Liverpool – Home of the Beatles, Liverpool Football Club and they mostly ignore everything else.

Our first night in Liverpool was notable mainly because we finished reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.  Now granted, this is not a Liverpool specific activity, but I should mention it because I had to read it aloud to Tash in the car over the previous week while we were driving about the countryside, and it is somewhat singlehandedly responsible for the fact that I have no memory of what the midlands of England actually looks like (although somewhat spookily we had just driven through the forest of Dean when we got to the bit where they are camping in the forest of Dean).  Okay, no more spoilers!  Anyway, if you’re going to read Harry Potter aloud, this is as good a place to do it as any.

We had a couple of days in Liverpool, and to be honest I think I might need to come back in a few years.

  Half the city is currently under construction and it’s not massively tourist friendly with the exception of the (understandable) obsession with the Beatles and with the Liverpool Football Club.  As a fan of both it was good to be able to see the various attractions centred around these things, but it is very, very touristy in parts.  There were a couple of surprise highlights though...

We started off in Albert Square and almost accidentally went to the Maritime Museum.  This was really well done, with exhibits on Liverpool’s role in shipping, cruise liners (including the fact that the Titanic was registered here, which I’m not sure is something to brag about as it sank on its first voyage).  Actually while I mention it, everywhere seems to want to have a piece of the Titanic!  It was registered in Liverpool, so there’s stuff in the museum there, it was designed and built in Belfast which given the rather massive design flaws with the ship they are surprisingly proud of (and keep saying “it was okay when it left here”) and sailed from Southampton, so they take a bit too.

  Even New York (it’s supposed destination) had a claim on it!  The reasons why it comes up so often are obvious, but I doubt it would be so fought over if it hadn’t sank!  Anyway, I digress...  The maritime museum was good.  Go there if you are at all interested in boats or Liverpool’s history. 

We then went to check out “The Beatles Story” which is a museum/gift shop dedicated to the Beatles.  We didn’t actually go in, because the line was massive, the entrance fee excessive and I realised that given my obsession with the band in the days of my youth, it was pretty unlikely that they were going to be able to tell me anything new.  Although please, if I made the wrong decision, tell me.

  So I acted as Tash’s own Beatles tour guide for the rest of the day, not that there is really that much of the Liverpool they grew up in left from the sounds of things.  The Cavern Club has been rebuilt (although in a slightly different location), John and Paul’s childhood homes are now national trust museums (again, decided not to bother going through them but drove past and waved), Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane both suffer from the enthusiasm of fan graffiti (see photos).  All in all, the best bit of Liverpool for a Beatles fan was the photo exhibition in the Tate Liverpool showing some fly on the wall scenes from around that time.  On the subject the Tate here is quite a good gallery, exhibiting a lot more left field work than I expected (as well as yet another International Klein Blue painting!).          

Another sort of disappointment for me was visiting Anfield stadium.  Yes, it’s great to see where the LFC plays and I’ve been a fan for a long time now.  Unfortunately the EPL season didn’t start for another 2 weeks, so were restricted to the outside of the stadium and the gift shop, which surprisingly had very little of interest.

Perhaps the lesson is that we have heroes because of what they do, whether that is sport, music or being able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.  Although it’s interesting to see the background to these exploits, they’re never as good as the finished product and especially in this case, other people will always try to cash in on them anyway.

 

On the plus side there was one pleasant surprise in Liverpool, which was the Wallace and Gromit exhibition we discovered was on at the World Museum.  Once we managed to step over all the annoying small children, this was great.  There were sets and models and various interactive displays from Wallace and Gromit and it was one of the rare situations that the background story is just as good as the real thing. 

So all in all, Liverpool didn’t really excite me that much.  Which was a little surprising.  But it was good to come here nonetheless.