York, Day the first

Okay, so I've been absolutely crap at posting all this, but I'm going to make a big push to finish up everything before I go to Ireland on Wednesday. We'll see how it goes. This is still continuing the trip I went on two months ago. I know, I've been bad at this!

On Wednesday morning I woke up and set off on the next stage of the adventure. York. It's a very very pretty town, and I had loads of fun there, though I didn't stay for very long. The hostel there was very nice, it's run by the Youth Hostel Association, and was very clean and family friendly. Plus they had a full continental breakfast included in the price of the night. Mmmm delicious!


York is one of the few cities in England that still has about 75% of it's original city walls. Of course, they aren't really around the city anymore, just around the core of the city, but it's still pretty cool.



All that yellow is Daffodils. The hill was covered in them!


The walls have Gates, or Bars spaced evenly around the city. I think there are about 5 of them. This is Monks Bar, which is around the back of York Minster.


And this is the Minster! It is very grand, and very beautiful. It took so long to build that there are loads of different kinds of architecture within the same building, just because the style of the times evolved over time. I arrived just in time to go to the 5:15 service. It was a little odd. I knew all the words, all the things to say, but every once in a while there would be something that would be a little different that would just throw me off.


I went on the ghost tour that starts at 7:30 in front of the Minster, and had a blast. The guide was wearing all Victorian gear, top hat and all, and was very good. He was very enigmatic, and gave a lot of history along with the stories. There are loads of people who give tours in York and in Edinburgh, and I would definitely recommend going on one, it was lots of fun.

Manchester part trois!

So the third day in Manchester wasn't terribly eventful. I went and saw the library, which was pretty cool. This photo reminds me of a picture my mom has, which she also turned into a giant amazing painting.

The library has a really cool circular main hall, which is modeled after old monastery libraries.

Other than that I mostly wandered about, seeing things, watching people. I always have lots of fun watching people!

I also went to the Manchester City Museum of Art. They had a cool exhibit on Dutch painters, most of which I had never heard of, but all of it was very good. As I recall there were also some very noisy children running around in the kids exhibit next door, but that's not really surprising. Kids are born to be noisy.


I also took this picture of myself in the bathroom, which I hope makes up for the really rubbish photo I posted the other day. See, I am capable of looking happy!

Manchester, day 2!

So, after a very worried night, I started off the next day to get my wallet from the bus depot's lost and found. It was a longish walk, though definitely within reasonable. It did contain one of the most boring stretches of road though, proof that no where is perfect I guess!


Once downtown I fulfilled the most important things. I bought a new pair of shoes to replace the Converse as my feet were killing me, and a new bag. The shoes are a pair of all black Gola's, and the bag is a messenger with the Beatles Help! logo all over it. Cute!


Mostly I just wandered about that day, to see what I could see.





I did go to Urbis, a very cool museum on cities. It didn't actually have much on cities while I was there, but they are going to have an exhibit on Manchester over the summer. The exhibit I did see was called How Manga Changed the World, which was really fun. Lots of cool art.

Manchester take one.

Okay, so I got a bit behind.... Trying to fix that. Sunday (as in yesterday) I was knocked over by one hell of a cold that just made me feel miserable all day, yet miraculously disappeared come morning. Which is a good thing because I was not looking forward to sneezing my way through my first classes back.

Back to scheduled programming. Sunday I was in Manchester, which is a city I love. They have streetcars! Okay, they call them trams, but hey, it looks like a streetcar to me. I took one out to Salford Quays, which are a out of the city centre,


The Quay's are kind of like Harbourfront, only minus any noise or traffic. There were lots of new condo buildings, some like these ones, and more that were walk ups. It freaked me out how little noise there was. I think water, I think people, boats, coming and going. Here there were just tourists walking about, and there weren't even that many of them.


Tourists? What is there to do out in the middle of nowhere you ask? Lots actually, makes for a well spent afternoon. I first went to the Lowry Museum. This modern building was designed to look like a boat, which is appropriate since it's on a river.


I saw an exhibit of paintings, drawings and prints by an artist named Laura Knight. The focus of the show was the work she had done based on the Russian Ballet and theatre, mostly Shakespeare. It was so interesting to see the way she captured all the movement, sometimes in just a few lines.


In addition to art, the museum holds a theatre that shows plays, ballets and opera.


Next stop was the Imperial War Museum North, which is all about .... well, war. Once again it has a very modern building, this time representing the continents of the earth.



The exhibition rooms are very interesting. It's one big main space broken up into smaller stations around the room. There was a real focus on the individual within war. There were the personal stories of soldiers, nurses, POW, children, women at home. Everyone had a say. There were a lot of person artifacts to go along with the stories as well.


I could have spent a lot of time there, just wandering about and reading. However, the one down side about the Museum is that it has very low lighting. Very very low. Every half hour they play one of three multimedia movies, which are very loud. With gun shot and bomb sound effects. The combination meant that I got a headache, so I called it quits once the second movie started.


I am not actually as upset as I look in this picture, I was just concentrating really hard to take a picture of myself. It's more of a Here I Am picture than anything. That's what happens when you travel by yourself, no one to take pictures of you.



I should also mention that this was the day that in a mess of groceries I left my wallet on the bus in Manchester. Through the intrepid skills of the bus company, it was found. Kudos also to my dad who canceled my credit card within seconds of finding out.

Liverpool: Day 2

On my first morning, after a good night's sleep and some very sore feet, I set out to the city library to check my email. The library is near an art gallery and a museum, however, I didn't visit either of them. 

The buildings in the area are all very grand old things. They fit the part for a museum, but were a bit unexpected for a library. 

I then wandered back downtown, to see what sort of shopping could be done on the very large main street in Liverpool. The verdict was .... nothing I couldn't get anywhere else. It's a little sad, but true. If you lived in and around Liverpool you'd be set, all the chain stores on one street. I mean Swansea only has half the stores that Liverpool does, so clearly that's good. However, there just wasn't anything really unique, something to say "I got this in Liverpool". So, I didn't buy anything. 

On a side street, off the main shopping street is the club district. That's where the Cavern Club, where I had been the night before is. There is also The Grapes Pub, where the Beatles would drink before and after gigs. Apparently their chosen spot to sit was right by the ladies toilets, so that they could peek in and see the girls getting ready to go out after work. Cheeky.

The Cavern is just down the street, with the club on one side and the pub on the other. The original entrance is made to look just as it was, including a photo of the old bouncer from the Beatles era. 

The current club entrance is just down the street. 

The Cavern has created a very cool memorial to it's rock history on the brick wall outside. Each brick features the name of a band that played there in the past. I took this picture, of Jimi Hendrix, just for Andrea. Some day we'll go see it in person together. 

Another pretty cool thing I saw in Liverpool was this old church. From the front, it looked pretty standard, and I wondered if I would be able to take a look inside. 

The answer was no in the end, and for a very good reason. 

This church has no roof to it's name. I'm not sure why, probably bombed out during WW2, or maybe a fire? Who knows. Instead it sits there, looking pretty but with no one to stand within it's walls to give it much of a sense of purpose. Even the clock on the tower was wrong, or rather, was only right twice a day for a minute, since the thing had completely stopped working. 

Tomorrow there may not be a post as I am once again on the move, this time back to Swansea so I can go to school on Monday again. Good thing I didn't do very much that day anyway, not much to talk about. 

The Adventure Begins!

This adventure begins two weeks ago today. I will (hopefully) be updating solidly for the next two weeks recounting adventures on their corresponding day. We'll see how it goes, eh?

First stop on the Adventure train was Liverpool. I had to get up super early to catch the train, which took me to Birmingham, then on to Liverpool. 

Liverpool is famous for it's two huge cathedrals. I only really visited one, the Liverpool Cathedral, which is Anglican. It was started in the early 1900's and finished in the 70's, so it's not very old compared to most found in Europe. It is impressive though. The elderly lady who was sitting at the information desk told me that when soon after it was completed they had to add more toilets. The original building only had three, as they were not expecting hordes of school children to be visiting on a regular basis. It's a little odd to think that this building has never been just a church. It has always been somewhat of a tourist attraction. 

The really odd thing about the building, which really adds to it's impressiveness, is that it has a sort of moat all the way around it. It's only sort of a moat, there isn't any water in it. Instead it seems to serve as the graveyard, with tombstones creating a wall for the path. 

A little further than the church, down the same street, is Liverpool's Chinatown. According to the owner of the hostel I was staying at, Liverpool has one of the oldest Chinese communities in Europe due to it's shipping industry. It also has an impressive gate. The community in Liverpool isn't very big anymore, but it is still there. 

While walking I saw this on the side of a pub that seems to be abandoned. Now I'm no expert, but that looks like a Banksy to me. Banksy is a graffiti artist who has left pieces of art on the sides of buildings all over the world. His most well known images are those of rats. 

There was more graffiti on the wall opposite. These were repeated in the windows of the building for quite a while. 

Liverpool has a pretty cool skyline, full of big old buildings. Unfortunately, due to Liverpool being this years Euro Capital of Culture, most of it was under construction. 

Being a port city, Liverpool has a fairly substantial harbor. It reminds me of the Distillery District in Toronto. All the old warehouse buildings have been converted into stores and museums. 

The building on the left houses the Tate Liverpool, which is part of the Tate Modern in London. If you are going to see at Tate museum, the one in London is much more impressive, as the Liverpool one is quite small. It did have some interesting exhibitions on, namely one on representations of the body throughout art history. It had some contemporary preformance art pieces that I had studied in a class last term, so it was super cool to finally see them in better quality than a photocopy. 

Liverpool is also famous for music, namely the birthplace of the Beatles. There is an awesome museum called The Beatles Story, which is highly recommended, even by the locals. There is an audio tour included in the price of admission, which is narrated by John Lennon's sister Julia. There are interviews with people who knew the Beatles, fans and their assorted managers, recounting what it was that made them so cool. 

Another wickedly cool thing to do, especially if you are in Liverpool on a Thursday, is to go to the Cavern Club. The Beatles played over 200 shows there, and plenty of other bands got their start there as well. Every Thursday, for the grand price of 1 pound, you can see the Mosey Beatles, a series of Beatles cover bands. It is wicked fun, partly to hear the music preformed live, and partly because the musicians are just so mad talented. They refered to eachother by their Beatle-name all night, saying "Ringo's going to sing his first song of the night now" or "John's going to go acoustic on this one". They play three 45minute sets, each one showcasing songs from a different period in their career. 

Seeing them preform reminded me how much I love seeing live music, which I haven't done since October, in Toronto. Maybe I'll try to see more in Swansea ....