First, let me preface this story with the fact that this trip was AWESOME. I was only in Liverpool for about twenty-four hours, but it was just incredible. My dad thought it was a bit strange that I could have such a blast travelling alone, but I really didn't mind. Though I must say to my roommate, Caitlin, that if I could have brought one person with me, the choice would have been obvious: T-Pain. (Look up "I'm on a Boat" on YouTube if you missed that...) And so, without further ado, I give you my wonderful, magnificent, Beatles-tastic trip to Liverpool!!
I had to get up at 5am in order to catch my train out of Cambridge, and, as a whole, the trip was pretty uneventful. I did fall asleep on the leg to London, though, and I ended up missing my station, but it really wasn't a big deal... Luckily, I have a firm enough grasp of the train and tube system that I was totally fine. It's kind of a rule of thumb that something has to go wrong on every trip, and I'm happy mine was so insignificant. Anyways, I got into Liverpool Lime Street quarter past 11; by this point, I had been listening to the Beatles for about four hours while riding the train, and I was rearing to go.
Might I just point out that Lime Street also happens to be the street that Maggie Mae will not be walking anymore?! Being the dork that I am, I was really excited when I realized that. (If you missed the reference, listen to "Maggie Mae" off of Let It Be.... I have a feeling that this post is going to contain a lot of parenthetical references.) But I had pre-booked a tour that was leaving from Albert Dock at noon, and so I hopped in a cab and set off towards the docks.
Since I had such a short amount of time in Liverpool, I knew I needed to find an efficient way to see everything, and so putting aside my disdain for awful touristy things, I had booked a seat on....
THE MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR BUS!!! How wonderfully cheesy, right?! But they promised to take me to all the great Beatles-related sights in just two hours, so I was game. The tour ended up being great... because it was so short, we weren't always able to get off the bus to look at the sights, and sometimes we didn't even stop; they just pointed them out as we drove by. We saw a bunch of stuff, but here are some of my favorites:
The childhood homes of the Beatles. Ringo and George each had two homes (they moved as children), but I just picked one photo for each. Note that Ringo's first home is in a neighborhood slated for demolition... how sad! Clockwise from the top left: John, Paul, George, and Ringo.
We also went to Penny Lane, where I got a picture with the street sign:
And while driving down Penny Lane, we passed the barbershop where the barber keeps "photographs of every head he's had the pleasure to have known"...
And the "shelter in the center of the roundabout"...
Currently named Sergeant Pepper's Bistro, the roundabout is closed down right now (and has been for some time), but the city of Liverpool is trying to turn it into a proper tourist attraction. Imagine actually being able to eat there!!
We also drove by St. Peter's, where John Lennon first met Paul McCartney at a church picnic. John's first band, the Quarrymen, were playing at the picnic, and Paul was in the audience and was quite impressed. After the picnic, he went up and introduced himself to John in the church hall, and the rest is history. We drove by pretty quickly, but you can see the peak (not the spire) of the church hall over the top of the buildings:
Also at St. Peter's is the grave of Eleanor Rigby. Though Paul actually named the song after Eleanor Braun, the boys' costar in their movie "Help!", there must have been some subconscious mindwork at play here... The position of the bus didn't let me get a great picture, but about halfway down the tombstone, you can see most of her name:
We also went to Strawberry Fields, which inspired one of my personal favorites:
That song is just so lyrically and technologically brilliant!! It took over forty-five hours to record.... just incredible. Of course, I needed a picture with it. I don't know who Linda B. is, but she's kinda cramping my picture here:
Weirdly, as we were driving back towards the center of Liverpool, the guide was telling us how Paul and George met on the bus they took to school, which happened to be city bus number 86. Then he goes, "Oh, look, there it is now!" And I looked out the window, and there it was! It was moving, so I didn't get a great picture, but you can just make out the yellow 86 on the back:
We also drove by St. George's, where many of the Beatles have played concerts in during their post-breakup careers. There's also a WWII memorial here, where vigils for both John and George were held after their deaths:
The tour ended in the center of town, right near my hotel, and since it was past 14:00, I went to go check in. Guess where I stayed?!
The Hard Day's Night Hotel!! I just couldn't resist... I had one night in Liverpool and I was going to make it as Beatles-tastic as possible. The building itself was actually pretty cool; it was built back in the 19th c., but has since been refurbished. It's also been decorated to fit the theme of the hotel. On one side of the front doors, there are four black etched panels showing the boys at the beginning of their career...
And on the other side, the four boys at the end of their career, which, if you think about it, was only about seven or eight years later....
Also, along the top, there are four statues of (you guessed it) the Fab Four themselves. From left to right, John, Paul, George, and Ringo:
There were so many cool things about this hotel. The first was the logo:
It actually has two meanings: first, it is the opening chord of the song "A Hard Day's Night" (that really recognizable discordant one). Second, it is also meant to represent the stage configuration the Beatles always played in: starting on the left, Paul and George, then Ringo and the kit set back a little, and then John on the far right. Pretty cool, huh?
The other thing that I really loved was all of the memorabilia and photographs that were everywhere. This one was over the bar:
And then all of the staircases were lined with these enormous photos of the Beatles at different point in their careers. I really liked them, and spent a bit of time just walking up and down the stairs, admiring all of them.
They also had a Yellow Submarine jukebox near the reception desk...
... as well as tons of other memorabilia, from handwritten lyrics to commemoration frames from when their albums went platinum. So cool. But I digress; I went and checked in and headed up to my room.
I suppose I wasn't completely honest when I said I travelled to Liverpool alone; as you can see above, I did have Kate, my ever-faithful travel partner. In case you're wondering, Kate is the aardvark in the pink pajamas sitting on the bed... I've had her since I was seven, and since then, she's been to sixteen states and eight international cities. Not bad for an aardvark!
Anyways, one thing that really made me smile was the picture over the bed. As you can see, it's Ringo, but that's not what got me. If you look to the left of his head, you can see three little colored X's...
They're darts! I feel like I'm probably one of the only people nerdy enough to understand this reference (at least among people born after 1990), but in the movie "Help!", which is one of my personal favorites, the cult leader is watching the Beatles on a big projection screen after learning that Ringo has stolen the sacrificial ring of their people, and every time Ringo comes on the screen, he starts throwing darts at it. Hence, the darts in the photo.... though in the film, all of the darts were red. Don't think you can pull the wool over my eyes!!
I decided to go have lunch in the hotel restaurant, and I had a lovely goat cheese, sundried tomato, and rocket (better known to Americans as arugula) sandwich in the company of one of my favorite pictures of Paul, taken by Astrid Kirchherr in Hamburg in the early sixties:
A terrible photo on my part, I know, but the lighting was so dim in there! Anyways, after finishing my sandwich, I headed back to Albert Dock for the next item on the itinerary.
The Beatles Story Exhibition, which is the only permanent Beatles museum in the world. It tells the story of the Beatles from their births up to the present day... it was awesome! They built replicas of the different venues they played in, and had tons of memorabilia from their careers. I must have taken over a hundred pictures in there, but I saw a few things in particular that I really liked. One was John Lennon's first guitar. It's the red one (and if you can see the picture above it, he's the one in the checkered shirt in the front):
They also had John's collarless Edwardian suit from the very early days...
And a big case full of Beatlemania memorabilia, including a pair of pantyhose with their faces printed all over them!!
Of course, the Beatles broke up in 1970, but the story doesn't end there, so there was a whole other section of the exhibition devoted to their post-breakup careers. Now, picking a favorite Beatle is a difficult thing, but I must say, there is something about John Lennon that intrigues me very much. Not only was he a completely brilliant musician and lyricist, but he went from being a wild, angry, drug-dependent guy with violent tendencies to one of the biggest advocates for peace the world has ever known in a matter of less than ten years.... how does something like that happen?! He lived at both end of the spectrum, and I find that fascinating.
The section on John was quite extensive, and they had a lot of his stuff there, including the famous orange glasses:
There was also a section devoted to "Imagine," with lyrics written on the walls....
... And the legendary white room with the white piano.
So incredibly cool.
After leaving the exhibition, I stopped by the Fab Four Store, which is the gift shop connected to the museum. They had tons of stuff, but I decided not to buy anything yet... I knew I needed the perfect souvenir for this trip, and I didn't know what it was quite yet.
At this point, I was ready to head back to my hotel to eat some dinner and relax a bit before going out for the night. On my way there, I stopped by the John Lennon Peace and Harmony Memorial at Liverpool ONE:
The memorial is actually quite new; it was dedicated by Cynthia and Julian Lennon (John's first wife and eldest son) less than a year ago. The picture in the background is of John and a very young Julian... so cute.
As I was getting back to my hotel, I stopped at the boutique connected to the hotel, called the Hard Day's Night Shop.
Once again, they had so much stuff there!! They also had an awesome selection of shirts, but I was amazed at how pricey they were. They were all between forty and sixty pounds... thats any where from $80 to $120!!! Plus, none of them particularly struck my fancy. I knew the perfect souvenir shirt was waiting out there somewhere, I just needed to find it.
Later that evening, around 8:00pm, I got dressed up and headed out to Mathew Street, which was right near my hotel and home to some very famous bars, pubs, and clubs. I passed by the original entrance to the Cavern Club:
The Cavern was is an underground club that opened in 1957, and it basically where the Beatles got their start. They played there 292 times between 1961 and 1963, and it was there that they began to build their fan following and met Brian Epstein, the manager who essentially made them famous.
I also passed by The Grapes, a pub that the boys used to frequent. Back in the 1960s, the Cavern did not serve alcohol, so they would go across the street to the Grapes to get a pint after a show, and also to avoid any irritating underage fans who wouldn't leave them alone.
And then I went to the Cavern Club for myself. It now has a new entrance, two doors down from the original, but it is still an underground dance and music venue for local bands... and it was awesome.
In order to get in to the club, you have to go down four or five flights of concrete stairs... it's really underground! But as I was walking down the stairs, all painted with "The Cavern, Liverpool," I was starting to get really excited.
Once I was down there, it was exactly like all of the pictures I had seen... sort of a long tunnel shape, lined with brick archways, leading up to the small stage at the end.
There was already a band playing when I got in, and they were actually really good!! They played a mixture of stuff, including some early Beatles stuff and other songs from Merseybeat (the Liverpudlian musical movement the Beatles came out of). Dancing to "Twist and Shout" in the stiflingly hot underground club, I was in heaven.
After the band's set ended, I went to the restroom, where I ended up meeting a girl named Lucy (yes, named after "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"), who lived in Liverpool and she told me that there was a really great band playing at the Cavern Pub (just across the street) at 10:00. It was actually quite funny, because she asked me where I was from, and when I said California, she said to me "You're so lucky!!" Strange, because I was thinking the same thing about her! The grass is always greener, right?
But I told her that I would definitely go and check out the pub at 10:00, but it was only a bit past 9:00, so I decided to stay at the club a while longer, just to hear some more of the music. And that is when I saw it. It was my perfect shirt, the souvenir I had been waiting for all day: a red t-shirt with the vintage Cavern Club logo on it.
It was perfect for three reasons: first, I could already tell that the club was one of the highlights of my trip, and I wanted to remember it. Second, there is Beatles history all over the world: San Francisco, London, Japan, India... it's everywhere! But I cam to Liverpool to see where it all began, and it began at the Cavern. And third, there was a picture on the wall of Paul McCartney wearing one in the 1980s, and if it's good enough for Paul, it's good enough for me!!!
I bought it and went quickly back to my hotel to drop it off before heading over to the Cavern Pub. I don't know what exactly came over me, but I didn't take a single picture inside the pub, so you'll have to excuse the text-heavy account of this part of my night. The band was called Xander and the Peace Pirates (they're on iTunes), and they were incredibly talented!! They played a mix of covers, everything from Lynrd Skynrd to Katy Perry, as well as some original stuff.... but the most amazing part (in my opinion) is that the lead guitarist was missing his right arm up to the elbow! He had a hook instead, and somehow managed to be completely incredible despite his lack of fingers, hand, or wrist! I had a great time, dancing and even meeting a few local people, but before I knew it, it was 1:00am and the pub was closing... I had been up for a full twenty hours and hadn't even noticed.
Exhausted but ecstatic, I walked back to my hotel (fear not, it was only about a two hundred foot walk), and collapsed into bed. I slept like a rock, and woke up in the exact same position I fell asleep in (that never happens to me). When I woke up, though, I suddenly felt very sad; this was my last day in Liverpool, and I didn't want to leave!!
Pushing that aside, I got up, got dressed, and walked back down to Albert Dock (that's the other great thing about Liverpool... it's pretty small, so you can walk everywhere!). I decided to have breakfast in the Beatles-themed Starbucks, and sat and ate my porridge while I wrote a few postcards and planned out my last few hours:
The walls were decorated with Astrid Kirchherr's photos from Hamburg, which are some of my absolute favorites. Again, you can see one of my favorite ones of Paul:
And then a few of the boys all together. Note that the one in the center has five people in it... yes, there were five Beatles! In Hamburg, they played as the Beat Brothers ("beetle" is a pretty rude slang word for, um, "man parts" in German), and it was John Lennon, George Harrison, Paul McCartney, bassist Stuart Sutcliffe, and drummer Pete Best:
After breakfast, I walked along the dock towards the Pier Head... what a beautiful walk! It was insanely windy (there were actually a few times where it was so strong I couldn't walk in a straight line), but the views of the water were beautiful, and I got to see what are called the Three Graces: the Port of Liverpool building, the Cunard building, and the Liver Building, all of which sit on the Pier Head facing the water:
Inside the Pier Head, there were even more Beatles exhibitions to see!! The stairs that led up to the second level all had the names of Beatles songs written on them...
... and then I found myself in yet another souvenir shop!! They did have a pretty cool case of Beatlemania memorabilia:
Look at these awesome sneakers! I would totally wear these... If you can read the card, it says that they sold for $4.00 in the 1960s, but are now valued at $1200. I want to go back in time and buy all this crazy stuff!!
There were two exhibitions in the Pier Head; one was the John Lennon White Feather Foundation exhibit, which was set up by Julian Lennon after John's death. They had a whole bunch of his stuff there, including his mini motorbike and some of his clothes... recognize this jacket?
They also had a collection of previously unreleased photographs of the Beatles. Taken in the early 1960s, these pictures were not even developed until earlier this year, and are now hung in a long white gallery that wraps around the Pier Head.
It was here that I discovered my new favorite photograph of Paul:
According to the titlecard next to the photograph, they were playing "Twist and Shout" when it was taken. Too cool.
The gallery was also lined with floor to ceiling windows, which offered great views of the water....
... as well as allowed for a great reflection photo. Here's me with John and Paul!!
And, sadly, that was pretty much the end of my trip. After that, I went and posted my letters, checked out of my hotel, and headed to Lime Street station to catch by train back to Cambridge.
I had such an incredible time... I'm honestly thinking of going back for a few nights around the 19th because there are so many things I still want to see!! I'm hoping to convince someone to go with me... people didn't really want to come because Liverpool has a reputation of being a really small boring port town that's only interesting if you're a huge Beatles fan. Not true at all!! In addition to awesome nightlife and music, Liverpool has incredible history and amazing shopping. Liverpool ONE, the main mall in the center of the city, is more akin to a small town than a mall... Unfortunately, the violence that started in London has now spread to Liverpool, so I'll have to wait and see if it'll really be safe to make a return trip. It's a bit scary; the night that I was there was the last peaceful night the city has seen!
And there you have it: my incredible, unforgettable trip to Liverpool. It was only about twenty-four hours, but it's a twenty-four hours I'll never forget. I don't have to much time to mope about it being over, however, because this weekend is Paris!! (How incredibly lucky am I?!) I'm going with my friend Blake, and we have big plans... should be a great weekend! Stay tuned.... until then, cheers!!
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