A day in Liverpool

Liverpool, home of the Beatles, the Titanic and our next door neighbours in Mornington, Ted and Lillian. Being a short ride from Helsby, we had to visit. That the short ride turned out to be a 3 hour return trip in horrible weather just added to the adventure.

Gab, James and Xavier decided to have a lay day in Helsby so it was just the 'A team' of William, Elizabeth and Dad who struck out in freezing cold weather. We arrived at the Liverpool Bus Termimus to pelting rain. We asked the bus driver where the main tourist area was and he pointed to the docks 400m away. We realised we could either spend a dry day in the bus terminus or make a run for it.

We finally got to the docks. We three drowned rats went to the museum attendant and jokingly asked for the hair dryers. He kindly pointed us to a bank of hand-dryers which we hogged for 20 minutes. Then it was off to explore the Maritmime Museum of Liverpool. There was a hall full of the most amazing ship models we are likely to see in our lives.

The highlight was a 30 foot model of the Titanic (left) which had it's name plate removed after a mid-Atlantic shipping accident.

The next highlight was the 4th floor that was actually a museum of slavery. Liverpool turns out to be one of the biggest slave ports in the world and the city is now only acknowledging its heritage. The museum concentrated on many of the ghoulish aspects of the slave trade, but also highlighted the cultures of the African tribes from where the slaves were taken.

Liver building (left)

We had a special mission from our neighbour Ted to go to the top of the Liver Building and check out the giant Liver birds on top of the building. We battled our way there to the entrance lobby

where we were met by the building attendant. We explained that we had travelled from Australia with a goal of getting up close and personal to the Liver Birds. The guard was very impressed that we had come so far and then explained that there was no chance of us getting any further than the lobby. Elizabeth and William even tried their patented sad faces, but to no avail. We should have brought James!

It was then off to the Liverpool world museum to see what they had to offer. Elizabeth decided she could no longer walk and would only travel by bus. William insisted on walking, so we had a 3 minute stale-mate whilst we all looked at each other. In the end we caught the bus!

As I relucantly opened my wallet to pay for another bus fare - William worked out that it was the same bus company we had come to Liverpool on, and as we had an all day pass, we didn't have to pay again.

The Liverpool World Museum was very disappointing other than one of the original rockets (left) they used at Woomera which we took a photo of for our friend Paul who was a Woomera boy. We got back on the bus and went home, in the rain.

Elizabeth was in charge of the bus tickets which we had to pull out about 8 times throughout the day. She handled this task brilliantly.

We arrived back home to a beautiful hot meal and lots of kisses and hugs after our big adventure.