GO TO THE CAVERN CLUB: This is technically not possible, but you can walk down Matthew Street, which is where the Cavern Club actually was, and see a doorway that marks the original location (#10 Matthew Street), which is where the Beatles famously honed their skills pre-Beatlemania. You can also go to a "new" Cavern Club, which is a few doors down and exists only to trade off of the 292 appearances the Fab Four made at the
original between 1961 and 1963. Or you can go into any of the many pubs, bars and restaurants on Matthew Street and see a guy playing Beatles songs on an acoustic guitar. Matthew Street is Beatles Fisherman's Wharf.
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| Here's where it went down in 1961. |
Why is it that the tourist spots are always the easiest to find?
WALK THROUGH A GIANT MALL: Except that you might not realize it's a giant mall until you're almost through it and realize you just passed a Hollister Store. Before that it might seem like a charming pedestrian street, and then a slightly less charming pedestrian street and then a pedestrian street with sketchy teenagers hanging out on the corners and then --viola! -- it's a giant mall. It is true that you can travel the world buying only Swarovski crystals at each stop, but why would you want to do that? If you continue walking through the giant mall, you will eventually emerge at the Hilton we didn't stay at but did pull into at first because I didn't read my calendar very closely. Then you can get dinner at Bill's and understand only 33 percent of what your waitress is saying.
GO TO A REALLY COOL NEIGHBORHOOD: Turns out Liverpool is the nightlife capital of
England, or claims to be. Part of that is the corny bars near the Cavern Club (including the Cavern Club and at least a half-dozen other places whose names are either straight-up Beatle names, titles of Beatles songs or phrases taken from Beatles songs) but part is also the dizzying array of restaurants and bars in Ropewalks and the Baltic Triangle. We set out after dinner, still a bit confused as to what in the world our waitress was saying 67% of the time, bound for the Baltic Triangle but never got there because Ropewalks satisfied our need to see the "cool" part of Liverpool.
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| Bold Street: Highest hip restaurant per capita in Liverpool. |
If you are of college age or slightly older, get on a plane and fly to Liverpool (John Lennon Airport, of course), take a cab into the center of town (don't drive) and ask to be let off on Bold Street. Make sure you're hungry because every other storefront is a cool restaurant, and then if you're still young, head to one of the Ropewalks' huge, loud and colorful bars. If you are old, skip that part. In fact, skip the restaurant, too. Just walk up and down Bold Street marveling at all of the activity, then continue through downtown until you find someplace quiet like the Globe Hotel.
DON'T GO TO THE BLOB SHOP: Unless you recognize an awesome bar when you walk past it, even though it's full of old guys, is "way too bright inside" (S. Bullock) and is called The Blob Shop, go ahead and keep on walking. We did and I'll regret it to my last day. How can you not go into a bar called The Blob Shop?" Go there if you're Steve McQueen. Go there if you have this song stuck in your head. Go there if you saw the dumb 1980s remake starring Kevin Dillon. Go there if you watched the original in the Stroney's basement when you were nine.
Some people wonder what they're going to do when they retire. When I retire, I'm going to move to a small town and open a bar called "The Blob Shop."
GO TO THE GLOBE HOTEL INSTEAD: Because you can't hack it at the Blob Shop.
ENJOY A LUXURIOUS HOTEL ROOM: Okay, so maybe you messed up and booked at the Doubletree, not the Hilton, which resulted in 20 minutes a inching down congested city streets while dueling navs battled for control of your heart and mind. In the end it was worth it because your Hilton Honors membership (anyone can sign up!) got you a huge room with functioning a/c and good bathroom light. Despite Liverpool's 24 hour party reputation, you'll want to spend as much time in this room as possible.
WONDER WHAT ALL OF THOSE COOL OLD BUILDINGS ARE: And then don't find out. Let them remain a mystery. Wonder if John and Paul maybe sat on those steps when they were teenagers, John trying in vain to convince Paul of the awesomeness of Gene Vincent, Paul pretending to listen, writing dance hall ditties in his head and nodding.
WAKE UP AND WALK AROUND IN THE RAIN: 37 days in England, Scotland and Ireland.
So far 34 have called for rain. Only two have really delivered, one day in Cork and one day today. "We have one week left, we're going to tough it out," declared Sandra Bullock this morning, despite being in full knowledge of the sad fact of her hair's future, despite the "excellent dryer" at the Doubletree. "I'm going to walk outside and my hair is going to get frizzy instantly," she explained while we walked, hoods up, to a small coffee shop nearby.
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| You could get a lot of mileage out of having this name in Liverpool. |
Little-known trick: If you are walking with your wife in the rain and both have your hoods up, you can stop, call her name, and then watch as she walks 0.75 of the next block before she realizes you're not there.
ORDER THE TOAST: Lovelocks coffee has only a few pastries, but it does have a long menu of toast that you can order if you're not wary of all eggs that are not scrambled. You can get toast with avocado, toast with barbecued beans, toast with cheese, toast with whatever you want as long as you also want baked eggs. If you don't want baked eggs, you may end up not eating until 3:30, after you decide twice that you don't want to "get involved in driving around a different city" to get lunch and just stay on the M6 until you get to Keswick. You will arrive starving and will remember with longing what the barbecued beans on toast looked like when it arrived at someone else's table at Lovelocks.
Sandra Bullock got the avocado on toast. She still wasn't hungry at 3:30, when I forced her to join me in a Cornish pasty.
BUY SOME STUFF AT THE LAMBRETTA STORE: And convince yourself you're not just like the guy who buys a Ferrari polo shirt.
CHECK OUT THE ROYAL ALBERT DOCK: Anyone who's read any kind of Beatles biography probably remembers Liverpool being described as a "dreary industrial city," like an English Pittsburgh. The drive to escape Liverpool was part of what made the lads so focused on rock and roll greatness. Well, Liverpool heard what people were saying about it, so it went on a huge kick to reinvent itself as a tourist location, transforming its once-gritty docks into museums, shops, bars, restaurants... the usual catnip for visitors, though so far it seems to be drawing mostly people from other parts of England. All of the Americans can be found taking pictures next to statues on Matthew Street.
Royal Albert Dock Fisherman's Wharf rating: 54.7 percent.
DRIVE FOREVER AND WONDER WHEN THIS CITY ENDS: You may think that Liverpool
is a small city, since like every other city in England it dwells from deep within the shadow of London. Flying into John Lennon Airport does nothing to dispell this untruth. For a city of a half-million (I checked) it's got the airport of a much smaller municipality. It's not until you get in your rented Volvo V40 (please import this car to the U.S. Volvo) and start driving that you realize that 90 percent of Liverpool is outside its downtown. It takes 25 minutes of driving through increasingly run-down semi-suburbs to break free of Liverpool's grips. By then you've forgotten all about it being England's nightlife capital and have begun to understand why John, Paul, George and maybe Ringo (I always always under the impression he was from somewhere else), plus all of the other Merseybeat guys, ended up moving to London first chance they got.
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| Please import this car, Volvo. |
Here are some numbers for today:
5 -- number of times Peter O'Toole and Princess Grace's cab driver dropped f-bombs yesterday while driving them to the Dublin Airport. The hack, who will soon celebrate his 28th wedding anniversary, plans to celebrate by take a Ring of Kerry tour and pushing his wife out of the car halfway through.
7 -- percent of times you drive past road construction signs, see a lane closed off with cones and actually see some people working on the road.
3 -- total number of lightswitches in our room at the Keswick Park Hotel that have no discernible function. This is about average for aged hotels in the U.K. with "character."
2 -- pairs of socks worn today by me after suffering a water breach in my left shoe while walking around Liverpool. Watch for this to potentially grow into a crisis as we near our return date, as I am very low on socks. These shoes are supposed to be water proof. Otherwise I wouldn't be wearing them, because they're dumb-looking. At least be water proof, dumb-looking shoes.
0 -- aggregated total mentions in Liverpool of Frankie Goes to Hollywood, OMD, The Merseybeats, The La's, Echo and the Bunnymen and Gerry and the Pacemakers, the Icycleworks, the Boo Radleys, Dead or Alive, The Searchers, The Lightning Seeds or any of the dozens of other bands who came of age in Liverpool, though we did see a guy playing "The She Goes Again" on a really cool hollow body electric Epiphone before the pedestrian mall turned into an actual mall.
77 -- average width, in inches, of the eight free parking spots behind the Keswick Park Hotel. We opted to pay three pounds per night for public parking a few minutes away.
Tomorrow: Is Keswick really England's "most dog-friendly" holiday location? Does it really take four hours to walk completely around Derwentwater Lake?
Come to this space to find out!
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