Liverpool

Liverpool was definitely an experience in itself as was trying to make it there/home! Trying to use the trains here is much more difficult when you don't have anyone to assist you along the way. We were a little crunched for time but somehow we made it to our 1055 am flight. We left our dorms before 6 and made it there by about 10. Was awfully hectic. Turned out when we got there check-in was at 1055 and our flight didn't leave until 1125 so we didn't need worry nearly as much as we had.

We landed in Manchester, England after a really quick flight. Liverpool has their own airport but Ryanair doesn't fly from Brussels-Liverpool for some reason, wish they would that would have saved us a lot of time/money in the long run! After we gathered our wits and watched pigeons in the airport for a little, we caught a 45 min charter to Liverpool and finally made it! It took us forever to find The Nightingale Lodge. We finally asked a lady "where's Upper Parliament & Catherine?" and she told us we were standing there! Thankfully we found the hostel and got settled in. That was real nice to be able to communicate directly to the people again and definitely made things much easier!

We went out to some bars on Friday, met some interesting people. "We love you f****n Yanks!" was one of our friends favorite sayings. There were a lot of couples there that talked to us and told us how much they like Americans. That was nice. Came across a man, Dennis, who claimed to have smoked the peace pipe with one Bill Clinton back in the day. Not sure if I believe him but he also had a lot of other historic information on Liverpool, was a pretty cool guy. Met the "Bolivarian Ball Buster"; a crazy old man who was wasted and just dancing. He had balloons, puppets, and all sorts of accessories he was playing with while he was dancing to the live karaoke. After we went to O’Neil’s, a favorite spot, we attempted to walk home BUT we managed to get lost and for some reason thought that going to the Police Station would be a good idea. Luckily they didn't give us much grief and just got a taxi for us to take, apparently we were completely lost and way off from where we thought, whoops. Hey but it makes for a good story!?

Friday we went to Albert’s Dock where we walked around and had some lunch, which was pretty cool experience. After that we went to The Beatles Story, a museum/tour of The Fab Four. It was pretty cool, had a lot of Beatles stuff never knew/seen before and definitely fun. Even to this day the boys draw crowds to little Liverpool, pretty amazing. We spent the afternoon walking back and just taking in Liverpool. It's cool to think how much history there was there and we were actually in the town. There was a church nearby that was bombed to high hell during WW2 but was still standing and a historical monument of Liverpool that we walked by frequently. I thought I had lost my passport Friday morning and was a little nervous throughout the day. When we were about to go to dinner/bars for the night I put on my jacket and found it in my sleeve. Not sure how it got there, but thankfully I found it! That caused a lot of stress through the day, was a big relief to find it. We hit up some other bars and went back to O’Neil’s to watch some live music where to our surprise, "THE BBB" was there again, frog and all. This time he was in rare form and played the guitar/rubber chicken while he sang and dance to the band's music. It was like he was traveling with us, only he was there for the bars and entertainment strictly.

Saturday. We went to John, Paul, Georges, & Ringo's old houses of Liverpool. That was pretty sweet. John & Paul's are bought and owned by The National Trust and you have to get on a tour that only 7,000 get on per year so we only saw the outside, but it was still really cool to do. We walked to Strawberry Fields and inside there. Was a very cool thing to do, neat to have the actual image in my head of what is referred to in the song. Did more sightseeing on that side of town and ate some Fish & Chips on Penny Lane. That just sounds cool and was a really good meal actually. Decided we would take it easy that night since we had to make an 805 flight the next morning; then the chaos began. Discovered that there were no trains, coaches/buses that go to Manchester Airport early enough for us on Sunday morning. Also taxis would cost 2 arms and 2 legs to make it there. After some debating and consulting we opted to leave a night early and head to the airport Saturday night around 1115 pm. We caught the train were doing good, surviving, and then we missed our stop...great. Not knowing what to do we thought getting off at the next stop and taxing back to our missed stop would work BUT we got off in probably one of the rougher areas and there was not a sound/site around when we left the station. GREAT. After we cautiously walked around for about 10 or 20 mins we finally found a taxi and had to take that to Manchester Airport, we were out of ideas/options at that point and frankly a little worried. Taxi wasn't the best option but it was our only one so we took that and made it safe in sound after a while. It was pretty frustrating our blissful trip was quickly spiraling out of control! Kind of a bummer that things became some helter skelter and everything. We had to sit at the airport from 1230 until our 8 am flight and it was torture. If you've spent time like that in the airport you'd understand. We made it home, flight went well and all that. We had to train from Brussels to Hasselt and that was another pain in the ars but somehow we got it done again.
Then we couldn't even take the bus home from the train station in Hasselt, so we had to walk another 20 minutes to our dorms.

All and all Liverpool was an experience, historically and educational one too. Learned a lot travelin'. Hopefully the next ones go smoother! (Just saw how long this was, wow..)Welp until next time, ciao.