If Scott had a few things on his required bucket list, I had this one. I really wanted to do the magical mystery tour of Liverpool. I was a Beatles Girlie!  I had the biggest Beatles phase in my late teens and early twenties.  One of my earliest music memories is my mom playing Let It Be on our record player while we cleaned house.   

We woke up this morning to the snottiest weather imaginable. We bundled up in coats, hats, and mittens, and caught the train to Liverpool.

I wasn’t sure what to expect of Liverpool, but the words gritty and industrial come to mind. However, the train dropped us off in a super modern part of town near the Royal Albert dock.  It had cool architecture and a very pedestrian friendly harbor complete with a Ferris wheel you couldn’t have paid me to ride.  The wind gusted and the rain pelted and I couldn’t think of anything worse.  

We raced through the rain and decided that spending a little time in an indoor museum would be a good idea.

The Beatles Story museum in Liverpool? Very well done!!  I was surprised how emotional I got at the end.

Yes. That was me crying my eyes out in the John Lennon White Room.   All the cool portraits and photos of him plus the piped in music of “Imagine” didn’t help.  My eyes started stinging, and it took me totally by surprise. I can’t emphasize enough how emotional that moment was for me — I still remember the moment I heard he had died.

We raced through the rain to our Magical Mystery Bus, which was surprisingly plain and white. Unfortunately, the colorful, signature bus of the tour had broken down.  But let’s be real – you don’t know what the outside of the bus looks like when you’re sitting inside… Right?

Driving around, we saw the childhood homes of all four Beatles, heard some stories of how they met and where they met. We saw locations that inspired the lyrics to some of their songs. 

I mean… Come on – Penny Lane! The real Penny Lane. 

We actually saw the shelter in the middle of the roundabout.  We saw the bank where the banker never wears a mac in the pouring rain.  We stood outside of Strawberry Fields. It was all very meaningful and a perfect way to spend a rainy afternoon.

Scott was such an amazingly good sport. I’m still not quite sure whether this was something he actually wanted to do or if he was just being a good actor, but there was a moment as the bus drove around when everybody was singing along to “Love Me Do,” (full volume, wildly out of key), which Scott had informed me yesterday he did not like. (I had the Beatles playlist on repeat while we drove across England to get in the mood for Liverpool.) There was a moment when I thought maybe he grimaced a little.

As an added bonus, we got to see some Peaky Blinders film sites as well.  – That scene at the beginning of the very first Peaky Blinders? Where Tommy rode down that street on that black horse… I mean that’s cinematic right? Well we saw the street he rode down on. And I could actually picture it in my mind – purple, trash cans and all.

While Liverpool wasn’t gritty, it did have distinct neighborhoods with personalities. There were simple homes and grand homes, there were parks, and huge community garden plots. There were murals- cool murals! 

Perhaps the cheesiest, most touristy ending to our day was the hour and a half we spent in the Cavern Club. Again, Scott was a good sport. I don’t think he wanted to be there, but I was enjoying the old 60’s music being played by a Jeff Daniels look-alike on guitar, so he ordered a beer and perched with me on an uncomfortable stool.  

It wasn’t the original Cavern Club, but apparently every single brick was taken from the old one and put up in the new one. And the new one is actually a Mecca for British rock ‘n’ roll royalty. The list of people who have performed there is as long as my arm – starting with Paul McCartney, followed by the Rolling Stones and many others, it held some legitimacy for me. 

The train ride home was smooth and once again reminded Scott how much he hates driving in the UK. 

Wandering well for me today meant tears in the Beatles Story museum.  It meant singing Beatles songs loudly on a bus with strangers. It meant memories and the power of music.