People they rush everywhere
Each with their own secret care
So ferry 'cross the Mersey
And always take me there
The place I love
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| The area around our hotel in Liverpool |
Ok, someone really needs to pinch me. We woke up at our hotel in Farnham this morning to absolutely brilliant sunshine making it pretty much a month so far of nice weather -- I am actually hoping to get some rainy weather so that I really know I am in the U.K. When the month of May is done, I am going to check out the month's weather versus previous years' as this has got to be an anomaly.
Well, I shouldn't complain as the next few days we are going to visit Liverpool (one day is set aside for a one-hour train trip to my ancestral home on my father's side) and the forecast is for more of the same. Angela and I have never been to Liverpool in all the times we have traveled here. Our destination today is a hint regarding the title of the song that the lyrics above are from -- I had been negligent in maintaining my "name that tune" element of our blog.
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| Albert Dock |
Our trip today took us first to London Euston Station so that we could catch our direct train to Liverpool Lime Street station, the city's main train station. When you arrive, you realize that the station is a terminus and the tracks do not run through it. Instead, trains going in all directions simply arrive here and then pull back out to go off to their next destination.
Our hotel, the Nadler Liverpool, is located within a 10-minute walk of the station and takes one into the former warehousing district of the city. There are still a few downtrodden buildings that are currently ready for renovation, but for the most part the area has been re-done and there are a lot of hotels (like ours), restaurants, bars and clubs that now occupy the old warehouses.
At the west end of the docks you come to what is referred to as the "Three Graces." They are three buildings, of which one is the iconic Royal Liver Building with its two clock towers topped by weathered green copper dragons. Any picture of the Liverpool waterfront is bound to have this building front and center. The other two buildings are the Cunard building and the Port Authority building.
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| Staring out onto the Mersey |
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| Royal Liver Building |
We arrived late in the afternoon but with plenty of time to take a trip down to the Mersey shore and a walk around the Albert Dock, a group of renovated dock buildings that were built in the mid-1800s, and the first in Great Britain to not contain any wood in their construction. The docks surrounding the buildings were also the first location of the hydraulic crane to assist in unloading the ships directly into the warehouse sections, another new innovation. The docks were a commercial success until the second world war when they were damaged by Luftwaffe bombers. After the war, the owners could not raise the funding to completely repair the damage and the area began a slow descent into total disuse. By the 1970s, plans were being made to redevelop the entire dock area and in 1988 work was completed. It is now arguably one of the premier tourist areas of the city with museums, restaurants and shops. In fact, tonight we dined at the Old Spice, an Indian restaurant that satisfied our urge for a curry!
Ale of the Day: Penny Lane Pale Ale, Mad Hatter Brewery, Liverpool
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