There these places where you want to go for a very particular reason. I wanted to go to Liverpool and I had a single reason for it: The Beatles. I didn’t have any expectations on the city itself. My main interest was to visit the city where one of my favourite and best music groups that has ever existed was born. Basically, to go back in time to very beggining of it all.
Nevertheless, Liverpool surprised me in a very positive way. Even though I got in bad mood as soon as we got there – heavy rain was there to welcome us, and a nice man we came across with even commented with us with his very scouse accent: “Amazing weather, hen? If you’re a duck!”. Well, well. At least some can find humour in the darkest times (I know I am being quite hyperbolic in here). I guess I was just mad that every single time I decided to go on a trip beyond London, it bloody rains. It can blows everything.
Luckily something come up on the way to fight away my bad mood. We went to have coffee at The Beatles Story Museum Cafe and I had a lovely Beatle themed cupcake (I wasn’t even that hungry, but look how adorable they look):
We had booked the Magical Mystery Bus Tour to take us around the relevant Beatles spots in town – Penny Lane, Strawberry Fields, the house where John Lennon lived his childhood as well as McCartney’s house. Even though part of the trip was sort of damaged by the rain, it was really interesting and definitely worth it if you’re a Beatles fan. It takes you beyond the city borders, it stops to give you time to take the pictures to the landmarks and the guide was really nice and good humoured.
After the tour, you get to go to The Cavern Club for free, a place where The Beatles performed their first gigs and where many other famous groups have been performing ever since. The vibe is pure rock n’ roll, I have to say I just f****** loved the place. Live music was on, and this seems to be the general atmosphere in Liverpool: while walking on the streets you feel the music reverberating amongst the so many live music pubs. And, I must confess, I am so old-fashion on this: nothing is better than pure, live music, actual instruments, actual voices with no artificialities. I’d choose that every time against DJs. This was definitely something that I loved about this city.
We had obviously bought tickets to The Beatles Story Exhibition, but when we got off the bus (the tour takes about 2 hours), the sky was clear and the sun was shining! Yes, it was a miracle. Yes, my mood went from -100% to +250%. At a certain point, I didn’t even feel like going inside a museum, having in consideration how rare it is to have such sunlight. Therefore, this allowed me to finally take my camera out of my bag and take some photographs of Liverpool in its best weather.
Without an umbrella covering my sight, and with the sun giving light on all Liverpool details, I could observe the splendor of Liverpool architecture. The city is quite rich in modern buildings, which took my surprise. But the good thing is the contrast: by the docks, there’s the splendid contrast of the old against the new. Located by the river, we were able to enjoy the sunshine by the water, that feeling of Summer reminding me of home.
We still visited Tate Liverpool and then we finished in The Beatles Story Museum which I definitely recommend. It tells the story of the band sequentially, driving you to very well designed rooms that are basically small replicas of real places. At the end there is a space dedicated to each Beatle, and an amazing photography exhibition dedicated to Lennon, while he was campaigning with Yoko Ono for peace, and it ends with the white piano, the main piece on Lennon’s beautiful Imagine song.
