Eight days a week...

With a final drive through what we could only call the "Jersey Shore" of Wales, we waved adieu to this beautiful and quirky country and drove back into England and into Liverpool. We got in late, but we were able to get beds in the YHA near the Albert Dock in Liverpool. After having some of the loudest hostel mates we set out the next morning to get our fill of all of the culture the city. We visited The Beatles Story (which was incredible, informative, and fun), got our dose of modern art culture at the Tate - a surprisingly not good modern art exhibition, if I may say so :(, and walked the docks to soak up some history.

With Beatles songs stuck in our heads and a teensy drizzle we headed off to Manchester for a couple of days of urban life. Upon our arrival in Manchester we discovered a city of ring roads that you couldn't turn off of. So after two bouts around and through the city we were able to park. We stayed in the first night, enjoying a quiet room and hostel mates as well as our Brains beer we had purchased in Wales. I must say that fizziness and warmth aside, the Brains were really not very enjoyable, but many a zombie joke was still had ;)

For our full day in Manchester we spent walking the city, visiting the Museum of Science and Industry, and getting laundry done!




Manchester was a really neat city, a thriving metropolis during the Industrial Revolution, these tall sandstone block buildings still stand throughout the city, sprinkled with modern and contemporary shopping complexes and flats. We went out Wednesday night and had a fantastic time getting drunk all on our own - apparently Wednesdays are dead nights in the bars here.

After Manchester we headed up to the Lake District to revel in beautiful countryside, the lands of Beatrix Potter, and Wendsleydale Cheese (which is just as yummy as Wallace and Gromit say it is). We stayed in a quaint and lovely hostel in Ambleside.




The North (a.k.a. SCOTLAND)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We drove up through Lockerbie and out to a small town called Newton Stewart. In the cemetery outside of town we went hunting for the tombstone of one of Taylore's ancestors from some time in the 1600s. We were prepared with a photograph of the church, a photo of the tombstone, and a picture of a hand drawn cemetery map. Unfortunately we didn't have those with us, so we missed on site confirmation, but the next time we had internet Taylore looked it up and confirmed that it was one of the headstones she had seen.

Our first night in Scotland was in Glasgow, where we were distracted from going out by watching the Scotland v. Czech Republic Football match on the tv in the bar in our hostel. The following morning we stopped in at the Glasgow Cathedral before heading North. The Cathedral is one of Taylore's favorites, and I can see why she wanted to go back to it. Its incredibly grand, with beautifully tiered arches in the nave, excellent sandstone block construction, and the shrine of St. Mungo in the underground portion of the Cathedral (not to be confused with the Crypt). The entirety of the front "basement" half of the Cathedral has a honeycomb like layout of smaller chapels that creates an intimacy and seclusion I have yet to see in any Cathedral I've visited or studies. The walls are not painted, the architecture and stained glass windows alone are the decoration, and I think it far surpasses the type of beauty found in painted and glazed Cathedral interiors that I have experienced before.

From Glasgow we headed around Loch Lomond (insert folk tale singing here...) and up towards Skye.