Night out in Liverpool

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Liverpool Day 3
Since we don’t have classes tomorrow, we decided to go out and explore Liverpool tonight. We actually had an amazing time just wandering around Liverpool. We took the double decker bus to get to the city centre because it was free, though it dropped us off a long way from the city centre. We first stopped at a grocery type store to buy all the toiletries that people needed. I bought body wash and some cow biscuits. The wrapper looked really cool, and I wanted to try them. At the shop, I also got the first souvenir of the trip for my mom. I’m not going to say what it is because she reads this, and I want it to be a surprise. After the shop, Jessica, Alicia, Sarah, and some other people decided to go back to get ready for clubbing. They were wearing trainers, and you won’t be admitted to a club if you are wearing trainers. Personally, I was wearing my trainers, and I didn’t really care, because I didn’t plan on ending up in a club. They tried to get me to go out clubbing with them tonight, but I really wanted to explore Liverpool.

Right after leaving the store, we found this clothing store that was going out of business, and everything had to go. I got a really cute pair of shoes for 2.50 pounds, which was an amazing deal. At the clothing store, they had a sleeping shirt with a porcupine on it that said, “cuddle with care”. Katie then proceeded to give me a huge hug and ended up breaking her sunglasses.

We must have walked a good four and a half miles to get to the city centre.

We started walking to the city centre, and the farther we walked the more we realized that the city centre was a lot farther away than the bus driver of the double decker bus had said. We decided to keep walking though, because it would be an adventure. On the way there, we found this really awesome old chapel that we wanted to tour, but all of the entrances were locked. It was the ancient chapel of Toxteth. After seeing the chapel, we walked around to see if there was any way to get in. There wasn’t, but then we saw the Liverpool Cathedral again, and after some picture moments, we tried to find a way in. Eventually, we went for another nice long walk and found the Liverpool Cathedral. We posed in front of the Liverpool Cathedral right past the ancient chapel of Toxteth, and we all took turns taking pictures because we wanted group pictures. On the way to the Liverpool Cathedral, we saw this really cool peace sign that we all took pictures of.

After taking some cool group pictures, we walked up this path to try to get into the Liverpool Cathedral, but there was just a locked gate. There was this kid there who started running after us as we started walking back down the steps screaming “Wait Wait” along with other things that I didn’t really catch.

So then we arrived at Chinatown, which we were not expecting at all. This was all on the way to the city centre. We took pictures of the gate to Chinatown, which was very extravagant.

A little while later, we finally found the Liverpool Cathedral and took some “yay we found it” pictures. Before heading towards the Liverpool Cathedral, we viewed the Oratory, which used to be the Chapel of St. James’s Cemetery.


We found this amazing garden next to the Liverpool Cathedral. The cathedral had been built on the old quarry, and some of the most famous people from Liverpool are buried there. I also discovered that a captain from South Carolina is buried there. He died at Biscay, and some of the other officers purchased this plot for him as a memorial. His name was Capt. Lekisha Lindsay Halsey. This garden was filled with beautiful tombstones and memorials, as well as beautiful plants and trees. While walking through the garden, we discovered an amazing path that led up. I got some amazing pictures from that path of the Cathedral. While walking up the path, we took some fun pictures. We also saw a house that had a rooftop like the one in Mary Poppins, so we decided to take a picture of it. Heather then divulged that she had never seen Mary Poppins, so we decided it would be fun to see Mary Poppins the musical while we were in London.

We then continued walking throughout the garden, and Katie found this stump and she decided she wanted to stand on it. While she was standing on the stump, she hit her finger on some stinging nettle, and it is now swelling. ;( We then discovered this awesome bending tree where we insisted on taking some fun pics. Heather totally looks like a model in her picture with the tree.

When we finally reached the end of the garden, I took a funny picture of everyone at the gate. We then went closer to the Liverpool Cathedral sign and realized that it closed at 1800. (6 pm). It was by then after 7, so we decided to come back tomorrow.

The cathedral is said to contain the largest free-swinging bells and the largest pipe organ in the world. It also has some of the largest stained glass windows in all of the cathedrals throughout Europe, which is why we are planning to go back tomorrow.

We got ready to leave, but we saw a really cool view that we took some pictures of. At the exit, there was a sign for the Queen’s Walk, which I found really cool. On our very long walk to attempt to find the City Centre, we saw a sign that said the Queen’s head.

So we exited the cathedral area and sat on the steps for a while to relax and look at a city map. While we were waiting there, Heather saw a pink limo and got extremely excited about it. Since it was stopped at a stoplight, we all had to get pictures of the pink limo.

On another long walk to find food, we saw a building that had a large picture of a cat on it. I took a picture of it for Emma.

Still on our walk to find food, we saw this really cool sculpture that Kyle and I just had to take a picture of. We even stood in the middle of the street to take the picture.

After taking some pictures of the view, we decided that we really did need to go find some food as we were all starving. We wandered around for a good while until we found this place that had chicken kebobs and pizza and other things like that. The kebobs were actually really good. The restaurant was on Bold Street, which some Liverpuddlians had recommended we go to find restaurants.

After dinner, we kept walking because we wanted to continue our adventure.

We came across St. Luke’s, which we thought was a normal church for the first ten minutes at least as we were all taking pictures of it. At one point, Katie said, “This cathedral doesn’t have an inside.” It turned out to have been heavily bombed by incendiary bombs in 1941 during the Blitz. There was a hole in the middle of the Church as a result of these bombings, though the steps were still intact. Only the shell of the nave, chancel, and tower were left. The church was never repaired. St. Luke’s was bought from the Church of England by the Liverpool City Council in 1968. Today, it stands as a garden of peace and tranquility for the people of Liverpool. It also houses a tribute to the victims of the Irish Famine. The building itself is actually an un-official War Memorial, however.

After visiting the church, someone decided that wanted a picture of Katie by the toilet pretending she really had to go. It was rather interesting.

After seeing St. Luke’s, we were all really exhausted and decided we would be finished for tonight and come back to Liverpool tomorrow and Saturday, since we are staying here this weekend.

We did discover that St. Luke’s had a myspace.


So after taking all the pictures with the Humps sign, we were just standing around trying to get a taxi.

None of us had obviously hailed a taxi before, and we all looked extremely ridiculous. We were just standing there when this taxi driver pulled up and asked us if we needed a taxi. We were the very touristy people and taking pictures in the taxi numerous times. Erin and I were sitting backwards. I’m sure the taxi driver found us all very amusing.

So even though the rooms are rather dingy, the showers in my flat don’t work the way you want them to at all, it took me like four times to finally get internet to work in my room, and the food at the refectory isn’t that great, I’m in Europe, and I’m going to have an amazing time. ☺ I had an amazing time just wandering around Liverpool tonight though, and I am sure that we had a much better time than all the people who just went clubbing or to the pubs.


When we got back, we decided to create a game plan for the rest of the weekend. We are definitely going back to the Liverpool Cathedral, and we decided that we might take this taxi Beatles tour tomorrow afternoon before we go back to the Liverpool Cathedral. We have a list of places we want to see, and they are the Metropolitan Cathedral, the St. Luke’s, Matthew Street, and the Albert Dock.

I had an amazing day today. I think this was the best day I have had during my time here so far, though I have only been here since Tuesday.

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