Ok, not so magical or mysterious but, a tour for sure. On Friday, 24 February the Study in England program took a bus tour up to Liverpool to learn about the Beatles and Slavery. It was a 2 1/2 ride up to the Northeast area of the country but we had a lovely day to travel and saw a lot of countryside with sheep, cattle and horses. More cattle than we've seen on other rides.
Liverpool is an old shipping port as it is located on the Irish Sea and River Mersey. In addition to the slavery trade, it was also home port of the Titanic and during World War II, endured over 80 air raid which killed 2,500 people and damaged nearly half of the homes in the metropolitan area.
As the shipping vessels became larger, the depth of the Liverpool harbor rendered it outdated and like many port cities in the U.S., Liverpool has restructured their waterfront into shops, museums and performance spaces including the ECHO arena.
Our Beatles Experience museum at Albert Dock and a Liverpool Magical Mystery
Tour of the city were a lot of fun. While the museum was short on Beatles memorabelia, they did have a mock up of the Yellow Submarine and John Lennon's white piano where he composed Imagine. Of course, that was composed in 1971 and the band split up in 1970 - details, details. It covered a lot of the early Liverpool history and the influence of their manager Brian Epstein which was interesting and stuff that only a true Beatlemaniac would know.
The bus tour of the city was very interesting as we drove through a bit of the waterfront area but also the parts of the city where John, George, Ringo and Paul lived when they were growing up. We also got to through the neighborhood where John and Paul met and wrote many of their songs. We took a partial jaunt through "Penny Lane" and saw the shop where the "barber showing photographs; Of every head he's had the pleasure to have known" and "the shelter in the middle of a roundabout; A pretty nurse is selling poppies from a tray." Well, OK the nurse wasn't there and the barber shop had moved down the road but the roundabout was still wheeling cars around. And it was all under "blue suburban skys" which was quite nice.
George and Ringo were from the inner city in a much more working class neighborhood. We did get to see where George Harrison lived which is a small house now occupied by a couple and their cat.
Our other activity was a visit to the International Slavery Museum.
This was a very well done look at a major part of Liverpool's history, as it was a major place for the launching of ships carrying slaves across the Atlantic. Much of the wealth from this trade was the basis of Liverpool's growth as a major city. They have done a good job of looking at this issue from various historical points as well as reminders of current human trafficking that is still occurring around the world.
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