Advertisement
Published: November 25th 2019
Town Hall 1754
No longer the administrative buildingWith a little more than an hour to spare before needing to leave for the Lime Street station, I sought out a few missed pleasures. Steady light rain greeted me.
Yesterday, I had recognized that City Hall (seen at a distance on the walking tour) was just down the street. The wrought iron railings were freshly painted black with gold highlights. A group of tourists entered the building, which I hadn’t even considered, because it looked closed. The guard who was keeping people from entering the function rooms was happy enough to let me photograph the lobby. The carvings and gilded features were magnificent.
In spite of the rain, I walked along the face of the
Museum of Liverpool looking for the
statues of the Beatles, which I hadn’t been able to find since the walking tour. Rather than wasting more time looking, I decided to spend a little over half an hour in the Museum. A friendly greeter told me all about how to spend time at the Museum. Also, she told me how to find the nearby statues. First, I took advantage of the facilities and bought an egg and cress sandwich for lunch on the train.
Initially I was disappointed
Town Hall interior
Elegant standard of another era in the Museum because the diorama approach was over-used to trace history from the beginning of time. Once I found a display on the
Overhead Liverpool Railway, I felt like I was learning something new. Wooden cars ran overhead along a great stretch of the city, quite a marvel at the time. Its demise came in the mid-fifties, as for many public institutions, when damage was extensive and money was tight after the war.
Yoko Ono had curated a reminiscent gallery on her time with John Lennon. As in Washington DC when I was there, she had message trees. Anyone can write a message on a tag and tie it onto the tree – now my thoughts are recorded in both places. The gallery had a relaxed feel, even though some of the panels did deal with war and John Lennon’s assassination. One of the quotes near the end spoke of her need to keep on developing personally, rather than giving in to her grief.
I walked quickly back to the hotel, packed last items in haste, and set a quick pace to the station. Although I had walked the distance twice in reverse, this was the first time going from
hotel to station. Noticing the landmarks was a bit of a challenge. Even so, there were no problems finding and getting to my reserved seat. The surprise was that I could hoist my case from floor to about shoulder-height to fit it into the luggage rack.
Sitting in the train watching the farmlands roll by I kept thinking, “How beautiful it is!’. The view was relatively the same as in Ireland and Scotland - yellow and green fields outlined by dark green hedges and dotted by dark green trees, occasionally running into a dark woodland. Every time I looked out the window, I got the same jolt of joy.
In London, finding the way out of Euston Station was a bit difficult because of construction. Once at Euston Road I checked with a convenient trio of safety officers to ensure I was about to walk in the right direction to St Pancras Station. Once there, I had to ask another guard to show me the entrance, because it wasn’t obvious that the entrance to the Underground was also the entrance to the trains. Since there hadn’t been any delay in my first train, I was early for my
Beatles Statues 2015
Honouring local boys second. At the very back of the long station (low-rent area?), I found the Boots I vaguely remembered and bought a few things. The Broadstairs train wasn’t on the announcement board yet, but by the time I trundled up and down looking for the Southeastern trains, it was. Up the elevator, as I now remembered, and onto the platform. Easy journey.
At
Broadstairs, Rosemary climbed up and down the overpass stairs to greet me, which was nice. But, I asked her to bring her car around to the other side of the station, where I had arrived, to avoid the very high staircase over the tracks. Of course, we started chatting immediately.
View map of trip to date.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.116s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 13; qc: 30; dbt: 0.0613s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 3;
; mem: 1.2mb
Isabel Gibson
non-member comment
Tile floors
I don't know whether I would want to live with something so busy on the floor, but every time I see a tile floor even half as gorgeous as these, I am tempted indeed. You did well to make use of every minute of your time.