TUESDAY and WEDNESDAY (Catch up)

TUESDAY was spent attending more Rotary breakouts including Club Leadership planning and Youth Programs; Rotoract, Interact, RYLA and Youth Exchange.

After the breakouts, we headed to the central square to await a concert in the "Town Hall" concert hall. The best part of the wait was the First Annual International Food Festival being held in the square and down High Street. There were multiple booths with food, food and more food. We almost bought some exotic meats to bring home:

We then attended a concert by the Treorchy Male Choir. A mens choir that has been in continuous existence for 125 years. They are from Wales and sang a number of songs, including some wonderful Welsh tunes. The most interesting part of the show was the ladies behind us talking about how much they enjoyed the Rotary Convention in Salt Lake in 2007. As we talked with them, we found that one of them is also from Merthyr Tydfil, the town we will visit Thursday!

WEDNESDAY - Well, Brad got up early and headed to the airport and picked up our rental. It was supposed to be a small station wagon type vehicle, but they didn't have any automatics, so we had to put up with an upgrade to a two seater Peugot convertible. Well. it has four seats, but the back ones are useless....

Handsome cuss, isn't it? (The car.....)

We're still trying to figure out how to put the top down.....

First day of driving in England, on the "correct side of the road", as we were informed, was an experience. The GPS saved our bacon.....

Our first stop was the temple in Preston, about 2 hours north. We finally arrived after only 40 extra miles of "recalculating" when Brad tried to second guess the GPS and figured out those wonderful round abouts.


We had a wonderful session at the temple and headed out about 4:00. Realizing we weren't that far from Liverpool, (Annette already knew that, Brad needed some persuading....) we took a side trip to see "Beatle Land". After some hair raising downtown driving, we made it to the "Story of the Beatles" museum, just in time to miss entry by about 15 minutes! BUMMER!

But the gift shop was still open..... DUH!

OK, I have no idea where this sign came from or what it meant, unless it was referring to the speed bumps in the road:

After a few pictures of the wharf, we walked across the highway to a great sports cafe and had Fish and Chips and Yorkshire Pudding (Beef pie), YUMMMM... while watching USA score the first of it's two goals against Spain.

Click on the picture for a bigger version.

Had to throw in a picture of this car pulling a trailer. As we drove, there are NO pickup trucks, but numerous cars pulling trailers:

Our favorite was a Jaguar with a trailer in tow! (Sorry, no photo available)

After only 10 or so extra "recalculating"s, we arrived at our hotel more than ready to hit the pillows for the night. Up early and on our way to Merthyr Tydfil in the morning!