Liverpool
Jan 5th, 2014, 01:25 AM
#3
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.
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.
Jan 5th, 2014, 08:46 AM
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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.
Jan 5th, 2014, 09:09 AM
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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!
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!
Jan 5th, 2014, 09:18 AM
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Jan 5th, 2014, 10:10 AM
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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
http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/...k-boss-3320503
Jan 5th, 2014, 11:12 AM
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<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.
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.
Jan 5th, 2014, 02:14 PM
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<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 . . .
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 . . .
Jan 5th, 2014, 02:29 PM
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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 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.
Jan 6th, 2014, 05:21 AM
#13
"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.
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.
Jan 6th, 2014, 08:30 AM
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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.
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.
Jan 6th, 2014, 09:07 AM
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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.
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.
Jan 6th, 2014, 09:13 AM
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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!
Here are some images of Detroit - I take back what I said about Liverpool having more similarities to Detroit than Rome!
Jan 6th, 2014, 11:35 AM
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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.
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.
