Thursday May 1

Liverpool, England

Today our port of call is Liverpool in England. The weather here today was fantastic with highs of 23C. The weather has been great since we arrived in Europe with Amsterdam experiencing the warmest spell of the year and similar weather in Cobh yesterday. It certainly is a lot warmer than what had been forecasted before we left home. Tomorrow we will be in Wales and the weather is supposed to cooperate again.

The water you see in the photos is the Mersey River on which Liverpool is located. It was low tide when we arrived and it's pure muck and it's muddy looking at high tide. I'm sure nothing can survive in it.

Today we took a bus tour around Liverpool where we got to see many of the sites of the city. The bus stopped a few times to allow us to take a few photos. After the tour we walked to an area called the Royal Albert Dock which is an area of the Liverpool Cruise Port designed to attract tourists. There are lots of littles stores selling souvenirs, restaurants, cafe and the like. The Royal Liverpool Museum is also there and we visited that too. We also rode the Liverpool Wheel which is 196 feet tall and you can get a great view of the city from there. You get 3 revolutions of the wheel which lasts about 10 minutes. Kind of like a giant Ferris wheel but each seat is totally enclosed. it was very nice.

We also got to see the Liverpool FC football stadium as well as the Everton Football Stadium as the bus drove by. As well Everton is opening a new football stadium in August which is pictured below.

We got back to the ship to rest before supper. I went up to Deck 14 as there is a little putting green there so I had some fun for a half an hour. We had a great supper this evening. We both had a green salad with Gorgonzola cheese for starters, Gladys with veal and I had seafood linguine for our main while we both had chocolate lave cake for desert. Throw in a couple of glasses of wine along with an order of Turkey on risotto which our waiter wanted us to try. We'll need to do lots of steps after this.

The show tonight is a tribute to the Beatles and Elton John which starts in about an hour. By the way the Beatles got their start in Liverpool. From the bus we got to see the pub where they first started playing as well as the schools a couple of them attended plus the theatre where they played their last show.

Lots of other interesting sites to see here as well. Here are a few photos from our day.

Photo taken on the Royal Albert Dock which show the chain filled with locks. There are hundreds of thousands of them of which most are engraved with name and dates.

Enjoying a plate of chips!

Liverpool Wheel

Overlooking Liverpool

Gladys with a view of part of Liverpool in the skyline.

Photo of both of us.

Us with the statue to the Beatles. Long lineup for photos here. A man from Nova Scotia took this one.

Empire Theatre where the Beatles held their last concert.

Kind of museum to the Beatles.

Nest few just show a few streets in Liverpool.

St. Georges Hall - site of the War Memorial. Special functions are held here on November 11 along with other functions. Notice the guy sleeping it off on the base of the front steps.

Anglican Cathedral

Catholic Cathedral

Chinese Arch - largest Chinese arch outside of China. Very large Chinese population in Liverpool.

Our view from the sky.

Everton Football Club's new Stadium wth the shiny roof.

Couple of older buildings. Lots of the older buildings were bombed during WWII so you will see parts of them now with sections more modern. Interesting.

Royal Albert Dock taken from the Sky Wheel with our cruise ship in the background.

Propeller from the Luisitania.

Dry dock. Not sure if they are in use anymore but there are a couple in the area.

Liverpool Titanic Memorial