Travel ....Repeat...

24th May....

Good morning.....Liverpool.
The ship pulls right into the dock in Liverpool which was lovely.
We walked down to the World Heritage listed Albert Dock.

 Waved to the gorgeous Royal Liver building on the way past with its Liver birds at the top.

Stopped and had our photo taken with these 4 guys .... haha

.... then we headed off to  'The Beatles Story' exhibition... to soak in some Beatlemania. 

The exhibition was brilliant actually.... it told the story from the beginning to the end...with lots of memorabilia and personal stories. I know I walked out feeling like I knew them and their rise to fame so much better.

For a complete change of pace we left the Beatles exhibition and headed to the Liverpool Cathedral .... its enormous... the largest cathedral in the UK...and 5th largest in the world...however in contrast to a lot of the historic churches we had seen this one was relatively young... completed in 1978.
(Its also the only cathedral I've ever been in that has a coffee shop inside)

We took the lift and then the last 180 steps to the top of the 500m tower for a 360 deg view of Liverpool...which was spectacular. I was taken in by these oval housing estates... we just don't see them in Australia.

 We also visited the Elizabeth Hoare gallery on the third floor which houses a stunning collection of Victorian and Edwardian embroidery.

 Just outside was a little old cemetery with this path leading down....its so easy to loose time reading the stories on the headstones .. so many lived through such tough times...and we take so much for granted.

Keeping up our day of contrasts... we caught a cab out to the Liverpool Football club ... bit of a bummer it was closed as they renovated some stands or something...but we wandered the shop and took some photos.

Then it was back into Liverpool  for a visit to the Cavern Club which was where the Beatles story all began. Although this isn't the original cavern club (which was filled in during some rail extensions) it is a replica built with many of the same bricks. I guess its as close as you can get.
It had so much atmosphere inside....with music playing and drinks flowing....it would have been nice to stop for awhile and settle in....but that is one downside of a trip like ours...we were always watching the clock and needing to keep moving.

This lively part of Liverpool had bars and clubs dotted along the streets everywhere....with lots of reference to the famous four.

We squeezed in a little last minute wander of Albert Docks before boarding again....ready to set sail for Belfast in Ireland.

20th May 2016
Its nice to wake today with our feet on the ground and new adventures at our doorstep.
Yesterday went in a blur of shuttles... plane flights and customs as we said farewell to Japan and hello to England.

We stayed overnight at the lovely Novotel Southampton which provided a fabulous breakfast and was a nice easy walk from the historic old town... steeped in Titanic history.

I struggle to comprehend the age of and history of some of these buildings...seriously... this is the Bargate.... a medieval gatehouse constructed in Norman times as part of the Southampton walls... this was built in c1180 !!

 They weren't only building walls and gate houses back in Norman times...they were also building houses... like this World listed Tudor house.


We also felt a little like we had stepped back in time... The Titanic tragedy in 1912 struck Southampton hard... and there is a Titanic trail and references everywhere.

Our morning wandering Southampton was a lovely prelude to our cruise... we made our way to the dock and boarded the lovely Caribbean Princess around lunchtime ... so looking forward to our cruise of the British Isles.