St James' Garden

Whilst in Liverpool we visited Liverpool Cathedral, which is the largest cathedral in the UK. We didn't find that it was very impressive, considering it was completed in 1978, and many other cathedrals and castles were built hundreds of years ago without the technologies made available in the last century.

What was impressive though, was St James' gardens below the cathedral. This was the main city cemetery, used until 1936 and had over 57000 burials. Now they've moved quite a few gravestones from the centre to make way for a public park. The basin (before it was used as a cemetery it was the a sandstone quarry) is surrounded by gravestones, with areas at either end filled with quite a few. It was a really interesting place to walk around and learn about.

Liverpool Cathedral

Lady Chapel

New English products!

I feel like I've been super restrained with purchases so far. I ignored the 3 for 2 sale Superdrug had when I arrived, and haven't swatched much in-store. I couldn't resist a few little things though.

First up I bought the Nivea raspberry Rose lip butter. I was running out of my other lip balms so thought I'd buy this. I didn't like the scents that are available in Australia, but this one is quite lovely. Although I have to keep it in a pocket of my bag because I'm worried the lids going to fall off!

Next I decided I needed a pink nail polish. I chose Barry M Gelly polish in Grapefruit. I really wanted to try these polishes, but the wear time is pretty awful! It started chipping after a day, and I managed to get at least 3 from the ulta3 polish I had on before. It is a lovey colour though, and I might give it another go with a top coat.

Sorry about how horribly it's applied... just look at the colour!

I picked up one of MUA's new £1 powder blushes with the nail polish. I decided to get cupcake, as I thought it was a more brown based blush that I though I could use as a contour . It's a bit pinker than the swatches I saw online (no stand I came across had a tester) but its still super pretty.

heavy swatch and blended.

I managed to pick up Rimmel's Lycra Pro Matte Finish top coat in a supermarket for half price! I've been looking so long for a matte top coat and found out this one was discontinued, so I was so happy to find it sitting lonely in the Rimmel stand. I've also basically doubled the amount of nail polish I bought with me. Score!

Last of all is Soap and Glory hand food. I haven't tried Soap and Glory before so this was what I went for when my Body Shop hand cream decided to split at the sides. It's got quite a strong scent which takes a bit of getting used to, but the formula is lovely. I only got a little bottle so it could fit in my handbag but I might have to pick up a bigger one to leave in our room.

Do you have anything you'd buy straight away if you went traveling?

Strawberry Fields Forever

A few weeks ago, Toby and I made our way to Liverpool on what could only really be called a 'Beatles pilgrimage'. "Why would you go to Liverpool?" people would ask. Because of The Beatles!

We stayed at what could only be described as a joke of a serviced appartment. No toaster, no information about the hotel or surrounding area (not even a fire escape plan!), oven but no oven trays, iron but no ironing board, no soap or shampoo, and no tea or coffee. There was also a bug squished on the roof, no cold water coming from the sink in the bathroom, and I don't know where I got the term serviced from, because no one but us stepped foot in that place after we checked in. It was a short walk from the main shopping strip, which was nice, and it was pretty cheap.

On day one we went to the Beatles museum, after a quick trip to Primark where Toby tried to convince me he needed 8-bit sunglasses. The museum was really good! I did have a bit of a problem with the timeline, as I got a bit confused to when Ringo Starr replaced Pete Best as the drummer, because they kept talking about both of them. It was very interesting though. You get given headsets so you can just listen to someone telling you things instead of reading things, which lets admit, is really hard to take in.

5 minutes down the harbour was the Fab 4D experience, a 4D short movie with Beatles songs, which was really fun. Toby and I didn't have anyone else in our screening which was great so we could sing along and nobody could care about when I screamed when we got sprayed with water.

We then went for a walk over to the Cavern Quater and Mathew street, where the infamous Cavern Club is. The Beatles played there 292 times while it was open! It's since moved slightly from the original spot, a few meters up the road. The original club got closed because they wanted to build subway vents, but they never got built. The new Cavern Club is really cool though, and even Adele has played there (which would have been one of the coolest gigs ever!)

The second day we went to the Liverpool Cathedral and St James' gardens (I have another post lined up about that!), then walked down to the docks to the maritime museum. We went to dinner at Jamie's Italian that night which was really delicious!

Mac Viva Glam Nicki 2

I just wanted to pop up a quick review about this lipstick. This was never on my (rather long) wish list of MAC lipsticks I have, unlike shades like Impassioned, Girl About Town, Candy Yum Yum, or even the first Viva Glam Nicki!  It made its way into my hands in Harrods when they didn't have the pastel purple from the Baking Beauties collection in stock, which I think was a good thing because from swatches ive seen, this lipstick is much prettier! Not only is this the first MAC Lipstick I've purchased myself, almost 100% of the price of these (minus tax) goes to the MAC AIDS fund. Win win!

Viva Glam Nicki 2 is a lovely cool toned, white based lavender lipstick. It's very light and not the most easy to wear lipstick but for some reason I really love wearing it!  Now that its summer where I am at the moment, (I use that word loosely because I've had warmer winter days when visiting Sydney) this is going to be a great lipstick to wear.

It doesn't last very long, as you'd expect from a light coloured lipstick, maybe 3 or so hours. About the same wear time I get from Angel. It does stick to dry patches on the lips and in the lines in your lips, another thing you'd expect from such a light lipstick. It is very creamy and lovely to apply though.

with flash

in sunlight

Have you tried either of the Viva Glam Nicki lipsticks? Which is your favourite?