Liverpool; Monday, 12 April, 2010

I pulled back the curtains to reveal a stunningly clear blue sky, a distinct improvement on what the weather had been like a week earlier, and at one point I had feared would still be like. After a winter that dragged on from early December all the way into early April, the sudden arrival of spring just before Easter had been an unexpected piece of good news. I watched the morning traffic make its way over the flyover in front of my hotel window whilst munching on breakfast (no catering in the hotel meant that I didn’t just have any breakfast, I had a slightly stale M&S breakfast purchased the previous evening in the station.)

I headed out into the warm spring sun and wandered down to the tourist information centre to purchase a Liverpool Visitors Card which would cover me for most of my transport and attraction requirements for the next couple of days, and then I carried on walking down to the Albert Dock to pick up the City Experience Open-Top sightseeing tour.

I did a full circuit of the tour, and then wandered the short distance down the riverside to the Pier Head to hop on the Mersey Ferry cruise. Back on dry land I caught the bus back up into the city centre for a spot of late lunch before getting the sightseeing bus back up to the Anglican Cathedral.

Having taken in the Anglican Cathedral and the stunning views from its tower, I walked the 800 yards or so down Hope Street to the other Cathedral, the Metropolitan Catholic one. I doubt there are any other streets in the world which can boast a Cathedral at each end!

Two Cathedrals down, it was time to attend to, if you believe the hype of the tourist office, the real first religion of Liverpool is (and no, it wasn’t as I thought, football), and technically, they did claim they were bigger than Jesus – The Beatles, and more specifically, the Beatles story based in Albert Dock.

With the three main denominations ticked off, Anglican, Roman Catholic and Beatle, there was just time to catch the last Yellow Duckmarine of the afternoon. The Duckmarine, like similar services in Dublin and London, uses old World War II amphibious trucks (DWKS, pronounced ducks) converted to tourism duties to take tours round by both road and river (or in Liverpool’s case, dock)

By the time I disembarked it was rapidly approaching dinner time, and as I tried to decide where to go I suddenly remembered seeing a sign for a Yo! Sushi the previous evening, so I headed back into the big Liverpool One shopping development in search of food.

Yo! were running a special deal, all plates one (cheap) price, so needless to say I stuffed my face. Some time later I staggered out of the restaurant, my distended stomach hanging over the top of my jeans, so I took that as a hint to have a bit of a longer walk round the city centre before heading back to the hotel to sleep off all that rice and fish.