Late

On Tuesday morning, we woke up to bright sunlight and a messy hotel room. Having got in late, we had pretty much fallen into bed, still aching from London, drained from our travels, and grateful to have a room for the night.


Joy still wouldn't say she wasn't mad at me for making her drive, though a restful night in a quiet country inn, surrounded by thatched roofs and chirping birds, seemed to lift her spirits.


We gathered up the laundry that had accumulated over the course of our trip, and my mom took £5 with her to do our laundry. Apparently, laundry is free. While she was doing the laundry, my mom told the owner a condensed version of something Joy had mentioned.


Joy said, referencing Pilgrim's Progress,


It doesn't matter what time you get to the Celestial City, or how long and hard the road is, or how much difficulty you had getting there. As long as you have a roll, a confirmed reservation, if you will, signed and sealed by Christ, the owner of the Celestial city, you will be welcomed and greeted. This reminded me of it.


It is true that we were not greeted by a detachment of angels, and that the comparison really did stop right there, but it was a great thought, nonetheless.


While our laundry was getting clean, we had breakfast - a welcome sight since we had had nothing to eat but apples and cheese sandwiches on Monday. The food was served in a low room supported by old oak beams.


We'd had a couple full English breakfasts by this point, but they were both in London. The addition of a teapot, milk, and sugar lumps, served in the country, made a wonderful meal even better.


After breakfast, I took off to take pictures around the area while waiting for the laundry to dry. Then we packed and checked out. I was sorry to leave. It was such a homey little cozy place.

We were still behind schedule, but we determined to do everything we could to get where we wanted to go. We still hadn't had our afternoon tea, but we figured we could do that somewhere between Anne Hathaway's cottage and the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool.


It took us a while to get to Anne Hathaway's cottage. It seemed that everything took longer, especially since we were still getting used to the fact that right was our left and left was our right. But the car no longer told us to take tea breaks, and people no longer honked at us, and traffic circles were no longer so much of a problem, and we didn't get turned around at all. (That last in itself was lovely.)





Anne Hathaway's Cottage was absolutely lovely. The grounds were delightful, and the house itself was beautiful and well-preserved. To be sure, Anne Hathaway did not live in any rooms but the kitchen and dining room (the rest were added later). This, however, did nothing to detract from the pure charm of a wattle-and-daub thatched cottage.




We set off toward Liverpool next, realizing that we would not, in fact, have time for tea this day. Traveling took longer than we anticipated - Joy was not exactly ready to fly through the countryside at a staggering 70 mph around curves on two-lane roads with no shoulders. So we arrived at the tunnel that ran under the Mersey River not long before the International Slavery Museum closed.


This was, incidentally, our only toll for the entire trip. Fun fact: at £1.70 both directions, we paid the same fare as a motorcycle with a sidecar or a three-wheeled vehicle.


Liverpool is an interesting old place, an odd mixture of history and trendiness. We stuck mainly by the Albert Docks, since we were there to see the International Slavery Museum, which had closed by that time.


It was still interesting to see all the ships in the docks, many of which were restored. One is used to teach the troubled youth of Liverpool a trade, as well as important characteristics such as respect, promptness, and initiative.



We left Liverpool behind, went back through the tunnel, and tried to get to the little place where I'd planned to have dinner. It's a darling little country pub, and I really wanted to get there.


But our directions were wrong. I don't know how, but we had to get lost in order to find it. I finally said, "Well, let's just go down this wrong turn and see where we end up." (Joy thought this a really bad idea, especially as it was getting dark, but she still went with it. This is how tired she was.)




And there it was: the Stamford Bridge Inn. I was looking forward to bangers and mash, or just a bit of nice, warm comfort food. This was not to be: it was Italian night at the English country pub.




We were greeted at the door by a charming and somewhat bashful centurion, who told us that we were welcome to stay but that it wouldn't be traditional English fare.

I hadn't realized until that moment how much I had wanted an evening like this. Never are the English more English than when they are pretending to be something else; finally I would get to see what that meant.

The fare was nothing like what Americans think is Italian. It was probably nothing like what Italians think is Italian, either.

What made the evening spectacular indeed was the music. Someone we had never heard of, Jon Christos, sang Italian songs, old love songs, and a wonderful rendition of "To Dream the Impossible Dream". We had not expected to find opera-quality talent in a small country pub. The patrons were encouraged to dance, but the only ones who did were two of the waitresses (both of whom were convinced it was the other who couldn't dance) and a very determined lady who danced by herself because her husband refused. Being the type of person who knocks paintings off walls just by standing up, I didn't try.

Jon Christos was apparently in town to perform with the Liverpool Philharmonic. How we managed to miss that small detail when planning our trip to the Stamford Bridge Inn I will never know, but at the time, we were only delighted that the evening had turned out so well, especially after our disappointment at Liverpool.

Since the Inn is not, in fact, an inn but a pub, we ventured forth into the dark once more to find our hotel for the night. It was a Day's Inn, thankfully not too far from the roadway, with three beds and an electric tea kettle. Having shared a bed with Joy since our trip began, I was glad to have my own again!