Eurotrip - Featuring The Heff

Aaaaaaaalright!

This is going to be like a double-feature sort of blog. My reasoning is that whilst in Liverpool, we had very limited access to the internet, and therefore could not post my York blog.

Everyday while travelling is a precious one. It's crucial that you make the most of each moment, just in case you never get to go back. I think more than anyone, this is the case for Ben, as he's only in Europe for four months. By all means, we don’t wake up in the morning, walk outside and come back only to sleep. It’s not a case of every second of the day, we’re ‘doing something’. I do enjoy myself a sit down with a tea and scone – It’s somewhat forced on you in England. Why do I say all this? Read on.

The trip from Edinburgh to York can be described as no less than a predicament. It had been a loooooooong time since I'd seen our young Benjamin that angry.

Our rough plan every time we leave a place is to check out from the hostel, walk to the bus station, buy a ticket and get on the next bus. It seemed to be working all fine and well. No organisation needed. I realise that by doing this, we're probably always paying top dollar, but as I mentioned earlier, every minute in a foreign zone is worth being made use of. I could sit on the laptop all day, every day, and maybe manage to find a discounted bus ride, that had 50 change-overs, or, I could go for a stroll around the near-by lake. I find the latter to be rather appealing.

As I mentioned in the previous paragraph, our little plan for getting out of the city usually worked, but leaving Edinburgh was a little different. Being a rather large city - the capital in fact - I was under the very misleading impression that the transport in and out of the city was going to be painless and convenient. If a chump was willing and obtuse enough to pay top dollar to use the rail, then yes, everything would be fine, and getting out of Edinburgh would be like eating a banana - an infant could do it. Rather than just complaining, I suppose I should tell you what it is, in fact, I’m complaining about.

When we arrived at the bus-station, we knew we wanted to go to York, we had that much planned. From there it was a guessing game as to what time the bus would leave, how much it would cost, how long the bus trip will take etc…The time at the time, was I think 12:58 or something. Basically, there was an 11:30am bus, or the 12:50pm bus…I know! The one after that was the 10:30pm bus. Now, I know you’re all thinking “Ohhhhh that sucks man! Are you ok? I feel so sorry for you! What more could go wrong?” Well my dear friends, at least one other thing could go wrong. The closest the bus could take us was Newcastle – In which we would arrive at 1:00am. We walked what seemed an eternity to the train station, only to discover that the train cost quadruple the amount of the bus.

Soooo, we had to wait around Edinburgh for another 8-9 hours and it’s hard to do stuff with a big bastard bag on your back, so we were limited. We ate up about 2 hours by seeing “Kick Ass”, an ok watch, but no “Dead Man” by any means.

Somehow, we managed to wait around until 10:30pm and got on the bloody bus. I managed to read a little of my new book “Confessions of an Opium Eater”. It was written in the 1800’s. Anyway, the bus dropped us off in Newcastle at some random bus-stop in the city, and we had to walk a few minutes to the bus station. Now, if anyone knows Newcastle pretty well, you’ll probably understand why sitting at the bus station in Newcastle at 1:30 in the morning and then getting bored and deciding to go into a pub as a young fresh looking Australian backpacker is a bad idea…Because you’ll probably know that the Newcastle bus station is smack-friggan-bang in the middle of the Newcastle gay community.

Every bar was chocka-block full of these lads making out, and girlies with insanely short hair and as stocky as a prop. It did seem a little odd when we soooo many chaps in the same room, but let’s be realistic – What bar isn’t over-populated by the boys? I have nothing against the homo-sexuals, all stunning people, but the experiences Benjamin and myself went through that night were somewhat uncomfortable. We made a pact to never reveal what went on in that bar…

Nah, it wasn’t that bad, but uncomfortable? Definitely. I desperately needed to use the facilities, and so I left Ben standing in a dark corner of the pub with our bags. I ran into some lad with a fringe running down to his chin, but there seemed to be very little hair on the rest of his head. In the most stereo-typically gay voice I’ve ever heard, he said “Whoops! Sorry babe” and gave my arm a quick squeeze…It was at this moment when I’d realised every couple we saw…Were male couples. When I found Ben, he’d somehow retreated even further into the dark corner of the pub, and seemed to almost somehow blend into the wall. Never have I seen such terror in a man’s eyes. Slowly, I turned around to see what Benny was so terrified about…and saw Him. Sitting at the bar, legs spread, moose knuckle beyond anything imaginable and about 58 years old complete with balding grey hair…Passionately and eagerly staring at us. I don’t think a discussion even took place, Ben and I just got the hell out of there. As if that wasn’t creepy enough, when we stood outside to discuss the next point of action, we noticed that he was still staring at us, from the same spot. There are a few forms of stares as I’m sure many women know, and this wasn’t a comfortable one. Oh, and Ben had his hair stroked a couple times by a couple of chaps.

Blergh, don’t want to talk about it anymore.

The first bus going to York left at 8:30am, so we had a 7 hour wait. I won’t go into the finer details of our doing nothing for that time, but I can tell you that it was the coldest 7 hours of my life. Quite obviously at that hour in the morning, not much is open.

I’ve written this much already, and we haven’t even got to the York bit of the tale.

Basically, everyone has been telling us to go to York, because it’s beautiful, old, and full of history, beautiful women, heaps of touristy stuff and has a slight country-side feeling to it. I’m happy to report that it fulfilled all those expectations.

On arrival – as we do – we went for a large walk, and enjoyed observing the proles in action, going about their daily lives. It was a beautiful sight. Ben fell asleep by 4pm, and so I decided to have a little mini tour of the city by myself. I sat on the city wall overlooking the city and watched the sunset. Whilst walking, I also found two people begging for “Just a spare 10 pence sir”…While sipping a beer.

During this mini tour, it occurred to me how different my life really is now. 6 months ago, I would wake up at 3pm, go to work at 4pm in which I would spend an entire shift by myself, talking to myself, making super-size paper-wasps, writing album reviews that I would just end up throwing away anyway…Whatever, the point is that I would spend the entire shift by myself, talking to no-one. I would then go home at 10, and find everyone to be asleep, so I’d have a feed by myself, and go on sit in my room by myself and continue my boring-ass cycle of facebook stalking. Yesterday was the first time in over a month that I was by myself. I actually had a chance to think. It was magic.

York is said to be the most haunted city in England. There were about 10,000 Ghost Tours and Haunted Trail Tours that were available, but all looked pretty crappy. Unlike our Ghost Tour in Edinburgh which involved actual myths, and a frigg load of true stuff, these York one’s involved people dressing up in zombie suits and yelling at you. In a brochure I read about a 700 year old haunted house, and thought it might genuinely be kind of scary – But they had a children’s price. Then it occurred to me that they didn’t even have a warning on there like the usual “Young children may be frightened” or “Not recommended for children under x age“. Sooooo, we gave up on the whole haunted thing and went to the pub.

This was an exciting pub. They had beer from Thailand, Japan, Belgium, Germany, Czech Republic, and Mexico – everywhere, and neither of us had heard of any of these beers. We managed to find one at 10.5% and both bought it. It was insanely sweet, and proved to be a huge challenge to get through, but we did it. Old mate behind the bar was from Rockhampton and convinced Ben to try an 11.3% beer. I had a dig of his, and it was much better than the first one. Being a bit of a girl, I just went for the rather tame 8.6% Mexican beer. The toilet had an entire sex shop, in a box on the wall where you usually find condoms, breath fresheners or cologne and the tap used a dial on the wall rather than…a tap.

We met an insanely rich guy who kept buying us drinks, one of which was this shot of a kind of Moonshine-like alcohol, as described by the Rockhampton man. 80%. Our insanely rich guy was having a standing fit, my lips almost burnt off and Ben probably done something hilarious. I would never touch that stuff again. There was another shot which was 89.9%, but our rich man ran out of money, and I’m quite sure it couldn’t be too healthy to be eating these down.

Surrounding the entire city is a huge brick wall. I don’t even know why it was there, because I’m lazy and didn’t read any of the little story plaques, but it was pretty cool to walk around. It took us like 3 hours to walk it, combined with stopping at all the cool gardens and churches. I could try and go into much more detail concerning what we saw in York, but I have no way of making it exciting enough to read about. I’d recommend for people to come here, but I wouldn’t stay any more than 2 nights. Despite there being plenty to see and do, it can be done in a day. Oh, it’s an expensive little bastard too. We met a guy who had just moved there from London, and he says it’s about the same price – Phwoah!

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And with that my friends, we moved forth to Liverpool – home of The Beatles.

I’ve never seen such love and passion for a band. I do believe the folk of Liverpool are quite proud that one of the greatest (The greatest, depending on who you talk to) bands of time were spawned from where they live. All we knew of Liverpool before going there was that it had a lot to do with The Beatles, but the city itself is much more.

Our arrival to Liverpool was relatively late and we didn’t get a lot done. We managed to find the most expensive hostel in the world which apparently has been awarded for being the best hostel in the UK…Bullshit. That place sucked and had no atmosphere, no kitchen and the internet – like most expensive and bigger hostels – you had to pay for. I could bitch about it all day, but it only makes me angrier that we were stupid enough to continue staying there. It was the YHA by the way, and I already have had bad experiences with the Australian versions, so I don’t know why I thought this one would be any better.

For those of you who aren’t all that familiar with The Beatles, they were a group of four English chaps who inspired a generation and took over half the world. If you haven’t heard of them…There is no hope for you.

I warn you, the next part I’m not that sure about. You see there is a chain of little streets in the heart of Liverpool known best as “The Cavern Quarter”. On one of these streets you have a place called “Lennon’s Bar” and two places with very similar names, one being “The Cavern Club” and the other “The Cavern Bar”. Now I’m not entirely sure which is which, but I know one of them is the most famous bar in the world, and is quite an honour to score a spot on the stage. That sort of stuff looks good on a resume. It also happens to be where The Beatles used to play and correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe it’s where they first played and were introduced into the world of music.

The original Cavern Club has since been torn down, but it’s said that when they rebuilt it, some of the original bricks were used to give it some of its original feeling back. For some stupid reason, it was closed when we went there, but across the road was The Cavern Bar, which has live bands every night of the week, so we went and had a look.

I managed to grab myself a dance with a lady of about 60 not knowingly hooking into the Jive (Someone later in the night informed me), and had a right old time. Halfway through an AC/DC song, the band stopped playing, and when I turned around to see why, I saw Ben being smacked in the head with a chair. Apparently, Ben was sitting down enjoying the band, and noticed some bloke enjoying the music. To show his fellow appreciation for the great music, Ben gave the bloke a rock salute. Somehow, the bloke believed that Ben was trying to seduce him, and yelled “Are you gay!? You trying to get with me!? You f@%king homo!” followed by a right old head-butt to the lip, sending Ben stumbling onto a table (Which may I mention was host to my near full pint of John Smith’s). Before Big Ben could establish what actually happened, he was hit with a flying chair, then followed by a bottle being smashed on his head, and then followed again by a chair. Just as the bloke was picking up the table, his friends managed to take him outside. Unfortunately, for the amount of abuse our boy Ben went through, all he got was a slightly puffy lip. He did have to clean out some broken glass from his head though. It was all rather exciting.



After awaking somewhat earlier than usual the next morning, we decided to book a Yellow Duck Marine tour. Yes, it sounds a little bit like Yellow Submarine hey? Pretty clever. Anyhow, it really wasn’t that exciting. Our tour guide had a very awkard sense of humour and throughout most of the tour, he was only making himself laugh. Basically, you sit in this old WW2 vehicle that can drive on road and through water. It takes you on a tour around the city – seeing all the typical touristy things and then finishes off with a little tour through the harbour. The process of getting into the water was a wet and exciting one, but still not really worth what we paid. You have to learn these things I suppose.



For the rest of the day, we decided to take matters into our own hands, and went to see Penny Lane, Strawberry Hills and St. Peters, where Lennon and McCartney first met. By going ourselves, we were able to see a lot more of Liverpool which we probably wouldn’t have been able to see. It’s not the place I would like to go of a night time by myself.



Aaaanyway, Liverpool seems like the sort of city in which is would a great place to live, like if you knew people and stuff, because the city itself was pretty cool. Heaps of cool bars are around, and despite being so modernized, is still quite a lovely place. In saying that, as a tourist to the place, it’s bloody expensive. They charge an arm and a leg for the tours and just everything in general is expensive.

I’ll leave you with that for now. We’re on our way to Manchester, which to Ben’s liking has a very vibrant and extravagant gay community. A whole village is dedicated to the homo-sexual people. :)

Byyyyyyyyyyyye!