British Isles Explorer Ocean Cruise

Day 10: Thursday, April 16, 2026 - Liverpool, England

The day's statistics:
⛅ Weather: mid 50s, overcast
👟 Steps: Linda 13,429; Steve 13,705

We had an 8:30 excursion, so we awoke at 6:30 (a half-hour early) to assure we didn't have to rush to get ready before we departed.
Our routine was the usual: wake, shower, get ready, have breakfast, brush, gather what was needed for the day for the excursion (VOX, tickets, camera, jacket [maybe]).
Looking out, the ship was moored, and then gangplank was ready to go.

Today was going to be a Beatles Day. OK, this morning was going to be a Beatles morning...
Our group was to meet at 8:20 for an 8:30 departure. After disembarking, we had a little bit of a walk under a covered walkway, over a small drawbridge, and up a ramp to the parking lot.
As we were boarding, we gave our tickets to the guide who looked at them, and stated our names.
After boarding, we departed. Today's guide was Gary, and our driver was Ben.
Right outside the port was the Royal Liver Building, with two birds, Bertie and Bella, on top overlooking the city (Bertie) and the sea, s-e-a, sea (Bella).


The bus ride went into the city, and we came upon Mathew Street. Gary asked Ben to drive slowly. Really slowly. Pause as long as he can. This location is famous as the Cavern Club is located on it. And the Cavern Club is famous because that is the club where the Beatles got started. And on the corner was a merchandise store.




Our route took us back toward the waterfront - now about a half dozen blocks from the ship.





As the group debussed, Gary tried to get as many of our names as possible - he had about half. Those he didn't know, reminded him.
He then walked us around the corner toward our first destination.



At "The Beatles Story" is where we arrived. We were scheduled to visit the museum-like facility until 10:30 - about an hour and a half. Part of the tour included an audio tour where we heard descriptions of as many artifacts as we wanted to hear.
The museum was laid out in a linear fashion, with the history, careers, and popularity from the beginning, and through some of their post-Beatles solo careers.














Our first selfie were two blobs in front of a bright background. The second - here - was a tad blurry (and I can't tell what the camera was focusing on). So I kept the better of the two.

And then we continued on.





































The gift shop was upstairs. After fifteen or so more minutes, the group started heading back to the bus.
Gary tried to name everyone, again, as we got on the bus. He got a few more this time, but still not everyone.
The bus tour continued back through town.






Our route took us past Penny Lane. THE Penny Lane from Beatles lore. While Sir James Paul McCartney's signature isn't visible, where is photographic proof that he actually did sign the wall.



Just outside of town was an apartment (behind the scaffolding) that Farrokh Bulsara rented. Farrokh is most likely better known as musician Freddie Mercury.

Eventually we arrived in the center of the town.
Regarding the song "Penny Lane". The story is that Paul would sit in the town center and, essentially, look around. It was those sights that led to some of the lyrics from the song that included "A four of fish and finger pies", "barber showing photographs of every head he's had to pleasure to know", and "On the corner is a banker with a motor car". Our route took us past those sights that inspired those lyrics.



Some other notable or interesting sights on the way out of town.



Further on we eventually arrived at Strawberry Field.
While many may think that Strawberry Field may be a park, or an actually field, in reality it was originally a girl's home, later a co-ed home for orphans.
One particular phrase from the song "No one I think is in my tree" supposedly represents the tree that John used to climb to get into Strawberry Field to play with the other kids, and also, as he was threatened by his aunt Mimi that disapproved of his trespassing and warned him "they will hang you for that". Since "no one was in my tree", no one was hung. Yet.
After the bus was parked, we walked up the path to the facility for a self-guided audio tour.
As the tour was mostly about the facility - not that there was anything wrong with it - and not so much about the Beatles, pictures and the tour didn't take too long.
We did see John Lennon's original (the original) piano used to write the song "Imagine".












Contrary to what we were told by Gary - and perhaps even "common belief", the REAL meaning of the reference "No one I think is in my tree" is actually a reference to his unique perspective of life.

We stepped out the back of the facility to view the garden.

The time had come to board the bus and continue on.
Our next stop was to drive by the house John Lennon grew up in, at his aunt Mimi's house. The smaller, upper left room with the bay window, was John's.

We were told a story of something that happened with John and his aunt Mimi. When John first started to play music, his aunt told him to not bother as he wouldn't make a living from it. Many years later - and after becoming successful - John took his aunt to view some houses. One of the houses they went to was, at the time, the second largest house in Liverpool. After touring the house, he asked his aunt what she thought of it. She said it was OK. John then handed the keys to it and said "Even though the music thing wouldn't work out, I bought this for you."

Next, the bus stopped on a comparatively rural street.
Gary led us around the corner and down a block - to Paul McCartney's house.

And then we walked back to the bus, stopping with Gary to say "hi" to an elderly 96 year old woman that Gary grew to know over time. She recently had a birthday too.
After boarding the bus, we headed to the next destination.

The bus couldn't fit down the street to take us by Ringo's house, but we did see this mural on a wall at the end of the block. The bus wasn't permitted to stop (it wasn't elsewhere, but Ben was able to get away with a slow drive.



Continuing on.





Over the course of an almost four hour excursion, we learned quite a bit about the Beatles.
A couple of these items already include (not already mentioned above) were:
- Where did the Beatles name come from? The group was fond of Buddy Holly And The Crickets. They wanted to use a similar name. So the Crickets portion of the name was converted to... Beatles.
- The song "Let It Be" was NOT derived from the Virgin Mary, but rather Paul was sleeping one night, after his mother passed away, and he was feeling stressed and challenged. "In his darkest hour", in this dream, his "mother, Mary, came to him, and whispered words of wisdom: 'Let It Be'".
- When Ringo was young, he was ill from TB and missed a lot of school - two years - due to his sickness. The band had to do a lot of practicing and they told Ringo who replied "we're working eight days a week." And when he was told that due to the band's schedule, they would have to rehearse at night, to which Ringo responded "It's a hard day's night." Paul, who had a knack for taking notes and creating songs from them, made two popular songs from those responses from Ringo.

Gary wished each person well as we got off the bus. He only missed two or three. But what was odd was that one of the ones he missed was Linda. Under normal circumstances, that wouldn't have been an issue, except Linda is the name of Paul's wife. I'd think he'd remember that name...

After dropping our excursion items off in the cabin, we headed to the World Café for lunch.
We did the usual salad and sandwich for Linda, and I had some buffet items.
On the way back to our cabin, we passed through Guest Services and picked up our passports.
I couldn't locate the receipts we were given when we turned them in, but we were able to sign release forms instead.
After returning to the cabin, we stored the passports - and then found the receipts.

When planning the trip, we made a note of a couple things to do in the afternoon on this day. Just a couple blocks away - closer than The Beatles Story - was the Liverpool Museum.
On the way out, we passed back through Guest Services and turned in the receipts (even though we didn't really need to).
So we headed out. In the terminal building we saw an anniversary timeline of said building.

We walked along he waterfront for the couple of blocks and enjoyed some architecture and other sights, including some bronze statues of the Beatles.









We arrived at the museum and went up to the third floor so we can walk down.
This was the Liverpool Museum and a decent amount of the artifacts on display were city or country related (not that there is anything wrong with that - we just might not have gotten as much out of the visit as we might otherwise have elsewhere).




At each end of the third floor were windows. One side overlooked the Mersey River; and the other side, one of two ship dry docks with the Wheel of Liverpool in the distance.


We continued through the museum.












There was another window at the end of the museum near the model in the last image above.
We saw the entire waterfront street we walked down earlier, with the end of the Neptune just visible on the left - that's how close it was. Linda took a photo on her phone that better shows the ship.


Because of geometry, I put the zoom lens on the camera to try to get decent shots of the birds on top of the Royal Liver Building.



At these windows, there was also a life-size model of the birds on top of the Royal Liver Building. I'm in the picture for scale.

A large city map was on the wall.

Of course we had to visit the gift shop after the museum tour. But then we headed back in the direction of the ship.

We would have liked to have gone to visit the cathedral - that large square brick church we passed during the Beatles tour - but it was just too far away. So we walked along the waterfront and headed to another church a little closer by.



We crossed before the RLB, and passed on the other side of it - which looked a lot like the side facing the waterfront.

At the end of the block across from the RLB was the church and gardens that we wanted to visit - and there was a street level set of stairs to access the grounds right there too.









We made our way along the side and to the front - and found that the door was open. So we went inside to look about.









A Royal Mail truck greeted us as we exited the church and began the three block walk to the ship.

A young local couple with two small children - one in a stroller - were waiting to cross the street when we got to the corner.
We chatted with them for about five minutes as we made our way across multiple intersections before reaching the cruise terminal.
We showed our cabin cards and passed through the main terminal building. On the wall after exiting the building was this mural - that we passed by three times and didn't really notice it.

There wasn't too much time between when we embarked - and had a cup of coffee - and dinner time.
While we were at The Restaurant for dinner, the ship started heading out. Just off shore was a large wind farm with a total of 40 turbines that were barely visible through the mist and fog (all here in one spot though we passed them while we ate). While cell phone pictures have been getting better, they didn't do too good of a job here...




Our table was fortunately by the window, we were seated and given menus.

Linda had Cauliflower Cheese Soup, Seared Scallops, and Scottish Cranachan.



I asked our server Melissa if she would recommend the shrimp or the scallops. She said "Why not get both?"
Well OK, I can do that... I had the Scallop & Mushroom in Chicken Broth, Potted Shrimp, Sailor Scouse, and Praline Perfection.
I was able to get a picture of the pre-pour soup. Something new Viking has been doing - or at least on the ocean ships - is the waitstaff delivers the soup ingredients, and then pours the broth from a small pitcher onto the main ingredients.

We took our wine to the atrium for a couple songs before heading to the Explorer's Lounge for another game of trivia.
Tonight our team included Sue and Wayne (OR), Ingor (NE), and Fran (OR). We didn't win and only got 9 of 15 correct.

By 9:00 it was time to be in the Star Theater for a location-appropriate show called "The Beatles".



I didn't record the whole show since we already saw it, but did get a couple songs.

Before departing the theater, we briefly chatted with Catherine and Bruce (NY).

We returned to the cabin, reviewed the daily, and relaxed a bit before going to bed.

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