A Day In The Life
The Magical Mystery Tour
September 15-16, 2026
"There are place I remember, All my life..."
Lennon / McCartney
What We Knew Before We Left
There are a few things we know about our Liverpool jaunt. One is that our
full day in Liverpool, Wednesday September 16th, will be centered around the
Beatles. And Two, we are staying at the Cove Paradise Street Hotel, which
is an 8 minute walk to the Cavern Club.
Update - Instead of doing a full day dedicated to Beatles, we decided to split
things up little. I booked the Beatles Story for first thing on Thursday morning
since the drive to Blackpool is less than 2 hours, we wanted something to do in
the morning. That also left Wednesday open to any tour that was available. In
the end, we took a highly rated private tour 4 hour tour that includes an inside
visit to the
Casbah Coffee Club.
What We Didn't Know
Other than the 4 hour tour that starts at 10am we don't know non-Beatles
Liverpool holds for us. Maybe another surprise.
What We Now Know
We know that our 4 hour tour has turned into a 3 hour tour as they are
filming a Beatles documentary in the Casbah and we won't be able to visit. The
price of the tour for the both of us is now 'only' £195.
We also found out that our accommodations in Liverpool is actually a 2
bedroom/ 2 bathroom apartment on the top floor of a 10 floor building. It has a
full kitchen and even had a washer/dryer. Grea views and indoor parking where we
won't touch the car for 2 days other than to wash off the seagull crap from
Aberdyfi. Now that we are settled in, we are going to go out on the town even
though is cool and windy.
What We Did
The last 24 hours has been a whirlwind of activity, a lot centered around the
Beatles including a visit to the Cavern Club where the Beatles played and got
discovered by Brian Epstein.
This morning we started a 3 hour private tour by Ian. I will let the pictures
tell the story as there is too much to write. We did a lot of walking here in
Liverpool. Only 8 kms yesterday as we only got out at 5:30pm, but today we have
already clock 20 kms and we haven't even gone out for supper. We have to come
back to the apartment for a rest and my phone had 3% battery left. It's now 8pm
and we are heading out to eat dinner.
Tomorrow, we have an 8:30am visit to the Beatles Story. We will eventually
make our way to Blackpool for our one night stand.
We had an 8:30 am reserved time at the Beatles Story but Google kept telling
us that it only opened at 9am. In the end, even the staff was surprised that we
had that time but they opened at 8:30 and we were the first ones through before
a large group from North America. We were there for just over an hour. If you
listen to the full audio tour, it would take almost 2 hours to se and hear
everything. Since we heard so much the day before on th tour and we wanted to
stay in front of the crowd, we went a little faster than we wanted.
Travel Notes
The Cove Paradise Street was booked through Blue Rewards. On May 31st, Airmiles
changed to Blue Rewards. My 6,695 Airmiles were converted to 105,710 Blue Reward
points. I went to redeem travel on the Blue Rewards website and it offered the
Cove at 62,271 points. Leaving enough points to book my Blackpool hotel for one
night. I had given up on cashing Airmiles, so this worked out pretty good. Three
nights of hotels for 'free'. WooHoo!
Using A Credit Card Abroad
We brought cash with us but we haven't found many places to use it. Many
places are credit and debit only. We managed to pay our Beatles Tour in cash and
I think Ian appreciated it.
Here is a warning though when using a credit card. Not all, but many places
will give you an option to pay in the 'local' currency or will offer to charge
in Canadian dollars. Some of the newer displays will actually show you a
Canadian flag button that you can hit if you wish to pay in your home currency.
DON"T choose Canadian as it's scam that could cost you lots of money. Here is a
real example of how much it could cost.
For some strange reason, whenever I use my credit card, I get an immediate
alert on my phone with the amount in Pounds and then I get an email with the
amount in Canadian dollars. I actually like this and yesterday confirmed that
paying in the local currency is much cheaper. BTW use the same strategy when
withdrawing money from an ATM. Last night, our bill at Bacaro restaurant was
79.80 pounds. When they passed me the terminal I could click the Union Jack or
the Canadian flag. It is always tempting to click the CDN flag but here is what
it would cost. If I chose the CDN flag, it said that I would be paying
$158.25CDN. But since I chose pounds, my real charge was actually $150.19 which
includes the hidden 2.5% credit surcharge for a transaction in a foreign
currency. This means that it would actually charge 5% more. If by mistake, when
paying our hotel bill in Manchester they offer a Canadian payment option, it
would cost $75 more. I am not sure who gets this money, the vendor or the bank
but better in our pocket than theirs. If you read my story about the ATM in
Ireland last year, the charge is even worse there.
