Obviously Amanda and I had to get dressed up for the Harry Potter premiere, so we threw on some make-shift costumes (Amanda in a homemade deathly hallows t-shirt, and me in maroon v-neck, gold scarf, and a lightening bolt on my head). We purposefully took the tube through Kings Cross up to Camden Town, where we had reserved tickets for the midnight showing. Much to our disappointment, most of the crowd did not dress up – but it was alright because they were cheering just as loud as us in the theater. I had never seen a movie in a country outside of the US before this, and I noticed that the commercials were very different – they have an entire reel of regular commercials, then the previews, and THEN the movie. Needless to say we were extremely anxious and excited when the movie actually got started. I don’t want to ruin the movie for those of you who haven’t seen it yet, but I can assure you it was very good. I was overall impressed with it, and had trouble going to bed that night because I was on such a Harry Potter high.
The next morning Amanda and I got up early, threw together a quick overnight bag, and rushed over to Victoria Coach station to catch the morning bus up to Liverpool! I am definitely my mother’s daughter, in that I LOVE the Beatles, so I wanted to go to where it all started. Luckily the bus ride went fast because we were so tired from the night before we slept through it, and we were in Liverpool before we knew it.
After dropping our stuff off at the hostel we decided to walk around the city to gain our bearings. Let me tell you – Liverpool has an extremely strange vibe. It is definitely less refined than London, and has a personality of its own. We ended up at Albert Dock, which is where the “Beatles Story” museum was. This museum basically goes through the career of the Beatles, from their origins up until the band broke up. Amanda and I were both extremely impressed with the set-up of the museum – it was put together really well and gave a great overview of the Beatles in context of what was going on in the world during each of their albums.
When we finished at the museum we continued to wander along the docks, but when it started to rain we quickly wanted to seek shelter so we went over to The Cavern, which is the pub where the Beatles performed over 292 times throughout their career. We absolutely loved the vibe of this pub. To this day, they still have live music playing from 2pm until closing every day, and have had all types of groups from no names, to the Beatles, Queen, and Journey all play there. I almost wish there was a place like The Cavern in London to go hang out at.
On the way back to the hostel we saw a pub advertising two plates of fish ‘n chips for 5.50 (which is a steal), so we stopped for a quick dinner. Amanda made friends with a local there… although the friendship was very short-lived, since the local quickly moved on from Amanda to the random street performer.
Once we were revived after a quick nap, Amanda and I made friends with Kara, a girl from Australia who was also staying in our hostel, and the three of us took off to explore Liverpool’s nightlife. I have to admit, Liverpool has one of the strangest night scenes I have ever encountered. Everybody was extremely dressed up (we felt underdressed at every place we were at, even the more relaxed pubs), and many people were dressed in costumes to a point that we thought it was Halloween. There were also many older people out, which was surprising. We ended up going back to The Cavern for a bit amongst other places, and ultimately ended up staying at The Grapes, which is a bar that the Beatles would hang out at after their shows at The Cavern in order to escape the screaming hoards of girls. They sat at the same table every time, and we got a picture sitting at that table!
The next morning we woke up early, took advantage of the hostel’s free breakfast, and went back to Albert Dock in order to purchase our tickets for The Magical Mystery Tour, which was a 2-hour bus tour to all of the Beatles landmarks throughout Liverpool. Because we couldn’t get on the tour until 12:30pm (they sell out so fast!), Amanda and I headed down the pier to the John Lennon exhibit, which was created by his first wife Cynthia and his son Julian. They had a lot of extra stories and pictures of John, and spoke a lot on what it was like to be the family members of a Beatle. Also at this exhibit was collection of pictures called “The Beatles Uncovered” taken by a student photographer from Liverpool when the Beatles had just gotten together for a school project. He did not release them until this past fall, and there were countless candid images of them that have never been seen before, which was pretty cool.
After getting a quick cup of tea, we met up with Kara again and jumped on the Magical Mystery Tour bus! It was literally painted like the bus seen on the albums, and the interior had a very funky feel. Our tour guide’s name was Paul (coincidence?), and when he wasn’t talking, Beatles music was blasting. It was AWESOME. We stopped by many cool places, including (just to name a few):
When we hopped off the bus we grabbed a bite to eat, said goodbye to Kara, and then hiked up to the Liverpool Cathedral. It is at a high point, so you can overlook the entire city, and it is the largest cathedral in the UK and the fifth largest in Europe. Fun fact about this cathedral as well – Paul had tried out to be in its choir as a kid, and was rejected! They said he didn’t have a strong enough voice… boy were they wrong!
We meandered back down to city center and quickly realized that unless we wanted to go shopping, which we neither had the money nor desire to do, we didn’t really have much to do until our bus ride. To eat up time we decided to go to the movies and see “Bridesmaids”, which I thought was hilarious. Another bizarre thing that happens at movie theaters in the UK which I didn’t mention before is that they make you queue (or line up) outside of the theater and wait until literally the moment that the movie starts before going in to take your seats. It is kinda strange, and we were frustrated because we had done a lot of walking for the day and just wanted to sit down. It was alright though because we got in line just as the movie was going to start anyways so our wait was minimal.
For dinner we found a place called “MexiGo”, which was Chipotle’s lame second cousin. However, it did its job because I have missed Mexican food so much. We were absolutely stuffed, so we basically shuffled up the hill, through St. George’s place to the bus station to wait for our bus back to London. Amanda and I were thrilled to discover that her little brother Paul had put the movie “Dumb and Dumber” on her iPod, so we had some entertainment while waiting for the bus.
The bus ride would have been good, except for the fact that I sat next to a gremlin. Literally. Amanda and I originally thought sitting on opposite sides of the same row would be a good idea at first because then we would both have window seats, and potentially have room to spread out…but no. This little man would not stop talking to me (even though I was clearly asleep), was munching on the loudest food for hours, and felt the need to move around constantly. Not the best situation for trying to fall asleep, but it turned out ok in the end because we still made it back to our flat early enough to sleep some more before actually starting our day.
When we finally decided to get up, we walked over and spent some time in the British Museum. I don’t know whether it’s because it is a Sunday, or because of the rain, or what, but it was so crowded that I was having even more problems concentrating than usual. Also, the plaques did not do that great of a job explaining what each of the artifacts were, so overall I was a bit disappointed. However it did get a lot better at the end because we went on a guided tour of the Roman section, which was way more interesting, and then got crepes at a stand outside of the museum.
The rest of the day was relatively uneventful – we just did some grocery shopping and watched some movies/chilled after having so much to do over the weekend. I’m also actually REALLY excited to go to work tomorrow, because lots of stuff has happened with the phone hacking scandal over the weekend! I’m going to try my best to keep up this habit of updating more than once a week :)
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