Kiwi Roaming

Next stop Liverpool. Here we stayed in another Holiday Inn Express over the River Mersey in Ellesmere, about a 30 minute train ride into the CBD. The hotel is out on a peer and in a lovely setting. Way upmarket after our Manchester experience with a wonderful breakfast (where they cook you eggs or pancakes along with the buffet) and very comfortable room.

Sadly it rained most of our time in Liverpool, we walked to a Morrisons Daily for supplies the first night and got soaked but were determined to see as much as we could and did get dry segments of our time in Liverpool to enjoy walking around this very walkable city. We explored around Ellesmere a bit one morning when it wasn’t raining so a few pic of there above.

Lovely Liverpool – the first thing that struck us as we emerged from the train was the size and scale of the buildings on the docks, huge enormous and in contrast with Manchester made of stone not brick. We had loaded up a Mural / Street Art walking tour of Liverpool as a way to navigate ourselves around. Again they like memorials so we started at the Titanic one, then went to see some musicians (whose likeness is everywhere), there are lots of disaster / war / hero statues to see along the way.

It was cold, I know it’s early December so what did we expect? – but the wind chill factor here was frigid and I hadn’t brought my cashmere scarf into the city with me so purchased a £5 “cashmere feel” scarf from a street vendor. There were lots of Christmas markets and other activities setting up on the wharfs plus a fair few tourists milling around in the city too but generally it was quite quiet here.

The Mersey is far far wider than any river we’ve ever seen, and moves very fast. The ferry to Isle of Man goes from here as well as ferries across the river, ships to and from the port plus other smaller craft. I’m pleased we went to Manchester first and saw the canals built to connect with the Mersey, and it was good to be staying on the other side from the city too, to really get some perspective of this space.

On our mural / street art tour we came across the old factory precinct of the wharfs where many of the brick buildings have been turned into breweries, apartments and lots of bars. We tried one brew bar which had Inch’s cider (my new go to drink is half an Inch’s) and Steve tried a flight of their beers. Next stop was another fab food hall with mostly asian food stalls. We ordered different dishes there then checked out a local craft market – one of the ones with hundreds of stalls like the Wellington Collective at home.

Our tour continued into the centre of the old town where there were lots of amazing works of art to explore on the sides of various types of buildings enabling us to walk the streets in all directions. Near China Town there is a large vacant space – many hectares – being developed into a new precinct, not unlike the one we found in Bordeaux, massive with parks, retail and housing.

I am writing this as the sad news of a mass shooting in Bondi, Sydney – so so sad. In Liverpool and other cities on this trip there have been extensive barriers installed in areas where the public gather to prevent vehicle based terror attacks. Sadly this is the world we now live in.

We only stayed 2 nights in Liverpool but got a good look around. On our way to and from Liverpool we made a few stops I will write about in another blog post.