The Capital of Culture 2008 appears to be the capital of building and roadworks! Liverpool is still vibrant and energetic, the locals definitely living up the life a Capital of Culture has to offer. I spent three days in the city with the BECTU conference at the Britannia Adelphi Hotel.
You may remember that the BBC made an early fly on the wall documentary about the hotel. It has not changed a bit. I was in the same hotel three and four years ago, I can report that absolutely nothing has changed at all. Quite a shame really, as if Britannia hotels brought it up to standard I might think about going there again. In the meantime, they really do need to fix a few things:
- Rooms with broken toilet seats
- Previous occupant’s blood on the toilet roll
- Rooms with no heating are excessively warm
- No food from outside is allowed in the hotel – but the hotel food is absolutely inedible for various reasons – one of which is hygiene, the others are quality and taste.
- No wireless internet
Virgin trains need to go a little way to providing a consistent service on their trains. The now defunct GNER resurrected the idea of quality food on trains, Virgin attempted to copy this. Badly. The return train had no attempt at service – the staff were lacking any enthusiasm for their work, and the attempt at a train ‘shop’ was just that – the least you can do is stock it, Virgin.
Lithuania is next – culturelive.lt is up and running to promote Vilnius as the capital next year. I hope they’ve pre-planned their roadworks, and I suspect the hotels will be up to a higher standard already.
Thanks to the people of Liverpool for making it a cracking weekend.
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