Thursday, September 25
Pier Head, Liverpool, 14:30
This morning Irma and I got up early and drove to the airport to catch a flight to Manchester, leaving Naa and the cat asleep. The flight was simple and Manchester airport was cosy, efficient and friendly. The train station was right there, where you wanted it, and an hour and a half after we landed in England we were standing in Liverpool Lime Street station, asking the way to James Street.
A man in the station gave us directions and an old lady took us half the way there, talking all the time. Finally, when I got my iPad out to check where we were, a man came up and asked where we wanted to go and showed us. We found the Days Inn hotel, they let us check in early, and we were given a big room at the back away from all the noise.
The weather is much warmer than Finalnd, and will continue to be for the whole weekend. People are wandering around in shorts.
The hotel is in an absolutely ideal position, three minutes away from Pier Head and the Albert Docks. We are walking along the river now, looking at the new developments and the old buildings. We will wander around in a daze for hours, eating in The Liverpool, a pub thirty metres from the hotel. I will have steak pie and chips and Irma will have fish and chips with mushy peas.
Irma will be both amused and entranced by the accents and by the sheer amount that people talk.