The World of Nickolândia: Liverpool Trip

Two weekends ago I took a trip to Liverpool for John Lennon's 70th birthday celebration.

The weekend was concoted only several days before we took off. Wednesday, we booked a hostel for two nights, and Thursday evening, we secured a rental car with Enterprise.

So Friday afternoon, Hernan, Claudia1, Claudia2, Eduardo, and I, set out from Edinburgh on a nice 4 hour drive south to Liverpool.

I volunteered up to be one of the drivers. Having never driven on the left hand side of the road, I thought I should give it a shot.

It didn't help that we rented a manual, so I was shifting with my left hand (and the gear layout was different as well), and of course, the driver sits on the right side of the vehicle, whilst driving on the left side of the road. We hooked up the compulsory GPS, and were off. It took awhile to get out of Edinburgh, mainly because I was a bit nervous and thus we missed a few turns when I was in the wrong lane at the wrong time, but nonetheless, I drove the first few hours, to the tunes of occasional passenger gasps at how consistently close I was getting to the cars to my left. I admit I had to make Eduardo speak in English while I drove as I did not really want to use my brain translating from Spanish to English when I was focusing on driving (the rest of the trip, though, was filled with speaking Spanish the whole time, hooray). No wrecks were had, and I handed off the second half of driving to Hernan (Argentina), and he got to cruise on the highway the rest of the way.

I guess I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. The city itself really surprised me in a good way as it was much more historical than I expected (as opposed to industrial), lots of pedestrian walkways, great architecture, museums, nice riverfront. Basically, though, we saw a bunch of Beatles things, walked around Liverpool, and hung out at the Cavern Club where the Beatles got going (there were a bunch of tribute acts... however, I, for one, could only take hearing 'Love me Do' and 'Hey Jude' 5 or 6 times per hour, and thus stayed only a few hours). Claudia and Eduardo are huge Beatles fans, so they really really had a blast and stayed a long time. Overall, it was really cool experience, though.

The only other thing that really stuck out to me about Liverpool was about the people at night. I have never been to a place where so many people get so silly and sloppy drunk. There is a large area just off the center full of pubs, bars, clubs, restaurants etc, and at night it is closed down and becomes pedestrian only walkways. There's a big difference between having 1 drink, a few drinks, maybe getting tipsy, even drunk, and getting so drunk you probably have no clue what you are doing. Well, that's what hordes of people were like, on Friday and Saturday. It was quite a spectacle and it really was not something I was expecting. At least several times I couldn't believe I a few things I saw people doing. But more so it was just a general atmosphere of extreme drunkeness. It wasn't just 18 year olds, but 21, 24, 27, 30 and up. It could have been the French Quarter in New Orleans, but in fact it was just another weekend. Also, the style of the women, lets say 'younger' women, maybe from early 30s downward, was quite different than Edinburgh, the US, and places in South America. Basically, I don't know how else to say it or put it nicely or politely, but they all looked like hookers. Dresses barely covering butts if at all, and multiple wardobe malfunctions (which actually, in fact, were not malfunctions). All I'm saying is, the style was 'different'... it was certainly a 'style' as the majority of women looked like that, and I can't say I've seen anything like that, to that extent, anywhere else. Style, Liverpool style.