Soggy English Muffins

Nine of Owen’s last ten birthdays have been in Italy. This year, Manchester, England. The highlight was a visit to Old Trafford, the famed stadium of Manchester United.  Another great tour! We had a morning to ourselves before getting the train to the Stadium so we walked around in the rain before taking cover for tea and crumpets. My first crumpet… hmm… took about 45 minutes to come and it was like a soggy, saltless, sugarless English muffin :(   I just Googled what others think about crumpets. Everything from:  “Imagine a sponge made from a mix of bread and chewing gum.” to “They are soooo delish, with butter and honey or jam.....why i just had some yesterday...yummy...you gotta try them!  :))”

Sketchers take cover.

Canals & Locks of Manchester.

House boats, canoes, tour/party boats.

The pilot of this boat was sipping tea.

Every alley has kegs. This one had chairs, too.

Cool footbridge over the canal. Train tracks above.

The house boat's resident advertises her gardening services.

Old & new architecture co-exists in Manchester. The building on the left is an aviation museum which we popped in to.

Creative bench design.

This was amazing. Moss and other ground cover in between the tracks at this station. Seemingly, it was planted and cultivated.

OMG, I just Googled this... so cool. Architects are responsible for this! It is, indeed, cultivated.

http://www.enviromat.co.uk/blog/manchester-tram-stop-goes-sedum-green/

Now, on to Old Trafford!

The have the tour walk through the "tunnel" on to the field as the players do, while they play the audio of cheering crowds. 










Back at home we had the birthday dinner at this pub.



A 19-year-old and his shandy.



Half lager, half carbonated lemonade (or 7-Up apparently!).



I got the ploughman's lunch. Never had so much cheese in my life!



And so ended our second-to-last night in Manchester!  Cheers!

She's a bit of a liar, and a cheat but she's alright.

Thursday was Liverpool day! A one-hour train ride delivered us to Lime Street Station, Liverpool, where we were met by our Beatles Tour guide, Stevie T. I had read great reviews about him on Trip Advisor so I requested him for our 3-hour tour. The kids have been listening to the Beatles with us in the car since they were little. One of my earliest memories was of my aunt Susy taking care of me for a weekend when she had tickets to a Beatles concert (1966?), so her friend Judy’s mother took care of me that day/night. I wandered upstairs in Mrs. Anderson’s house and alerted her that the beds weren’t made. (!) Not sure if I “remember” this detail because of her reaction, or because she told Susy and I overheard it being retold.

The weather was perfect for the way I pictured Liverpool. Gray like liver. And pouring rain at times. The rest is best told with pictures.

Liverpool's Lime Street Station, where we soon joined Stevie T.

Paul McCartney's childhood home—one of several, actually, as his mother was a maternity nurse who was moved around to be close to the neighborhoods she served.

Paul's room just above the door.  The house is a museum now.

John's house. Hundred's of songs written in this house, also a museum now.

This church is where John and Paul first were together but didn't officially meet. John was there playing in his first band, the Quarrymen.

The graveyard of this church is where John and Paul would go to drink and smoke. There are theories for and against the name on this gravestone being the inspiration for the song. Paul says no... he got Eleanor from someone he know, and Rigby was the name of a store or something...

 

This plaque is on the wall of a church building across the street where they later played music together.

Strawberry Fields was basically in the backyard of where John grew up. It was the grounds of some kind of home or school for disadvantaged girls. John's mother would tell him not to climb the fence because it was private property, but he did anyway, and said to his mother, "It's not a big crime to do that. Nothing to get hung about."

This guitar was signed by the members of The Quarrymen. Owen played Blackbird on it. Quite moving.

We were in Penny Lane in the pouring rain.

George Harrison's childhood home. Private residence, now. Stevie T. was greeting hello by two neighborhood boys who he said have been saying hello to him since they were toddlers.

And Ringo's childhood home :)  My favorite Beatle.

Near Ringo's home is the set for the BBC's Peaky Blinders series.

 And this is the building where Ringo's mother worked. It was later the image for Ringo's first album cover, Sentimental Journey.

Silly thing Stevie T. makes his customers do!  The tour is called Mop Top Tours.

And here we are with Stevie T. outside of the building where John Lennon was born. This is a selfie, but the second one was taken by a student passerby who offered.

After the tour we built in three hours to hang out in Liverpool before catching the train home.

Since it was pouring it wasn’t ideal, after a couple of hours we ended up at a pub having shandies. So fun. We’ve been spending SO much time together, sometimes conversation is lacking. Owen said, I wish we had a deck of cards or something, at which point Henry produced a deck from his backpack! Total lifesaver. We had a blast after that. 

The group next to us—two older couples—seemed to be noticing us. I had to look up Gin Rummy rules on my phone because we needed a refresher. I overheard one guy use the term Bum Fluff, so I looked THAT up on my phone:

Later they broke the ice and we chatted. I asked how old they thought the boys were and they said 17 and 19 or something… I had figured the Bum Fluff was in reference to their wondering if they were old enough to be drinking. Who knows.  They went on to tease me about cheating (because I was looking up things on my phone, I guess). I denied it, of course, but when I stood up to use the bathroom after we were done playing, five cards feel out of a fold in my shirt, only egging them on with their theory!  When we left they said to the boys, “Take care of her.  She's a bit of a liar and a cheat but she's alright.”