Liverpool is where The Beatles rule

Next to offering a wide range of sports, business and social engagement opportunities, the International Office of Coventry University offers international students, as myself, the possibility of visiting various cities or landmarks around the UK.

This is how three Belgians -being Hans, Ben and me- ended up, on a casual Saturday, on a bus full of chinese students to Liverpool, home of The Beatles. The program was quite simplistic:

08.30AM Depart from Fairfax Street, Coventry

11.00AM (approx.) Arrive in Liverpool, Free time to explore the city

04.45PM (latest) Meet back at the coach

05.00PM Leave Liverpool
07.30PM (approx.) Arrive in Coventry

As you can imagine we were wondering why someone had actually taken the effort of making a program leaflet at all… There was also a small map of the city itself, although it didn’t even cover half of the city boundaries.. Luckily, the prepared man I am, I had researched some to-do-stuff in Liverpool along with having downloaded the offline edition of Google Maps for Liverpool. This really was one of my best ideas ever I think and certainkly must remember to do this again whenever I go visiting cites. My smartphone’s GPS indicates where I am and all the streets, highlights etc. are indicated right in your hand palm! I must admit thought, that there are little things more romantic than walking around in a city with an actual map, asking around on where to got somewhere, which is what I didn’t have to do in Liverpool.

As we only had about five hours to discover the most of the city as we could, we decided to take a Hop-on Hop-off tour, offered by Liverpool City Explorer. The worldwide active City Sightseeing was also a possibility, but truth is that first-named was simply cheaper for doing the same tour (Student’s price: 5 pounds) The three of us hopped on a bus and let us drive around a first part of the city. We had been dropped off by the Coventry Uni bus at Albert Dock one of the oldest parts of the city, the ancient harbour. It was one of the nicest parts as well. The old warehouses have all been restored and today they are being used as: hotel, museum, restaurant, bars etc.

So during our bustour the, pretty crazy, guide was telling us all about Liverpool’s history. The city truly has a rich and interesting history including: World War 1&2, maritime business with the continent and the USA, the Titanic, footbal and much more. After about 20mins on the bus, we had reached the city centre and decided to hop off. Our initial plan was to go over to the Liverpool football stadium but unfortunately that was too far for the short amount of time we had. Instead we had lunch at Burger King and headed for the heart of the city, the shopping avenue (with a real-life Minon, a big Iron Man and a lot of people with strange hair colours). But this was not our aim. After a couple of minutes we had found our way to the Hard Days Night Hotel. That’s right, a hotel named after The Beatles-song! It even has each member as a statue near the entrance! Right around the corner of the hotel was another statue of John Lennon, with whom I obviously had to take a picture with the Belgian flag!

Chilling with Mr. Lennon.

It only occured to me now, while writing this post. That I now have been to one of the places where John Lennon’s carreer started, Liverpool, and the place where his life was taken in 1982 in New York (back in 2005 on my first USA-trip). Makes me feel special I guess.

Straight across the street we found the place we had been looking for The Cavern. After going down the stairs two floors and finding ourselves in a kind of weird basement, we only realized where we were when we heard the crowd singing. We were in the pub where The Beatles had first played in 1962. There was a band playing Beatles-songs all afternoon, every day of the week and a lot of people drinking and laughing and singing, celebrating birthdays, bachelor parties, tourists wandering around taking pictures etc. If it hadn’t been for The Beatles, this bar would probably had been shut down long ago, but now it’s definetely one of Liverpool’s top attractions. And it’s worth it.

We had a beer in The Cavern and headed back out, to our bus. Luckily the guide wasn’t as crazy this time and we still learned a lot about Liverpool’s history and actual importance today. We didn’t hop off again and before we knew it we were back at the start of our tour. As we had a little more than a hour and a half before the bus left again, we decided to do Hans a favour and go to the Merseyside Maritime Museum (free!). This museum is not only interesting because it’s free. We actually learned quite a bit about British naval history, economy and how it enabled England to be such an important world player for the past 200 years. Finishing this museum had made us crave for more knowledge and we headed for the Museum of Liverpool (free!), finding out more about Liverpool, its relation towards London as a capital, its people, its footbal clubs, its sicknesses and its healths, it growths and its declines, …  Boy, did we learn a lot!  

In the end we had to hurry up to be on time for the bus back to Coventry. Around 7.30PM we got back in our, what I like to call, UK hometown and before I knew it, I had seen Liverpool, city of The Beatles and way more, and was back in bed, taking a rest towards another experience.

Thanks for joining Hans&Ben, I had a blast!

Would I go back to Liverpool? Yes, definetely, there are so many places that we didn’t get to see. I would have loved taking The Beatles-tour, seeing the Strawberry Fields, Penny Land and the Liverpool stadium, but there was no time for all of that… Definetely a city worth a citytrip to, maybe in combination with close neigbouring city Manchester. Cheers

thibaultinethworld

The Cavern, where The Beatles first performed.
You actually have to go down two stories in order to get into 'the cave'.

PS: as you might've noticed, I did some slight adaptations to my blog's lay-out. Be sure to click around & comment where you want!