Manchester and Liverpool

Hi, all!  I'm just days away from my long Easter vacation, but I wanted to blog about my weekend in Liverpool and Manchester.  Manchester was perhaps the least favorite of all the places I've visited here, but I really enjoyed the Manchester Art Gallery.

Manchester City Hall

Nuclear Free Zone

Art Gallery- you could write a tag of somewhere you wanted to be/visit

A painting I thought was neat

Liverpool was simply about an hour-long train ride from Manchester.  I liked Liverpool much better!  We headed to our hostel to drop off our bags before heading to find food for dinner.  We decided to cook pasta at the hostel to save on money (and get ready for the half-marathon the following morning).  After dinner, we decided to check out Albert Dock and the Wheel of Liverpool.  This was so neat to see; it was practically a mini-version of the London Eye.  We decided to ride it to get a birds-eye view of the city.  We played a few games of Scrabble before calling it a night to get well-rested for the race.

That's us... along with 7,498 other runners :)

Beatles (at the hostel)

Wheel of Liverpool

Riding the Wheel

Wheel with reflection

Sunday was race day!  7,500 people were running the half-marathon; it was crazy!  At the hostel, Curtis and I met Katherine, a student from University of Maryland studying at Bristol, so the three of us ran the half-marathon together.  I loved getting to see the city as we ran through it.  It was such a great day for the race.  I did much better than I expected, finishing in 1.49.00 and beating my time from the Des Moines half-marathon.  I really enjoyed running!  :)

Me with my number, t-shirt, and finisher's medal

I was happy with my time :)

After the race, Curtis and I had time to relax before going on the Magical Mystery Tour to see places associated with the Beatles.  I loved the tour; we got to visit iconic places like Penny Lane and Strawberry Field and see the homes of the various Beatles.  I also enjoyed singing along to the Beatles tunes I knew during the breaks in the tour.  :)

The bus!

Birthplace of Ringo Starr

Penny Lane

Strawberry Field

At the Cavern Club

Thanks to everyone for reading my blog!  I'm almost to 1,000 views, so I appreciate you visiting this site!  To close, here's a video of my favorite Beatles song: