LIVERPOOL, England — John, Paul, George, Ringo, Pat and Teri.
A week-long trip to Liverpool to see all things Beatles wasn’t only about the Beatles.
The 900-year-old English port city offers many historic, scenic, shopping and sports-related sites to keep a couple busy for seven days.
But still, a Beatles pilgrimage was the top item on our middle-aged agendas.
My wife Teri Patrick and I dove into our Fab Four fact-finding mission the morning after our arrival from a nearly 20-hour trip from Kelowna, B.C., with a two-hour taxi tour of Beatles sites.
It’s just you with a cabbie who’s telling stories, pointing out sites and making photo-op stops along the way.
Various companies offer taxi tours. Ours was through our hotel, the Hard Days Night Hotel — a 19th-century building in the heart of the city converted into a classy Beatles-themed inn.
The taxi tour is the best way to get an overview of Beatles history and to stop at locations such as Strawberry Field, Penny Lane, their childhood homes and schools, and other sites important in their young lives or referred to in their music.
An unexpected highlight was an added one-hour tour of the Casbah Coffee Club. That’s where the young Beatles played before they moved on to the better-known Cavern Club.
The club set up by Mona Best in her basement drew hundreds of teens to watch the Beatles before they had their name or a drummer.
Best’s son, Pete, became the Beatles first drummer there. A plaque refers to him as an “Original Beatle.”
The home still belongs to the Best family and is being restored to become what will soon be a huge draw on Beatles tours.
Our guide’s inside knowledge of the Beatles was an added attraction. “Roag” is Pete’s half-brother, son of Mona and longtime Beatle insider Neil Aspinall.
He avoided talking about why Pete was booted from the band in favour of Ringo Starr, but others didn’t hesitate. Roag simply noted that because of his parents, his feet are in both camps — Pete’s and the Beatles.
The accepted story is producer George Martin wanted Best dropped because he wasn’t good enough, but cab driver Joey claimed other Beatles, Paul McCartney in particular, were jealous of Pete’s good looks — he was the one young female fans seemed to lust after most — and came up with the George Martin excuse to get rid of him.
John Lennon, we were told, simply said Ringo was a better Beatle than Best.
Our Magical Mystery hotel package also included a ride on the Magical Mystery Tour bus. It’s a bit unnecessary after taking the taxi tour. You hit the same, but fewer, spots. However, the tour guide was entertaining, and it was a good opportunity to watch others ooh and ahh about sites we’d seen the day before.
Strawberry Field, perhaps the most popular stop on the bus tour, is now a source of controversy. The original red gates at the entrance to the orphanage-turned-community centre have been replaced by replicas. The Salvation Army is apparently selling the real gates. Our tour guides disapproved.
Both tours stop at the Lennon and McCartney childhood homes, which are national historical sites. You can go inside the homes only on a National Trust tour.
The Magical Mystery Tour ends near the Cavern Club, which was just around the corner from our hotel. It’s a rebuilt version of the original Cavern, where the Beatles’ rise began.
Liverpool didn’t understand the tourism gold it had in the Beatles when the Cavern was torn down in 1973. The new version, built in 1984, is a close copy built with many of the original’s bricks. A lively district of clubs and pubs has built up around it.
We ended the bus tour with Bulmers ciders at the Cavern — we’d return for more — before heading on for the next Beatle stop.
Tickets for the Beatles Story museum at the Albert Dock were also included in our hotel package. The main museum is a 10-minute walk, if that, from our hotel, through the Liverpool One shopping, pedestrian and tourism district.
The dock is an attraction itself, also featuring the International Slavery Museum, Merseyside Maritime Museum, Liverpool Big Wheel (a 60-metre-high, London Eye-style gondola Ferris wheel), Tate Liverpool modern art gallery, plus other shops and restaurants.
The Beatles museum audio tour tells a good story and features artifacts and photos donated by people associated with the group.
The second part of the museum is located 10 minutes down the Mersey River waterfront. We visited the next day to watch a 3D Beatles-themed movie and an exhibit of photos, artifacts and reminiscences from Julian and Cynthia Lennon.
Inside the same building is the ticket booth for a ferry ride on the Mersey River, an attraction made popular by the 1964 song “Ferry Across the Mersey” by Gerry and the Pacemakers.
The trip takes 50 minutes, makes three stops and offers some great views of the Liverpool waterfront.
After our heavy immersion in the Beatles, the next few days were spent checking out historical attractions and satisfying my need for sports.
About a 10-minute walk from our hotel in the other direction is an area of imposing and impressive 18th- and 19th-century buildings. They look massive from the outside; they’re even more overwhelming inside.
St. George’s Hall is where justice was meted out in the early 20th century. We didn’t know about the inside until we stumbled upon a small entrance as we walked down a side street to another destination.
You can see the cells prisoners were kept in. Read their stories. See some of the devices used to keep them in line. Today, we’d call those enhanced interrogation techniques. Check out the giant courtroom and get a picture of yourself sitting in the judge’s chair with wig and robe.
The World Museum features five floors of ancient, rare and cultural artifacts. It has rightfully been labelled one of Britain’s top 10 free attractions. (Public museums don’t charge admission fees, but do ask for donations.)
The Liverpool Cathedral, the world’s second-largest Anglican cathedral, is where McCartney was rejected as a choirboy, then came back years later to debut his “Liverpool Oratorio” classical piece. For a couple of pounds, you can go up its 101-metre tower for a look around.
A more modern-looking Catholic cathedral is also nearby.
It would be foolish to go all the way to Liverpool and not see some soccer (oops, football).
Everton hosted Chelsea in the final weekend of the Premier League season. Only pride was on the line as the seventh-place home team upset the league runners-up 1-0.
Noisy, passionate but ruly fans surrounded us in the oldest of four stands at Goodison Park. Once the game began, we no longer cared we were in narrow, old wooden seats. We were high up in Row O of the top balcony, but at midfield for a great view.
After the game, one of the noisy oldtimers in our section sitting next to Teri told her he’d been attending games for 50 years and apologized for his frequent outbursts, but said he just couldn’t help himself. To us, it was part of the atmosphere.
A spectacular goal won the game for Everton, making for a happy bunch of Liverpudlians.
The more famous Liverpool FC was out of town for its final game, but we did tour its Anfield stadium the next day, our final day in the city. It has a nice restaurant and tiny dressing rooms.
You really notice how close to the action the fans are in these stadiums.
After the stadium tour, it was off for a pint and food at the William Gladstone pub and then time to pack.
Too bad it was over, but we had the Beatles, history, sports and a comfy hotel for a week — that’ll be a tough vacation to beat.
If You Go...
The Hard Days Night Hotel was booked through their website and Everton tickets purchased on the team website. Tours were arranged through the hotel. Everything, except the soccer stadiums, was within walking distance. We took buses to the stadiums.
The hotel had a high-end restaurant, but otherwise finding good eats was a challenge at times. Prego Italian restaurant in the Liverpool One district and the Liverpool FC restaurant were our best finds.
The tours and sites we enjoyed have websites that can be found with your search engine.