Tour d´EFFORTS

After a pleasant and on-time sailing across the English Channel I came to the hotel in Portsmouth to stay over night and I very curious to find out whether my rail tickets would be there. And they were! They were one of the first things the receptionist would give me. But apart from that I can not really recommend the Queens Hotel. They did not have adapters from continental plugs to English plugs which I would have needed because I used my PC on the ship where I couldn´t plug into the power socket because the already had English sockets on the boat, so the battery was flat. The internet WLAN would have cost 5 Pounds/h or 10/d. And on top of that during the night odd noises like from water flowing through big pipes disturbed me. So all in all I was happy to continue my way the next morning by train.

I have to admit that I did not like  the CrossCountry train service from Southampton to Stafford very much either because it was too narrow for my long legs! It was like in plane from which I actually wanted to escape b using the train. However, with some delay I arrived in Liverpool.

I got very happy when I found an electronics store near the Liverpool Lime Street station where obtained the desired adapter at the reasonable price of 2,50 Pounds.

In the sunny afternoon I explored St. Albert Dock and the vicinity. Currently there are major construction sites everywhere that it seems they are rebuilding half of Liverpool centre.

On the ferry from Liverpool-Birkenhead to Dublin I got a cabin all on my own although it had 4 bunks because the ferry was not very full at this time of year, mostly lorry and their drivers. It was equipped with a bathroom with shower, a small desk and a carpet, so it was a cosy room. Because it was dark anyway it did not matter that the cabin was on the inside. So this was a perfect compensation to the hotel room in Portsmouth.

The ferry arrived one hour late in Dublin, but that didn´t matter because I was still two hours early for my meeting with the people from the Port of Dublin. I spent the waiting time in the cafeteria of the ferry terminal until Deirdre picked me up.

# posted by Jan Prahm @ 18:40