Liverpool, part 2

Tags:Albert Dock, Beatles, England, Liverpool, muffins, rain, St. John's Memorial Garden, UK, Yellow Duckmarine.

The next day’s agenda was…another tourist escapade! We went on the Yellow Duckmarine tour! I can hear your inward groan, but I have to say, I learned an awful lot about the city on that tour. Sure, there was a cheese factor, but mostly it was great. For example, did you know that Liverpool has the largest cathedral in the UK? And the largest Anglican cathedral in the world? Did you know that Lime Street Station was the first passenger railway station in Great Britain? Did you know that Hope Street is the only street in Europe that has a cathedral at either end (Anglican and Catholic)? Did you know that Liverpool is home to the Super Lamb Banana? I thought not. It turns out 3 days isn’t really enough time to see Liverpool; I guess we’ll have to go back.

Constance also told us (rather belatedly) that we had to send some muffins, or failing that, muffin mix, to her friend Susan back home. This is because of their warped version of the song “All My Loving” that they’ve changed to “All My Muffins.” You know, “all my muffins, I will send to you-ou.” Hence the need to post muffins.
Hmm.
We found some day-glo muffins at the 99p store (also picked up some umbrellas…) and we wandered around Liverpool One looking for a post office. Eventually, muffins and packing materials had been acquired and the muffins were sent. Except that Constance forgot to write down Susan’s address before we left on the trip. We grudgingly went into a Starbucks because they were supposed to have wi-fi and we needed to look up the address. As it happened, the wi-fi was so slow as to be impossible to use so that was a waste. Instead, we used the time to package the muffins and ingest some sugar. We eventually guessed at the address and, it turns out, we were off by only one number. Susan did get the package all the same (and ate the day-glo muffins), so all was well.

I swear, my life often feels like a series of near-misses with catastrophe. As if I’m constantly warding off crisis by the skin of my teeth. I know sending muffins to a friend back home doesn’t sound like it could go that terribly wrong, but you must remember I am a parent of a teenager. Everything takes on epic proportions when you’re 14. Even so, it feels like my life is high maintenance. I’m not really sure what that says about my life, because I don’t think I, personally, am all that high maintenance (others may disagree, I don’t know). Somehow, though, my life is forever in flux, teetering on the brink of…something. I’m pretty sure I have influence over that, but I just live the only way I can, the only way I know how, the way I feel compelled to live it. On the other hand, boring would be far worse than forever in flux. I think.

So, after the muffin escapade, we headed back to the hotel (in the pouring rain) with a brief stop at the Cornish Pasty Company (mmm, pasties). Duncan was set on using the hotel swimming pool so Constance and I took a stroll over to St. John’s Memorial Garden. It’s a “memorial garden” instead of a park because it used to be a cemetery, and by calling it a memorial garden they can leave all the dead bodies in the ground. If it were a park, they’d have to disinter everyone and move them. Too expensive, so…memorial garden it is!

We ordered room service on our last night, seeing as how we were bushed and the rain was coming down furiously. The food was ok, not going out was wonderful.

The next morning we packed up and walked back over to Lime Street Station. So much left to see and no time to see it! The Tate Liverpool, the cathedrals, the International Slavery Museum (oh yes, Liverpool was a major depot of the slave trade), Croxteth Hall, the list goes on…

Alas, our stay had come to an end and we sat in the station waiting for our train to Edinburgh, from thence by bus to Stow. While we were waiting, there was an announcement of a delayed train “due to a fatality.” Funny, I don’t think they usually tell you that part back at home.

Next up: Scotland!

It’s not the leavin’ of Liverpool that grieves me, but darlin’ when I think of thee

Tags:Albert Dock, BBC, Beatles, cream, England, food, French, Liverpool, Mancs, pirates, rain, Scousers, travel, UK.

Well, maybe it’s a little bit about the leaving of Liverpool.

What do you think of when you think of Liverpool? I’m betting The Beatles. That’s what I figured too.

When we first started making real plans to take this trip to Scotland (because I pushed relentlessly, I know…), Constance avowed that we’d also be going to Liverpool “on the way.” You know, since we’d be in the area and all. Mark thought this was kind of crazy, seeing as how being in the area was akin to stopping in Seattle when we were going to San Francisco from, say, Germany. I agreed, but I also pointed out that Scotland was a lot closer to Liverpool than California was, and that nearness was a relative term. And Constance would not be put off.

We decided that we’d stop in Liverpool for 3 days before heading into Scotland. Since we flew into London, it really was on the way, more or less. I figured 3 days was plenty of time to do the whole Beatles tourist thing.

We arrived in the evening and we were starving. The helpful concierge suggested we walk over to Liverpool One, a shopping plaza, that had lots of restaurants. I wasn’t terribly keen on going to a mall, but we were all very tired and hungry and we decided to just go and see what we saw. In the end, we went to a lovely French restaurant called Cafe Rouge. It is a chain, but the food was good (no, seriously, the English know French food).

Oh, and did I mention the rain? It was raining, not too, too hard, but enough to get us pretty thoroughly wet. This would be a continuing theme…

Anyway, Cafe Rouge was quite nice. Our waiter nervously approached our table and said, “I just have to tell you we’re all out of steak tonight. And whole chickens. The pirates ate them all.” (I believe there was some other form of meat he mentioned as well, but I’ve forgotten.) We hesitated for a moment, still processing that tidbit. After we had our moment, we assured him it was not a problem.

It turns out there was an enormous gathering of “pirates” that day in Liverpool in an attempt to break the world record; how sad that we missed it! We all found it terribly funny that the pirates came through and cleaned out the restaurant of all the big pieces of meat. The other funny part was that many of our friends had been at the Northern California Pirate Festival setting that very world record. Small, geeky world.
The pirates became a running joke for us during our stay in Liverpool.

The kitchen stayed open late so we could have dessert. The desserts were excellent. We overtipped. (oops)

Duncan ate his too fast for me to get a picture before it was gone…

We mostly just passed out after we got back from dinner. Mark and I had shared a bottle of red wine and we were feeling no pain. The rain helped keep the warm mugginess of Liverpool from being oppressive and we didn’t mind all that much being wet. We’re rain-loving folks anyway.

A little tele before bed:

I have to admit, it was all any of us could do not to break into Monty Python and Eddie Izzard bits and speak with British accents. We really, honestly didn’t want to mock anyone, nor to make anyone feel we were mocking them, but the accents SO wanted to come out.

The next day was all about The Beatles Story. We went down to the Albert Dock and descended into the lengthy, and highly produced, Beatles “experience.” I did learn a lot about the band, possibly more than I ever had the inclination to know. Some of the location recreations were really cool. I love that sort of thing. There was a Cavern Club, the office of the Mersey Beat, and a psychedelic Yellow Submarine area. My numerous pictures of that, and other locales in Liverpool can be found here.

After spending far too much money at the Fab4 Store on the way out (partnered with Starbucks, there’s no escape), we were hungry and went looking for a place to eat lunch. We almost ended up at a pub-type place, but they were out of nearly everything (residual pirate fall-out?), though we learned an important factoid there: they had something called Scouse on the menu, apparently a traditional lamb stew that is a local speciality. From this stew comes the locals’ name for residents: Scousers. Not to be confused with Mancs (from Manchester). There is quite the rivalry between Scousers and Mancs, mostly friendly (but not always). Never having been to Manchester myself, I lean toward the Scouser side of things.

So, didn’t eat at that restaurant, don’t remember its name. We did eat at Gusto, an Italian restaurant right on the waterfront.

On the way back, it started pouring. We didn’t have any umbrellas (naturally) so we got exceedingly wet. Stopped to take this silly picture in which you can tell the kids are simply sopping:

When we were nearly back to the hotel, we stopped in a pub called the Rat and Parrot. How could we not, you know? Coffee in the UK seems to always be served with a sprinkling of sweet cocoa powder on top. Also, virtually every dessert appears to be served with the choice of vanilla ice cream, sweet cream, or whipped cream, and most are served warm. That means that if you order chocolate cake, it will come warm with melty chocolate frosting and in a pool of cream or with a dollop of ice cream. Took some getting used to, but I think I like it. Warm sticky toffee pudding with cream? Oh my god.

Liverpool TBC…

I’m not scattered, I’m omnipresent!

Tags:art, crocheting, diorama, Gray Lady, herbal, incense, knitting, preserves, projects, shawl, teaching, transcendence, travel, wine.

Now that my adventures in jam have passed for the moment, and I’ve (more or less) secured lodging in Scotland for our trip, my thoughts turn toward other projects, other pastimes… like making incense!
Yes, never content to have 20,000 in-progress projects at any one time, I’m always itching to start more!

Actually, the incense is something that was unfinished from before, so really I was tying up loose ends. Not to mention that it earns me some money for our trip (yay!). I’m an avid amateur herbalist, and so I’ve been working on developing a line of incenses and other herbal products. (The jam could actually tie in with this, but we’ll see.) Currently, I have two varieties of incense: Descendence Incense and Transcendence Incense, and they’re carried at The Sacred Well in Oakland.
The Well had requested more Transcendence Incense from me way back in November, but, what with school and all, I just couldn’t get it done. Now I’ve completed the order and earned some dough. Yay again!

Of course, I’m also working on knitting a funky shawl, just because I feel like it,

trying to get some more dioramas finished to sell through Gray Lady,

coercing a friend to give me some blackberries to make more preserves (with Drambuie this time, I think), crocheting my outfit for Off the Needles: A Knitting Pinup Calendar, and…oh yeah, there’s that elderberry wine in the closet I still have to rack and sweeten, and I also still need to get honey to start the crab-apple mead going (crab-apple juice frozen in the back of my fridge). Mmm, a couple of other unfinished needle-work projects in there, too, but we won’t mention them.

Oh! And a friend of mine commissioned me to design a tarot deck for an iPad app he’s working on.
And I just got invited to teach classes to “mid-kids” at the Northern California Women’s Herbal Symposium this September.

Honestly, I don’t know how I end up getting so busy! I don’t set out to do a million things at once, I just seem to keep finding myself in the midst of it all. I can’t resist a new challenge, a new project, new ideas, new stimulation, new opportunities.
In school, my teachers said I lacked focus… I guess I could admit to that, but I prefer to think I’m just well-rounded.

Now if only I can get Lonely Planet to hire me to write for their travel guides…