(this narrative began from when I first landed in London on September 3, 2016)
Tuesday
September 20, 2016:
Today, we left Dublin, Ireland relatively early
(7:15 am) to catch the ferry boat across the Irish Sea to Wales again. First stop was at a tiny little village with
a very long, tongue-twisting name, Llanfair…
The village store had some awfully nice clothes in it for sale and I
just had to buy myself something. So,
after having nothing but problems processing the sale with my credit and debit
cards, I bought a nice, blue, fleecy hoodie.
I had to pay for it with Euro-dollars (the only currency I had with me)
even though they usually took pounds Sterling in Wales, but they did agree,
finally, to accept my paper money in Euro-dollars instead.
Then, we were headed through the Welsh island, which
I didn’t know was an island, called Anglesey, Wales, through scenic Snowdonia
National Park, through the Llanberis Pass, and ended up in Liverpool,
England. When I asked John Hood, our
tour director, when we left Wales exactly, he said it was at a tiny place
called Queenstown. But, unless you were
looking at a map, you wouldn’t see a border crossing of any kind – it’s
invisible.
Liverpool, England is the birthplace of The Beatles,
one of the most famous rock groups in the world. A few of us (20) went on the city tour before
actually checking into the hotel – we only got our key cards, but did not have
time to offload all our stuff before the tour began. Our hotel was the Novotel hotel.
The best thing – no holds barred, in my opinion – was
visiting The Cavern, a bar where The Beatles played 292 times, as well as
playing at many other places in Liverpool.
Other rock stars and groups played there as well, like Elton John, Elvis
Presley, the Everly Brothers, Rolling Stones, etc. These rock stars and groups made me think
that I should buy some of their music when I get home if I haven’t got it
already. The Cavern reminded me of a
subway tunnel in its design, but had great acoustics. A male musician was on stage playing Beatles
songs on his guitar and singing while we were there. There were a lot of young people there – it
was really busy and it seemed like a fun place to be.
After the tour, when we were finally dropped off at
our hotel, I then dropped off the rest of my stuff (my suitcase had already
been put into my room), and I went out for dinner to a nearby restaurant called
the Wildwood Kitchen. I ordered a glass
of wine and a meat lasagne and cheesy garlic bread along with a glass of milk,
and enjoyed every bite. It was an
excellent dinner.
Tomorrow morning we had to get up by 7:00 am – I got
up at 6:30 am just before my wakeup call at 6:45 am. We had to have our baggage out the door by
7:30 am, and then we had breakfast at 7:30 am. We had to be on our way by 8:20 am exactly
because, as a group, we were all going to be visiting “The Beatles Story”
exhibit this morning. Our group tour
time was scheduled for 8:30 am.
I didn’t get a chance to write and type up my
journal notes for today on Tuesday evening before bed – I was so tired because
we’d had to wake up so early this morning to get on the road by 7:15 am that I
just went straight to bed after the Liverpool city tour this evening and
determined that I would write my notes longhand on the bus tomorrow and then
type them up on Wednesday evening.
copyright 2016 - Anne Shier
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