After my brief stint in Birmingham in order to stop by Burton upon Trent, it was time to head to my next destination, which was Liverpool.  Liverpool is most famous for being the birthplace of the Beatles and it is hard not to notice.  Beatle mania is everywhere, with statues, tours and  buskers jumping on the Beatles bandwagon.  I didn’t mind though because one of the main attractions of visiting Liverpool was to see the sights associated with the Beatles (and make my dad really jealous).

I arrived in Liverpool in the morning and after dropping off my stuff at the Eat Sleep Love hostel, I headed out onto the town, to see what sites i could see on my first day.  The most obvious destination was Mathew street, which is the center of the Beatles in Liverpool.  It’s where the new cavern club is as well as several statues and other establishments the Beatles used to frequent before or after a gig.  I stopped off at the Cavern club, which is a re-creation of the old one which was closed in 1973 to make room for a ventilation shaft for a new metro loop that was planned in the city.  In 1984 it was reopened nearby in a space that was designed to recreate the Cavern club as close as possible to the original.  The entrance was right down the street and the inside has been designed to look as close to the original as possible.

After a beer or two at the Cavern Club, I headed onwards to my next destination which was further wandering.  I hadn’t done that much research at all on what I was supposed to see and do in Liverpool but it’s not a huge place, so it was pretty walkable.

I wandered the city a bit, and then decided to hit up a local place that was apparently brewing their own beer in the basement called Baltic Fleet.  Turns out that this was not the case and so I just had a standard local ale instead.

I wasn’t feeling to hot that day and was pretty tired, so after wandering around for a little bit longer, I decided to head to the hostel and chill out, while doing some research as well as write some of my blog.  It was a chill evening, which was pretty nice.

The next day, I went on a pretty extensive walk of the city, seeing most of the sites.  I started by walking along the water which in itself was pretty nice, The change in tide on the river was pretty substantial, so depending on the time of day the water level changed dramatically and there were plaques along the way describing how shipping operations relied on the time of day and the tides to operate.

The harbor area was really nice and seems to have recently been updated to be a tourist area with shops and places to eat. The first stop on my adventure day was a stop at the Liverpool museum  which was huge and full of cool history of Liverpool.  For a city that size to have a museum that big and impressive was interesting.

There was a lot about the importance of the Liverpool harbor, the development of said harbor and some of the other industries that have been located in Liverpool.  The special exhibit at the time was about John Lennon and Yoko Ono which was really cool.  They had a bunch of recreations of Yoko’s art as well as many artifacts about their post Beatles life.

After spending some time in the Liverpool museum (it was free), i headed back along the water towards the Beatles Museum.

The museum did a pretty good job of taking you through the history and development of the Beatles including their beginnings, rise to fame and how they broke apart over their almost 10 year run.  I enjoyed the stories and learned a lot about their history that I did not really pay attention to before.

After the museum, I decided to try and check out some of the Liverpool craft beer scene by heading to what I thought was some of the local breweries which were located a decent walk out of town.

The first one I went to was actually open and I sampled two beers there.  It was called Higson’s and it seemed to be fairly new with a pretty upscale brewpub feel to it.  I tasted a few of their beers and they were decent but not amazing and then set off to the next one which was down the street.

Unfortunately the next stop proved to be closed, so I couldn’t try any of their offerings.  It was called Black Lodge and had decent reviews.

I continued about 10 minutes down the street to what was advertised as Brewery Village, I know that there was a big brewery in that area at one time and that it had closed down, but there appeared to be a smaller working brewery in the same location making smaller batch craft beer.

When I arrived, I found a hipster food court type arrangement that took full advantage of the large warehouse space the old brewery used to use for it’s operation.  Unfortunately I could not locate the new brewery and eventually learned that they had been working on setting on up for several years and that various factors had prevented it from happening up until now.  I was promised that things were still moving along and that they hoped to be open soon.  I walked through the vendors and they did have some good offerings, but really made me think I was in San Francisco or any other city with a hispter food market like this.  The old building was beautiful and I am glad that it is being used for other purposes other than letting it fall to ruin.

I needed to get something to eat so I went for a stroll and located a vendor that stood out to me.  It was called Caribou and it sold Poutine, complete with legit cheese curds.  It was delicious and the beer I had with it was pretty good too.

I didn’t get a photo of the entire inside of the place, but it was expansive and full of various vendors!  It also had a nice patio for chilling outside, which is where I opted to eat my dinner.

Post food, I went to the place that on some accounts said they might have their own beer called the brewery tap which was located on the corner and seemed to have a decent selection.  I was basically the only one in there so I chatted with the bartender and enjoyed my beer at the bar.  Turns out it was another dud location and there was no house brewed beer to be had.

I then located a place to play some pinball followed by random wandering to find a place that looked like there were people to be social with.

I found said bar and ended up chilling with these two lads for the rest of the night until well past closing.  The day was jam packed with walking and exploring and so by the end of the night I was very tired and headed back to the hostel for some sleep.

The next morning I woke up with the intention of heading to both Penny Lane and Strawberry fields on my run, so i woke up in good time and headed out on the run.

Penny lane wasn’t so far and so I made it there with no problems, but Strawberry fields gate was considerably further and a mixture between timeline, legs feeling heavy and how I was feeling made me abandon the strawberry fields destination and just head back after Penny lane.

I also made sure I passed the Eleanor Rigby statue on my run as I had missed it the previous day.

After washing up from my run and checking out my my hostel, it was time to say farewell to Liverpool and head off to Manchester, which was supposed to be a bit bigger and livelier than Liverpool.