Liverpool Day 1: Rock n' Roll Road Trip

 

 

Statues of The Beatles

If you're a follower of one of my social media accounts you'll probably have noticed that last week I went on what was for me an extremely exciting trip! Last Wednesday my family and I went on what I like to call a "Rock n' Roll Road Trip". Yes, it may sound rather geeky but I associate road trips with music and America for whatever reason.

No doubt you'll already have guessed (thanks to my blog title!) that the road trip was to the city of Liverpool. I've wanted to visit Liverpool for such a long time but the main reason I actually went there in the first place was to see Sir Paul McCartney! I'm a HUGE fan of Paul McCartney, Wings and of course the legends that are The Beatles! Seeing Paul live in concert has been one of my biggest dreams for I don't know how long. There has been a couple of occasions in years gone by that I've missed out on seeing Paul so I was beyond ecstatic to actually have managed to get tickets for the Liverpool. Ever since my Mum put the phone down after purchasing our tickets I've been counting down each second until the exact moment Paul walked on stage.  

"Welcome to England" sign

 Anyway, I better start writing about the trip itself and not bore you all with my excitable rants about Paul McCartney! So we set off on our journey last Wednesday from our home here in Scotland to the city of Liverpool. Surprisingly, the car journey went by pretty quickly which is always a good thing! I must admit that I did however, spend most of the journey searching for a service station with a Starbucks coffee shop. Can you believe that between Glasgow and Liverpool there was just two Starbucks coffee shops!? I mean there's nothing wrong with Costa but I do love a Starbucks frappucino! Who doesn't?! Thankfully, we did find a Starbucks branch eventually and I was able to get one of my all time favourite drinks; a strawberries and cream frappucino-mmmm!

I finally got a Starbucks frappucino!

Before long we'd arrived in the outskirts of Liverpool and as you can probably imagine I was on a complete and utter high. It really hit me that one of my biggest dreams, the one I'd waited such a long time to actually happen was about to come true!

There was something really special about driving in to the city; there was a complete and utter buzz! Even in the in the outskirts there was some sort of tribute to The Beatles everywhere I looked.

I fell in love with Albert Dock literally the second we drove into the area. Everywhere I looked there were people coming and going, there was a cute merry go round for children, barge boats, swan boats and I even spotted a yellow submarine apartment floating on the water-how cool! The buildings themselves were stunning, the architecture was absolutely breath-taking!

For the first two nights of our trip we stayed at the Premiere Inn, Albert Dock which is situated directly across from the Echo Arena and next door to both The Beatles Story museum and a Costa Coffee branch (Seriously! Why can't it be Starbucks?!). So our hotel was pretty central from everywhere we'd planned to visit over our trip.

It was extremely busy down at the docks and parking was a little hard to come by. Fortunately, a car pulled out of a space right there in front of us so guess where we parked? The gentlemen who pulled out of the car parking space kindly gave us his parking voucher which meant we could park there for free for a few hours which was so kind! Over our entire trip we were overwhelmed by just how kind the people of Liverpool are. They'd do anything to help you out.

We unloaded our car and made our way to the hotel, into the reception, checked in and took the rather small lift to the third floor where our room was. All of the original features such as the brickwork and the old doors had been incorporated in the building creating an atmospheric and quirky feel within the building.

 

The roof in our hotel room

 The view from our room's window was amazing! Our window looked out onto one of the docks where at least a dozen boats were docked at any given time. There was lots of independent shops, restaurants and the Tate art gallery situated around the docklands which meant people were constantly coming and going. I claimed a little armchair which sat by the windowsill and spent a lot of time sitting there watching the world below going by. I really wish I could have taken the window and armchair home with me!

The view from our room onto the docks

We left the hotel to be met by a heavy rain shower, I thought that only happened back home in Scotland! Due to the downpour we decided to take the car to the Liverpool One shopping centre and get a bite to eat as we were all pretty hungry after such a long journey. This meant that our next mission was to find a nice restaurant which wasn't too hard to come by. There was so many different restaurants to choose from but in the end we decided upon dining in a thai restuarant named Chaophraya. Both my parents and sister have been to it's sister restaurant in Glasgow at different times. For whatever reason I haven't dined there as of yet so it was a new experience for me.

For dinner I ordered chicken satay as a starter which came with a delicious peanut sauce follow by my favourite noodle dish, pad thai as a main course. Both courses were absolutely delicious!

The décor inside the restaurant was pretty fancy, they had these huge sparkly, chandelier lights hanging from the ceiling above us. There was even glass windows round the kitchen area so that diners could watch the chefs cooking their meals. I loved watching everything that went on inside the kitchen particularly when huge flames came shooting out the pans (I'm such a big kid sometimes!). When leaving the restaurant one of us looked up and noticed that above our head was a fish tank in the entrance doorway. I don't think I ever seen anything like that before!

chicken satay 

It was becoming rather cold and windy as we left the restaurant and although there wasn't any rain at that point, the sky looked grey and heavy meaning that evidently a rain shower wasn't too far away. With this in mind we decided that it was probably time to make our way back to the the car and head back to our hotel to get some rest before the extremely exciting day that would soon follow!