Liverpool
 

I am hearing more about Liverpool. We will be in Conway Wales and possibly would go there. How far. Is it from Conway? What are the highlights?

It's around 56 miles by road, approximately 1hr 20mins.

Liverpool has some great buildings and art galleries and still makes a living on the Beatles name. The city grew in wealth and importance due to its port and its close links with the slave trade and US cotton industry.

It also has a poor reputation for low income families and crime problems, although nothing on the scale of some US cities. As a Mancunian (from Manchester) I'm not that enamoured of the place, although if you've not been , it's worth a day trip.

Rubicund , if we drive is it difficult to drive there for the day... Park, see sights etc.

We could just do Chester instead of Liverpool ...thoughts? We have an extra day or so that is why I am considering either. The other thought is to go to Southern Wales instead.

I think Liverpool is well worth the trip especially as you are only in Conway. The road connection between the two is good. Highlights would be the docks and the maritime history, the excellent museums and galleries and the two cathedrals. Shopping is great and just being in the city and soaking up the atmosphere will be great in itself. As someone who lives in Manchester I'm hugely impressed with how Liverpool has improved as a city over the last years.

Though I have not been to Liverpool for several years I have been there twice and loved it - it will not win the "Most Beuatiful City in England" award but it is in the running for the most fascinating IMO - what are the main sights?

Well the renovated docks in the city center - think there is some kind of museum to Immigration to America there as so so many American immigrants departed Europe from Liverpool and I believe the Tate Gallery has a branch there too.

But to me two sobering sights were the two cathedrals - one Anglican and one Catholic and one old and one new - rebuilt after being bombed to bits in WW2 - I especially liked the new cathedral (or church or whatever they call it).

But to me as an aging 60s type the main attraction was the Beatles museum and the Magical Mystery Tour, which at that time at least was a bus that went around to sites associated with the Fab Four - Penny Lane of course - John Lennon's middle class home where I believe his mum or aunt was run over by a bus and Ringo's lower class house, Strawberry Fields, etc.

So not sure of the current status of all of this but Liverpool can sure fascinate - and Liverpuddlians were nice to boot!

Liverpool also has a neat vast park that was a template for Central Park in NYC.

http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/...k-boss-3320503

<where I believe his mum or aunt was run over by a bus and Ringo's lower class house, >

It's actually John's and Paul 's homes that can be toured as they are owned by the National Trust. John's mother was run down outside Mendip's, his Aunt Mimi's house, by a policeman.

<i>It also has a poor reputation for low income families and crime problems, although nothing on the scale of some US cities.</i>

Whatever this means, relatively few people from Europe visit Detroit, Oakland or complete pits like Camden and Wilmington as tourist destinations.

To the OP: what's the real attraction? Determine that, and it may help you make up your mind.

P.S. - I thought the town in Wales is Conwy . . .

PalQ, as so often, has been on the Dulux too much.

Liverpool is claimed to have the largest number of conservation-grade buildings in Britain after London. It no doubt fails to meet the spectacular standards of urban beauty his native Detroit manages - but Oxford and Florence can't match it for the sheer volume of wonderful buildings.

No docks in Liverpool, apart from a container depot five miles downstream (which handles a greater tonnage of freight than when Liverpool was the world's busiest port), have been renovated in over a century.

The UNESCO World Heritage site (the model for Shanghai's Bund, and a status tedious dumps like Stratford and Cambridge can't boast) around its Pier Head has had some new buildings (as well as a canal with a footpath offering traffic-free walking into the middle of the Cotswolds, or into central London) added in the past decade.

Neither of Liverpool's cathedrals was war-damaged, because neither was built by WW2. The Anglican one (finished 1978) looks traditional. Its graveyard includes the stylish mausoleum to William Huskisson, the city's MP, killed by a train during the world's first intercity railway journey (like gerry-building, modern docks and tropical medicine, a Liverpool invention). It was designed by the man who designed the classic British red telephone box, a huge proportion of Britain's Catholic churches and the awful New Bodleian Library in Oxford (which, thankfully, is being torn down and rebuilt with a substantial grant from a Merseyside bakery).

Its Catholic one (finished 1967) looks self-consciously modern, and was designed by the man who designed Heathrow Terminal 1 and 2. Neither has art up to the standards of the St Christopher at Norton Priory: simply the finest surviving example of English medieval sculpture

PalQ is thinking of St Luke's church in Berry Street, bomb-damaged and left virtually unchanged, as a memorial to the victims of the Blitz, since its near-destruction in 1941. One of Liverpool's near-infinite contributions to modern civilisation was its role as the operations centre for the Battle of the Atlantic (the really crucial battle for Britain's survival): the war-rooms are visitable March-October (http://www.liverpoolwarmuseum.co.uk ). The city's Maritime Museum has quite a bit on the battle.

The Maritime Museum (Liverpool has, of course, the greatest density of national museums of anywhere in Britain apart from London) also includes galleries on emigration, while the Museum of Liverpool has galleries on the city's immigration (not surprisingly the term "world city" was first used in 1886 to describe Liverpool - not London or New York). Its China Town, for example, has been there far longer than any of America's parvenus. It's alleged that about a quarter of the population of the English-speaking New World (a term that obviously includes Oz and NZ) have ancestors who got there via Liverpool. http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk

Birkenhead Park wasn't the "template" for Central Park (two seconds' walk around either demonstrates they scarcely resemble each other). But it WAS the inspiration. Birkenhead Park was built on the philosophy that it should be free for everyone, including recently arrived Irish migrants, to enter. This was fundamentally at odds with the snobbery that dominated mid-19th century New York, but was what struck Frederick Law Olmstead most spectacularly when he toured English parks in 1850 while pitching for the idea of any kind of park in New York's arid wastes.

Olmstead's real achievement was using Birkenhead as the example that dragged provincial, uptight New York up to Liverpool's standards of democratic openness (apparently someone at that time did a survey and found there were more guidebooks to Liverpool on sale in New York than there were books about New York in Liverpool)

Brian Epstein pulled much the same trick a century later when introducing the Beatles into the conformist tedium of early 60s America.

Liverpool ("the centre of consciousness of the known universe" according to Allen Ginsberg in 1966 and "the Pool of Life" according to Karl Jung) is also famous in Britain for the quiet charm and self-effacingness of its citizens.

We don't do hyperbole. We claim to be The World's Greatest City (TM) because we are.

Parking is generally painless (just follow the P signs when emerging from the Tunnel), though not cheap by US standards. The very best way of arriving by car from North Wales is to follow signs for Birkenhead, take the tunnel, and then the main Liverpool exit. You debouche immediately into the finest complex of classical buildings erected in Europe since Athens in the 5th century BC.

Urbino: eat your heart out.

"Liverpool ("the centre of consciousness of the known universe" according to Allen Ginsberg in 1966 and "the Pool of Life" according to Karl Jung) is also famous in Britain for the quiet charm and self-effacingness of its citizens.

We don't do hyperbole. We claim to be The World's Greatest City (TM) because we are".

flanner is certainly no stranger to certain substances that the Beatles were familiar with, when he opines those thoughts! Ginsberg was also on it too. PalQ obviously paints his own version.

"quiet charm and self-effacingness of its citizens" some are and some are not but "famous in Britain"??????

Christmas cake and sherry all round

Why, when I read a Flanner post, do I hear the tintinnabulation of little bells?
Could they be attached to legs?

Let's face it MissP, you need a sense of humour to come from Liverpool. Always remember, if you park your car in the city, count your tyres before you move off!

Liverpool is claimed to have the largest number of conservation-grade buildings in Britain after London. It no doubt fails to meet the spectacular standards of urban beauty his native Detroit manages>

Well that may be but overall their glory is lost in tacky modern developments endemic in many large English cities - no one in their right mind save those on Dulux would call Liverpool one of the most glorious cities in Britain - not nearly - it does have monumental architecture, one reason I like it - but they do not form the coherent overall beauty of an Urbino or any Italian city or most European cities.

Liverpool has more similarities to Detroit than Rome.

No docks in Liverpool>

how about Quays then - where the Maritime Museum is located is what I was thinking of - a nicely restored area - I have not been to Liverpool since it was, rather oxymoronically, named European Cultural Capital and thus was spruced up a whole lot - it may shine more than before but still you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear - talking about the city as a whole - really fascinating place with some stunning architecture and cultural associations with Beatles and their ilk but a beautiful city no no way - though beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

https://www.google.com/search?q=detr...=1600&bih=1074

Here are some images of Detroit - I take back what I said about Liverpool having more similarities to Detroit than Rome!

We had a fabulous time in Liverpool and felt our stay wasn't long enough. Our highlights were the Lady Lever museum and the Walker. I'm mad for PreRaphaelites, but both museums and the incredibly interesting area around the Lady Lever were great.

We went to fabulous shops, had a wonderful dinner out, and did a little Beatles touring.

We are glad we went and had a great time.

Liverpool is claimed to have the largest number of conservation-grade buildings in Britain after London.>

that may be so but they are scattered about so not so apparent to tourists but 'ferry cross the mersey' (Hermans Hermits ?) takes you to Birkenhead, a Merseyside suburb that pretty much was a product of the rapid industrialization of northern England in the 1800s - the town had many wealthy benefactors who built grandiose buildings, many of which remain.

Wikipedia says "William Laird, a Scot, and his son John, were influential in the design of the town. Parts were laid out in a grid-iron pattern like Edinburgh New Town with similar architecture. The chief architect was James Gillespie Graham from Edinburgh. This grid pattern was centered around Hamilton Square which was started in 1826 and, apart from Trafalgar Square in London, contains the most Grade I listed buildings in one place in England.[18] including Birkenhead Town Hall."

NOTE: contains the most Grade I listed buildings in one place in England" - so says flanner's saying Liverpool has this title is not right (suspect flanner as usual is right but not according to Wiki - perhaps flanner is including Birkenhead in his accounting - anyone take the metro or whatever conveyance - a train - under the Mersey and explore this unique town which I enjoyed very much.

Well re-reading Wiki it says 'apart from Traflagar Square so I guess it means Birkenhead has the most listed grade 1 buildings in one compact area not the city as a whole so flanner, as usual, is right.

" 'ferry cross the mersey' (Hermans Hermits ?)"

Sorry Pal, Herman's Hermits led by Peter Noone were from a suburb of Manchester. The song to which you refer was by Gerry and the Pacemakers.

Peter Noone now lives near Santa Barbara.

Miss P. I can hear those leg bells getting louder as he continues digging the hole he is in.

To OP, yes, Liverpool is well worth a visit.
Have a look at http://www.visitliverpool.com/travel...st-information
For ideas

It looks like there are several tours about the Beatles. Any favorites?

With a name like mine, you know I am biased! There are two Beatles tours. One is the standard coach tour. It's about three hours and drives you past all the important Beatles sites and ends near Mathew Street so you can pop into the reincarnated Cavern Club. (You can also take this tour by taxi.) The other is the Beatles Childhood Homes, a National Trust tour that allows you inside Paul and John's homes. They have been redecorated to look as they did in the '50's, and Paul's home in particular will give you a good idea of what council housing looked like back then (if you're British, you may already know!). I always like to ride the ferry (thank you, Gerry!), wander around the Anglican, and visit the attractions on Albert Dock, such as the Beatles Story exhibit and the Maritime Museum. There has been a lot more money put into the city in recent years, and the waterfront is looking lovely.

I work for the airlines and layover a lot in Manchester. I have gone to Liverpool several times on my layovers and have thoroughly enjoyed the city. The maritime museum down on the water is very interesting and has many unusual exhibits. There are cute restaurants all around the area to enjoy the views. The Liverpool museum is also nice especially the football and pop music exhibits. The shopping area is huge and easy to walk from the train station.
Both Chester and Liverpool are great choices for a daytrip from where you are in Wales.

As ever Flanner has been on the Dulux.

Liverpool made substantial amounts of money by operating the slavery triangle of Africa/Southern America/England. Since then it has had few ideas with with to create wealth other than draining the British economy of benefits.

The areas of architectural interest do not form part of the city centre and these buildings are not high class residential but mainly flats and offices leaving it feeling without soul.

There are two places of worth to visit in Liverpool both with substantial art collections. The Walker and Port Sunlight have good collections and specialise in the Pre-Raphaelites. Other than that although it has seen some investment over past 10 years, large parts of city are still the most deprived in Europe. The city council came up with the bright idea of vacating many of the slum areas with a view to redeveloping at the height of the boom. Their timing was appalling and since 2009 little work has been competed due to a lack of funds which has left large areas of the city a waste land and virtual no go areas. Toxteth is simply the worst area I have the misfortune to visit in the world.

A best Liverpool is a straight in and out destination, to see what you plan to see.

Charleston is is not.

Oh Dickie, spoken like a Manc! Remember, what Manchester does today, Liverpool will eventually try to copy. They are still trying to make a living on a 50+ year old pop group.

I have a South American friend who visits Liverpool for work. He calls certain areas of the city "favelas".

Scot with a Manc T shirt.

One never forgets New Order at The Hac.

We created a world industrial revolution, Liverpool created Derek Hatton and personal injury claims.

Liverpools answer to Downton Abbey.

http://youtu.be/p2inSqo3Q3c

Couldn't find the clip with subtitles for those who speak English.

You're younger than me then. I remember John Lee Hooker at the original Twisted Wheel, The Hollies at the Jungfrau and Freddie and the Dreamers at the Oasis. All the Madchester stuff at the Hacienda and clubs in town that still host ground breaking music.

Liverpool had the Beatles and ...oh yeah, the Beatles.

From Conwy I would travel to Liverpool by train. You will get a train to Chester approx every hour( not all of them stop at Conwy so you may need to go to Llandudno Junction about half a mile away). Change there for the Merseyrail which leaves every half hour (every 15mi s at peak period) and takes 45mins to get to Liverpool where you can get off at the most convenient of 4 stations. You can also get off at Port Sunlight (see above).
If you are feeling thoroughly rested at the end of a holiday you can have a look at both Liverpool and Chester the same day !

I should add that the best of Chester is strolling the Rows and the City Walls both of which you can do after museums and galleries close. You can easily leave Liverpool mid-afternoon and then spend a few lovely hours in Chester in June and still get back to Conwy before dark. By the way I saw a nice looking fish restaurant when I was in Conwy on Sunday-Chrissie's Kitchen

Either or both of Liverpool and Chester are well worth seeing, and they're very different. We liked Liverpool but we loved Chester.