The Albert Dock

Ela has had numerous outings to the Albert dock this summer. There has been no end of activities on there to keep her entertained.

First there was the tall ships who visited Liverpool at the start of their race from Ireland to Norway. Ela enjoyed searching for Pirates, and was only slightly hesitant at having this photo taken.

Then we spent an afternoon at the maritime museum, although we had to wait a while as when we arrived there was a fire alert and the engines arrived and Ela was more excited about that.

We had another visit to the maritime museum and also the Tate gallery when our friends Julia and Jarrod came up to see us with their gang, Tallulah, Xavier, Azaria and their latest addition Tarrick. The Tate Gallery has wonderful activities for children, where they get an object - this could be a set of blocks, a bag of string, a smell in a can, a colour, and they are given crayons and paper and the idea is that they look at all the artwork and choose something that represents their object and then draw what they think/feel/smell. Kept our lot out of mischief for a while anyway. We also had a fabulous lunch at Pizza Express - totally demolished the place!

But probably Ela's favourite excursion there was with Grandad when they took a ride on the YellowDuckMarine. This is an authentic World War II landing vehicle which takes tourists on a tour around the city centreand the wonderful rejuvenated docks area.