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Post by Timeblue on Oct 15, 2018 21:56:19 GMT
This weekend we went up to Liverpool to see my favourite second favourite band OMD, it is their 40th anniversary starting in October 2018 and so they played two concerts Saturday and Sunday at the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall accompanied by The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. It was brilliant the orchestral arrangement of the songs played by the full orchestra was something to behold and brought a completely different vibe or element to the songs. Here are some pictures of the weekend. You could fall out of our hotel into the Philharmonic Hall directly opposite, Mrs Wimp was impressed with my hotel choice. We ate at the Philharmonic pub a few hundred yards away this has some amazingly old Gents toilets and has seen John Lennon and Paul McCartney as customers in the past (sorry no pictures of the pub) but a wiki link. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philharmonic_Dining_RoomsLiverpool Metropolitan Cathedral Waiting for the band Action shots Stanlow, OMDs love song about a Oil Refinery Sunday morning outside the hotel, at first I thought the word had got out that Horace Wimp was staying at Hope Street Hotel but strangely no one asked for my autograph when we exited and everyone had Liverpool Football Club memorabilia. We found out that before matches our hotel was were the Liverpool team always meet up for breakfast, they were playing Manchester City on Sunday. There were many young men in the breakfast room who now I assume were Liverpool players but not knowing the team I didn't recognise them. As we left the hotel later for the car all the fans were dispersing showing each other their photos and autographs they had obtained. Weird I almost felt like a celebrity for a few minutes.
Philharmonic pub toilets where The Beatles frequented..
A Dazzle Ship
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Post by Timeblue on Oct 15, 2018 21:58:17 GMT
Probably Shard End too....
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Post by Helmut83 on Oct 15, 2018 22:24:45 GMT
It's amazing! You can find Senegalese street vendors in just about any country in the world! I've haggled with Senegalese vendors from NYC, to Paris, to San Juan Puerto Rico, to Rome, to Montreal... Surely they can be found in London, Hamburg, Rio, Hong Kong, and Tokyo, too! I don't know about those cities, but I can confirm about Buenos Aires. They are here too.
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Post by Helmut83 on Oct 15, 2018 22:28:19 GMT
Philharmonic pub toilets where The Beatles frequented.. And they flushed the toilets the Beatles used??? That's criminal!
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Post by Timeblue on Oct 15, 2018 22:33:13 GMT
If you call that a "beauty" then I don't want to know what call a "monster"... Good pictures, Timeblue . Interesting place. Why or from where did you get the idea of visiting Cabo Verde? It's quite an exotic destination. I thought you would appreciate it's beauty! We chose this a while back just because it was different and not too 'touristy'. The island that we stayed on was called Sal and is one of about a dozen islands that make up Cape Verde, only Sal and Boa Vista are frequently visited. Sal itself is barren and dry,nothing really lives there flora wise but the fauna is good,plenty of migrating birds as well as the turtles and spiders! There is not that much to do outside the hotel,Santa Maria the capitol was just 5 mins away by taxi was nice and pretty and a few natural features like the 'blue eye' cave and shark bay to see. The turtles lay between August and October so that too was a factor in choosing the date, just so we could see them. This island is going to take off big time I think in the next 10 years so I'm glad that we saw it now.
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Post by Timeblue on Oct 15, 2018 22:55:52 GMT
Anyway,onto next year and.....CROATIA! a little village just outside Dubrovnik called Mlini. We are going in May and looking forward to it.
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Post by Helmut83 on Oct 15, 2018 23:31:23 GMT
Will it include any vengeance for England's elimination in the WC semifinals?
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Post by Timeblue on Oct 15, 2018 23:49:03 GMT
You mean the competition where we reached the semis and you...er....didn't? Nah! I'm not a big football fan anyway..
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Post by Horacewimp on Oct 16, 2018 7:40:59 GMT
Anyway,onto next year and.....CROATIA! a little village just outside Dubrovnik called Mlini. We are going in May and looking forward to it. We stayed about the same distance north of Dubrovnik some years back, you will love it.
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Post by unomusette on Oct 16, 2018 19:45:11 GMT
Great photos Timeblue, I love the blue eye cave especially and the beaches look positively like paradise. How did they get the turtles to dig in such neat rows? The baby shark is soooo cute, I wonder if they get used to people and try to come back expecting a warm welcome when they're all grown up? Neat Dazzle Ship in Liverpool too, are they kept near the main tourist area? Must have a look when we go to see Jeff
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Post by Timeblue on Oct 16, 2018 20:53:02 GMT
Great photos Timeblue , I love the blue eye cave especially and the beaches look positively like paradise. How did they get the turtles to dig in such neat rows? The baby shark is soooo cute, I wonder if they get used to people and try to come back expecting a warm welcome when they're all grown up? Neat Dazzle Ship in Liverpool too, are they kept near the main tourist area? Must have a look when we go to see Jeff The turtles are trained from an early age to lay their eggs in neat orderly rows, it makes the rangers life much easier........
....and if you believe that,you will believe anything! No, the eggs are collected by the rangers from where they were originally layed and transported to the hatchery for safekeeping. If they are not collected then they are easy prey for crabs and other beach predators, the ranger showed us empty shells he said were eaten by crabs. Obviously not all eggs can be retrieved and taken to the hatchery but the rangers do a sterling job in rescuing what they can, and as I said in an earlier post,only 1 in a 1000 make it to adulthood so they need all the help they can get.
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Post by Helmut83 on Oct 16, 2018 20:54:10 GMT
You mean the competition where we reached the semis and you...er....didn't? Haha, well answered. On top of everything we lost 3-0 to Croatia so I can't laugh much.
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Post by unomusette on Oct 21, 2018 20:42:56 GMT
Here's a short documentary about how we Welsh react as we travel over the Severn Crossing into our homeland - spot the welsh cake...
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Post by queenofthehours on Oct 30, 2018 20:52:27 GMT
Last week to see Jeff in Liverpool but that's not all I did there. I did what every normal ELO fan would do, I visited a cemetery.
It wasn't just any cemetery, it was St James's Cemetery, which is now a park, behind the Anglican Cathedral.
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The area became a cemetery in 1835 but before that it was a quarry. It remained a cemetery until 1936 and over 57,000 people are buried there.
Now, you might imagine that the cemetery belongs to the cathedral but it doesn't. The building of the cathedral didn't begin until 1903 (completed 1978) and has nothing to do with the cemetery beneath. Fun facts about the cathedral: It was designed by Giles Gilbert Scott (of red telephone box/Battersea Power Station/Tate Modern building fame) who is buried just outside of the building. The cathedral is the longest cathedral in the world and the bells are the highest and heaviest ringing peal in the world. The cathedral is also the largest in Britain, in fact it's the largest religious building in Britain, and, in terms of overall volume it's the fifth largest cathedral in the world.
To get to the park/quarry/cemetery you can walk down a tiny path lined with gravestones -
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And through a tunnel lined with gravestones -
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There are some lovely memorials in the cemetery although most stones have been moved from their original spots. It was very interesting to look at all the names and dates and stories about the people buried there. My favourite name was that owned by a child which died in 1870 - Evelyn Happy George. Many of the stones I looked at had some beautiful but wordy 19thc verses carved on them. For instance, this is for a William Baines who died in 1829: “Oft shall the sigh of sorrow heave my breast/My dearest husband while you lie at rest/Oft recollection pictures to my view/The good and happy days I spent with you".
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Post by queenofthehours on Oct 30, 2018 21:13:22 GMT
And this on the stone for Amelia Kurtz aged 5: "My little fingers were not made/To labour in the sun;/for I am sleeping in the Grave/and all my work is done/Dear lovely child farewell/thy parents mourn for thee/but thou in heaven dwell/to all eternity" I couldn't read the rest but it makes you wonder how much money it would have cost the family to pay a stonemason to carve so many words. Victorians really did put a lot of love and effort into their gravestones.
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The cemetery also contains the grave of William Huskisson who was a Liverpool MP and is mostly famous for being the first ever railway casualty - killed by George Stephenson's Rocket. By his memorial is a natural running spring which I did have a little taste of and it was ok, just like natural spring water - which it obviously is! But I didn't drink any as drinking running water in graveyards is not something I'm keen on doing.
Here's a picture of the quarry in 1821 when it was working, note the windmill -
And here is the cemetery while the cathedral was being built in 1936 -
In this picture (1896) you can see the oratory, which was the cemetery's chapel and the spot where the cathedral was to be later built -
The oratory is still there
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The cemetery is very beautiful and atmospheric but also very spooky, it isn't somewhere you'd chose to go at night (definitely not Halloween night!) as ghosts have apparently been spotted there. And that tunnel is rather spooky even in daylight.
There's some info on St James's Park here - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_James_Cemetery and this website is excellent and tells you about some of the people buried there - www.stjamescemetery.co.uk/index/categories
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