One Night at The Cavern Club in Liverpool
The Beatles first played at this club on February 9th 1961 so I felt it was time to spend one night here. If you’re a fan or just curious about what this is, come and read.
We were in Manchester after the Old Trafford game and decided to come over the following day to Liverpool. It was just 33 miles and a relatively fast route via the M62. This was our next stop in our latest UK Road Trip. Besides the close distance, the real reason was not the iconic Anfield (although it would have been great) but The Beatles. It was a while I wanted to see the place where the band formed. I wanted to see Liverpool. One place particularly came to my mind. This was The Cavern Club. The venue where the Beatles popularity started and where Brian Epstein saw them for the first time. Of course we know the club closed in 1973 and was demolished but in 1984 a new one was built nearby using some bricks from the original venue. The “new” Cavern Club.
We arrived at Liverpool before lunch time. We parked not too far from the hotel at the city centre. We checked in and left straight away as Kristina and I wanted to enjoy a nice oat flat white coffee at Lovelocks on Old Haymarket. This was an independent and cosy coffee shop by the World Museum. I was actually hungry so I ordered some avocado sourdough toasts. Everything was super tasty and I’d highly recommend this lovely coffee shop. After this we were ready to walk towards Chavasse Park, a beautiful open green space to take a break from shopping. We didn’t really go for shopping, just saw around some shops on the way. We crossed the park and went to Albert dock. Yep, your guess is right. We were heading to The Beatles Story, a museum about their history that opened in 1990. It was the perfect moment to go inside as it was raining quite heavily. It was £17 the ticket to enter. This is not cheap but if you’re truly interested, then it’s worth paying it as it’s the world’s largest permanent exhibition purely devoted to The Beatles. You’ll get the audio guide and start the tour. There were moments were I absolutely felt “there”. Especially when Beatlemania arrived in the US, when I saw the bus of the Magical Mystery Tour or Lennon’s white room. These are only some examples. The museum is so rich and dedicated that even if you don’t know much, you’ll quickly learn. We spent a good 2 hours in the museum. But I tell you, time flies there! Right after that we were thirsty and hungry, so we decided to have a drink in a Christmas stall by Liverpool ONE (shopping complex) and a fresh falafel nearby. We felt like a mobile phone running out of battery and suddenly fully charged again. We went back to the hotel to change and got ready to leave again. The objective was always The Cavern but still on our way we found some nice places with Live music and stayed for a little while. This was the thing about Liverpool. So great vibe that we felt like jumping from pub to pub without even doing a pub crawl.
It was time to go to The Cavern. We paid the £5 entrance fee and got in. This was the amount of money they were given to share between them for the first show. We were in the iconic basement where The Beatles played 292 times. The basement with a legal capacity of 200 people that many times doubled the people… or more. Ventilation used to be very poor and it was not uncommon to smoke there back in the days. Paul McCartney described it as a great claustrophobic hell. We grabbed a drink and quickly found a spot to see a live band doing Beatles’ covers. While listening to some of these legendary songs I was thinking that the Beatles before 1961 were regular performers in Hamburg but they still struggled to get available slots at The Cavern in their own hometown. We spent 3 hours there. The best 3 hours of the trip. Being there listening to their covers, felt like being back in the 60s. For 3 hours we travelled in time to see John, Paul, Ringo and George.
