After a wonderful full English breakfast at the B&B in Ulverston, we loaded up and headed south to Liverpool.

We got in about noon and headed down to the waterfront. Over the past 10 years, they have refurbished this formerly run-down dockside/quay and have installed all sorts of museums, shops and things to attract tourists.

The weather did not behave today, however.. most of the time it spat down on us, but the malls and attractions were all designed with overhangs and roofs between structures – I get the feeling this place gets a lot of rain.

Liverpool is kind of disappointing.  It’s more modern-looking than other cities we’ve seen in England, so not nearly as many of the cool old buildings.  The residential areas look run-down and rough.  We spent most of the day at Liverpool One, their big new shopping mall area/museum area.

Ferry ‘Cross the Mersey….

We ate lunch in the mall, and stumbled onto a The North Face store.  The North Face is the brand of clothes we loaded up on in REI before we left, and have been a huge saving grace on this trip.  We don’t have laundry facilities and don’t want to waste entire days figuring out how to find and use laundromats, so we bought a bunch of clothes that can be washed in a sink and will dry overnight.  They are lightweight, warm, and wrinkle-free.  Best clothes ever.  So, we stopped at that store to get Isabella one more pair of pants (they only had one pair in her size at REI back home) and I ended up buying a new rain jacket.  The white jacket I’ve been wearing in every photo sent out is my favorite coat, but made of cotton and absorbs water like crazy.  Since it’s been raining so much, I’ve been continually damp.  Having a waterproof coat will be such a luxury!

Near The North Face store in Liverpool One

We next visited the Tate Museum, the only one in the area with free entry.  It was also quite disappointing.  The two floors of paintings I was most interested in seeing (Monet, Turner, Twombly) were closed for maintenance, so we were left with the remaining two floors of sculptures and modern art.  We are not fans.

This was the period of time when it became acceptable to put out any old garbage and call it art.  Literally.  One of the exhibits was a lucite box filled with garbage the artist found on the street of some city.  I can’t even remember which city, but the name of the piece was something like “Portrait of Liverpool [or wherever].”  There was a lofty explanation of the piece next to the box of garbage about how it shows modern life and it’s consumerism nature, blah blah.  It looked more to me like the artist got nabbed for drunk & disorderly and got sentenced to picking up trash for community service, and then decided to make the best of an unfortunate situation.

Another exhibit was a urinal another artist had signed his name on with a Sharpie.  Art!  A door standing in the middle of a room .. art!  A rope hanging off the ceiling … art!  Come on.  Yoko Ono had a piece, too.  It was a pile of triangular prisms with a light shining on it from below.  She called it something like “Castle of Light in the Sky” — but it wasn’t any different than a typical display of fake diamonds jewelers put in their shop windows to attract peoples’ eyes with shiny objects.  I don’t know what got into people in the 60s.  Maybe too many drugs, for an entire generation of people to think that mundane stuff was worthy of calling art.

I am not very impressed with Andy.

Isabella participating in an active, kids effort at modern art.

Poor Holden, in a state of perpetual boredom while he waits for his sisters to poke through yet another shop.

It was still raining when we left the Tate, so we had a Starbucks hot chocolate and headed to our hotel.  This is one of the best set-ups we’ve had in a hotel so far — two whole rooms, with the kid in one and Adam and I get our own room!  It’s cold as can be though.  It’s in an old Victorian house that oozes charm, but none of the heating works.  There also isn’t any hot water in the sinks, which makes for a rather bracing face wash.

Starbucks hot chocolate — good to the last drop.

Adam talked to Colin yesterday afternoon and Colin promises our car is almost ready.  Today we’re driving down to the Sherwood Forest/Nottingham area and Colin is going to meet us somewhere down there for a car swap.  We still have to work out the details and not sure if that will take place today or tomorrow (we’re guessing tomorrow) but looking forward to getting our own car.  It will be a relief to have all that mess finally sorted out.