Nottingham in a Nutshell: Love from Liverpool!

So guys...I survived my first weekend adventure and hostel stay but let me tell you it was exactly that...an adventure! Our group was myself, Rae, Alison, Simone, and Beck (Rae is from U of I and the other 3 girls are Australian). It all started Friday when we all raced out of our classes to make our train. I had some left over credits from lunch so I bought some chips for the train because you never know when you might need a bag of chips and was good to go with my backpacked on and looking like a real live backpacker...until I had Rae take pictures of me. I think all my credibility went out the window at that time but oh well! Our train ride was pretty seamless and we arrived at Liverpool Lime Street Station and found a taxi to take us to our hostel to check in. Our driver was very friendly and gave us some tips on where to go to get something to eat after we were all settled in. Upon walking into our hostel (a little place called Strawberry House after Strawberry Fields by the Beatles) I was no longer feeling so confident in the situation that we were in! The hostel itself was clean and everything but dark and scary and it was windy out and my bed creaked, so needless to say I was feeling like the situation was slightly less than ideal and I was ready to look for the nearest Holiday Inn to check myself in for the weekend! Since none of us had eaten dinner yet and it was getting on 9pm we decided to venture into the city to find some food. We had a handy travel book that gave us some good suggestions to eat so we hopped into a taxi and were off. We discovered this restaurant that had a £4.10 beer and burger special so we were all for that. Here it is totally legal for me to drink but it is still odd ordering alcohol at a restaurant...I think that I will feel that way even when I turn 21 in September! So after our food (which tasted like the BEST thing we had ever had since 1. we found it on our own and we felt all grown up and 2. we were starving) we headed to a bar down the street to just hang out and get a feel for Liverpool. The night was pretty uneventful and I will admit that I was perfectly content with going to bed before midnight! Except let me tell you about that! The 5 of us had a room just for us so that was cool. It had 2 single beds, 1 double, and a set of bunk beds. I didn't mind taking the top bunk but I soon regretted this decision because I promise this bed was missing a piece! Every time I breathed in or out it squeaked and if I physically moved this bed rocked like a sailboat caught in a hurricane! I literally thought that I was going to die or at the very least crush the girl sleeping on the bunk below me! This bed was making my little, uncomfortable bed at uni (breaking out my Aussie/British lingo) look like a cloud of wonderfulness!

Saturday was the big day because we were going to do the Beatles. And when I say do the Beatles I mean visit practically any and every location that any member of the Beatles or their families could ever have been associated with (including but not limited to the bar where Ringo's mom worked, George's grandma's house, and the maternity ward where John Lennon was born)! The morning started off with me needing cash and having to try 3 different ATMs before one would give me money. I was in a slight panic by number 3 because no money is a big problem! Then it started to rain...and rain...and rain and of course this was the FIRST time that it has truly rained since we have been here. And what did I leave in my dorm room at Nottingham? Of course, my umbrella and being the cheap person that I am I was NOT willing to purchase another one! Luckily I brought my rain jacket so I did not get soaked because we were not going to let the rain bring us down (although for some reason the rain somehow got inside my boots and my socks were SOAKED after 8 hours of practically standing in water). The tour that we decided to do was actually a cab tour so it was just us 5 ladies taking on Liverpool with our fearless driver ready to drive us around and take pictures of us as we shamelessly played the part of the tourists needing a LOT of pictures taken! The tour was not only cool for the Beatles lovers of the group but also a really cool way to see a new city. People in Liverpool were SO friendly (for the most part) and the city itself was beautiful, especially at night. We learned cool things like the GIANT Catholic church in Liverpool has 4 bells outside of it, one for each member of the band and that Eleanor Rigby was actually the name on a grave that John Lennon always hid behind when he played hide and seek with his friends in the church graveyard by his house (not my choice of hide and seek setting but maybe it's a British thing?!). After our tour (3 hours of everything Beatles!) and jumping in and out of the cab (it had a seat that faced backwards...SO fun!) to snap pictures we were again starving (my day really does revolve around food but I'm okay with that!) so we got a recommendation for a cheap place to eat from our Cabbie and were off. We walked into this pub (the Wethered Spoon) and discovered that it was the exact same as the place that we ate the night before but with a different name and everything was about 50 pence more expensive. Good thing we liked it! This time I had some lasagna...yum! After our meal we just kind of bummed around town (still raining) and then headed back to our hostel to get ready for a night out on the town.

Now the weekend gets really entertaining for all of you when when we get to today. We were originally supposed to take a train at 11:20 but for various reasons we decided to take the 12:52 direct train from Liverpool to Nottingham. Easy enough, right? WRONG! We got to the train station only to discover that the train was canceled to to a landslide on the tracks...what the heck! So we were instructed to take a train to Leeds and then get to Nottingham from there. Easy enough because that train was in about 20 minutes. Well, we get to Leeds and there are no trains going to Nottingham on the board so we ask how to get there. And with our luck we ask 3 different people how to get to Nottingham and they all give us different answers. Well that's a problem, now isn't it! We finally figured out that we had to take a train from Leeds to Chesterfield and then get on a train in Chesterfield to get to Nottingham. Well the Chesterfield train wasn't leaving for an hour so we got something to eat (of course!), boarded our train and were off. We finally arrived in Chesterfield and waited another hour for our train to Nottingham. So long story short a train ride that should have taken us 2.5 hours took us about 7. Luckily I decided to buy a chocolate bar at the train station so I was a happy camper on the train(s) with my candy and Kindle (greatest piece of technology EVER)! So now I am home which I find kind of weird because coming home from a trip usually means going to Geneva but I'm getting used to being away! 2 weeks down already, dang!

Fun fact...I have gone 3 days without getting a single potato on my plate, that's gotta be a record or something!

Well I'm off to bed because I'm exhausted! Pictures from the trip will be up tomorrow so check back but for now enjoy the little treasure's at the end of this!

Love from London (and Liverpool...I think I can only go places that start with "L"!)

Stacey