Return to Merseyside

Greetings, gentle readers.
And so it came to pass that in those days of much confusion and despair, wherein artists and visionaries fell by the score and frustrated despair tore down the halls of government offices, replacing them with street-fighting beer halls, there was a small band of adventurers that decided to take a time-out.
The following blogs are just the observations of one of these adventurers, desperately trying to stave off the forces of cynicism and apathy.  
Prologue
I was on FaceBook in the summer of 2016.  Dutarte had been elected in the Philippines, Erdogan in Turkey, and Brexit seemed to start an authoritarian political storm that would sweep through Hungary, Romania, Macedonia, and Moldova.  Bernie Sanders had suspended his campaign.  Like many others, I was forced to consider the hypothetical of voting for Hillary Clinton just to prevent Donald J. Trump from occupying the Oval Office.  Times were bad.
But there was still Facebook.  A minor notification reminded me that IcelandAir had made the Edmonton International Airport a major hub of operations, and offered not only direct flights to Keflavik, but free stopovers when connecting to European destinations.  In the anti-corporate tumult of all of the news items broadcast by the Ring of Fire network, the Young Turks, and Redacted Tonight, I realized that one company had made an effort to cooperate and nurture a relationship with my community.  I clicked on one of their sponsored ads and went to their page.
I sent a message explaining why I would like to extend my patronage toward them and offered some preferences and constraints.  They promptly sent me back a full suggested itinerary.  I was so impressed that I bought three tickets and told my friends later that we were going on a trip.
We were to fly to Iceland, stay two days, then take off again for Manchester.  From thence, we were to shuffle directly off to Liverpool by rail. Eleven days on Merseyside would be followed by a train ride to Manchester, and then back to Keflavik for a day.  From there we would be dumped back at our point of origin.
So that's the background.  The blog posts that follow are just my experiences and observations of the people and places that we encountered along the way.  I hope that some of them may provide some sort of insight into the human condition and some of the things that make us part of a greater global village and not a tribe amongst warring tribes.
Part One should be along shortly, but until then,
Goodnight England and the colonies.
—mARKUS