Liverpool - Day one: Land of the Lambanana

Thursday
Waking up to a good fry up from Heavey set the tone for what has been an excellent few days. After saying our good byes we jumped on the bus to Liverpool. The trip was only an hour and yes once again I slept most of the way.
Waiting for us at the bus stop like an eager 9 year old waiting for Santa Clause to come was Roger "Chimpmits" McOzzy... honourary Australian and even comes packaged with the Southern Cross on his arm.
After a quick drive to his house we dropped off the gear and caught the first train into the city.
2008 is a special year for Liverpool, the arrival of Robbie Keane and plus it is also the year that Liverpool is the European City of Culture. This means there is a heap of stuff to do one of which is Lambanana hunting.
So what is a Lambanana I here you say. It's a cross between a lamb and a banana (duh!) It seems an artist quite a few years ago made this 8 tonne tribute to genetic modification and used a lamb (Dolly the sheep was the first cloned animal) and a banana to symbolise fruit which has been geneticaly modified for some time now. For this year they have made 122 of them, got local artists and communities to decorate them and then placed them all over the city and beyond.
After a beer or two Jane, the Dodger and I decided we'd make it our goal to see as many as we could. This worked out quite well considering they were spread out so we got to see a lot of the city as well.
Of course no game of Lambanana spotting is complete without many, many trips to the local establishments to sample their fine array of amber fluids. We went to the Jacaranda which is the pub where the Beatles first played as the Beatles (theyre was a whole ensemble of names and band members before that). Our biggest struggle for the day was finding a pub meal after 8pm. Instead we had to make do with some pasta from a little Italian restaurant washed down with a fine bottle of rose all the way from France. Doing hard on this trip I tell ya!!
We hit a couple more pubs in the evening and caught one of the last trains back to the Dodger's abode where we settled down to a few more cans and Top Gear on the telly. We managed to find 23 of the Lambananas so there was is a big day ahead of us. Plus the Dodger and I entered ourselves in the British Chess Championship which was being held in Liverpool.