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Here, There and Everywhere with The Beatles: The Liverpool Museum

This Thursday, December 8, marks the 31st anniversary of the day John Lennon was shot and killed outside his apartment in New York City. While fans of Lennon and The Beatles will come together at Central Park's Strawberry Fields to remember him, we'll spend this week focusing on other places to visit to dip into Beatles history.

Today: Liverpool's "The Beatles Story" Museum.

Love The Beatles' music, but not up on your Beatles history? This is where to come for something like Beatles 101, with a dash of Liverpool's own music past. The museum is divided into two buildings, one with a 4D film and the other with the bulk of the experience, which takes visitors from the start of The Beatles' fame with mock-ups of the clubs they played and the radio stations that played them, clear through to John Lennon's white piano.

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Here, There and Everywhere with The Beatles: The Cavern Club

This Thursday, December 8, marks the 31st anniversary of the day John Lennon was shot and killed outside his apartment in New York City. While fans of Lennon and The Beatles will come together at Central Park's Strawberry Fields to remember him, we'll spend this week focusing on other places to visit to dip into Beatles history.

Today: The Cavern Club in Liverpool.

Just around the corner from the newish Hard Day's Night Hotel in Liverpool sits the old Cavern Club, known better as the home club of The Beatles. It bills itself as "the most famous club in the world," and it pretty much is, since many lookalike clubs have sprung up around the world. The typical nightly crowd is a mix of Brits, older Beatles tourists and younger Contiki-type tour groups and, despite its enduring popularity and major place in music history, tickets to the nearly nightly live performances are nice and cheap, averaging £3 per person.

It's here at the Cavern Club that the members of the Fab Four first played, but with other groups like The Quarrymen and Rory Storm and The Hurricanes, before coming together as The Beatles. As The Beatles. they played the Cavern a staggering 292 times, but Beatlesmania forced them into larger venues and the Cavern went through its own period of weirdness before finally becoming the major tourist magnet it is today.

Naturally, we couldn't do a weekend in Liverpool without crossing the place off our bucket list...

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The UK Gets Two New, Multi-Million Dollar Museums with Free Admission

So you're visiting a new city and whoops—all of a sudden the weather changes and your plans for a walk and an alfresco meal get rained out. What do you do during days like these? Hit the museums, of course! If you're heading to the UK any time soon, there are two newly opened museum that should definitely be on your radar:

· Museum of Liverpool
This is not the sort of building you expect to see in Liverpool, but then you also wouldn't expect 13,234 visitors to have squeezed in there on opening day (July 19), but they did. The huge museum focuses on showing "Liverpool’s unique contribution to the world," including everything from the city's historic starts to its nautical heritage and especially its place in pop culture. Yes, there's Beatles stuff in there, but there's also a Ford Anglia, a totem pole, World War I items and a steam locomotive. And...umm...you can even donate your door for a future artwork. Entry is free!

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Inside the Virgin Trains First Class Lounge at London's Euston Station

Here's a tip straightaway, before we even discuss the Virgin Trains lounge: always buy your Virgin Trains tickets online, in advance, for the cheapest rates. It was this way (with only two days advance booking) that we scored First Class for 30 GBP less than what regular Economy was asking. Our one-way London to Liverpool cost was 34.50 GBP ($56) and it included free WiFi, food and drinks. Crazy? Maybe for Virgin Trains, but we're not complaining.

So now that you know how we managed to get into the Lounge, let's talk a bit about it. First off, you must traverse the crowded mess that Euston Station sometimes becomes, and head up a grimy stairwell before hitting the sliding glass doors of the lounge. Check in at a desk to prove you're holding a First Class ticket, and you're golden.

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In April 2012, All Eyes Will Be Back on the White Star Line's Liverpool Headquarters

In April 2012, legions of Titanic buffs will likely descend on Liverpool, England to remember the centennial anniversary of the ship's tragic sinking. Why? Well, the ship didn't sail from Liverpool on her fatal maiden voyage, but Titanic's owner White Star Line was registered there, earning the ship the "Liverpool" painted on her stern as city of registration.

Additionally, most of the ship's crew was from Liverpool, and the White Star building—called Albion House—was home for the company from 1898 through 1927. Thus, its historical, striped facade is something of a tourist site, which has the capability to turn a bit morbid since, according to Wikipedia, "in 1912, when news of the disaster of the Titanic reached the offices, the officials were too afraid to leave the building, and instead read the names of the deceased from the balcony."

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