love liverpool

Despite one of us being of a strong ‘scouse’ descent and having spent a vast majority of her younger days in Liverpool visiting family, shopping etc it is somewhere we rarely visit now. Chris’ job is in city centre Manchester and our son now lives there, so when we reach the East Lancs Road we almost always turn left. Taking part in the Poppy Walk during June 17, made us realise just how much of Liverpool we hadn’t seen for many years and in Chris' case not at all. It was time to remedy that.

Using trusty Secret Escapes, we had booked into the Richmond Hotel (free bottle of Prosecco!) for the night, and after taking the 40 minute train to Lime Street and checking in we spent two days wandering around the streets and buildings of Liverpool. Despite the weather forecast promising torrential rain (again) we were blessed with sunshine and almost warmth. We paid a visit to both of the Cathedrals – buildings we have travelled past many a time but never ventured into. Both stunning architectural creations and very different. The Catholic Cathedral known locally as ‘Paddy’s Wigwam’ was bathed in red and blue lighting effects inside – modern and breathtaking and all natural , created by the sunshine coming through the fantastic stained glass. It was hard to take a bad photo inside – every step presented another photo opportunity – it was also a really good test of my very early development with ISO and shutter settings (not all successful!). In complete contrast the Anglican Cathedral is a towering traditional Cathedral reminiscent of Harry Potter films. Unusually there were no chairs in the main building which made the sheer size of it seem even more impressive.  Not unexpectedly this took us almost all day and probably two full memory cards of photographs.

We dined at Albert Dock in Revolución de Cuba which came highly recommended by our daughter Lucy. Salsa band (occasional dodgy cover – Ed Sheeran?!?) exciting tapas style food which was delicious, great service and the only complaint was the sun was in our eyes! We watched the sunset over the River Mersey and again took photo after photo of sunsets, ferries, the Pier Head fairground and even Billy Fury (occasionally mistaken for Elvis by some people who had no glasses on) – it was a truly memorable day.

We finished off the second day with a 10k walk down the Mersey through the cruise terminal and beyond before heading home with our trusty Two Together railcard. It was such a wonderful weekend we will definitely be going back.

Viv