Cheers, again

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(as always, pictures look better if you read on blog site not email).

We began this round of travel December 1, 2025. It was a patchwork that included Malta, Southern England (Lewes, Ditchling), London, Sarajevo, Montenegro, The Baltics (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) and Poland (reports all found on this website). But we always start and end with a stop in Liverpool because that is where the real attraction is.

The city has begun to feel a bit like home. We have our favorite restaurant

Jackie P with tuna + cheese; 1/2 of the tuna and cheese gets put on the pizza. Olive oil optional and a separate take home purchase
(*jackie p is of course a jacket potato, aka baked potato)

We have our market

where we get our favorite meal ingredients (well, Nick does)

Parsnips and mushy peas plus
Cathedral city cheddar, air fried haddock and Franks

No matter how many times we come, we still find new places to go. https://chosenfugue.xyz/2018/10/21/liverpool/, https://chosenfugue.xyz/2026/02/09/cheers/, https://chosenfugue.xyz/2026/02/24/it-was-a-tad-bloody/, https://chosenfugue.xyz/2026/01/02/the-brrrritish-coast/

This time Port Sunlight. Port Sunlight is a model community built beginning in 1888 for the workers at the Lever Brothers soap factor (now UniLever). Since this is northern England, it was not named for its weather, rather after their most popular soap. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Sunlight.

Very weird war memorial, honoring the Lever employees who died in WW1. The bronze statues of children along the sides noted how proud the children were to have lost their fathers in the war. Very different approach.

A really beautiful, Truman show like community. What gave it an even more surreal feel was the cemetery.

Most people did not die rather they fell asleep
Doesn’t having “also” before your name kind of feel like an afterthought into the afterlife?
Here is the afore mentioned Keith
A lot of real and fake flowers and tchtchhokes throughout

It was a very interesting contrast to our recent visit to a worker’s city near Krakow https://chosenfugue.xyz/2026/05/13/beauty-and-the-beast/

A last busy weekend

and then a flight from Liverpool John Lennon airport to Dublin and onward to the US. A perk in leaving from Dublin, is that you go through US customs in Ireland, before you leave, instead of on arrival in the US.

It was very hard to leave, but the long flight allowed us to get caught up on all the movies we missed over the past 6 months, and gave us time to reprogram and accept our return to everything that we did not miss over the last 6 months.

We returned to a warm welcome in Seattle.

Followed by a stop in Mendocino for more gradual re-entry to the US with our emotional support animals, Mack and Phil. Then on to Los Angeles where we will spend the summer and figure out where to next. Mack and Phil recommend South America. We will let you know.

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