Marmite.
I am solidly in th camp that "loves Marmite."
My cousin introduced me to this stuff. What is Marmite? It's this funny smelling brown gloop that's made of Yeast Extract and tastes really salty. How I find it absolutely delicious with butter on toast is beyond me, but I suppose it reminds me of this seaweed mash I really like with rice gruel.
The Paddington Bear, so cute, has these really cute commercials dealing with the reactions Marmite gets. You either love this stuff or you hate it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1Y3qgi3Og8
Putting aside my Marmite obsession, my cousin took me to Liverpool last Friday, on October 16th, 2009.
Liverpool's this really neat port town with possibly the world's most friendly people ever. And of course, the Beatles' were first established in Liverpool.
We didn't really go to the Beatles' museums, they costed extra money, but we were able to go to most of the major museums in Liverpool, which were free.
The Walker Art Gallery housed some really great 19th Century Art. They also had a nice small collection of Impressionist art ranging from Monet to Degas. The Gallery is very small in comparison to the London museums or the Paris museums I visited, you can basically see everything on the second floor and each room basically goes through the ages: Medieval & Renaissance, 17th Century, 18th Century, 19th Century, Impressionists, British, to Modern & Contemporary. I really enjoyed the art here and the people were really friendly in helping us get acquainted with the lovely city of Liverpool.
The World Museum Liverpool is this great museum for families. Most of the exhibitions were about Ancient Egyptians, extinct animals, wildlife, sea animals, etc. and they were set up to be informative, but mostly to keep children interested. They did have a really cool exhibit running at the time we went called "The Beat Goes On," which displayed Liverpool's really rich musical heritage ranging from the Beatles to the Zutons.
The Merseyside Maritime Museum and the International Slavery Museum were all in the same building. The maritime museum had this great upclose look at the three great maritime tragedies: Titanic, Lusitania and Empress. You got a feeling of how Liverpool's port made it ideal for not only trade and building ships, but for immigration as well. I think they said Liverpool had the largest emigration port in the world from 1830 to 1930s. Explains why they have the oldest Chinatown in England.
The International Slavery Museum gave me the goosebumps. It gave this in depth look of historical and contemporary aspects of slavery, starting from the early beginnings of slave trade, the Civil Rights Movement in America, the Black Power movement in America, to modern stories of the effects of slavery. The reason I got goosebumps was because they first had this video of what it would have been like being carted on one of the slave tradeships and then they had this full on Ku Klux Klan outfit that is absoltely terrifying in person. In pictures the get up looks ridiculous, but when you actually see it in person, it's frightening. It's always difficult to face the reality of the slave trade and how it not only was pervasive in America, but in Europe and worldwide as well. Many countries beside America like Brazil and France are still dealing with the repercussions of exploiting from slave trade.
The Tate Liverpool Museum is like this smaller version of the Tate Modern. Again, no pictures were allowed, but they had a Duchamp urinal in there and I couldn't resist sneaking a picture. They had a lot of artists in there, ranging from Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, Marcel Duchamp, to Man Ray. It was a pretty impressive collection, in my opinion. Taking art classes at UCI, I pretty much have to love modern art, so going to the Tate Liverpool was a nice breath of fresh air from seeing all the oil paintings in the other museums. Appropriately enough, we started the day in Renaissance to Impressionst Art and we ended the day in modern art.
Finally, Liverpool has this fantastic expanding shopping center with stores ranging from ZARA, to Urban Outfitters, to H&M, to Primark. Really can't get away from any of these stores. They're everywhere!
Liverpool is such a great city, I loved it. Very accessibly by walking, very friendly, and rich in history, the city was absolutely beautiful (it's by the Mersey River!).
Tomorrow, I'm heading off to the city of Chester!
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