Liverpool, The Beatles and Tall Ships

As part of our trip to The Open, we spent the weekend in Liverpool. Our first time to that interesting city. There was tons going on - it would be like visiting downtown Dallas for the first time during Texas/OU weekend - crazy. Our cab driver said they guessed about 30,000 were there for the Open and about 50,000 were there for the "Tall Ships" event. We spent Sunday exploring the Tall Ships and, of course, The Beatles.

the flags on the boats spell out some message - each flag design represents a letter, but I don't know exactly what it says. My guess, "you lookin' at me?" ha.

What to say about the Tall Ships... we obviously don't have an appreciation nor do we even know what we were looking at. The ships are tall (duh), and pretty cool looking. There were about 70 ships, all of the "Pirates of the Caribbean" sort, which were docked in Liverpool. Some over 100 years old and some brand new. Some of them were open to climb aboard, but they were all there to be admired by the masses before they had a "parade of sails" on Monday and raced on over to Norway. I wish we could have stayed for the parade today, I'm sure that is something spectacular to see with them all out in the harbor - sails fully flowing in the wind. As it was, we saw them all moored in the dock with sails safely rolled away. DA and I kept looking at each other thinking "we must be missing something". Didn't really see what would bring 50,000 people to the city to walk around. Not to say Liverpool doesn't have tons to offer, but it's just the Tall ships, what is the draw? and you know the English are famous for queuing? well we had to wait in a queue (that's 'a line' for all you natives out there) for about an hour with thousands of other people just to walk through the big gates to enter the dock - no cost - no barrier - no bag search - no ticket - no window to stop at - just waiting in a line to walk through the gates. what is the purpose of the queue? Why couldn't we have just walked through the gates as we got there? made no sense what so ever!

We decided to forgo the rest of the dock (took the "short route") and headed over to Albert Dock to walk through the Beatles museum. As we arrived there was another queue of thousands of people to see even more tall ships. Fortunately, they let us walk around the side and to right up to the museum. Our kids would have fainted right on the spot had we had to wait again.

The Beatles museum - very cool. Tons and tons of info, cool photographs, memorabilia and music. DA could have stayed much longer and looked at every little thing. The Beatles were from Liverpool and the city very much embraces them to this day. DA is determined now more than ever to get our family photo at the Abbey Road crossing in London. Be lookin for that on the next Christmas card! The kids enjoyed it to, although B says Paul was not the "cute one". The cute one was the drummer, Pete Best (I think was his name), they kicked out before bringing Ringo on board. She cant understand why people called Paul "cute". I showed her Sir Paul today on TV and she just cant reconcile his old man face to the one in the museum.

Oh, one more thing about Liverpool - the accents. My, my - could hardly understand a thing the natives were saying. Their accent is sooooo strong. We got a laugh that they actually asked us if we were from Ireland - Said we sounded Irish to them. My kids were just staring at locals on the train like they were speaking a foreign language. very funny. It's the accent where they say "what" and pronounce it as "wa" and never close their mouth.

Ended the weekend with the 3 1/2 drive back to the city that always goes long because the traffic headed south on the M40 on Sunday night is so heavy. DA and I were so hungry for dinner, but our only options were MORE TRIANGLE SANDWICHES!!! we are so sick of those. basically the only quick options that exist in England and with only about 5 "services" areas between Liverpool and London - those triangles are even hard to come by. Ended up with cut fruit from M&S. We seriously need to introduce a Wendy's or Taco Bell here. Something that is not a prepared sandwich cut into a triangle!