We are currently in Liverpool! Yesterday we drove for three hours to get here, and it’s most certainly worth it! We went to go and see some of the most famous sights before going into a really cheap but very posh youth hostel to stay the night. On all the doors were scenes of things and it was really cool! On the door to our room there was a beefeater and whenever I came out to go to the toilet or brush my teeth or something I would get a fright from this big beefeater standing at our door with his gun! There was one of a prison cell with a dark hood and skeleton hands on the iron bars of the cell! It was kind of creepy 😉
When we got there, we went into the youth hostel to check in so we wouldn’t have to do all that later. The receptionist there was Dutch – his name was Wouter – and we had no trouble in understanding him; however, later on, when we came in to go to bed, the receptionist was Liverpudlian, and we could barely understand him at all, though he was from our own country! 😉
Wouter told us all the interesting sights and marked them on the map, and then we went to see the ‘Superlambbananas’ first. They were so strange! Apparently, the (most likely mad, in my opinion) sculptor made whatever came into his head randomly, and at the end of all these sculptures, he couldn’t decide whether each looked more like a lamb or a banana! We took some photos of us with them, as shown below.
This was all on very famous Albert Docks. We had a wander round and saw the famous, large, plain statue of The Beatles. We got some selfies and photographs of us all linking arms and holding hands (what did you expect?) and they’re all here below!
Then we went to the Museum of Liverpool, where we learnt all about the horrid mass unemployment that happened there in the past. Lots of people, from the most important dockers to the owners of popular cafes, lost their jobs simply because they weren’t needed anymore. Machinery started being used to unload the ships so they didn’t need men to do that job anymore. Many families got poorer and poorer and most died at a very early age.
After that, we went into the Museum of Slavery, and saw all about how Liverpool was involved in the Atlantic slave trade. There were four or five different sections showing four or five different things, most of which were panels and films and the occasional interactive thing. It was really good. Because Liverpool was a big port, it was an important place where slaves would be held before making the crossing to the Caribbean. They would trade things such as spices and sugar for the slaves in Africa, before putting them on the boat and selling them in the Caribbean. It was really horrible – what they did to the Africans, that is. The boat would have been really really crowded, and they were kept below deck, tied to the benches and were handcuffed and shackled and had an iron thing around their neck. Many of them died on the journey to America. When children were born from the slaves they were actually owned by the slave owners, so would often be taken away from their parents and sold. We watched a film about a lady whose children were all taken away and she never saw them again.
It was a lovely, busy, sunny day, so we decided to go for a wonder round Albert Docks for a bit.
According to Wouter, there was a music festival going on later at night called ‘Africa Oye’, and we went to go and watch it after dinner. There was some really awful chavvy music on one side of the lawn (!), so we went and moved to the other side, and guess who came on the stage at half nine at night…? MAX ROMEO!! Singing live! It was so awesome! Andy and Daddy were both on the phone and they wanted to know all about it because they were so jealous! We waited right until the very end for him to sing ‘Chasing the Devil’, our favourite! He would sing, ‘I’m going to put on,’ and then leave a gap for the audience to shout, ‘An iron shirt!’ And then he would say, ‘And chase Satan,’ and we would say, ‘Out of Eart’!’ And at the end, he said, ‘Now, people – when you wake up in the morning, you spread happiness, joy, peace and harmony, alright? And we will make the world a better place – look up at the sky above you, this is the world we’re living in, you be grateful, you spread harmony. One world, one love, one destiny – rastify!’
That day, when we got back to the youth hostel, it was about half ten, and we got in bed about eleven in the pm!
NEXT DAY – Monday
Today, we woke up in the morning and went straight out to the River Mersey to see if we could get a ferry ride. However, the receptionist there said there had been a ‘very dreadful incident’ and that ‘the police have closed the river’. We went to go and ask one of the other staff members what the ‘very dreadful incident’ was. He said:
‘Last night, two people fell off the ferry and into the river. One of them was rescued and taken out, but the other hasn’t been found yet. We don’t know when the ferries will reopen; it’s up to the police to let us know when the river is safe.’
That was REALLY creepy! So Tilly and I told Mummy what he said, and we went, rather safely, away, and had a wonder about again.
We went in some of the shopping centres and then to the art gallery. There were lots of cool paintings in there, some of the artists of which we knew, such as Rembrandt; Holbein; and many more.
We also went and saw the massive library nextdoor, which was a bit like a modern Harry Potter one! It was SO BIG! If you looked up, there was this wide, tilted, glass spiral staircase going up to the top, just like the Sliding Staircases or whatever they’re called in Harry Potter! One of the – well, one of the odd things – was that someone had gone around knitting coloured boobies and putting them all over the shelves, and tied to them was a tag, which on one side had a fact saying something like, ‘Did you know it is illegal to ask someone to ‘cover up’ when they are breastfeeding a baby?’ and on the other side it said, ‘BETTY’S WOOLLEN BOOBS – BETTY’SWOOLLENBOOBS.CO.UK.’ It was the weirdest thing I’d ever seen!
After the library, it was about half two, so we went back to the hostel, had a little snack lunch (on the amazing beanbags outside!), and got in the car to go to Blackpool. See my next post all about that holiday!
