Liverpool Ferry Port

After rejecting the 5am wake up my body so nicely decided upon, I ended up rising at a much more respectable nine; besides, there's still an hour until things really open. The unfortunate side of this morning, and I totally plan on oversharing, is that mucus should not be that color (I'll spare you the other details.) So, getting ready took a little longer with my foggy head, but with only a few days left of this trip, some of them traveling, I'm not going to let this take me out of commission. There may be a stop at Boots (kind of a convenience store) for lozenges and tissues, there will certainly be tea and a bacon bap, but I will go on my free tour and hopefully infect no one.

Well as far as the tour went, I had an amazing time. Not only did I learn about how Liverpool got its start, but also about the Liver bird, which is a made up bird and emblem for the city. Being a small group our guide was able to take us to all sorts of places, singing and dancing all the way, making for a very enjoyable time. By the end of our two and a half hours, not only had I learned a whole bunch about the city I was in, but I had made some new friends too. Although I had planned to go to the Tate museum, I thought it might be more fun to hang out with the group, and we all headed to the Liverpool Cathedral. This place is massive, with ornate statues, and intricate stained glass windows. Although no one else was interested in paying to go to the top of the Cathedral to see the views, they were kind enough to wait for me, as well as live vicariously through my photos. It was an amazing view, on a surprisingly clear day, and it wasn't even as windy as the top of the Wallace monument. Taking more photos than necessary, I headed back down, especially because I knew we were going to get food. As I learned, the local dish is called scouse, meat with vegetables and potatoes (what a surprise), that closely resembles stew. So we headed off to Bold St. to experience the area like a local and eat the food that is so loved. Once we found a restaurant that had what we were looking for we all popped in, learned that it was served with pickled cabbage and beets, and couldn't wait to dig in. By the time the food got to the table, I can safely bet, we were all ravenous, and dug in. It was a bit plain in flavor, but the pickled vegetables really brought a brightness and rounded out the flavor. All the guys blew through their food, and I managed to eat half of it, giving the rest to one of them who was still hungry. Once I was stuffed, and they had taken an edge off their hunger, we decided to split up back to our hostels, and meet up for drinks and music later. Heading back to my room, that surprisingly had other people in it, I dropped off anything I didn't need and went to spend more time with my impromptu group of friends. Originally the plan was to listen to music and have a few drinks, but after realizing that we could barely hear each other while yelling, we moved to the quiet bar attached to my hostel and played a few games of pool... we all blamed the curved cue for our poor performance. I also ended up introducing them all to borek, for our late night snack, and we stayed up far too late chatting and laughing. Not at all how I'd planned my day, and at this point I wonder why I try, but once again better than I could have hoped.Read more