May 10 - A day with Scousers and Beatles

Today was another marvelous day in Liverpool in northwest England.  So, what is a scouser?  That’s the name  often given to Liverpudlians. It came from a stew, scouse, eaten by sailors and working-class people.  This morning I met my friend Hilary who drove down from  her home in the Midlands so we could spend the day together.  We met on our cruise a year ago when we had such a good time, and we’ve stayed in touch.  We were docked at Prince’s Dock and when I walked into the cruise terminal, there was Hilary.

Liverpool is on the river Mersey, which was made famous in the song “Ferry cross the Mersey”  by Gerry and the Pacemakers.  I’m not going into its long history; I’ll only tell you a few things about it.  It was the headquarters of a shipping company called the White Star Line and a ship we’ve all heard of was designed here. Of course, it’s the Titanic.  The Cunard Shipping Line is still based here.  There are other things in Liverpool, but probably the most famous is that it is the birthplace of that small rock band, the Beatles.

Hilary arranged our day and our first stop was the Maritime Museum on the waterfront.  Liverpool had been in decline back around the turn of this century, but then a revitalization program began and the area down at the river is bustling. There are several museums, an arena and promenades.  The Maritime Museum was interesting. It had a lot of information and artifacts about the Titanic and about the Lusitania, another passenger vessel sunk by a German U-Boat in the Irish Sea in 1915 with great loss of life. The sinking of the Lusitania was not the reason the US entered WWI but it did contribute to increased support for our entry since 128 Americans lost their lives.

From the museum we went to the Hard Days' Night Hotel to meet our fabulous tour guide Robbie and his wonderful car, a replica of John Lennon’s Phantom Rolls Royce. For the next few hours Robbie chauffeured us around to the childhood homes of the Beatles and venues mentioned in their songs.  We heard about the early lives of the Fab Four, all of whom came from working-class families. Two of them, Ringo and John didn’t have the best of childhoods. George and Paul came from more stable families.  Paul wanted a guitar but his father instead got him a trumpet.  He then proceeded to pester his dad every day and play the horn particularly badly until his father gave up and got him a guitar. George and Paul knew each other and eventually they teamed up with John Lennon to form a group called the Quarrymen with a couple of other musicians.  The band had moderate success but tried playing under several different names before settling on the Beatles.  

Now this is a ride!

This building was a pub down the street from Ringo's home and was featured on the cover of his 1st solo album.

Paul McCartney's childhood home and where the band would practice while his mum and dad were at work.

Penny Lane of song fame.  It is a street in their neighborhood where the barbershop they sang of still exists.

Midway down you can see Eleanor Rigby's name in the graveyard of St. Peter's Church

The marker outside the church commemorating that this was the place Paul McCartney and John Lennon first played together

The gate to Strawberry Field

I won’t tell you all the twists and turns of their journey to becoming the tremendous success they eventually did.  I can’t remember it all frankly.  I do know that their meeting up with Brian Epstein, who became their manager and who fired their drummer Pete Best because Epstein thought Ringo Starr was better, was the beginning of their trip to fame and fortune. Pete Best, talk about a lost opportunity!

Their boyhood homes were modest at best.  A couple of them had no indoor bathroom facilities, only a tap for running water, and no heating except for coal stoves. Now those houses are visited by thousands of people every year.  We saw Penny Lane and Abbey Road.  We went to the churchyard where Eleanor Rigby is buried and we drove past Strawberry Field, which was actually a large house belonging to a wealthy family who gave it that name. Of course as we rode around in between Robbie’s commentary we listened to Beatles songs.

The ride did also give me a chance to see some of Liverpool and understand a little about the city.  During WWII it was bombed heavily because it was a port and an industrial city. Just a couple of blocks from some of the childhood homes blocks of buildings were bombed.  At that time there weren’t any smart bombs and so residential areas were also destroyed, sometimes purposely and other times by accident.

After we’d gotten more Beatles information than we could possibly remember we were dropped off where we started. Hilary and I had a bite to eat and something to drink at the Slug and Lettuce (strange name) and then went down to the waterfront. We wanted to see the life-size statues of the Fab Four down at the waterfront.  Unfortunately, the Eurovision competition is being held in Liverpool and much of the waterfront area, including the area around the statues is cordoned off and there was a long queue to get near them. We decided we didn’t want to wait and besides it was getting quite cold, not to mention it looked like it might rain any second.  Hilary walked me to the cruise terminal and we said our goodbyes.  It was a fun day and I really appreciated her arranging it all for me.  I’ve met the most wonderful people in my cruising career.

I do have to mention one more thing I did today because it was a first for me.  Despite having sailed about 90 days on this ship and her twin the Encore, I had never eaten in Sushi, the Japanese restaurant on board.  I wasn’t really very hungry so when someone suggested I try it, I thought “why not.”  Am I ever glad I did.  The food was delicious and just enough.  It’s on my list of favorite spots on the ship from now on. After dinner at Sushi I gave myself a night off because there was no show and I was just plain tired.  According to my Apple watch I did close to 15,000 steps today.

Well, that was my “magical mystery tour,” to steal from a Beatles song.  Liverpool is an interesting city and one that I wouldn’t mind coming  back to one day.