We’re celebrating the 4th of July in the mother
country. They are completely
non-plussed. No fireworks for us.
We get up and about, we take showers in our tiny bathrooms,
and we go down for breakfast. The hotel
has a continental breakfast that goes along with various hot items that you can
order. I get the full English (not sure
that I’ll ever tire of that), and Lauren kind of gets it, but no beans (gotta
set this girl straight), Brittany sallied her breakfast and just wanted the
bacon. She has a way of getting what she
wants, and because it’s slow, they do it for her. We pack up the car and walked to Albert Dock to
catch our Magical Mystery Tour! We pass
it up and end up at The Beatles Story (which we also have tickets to), but
that’s an all day entry and the bus leaves at 10:30. Thomas finds the entrance for us, and we
check out the gift shop while we wait. I’m a huge Beatles fan, and there was a
time when it was an obsession of mine, but I’ve forgotten most of that minutia
that I used to know and replaced it with other minutia. There is Beatles music playing in the shop
and the words come back to me really easily (it’s scary how that happens with
songs you haven’t heard in ages) – and I even realize that they’re playing full
albums, and I know the next song before they play it. Dana does not want to sit next to me on the
tour, she doesn’t care for me serenading her – so Patti and I sing to each other. If I worked there, I wonder how I would feel
about the Beatles – we’ve been there just about 30 minutes and a song has
already looped back around… Dana and
Brittany find other ways to kill time.
They are scoping out the men working construction around the store. There is a bald one that they’re fighting
over – and when we come back from the tour he’s still in the area, and someone
may have snapped a pic or two.
Our tour guide, Neil comes out and gathers us up to get on
our Magical Mystery Tour bus. It looks
just like the one the Beatles used in that very bad movie of the same
name. He’s very Liberpudlian in his
humor and accent. Each time we stop he
has at least one cigarette – I think the others were keeping closer count…
total of 5 or 6.
Brittany is far from a fan (she can’t even name all four
Beatles… I know, right??), but she’s game for just about anything and views
this as just learning a little history.
The kids are along for the ride too – I’m hoping that this will develop
even just a little Beatles appreciation.
We go past the childhood houses of all four Beatles and we’re able to
stop at Paul’s and George’s – Ringo’s was down a road we can’t go, and John’s
is owned by the National Trust and we can ‘t stop there because they run their
own tours of the house where you can go inside.
We get to see Penny Lane (and see that the place where they waited for
the bus and all the places in the song are within the same area of that). The area is actually not Penny Lane, at least
not at the time the song was written, Penny Lane was a couple of streets
down. But Smithdown Road didn’t have the
same ring – and the funny thing now is that everything in that square has named
itself Penny Lane… We go to Strawberry Fields - let me take you down…
Neil makes the tour a lot of fun and he’s very proud of a
picture of himself with “Sir Paul”.. He
likes to tease the Americans about our sports.
Why do we call it “soccer”, is it because we wear socks? It’s called football because you play it with
your FEET and a BALL. And then there’s
American football… which they call “Rugby for girls”. The tour ends at the Cavern Club, which is
actually rebuilt on the original property. They had to tear it down for new
tube construction, but then they never built the tube there.. so they thought
it was lost, but then when they looked into it, it was still there! They did change the placement of the entrance
of the building, so some purists say that it’s not the same because of that. But it looks exactly like all those classic
pictures of them playing down there; it’s amazing to see how small it really
is.
We get our Cavern Club pics and merch, and we head across
the street to the Cavern Club Pub (they serve food) and grab some lunch. Britt is getting tired of pub food (WHAT??) –
she orders pizza which she shares with us because it’s a lot of pizza for one
person (just like the Italians do it).
Patti and I get the fish and chips and it’s not great by London
standards.. Thomas gets… a burger. We
also find the Bulmer’s berry and lime flavor.
OMG. Nice. I fell in love with Bulmers the last time we
were in London, it’s a hard cider but they also have different flavors that are
seasonal. The classic apple, and then
their Pear is delicious. But the other
day we tried Grape, and the woman who served it said that we need to try the
Red Berry… so when we saw it in the case, we had to get it. YUM.
They need to get this stuff over to the States pronto. It’s really
dangerous because it doesn’t taste like alcohol. Even Dana likes it.
We walk back over to the Albert Docks to go through the
“Beatles Story” – it’s a self guided audio tour of their history. And I didn’t really take a survey, but I
could have done without it. We really
just did it because we needed something to while we waited for our ferry. We have to be there at 7:30 to load, and it’s
only about 1:00. It’s hot down there,
and we just heard most of this stuff on the bus tour in a more entertaining
way. We skip most of the audio tracks
and just get through to the much needed air at the end of the tour… there was a time when I would have said that
was sacrilege. At the end of the tour
we go through the gift shop again and make sure we have all the Beatle stuff
that we need.
Now we have about 4 hours to kill before our ferry, so we go
back to the mall. We’ve already check
out of the hotel, so we’re kind of homeless at the moment. It’s strange to have this 4 hours with
nothing to so and no place to be – wish we could redistribute that time because
there are other times when we’re so rushed.
Thomas and Lauren want to shop more, so they go off hunting for bargains
while the rest of us have cold drinks and wi-fi at Starbucks. The kids get back super fast – and Thomas
hates the smell of coffee, so we meet them outside and sit on the steps in the
sun (nice day!). They’re promoting an
upcoming piano concert for charity by playing publically and collecting money –
different people take shifts playing and it’s nice background while we just
hang out and chat.
We decide to walk around again – still like 2 hours to kill
– and we just surf through the stores. Thomas
and Lauren bought something cute at the Lego store, and Brittany wants to see
if we can find a red double decker bus in legos. As we’ve shopped around Liverpool we’ve been
seeing this weird animal on postcards, key chains and magnets, and we have no
idea what it is. It looks like a lamb
that has a banana for a back end, and the post cards call it the Lambanana… in
one of the toy stores they have Olympic mascots on sale for just 1 Euro
(they’re really weird, like one has only one eye and a bulbous body, what is
that? And there is a lion with a red white and blue mane, and something else) –
but one of the workers sees us making fun a little and comes over to engage
with us. The conversation turns to other
weird beings, and I ask about the Lambanana (which I mistakenly called the
Bananalamb) – and they say that it just “is” – it’s funny. Is it? We don’t get it. He tells us that it’s “Scouse humor”
(Liverpool humor) – I actually looked it up later and it was created by a
sculptor to represent Liverpool and it’s brand of humor, but the lamb and the
banana were used because those were two main things that were traded through
the docks. Later it went viral, there
was a huge one made that gets set up in different locations around town, and
they did one of those projects where they put a million different thing all
decorated differently around town (you know the art projects and then you have
to track them all down?) – I’ve seen it done with Mickey Mouse and pandas..
We talk to this guy more, and he has questions for us – like
how does Craigslist work? That makes me
chuckle a little – his one big burning question to ask an American is how
Craigslist works. He watches a show
called “Traders” and people use Craigslist to trade up items and see who ends
up with the best thing in the end. We
tell him that we don’t watch it, never heard of it, and he’s incredulous – “but
it’s an AMERICAN show!”… Yes, there are
so many of those types of shows.. He’s fascinated that you can just put things
on there and people will come pick them up off your curb. We tell him that we’re driving around the
country, and he says that he has an upcoming adventure in the states. He’s
renting an RV for 50 days, driving from San Francisco to Boston, and he wants
to be sure to hit Texas along the way.
Whoa! And he thinks that we’re
brave for driving? He’s going to be in
that huge RV across the country?
Finally we have wasted as much time as possible at the mall
and we decide to just go a little early and we head back to the car. The ferry is just about 15 minutes away and
we find it with no problems. There was a
moment of confusion when we rounded a corner expecting to find more street and
it was basically a parking area. But we
figured out that it led to gates (that looked like toll gates with the little
booths next to them). We sat next to it
for a long time (seemed like a long time anyway) and there was no one in
sight. Just as I had given up and thought
we were lost, a little man sticks his head out the window and declares that we
have no patience. That may be true. He totally reminds me of the guy guarding the
gates to OZ.. he lets us through the
gates without checking anything and we wind around just a bit more and we’re at
the gates to the ferry. We’re not really
sure where to go from there, so we park and I head up to the gate to ask what
to do.. There is a sign that tells us
just to go ahead and pull up to the gate and they’ll process us. While we’re reading it, the lady opens the
window and I say “I’m sorry, we’re new” – she’s really nice and helpful and
tells us just to go ahead and pull around.
They process each car one at a time, and really by the end of it, there
are less than 10 cars getting on this HUGE ferry – most are truckers. That surprised me a little – I guess most
people take the “quick ferry” from the other location – but it was about
another 3 hour drive, and then 2 hours across, plus not as cool as sleeping on
a ferry.
As we’re being processed the guard asks us all our surnames, it sounds like he’s asking just as a conversation, but after I say “there are three McBeths” and he says “ok…” – like he’s checking off a list.. I realize that he’s testing us to see if we know our names. Brittany is a little excited that just happened – we just got screened… she was surprised that she didn’t even know it was happening while it was happening. But then she’s kind of glad she didn’t know because she might have looked suspicious.
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| Patti in the back back seat with the bags |
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| Our car is the blue one in front of the black one... tight fit! |
We wait about another hour once we get inside, but we can
see activity, all the big trucks are loading in. There is a waiting area with a bathroom,
vending machines and a tv – but we wait in the car for the most part. Just as I decide to go get coffee and head
back, people are pulling into the gate and loading on to the ferry. It’s a tight fit, we have to pull in and
then back up into a row on the ferry (and I did it! Yay!). With the car parked, we follow the lead of
the other people on the ferry, and we head to the main deck to check in at
reception. The lady is very nice – we learn
that we can exchange our money with her for no commission (Ireland uses Euros).
I’m excited about the new experience of
sleeping on the ferry – our rooms feel very similar to the hotel that we just
left.. the bathroom is almost identical.
But this bathroom SHOULD look like that because it’s on a boat. Not sure what was happening with that
hotel. I wanted to charge my phone and
be able to use my laptop – but we realize that the plugs are different on the
boat. It uses the two tiny prongs that
is used across most of Europe. I buy a
converter – we didn’t even think to bring our other converters. When we check in and learn that we’ll have a
4:15am wake up call, dock at 5:15 and then head into Dublin. Hmmmm…
4:15?
We get our stuff in our rooms and get settled and then head
down for dinner. They serve until 15
minutes after we leave the dock. The
cars were the last ones on the boat, and the dining room is already filled with
all the truckers who are carrying their loads to Dublin on the ferry. They’re old pros at this – we’re obviously
newbies. It’s a buffet and you get a choice of beef,
chicken curry, or some fried pork thing.
They have a cheese selection, some dry chocolate cake – it’s just ok,
buffet food on a ferry… what do you want?
But Patti likes the water.. it’s “Nice good and
cold water”.
After dinner we need to convert to Euros – but we didn’t
realize that she would close as soon as we pulled away from the dock, so we
missed it. We catch her locking up and so
we have to do it at 4:15 in the morning when we get up for breakfast.
We head back to our rooms after dinner – we’re not allowed
to be out on the deck, and it’s late by now (about 10:30) and we have a 4:15
wake up call… I check in on Thomas and Lauren, and they have a wet floor (a
puddle near the door that has no obvious origin), and they have a squeaky
bathroom door handle. It squeaks just because
of the vibration of the engines of the boat.
Very annoying. I tell them that
must suck – mine doesn’t do that. I
head back to the room and I have a short blog meeting with the gals to see what
they want me to write about. I’ve learned
that the toilet sucks stuff down like an airplane bathroom – you don’t want to
be sitting on it while you flush or it creates this scary vacuum, and you have
visions of a huge butt hickey – but don’t ask me how I know..
The beds are actually pretty comfy – but they’re hard to get
out of because they have a lip. So you
do this rocking motion when you try to get up – your feet and arms stretched
out in front of you.. awkwardly reaching for the place you want to be, but just
can’t seem to get to on your own. Like a mummy in a rocking chair....
It’s
about 11:15 and I we have to be up in 5 hours.
We’ll wake up in Ireland!!
Daily total -- 15,470 steps;
30 stairs; 6.68 miles
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