"I'd like to thank you on behalf of the group and ourselves, and I hope we passed the audition"

 Liverpool (sabbatical 2, week 3)

Let us continue the Beatles theme, shall we?  Fans wishing their fix will find no shortage of places to celebrate their favourite band in Liverpool.  Here are three of the stops clustered in and around the docks.

On the Royal Albert Dock you will walk past multiple tour bus operators, including the "Beatles Magical Mystery Tour," which Craig did not take.  Instead, he continued on to the poorly-labelled "The Beatles Story" museum (it also refuses to show up on Googlemaps until you've zoomed in rediculously small).  However, it remains probably the most popular attraction, both on the day Craig visited and according to the reviews he read: "arrive early" indeed!  Even 20 minutes after opening time (albeit on a Sunday) it was 100 people deep and arranged in such a way that you hoped no one had COVID.  It is certainly the most accessible, directing the visitor chronologically through the group's career in a winding path taking you through recreations of a Hamburg street, the Cavern Club, Abbey Road studios, etc.  The audio guide is modern and easy to navigate, if overloaded with information (Craig listened to maybe half, being pressed on by the crowd more quickly than the audio guide kept up with).  Much (most?) of the "artifacts" are recreations, i.e. it was more important to try and show how the places were in the Beatles' time rather than restoring genuine Beatles artifacts.

Moving down to Pier Head, you'll find a bronze statue of the Beatles, in front of the Port of Liverpool building (on Canada Blvd!).  That building also holds the British Music Experience museum, which we'll come back to in a later post.

In contrast to the Beatles Story, genuine artifacts can be found aplenty at the Liverpool Beatles Museum, on Mathew St., another location that stubbornly refuses to show up on Googlemaps.  This is a true museum, the walls covered in historical photos, newspaper clippings, and posters, containing such gems as the piano from the Casbah underground club, a guitar George used in Hamburg, Pete Best's drum kit, etc.  It also contains some.... let's call them more esoteric artifacts such as Paul's lighter and a broken watch that John left behind (because it was broken!).

He played "Somebody to Love," "Mrs. Robinson," and "Piano Man," among others

On the same street is the "Cavern" suite of clubs.  Keep an eye open for "The Wall", containing bricks engraved with the names of (allegedly) all the 1800 acts that have performed at the Cavern since its inception in 1957.  Across from that is the recreation of the Cavern Club where the Beatles played 200+ sets (and John's band The Quarrymen played as well).  These clubs were all literally underground - no windows, hot, too small to hold everyone.  The warehouse above was bulldozed in 1973, years after the Club had gone bankrupt, to make way for railway infrastructure that was never built.  In 1984 the site was re-excavated and the original characteristic arches were found to be intact and the club rebuilt (apparently using mostly original bricks excavated from the site).  It remains narrow and claustrophobic and full of revellers all day, listening to live acts (also all day, according to the website), mostly tribute bands/singers.  It also feels the most "authentic" of all the Beatles sites Craig visited..... probably because it (mostly) is!  The Club contains a number of artifact cases, up to and including modern acts like Adele, who played there to promote her "21" album, as well as a surprising amount of space devoted to the Arctic Monkeys.