Call them a Scouser or Liverpudlian, whichever you prefer.

You know it's a good trip when you get back sick as a dog. My recent journey to Liverpool is a prime example. Being a long-term, and recently much more serious, fan of the Beatles, I was excited to see the place of their birth. What I found was this English city long-associated with the so-called dregs of society, the working class (gasp!), struck a chord with my perspective. Many European cities can be so overwhelmingly grandiose that the idea of people actually living there is hard to imagine. Now I don't mean that Liverpool didn't have a lot of nice architecture, because it did, for example the interior of Paddy's Wigwam (pictured). In fact the city had just been spruced up in 2008, as Liverpool was chosen that year for the annual European Capital of Culture, which is basically an excuse to spend a bunch of money on city beautification.

But what Liverpool also had plenty of was, reasonably priced pubs (for England); interesting characters wandering around the streets, like this one old Chinese dude we shared a cab with, who had the funniest laugh in the world; and all-night curry and chips stands that were delicious... even if I regretted them the next morning (thus "sick as a dog"). In the end I didn't get to go on any kind of Beatles tour, although I did see a few points of interests, the Cavern Club and whatnot, but I've found that my previous frenetic style of sightseeing (run everywhere and see everything in 2 hours) is of less interest to me these days. My wanderlust is definitely cooling off. But I did have a blast listening to Scouse accents everywhere we went.