Manchester, Liverpool & Chester

Hi, I just wrote this answer on a person’s post asking about Chester vs. Liverpool. I haven’t been to Manchester although I worked with some guys from that city.

“Hi, without knowing the rest of your itinerary, we stayed one night in Chester, and we really enjoyed it. We were coming by car from Conwy, Wales where we stayed for a couple of days to enjoy the castle fortresses in the area, my husband played golf, and I absolutely loved the Bodnant Gardens. If any of that interests you, it’s just a train ride from Chester.
Look up the photos of the medieval downtown of Chester. A very pretty & historical area, and the Town Crier at noon is very entertaining! The cathedral is also gorgeous! My husband played golf at nearby Wallesey.

We considered staying at Liverpool since it’s about equal distance from Wallesey. I would have taken a Beatles tour; otherwise, I preferred the Chester setting.”

Liverpool has a fascinating National Trust tour of Beatles homes. It's quite an interesting look at life during the 1950s when the Fab Four were lads.

I've spent time in all three cities with the most time in Manchester.

Here's my suggestion. Research what you might want to see in each city. Stay in the one with the most things you want to do and take day trips to the others by train. The train times between each city average anywhere between 45 minutes and about 1:15. And there are plenty of trains.

This way you don't have to moving hotels every day or two.

I live slap bang in between these three cities and visit them regularly.
Manchester and Liverpool are big cities, whereas Chester is a lot smaller, more of a town size.
Liverpool has great museums, a historic waterfront, restaurants, shopping, theatres, two massive cathedrals, football, a very vibrant feel with street entertainers.
Manchester is more of a working city and a bit grittier, but very affluent in parts. Plenty to see in the way of museums, football, restaurants and historic buildings but more spread out. Plenty of shops.
As with most places, you will see a few unsavoury characters around the places, but they keep themselves to themselves and all three places are perfectly safe.
Chester is completely different. It's an ancient Roman city, quite small, with walls to walk around, a riverside setting with boating trips, top class restaurants, very nice centre to walk around. It also has the best zoo in the country IMO.
All three places are linked by trains.
Unless you prefer a big city vibe, I would stay in Chester and have day trips to the other places.

What attracts you to these three places? Have you identified a list of things you want to see and do in each? If you do this, it will help allocate how much time to allow for each. Not knowing what your priorites are, we can't do this.

I did a very similar trip to this area in December. Briwire's summaries of the character of these cities, as a local, were spot-on with my impressions as a visitor. I liked all three. I did find it worthwhile to split my accommodations, with 2 nights in Manchester to start, then 3 in Liverpool (with a day trip to Chester, which is easily done by suburban train, about 50 minutes each way). That turned out to be a good allocation. I have a strong interest in history and love museums so that was my focus (especially in December). I do not have a strong interest in either English football (Manchester) or the Beatles (Liverpool) so those tours and sites were not on my itinerary. Here is what I saw (using the RS star system to grade them per my impressions):
Manchester: People's Museum, art gallery*, Imperial War Museum North, Ryland Library, cathedral*.
Liverpool: Maritime Museum, Museum of Liverpool, Western Approaches HQ museum **, Walker art gallery (would likely have been higher but part of it was closed for renovation)
Chester: walk around walls, Grosvenor Museum, Cheshire military museum, cathedral **, overall beauty of town*
One thing to consider if you're basing in one and day tripping to others, is access to your transportation. In both Manchester and Liverpool I found good lodging in a lively area within very easy walking distance both of train station, and to the other attractions (other than IWM North, for which you need to take a tram): The Leven Hotel in Manchester, and a Premier Inn a stone's throw from Lime Street Station, in Liverpool. In Chester, the area around the train station is unappealing (not in a dangerous way, just in a blah way) and it is at least a 20 minute walk or local bus to the center city which is where you will want to be.

Not quite sure why my reply above ended up formatted that way, what I meant by the grading was:
One star: Grosvenor Museum (Chester), Manchester cathedral, Walker Art Gallery (Liverpool), Manchester art gallery
Two stars: People's Museum (Manchester), Chester cathedral, Cheshire military museum (Chester)
Three stars: Maritime Museum (Liverpool), Museum of Liverpool, Chester walls, overall beauty of Chester, IWM North (Manchester), Ryland Library (Manchester), Western Approaches HQ Museum (Liverpool)

One major attraction I normally would have visited is the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry, but my pre-trip research showed that while it was open, it was undergoing such extensive renovation and gallery closures that it was not apparently worthwhile at that time.

Not quite sure why my reply above ended up formatted that way.

Because the forum uses Markdown, which is a system for formatting posts. Asterisks are used to make characters bold, so if you try to use an asterisk for anything else, it won't work unless you format it to ignore the code by inserting backslashes before the asterisk. That way you can get it to come out like this: *asterisks*

Thank you Mardee, lesson learned!

Regarding the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester, it has been undergoing renovation for a few years now. The air and space gallery is now empty and won't be reopening. The steam hall is due to open this year. That leaves the main building which houses hands on experiments aimed at children, and the cotton hall with its looms.
I went a few weeks ago with my Grandkids, and they were happy with the experiments for an hours or so.
Once the steam hall opens it will once again have steam trains and working engines. I was told that they are expecting it to be finished in August.

We were in a tourist T1 in Chester, talking about our recent visit of Liverpool. He asked how we liked it and we told him it was fabulous. The vibe had a big party feeling and our only issue is we had more trouble there understanding people's accents. He said no worry, everyone in the UK has trouble understanding them.

By the way in Chester there is a Premier Inn just up the street from the Railway Station. There are buses into the city literally every few minutes, or from the PI it is a nice walk along the canal, into the City Centre.

A tip for the bus- buy a Chester Plus Bus ticket with your train ticket for well reduced bus travel anywhere in Chester for the day.

I've been to all those cities and agree there's much to enjoy in the area, perhaps starting simply with the architecture. I want to add the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool to the list of worthwhile sights.

As Jean's post suggests, an advantage of basing in Chester is that it would allow a side trip to northern Wales. I, too, loved Bodnant Gardens. It's a bit time-consuming to reach if you don't have a car, though.

Whilst Bodnant Gardens is lovely it’s a long way and will take one of the 4 days you have. If you particularly want to see a garden the RHS have the relatively new Bridgewater gardens on the weste4n edge of Manchester which would be a lot easier to access.