To the port of Liverpooooool

One of my American flatmates found tickets for a train that would take us to Liverpool and would only be £10 for the day. Sort of like the weekend Metra pass but for only one day. We thought this was a lovely idea and decided to go one Saturday. The train ride out was so pretty and looked like a scene from a Jane Austin novel. Unfortunately, nobody really did any planning. I wasn’t aware of this until we got to Liverpool at 3:30 only to find out that the last train home was at 6:30. After some grumpiness (mostly from me) we decided that we would just stay the night and ride the train back in the morning. It wasn’t until we wasted an incredible amount of time looking for internet that we found out there were no available hostels or hotels. Why? Because there was a football match the next day. Great. We had the same thing happen in Oslo. Except this time we didn’t have to get a slightly more expensive hotel room. We had to sleep outside.

Okay… not exactly sleep outside. We had resigned ourselves to stay up all night. We asked a girl who worked in a shop if there was anywhere we might be able to go. She told us a few places but most importantly she told us of a club that stayed open until 6am. Perfect. We thought the train station opened at 6. Turns out… not so much. The next train into London wasn’t actually until 11:30 the next morning. However, not knowing either of these things we began our adventure with blissful ignorance.

Step one of our adventure was to head over to the Beatles Museum. It was only £8 to get in and we got a whole lot of Beatles. It was a really cute museum and I learned a few things I didn’t know. It took us an hour and a half to get all the way through it. But it was really neat getting to learn the history of the Beatles.

After the museum we decided that it would be a good idea to get some food. We found this pub that is a chain that also has a branch really close to our campus. Not only do they have good food but they have two for one cocktails on the weekends. We made the best of both of these perks. After dinner and drinks at the Slug and Lettuce, we went to a pub called the Cavern. The Cavern is where the Beatles used to play in Liverpool. They had actually played at this place over 300 times. And we stood inside there. When we got there, there was a live band playing classic rock. It was amazing. For any of you who know Carbondale, it reminded me of PK’s. While we were sitting, I saw a guy in a Cubs jersey. I asked him if he was from Chicago. He was not. So I asked him why he had a Cubs jersey. He told me because it looked cool. Of course, we made friends with him (picture below).

After leaving the Cavern we went to another pub. (This would become a pattern for the night so that we wouldn’t freeze to death.) At this pub, we were picked up by a large group of Liverpudlian men who were out celebrating one of their birthdays. There were four of us and about nine of them. They thought we were just wonderful. (I feel like I have to add a sidenote here. When I first arrived to London one of my friends told me that the farther north you go, so do the skirts. I didn’t quite understand what this meant until I got to Liverpool. The girls there wore THE tallest heels and THE shortest skirts I’ve ever seen paired together. AND it was freezing and they were all walking around like it was summer. Needless to say, the American girls who didn’t plan on going out so were dressed in boots and sweaters did not quite fit in.) Guess we were a welcomed change. We ended up sticking with those guys for one more bar and two more clubs. We were sort of just bouncing between places as they closed. All of the guys were really nice and made sure we got a cab back to Lime Street when we were ready to separate.  

Once back to Lime Street, we got something to eat. We sat at a kabob shop for about an hour until they kicked us out because they were closing. So at about 5 am we had no choice but to go to the last club opened call Heaven. The second we got there we plopped down in a booth, coats still on and hunkered down. I actually managed to fall asleep a little. Carmen was not so lucky. Apparently the man next to her kept asking to go home with her then suggesting they should get married. Neither happened.

After getting kicked out of Heaven, we headed back to the train station. The next hour was the worst of the trip. The train station did not open at six. In fact, no one waiting outside knew when exactly it opened on Sundays. We waited outside until just before 7 when one of our group remembered that a restaurant opened at 7. So we decided to go there to wait out of the cold. By this time, we had added to our posse. We had made an American friend who had just caught a ferry from Dublin and was on his way to London and a Liverpudlian friend who had just gotten off work from one of the clubs we were actually at. Both came with us to the restaurant.

After some tea and porridge (I’m basically English now) we left the restaurant at about 8:30. Our Liverpudlian friend made sure we got our tickets just fine and we sent off the other American guy. It was at this point we found out that we couldn’t get a train out until 11:30. So we went back to the Beatles museum. There was a 4D show that we didn’t get to see the day before. The show was only about 12 minutes long but was awesome. After being awake for over 24 hours the bubbles they blew at us while we were on the yellow submarine were INSANE. I’m pretty sure everyone in the theater thought I was on drugs. I was not.

After round two at the museum we wandered back into what was now a well lit and bustling downtown. Very different from the night before. We did a little shopping while we were waiting and caught our train with no worries. We ended up getting back to our flat at about 5:30 pm. Liverpool was exhausting but I loved it. I would LOVE to go back. Everyone was really nice and they had the best accents so far… even if every other sentence I said was ‘sorry. What?’.