Weather: overcast
Current Obsession: Cabin Favourites

Dad and I left the house to get the car around 8:30am.  We didn’t get the car until 9:30am. That was a long trip in itself.  After finally picking up the VW Passat (manual) we used the GPS to get back to our place.  That also took us a bit because it wanted to put us onto the motorway, and Dad wasn’t quite ready to be on the motorway just yet.

We finally left around 11:30am, and started our long trip out of London.  There really isn’t any easy way to get out of London.  They should build more underground tunnels to get the traffic through more easily.  Funnily enough we nearly went past my cousin Keith’s place, so I got to show my parents approximately where he lives.

Just out of London around 1:00pm we stopped at a service break for lunch. Of course being a roadside café place, it cost more than it should. *sigh*

The trip out to Liverpool was fairly uneventful, except for the M6 (one of the major motorways that we could take to Liverpool) was chokka block full of traffic, delays and crashes. Luckily the handy-dandy GPS gave us an alternate route, but was also a longer one (had the M6 been clear).

We switched on the radio at one stage, and there was a 1960s countdown; a repeat play of a week in the charts. Mum was surprised at how many songs she didn’t know, but that was because she’d left England when all of these songs came out, and they didn’t make it to New Zealand.  She reminisced how her and Nana would have the radio going at their holiday batch, and they would call their favourite songs ‘cabin favourites’.

We stopped at a wee pub about a half hour out of Liverpool to have a coffee (and surprisingly a soya hot chocolate) and a stretch. We also go to see the highlights of the Bulls vs Crusaders game.  Weird.

Then it was off into Liverpool, and no accommodation, so we had to do the best we could do.  The GPS didn’t know about recent road changes (we hadn’t updated the maps before we left) so it was trying to tell us to go down bus lanes and one-ways and such.  Not helpful with a tired, anxious driver.

Accommodation was scarce because of it being a bank holiday, and there is a major soccer (football) match on in town tomorrow.  This left us scrounging for whatever we could get, and me saying ‘I told you we should have booked’ to my parents. Ha, I got to say ‘I told you so’.  So we stayed at the Adelphi for £85 for three people.  Not too bad, except I had a minger camp stretcher.

After getting locked in the city council parking building, we wandered around the town and found ‘Bella Italia’ to eat for dinner – £40 for the three of us, which (again) was pretty good.  I haven’t had pasta in a long time.  Mmm nom nom nom.

After dinner we wandered around town, and I took some photos.

Tags: England, Liverpool, travel