are they worth it. Anyway, after this, we headed down to the pier area of Liverpool, on the Mersey, and it was a pretty drive, and not too hot I’ll let you know. Anyway, we drove for probably around 45 minutes and parked, for not a whole lot of money, and we walked by a big complex where the ships would often come in and store their cargoes in warehouses (since converted to other things) back in the day. We walked by the Beatles museum, but it was £9.00 per adult, so we all figured it was not really worth entering, but fascinating to be there all the same. We also walked by many other museums, shops and restaurants but ended up going into the Liverpudlian Maritime Museum.
This was a fantastically large museum, although it did not seem so on the outside, and in several hours we only saw about half of it. We began on the basement level, which was devoted to the history of the slave trade and it was very fascinating and depressing as one would likely guess. I really did not know what to think of it though, to be fair, because I always have a sympathy with historical figures who had a difference of moral opinion than we do today, not that I am justifying it mind you, just I don’t think we really could understand their mentality on the subject today. The next floor was devoted to the history of the customs house and the import of goods to England through the Liverpool port. The next floor was more or less devoted to the role Liverpool played in World War II, and the fact that it was fairly heavily bombed. The next few floors we did not really look at, save to get to the café there, because we were hungry and wanted a bite to eat. We did to that, and then went back down stairs. We went outside, and looked at some of the amazing things, amazing buildings along the Mersey. It was great to see these old really wealthy places, merchants offices of yore, and things like that, I was just so impressed to be there, and I was happy to be with Kate and Roy, because they were such nice people to spend some time with. I was also happy to not be in London for a little while, but rather this slightly slower paced place as Warrington.
Following that, we drove by the cathedral there, which I must admit as all cathedrals tend to be, was impressive and then we went to this old pub to eat. On the way to the pub something happened which pleased me much. A problem I had not explained earlier, is that I was in Liverpool five years ago, but did not remember anything we had seen when I was there this time, but because of our little drive I realised I was just in a different part of town. We passed a big Chinese gate, and that clicked with me immediately. I remembered right then where I was, and where the hotel I was staying in was relatively. Another problem I should probably mention is that my camera’s batteries died the day before I left from London, therefore I was unable to take any pictures of this great weekend though I wanted to immensely, I suppose I’ll just have to go back. We went to this great old pub, that was probably a little more than 100 years old, which had a very musical theme to it, though, the rooms were named after classical composers and had a cockney rhyme scheme to them (a very clever thing I thought)... the rooms specifically were called Brahms and Liszt, which was in this scheme for ‘pissed’ or drunk... English style. We had a couple of pints there, and then went back to Warrington.
Once there, Kate cooked a divine dish of roast beef, potatoes and Yorkshire pudding, which I had never had before. It was a great meal, and I ate to my heart’s or stomach’s content. After that, we sat by the fire, and let me tell you, it was divine to simply sit by a nice fireplace dressed warmly and reading a good book (American Gods) I could have done that forever and it made me think that I definitely want the rustic life in the future where a fireplace is included. I would be very pleased for something nice, soothing, and relaxing like that for sure. After that, Kate went to bed, as she had to work the next day and Roy and I continued to sit around the fire and chat, before watching the awesome series on HBO and for us on BBC 2, Rome! What a great series, although apparently we were fairly far into the series by the time we started watching it, so I am hoping to catch this on DVD when I return back to America, but we’ll see. Anyway, after this, we went to bed, and I was a bit sad as it would be my last night in such a great and nice house as this, but I was looking forward in a way to returning to London and getting things done.