UK 2011 Day 5

Day 5

• Get car @ Alamo @ 8:30 am

Cost - £ 28.12 (left over)

• Drive through George's childhood home (25 Upton Green), through Paul's childhood home (20 Forthlin Rd.)
• Park at Yellow Tree Road
• Walk to Strawberry Fields (Beaconsfield Rd.), St.Peter's Church, (Church Rd), through Mendips (251 Menlove ave).
• Drive through QuarryBank School (Harthill Rd)
• Park around Penny Lane and walk down it.
• Drive through George's birth home (12 Arnold Grove), through Ringo's birth and childhood homes (Admiral Grove and 9 Madryn)

addresses to park: Burgess St, Craven St, Kempston St, Lambert St.

cost – £5.00

• Walk to the Jacaranda (21-23 Slater Street ), The Grapes (corner of Knight St and Roscoe St.) Liverpool Institute (Mount St) and Liverpool Art College (68 Hope St.)
• Walk to The Beatles Story

address – Albert Dock

cost – £ 13

• Lunch @ The Cavern Club

address – 10 Matthew St.

cost – free from Mon-Wed

• Walk by the NEMS (12-14 Whitechapel)
• Drive (through Prestbury, Chipping, Keswick if there is time) to Days Inn Abington M74

address to park - Welcome Break Srvc Area J13M74 Lanarkshire, ML12 6RG UK

We got the car at Alamo and that's when we were extremely upset at them. They had charged out credit card for those 2 days we were in Ireland, bc they could not figure out where the keys were, therefore we made them lose money on a car that had to stay parked instead of being rented. They had the guts to tell us we did something stupid by leaving the keys inside the car.

"would you do that to your own car?" the guys asked.

"Yes, actually, we do that to our cars every time we leave it at the mechanic, because it's too late at night for him to be there for us." You know, some of us work for a living.Shut up, Virginia. Anyway, he took the charge off the card when we told him where the keys were.

Then we got another Vauxhaul. This one was driving awful, and it was bigger than what we paid for again, but we took it, just to exchange 2 days later.

As usual, since I stink as a tuour group guide, we left the hotel late again. Got to breakfast late to start with. Anyway, we did see George's and Paul's childhood homes, but we couldn't get to Ringo's. 

The walk's first stop was John's Childhood home. From there we took the back roads (it's a very residential area) and found St. Peter's church, where John and Paul met as teenagers. I started to get a little desperate when we kept walking and the church was nowhere, but then this guy with a British accent helped us find it. 

The walk to Strawberry Fields was really long too, and I confess I was a bit scared of the the deserted place, but in the end it was ok - and worth it.

We really enjoyed the walk through the residential area. Getting to see the houses and the cars people have parked in their garage is neat.

From Strawberry Fields we were really close to the car, so we made our way back to the car to go look for their childhood school which we did not find.

We also could not find the parking spot I had scheduled for Penny Lane, there were cars parked everywhere on both sides of every road. So we drove through Penny Lane. I think next time I want to find a way to walk there.

We were late anyway, so we headed straight to the Beatles Story, at the Dock. Dean convinced me to do the Beatles experience. I did, and I learned nothing, bc I already know so much about the Beatles... The cool thing was buying shirts and a lunch box.

That really put us behind schedule.... gotta build in time for unexpected activities next time. We were going to walk to Cavern, but, hey, Dean was tired and we would never make it on any reasonable time. So we skipped the Jacaranda, Liverpool Institute, and Liverpool art College. I have to be honest, they looked so much closer on the map! We drove towards the Cavern club and found a street parking lot.

Of course it turned out that we were late for our lunch at the Cavern Club. We went in there and took pictures, but it was close to 5. We walked to the Grapes and meant to take pictures at the Beatles hiding spot (they went there when they wanted to hide from the crazed fans from Carven Club. We couldn't do that bc some fat old guy with the butt crack showing. We waited and waited and then we figured it was time to go. We ate this pub on Matthew street called Flanagan's Apple. I ordered a blue drink and FINALLY ATE FISH AND CHIPS!

It was too late to do anything, we were driving toScotland and wanted to do it through the Lake District. We got to the lake district at dusk and saw some cute towns - the ones mentioned above - Prestbury, Chipping, Keswick. We got to  our road side Days Inn in Abbington Scotland at around midnight... (what else is new?) and I warned Dean we could not be late the next day or else we would not make to the castles... - now an exercise in making predictions - can you guess what happened the next morning?