Earlier last June, I and a dear friend of mine from work made a day trip up north to Liverpool and Manchester. It so happened that three weeks prior to that, my friend offered to give me a ride to Manchester to attend Taylor Swift’s second show at the Etihad Stadium, part of her reputation Stadium Tour. If it wasn’t for my friend I would’ve never made it to the show, and words cannot describe how grateful I was for the opportunity that arose – genuinely, a dream come true but that’s for me to write about for another time. The day couldn’t just be spent on the way to Manchester and I was thrilled when my friend suggested we’d see Liverpool before we actually made it to the stadium. He’d been there a few times but I hadn’t, and I was thrilled to see what the city I heard so much about had to offer.
The car ride to Liverpool took about two and a half hours and it was filled with chatter and music: just how I like my car rides to be. There is something inherently magic about talking, sharing stories and one’s own life while the world unfolds around you. It also so happened that all the radio stations we were stumbling upon were playing 70s and 80s jams that I knew by heart, and my friend had the wonderful opportunity to listen to my personalised rendition of Everybody Wants To Rule The World twice. Oh, and for once I didn’t feel sick in the car. 11/10, would absolutely do it again.
Liverpool consisted of two main stops: the beach and the city centre, and we roughly spent around four to five hours altogether exploring. The beach that we stopped at was actually part of the bigger Crosby Beach and was fairly secluded, lying by a quiet, exclusively residential area. The kind of beach you’d imagine locals going down to in the morning, to jog or meditate or walk their dogs or make sand castles with their children. And surely enough, the beach was quite busy at that time of the day, with many people taking advantage of the sunny weather to go outside and enjoy the fresh marine air. In spite of that, the beach still felt calm and quite intimate to me. Being there was a bit of a surreal experience, and looking back now as I am writing about it, I feel quite embarrassed about how little conversation I must’ve made with my friend in the time frame we spent on the beach. Although literally bordering the outskirts of Liverpool, the beach looked untainted, pure, clean. People were around, yes, but it didn’t feel noisy or annoying at any point. The tide was low the day we came and so much of the nearby sea bed was showing, and the water was far away and we could barely smell it or hear the waves. It was quiet and otherworldly, and I was taken aback just by the mere sight of it.
(source: personal archive)
(photo credit: Alex Andriuc)
That was also the first time I’ve ever seen the ocean in real life, and that used to be a thing I dreamed about doing when I was a younger. For silly, innocent me, the ocean was a thing I would see only when I grew up, moved away and started living life on my own terms and started accomplishing my goals and aspirations. And it so happened that I saw the ocean for the first time at the end of my second year of university, after getting amazing grades at school, landing a brilliant part-time job and an outstanding group of friends and falling in love with my ride or die, hours before seeing my greatest role model perform live in the first stadium gig I’ve ever attended. Needless to say, I was emotional.
We hung around the beach for a while, taking pictures and just enjoying the fresh air and the nice atmosphere. My friend is a gifted photographer and he took some great shots in the hour we spent walking around. Apart from the low tide which I found fascinating, the highlight of our stop was seeing some of the statues from Sir Antony Gormley’s Another Place: cast iron figures the size of an adult male, all facing the sea. Naked figures spread around, at different distances from the shore, all looking at the water. Although I’m not much of a visually artistic person, I found the statues to be of an eerie beauty. Definitely unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.
The car ride into the city was short, and after we found a parking spot we went exploring. In the remainder of the time that we had left to spend in town, we managed to walk along the shore, see some of the important tourist attractions and admire the beautiful architecture, a balanced combination between the old and the new. At noon, Liverpool was bustling with activity: tourists and inhabitants alike were walking around, taking pictures, laughing and chatting away. People with different names and different stories, honouring diversity amid one of the most gorgeous cities of England. I was so excited to see that everyone fit together so well, despite said diversity: everybody was smiling, everybody was having an amazing time. We passed a girl wearing a T. Swift T-shirt as we were exiting the docks and I shortly lost my shit. I was having such a good time.
As far as atmosphere is concerned, Liverpool was a welcomed awakening from the usual calm and serenity from my university town. It was alive and full of energy, and walking around charged me up more than anything.
(source: personal archive)
(photo credit: Alex Andriuc)
We started by walking down the Pier Head, where we saw the Royal Liver Building, the Cunard Building and the Port of Liverpool Building, as well as the famous statues of the Beatles, and then proceeded to walk down the waterfront towards the docks. After touring the nearby docks, we came back through the Chavasse Park and explored a bit of the commercial centre: lots of narrow streets guarded by old buildings transformed into fancy high street shops. After lunch, we toured the Radio City Tower. Built in 1969 and reaching 138 meters tall, it is home to Radio City 96.7 and the perfect place to get a breathtaking panorama of Liverpool. We had a sunny day out, so the Radio City Tower couldn’t be missed.
We spent a good twenty minutes up in the tower, just watching the views and admiring some other tourist attractions that we would not have time for that day from a distance. Liverpool’s beauty doesn’t cease once you go up to look at it; in fact, it’s just as amazing, but from a different angle. The love that people have put into the city is obvious wherever you look and honestly, I felt beyond honoured to be an observer of it that day. Even the inside of the tower itself spoke so much of the energy that the citizens of Liverpool put into what they’re doing: the little, professional recording studios for the radio shows, the office rooms looking like they were frozen in time since people last were on air. It was a different kind of atmosphere up there, and I enjoyed every second of it.
(photo credit: Alex Andriuc)
(source: personal archive)
On the way back to the car, we took a different route through the streets of the city centre and also stopped to see the Town Hall. Built in 1754 and rebuilt in 1802, its beauty reaches beyond my ability to write and describe. If I could say anything, it’s a true gem in the middle of a city overflowing with fragments of history from different times. It was also the perfect way to end our little exploration of the town; we didn’t have time to sightsee anymore because we were due to be in Manchester soon.
(photo credit: Alex Andriuc)
The Liverpool Town Hall
(source: personal archive)
Again, because of time pressures, I could only see Manchester from inside the car, as we were looking for the stadium. By that point, my excitement for the show was so big that I hardly registered anything that was around me but from what I do remember, Manchester struck me as a highly urbanised, intimidatingly modern city. Looking bigger and less gentle than Liverpool, where I genuinely felt like home. I absolutely want to come and visit Manchester, and hopefully I can make this a reality sometime next year.
Same with Liverpool, I am seriously planning on coming back to see some more of it. It was beautiful and it made me feel alive, it filled me up with energy and thirst for life and things that I’ve almost run out of during what was the most stressful and demanding, yet amazing and rewarding year of my life. From what I’ve seen so far of it, I cannot recommend it enough! Make sure you go when you get the chance.
That’s about everything I’ve done during my trip to Liverpool and Manchester. Quite a bit, given that I was heading to the area with something else in mind. I feel so grateful for the opportunity of passing through and seeing what this delightful part of England has to offer, there is literally no way I can put it into words. I can only hope you got to feel it through this post, though.
I am also planning to write a post about the Taylor Swift concert, so stick around to read about my experience of that!
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Alex Andriuc (where mentioned)
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