Virgin To Liverpool

Once we arrived at Euston Station we found a small kiosk for the Virgin Train service which had a Pendolino train leaving for Liverpool in about an hour. We had purchased BritRail passes in the US and asked the attendants if we needed to check in or get a boarding pass. They said we didn’t have to do anything. Essentially with the BritRail pass we can simply walk on board any train in the country anytime we want.

One of our company’s suppliers is located in Liverpool and I had traded several emails with one of the support engineers. Eventually I mentioned that we were planning a trip to Liverpool. She gave me a few pointers, an invitation to visit their company and highly recommended getting a first class rail ticket. This turned out to be good advice.

The voice on the overhead speaker at the station announced that boarding was commencing for our train. We wandered down and hopped on board one of the first-class cars. We set up camp at spot with four seats and a table in between. There were only about five other people in a car that holds at least thirty, so plenty of room. In addition there was a kitchen in the front of the car with a chef and the equivalent of three “flight attendants”. The Guinness and Scotch were all free! They served a great meal which included spicy lamb curry and many other tasty bits too numerous to recall.

One of the passengers was a lady from Essex who had lived in Liverpool for five years and we had a nice chat with her. The lead “flight attendant” was from Scotland and so we mentioned we were eventually heading for Edinburgh. She gave us some outstanding advice regarding food and drink in Scotland. She also told us about a long and fantastic bus tour that she had taken across America. Many of the folks we encountered on our vacation happily told us about their trips to America. Very interesting perspectives.


The three hour trip went way too fast. Once we heard the menu plans for the evening, we seriously considered riding the train back to London and immediately returning just to enjoy the meal on the dinner train. All in all, this was the most fantastic and enjoyable train ride ever! This set our expectations very high for the upcoming train travel to Edinburgh. It didn’t quite turn out as expected, but more on that in a later post.


We arrived in Liverpool and made our way to the Sir Thomas hotel on Sir Thomas Street just a few blocks from the Lime Street station. The building was previously the Bank of Liverpool and had been converted to a very nice 39 room hotel within walking distance of most of the places we wanted to see (e.g. The Cavern was just around the corner).