We All Live in A Yellow Submarine.

The latest adventure in the collection of my escapades abroad was a trip this past weekend to the wonderful, beautiful, cultured, and beatlicious (yes its a word) city of...LIVERPOOL! I still have absolutely no idea what exactly is in scouse, nor what a true 'scouser accent sounds like, but I did get to see an incredible city, meet some absolutely wonderful people, learn way more than I could ever have imagined about the Beatles, and basically just enjoy one of the most amazing weekends since I arrived in the UK and possible one of my top 10 weekends ever...and that's even including the dual train fiasco...the second of which turned out to be the best thing that could have possibly happened.

Bright and early Saturday morning (say 6:20am) I headed out of the warmth and happiness of Talybont into the misty Welsh morning as I made the 40 minute trek down to Cardiff Central Station. Round about 10:30am I made it into the lovely train station at Chester where I wandered aimlessly around looking for the platform from which to meet the train to Liverpool...which I was soon informed wasn't running, okay sweet. So I got on a bus (where fortunately I was taken under the wings of two awesome 30 somethings who were also heading to Liverpool for some shopping) and we were taken to the Houton train station where we boarded a train for Rockport, where we got off and were put on another bus to Hamilton Square train station where we finally got onboard a subway line into Cardiff Central Station. Whew. Quite a journey but at least I had made it...and there was a charming little leprechaun waiting there for me.

The rest of Saturday afternoon was spent wandering around Liverpool looking down at the docks and tracking these things to the left...affectionately called Lambananas which were designed by a Japanese sculptor...There are 125 replicas of this original yellow one scatter across the city...so far I have seen 15 of them.




Eventually Caolán and I ended up at the home of this lovely piece of Beatles kitsch...the Beatles Story at Albert Dock (http://www.beatlesstory.com/) which is a museum dedicated to everything Beatles...and we loved it. They had recreations of lots of the old Beatles haunts and of the people who made the Beatles famous...they also had the creepiest mannequin versions of the fab four that I have ever seen. All in all, it was epic!

After indulging in our brief and dizzying bout of Beatlemania we wound our way back to the flat and prepared ourselves for a special dinner with 7 of Caolán's closest friends...all of whom I am happy to say are amazing. I love the Irish.







Sunday was taken up by Mass in the Metropolitan Cathedral which was absolutely stunning, followed by a proper English breakfast (called a Fry?) and some more glorious touristy things...like a trip to the Liverpool World Museum which houses this fantastic display. I think this is the greatest African Savanna display I have ever seen...not your run of the mill animals milling about boringly in the hot African sun...this is action, adventure, danger...survival of the fittest.

And so ends the scheduled portion of my trip...BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE!

So Arriva Trains Wales, the company with whom I had booked my return ticket for Sunday afternoon, decided to go on strike...for Sunday and Monday...so I was entitled to two bonus days of Liverpuddlian goodness! It turns out this was actually an amazing thing to have happen because I was anything but ready to leave Liverpool on Sunday.

Monday: bonus tour of John Moore's Liverpool and Cheeky Monkey Monday's at Mood.

Then Tuesday...well I headed back home to Cardiff to catch the tail of the St. David's Day Festivities and my two hour math class.

Here are some photos of the finer things in Liverpool:

Me in front of St. George's Hall

The Wellington Monument

World War I and II Memorial

The UFO

I'll leave you with this quandry...
In Toy Story 3 there is a part where Buzz Lightyear gets factory reset into Spanish...in the Spanish version of Toy Story 3 does he get factory reset into English?






For those of you interested in the softer human interest side of this story:
I'm happy, I laughed more and smiled more than I have in a really long time this weekend. We talked things through and sorted out a lot of our baggage and while the no one knows what the future holds, I figured that when life hands you a second chance (complete with a railway strike and a bunch of irish strangers telling you you're a hansom looking couple) I think you had better at least try.