Liverpool Beatles Tour & Trip Home

2019-11-02Uncategorized Standard

[Photos taken 02 – 03 November 2019, posted online 17 May 2020. Lovely day weather-wise, there will be gardening!]

Finnur’s been to Liverpool quite a few times to watch Everton play at Goodison Park. He was therefore in charge of planning, and booked a two-hour long drive-around Beatles-tour for the two of us.

The guide picked us up at the hotel, and then drove us around to the childhood homes of each Beatles member, showing us old photos and telling stories from their youth. We also stopped at Penny Lane, Strawberry Field, and the church where an Eleanor Rigby is buried.

We ate dinner with other game-bound Icelanders, but the morning after, I traveled back to Iceland, where I arrived late to a birthday party, and then examined the bathroom-renovation progress. (60-ish images total)

Saturday 02 November 2019

Our driver made sure to take a photo of us (with my phone) at every stop. Here we are by the covered Penny Lane sign that Paul McCartney signed during the Carpool Karaoke with James Corden the summer before. The cover was put up, as the sign was about to be destroyed by over-eager fans scribbling their name everywhere. This turned out to be quite the theme.
This was actually the first stop, the pub right next to where Ringo Starr grew up, in one of those houses on the right of the pub. The pub “was immortalized in 1970 by being featured on the front cover of Starr’s first solo album Sentimental Journey“
In front of the house where Ringo Starr grew up, 10 Admiral Grove. According to our guide, somebody bought it, planning to turn it into a museum, but the neighbors protested loudly, so no museum. They still have to put up with a lot of foot traffic. The insides of the house looked gutted.
By the infamous Penny Lane sign, Sir McCartney’s signature was still visible.
Crooked image from a moving car. That pub on Penny Lane has the lyrics to Penny Lane written across the top of the entrance.
By the barber shop that features in the Penny Lane song, and also appeared in the Carpool Karaoke video. There’s a photo from the video-visit viewable from the window.
A sneaky photo of our guide re-entering the cab. This whole square is basically in the song.
By the home John Lennon lived in from birth to five years. The story is that Yoko Ono now owns it, and it looked very tidy.
Very Yoko Ono-ish inscriptions at least!
Sir Paul McCartney’s home, 20 Forthlin Road, check! There were fun stories of using a drainage pipe to escape outside, and the bizarre sight of bricks missing, as people were chipping them away.
Such an English view out the window.
Standing by the Strawberry Field gate, turns out Strawberry Field was a children’s home run by the Salvation Army. According to our guide John Lennon would lurk in the trees watching the kids (girls?), although wikipedia says he played with the kids. Like other Beatles locations, it was heavily covered with scribbles. Apparently guards guarded a cleaned gate when it was being used for a movie shoot, so that they wouldn’t get written on.
Our guide got artistic.
Then it was on to John Lennon’s growing up house at 251 Menlove Avenue. Sounded like he had a rather traumatic youth, with a missing dad, a rather ‘unsteady’ mother who was persuaded that her son would be better off living with his (possibly gay) aunt, and her husband who introduced John to a number of cool things.
Gorgeous autumn trees all around.
At the fourth home, George Harrison’s, in Mackets Lane where his family lived from 1962 to 1965. An old lady lives there now, and apparently the garden is slowly getting more unruly.
The other Beatles tour that we kept running into during our stops.
The graveyard where somebody found an Eleanor Rigby, although according to Wikipedia, that may have been a coincidence. Our guide regaled us with stories of make-out sessions out of sight from the adjacent road, it sure did sound like the Beatles boys were rascals!
Impressive graveyard.
Graves, and more graves.
The very last stop, the place where John and Paul first met.
A slightly better look at the sign.
With that, our guide drove us back to the hotel, and we parted ways, after an educational and fun tour!
It was a muggy Saturday, but we ventured out to find something to eat.
By the water.
Canals here and there.
Nobody was splashing in the water.
A posing bird.
Back at the Ferris wheel.
A little bit of sun breaking through the clouds.
It’s like the area has a few little enclosed docs.
A part of the light-arts installation.
Proof we were there.
A ballsy horse!
I had a few things I wanted to buy, so I spent about an hour or so wandering around the shopping center. I only had a tiny bag, so there was only so much I could buy.
This was around 16:30.
The hotel hallway.
We ate dinner with the other Everton-game-going Icelanders that were in the area. The restaurant was a Brazilian steakhouse, where you get your sides from a common area, and then waiters walk around with various types of meat, and you pick the ones you want.
Waiter cutting slices of meat at our table.
Cool stairs, perhaps leading up from the restrooms.
Icelanders, saying goodbyes, and planning the trip to the game the next day.
Our hotel was a fun building to photograph.

Sunday 03 November 2019

At 09:12 the next morning, I was out by the elevators, to start my solo journey home.
The hotel lobby was busy, with an event under way.
Oh great, another diet-drink pyramid-scheme company. Whyyyy people, whyyyy?!
I was thrilled to find there was a direct bus from next to the hotel to Manchester airport.
Hi there home-trip machine.
Hi there runway.
Flying past Grindavík a little while later.
A “lava shield with crater“, Sandfellshæð.
…. aaaand touchdown!
Some two hours later I found myself at a kiddie birthday party!
Turns out I was all photo-ed out, and only took these photos of the party!
I always appreciate a good restroom-read!
Back at home, we now had a toilet-box, where there once was a toilet.
The plumbers had discovered there there was a hot-water pipe in the floor already, but as it always used the runoff of the radiator, we’d not realized it was doing anything. We asked the plumbers to put in an independent controller for the floor heating.
Close up of the floor pipes.
Sink fully hooked up, and that white disk is where the floor-heat-controller would go.