[BITList] Liverpool

[HUGH]

Janet got an odd Mother's Day gift from our younger daughter - a few days (with me) in Liverpool at the Brittania Adelphi.  Apparently I had talked about having been in the city, albeit briefly, while in the MN and docked across the Mersey at Birkenhead (of which I recall nothing at all).  I'm glad I talked about it.  What a place and what a hotel. My 1959 memories of a summer Saturday afternoon spent walking around caused long buried memories to surface - much to my confusion, given the areas have much changed, mostly for the better.

The weather was 75% warm and sunny, and, despite not getting a map till our last day, Janet found a satisfactory selection of shopping streets and malls only a stroll from the hotel.  Much as in Malta, walk down hill and you'll come to the water eventually. Few streets meet at right angles in Liverpool, so it's definitely "eventually", and a surprise at every corner when a previously unsearched mall appears.  For this reason we only managed down to the Albert Docks once on foot.

If it were possible, I'd drag our local bigwigs down to Liverpool and buy them a pint in the sun at the Pumphouse. Seated thus, they would be able to see what can be done by not demolishing every bloody dockside thing in sight. Perhaps, who knows, the three Norwegians we met there might still be there (they come over "for the football" every year).

We found that too much hesitation at a corner would lead to a helpful local asking, "Are you lost?", but we only got lost twice - in the hotel, and in Wigan NW Station on the way to Liverpool.  The hotel is vast, and the lifts were being endearingly eccentric. Once we got fed up waiting and had a go at the stairs down to Reception.  A wrong turning took us through ornate space after space and more Egyptian pillars than there are in Egypt - so lots of posing and photos. At Wigan NW an English lady joined us in a search for Platform 5.  Having tried all other avenues, we worked out that it must be somewhere down and along an underpass marked 1-4.  And so it turned out.  The way out was down that way also, so Janet got a nice blouse in Wigan on the way home.

Hugh.
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