Merseyside

Welcome to Liverpool, home to the Beatles, scouse, a Tate and a football team that apparently never walks alone.

One of this year's European Capitals of Culture (the other being Stavanger in Norway), the city seemed to be gearing up for a summer influx of tourists with scaffolding everywhere and road works being undertaken in earnest.

The city, is compact and the city center can be easily traversed by foot. We spent most of our time exploring the waterfront and the docks. They have shopping centers and several restaurants serving a variety of cuisines ranging from Indian to Mediterranean. The waterfront also houses the Tate Liverpool. We visited one exhibition - the Twentieth Century and how it looked - which was sponsored by DLA Piper. I particularly enjoyed the figurative sculptures which involved representations of lives through artefacts - a bed, kitchen implements, soap dishes etc.

Liverpool is also home to two big cathedrals - the Anglican cathedral with one of the largest organs and heaviest bells in the world, and the other the Metropolitan Cathedral. Rather appropriately, the road connecting the two churches is called Hope Street.

While the Anglican church is a beautiful building, the Met. cathedral was a touch too modern for my tastes. Altogether too much steel, glass, and fluroscent lighting.

A keen reader will notice I'm omitting all mention of the Beatles. Obviously they are one of Liverpool's prime attractions, but there are only so many tacky yellow submarine buttons I can look at, so will leave that alone. Suffice to say that for any die-hard Beatlemaniac, there is enough in Merseyside to amuse and entertain.