Stacey News: 2025

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

Wednesday April 30

Cobh, Ireland

We had arrived in Cobh, Ireland by the time we got up this morning. Cobh is in County Cork and not too far from the town of Cork. My grandmother Cousins always said that her fore fathers came from County Cork in Ireland. There are lots of Collins's in the area but could find any Staceys.

After breakfast we walked around the downtown area of Cobh(the Irish spelling for Cove) and took in the sights as seen in some of the photos below. Cobh was the last port of call for the Titanic before it left for North America. The Titanic didn't dock in Cobh as it anchored a little offshore and took on 120+ passengers as well as a lot of mail for America. There is a little museum to the Titanic in Cobh too.

There is a beautiful Catholic church called St. Colman's Cathedral which we visited before mass started at 10:00am as we had an excursion scheduled for 11:00am to Spike Island which is the site of an old Castle or Fort that was used for centuries to protect against attack from outsiders. Throughout the years it has served as not only a military fort but as a jail as well. You can see that in the photos below.

We had a really busy day and arrived back on board at around 4:00 and got ready for dinner at 6:00. This evening we had pea soup with ham as an appetizer and beef bourguignon as the main course. For desert I had creme brule while Gladys had bananas foster. The server also brought along a kind of coffee rule for us to they too. And the waiter brought us a serving of pasta with gorgonzola cheese and dried tomatoes to try as well. It was all good and we are quite full now as we wait for our show to start at 9:00pm.

Photo taken from high up in the town with the Cruise ship in the background.

Cobh from the ship.

Cobh from Spike Island.

Streets of Cobh. Kind of reminds you of St. John's with the many coloured town houses.

Monument to the Titanic. Notice the wreaths from the recent memorial service.

Mural to the Titanic.

The Navigator

A monument to both the Merchant Marine and Royal Navy - one that both our fathers would have appreciated.

St. Colman's Cathedral

Cathedral from another angle.

Inside the church - middle aisle.

Inside the church - a side aisle.

Spike Island

These are a few photos taken from inside the fort which covered 23 acres. It's difficult to know that it is a fort because of the way it was designed. The ground was built up to the height of the walls so it took any impact from shelling.