Tag: Liverpool

Liverpool Food Guide

Moose Cafe @ Dale Road

Recommend by TripAdvisor, apparently one of the best cafes around Liverpool city.

We ordered the New York Moose and New Hampshire Moose – both are eggs benedict on toasted bagel but with either salmon or parma ham topped with hollandaise sauce. Both are equally good!

Coffee however is so-so. Latte was a little bit milky for me. Macchiato was okay.

Address:
6, Dale Street
Website: http://moosecoffee.co.uk/

Bold Street Cafe @ Bold Street

Recommended by my sister in law, this place serves good food and coffee. Toasted seeded boomer with creamy mushroom is to die for!

Address:
89 Bold Street
Website: https://www.facebook.com/boldstcoffee

Duke Street Espresso Bar @ Duke Street

A little small cafe manned by one barista but with great coffee. They use the same beans as Bold cafe.

Address:
27 Duke St
Website: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Duke-Street-Espresso-Bar/367018186643341

Jamie’s Italian

On our last night at Liverpool, we had dinner at Jamie’s Italian – one of celebrity chef Jamie Oliver’s many restaurants. The man had built an empire of restaurants using his celebrity status.

Jamie’s Italian was packed most of the time hence we had to make reservations a day before.

True to his business acumen, there were loads of Jamie Oliver cookbooks on sale in the restaurant. However, food is pricey and just so-so. It’s overrated.

Website: http://www.jamieoliver.com/italian/liverpool

Williamson Tunnels, Liverpool

I first found out about Williamson Tunnel when I saw a short film about it on BBC News. I followed their Facebook page and I became very intrigued about it.

According to Wikipedia:-

The Williamson Tunnels consist of a labyrinth of tunnels in the Edge Hill area of Liverpool, England, which were built under the direction of the eccentric businessman Joseph Williamson between the early 19th century and 1840. They remained derelict, filled with rubble and refuse, until archaeological investigations were carried out in 1995. Since then excavations have been carried out and part of the labyrinth of tunnels has been opened to the public as a heritage centre.

While waiting for my sister in law’s graduation ceremony to end, my wife, CY and I visited the tunnels. We walked there and found that the place is located in the middle of some residential buildings.

There is a small exhibition hall at the entrance to the tunnel.

There are loads of artifacts dating to the 1800s such as China, bottles, jars and even an abandoned toy car were found. They are put on display. Some of these jars have engraved labels describing the products such as cream and marmite and trade marks of old traders such as W.P.Hartley (jam makers – still in existence today!), Patey & Co (purveyors of perfumes & cold Creams) and JW Lloyd Dentist.

The reason why Mr Williamson built the tunnel is unknown. But it is said that he wanted to give jobs to local men especially men who had just returned from the Napoleon War. The construction of the tunnels stopped upon the death of Mr. Williamson.

We took a tour of the tunnels. We had to wear helmets for our safety. The tunnels were damp and cold but nevertheless interesting. The excavation is currently done by volunteers in the weekends.


This connects to a cellar of a house above.


According to our tour guide, this pillar was a result of an attempt to build a foundation for a hostel located above ground. They did not know that there is a tunnel below hence they filled it up with cement.

We were told that the excavations are still on going as many parts of the tunnels remain undiscovered. If we come back in 4 to 5 more years, there will be more to explore! 

Unfortunately, the tour is rather short (about 40 minutes) but our tour guide was very informative. I was hoping that we get to see the deeper parts of the tunnel. Nevertheless, I got to see the tunnels after admiring it from the Internet!

Liverpool, England 2013

The last time I was in Liverpool was in 2001 with fellow members of the Sheffield University Clubbing Society (yes, there was a Clubbing Society!). We clubbed at the now Cream @ Nation. It was so long ago that I hardly remember how the club looked like but I do remember that we took a van to Liverpool and security at Nation was tight.

We came here for my sister-in-law’s graduation ceremony. The place doesn’t look familiar to me at all. Probably because the last time I came was 10 years ago and it was at night!

Unlike London, Liverpool wasn’t crowded. Taxi was cheap and I managed to find good coffee places!

We spent a lot of our time wandering around Liverpool city. Getting around is cheap and easy. One can call a private cab (eg Delta cabs) and they will quickly despatch one within 5 minutes. They will even text you the cab number and model!

We stayed at Travelodge, located opposite of Albert Dock. It’s quite strategic as everything was nearby. The room is however mediocre. I wandered around Albert Dock to take some sunset pictures.


A building called Streaky Bacon – cause it looks like bacon. Sounds legit.

I didn’t manage to see much of Liverpool. I spent most of the time wandering around the city’s shopping streets while waiting for my wife to finish her shopping. I even spent couple of hours in Oxfam but I found one late 1800 book going out for 10 pounds. I also visit Standford, a store that sells mainly maps and travel books. They have been in business for more than 160 years.

As for my sister in law’s graduation ceremony, it was lively outside the graduation hall. Proud parents were brimming with smiles and thousand of photographs were taken just on that moment. I still have my graduation photo taken with my dad on my table.

A few of us didn’t get to enter the convocation hall as we did not have passes. Instead of waiting for the others to finish the ceremony, we walked to Williamson Tunnels, a labyrinth dug by men hired by an eccentric philanthropist in the 1800s. I first found out about this place from BBC News. I’ll write more of this later.

Cream @ Liverpool

The weather was so cold that it almost freezed my balls off. *brrr*

I just came back from Cream @ Nation at Liverpool. It took us 2 hours to reach back to Sheffield. The whole event was great. It wasn’t not packed and the music was great.

Nation is made out of 3 rooms, the main room, the annex and the courtyard. DJ Sasha was at the Courtyard and DJ Tiesto was in the main room. They started playing at 2am. We had to line up for an hour to get into the courtyard when Sasha was playing, sheshh.

Dj Tiesto was fabulous! The last song he played was PPK – Resurrection, it was damn good and his finishing was magnificent!

The security in Nation is extremely tight. We had to put our belonging into a plastic bag that was given by the staff when we were lining up to get into the club. A body search was performed on us from the body and they even checked our shoes and stocking. However, one of my friends could still manage to sneak a popper in by hiding it between his toes, clever huh. hehe. Surprisingly, you could still get ecstasy pills here even though the security is super tight. The pills there cost about £5 each.

We have couple of new faces that turned for the event that was organized by our Clubbing Society. There’s this couple named Jim and Jane who disappeared to nowhere suddenly once we get into the club. Then there’s this 2 Malaysian girls who were once from Taylor’s College, Malaysia. There are about 15 of us. Carl came all the way from Nottingham to join us. Luckily there’s an extra seat for him. We reached Liverpool at 9:30PM and went home about 4AM.