Our first nightbus night was definitely interesting. Aside from the fiasco mentioned in the previous post and having to deal with extremely obnoxious and terrifying teenage mothers (seriously, this one girl was insane--homegirl needed to take a chill pill), I had a really hard time sleeping just because we were sitting in a bus. Not the most ideal conditions. So needless to say, I was in a pretty bad mood on the bus, but then all of a sudden I looked outside the bus window and we were passing through the quaint English countryside and the sheer beauty and cuteness of it all put a smile on my face. And then as we passed over a little hill I spotted some COWS! They were absolutely adorable. Finally seeing the cows and sheep that I had been dying to see for so long made me really really happy. Now you might wonder why i'm so excited about cows, because we have them at home, right? Wrong! These cows are WAY cooler because they're the fun, clean black and white ones (as opposed to the uglier dark brown ones we have at home), and they hang out on lucious green grass (rather than dusty brown dirt and weeds that wish they were grass) so the contrast between the grass and their spots is gorgeous. seriously, it's a sight to see. So getting to see the cute little country cottages and farms made the fact that I couldn't sleep okay.
We arrived in Liverpool around 6:00 AM and headed to the train station to find a place to crash for a few hours until things started to open. Unfortunately, about 10 minutes after we found a nice place to sit, we got kicked out of our little corner by station police who said we weren't allowed to be there. Great. So we had to sit in terribly uncomfortable benches not conducive to sleeping and attempted to rest while strange people walked by (one of whom yelled "Boo!" to Michal and then walked off chuckling to himself--he was probably about 40 years old too).
Around 8:00 we gave up trying to rest and just got up to explore. It was raining outside (what's new?) so we headed over to this little square with a bumch of shops around. The Liverpool FC Official Club Store was just opening so we headed in to look around. It was heaven. They had everything you could possibly imagine, from the classics of jerseys, scarves, and hats, to completely random things like golf tees and dog water bowls--and it all had an LFC crest or liverbird, or "You'll Never Walk Alone" on it. It took a great deal of effort to not buy out the entire store. Michal did find a longsleeve jersy on sale for 8 pounds though, which was really exciting.
By the time we were done with the store we were pretty hungry so we found a grocery store, got some food (and an umbrella for me because we had only brought one) and found a sketchy little stoop to eat on (because everything else was wet). After eating we too the bus to Anfield (LFC stadium)!! We took the stadium tour which was so amazing. We went into the away team changing room (because the home team one was undergoing renovation), took pictures with the jerseys, explored the dressing room areas a bit, walked through the players entrance to the stadium and touched the "This is Anfield" sign, and sat in the seats of the stadium, learning about the history of the field and the team, etc. We absolutely loved it--it was awesome. There was this really sweet tourguide who really enjoyed taking pictures of us for us--it was kind of wierd but very nice of her. The club museum was also pretty interesting. Both of us were close to tears while watching the documentary recounting the 2005 Champions League final in Istanbul, and getting to look at the cup on display as well as see old jerseys and the like was really insane.
By the time we were done with the tour, the weather had cleared up a lot and it was absolutely beautiful. We took the bus back to the town centre and walked down to Albert Dock, on the Mersey river (we didn't ferry across it though, so we didn't get to hear the "Ferry Cross the Mersey" song unfortunately). This is where parts of Accross the Universe were filmed. There was some kind of crazy yachting convention thing going on and people were freaking out waving at the people in the boats which was odd, so it made things really crowded. We first checked out the International Slavery Museum which was pretty interesting, then the Magical History Tour which was a really cool exhibit about the history of the town of Liverpool. Unfrotunately we were so tired we didn't really get a chance to enjoy it. We were kind of falling asleep standing up.
We decided to take a little nap/picnic on a large grassy area near the museums but about 10 minutes after we laid down, what happens? Ah yes, the heavens open on us. Yes, CCR, we saw the rain coming down on a sunny day. Seriously, there were white puffy clouds in the sky and sun shining, yet raindrops were falling on our heads...and our picnic of cherry tomatoes and carrots. So we rushed into shelter. The rain stopped 5 mintues later but by that time the grass was wet so we couldnt' go back so we headed to the Liverpool City Library to take advantage of free wifi. It was actually a really nice museum but it closed about 30 mintues after we got there--enough time to upload a few facebook albums and write half a blog post.
After the library closed we decided to lounge on the grass in the square across the street and five minutes later, it started to rain. seriously, the clouds probably retain all their water all day and then when they see us go to lie down on grass they say, "Oh look, Michal and Shiri are resting on the grass--let's let out the water!!" and they rain on us. Not even kidding.
We wandered for forever trying to find a place to get dinner but everything was either a 45 minute wait or closed (everyhting closes SO early here its ridiculous) until we finally found a place called Bella Italia which was delicious but we had this extremely odd waitor named Ben. We weren't too sure what to think about him. Our pizza was delicious though.
Then after dinner, it was back to the Coach station to take our bus back to London. We were considering trying to take a bus to find Penny Lane (who's in our ears and in our eyes) but we couldn't figure out the right bus and we were tired so we were over it.
All in all though, the day in Liverpool was great. It's an amazing city, rich with culture and history, and really creepy teenagers.
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