Liverpool - it's a grower

I've been to Liverpool many times now over the years. But in the past 6 weeks I've ended up there on three separate occasions, doing three different things, and I'm beginning to see how much of it I've missed in all the years until now.

The Liverpudlians I know are very attached to their dear city but I'd never really "got" it before. It was just another city, wasn't it? But no. Liverpool has revealed itself to me as a world unto itself - which is somehow unsurprising but also satisfying to know.

Lime Street Station has generally been my entry point and even the station has developed in my years there. I remember going down to the docks the first time I visited but the development down there has just continued - I was slightly underwhelmed by a trip to the Tate on visit-before-this-one (mainly because I was expecting to see an Alice in Wonderland exhibition that had finished before visit-before-that-one and yet had still been being advertised) but my visit to the new Museum of Liverpool this weekend was brilliant. The waterfront is a wonderful open space and the Museum building a fascinating one, but the exhibits were also, in my mind at least, first rate. I started at the top of the building and worked down and found out many fascinating facts - including the fact that the only part of the Catholic Cathedral in the city that adheres to the original design (which, if it had continued to be followed, would not have been completed until 2133) is the crypt. And that there used to be an overhead railway along the docks. And some shocking statistics around poverty and employment. But it was also a museum I could imagine bringing several generations of a family to and everyone having a good time - plenty to look at, listen to, read, absorb, ponder...brilliant.

So, that's the docks. Well, part of them. The city centre seems to have refreshed itself and although I must confess I'm not a fan of shopping for shopping's sake, it seems to be thriving and is a pleasant place to be. They've changed the recipe for Crunch in The Egg (a vegan / vegetarian cafe at the top of a building just on the outskirts of the centre itself which has been a favourite Liverpool haunt of mine for years) but these things happen. I also picked up a fascinating bit of science/history in a central charity shop before jumping on a train home.

And one of the elements which fascinates me most about Liverpool are its empty buildings. Barely minutes walk from the new shiny hotels and apartment blocks (and in some cases literally across the road from) are buildings of old, empty and in various states of disrepair. Many are the kind of building I simply fall in love with - I can't describe what it is but the buildings somehow hold so much history, so many lives and so much history - but in an understated, "just another building in the city" kind of way. Two stand out in particular.

The White Star Offices: on the corner of James Street, immediately behind the three well known buildings (including the Liver Building) right on the front, is an old brick building (thanks to the photographer, callicrates2003 - the joy of the internet!) which now has some broken windows and clearly needs a lot of love. But it's right there. It's got masses of character and it's empty. Just empty.

Coleman's Fireproof Depository, Toxteth: any building which has branding or advertisements of old always doing it for me - Coleman's is no exception. As I walked past this weekend it was advertising itself for sale ("good income (masts)") but again, completely empty. The granite surround for the old doorway to the offices, it's stone carved letters beginning to fade through erosion, speaking of very different days.

Empty buildings always fascinate me. But what they draw out to me about Liverpool is the great disparity in places of living and working which are so close together. Minutes walk, if not back to back (there's another building, now I think of it, right next to the entrance to China Town - tall and proud and completely empty), buildings are thriving or rotting side by side. I can't fathom it.

And alongside the city itself, there are trains running every day, several times an hour, which take you out to the Wirral, to open beaches and beautiful countryside, to Moreton (which I kept thinking the announcer was  saying was Morecambe and I was getting mightily confused), to Hoylake and to West Kirby. Let alone the other locations I didn't explore today.

The Liverpool I've discovered over these three weekends, culminating this weekend in it coalescing in my mind and my understanding, truly is a world of its own. And a fascinating one with many possibilities, at that.