Skipping London (for now) and going straight to Liverpool

As I write this in our room at the Hard Day's Night Hotel (don't laugh--it's actually much classier than the name might imply, though does have a definite Beatle theme), we can hear loud dance music pumping outside. It's Saturday night in Liverpool and this place parties louder and harder than any city I've ever experienced. And I mean the entire city centre. Every pub and restaurant blasts music and people are everywhere drinking, singing karaoke, and in some cases wearing dressy, shiny clothes. Glowering bouncers/doormen stand out these places looking menacing. In my first day ever in Liverpool, I'm trying to get a grasp of the place, but am not successful so far. Not to say that this is a bad place at all, but it operates at a frequency that I am not attuned to yet. I'll have to see if it calms down at all tomorrow, which is a Sunday. 

After wandering around the area surrounding the hotel and not finding a restaurant that didn't look crowded, insanely loud, or both, we opted for our staid hotel restaurant. I asked our server if Liverpool was always this crazy on a Saturday night, and she said that indeed it was.

I'll backtrack now. We took a cab to Euston Station this morning and then a train to Liverpool, pulling into Lime Street Station at about 12:30 PM. Thankfully, we were able to check into our room. This gave us time to get our luggage in the room and for me to grab a cab outside to take me to Speke Hall, the National Trust's rendezvous point for the Lennon/McCartney home tours. My cabbie was extremely talkative. A real salt of the earth bloke who was thoughtful and friendly and full of ideas--maybe more ideas than I wanted to hear, but he was so engaging and inquisitive that I enjoyed chatting with him. Though it turned out he was conservative politically, he presented himself in such a convivial way that I just rolled with it. Eventually, I was able to change the subject to Premier League football and learned that he is an Everton supporter and not Liverpool FC. I asked him if it was hard being an Everton supporter when LFC dominates the city and he said it was, but he'd learned to keep his expectations low. I told him I felt his pain as a Detroit sports supporter. Finally, we arrived at Speke House and he started talking about what a loss the death of John Lennon was. I wouldn't have minded hearing more, but I had to exctricate myself to check in for my tour. I thanked him for the ride and we wished each other well. I genuinely hope he has a nice rest of his life. He is a good bloke.

So I checked in for my tour and the shuttle bus soon arrived. The drive from Speke House--an old National Trust estate--to Mendips (Lennon house) is about 10-15 minutes. And this really is the suburbs. Tree-lined residential streets and some shopping strips that don't look far different from American ones--well, less wasted space and smaller carparks. Mendips is on Menlove Avenue, which is actually a fairly busy thoroughfare. It's a semi-detached that, though pleasant and attractive, is still even smaller than I expected. John Lennon's bedroom has to be no larger than 8' x 5'. It seemed tiny. 

One of the funniest aspects was the "Downton Abbey"-like room bells, which seems comically aspirational for a house that could probably fit comfortably in one wing of Highclere Castle.

That said, the McCartneys' council house at 20 Forthlin Road is even smaller, probably smaller than the townhouse Lynda and I lived in when we first married. 

From these humble origins came greatness, though. These houses provided acoustics and love that sparked the creativity that made the Beatles.