A brief post, this one; at least, brief for me.
We’d spent our day in Liverpool, the final port on this short Sky Princess UK cruise, doing not a great deal, if truth be told, although we’d spent money ashore in an art gallery and some pubs, and we’d experienced culture in the form of public artworks and monuments along the Liverpool waterfront. That simply left waiting for the sail away from the Merseyside city, then dinner and drinks aboard, ahead of some time at sea before returning home.
This post, therefore, will consist almost entirely of pictures taken of the Liverpool skyline along the Mersey, passing between Bootle and Wallasey on her way out across the north of Wales to the Irish Sea. A few videos too, just because I took some, and some mentions of buildings of interest (to me) along the way completes the content here.
We were quite taken with Liverpool’s Dazzle Ferry, Snowdrop, operating from just aft of Sky Princess so therefore in a perfect spot to see her from our balcony. Who couldn’t love that explosion of patterns of colours? The unique design is by the pop artist, Sir Peter Blake, and if the name sounds familiar then it’s because he was the man who designed the Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover for The Beatles.
Another vessel that proved to be very interesting was the catamaran car ferry that operates between the Isle of Man and Liverpool. To start with it was mainly because she appeared to be a “clown car of the seas” after docking to our rear. We watched as cars left… and more cars left… and more… and more… and more… and it started to really amuse us just how many vehicles had been packed inside the boat. Every now and then it would seem like all the cars had left, only for another long stream of cars to start emerging… and then more… and more. According to Wikipedia, HSC Manannan can hold 200 vehicles, but it felt like double that were aboard as we waited to leave Liverpool, or that those leaving were secretly driving down some tunnel connecting to the vessel’s lower deck once out of sight and coming back out again for comedy value.
The further interesting point about this high-speed catamaran is her history, which includes an initial period of commercial service between Australia and New Zealand before conversion for military purposes and use by the US military. I guess that military conversion included the specification “to deliver an unfeasibly large number of vehicles ashore” and it was clearly successfully implemented.
Sky Princess finally departed from Liverpool at close to half past six. In the video below there are some clips of Liverpool, starting with one taken while we’d been in the Albert Dock earlier in the day (and which you can read about in the previous travelogue from this cruise), and the others from our balcony, showing Snowdrop and Manannan, as well as being able to hear the famous Love Boat horn sounding from our ship as we pull away from the dock.
Two churches for the price of one! Dead centre in the photo below is the very identifiable roof of the Liverpool Metropolitan Church. As I’d studied at Liverpool University in the 1990s this was a building that held a special place in my memory, situated right outside the doors to the students’ union. In the foreground is the Liverpool Parish Church. While this particular church is post-World War II, a church has stood on this location since the thirteenth century.
You can probably guess the approximate age of the building below and its original purpose without looking it up. This is Waterloo Dock, and it dates back to the 1830s, and the main building, the Waterloo Warehouse, was the world’s first automated grain warehouse, constructed when the dock chiefs gambled that the repeal of the Corn Laws would likely see the USA becoming the main source of additional grain to feed Britain, and that Liverpool’s existing ship route links to America made it the ideal place to import that foodstuff.
Either side of the Mersey by Waterloo Dock are towers like the one below. These are the ventilation towers for the Kingsway road tunnel that runs beneath the river. A nice bit of brutalism, but if I’m being honest, not a patch on those on the North Sea Canal.
Looking far older than its 1920 age thanks to the Neoclassical architecture, across the river we could see Wallasey Town Hall. In fact, the building is technically a little older than 1920, but its earlier usage was as a hospital for soldiers in World War I before being converted into its intended form. The foundation stone of the building was laid by King George V.
Opposite the town hall we passed Victoria Tower, a mid-nineteenth century clock tower constructed to allow sailors on ships departing for the Irish Sea to set the time correctly. A bell on the tower also gave warnings of fog.
As had been the case with the other ports on this cruise I made good use of the large aft balcony on Sky Princess and took a time lapse video of the departure from Liverpool.
The rest of the evening, you can probably guess. There were cocktails. There was food in the main dining room. We were more than satisfied with all of it.
We spent a reasonable amount of time in the Take Five jazz lounge, as we had on numerous other nights during this cruise. The Larry King Trio were great, and if you’re ever on a Princess Cruises ship and they’re performing then ask about their Love Boat theme rendition; it’s absolutely superb. The video below doesn’t show it, but it’s still worth a listen.
Just one more post remains in this Sky Princess cruise travelogue series, and that will cover the remaining time at sea aboard the ship and some thoughts about her.