Monday morning Uncle Yan, Auntie Val, and I loaded up the car for a week's worth of travel and drove off to our first destination - Liverpool. It rained off and on, culminating in a downpour as we arrived at Albert Dock in Liverpool. We actually sat in the car for ten minutes or so just to see if it would lighten up a bit. It didn't, so we slogged our way over to the Albert Dock buildings and found a restaurant to get some lunch. Uncle Yan and I both ordered fish and chips with mushy peas, as there was a two for one special.
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| liver building in the pouring rain |
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| albert dock in the rain |
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| fish and chips with mushy peas |
When we walked out of the building after lunch, we were surprised to find that the rain had stopped, and blue skies and sunshine were making their presence known. We wandered down Albert Dock past the Museum of Liverpool toward the Royal Liver Building. The two birds on top, the Liver Birds, are 18 foot tall bronze statues of not clearly identified birds - some cross between a cormorant, an eagle, and perhaps a spoonbill. By the museum, there were odd-looking animal sculptures, which I later found out were "mini superlambananas" - the Superlambanana is a 17 foot tall sculpture, symbolic of Liverpool's formerly common cargo of lambs and bananas. The mini ones we saw were all decorated differently.
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| no rain and the beginnings of blue skies and sunshine |
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uncle yan with "lambanana" statue decorated with
the history of chinese in liverpool |
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| auntie val and me in front of king edward vii and the liver building |
We took a quick stroll into the Museum of Liverpool, then headed away from the docks to look in on the Liverpool War Museum, located in the Western Approaches underground bunker. Unfortunately it was already closed for the day, so we were unable to tour the bunker. After checking in to our hotel, we wandered up to Chinatown for a very good dinner. While there, we discovered a sign identifying Liverpool Chinatown as the oldest Chinatown in Europe.
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| underground headquarters for world war ii bombing raids |
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| auntie val and uncle yan at the chinatown gate |
In the morning, we continued north toward the Lake District. Our first stop was in Windermere, then on to Bowness-on-Windermere where Auntie Val and I visited the World of Beatrix Potter, an attraction featuring three dimensional scenes from many of her stories including Peter Rabbit, Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, Tom Kitten, and other characters. We wandered a bit more around Bowness-on-Windermere, including having a look at Windermere (the lake) itself before stopping for a cup of tea.
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| auntie val with peter rabbit |
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| did you know peter rabbit is eating a long scarlet radish, not a carrot? |
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| the tale of peter rabbit was originally written as a letter |
We next headed to Ambleside where we were to spend two nights at the Melrose Guest House (bed and breakfast). It is a very picturesque village, with many of the houses including out lodging built of the grey lake stone. I have no photo of the Melrose as it had scaffolding going up when we arrived - the owners were having the window frames repainted for the first time in several years. Despite the scaffolding, the Melrose and its owners were lovely.
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| windermere from a lookout point on the way to ambleside |
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view from my room at the melrose guest house -
the scaffolding nearly blocked my view the next evening |
Our rooms were very nice and very comfortable and we slept well in preparation for some more exploring the next day.
