Liddypool

Liverpool.

I can't believe I finally get to say this, but I am in Liverpool at last.

Eva and I left Firenze on a train to Pisa early Saturday afternoon, and it proved to be a bumpy trip.

First, Eva was late to the train station because her backpack tore on the way there and all her belongings spilled out on her street. Then, when we got to Pisa, our flight was delayed (damn Ryan Air) nearly an hour and a half.

Because if the flight, we missed our £8 train from Leeds to Liverpool and had to catch the last train (£25) out.

On that train, we were seated next to four drunk men from Holland who kept trying to talk to us and making fun of the facts that we can't speak Italian after three months in Italy and that we were eating Burger King (thus proving our American citizenship, of course). They stopped off in Manchester, however, and we had a peaceful train ride after that.

Well, almost peaceful. Our one set plan for the weekend was to see the band The Verdict perform at 9:30 Saturday night. Eva's friend Kev is the band's drummer, so the plan was to catch his show then go out for drinks with the band. But thanks to Ryan Air, we arrived in Liverpool five minutes before the show ended.

Kev, however, was nonplussed by our missing the show and seemed just genuinely happy that we made it to Liverpool safely. He and his friend Tom met us at our hotel as soon as the show was over and took us out for drinks before Eva and I called it quits after the long day and went to bed.

So I didn't actually get to see Liverpool until yesterday, but I'm madly in love with it. It's everything I've always imagined it would be and then some.

After a complimentary breakfast at the hotel, Eva (who was here during spring break), took me on a walking tour of the city center. We did some souvenir shopping and sightseeing before going to the famous Matthew Street, where I took about a hundred photos and nearly fainted from excitement.

Of course our first stop on Matthew (after getting our pics taken with Eleanor Rigby) was at The Cavern Club.

Me and Eleanor. Eva didn't notice
that my eyes were closed...

It looks just like all the photos and movies I've seen of it (except expanded, far less crowded, and with an added souvenir shop). My heart was pounding the whole time we were down there and I was literally shaking over the fact that I finally achieved a great life goal by going to THE CAVERN CLUB.

In front of the Cavern main stage.

Honestly, had we stayed in The Cavern all day just admiring all of the momentos and signatures of bands who have played there (The Beatles, The Who, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, Elton John, Queen, and Adele, just to name a few), I would have been thoroughly happy with my trip to Liverpool. But there was still much more to see.

Eva and I stopped for lunch (peanut butter sandwiches... success) then met Kev and Tom for a Beatles tour.

The cheapest tour we could find was £50 per person, but thankfully Kev and Tom talked us out of that one. Instead, we bought £3 bus passes for the day and made our own tour, since all four of us have Beatles history down pat and Kev and Tom know their way around Liverpool.

Our first stop was at 251 Menlove Avenue in Woolton, South Liverpool. Better known as "Mendips," this was of course the childhood home of John Lennon.

Mendips was the only house where I kind of knew what to expect going there. I've seen it and parts of the neighborhood in photos, and I've seen it recreated in movies like Nowhere Boy (which I learned is surprisingly accurate), so it didn't surprise me.

What did surprise me is how beautiful Woolton is. It could possibly be the cutest neighborhood I have ever seen and I would love to live there. It certainly doesn't look like the setting of all the early stories I've heard of the Beatles (which probably explains why Mendips isn't the setting of most stories), but that kind of made me love it even more. I got chills again leaning on Mendips' front gate, gazing into the small front room where John and Paul used to practice when they were just beginning as bandmates. The house has been remodeled to look exactly as it did when John left for Hamburg in 1960, and it looked so much like the way I imagined that I swear I could almost hear Aunt Mimi yelling at John and Paul to turn down that racket.

At Mendips' front gate.

Speaking of Aunt Mimi, I also appreciated one particular comment from Kev as we were leaving Menlove. I stopped to take a picture of the street sign and Kev turned to me and said something along the lines of, "Make sure you snap a pic down the street. You know, this is the street where John Lennon's mum was run over."

Thanks for that reminder, Kev. I had been so caught up in how exciting it was to stand in front of Mendips that I almost completely forgot I was standing just yards from where Julia Lennon was hit and killed by a car on her way home when John was a teenager (too much info... I know, I know).

So aaaanyway... After Mendips, we went down the street to Strawberry Field. No big deal. We just walked right up to STRAWBERRY FIELDS FOREVER.

And once again, I cried a little because my emotions had been in a complete wreck ever since I saw the first sign for Matthew Street.

Strawberry Field is, of course, not much of a field. There's a little patch of unkempt lawn right behind the iconic gate, but Strawberry Field (a building, not a field) itself is now a church. When John Lennon knew it, it was a Salvation Army children's home and site of the annual Woolton Fete garden party where John and his friends Pete Shotton and Ivan Vaughan went every summer, and where their skiffle group The Quarrymen performed in the late 50's.

This didn't stop us from getting plenty of photos in front of it and all four of us signed the gate.

My name on the Strawberry Field gate!

We spent a few hours after that wandering around Woolton. We went through a huge, lovely park and walked down to Calderstones School, previously known as Quarry Bank High School, John's alma mater.

Just down the street from Calderstones, we found a riding school, where a stablehand called us in to look at the horses. After that, we stopped to watch show-dogs practicing an obstacle course in the adjoining K-9 school.

From Woolton, we took another bus to 20 Forthlin Road, childhood home of Paul McCartney. Since all the magic of the Beatles' earliest years happened at Mendips, I didn't know what to expect of Paul's house. It turns out it is a very plain, unassuming house on a plain, unassuming street. But I got my photo there as well before we got back on the bus and rode to Penny Lane.

Me in front of Paul McCartney's old house.

If you picture Penny Lane to be something magical, you're sadly mistaken. It's literally an alleyway with a corner store and four houses on it in a less pleasant area of town. But the "shelter in the middle of the roundabout" is still there (though now rebuilt and renamed "Sgt. Pepper Bistro") and I got my photos.

After Penny Lane, we road to Madryn Street, which was a very sad sight indeed. Every house on the block, including Ringo's childhood home is condemned and signs warned that they may soon be torn down entirely. Ringo lived in a very bad area of Liverpool growing up, and it looked like it's only gotten worse in the past fifty years.

Unlike at the other homes, there wasn't even a sign designating the house as Ringo's. We only knew it because of the graffiti asking for the house to be saved and the tour group standing on the doorstep taking photos (normally a dead giveaway, I guess). We got our photos and got out of there.

We ended the day with a tour of Liverpool Cathedral and the surrounding park. We didn't go to George Harrison's house because it's not in Liverpool proper and we couldn't easily get to it by bus. Better luck another day. After the Cathedral, we stopped in a pub to watch the Liverpool soccer match.  Liverpool won, bringing the team one step closer to the upcoming finals.

Today Eva and I are going to explore Albert Dock before meeting up with Kev again. She should be ready to go soon, then it's off to the Mersey for us.