Things to do in Liverpool
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Alma de Cuba
This extraordinary venture has seen the transformation of a Polish church into a Miami-style Cuban extravaganza, a bar and restaurant where you can feast on a suckling pig (the menu heavily favours meat) or clink a perfectly made mojito at the long bar. ¡Salud!
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Pan-American Club
A truly beautiful warehouse conversion has created this top-class restaurant and bar, easily one of the best dining addresses in town. Fancy steak dinners and other American classics can be washed down with drinks from the Champagne Lounge.
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Everton FC
Liverpool's 'other' team are the blues of Everton FC, who may not have their rivals' winning pedigree but they're just as popular locally. Tours of Goodison Park run throughout the year except on the Friday before home matches.
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Beatles Story
Liverpool's most popular museum won't illuminate any dark, juicy corners in the turbulent history of the world's most famous foursome – there's ne'er a mention of internal discord, drugs or Yoko Ono – but there's plenty of genuine memorabilia to keep a Beatles fan happy. Particularly impressive is the full-size replica Cavern Club (which was actually tiny) and the Abbey Rd studio where the lads recorded their first singles, while George Harrison's crappy first guitar (now worth half a million quid) should inspire budding, penniless musicians to keep the faith. The museum is also the departure point for the Yellow Duckmarine Tour.
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Masquerade Bar
There's no discernible gay quarter in Liverpool, with most of the gay-friendly clubs and bars spread about Dale St and Victoria St in Ropewalks. The Masquerade Bar attracts a real mix of gays, lesbians and bi's looking for a few laughs and a sing-song.
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Everyman Bistro
Out-of-work actors and other creative types on a budget make this great cafe-restaurant (beneath the Everyman Theatre) their second home – with good reason. Great tucker and a terrific atmosphere.
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Speke Hall
This diagonally patterned Tudor home dates from 1490-1612, and is filled with gorgeously timbered and plastered rooms. The house contains several 'priest's holes', where the hall's sympathetic owners hid Roman Catholic priests during the anti-Catholic 16th and 17th centuries.
A marvellous example of an Elizabethan half-timbered hall, Speke Hall was formerly surrounded by thousands of acres of land, but these days all that remains is the drive and an oasis of meticulously maintained gardens; the hall's Chapel Farm became the nucleus of nearby Liverpool Airport. A bus runs from Lime St to Speke Hall, but the walk from the bus stop is about a kilometre and a half.
Tours to Pa…
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Liverpool FC
Doff o' the cap to Evertonians and Beatle-maniacs, but no single institution represents the Mersey spirit and strong sense of identity more powerfully than Liverpool FC, England's most successful football club. Virtually unbeatable for much of the 1970s and '80s, they haven't won the league championship since 1990, but in 2005 they became European champions for the fifth time and followed it with an FA Cup in 2006.
The club's home is the marvellous Anfield, but plans are afoot to relocate to a new 60,000-capacity stadium a stone's throw away in Stanley Park before 2010. The experience of a live match is a memorable one, especially the sound of 40,000 fans singing 'You'll …
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Walker Art Gallery
Touted as the 'National Gallery of the North', the city's foremost gallery is the national gallery for northern England, housing an outstanding collection of art from the 14th to the 21st centuries. Its strong suits are Pre-Raphaelite art, modern British art and sculpture – not to mention the rotating exhibits of contemporary expression. It's a family-friendly place, too: the ground-floor Big Art for Little People gallery is designed especially for under-eights and features interactive exhibits and games that will (hopefully) result in a life-long love affair with art.
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Merseyside Maritime Museum
The story of one of the world's great ports is the theme of this excellent museum and, believe us, it's a graphic and compelling page-turner. One of the many great exhibits is Emigration to a New World, which tells the story of nine million emigrants and their efforts to get to North America and Australia; the walk-through model of a typical ship shows just how tough conditions on board really were.
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Liverpool Cathedral
Liverpool's Anglican cathedral is a building of superlatives. Not only is it Britain's largest church; it's also the world's largest Anglican cathedral, and it's all thanks to Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, who made its construction his life's work. Sir Scott also gave us the red telephone box and the Southwark Power Station in London, now the Tate Modern. The central bell is the world's third-largest (with the world's highest and heaviest peal), while the organ, with its 9765 pipes, is likely the world's largest operational model.
The visitor centre features the Great Space, a 10-minute, panoramic high-definition movie about the history of the cathedral. It's followed by your o…
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World Museum Liverpool
Natural history, science and technology are the themes of this sprawling museum, whose exhibits range from birds of prey to space exploration. It also includes the country's only free planetarium. This vastly entertaining and educational museum is divided into four major sections: the Human World, one of the top anthropological collections in the country; the Natural World, which includes a new aquarium as well as live insect colonies; Earth, a geological treasure trove; and Space & Time, which includes the planetarium. Highly recommended.
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Beatles Shop
For decent memorabilia, check out the Beatles Shop. Forty years later, the club is gone, the band has long broken up and two of its members are dead, but the phenomenon lives on and is still the biggest tourist magnet in town.
The Cavern Quarter - basically a small warren of streets around Mathew St - has been transformed to cash in on the band's seemingly unending earning power: the Rubber Soul Oyster Bar, the From Me to You shop and the Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds cafe should give you an idea of what to expect.
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Fact Media Centre
Proof that Ropewalks has more to offer than just booze and bars, this media centre - whose acronym stands for Foundation for Art & Creative Technology - showcases film and new media such as digital art.
Two galleries feature constantly changing exhibitions and three screens show the latest arthouse releases - although we've noticed that the odd mainstream release has crept into the schedule, proof that financial pressures often override creative intent. There's also a bar and cafe.
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Albert Dock
Liverpool's biggest tourist attraction is Albert Dock, 2.75 hectares of water ringed by a colonnade of enormous cast-iron columns and impressive five-storey warehouses that make up the country's largest collection of protected buildings, and now a World Heritage Site. A fabulous development programme has really brought the dock to life; here you'll find several outstanding museums and an extension of London's Tate Gallery, as well as a couple of top-class restaurants and bars.
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National Conservation Centre
Ever wonder how art actually gets restored? Find out at this terrific conservation centre, housed in a converted railway goods depot. Hand-held audio wands help tell the story, but the real fun is actually attempting a restoration technique with your own hands. Sadly, our trembling paws weren't allowed near anything of value – that was left to the real experts, whose skills are pretty amazing.
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Barfly
This converted theatre is home to our favourite club in town. The fortnightly Saturday Chibuku Shake Shake (www.chibuku.com) is one of the best club nights in all of England, led by a mix of superb DJs including Yousef (formerly of Cream) and superstars such as Dmitri from Paris and Gilles Peterson. The music ranges from hip-hop to deep house - if you're in town, get in line. Other nights feature a superb mixed bag of music, from trash to techno.
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London Carriage Works
Liverpool's dining revolution is being led by Paul Askew's award-winning restaurant, which successfully blends ethnic influences from around the globe with staunch British favourites and serves up the result in a beautiful dining room – actually more of a bright glass box divided only by a series of sculpted glass shards. Reservations are recommended.
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Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King
Known colloquially as Paddy's Wigwam, Liverpool's Catholic cathedral is a mightily impressive modern building that looks like a soaring concrete teepee, hence its nickname. It was completed in 1967 according to the design of Sir Frederick Gibberd, and after the original plans by Sir Edwin Lutyens, whose crypt is inside. The central tower frames the world's largest stained-glass window, created by John Piper and Patrick Reyntiens.
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Baby Cream
This supertrendy bar, run by the same crowd that created Liverpool's now-defunct-but-still-legendary Cream nightclub, is gorgeous and pretentious in almost equal measure. One pretty cool feature, though, is Creamselector - a set of touch screens where you can make your own compilation CD from a databank of more than 4000 tracks (for a price) - it's like taking a piece of the famous nightclub home with you.
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St George's Hall
Arguably Liverpool's most impressive building is the Grade I–listed St George's Hall, a magnificent example of neoclassical architecture that is as imposing today as it was when it was completed in 1854. Curiously, it was built as law courts and a concert hall – presumably a judge could pass sentence and then relax to a string quartet. Today it serves as an all-purpose cultural and civic centre, hosting concerts, corporate gigs and a host of other civic get-togethers; it is also the focal point of any city-wide celebration. Tours of the hall are run in conjunction with the tourist office; the tour route can vary depending on what's going on in the building.
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Philharmonic
This extraordinary bar, designed by the shipwrights who built the Lusitania, is one of the most beautiful bars in all of England. The interior is resplendent with etched and stained glass, wrought iron, mosaics and ceramic tiling - and if you think that's good, just wait until you see inside the marble men's toilets, the only heritage-listed lav in the country.
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St John's Shopping Centre
The largest shopping centre in Liverpool, St John's is smack-bang in the heart of the city. With over 100 shops and a food court, there's no need to see the light of day.
Some might grudge the exaggerated role shopping plays in the cultural life of Liverpool, but there's no arguing with the popularity of this giant complex. Come and see scouser mall-folk at play.
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Monument Square Farmers' Market
Liverpool's peripatetic farmers' market comes to Monument Square twice a month. A great way to get to know what regional producers are coming up with.
As the English food revolution gathers pace, farmers' markets are becoming an increasingly popular way of bringing real food to the urban masses. Cut out the middleman and meet the meat at Liverpool's biggest.
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Quynny's Quisine
Refried beans, plantains, salads and other Caribbean goodies are hearty and genuine at this basement restaurant. Going underground isn't normally ideal for dining, but in this case it just ensures that fewer people crowd the place and there's more room for you. The menu's not encyclopaedic, but then, with West Indian staples done so well, it doesn't need to be.
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