Welcome back!
At the very end of my first week here in Wales I went on a day trip to Liverpool, which was organized by the International Exchange Office Bangor. In this blog entry I will let you know what I did there, I hope you enjoy reading it and looking at the photos as much as I enjoyed my day in Liverpool! 🙂
Getting from Bangor to Albert Dock in Liverpool by bus took us only about one and a half hour. Albert Dock is located right at the river Mersey and it is one of the main tourist sites of Liverpool, there are many gift shops, restaurants, cafés and quite a number of museums, including the Merseyside Maritime Museum, the International Slavery Museum and the The Beatles Story exhibition.
Our first destination was the Merseyside Maritime Museum right around the corner of the place where we got off the bus. This museum offers quite a number of exhibitions; at the moment the Titanic & Liverpool exhibition is probably the most visited one. What I liked in particular about this exhibition was an information board about the myths in relation to the Titanic and its sinking (click on the photo below and should be able to read it as well!). The famous movie was – of course – also featured in the exhibition.
After visiting the exhibition we went to the shop (because where else would we go to? 😀 ) where they sold everything you can imagine one can sell: Little Titanic replicas, a replica of Rose’s Heart of the Ocean (the necklace, even I know that! If you didn’t know you should watch the movie again! Ok I didn’t know the name of the necklace either and had to google it..I am such a noob, I need to watch more movies) but also a replica of a Titanic passenger card and even a SuperLamBanana plush! Wait! A what?? A SuperLamBanana! The SuperLamBanana is a mix of a lamb and a banana. It was designed by a Japanese artist and first presented as a sculpture in 1998 and became a kind of symbol for Liverpool. If you are interested in this, have a look at the SuperLamBanana website.I liked it quite a lot, both the idea and the design, and I would have certainly bought a plush if it hadn’t been as expensive as hell…
SuperLamBanana plush
Afterwards we went to The Beatles Story exhibition, but did not go in because it was rather expensive and we wanted to see as many different things as possible on that single day – so I definitely have something to do on my next visit to Liverpool. We went to the shop instead, where they sell everything you can imagine – have a close look at the photos below to get an impression of that. What I found most interesting was a Lego Yellow Submarine with Lego The Beatles, something I definitely didn’t expect to find there. Another interesting finding was a picture of The Beatles at a shop, which was entirely made out of beans. I wonder how long it took the people who made it to finalize it…
Our next stop after passing a number of shop at Albert Dock was the Cavern Club in Mathew Street. This is the place where The Beatles played over 200 concerts and became famous. On the opposite of the club there is the Cavern Pub, next to it one can find a sculpture of a young John Lennon, which is very popular to take a photo with. Right next to it one can see a huge number of names on The Cavern Wall of Fame – musicians who have played at the Cavern Club, from The Beatles and Queen to Adele.
Leaving a crowded Mathew Street behind us, we went through the city towards Liverpool Cathedral and came across many interesting shops and buildings, including a Liverpool FC shop – it was a must for me to visit that shop, although I am not really a Liverpool fan – and a building called “Grand Central”, which did not only look fascinating from outside but was also pretty cool inside with a videogame and comic store and other shops selling clothes or movie-related stuff.
On our way to the cathedral we came across Liverpool’s Chinatown, Europe’s oldest Chinatown. It has a very impressive arch, as you can see on the photo below. They are currently also building a new part or “city within a city” called New Chinatown, which was quite prominently advertised. The blue dragon you can see on the photo is used as a symbol for New Chinatown. One its official website it is described as “one of the most important and exciting development projects in the UK today”. I am really excited to the project finished one day.
Our last stop on this day was Liverpool Cathedral. It was very impressive from the outside, but even more inside. There was – of course – a shop here as well, selling many different products related to the cathedral and religion in general. What I found quite funny in there was what you can see on the photos below, a Hero Bible and a Tabloid Bible. I think you can buy any kind of bible there. I said that if they sold 1D Bibles I would buy it, unfortunately (or rather fortunately for my credit card) they didn’t. But that might be solely due to the fact that the 1D hype is already over, who knows?
I was a bit sad about leaving Liverpool, I really enjoyed the time we spent there and the city had so much more to offer. I am planning to return soon, have a look at my last impressions of Liverpool at night below. I hope you indeed enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed the trip to Liverpool, next time I’ll let you know more about the academic side of my semester abroad – e.g. about the University system and the courses I take – the importance of Bilingualism here and my trip to the magnificent castle of Caernarfon. 🙂
Best wishes,
Alex
ALEX IN WALES 