We haven’t even left the Hard Days Night Hotel, and Alex, my teenage son, is already having the splendid time Liverpool guarantees for all who come to immerse themselves in all things moptop.

That’s Alex. Beatlemania took hold of my son years ago. I had been promising to make this pilgrimage ever since he started speaking in Beatles lyrics, quoting from Beatles interviews, and reciting to me the mysterious words recorded on Beatles songs when you play them backwards. We are calling this his “16th birthday present,” but it is more than that. To afford the trip, we forwent all other vacations for a year.

“We shall scrimp and save,” Alex declared at the time.

I like, not love, the Beatles. I don’t spend hours listening to “Abbey Road” on my iPod or pointing out to friends which Beatle plays which guitar solo on “The End.” I do remember going through my own Fab Four infatuation at 16, back when we had vinyl records that you could actually play backwards. My Beatlemania bit the dust long ago, but this is his birthday, and I’m determined to have a good time.

This had started out as a Beatles tour of London, with Liverpool tacked on as an afterthought, but that didn’t work out as we had planned. Don’t get me wrong: The capital city has plenty of Beatles lore for a dedicated follower of Fab-dom. Alas, many of London’s beloved Beatles sites are buried now under office buildings and big box stores. We saw the places where the studios no longer exist where the Beatles auditioned for record companies that no longer exist in between performances at venues that no longer exist. You cannot just stroll across Abbey Road the way they did on the famous album cover. It’s too busy. We saw a group of Spanish tourists try it for 15 minutes. Each time their friend would aim a camera, a lorry would come barreling at them.

“See how they run,” Alex observed.

Changing the scene saved the trip. Liverpool, a once-declining shipping city, has a revamped city center with a glistening pedestrian zone. It may not always have embraced the band that may have been its greatest export, but the city has changed its mind along with its mien.

Liverpool has renamed its airport after John Lennon. The legendary Beatles venue, The Cavern, which had been paved over and replaced by a parking lot, has been excavated, renovated, and reopened as a living museum with live music. Beatles cafes and clubs have popped up and Beatles tours of various magical and mysterious proportions have proliferated.

“The Beatles are the greatest thing ever to come out of Liverpool,” says Mike Dewey, general manager of the Hard Days Night Hotel, which opened in 2008. “Liverpool is just starting to embrace the Beatles now.”

Dewey, incidentally, acknowledges that he is not a huge fan of Beatles music, though after four years running the hotel he knows all the words. But he is proud of the appointments in his rooms, such as the American walnut bespoke table in the McCartney suite fashioned in the shape of Paul’s guitar. Our room is a lot simpler — George, John, Ringo, and Paul watch from the wall in an illustration based on the “Beatles for Sale” album cover. I’m slightly creeped out by it. Alex stands on one of the beds and poses like a fifth Beatle. We go looking for something to eat downstairs, passing the Beatles story in reverse as we descend.

Blakes restaurant, the eatery attached to the hotel, is dedicated to Sir Peter Blake, the pop artist who designed the “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” album cover. A large illustration on the wall identifies the 60 personages chosen, some whom we recognize (Marlene Dietrich, Johnny Weissmuller); some whom we have never even heard of (Diana Dors, the “British Marilyn Monroe.”)

I fall asleep during the movie we order in our room, the Beatles comedy “A Hard Day’s Night.” So when Alex tells me it’s time for bed, I am wide awake. I decide to explore the town.

“It doesn’t worry me to be alone,” Alex assures me.

I go out walking, and presently discover a bronze statue of Eleanor Rigby, sitting on a park bench of stone, dedicated to “All the Lonely People.”