If you didn’t know what was going on, it would look very strange indeed. A big group of people who’ve just arrived from the other side of the world are gathered round an ordinary looking gate. They’re all taking pictures of it. Some of them are posing in front of it. Others leave little tokens: flowers, postcards. There’s only one word for it really: pilgrimage.

The visitors have come to look at the gate in a street in Liverpool because it’s the entrance to Strawberry Field, the garden and former children’s home that fascinated John Lennon when he was growing up nearby in the 1940s and 50s. Famously, the place later inspired one of the Beatles’ most dreamy songs: Let me take you down, 'cause I'm going to strawberry fields. You’ll know what it sounds like.

The visitors from America who’ve come here are mostly in their 50s and 60s; no doubt they heard the song when they were young in Pennsylvania and Washington and New York and young love for music is the kind that makes you do things like this: cross the Atlantic to look at a wrought-iron gate that Lennon looked at 70 years ago. If you’ve ever fallen for a band, you’ll know why people do it.

The gates themselves, beautiful in deep, blistered scarlet, are now in a corner of the garden, basically for their own protection; God knows what they might be worth nowadays but don’t even think about it because there’s a camera trained on them 24/7. Inside the little museum, there’s also the piano that Lennon wrote Imagine on. It’s on loan from the estate of George Michael, who paid £1.4m for it in 2000. Imagine: £1.4m.

The museum itself, which is owned by the Salvation Army, is charming and unpretentious and the best bit, really, is wandering round the small garden past the gates and back up to the wonderful café and tea room. Everything in Liverpool, like everything in Glasgow where I’ve just come from, is served with chips and that’s the way I like it. And, Beatle fan or no Beatle fan, you’ve got to do the gift shop afterwards.

We’ve come up to Strawberry Field today from the Albert Docks where we’re staying in a superb little hotel called Staybridge Suites. Actually, hotel isn’t quite the right word if you’re staying in one of the suites because the room has a dinky little kitchen equipped with everything you’ll need (including bottle opener thank goodness). But breakfast is included as well so you can do be as hotely or non-hotely as you like (they also have regular one-bed rooms). Another asset is that the staff live up to the wonderful cliché of Liverpudlian friendliness – they stand and chat and have a laugh and they even put up a little welcome notice in reception for our dog Molly (they have pet-friendly rooms).

The other great bonus of Staybridge is that it’s smack in the middle of the docks, which in some cities might be a problem but not here. Famously, the Liverpool docks got a makeover in the 80s but it’s far from being a yuppy-colony: the bars and cafes and shops buzz all day and night with locals and visitors. We sit round the edge of the harbour drinking half-price cocktails and enjoy the afternoon becoming evening.

Later, when we start to get hungry, we walk the ten minutes or so to Down the Hatch, a comfy, cushioned bunker of an eatery with a stupendous selection of vegan and veggie burgers (with chips naturally). For dinner the next day, our natural Scottish love of chipped potatoes satisfied for now, we head to the indoor/outdoor Baltic Market food court on Stanhope Street. It’s a part of town you wouldn’t have walked through 30 years ago but now it’s a loud, colourful and welcoming place to chill out and eat and drink. I reckon that whatever genre of food you’re in the mood for, there’ll be a stall to cater for it. Our choice: pizzas as big as wagon wheels.

The following day, having visited the gates at Strawberry Field, another Liverpool icon is calling. It’s just a few minutes’ walk from the hotel and, in a way, the whole city seems to centre on it, or rotate around it. There it is: a huge chunk of a building made from granite (a lot of which was from Aberdeen incidentally) and topped, famously, by two copper birds of indeterminate species. One’s called Bella, the other’s called Bertie.

The great pleasure of visiting the Liver Building is that you can get up close to the birds. The guide takes you up in the lift, then the higgledy-piggledy stairs, then right into the clocktower where there’s an immersive film show that takes you super-quick through the building’s history. Then it’s up again and out on to the roof. Above are Bertie’s claws gripping the granite, over there is the centre of the city crowned magnificently by the super-modern Metropolitan Cathedral, and over there is the Mersey with the story of industrial and commercial Liverpool banked on either side. This is always the best way to experience a city: head there and then head to the top as soon as you can.

To end the day, we drive across the city to see the Metropolitan Cathedral up close and it’s as remarkable as people told me it was. The great concrete stanchions rising to its layered top with towers of steel give it the impression of a module crouching on an alien planet. Inside, it does its best to convert the sceptical, the agnostics and even the atheists – I wouldn’t be surprised if it regularly succeeds. It’s a remarkable building that belies the idea that 60s concrete always means brutalist.

Last stop is Sefton Park, one of the great pockets of green in the red, russet and brown and the combination of city and country reminds me so much of Glasgow for obvious reasons really: the two cities were born and grew up in the same way, products of Empire. They’ve also both suffered from industrial decline and have both found interesting, curious and wonderful ways to recover. We head back down to Albert Docks and follow the string of lights round the edge of the water. We stop at one of the bars. The soundtrack is the water. The backdrop is a row of steel pillars holding red brick. The mood is very relaxed. We order some drinks. This’ll do.

Travel facts:

Staybridge Suites Liverpool has 132 rooms (32 one-bedroom apartments and 100 Studio Suites). Room are available from £89 including breakfast. For more information, visit ihg.com/staybridge/hotels/gb/en/liverpool/lplkw/hoteldetail

The Turner Prize is at Tate Liverpool at the Albert Docks until March 19, 2023. Visit tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-liverpool/turner-prize-2022