Liverpool and Manchester

Liverpool, UK

My friend Danni and I had quite the adventure this weekend.  We took a whirlwind trip to Liverpool, Manchester, and Lyme Park.

Friday afternoon we took the four hour train to Liverpool.  It was a long ride, but pleasant.  I love traveling by train.  It's a great way to see all that a country has to offer.

We spent all of Saturday there just exploring the city at a leisurely pace.  We started our morning off in Liverpool Cathedral which is supposed to have the oldest church bells in Europe.  It was a massive place, and like all the others, breathtakingly beautiful.

Liverpool Cathedral

Next we went down to Albert Dock and did "The Beatles Story" museum.  I'm not a huge Beatles fan, but I learned a huge amount in that short hour.  I left the place with a newfound appreciation for the legendary band.

The Beatles Museum

Our hotel room in Liverpool.

Liverpool was a very historic city, but it was rough around the edges.  The buildings, although pretty, were old and run down.  It seemed no one had taken the time or money to restore the damage leftover by the wars.  I struggled to find a very nice upscale neighborhood downtown, or really, anything that didn't look like rough neighborhood.  It was an eye opening experience seeing the raw side of England.  This once grand city is a ghost of the past lingering on the docks.

The rest of the afternoon was mainly just spent wandering around the city.  We visited the Liverpool Museum, the Liverpool Central

Library, the Royal Liver Building, and saw the Cunard Building at Pier Head.  The day ended by looking for a coffee shop, which didn't end well.  Right when I was beginning to think Starbucks was taking over the world, I found myself in a neighborhood with only one coffee shop that was completely full. Tired and only slightly bitter, Danni and I hiked our way back to Lime Street station, grabbed a coffee to go, and hopped our train to Manchester.

In a short forty-five minutes we were in a brand new city.  Our walk to the hotel was longer than it should have been--we exited from the wrong door at the train station--but it was okay because we saw hundreds of Manchester City fans making their way to the stadium for a game.  Everyone was decked out in light blue and white.  I couldn't help but think of UNC's Tarheel games.  Momentarily it felt a little like home.

I like Manchester well enough.  It's odd, I was warned by many people how rough the city was, but I didn't find it particularly unseemly.  It had the air of an industrial powerhouse with a streak of modernity.  Like Cardiff, the old buildings were mixed with tall glass sky scrapers and apartment buildings.  It appeared that in this city, someone took the care to rebuild and repair the old decaying buildings.  I only passed through the city on a tram en route to Old Trafford, the Manchester United stadium, but what I saw seemed pretty normal for a city.  Manchester is a good deal larger and busier than Liverpool was.  It was more of a working city.  There weren't as many touristy things to do there, but the eternal hum of electricity that you get in a big city was there in the background, energizing its inhabitants.


Saturday morning we caught an early train out to Old Trafford.  Danni had booked us a museum and stadium tour.  This place blew me away!  I wasn't terribly excited at first.  Admittedly, I'm not a football (soccer) fan, and I knew very little about the team except that David Beckham once played for them. But after this tour I was proud to walk out of the "Manchester United Megastore" with my red and yellow t-shirt and support the team.

The stadium holds around 75,000 people, which in comparison to some of the mega-domes back home in the States isn't much, but standing next to the grass pitch being warmed by things that looked like the huge industrial crop irrigation contraptions with sun lamps attached, I realized how much time, effort, and money goes into each game.  We got to see the dressing rooms, directors' box, press rooms, and all of the cool back stage areas typically only seen by staff and players.  We learned a ton about the team's history, and Old Trafford itself that's been there since the early 1900s.



The afternoon was spent at Lyme Park, the home of Pemberly, from the 1995 A&E adaptation of Pride and Prejudice.  Despite some rather foul weather, it was a wonderful afternoon.

Danni and I stepped off the train into what appeared to be in the middle of nowhere.  I pulled out my iPhone to pull up my Google Maps only to find a dreaded "No Service" message.  My heart sank as it dawned on me that neither one of us knew where we were going, and had stupidly planned to rely solely on technology.  Well, technology had failed us.  After a few seconds of panic, we noticed the sign that said Lyme Park.  "Well, I guess we're going to do this the old fashioned way."  Off we went. We only walked for about a half a mile, although, allow me to point out, that when you're walking in a seemingly random direction with only one sign to go off of, no cell service, and practically by yourselves, a half mile feels like an eternity.

Front Gatehouse

Shortly thereafter, we arrived at the gate of Lyme Park.  I was quickly beginning to realize exactly what the true meaning of a "country estate" was.  It's a euphemism for I have a enormous house and lots of land in the big middle of nowhere.  We found a shuttle bus to take us from the front gates up to the house.  Our driver was very nice, and gave a short background story on the property itself.  He told us about the hunting lodge on the property as well as the house.  Apparently, they several types of deer in the park.  In a few minutes, he dropped us off, we went exploring in the house.

South side of the house.

The house itself wasn't nearly as large as I had imagined.  Don't get me wrong, it was still huge, after seeing it in the movie, I assumed it was all house, but it actually was square shaped with a courtyard in the middle.  The north side of the house is where the main entrance was.  It was pretty, with a big circular driveway and another beautiful gate.  The inside of the house was lovely, but we weren't allowed to take pictures.  My favorite, however, was the south side of the house that starred in the movie.  It was beautiful and everything I imagined.  The pond behind the house was enormous, but since the film they had erupted an awful statue of a giant Mr. Darcy emerging from the pond like in the movie.  It kind of ruined the mood.  That small complaint aside, the whole afternoon was fantastic.

We caught our train home and arrived safely back in Swansea for another week of classes and real life.

I feel so blessed to be able to see all that I have in these short few weeks.  Yesterday marked the beginning of my fifth week of classes, and my sixth week here in Wales.  It's been a wonderful adventure that is only just beginning.

I promise, my post on Paris is coming soon.  The pictures from that trip as well as this one is already on Flickr, accessible via my photos link.  More later!

Cardiff Castle & Mermaid Quay at Swansea Bay

I woke up at an ungodly hour on Tuesday morning, about 3:00 a.m. Cardiff time.  Jet lag at its worst. I took some time to have my first British--excuse me, Welsh--cup of tea, and update the blog.

The lovely spread offered by the Maldron Hotel Best Western Plus.

Tea it is!

The options:  Nescafe instant coffee, Tetley tea,
or freeze dried coffee.

I settled on the tea, since instant or freeze dried coffee did not sound appealing to me.  The tea was interesting...it tasted like normal black tea, but was thick like coffee.  I'm used to drinking Twinings Breakfast Tea back home, which tastes thin, like I thought normal tea does, but this seems to be the popular brand in Cardiff.

I went down for breakfast at eight since Cardiff Castle didn't open until 9 am.  I jumped right in and had a full English Breakfast:  eggs, sausage, baked beans, and toast.  It also included mushrooms and tomatoes, but I couldn't bring myself to eat either one of those for breakfast.  I have decided that the English breakfast is not for me.  I'll stick to my yogurt and coffee, thank you very much.

I walked down the street to Cardiff Castle, which turned out to be spectacular.  It amazes me, the historic architecture here is so seamlessly intertwined with the modern buildings.  There in the middle of the largest city in Wales sits this enormous Roman Fort, that was then taken over by the Norse, and later inhabited by a member of one of the most famous families in the UK, the Stuart family of Scotland, as in Mary Stuart Queen of Scots.  This area is surrounded by shopping centers, office buildings, apartments, and the City Hall. 

The picture to the right is the wall built by the Romans.  There are only a few parts that were left standing and since then have been repaired.  The wall is complete with walkways, guard towers, and treacherous spiral staircases.  I was told by the guide the Romans used this area as a training facility for their soldiers.  You can actually take a set of stairs and walk the wall, but I didn't have time.  

When the Norse took over, they came in and built this fort.  It is surrounded by a moat, which can be seen in the following picture's foreground.  I hiked up about one hundred stairs to climb to the very top of the tower.  I could see for miles.  From that perspective you can really see the clash between the old and the new in this historic city.  There are pictures on my photos page that I took from the top of the tour.  That skyline is filled with beautiful, old buildings, right beside huge modern structures like Millennium Stadium.

Cardiff Castle was built after the Norse left that the land and its buildings was bequeathed to Scottish nobility, the Marquess of the Isle of Bute.  His family was related to the Stuarts, as I mentioned above.  The third Marquess of Bute was said to be the richest infant in the kingdom.  His father passed when he was just six months old, leaving him with the current equivalent of 15 million GBP.  This castle, one of eleven homes owned, was only a summer home for the current Marquess and his family.  For generations it was solely used for six weeks out of the year.  In the 1940's it was given to the people of Wales, and is still in use today for tours and state events.

I took a lovely house tour of the castle.  The pictures can be found via the link to my photos.  My favorite room was the library.  

Next on my list was a double decker bus tour of Cardiff.  It was very informational.  We passed a clock that is attached to the city hall that is known as the "Big Ben of Wales".

Welsh Big Ben

City Sightseeing Bus 

The tour continued down to Cardiff Bay, which was once the largest coal shipping port in the world.  Today it has been turned into a shopping and dining area known as Mermaid Quay (pronounced "key" not quay like quail).  I ate lunch there at a little Turkish restaurant.  I had hummus and a lamb meatball wrap.  That's another thing I find very interesting about the metropolitan scene here.  There is so much diversity in an empire that once sought to bring English way of life to the four corners of the world.  London is known to have some of the best ethnic food in the world, but Cardiff's selection was not shabby at all.

My last stop was a backstage tour of the Wales Millennium Centre.  It is the largest performing arts center in Wales, with a stage size bigger than all but one stage in the UK.  It was built with only Welsh materials, and modeled after the hull of a ship.  The front, coppery looking part has two different poems, one in English and one in Welsh.  The first, in Welsh, reads:  "Creating truth, like glass, in the furnace of inspiration".  The second, in English, reads:  "In these stones horizons sing".  The Millennium Centre is also the home of the Wales National Opera and the BBC Wales Orchestra.

Wales Millennium Centre aka a Doctor Who Filming Location

I really like this building.  There is something very powerful about it.  It's very modern in its design and sustainability, but the design inspiration goes back to the very roots of Cardiff Bay, the shipping and steel industry.  The architects stayed true to the essence of Wales by incorporating art works by Welsh artists and poets into the design.  I learned on my tour they also have the longest working reception desk in the world.

I loved my first day in Cardiff.  I felt an immediate connection to this city.  It's funny how some places tend to click better than others.

More adventures in Cardiff in my next post, and new photos on the page!  Check them out!