Magical Mystery Tour!!!

When I headed out for Great Britain, there were three things to which I was most looking forward.  (I may have mentioned this before.)  The first was Blarney Castle.  The second was doing a Beatles tour in Liverpool.  I’ll get to the third in a later entry.

As you can probably imagine, there are lots of Beatles tours in Liverpool.  There were some that lasted all day and cost over $150.  While those include a lot of interesting things, I didn’t want to spend that much money and I found one that cost about 80% less, took two hours, and covered pretty much everything that I needed to see.  (I still had another full day in Liverpool in case I wanted to go out and see more.)  The trip I decided on was the Magical Mystery Tour, which is a bus tour to various Beatle-related spots throughout Liverpool, with stops at a handful of them.  It starts at the Albert Dock, so I went there to catch the bus.

Our guide was funny and very knowledgeable.  He was in some Beatles-related movie and knew Paul McCartney.  At least, I reckon he knows Paul McCartney.  He showed all of us a photo on his iPhone with him and Paul.  So, he had that going for him.

We went by a lot of cool places – at least cool as far as I was concerned.  We went by the birth homes of Ringo Starr and George Harrison.  We also went by one of the homes in which Paul McCartney lived and in which he and John Lennon wrote over 100 songs.  Another house we went to was the one in which John Lennon lived with his Aunt Mimi.  We went to Penny Lane but there were no pretty nurses selling puppies from a tray on the roundabout.  Very strange.  And we went to the red gates of Strawberry Fields.  At the end of the tour, we went to the Cavern Club.  I went in and wound my way down the stone steps to the bar/stage below.  It was extremely crowded, even at 5:00 pm, and smelled of stale beer.  I used the facilities but left before I got a drink.  I went back to my hotel, which was located just around the corner.

Now, I’d like to say a word or two about my hotel.  I stayed at a new Day’s Inn in Liverpool City Centre.  It has been open for less than three months.  I’m not sure what it was before it was a Day’s Inn but I’m pretty sure it was not a hotel.  My room number was M6.  To get to room M6 (on the mezzanine level), I had to go up three flights of stairs to the second floor (yeah, try explaining that) and then walk along the second floor corridor to another set of stairs and then go down two flights of stairs to rooms M6-M10.  There was a lift option to get up to the second floor but none to get back down to the mezzanine level, at least the part of the mezzanine level on which my room was located.  Inside my room was one of the best hotel televisions I’ve ever seen.  Unfortunately, there was no remote control to go with it.  I called to ask if I could get a remote for the television, but all they told me was that the last guest must have accidentally taken it.  I couldn’t care less what happened to it.  I ain’t a cop.  I just wanted a remote control.  Nope.  Okay.

Later that evening was the UEFA Champions League match between Manchester United and Barcelona.  I’ll go on from there in the next post.