Liverpool & Chester Breakaway - September 2025
A 3 night stay on Bed & Breakfast in Liverpool at the Ibis Styles Liverpool Hotel, Dale Street - very close to the Cavern Quarter.
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As soon as we got off the train at Lime Street station we dropped our bags, making our way down to the Waterfront, where we were just in time to hop aboard the Mersey River Cruise (50 minutes) on the Royal Iris - we were 2 of the last 4 passengers to board.
I didn't get the opportunity to take photos or video during the river cruise, but - I grabbed this YouTube Short after we reached the top deck of the Tall Ship as the Royal Iris she headed off on her 2pm round trip sailing here:
And then, as we pulled back into the dock we were at the front of the queue to disembark so we could head over to the Peruvian Navy Tall Ship - the B.A.P Union as she had been docked for visiting for a couple of days before our arrival into the city.
Next stop, off to the Everyman Cinema in the Metquarter shopping centre to book tickets to see The Roses, for the following afternoon.
All this, before we made our way back to our hotel to grab our bags and find out which room we had been allocated.
It was a nice big accessible room on the 3rd floor with views over Dale Street.
Somewhere in between all that, we found ourselves in the Rocking Horse pub, watching some live entertainment for a couple of hours. It's a favourite venue of ours and has Happy Hour special prices before 5pm midweek.
Evening arrived and we took ourselves to the Slug & Lettuce where we had already purchased a Groupon Voucher for 2 main meals and an alcoholic drink. Good value and lots of food on the plate, served piping hot - just as we like it.
Then we made our way to the Cavern Quarter and to one of our favourite bars - the Cavern Pub. More live entertainment and somewhere around 23:00hrs, we returned to our hotel for the night.
A bit of window shopping and inside shopping, after breakfast the next morning turned out without much success - other than the purchase of a mobile charging cable as my other half had picked up the wrong one for his phone and mine is different than his... oh, and a couple of golf umbrellas from Sports Direct (2 for £10) as it had started to rain!
Somewhere along the line in the day, we grabbed a sandwich before heading to the cinema.
We loved the movie with Olivia Coleman and Benedict Cumberbatch, enjoying a large glass of white wine on our comfy armchairs inside Screen One of the Everyman Cinema.
I believe we ended up in Ranelagh's bar after that doing a spot of people watching, whilst being entertained by various singers on the stage.
Being unable to decide where we wanted to eat and having enjoyed the meal (and the price) at the Slug & Lettuce the evening before, I purchased another Groupon Voucher (£24) and we whiled away an hour or so there - before going to the Cavern Pub again.
Handy for us as it was literally just a few minutes walk back to our hotel.
This was our last full day in Liverpool so after breakfast, we wandered into the shops - failing miserably to find some suitable lightweight waterproof coats that we can pack away into our small hold bags when we travel on our winter holidays in Europe.
A few more bars, some exploring of streets we hadn't seen before and - the one thing we really did want to purchase during this Liverpool city break - Patak's Chilli Pickle (something we cannot find in any of our regular supermarkets at home).
We had found it previously at the Turkish owned Marmaris Supermarket which sells all kinds of Asian foodstuffs (find it on London Road L3 8HY) - so we walked up the hill and made it our first proper 'buy' of the trip.
Four jars should see us through until our next Liverpool trip, although the helpful guy behind the counter did suggest to us to try and visit some of the Asian food stockists closer to where we live.
So that is definitely on our agenda for the future...
A short visit for a halloumi and humous grilled panini at the Paper Cup Coffee cafe (2 Queen Square L1), a coffee for me and tea for the other half filled a hunger gap and we did our bit to support this worthwhile cause.
The Paper Cup Project is a Liverpool based charity which supports people experiencing homelessness. Find out more here:
As we were trying to make our way to the coffee shop, we came across the biggest queue of people we had ever seen - apparently, it was the official opening day (4 September 2025) of SpudBros Express in Liverpool and although it was somewhere not long past 14:00hrs, it appeared the majority of Liverpool schools were missing a few of their kids for the rest of the afternoon!
Our last meal out in Liverpool was at Wetherspoons (The Wellkin) on the Curry Club Thursday menu - not the best Chicken Jalfrezi I've eaten in a Wetherspoons - sadly, far too much sauce and I'm sure the poppadums' used to come with red onions and a chutney dip... a disappointing meal for me on this occasion.
We headed to Ranelagh's tavern again for a spot of karaoke watching before making our way back to the hotel for our last night there. Not wanting to make it too late of an evening as we had some packing to do the next day and wanted to chill out a bit.
After breakfast at the Ibis Styles on our last morning, we took ourselves down along the waterfront and across towards the Albert Dock, the Billy Fury statue by way of a circular walking route - surprised to find Jürgen's Bierhaus branding has not been handed over to the new Liverpool FC manager (Arne Slot) - and has since become The Three Graces.
Quite a disappointment and definitely the end of an era...
So, back to the hotel to collect our bags and off to our next destination and an overnight in the city of Chester.... a train journey of 45 minutes by way of Transport for Wales as it was a lot cheaper with our Two Together Railcard than the Merseyrail transport system and, it brought us right back the next day to Lime Street station in readiness for our Northern Trains route in the direction of Blackpool.
We didn't do too much 'discovering' in Chester itself as we were pretty knackered from our wanderings in Liverpool but - we did have a rather nice leisurely late afternoon (sometime around 16:30hrs) lunch stop at Urbano 32 (find it on Bridge Street, Chester).
It all started with a bottle of wine - meanwhile, we perused the menu and chose the Cured Meats platter to share whilst we 'ummed over our pizza choice to follow once we had polished off the platter.
We went for SOME LIKE IT HOT with nduja, spianata calabrese, tomato and mozzarella - bringing back a taste of Italy from September last year.
Our lovely young Irish lady, was fabulous - polite, friendly and full of chatter looked after us very well, without hounding us to order - sadly though, we didn't get to "Alexanders" that evening...
In the evening, we headed over for some live music at The Cornerhouse by the roundabout on City Road, where we shared our trestle table and bench seating with 4 really great guys who had come into the city for the evening and a footy match the next day from Scarborough. It turns out it was a 1 All Draw...
We had a brilliant evening, lots of laughs and some political conversation with a meeting of minds :-) and a skin full of beer.
After breakfast yes - another one (this time, a full cooked one chosen from the menu, much to my partners' delight) at the Macdonald the New Blossom's Hotel - located to the left just before the Eastgate Clock.
We booked the Standard King Room, which provided double aspect windows and were allocated Room No 207 - photos below.
We set off wandering around a few of the smaller alleyways before making our way back to the train station, off back to Liverpool Lime Street station then another Northern train journey in the direction of Blackpool and home again.
Knackered but, thoroughly happy with our 4 nights away from home.
