liverpool

Over the four-and-a-half years that I've lived in London, I haven't much ventured into the land surrounding the city. I've walked in Kent a bit and spent a week in Cornwall. I've done, repeated and three-peated the mandatory fun trip to Brighton and taken day trips to the coast between Seaford and Eastbourne when it was hot. I've been to Bristol several times. I've visited Belfast and explored the north of Ireland, and I've been to the two villages of higher learning that loom just a stone throw away, always threatening to overshadow the ambitions of London's universities.

This list sounds long, but it isn't. Since I moved to London, I've seen more of Spain and Portugal than of England. I know the south of France better than Wales. And what exactly is Scotland? For domestic travel, I think in zones, and I rarely venture beyond the boundaries of the tube map and the limits imposed by the Oyster card. This is related to the fact that I imagine the rest of the United Kingdom as so different from London that it might as well be a different country, and as dull.

On Friday, from a different country, my sister came to visit. An inveterate Beatles fan, she wasn't content with the Abbey Road crossing (near St. John's Wood, zone 2) or 34 Montagu Square, where Ringo Starr lived for a while and then John and Yoko (near Baker Street, zone 1). No, she wanted to see where it all started. On Saturday, we took a train up to Liverpool.

Railroad travel started in England. The steam engine was developed here and quickly put on wheels and rails to increase the efficiency of coal mines. It was only a small step from these early cargo and hauling engines to passenger trains, a business idea that grew phenomenally in the late 19th century but then lost the race against the car. The glory days haven't been recaptured. Trains are slow (but frequent). Ours, averaging 84 miles per hour with hardly a stop, counted as fast. But the ride was comfortable and we got to our destination on time.

A friend in the lab who had done the same journey a few months earlier had warned me: "There isn't much to see in Liverpool. One day is enough." I was left doubtful: What were we gonna do there? I knew about the Tate, and I downloaded a music-themed walking tour in mp3 format. It clocked in at half an hour. I forgot to look up Penny Lane.

Leaving the station took us straight into one of these cheerless pedestrianized shopping streets that house the same stores in all English towns and cities, exchangeable in their drabness. We could have been anywhere. Mathew St., a side street a few blocks down where the Cavern Club hosted the Beatles 292 times, could have been only in Liverpool, but around lunchtime, there wasn't much of an atmosphere, and we missed the John Lennon statue, leaning forlornly against a wall. Out of options, we headed for the waterfront, my eternal hope when everything else fails.

We were saved. The Mersey, a river of inconsequential length but impressive width and tidal might, lapped high against the flood wall. Docks, quays, luffing cranes and passenger terminals used to be here, bustling with activity when Liverpool was the gateway to America. Smoke must have sat heavy in the air and the noise been deafening, but all this was gone. The riverfront is a promenade now.

On our left was the brand new Museum of Liverpool, welcoming visitors though still under construction. A poster on the hoarding surrounding one of the remaining piles of rubble showed a Ford Anglia with the sensual curves of the 60s for which alone I would have wanted to go in, but the sun was shining and we wanted to see what else there was.

A precariously balanced building to our right, its first and second floors jutting out over the murky water of the Mersey, housed an exhibition of previously unreleased Beatles photos available for sale in limited-edition print runs and the ticket agent for the river ferries. We booked the river explorer cruise and sat on a noisily departing ferry fifteen minutes later.

I normally don't do such a thing. I like to explore on my own and detest organized tours. But this one was different. It wasn't a tedious hour-long harbor cruise with too much information and not enough time to look, but essentially a regular ferry service that offered hop-on-hop-off opportunities on the other shore. We had an hour in Seacombe and an hour in Birkenhead with ten-minute ferry rides in between.

The walk along the estuary from Seacombe to the Irish Sea looked nice but was too long for the time we had. We did part of the walk because that was the only thing in town, then caught the next boat to Birkenhead, formerly a hub of shipyards and repair docks and, judging by fine late-Georgian architecture, the prestigious address of factory owners and wealthy merchants. The town had the first urban tram in Europe and the first public-funded park.

The park still exists, but the tram runs only on special occasions to commemorate the past and overall the paint is peeling on a massive scale. Hamilton Square is still elegant, but there are more To Let signs than there are Georgian façades, and there are empty shop fronts galore. There were no people and no business. The town seemed dead, ruined by decades of industrial decline, desperate for the kind of revitalization that has transformed the center of Liverpool but with no real hope for it.

Return to Liverpool

Our ferry ride back showed the Liverpool waterfront in all its redeveloped glory. Old buildings, tycoon baroque as well as industrial utility, have been restored and put to new uses. New buildings, bold and striking, have been added. The sinking sun added sparkling highlights and painted bricks an acrylic red.

The new energy doesn't stop by the water. A few city blocks have been turned into one of the more spectacular outdoor malls I've seen, three levels high with stairs and bridges at all angles, exposed viewpoints and a plaza with a big ice-rink overlooking it all. People were everywhere, all restaurants were packed. Further out along former warehouses, the bustle continued, clubs readying themselves for the Saturday night crowds, coffee shops, bookstores and other shops. It was lively beyond imagination, an area of a good twenty minutes across in constant motion.

This was not what I had expected. London is where the UK's life pulses, economically, socially, culturally. From a London-centric, deliberately ignorant and willfully arrogant perspective, there isn't much worth wasting quality time that could be spent much better within the confines of the tube network. Liverpool proved this approach wrong, if proof was necessary. There's no way round broadening my British horizon a bit in the months to come.