Long drive out to the lakes district today. Stopped at the craziest rest area ever with a huge disc of a building on a tall pylon. Looked like the disc up in the air was mostly abandoned but Igot some neat pics. Greeted by several crows at the stop on the way baack at another of these, so auspicious as well.

Liverpool itself seems to be a city of contrasts. Lots of older looking buildings jumbled in with very modern looking structures and a working waterfront. Huge old molasses and sugar cane sstorage structures, old warehouse buldings and a huge congtainerized shipping dockyard. Interestingly, employment plummeted when containerized transport took over thingss. Liverpool now moves huge amounts of material with only a few hundred people haqndling the work. Huge cranes.

Took a nice little train ride to a town in the lakes district where we caught a boat ride to another town. Very pretty and should have some nice shots from the boat trip. At the other end, lots of swans, ducks and geese at the waters edge. Stranger that the were acually well behaved.

We wandered into the town seeking lunch. The first place we tried had a long wait for food so we just each had a pint. I had a cider (that Lorna didn’t like) and Lorna had a pint of ‘ditzy blond lager’ that she enjoyed. She tried tried the unicorn but like the ditzy blonde better (unfortunately she says). We moved on to the ‘Pigs Fly’ and ordered sandwiches and another half pint. I tried the flying pig brew that they had on tap, not sure what Lorna went for. Neat wallpaper near our table with fun, fake book spines on the wall…makes me wish we could have bespoke wallpaper made with something similar from the popsicle stick art we have on the wall of the library at home.

After lunch and a pint and a half, we had to get rolling back to the bus. I was a bit wobbly. Lorna stopped at a Tesco’s to get bread to feed to the birds. Swans may not be viscious here, but they are messy eaters. They would grab a slice of bread and then shake their beaks hard enough to fling most of the bread in all directions. After a quick feeding we grabbed mint chocolate chip ice cream cones and hoofed it for the bus.

Mostly dozed on the ride back. Same highway as the route out and darker and rainier.

Once we got on the ship again we headed up for the ‘Liverpool Legends’ beatles show. Not often that I twist, but I did tonight. Alyssa later suggested that tango might be my dance 🙂

Now listening to the very talented violinist and having a drink while waiting for dinner time.

Seems as if the noro virus worries are continuing as they’re passing out sanitizing wipes everywhere and washing everything constantly. Hoping that we’ll dodge that bullet for the remainder of the cruise.