For all the people say about Liverpool, in a negative sense, we have found it to be extremely interesting. Our son Josh is adopted and his birth father, Steve, lives in Liverpool, with his wife Chis. Shown here on the left, him and Josh are working out their “road trip”, down through Wales, to get to London where Josh flies home from a week from now.

Although we have met Steve several times over the years, those meetings have been brief, so this is the first chance to really get to know him. It has been wonderful to see the little similarities, perhaps to better understand Josh. It has been an experience for me. PLUS, and this is a smaller, but not insignificant plus, he has lived in this area for most of his life, and so is a great tour guide, with lots of little tidbits that I always love.

It turns out that Liverpool is more than the Beatles home town.

I was not aware that Liverpool was bombed is WW 2 , but alas, being a port city, it was a main target. Liverpool was the largest working port on the west coast, thereby critical to the British war effort. In 1941 the city was hit by a devastating 7 day bombardment, and this church, St Luke’s, was hit causing a large fire that destroyed the centre of the building.

It was an Anglican Church and the bishop of Liverpool pressed for it to be left as a memorial to the war . So it sat for 60 years becoming quite derelict until it was revitalized in the early 2000s, and is now used for events, such as the market that we walked through

Oh and a statue outside to commemorate the Christmas in WW I when the soldiers on both sides put down their weapons and played soccer.

Certainly points towards the inherent stupidity of war.

We then went to a pub that has earned a special title for being perfectly preserved.

It is particularly famous for the “gents” bathroom. Josh snuck a photo for me.

I did check out the “ ladies loo”, but it was clearly an after thought and following the directions to the “ladies” I got the distinct impression that I was being escorted out. 😮

We then visited England’s largest cathedral

It was started around 1906 and completed 1978. I struggle with the enormous amount of money that goes into these kind of structures while poverty is so rampant.

And what trip to Liverpool would be complete without seeing the cavern club famed for being the site that the Beatles played early in their careers. The regional club is no longer open across the street are a few clubs with the name cavern so it’s a bit confusing. The street felt a little bit like bourbon street in New Orleans with music blaring from every door.

What tour would be complete without a beach walk? Ahead of Ken‘s hair, you can see a statue to the right. Then, if you look further and more closely, there are two others, further out. Apparently, there is a total of 100 of these statues and you can watch them appear and disappear according to the moon to the tides.

Another interesting thing about this beach is that just north of here is where they dumped the rubble from all the buildings destroyed in the bombs in ww2. So the beach is mostly made up of bricks that have been tumbling around in the ocean for 70 years. It would be wonderful to be here and take some home and build a fence or a cottage or something with them.

You can see a lot in a day with a good guide

Of course we found some cool sea glass. I guess from the windows that were part of the rubble

So that’s all for now. Love Janet and Ken