To Be...atles or not to Beatles

I apologize for the title.  If I could refund those couple seconds of your life that it took you to read it, I would.  The rest of this will be better.  Or at least it will have 100% fewer puns.

Last Saturday (And, shut up.  I can hear your judgment.  I know it's taken me days to write a post about this.  Jeez.), I went on a trip to Liverpool through the International Student Office here.  It was all for us international students, and we each paid a small sum of money to be loaded onto buses early in the morning.  They pretty much just organized transport, so they basically took 6 coach buses full of foreigners and set them loose on the city.  I'm sure the Liverpudlians (or Scousers, as they're apparently actually referred to) appreciated that.

I mentioned The Beatles in the embarrassingly bad pun of a title of this post because, as you may know, it's the birthplace of each of the Fab Four, and also the city where the band formed.  This gave me another thought.  I would bet that people who grew up in Liverpool are utterly sick of the Beatles.  I mean, they think I make annoying puns?  There's a "Hard Day's Night Hotel" in Liverpool.  An "Ate Days a Week Cafe."  Seriously--I bet it makes people want to cry.  All the tourists (including me) walking around singing Beatles songs, having people stop you to ask where Penny Lane and Strawberry Field are...  Besides the fact that it's all anyone knows about Liverpool, the Beatles overload must be a bit much.



Anywho, the first thing we did upon arrival was...you guessed it!!!  The Beatles Museum!  Well, it's actually called "The Beatles Story" to make it all classy or something.  (The classy was somewhat undermined by the workers dressed as the Beatles-a-la-Sergeant-Pepper-days.)  The museum was pretty interesting--a combination of stories about the band's development and journey, real-life pieces of history (like George's first guitar and John's round orange glasses), and cheesy reconstructions.

Cheesy.  But good photo ops.

The Museum ended around the time of the band's breakup and just gave a breeze through the post-Beatles stories of John, Paul, George, and Ringo.  The headlines for John's death were pretty sobering and it left you with a sort-of feel-good, inspirational, think-about-how-these-four-guys-from-Liverpool-changed-the-world message.  And then you go to the gift shop and Starbucks area--once again, the message was a bit undermined by the commercialism, but whatever.  All in all, it was a neat experience, and it took up a fair amount of our time.

We scrounged up some lunch (by which I mean "went to a restaurant") and then started off for the other Liverpool headliner--the Anglican Cathedral.  This is absolutely the most spectacular sight in the city.  Hands down.

Pictures cannot capture its awesomeness.

It's the largest cathedral in the UK (the 5th largest in the world), and the largest Anglican cathedral anywhere.  It's massive.  And massively gorgeous.  We spent a long time walking around the surrounding St. James' Park, which houses a giant cemetery.  It's well-worth the wander, as the headstones are really fascinating and some of them beautifully carved.  You also get to look up at the cathedral towering above you.  When we went inside, things were no less impressive.  It's created in the Gothic style, but it was built over the early and mid-20th century.  Because it's not actually a 400-year-old relic, the inside is a really interesting mix of old religious architecture, stained glass and altars and modern art pieces and themes.  The men and boys choir was rehearsing as we walked through, which was a gorgeous experience.  The entire vaulted inside fills with the harmonies.

Then, of course, we had to climb the tower.  They call it the "Tower Experience," which makes it sound like a theme park ride, which it sort of is.  You have to take two different elevators (only 3 people at a time!) and then walk the last few floors to the tiptop.  You get incredible views of the entire city, but I was once again dueling with my fear of being any distance off of solid ground.

Worth it for scenes like this.

Not a member of JLS, just a dancer.

Stunning, right?

By this point, we had eaten up most of the time we had to spend in the city, with just enough leeway to mosey our way back to the buses.  The rest were just tidbits.  We saw Liverpool's small but beautiful Chinatown, admired some of the absolutely marvelous graffiti, and almost caught a peek of JLS (they're a boy band, but they're British, which is why you don't know them).  

Then it was a hop, skip, and a jump (/two hours on the bus) back to Leeds.  And despite the excitement, it felt really good to be back.  Liverpool was a strange mix of old and new, industrial and cultural, crumbling down and shiny brand new.  Leeds feels oddly like home--familiar, cozy (despite being larger than the LP), friendly.  I'm off to York for a bit this weekend, so I'll be sure to take some pictures and tell you all about it.  I realize I haven't talked much about life in Leeds yet, but I'm getting to it, all right?

Hugs and best wishes--