Liverpool library

Liverpool's central library is awesome. I have missed English language libraries so very much. Since I have family and friends who are librarians, and I probably would have been one in another life, I thought that I would use today's blog post to showcase it.

The  Main part of the library was completed in 1860, with the Picton Reading Room (see below added in 1879 and the Hornby Library (also see below) added in 1906. Then the library was bombed in a blitz in 1941. Most of the building needed to be rebuilt, and then between 2010-2013 they rebuilt parts of it again. The result is a mix of modern and old, and it is charming in the extreme. Plus there is a cafe on the ground floor.

The outside of the building looks very historic.

The entrance is a touch more modern with a wide walk wide walkway with the titles of famous books.

This is what you see when you walk inside. A beautiful dome and floating stairways.

One of my favorite parts is the Picton Reading room.  It looks like something out of a historic novel. I wish I had a better picture of it, but it is a quiet zone and every sound is reflected back by the dome. That lotus lamp is massive, I doubt that I could stretch my arms to touch either side. and there are three floors of leather bounds books which you can get to by little iron spiral staircases.

If you walk through the Picton Reading room (built 1879)  you can come to the Oak room, where directly in the center of the room in a massive display case is an original Birds of North America by John James Audubon. The book must be a meter/yard tall!

The history of this particular edition, and ties between Audubon and Liverpool are interesting.

The walls of the Oak room have display cases where huge leather bound books are kept. Can you see that I took this picture as a tribute to Madrid?

The Hornby Library is also off of the Oak room, and it is a little library museum with rotating displays. When I took this photo there was a display to celebrate the 175th anniversary of the Liverpool Philharmonic.

But when we visited in early January to look at houses, there were first edition Charles Dickens books, including amusing hand written correspondence  (click to enlarge).

If you love libraries, be sure to give this one a visit. I am sure that I have only just started to explore it (I haven't been above the first floor yet, I hear that there is a roof top terrace.)

We are all doing well, I hope you are too.

Liverpool Bound

I am so excited to announce that we are moving to the UK! And we are moving soon, as in January!

St George's hall, the largest neoclassical building in Europe

I know that the blog has been silent for a long time. This summer we have been on trips to Canterbury and to Prague and while they were both beautiful and I had photos to share I didn't post because I was not feeling too positive about the way life was going. Spain is a beautiful country and I will always have a space in my heart for it, but it was not enough. DH is miserable in his job, I have no job (have you heard the state of Spain's economy?), and both of us are more "early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise" kind of people.

My new flag

Just as DH was going to give up on his academic career, he got an interview, and a 39 hour mini-trip to Liverpool ensued. I went along as flights were cheap and the interview fell on our 11th wedding anniversary. We found out the next morning that he was being offered the job!

a LJMU building

We are so excited. Both of us has wanted in live in the UK for quite some time. From everything that I have heard, seen or experienced the culture will be a better match for us.

The central library, which sounds like a wondrous place

There was not much time to explore, but at least it didn't rain. Everything that I saw was in a two mile (3.2km) radius from the city centre.

A real autumn!

Even though I am a Beatles fan, I sadly realized that I would not have to the time to see anything Beatles related. Luckily now I will have loads of time!

Liverpool One, a truly massive pedestrian mall with all sorts of shops.

I have a lot of information to share with you about what a cool city Liverpool is, but that will have to wait until after we finish the move.

Canning Dock, and an example of modern vs old architecture

So I will leave you with this announcement and some scenic photos of the city centre and go chip away at the mountainous to-do-list that every international move generates.

This is a Superlambanana, a symbol of Liverpool

Superlambanana

The three Graces, beautiful buildings along the docks.

The church of our Lady and St Nicolas

Yarn shops Bern

Just a quick overview of the yarn shops in Bern. All photos are taken from the respective shop's website because I again forgot to take pictures. I have linked to all the websites and they have many more beautiful photos to share.

Maglia Mania

This shop has limited hours but is well worth the trip. The yarn shop is in the basement of the building and in a doorway right next to the bank entrance you will find your typical European buzzer with their name above it. Just press it and then will buzz open the door for you. They sell only their own hand dyed yarn and they try to source as many of the fibers from Switzerland as they can. There is Swiss mountain silk in most of the bases.

The owner was fantastically friendly even replying to an email (in English) in advance when I was unsure of the directions to get to her shop. The shop was right next to my hotel but maybe 20 minutes walking from the historic town center. You could take the number 12 bus all the way there too, or it is just a walk up the hill from the train station. I think that it is well worth the visit.

Natura Handarbeiten AG

Sadly there is no real website for this store and no pictures. You can go to Goggle street view and just make out the first part of the sign behind one of the medieval statue fountains on the main street. The shop was small but packed neatly with German, French, and Swiss yarn. The shop assistant spoke very good English and was very helpful. Since this shop is in the center of the city there is no reason to miss it.

Near the train station there are two different stores that have not made it onto Knit Map yet. I learn about them from the Fresh Stitches blog and I include a link to each of the post below. (Go look, she remembered to take pictures!)

Loeb

Another blog post about Loeb's yarn from Fresh Stitches

Every European country I have visited has a yarn section in their huge multi-story department stores. There might be more than one, but the one I found was Loeb. Like many department stores it has multiple buildings. The one with the yarn on the 5th floor was just across the street from the end of the glass roofed bus hub.

The selection was amazing. I have seen many yarn shops with less selection. The sock yarn selection alone is worth the trouble of visiting. These German speaking countries know their yarn!

There was also other craft supplies here too, they even had seed beads (a thing that is very hard to find in Spain for some reason).

Here again, speaking English was not a problem.

Bastelzentrum

Other blog post from Fresh Stitches

Now this store had the biggest selection yet! If you visit here you might want to either know what you are looking for or that you have at least an hour to browse. You have to take an escalator from the main street to get down to the entrance. That "first floor" is what holds aisles and aisles of yarn, buttons, sewing supplies, (be still my hard) roving and felting supplies. Look for the stairs towards the back because if you, like me, are from a craft store deprived city the lower floor has everything your crafty heart could possibly desire. They had more craft supplies than most American big-box stores do.

Bern

 There was a time when we hoped that we would live in Bern. A time that seems so very long ago (but is only about 4 years). Now between new anti-immigrant and sentimentalities and some recent politics with the EU we will probably never get the chance. So when the opportunity came up to visit, we both jumped at the chance.

Bern is the small capitol of Switzerland, and with the very heart of the city being a UNSCO World Heritage site, a very nice place to visit. (If you go in May be sure to take an umbrella and a change of shoes.) Bern means Bear in German and the symbol was all over the city.

It was easy to tell when we had walked into the older part of Bern. 

This clock tower (in in the next photo from the other side) was built in the 13th century and still runs without electricity.

On this street (looking away from the last view of the clock tower) Einstein lived during the time he came up with the theory of relativity.

The street is dotted with fountains with statues.

The UNESCO part of town is located inside a loop of river. When you are on the other side of the river the views are breathtaking. (Sorry about the lighting on some of the photos. It kept storming and then was sunny so the light changed all of the time.)

There are brown bears kept just across from the "loop". When we were there, there were three bears, the parents, and this juvenile.

There was also sheep on the steep slope facing the river. I could hear them before I could see them, they were all wearing bells. As the Spanish would say "it was very Heidi".

Montpellier Day two

One of the things I really liked about Montpellier was the tram system. It runs often, quietly and there are four lines. Each line is painted differently so it is really easy to see from a distance if it is the line you want. There is even talk of a fifth one that will go down to the beach. (Although there was talk of that back in 2011 too.) If we move here having the tram to get around means we can put off getting a car.

Like I said, art is everywhere you look here. If one side of the building looks odd, it is probably because it is two dimensional (click to enlarge).

The center of the city is mostly pedestrian (although keep an eye out for vans and motorcycles) and tiny little streets filled with details in stone, iron, and stores.

The city also boosts an Arc de Triomphe 

If you are reading this as someone who wants to visit the city and is looking for something to do. I heartily recommend visiting the Jardin des Plantes or the Botanical garden. It is free, and open most afternoons (except Mondays). We did not get a chance to really visited it this time, more like a peek inside, but it is a truly beautiful European garden.

We next met up with a locally based knitter for coffee. She truly is the sweetest woman and let us ask question after question about living there. When we left her, it was a short walk to this view.

Do you notice how the light is beginning to turn pink for sunset? It does that in Madrid too, and I never get tired of it.

We then headed downtown to look for the last yarn store and for somewhere to eat for dinner. We walked through the narrow winding streets and window shopped, looking at all the art, in stone or otherwise as we passed.

Hopefully I will get to see Montpellier again very soon.

Montpellier Day one

Three years ago (very shortly before we moved from the US and I started the blog) my husband had applied to a position to work for the French government as a researcher. The position would have been to work with a research group in Montpellier University in Southern France. It was/is a beautiful city, but honestly, I could not remember much from that trip (It was a very stressful time in my life that involved doing the move from the US to Madrid in just seven weeks).

So, this year, when my husband decided to apply again for the same position, we decided we would go to Montpellier together. His main reason for this trip was to practice for his upcoming interview. Our main reason was to re-aquatinted with the city, with an eye for living there in the future. It is a very odd feeling to go to a city, not as a tourist, but as a potential future resident. However if he doesn't secure the position, we might not ever be back and we should do all the touristy stuff, right? Maybe? Turns out that we did not have time.

Luckily the AVE (Spain's high speed train) now goes directly from Madrid to Montpellier. (No stopping to transfer trains at the boarder!) It takes about 5.5 hours and trains are really a more comfortable way to travel. The only real downside to the train is that the schedule is a little odd. We came in Late Sunday night and had to leave early Wednesday morning. Two days, three nights.

Javi's department talk was first thing in the morning, so I had the morning to myself to explore the city. Swallowing my fear of being in a country where I barely spoke the language, I set out towards the center of the city. 

Side note - I might seem like a world traveler to some, but I often do not feel that I am. In fact look back at my travel history and there is rarely a time where I have been to a country that I do not speak the language. I am working on conquering this fear, in fact I already have tickets to Bern in a month or so.

Cathédrale de Saint-Pierre from behind

The center of Montpellier is a beautiful medieval city made out of a light colored stone. Since we watched a lot of tourist videos before coming, I can tell you that Montpellier is the 8th largest city in France, and the one with the most growth for the past 25 years. It also seems like a place for artists (which I love). It is possible to walk up the steep cobbled streets and see art adorning the construction barriers, here the music coming out of the dance or music school and then come across this...

...amazing Cathédrale de Saint-Pierre with it's towers straight out of a fairy tale. (I you look closely it has gargoyle water spouts like Notre Dame has, as always click to enlarge.)

Cathédrale de Saint-Pierre from the front

I climbed up the steep street and took some steps to my left  and came upon this charming plaza - Place de la Canourgue.

A cherub fighting two unicorns?

This was the plaza right by the hotel we stayed at the last time we were here, and the memories of the town came flooding back to me.

Here is a look back down the street I came up (the plaza is much higher than street level). There is the Cathedral and in the distance, be still my beating heart, mountains! Yes Montpellier is close to the beach and also to these small mountains. Though, in a couple of hours drive you could be in the French Alps or the Pyrenees! 

It is always very important to remember to look up in medieval streets because you never know what gems you will see. See that sign? A woman weaving!

This next building below used to be a convent, then a woman's prison, and now it is a choreography center. I love towns with history.

There were, thankfully, signs all over the place with maps. These old city centers are very easy to get lost in. There were also lots of little unexpected pieces of art up on the walls. Here we have a mosaic space invader.

This charming arch was in the Archeological gardens.

If you pass through the Archeological Gardens and up a lot of steps there is a great view of the North part of the city. Click to enlarge and look at that shadow art on the white building up ahead. Some of them are true shadows and some of them are painted. Have I mentioned I love the art and history this town has?

If I turn 180 degrees this is what I see - L'Esplanade park, with it's grand walkways, fountains and playgrounds.

Along the park are several cafés and I was able to successfully buy a bottle of water. At this point I found a bench in the shade (it was hotter there than Madrid) and knit while thinking of living in this city. I do find vacations can get overwhelming very quickly, and the act of knitting can settle my thoughts and leave me feeling refreshed. 

A charming building across the street

I am glad that I stopped to regroup. It is overwhelming at times that I am 35 and not only have I never owned my own couch, I have no idea what country I will live in next! Yes, at times it is exciting, other times you can ignore it, but then there are times when it catches up to you and it is so, very, stressful.

A memorial

So... my mind refreshed I continued wandering the park and snapping photos. I can not believe how beautiful it is here. Really the main problem with living here, other than Javi not having the job yet, is the language. A third language. I can only hope that this time, it'll be slightly easier. After all I already know a cousin language, right? If I was to live in France I would learn faster. After all, here in Spain Javi is here if I need him to translate. In France, it's learn or perish. I have already (optimistically) started studying French. After all, if he were to get the job we would be moving by the 1st of October. For those of you keeping score that means, yes, I am learning both languages simultaneously now.

Charming row houses facing the park

The sign says "the mansion of the pigeons"

In the park, there is this very small building with this banner. I think that it was an advertisement for the museum about 200 meters away. It turns out, we did not have time to go and see. I'll take it as a good sign that they chose a painting of his that shows a knitter.

L'Esplanade's Southern tip basically touches the main plaza of the city- Le Place du Comédie, which is beautiful.

Too soon it was time to take one of the trams (light rail) to meet up with Javi at the University. Luckily the Tram system means that we would not need a car at first to live here (another plus). Javi was practicing his interview talk at the University (the interview is this week in Paris, in English) and I was going to be his secretary. 

I'll leave you with the sculpture in University II. Which I find both mystifying and amusing.

Tomorrow four of the five yarn stores of Montpellier, and more pictures from our day of exploring.