Robot Claw

Yesterday I caught this train from London to Paris: 

The trip was comfortable and seemed quick. The channel tunnel was only about 20 minutes in length, so we were clearly going at a good speed. Once in France I was treated to views like this for the remaining 90 minutes to Paris: 

I took the subway to the hotel where I was met by Sue! Although the rooms are tiny, the hotel is quite good and very well located.

It was about 4pm and very warm out (35C) but we almost immediately set out for a walk along the river to Notre Dame. This was perhaps not the wisest of plans: 

That’s Riley checking to see if Sue had been overcome by the heat! It was hot hot hot and quite unpleasant, but we’re all Australian so that doesn’t bother us does it? At any rate I forgot the heat once this came into view: 

Magnificent isn’t it? I left the girls in the shade (since they’d been here already) and joined the line to enter. 

There was a service being held to bless the sacrament. This made the interior even more spectacular, seeing it while the priest sang his rites (in French) and the people responded. The sheer size of the cathedral was breathtaking: 

After Notre Dame we went shopping to get Riley some shoes and we stumbled upon the biggest grocery store I’ve ever seen. The produce section alone was about as big as my local and we boggled at not only the variety but also the (low!) prices. Those lucky French!!

So after one day my impressions? Paris is busy, hot, green, beautiful and has the worst traffic I’ve ever seen.

Oh and I can’t understand anything the locals are saying 😉

Yesterday’s train to London was extremely comfortable: 

And as of the cabin wasn’t good enough, my first class ticket also meant free food. I was in hog heaven when I was handed a bacon sandwich: 

It was a lovely trip through endless countryside that mostly looked like this: 

Many times the rail line traveled alongside s canal and I saw many narrowboats chugging along.

I also saw legions of cows and sheep and even managed a quick shot of a flock of camels fleeing from a falling star: 

After arriving in the city and checking into my (barebones but clean) hotel I headed out to explore. 

The subway here is expensive if you’re only here a day. Since I wasn’t going to buy an Oyster card, I had to pay for individual tickets, which was about $8 per trip. The trains are also old, a bit too hot and don’t run as frequently as other metros. 

I got off at Leicester Square, a short walk from Trafalgar. The weather was beautiful and the crowds large as I walked to The Mall toward Westminster Abbey. 

It seemed to get hotter as the day got older, and later on I’d notice that I actually got a little sunburned. The crowds at the Abbey were massive, and I quickly discovered they had stopped selling tickets for the day! I headed toward the river… 

Amazingly, I bought more postcards here and there. I’ve sent about ten so far this trip, but have about 20 more in my bag 🙂 

Last time in London we didn’t ride The Eye due to colossal lines. I very much wanted to remedy this yesterday but once I got there the lines were just as bad. I wasn’t going to wait hours so continued on my way… 

I saw more in my wanderings: Oxford St, Soho, Picadilly Circus and many shops but I was getting very tired and eventually shuffled back for an early bedtime. Considering I only had half a day, I think I did a pretty good whirlwind tour of London!

Today – very soon actually – I’m hopping on the train to Paris! An underwater train!? This should be an experience…

That’s one of the two large cathedrals in Liverpool, in this case the Anglican one. The photo barely does justice to just how massive it is… 

To quote Lovecraft, we’re talking cyclopean here. The ceilings are incredibly high and the amount of detail on the walls and arches and columns is breathtaking. 

When the organ was built, it was the biggest instrument in the world. The photo above shows only a quarter of the pipes. As with everything in this spectacular building, it’s mind-boggling! 

This may have been the most impressive church I have ever visited. A no-brainer if you’re ever in Liverpool. 

Operation Free Blackpool had resulted in two different Liverpool hotels and we switched to the second yesterday. It’s a large and comfy apartment with a good view of the city center. 

Around midday we visited The Beatles Story down on the docks. It’s a museum/exhibit with exhausting detail about The Beatles and I thought it was quite good. 

The exhibit has a lot of reproductions and recreations including of the original Cavern Club, as well as a wealth of artifacts and old merchandise. 

Being the home of The Beatles, they turn up frequently in Liverpool tourist areas. This for instance is a mural made of jelly beans in the window of a sweet shop: 

And this is a pizza store in Mathew Street (location of the original Cavern Club): 

It’s all very tasteful 😉

Speaking of tasteful, what do you think of this building? 

It looks like a spaceship or missile silo doesn’t it? It is actually the Catholic Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ The King. Notice the crown on top?

This one is only a few minutes from the Anglican one above, and just as massive. It’s also very… unusual and these days feels a little dated. 

The light inside is garish from the solid colored glass windows all around the seats. Those face toward the altar from 360 degrees, as if the priest is giving a performance or something. It’s massive inside, and could probably seat over a thousand. 

While it was memorable and striking, in the battle of Liverpool cathedrals my money is certainly going to the Anglicans! 

Dinner was a treat, in that I had my favourite that I have avoided eating for years! I’m not eating much (or often) on this trip so it was good to have a full belly 😀

It’s early morning now, and Florence recently left for her dawn flight home. I thank her for showing me some of Ireland and sharing this little northwestern England jaunt with me!

I’m off to London today on a first class train, and although I arrive after lunch there should be time for some tourism…

We left Holyhead early on a 4.5 hour train ride (on three trains) to Blackpool via Liverpool. 

The first train was comfortable and the Welsh countryside was beautiful. Here’s a station we stopped at not far out of Holyhead: 

We also saw lots and lots and lots of sheep! 

Eventually, around 2pm, we arrived in lovely Blackpool. Back when KLS, Jim and I visited England years ago this was the destination I wanted to return to the most, and as the destination of this trip I was very much looking forward to it. I’d been talking it up for weeks to Florence; it was going to be great! 

It was awful. 

Without laboring the point, here’s a list of why:
– Our B&B was in a gay red light district
– The B&B was locked when we arrived and we had to phone them to get in
– The owner was a creeper and the whole place made us extremely uneasy
– It was endlessly and heavily raining in Blackpool
– It was extremely cold
– The wind was cyclonic
– (Worst of all?) Everything was closed! We seem to have arrived in an off-season! 

That’s the famous Blackpool tower, taken from inside an arcade on the North Pier. The pier itself was closed, as was the central pier and virtually every attraction on the Promenade. And the beaches. 

I had purchased an umbrella which broke in the wind less than 2 blocks from the store. If the experience had been a comedy or errors, you’d laugh hysterically! 

So what to do? Well everything had gone wrong, but fixing things would take only time and money and we had both to spend. I ate the Blackpool hotel cost, hastily booked us (on my phone) two nights in a Liverpool hotel and only three hours after arriving in Blackpool we fled on an outbound train! 

There’s more to the tale, including the torture of actually finding our Liverpool hotel (shown above) and getting drenched due to indufficient clothes for the weather but much later that day, as we sat in a warm apartment laughing at reality TV with Blackpool only a memory I think we both felt the day had ended well and the vacation had been saved.

There’s lots to do in Liverpool, and as I write this I can even see a hint of sun outside. I don’t know what we’ll do today, but I know for certain it’ll be better than yesterday 🙂