Photo: Liverpool Museum. Courtesy of National Museums Liverpool

Quin Parker is one of four writers shortlisted for the Museums and Galleries Month/24 Hour Museum travel writing prize, sponsored by Eurostar. The winner will be announced on Thursday May 27 on this website.

I’d never visited Liverpool before, but as a snobbish Londoner I already knew about it. The Beatles, Cilla Black and Brookside are what the city has given to the world. In exchange for these, the residents take people’s hubcaps. But I wasn’t prepared for having my preconceptions removed too - particularly when I visited the amazing city museum.

It’s divided into three floors; space exploration, natural history and Egyptology, plus a top-floor café with a stunning view across the city centre. But the highlight of the museum is undoubtedly the Natural History Centre.

Situated in its temporary home on the second floor of the building, the Natural History Centre looks more like a library than a typical exhibition room. Wooden cabinets line the walls; there are shiny glass exhibits and plenty of shelves full of books. But the main difference between the centre and a library is the noise level. The room is full of the excited squeals and chatter of children.

Photo: A black rat on display in the Natural History Centre at Liverpool Museum. Courtesy of National Museums Liverpool

Liverpool Museum has opened a couple of exhibits in time for Museum and Galleries Month. Pride of place in the Natural History Centre are the Animal Invaders, which display all the creatures you would normally think of as British that actually aren’t native to the UK. For instance, collared doves were first bred in Norfolk in 1955. Everybody knows that grey squirrels are from the US, but rats aren’t native to these shores either. Neither, amazingly, are rabbits; they appeared around the time of William II.

It’s outside this cabinet where I meet Dave Roberts, who works as a palaeontologist. He immediately takes me over to another new exhibit, the Mystery Object Cabinet. Dave points at a couple of brown, spherical objects. "What do you reckon those are?"

"Errmn. They look a bit like wooden apples."

He hands me the answer sheet. I turn it over and it reads: 'Fossilised Asian Elephant Eyeballs.' I back away.

Photo: The Mystery Object Cabinet in the Natural History Centre at Liverpool Museum. Courtesy of National Museums Liverpool

"Do you see that?" Dave says, pointing to a large object that looks like a spherical brain. "That’s an ancient hairball, found in a horse’s stomach. Horses can’t cough up hairballs; you have to operate on them to remove them. And those are squid beaks," he says, pointing at something that looks like burnt fingernails.

That’s not all, though – there are disgusting things that are alive here as well. Dave takes me to a glass box on the other side of the room. "We’ve also got a tarantula," he says. "It’s special, because it’s salmon-pink. Unfortunately, it’s nocturnal and it’s asleep in the back of the box right now. It doesn’t come out during the day." Oops.

Right next to the tarantula, there’s a wicker basket. The sign on the lid reads: 'Dare you open this box to see the most dangerous animal in the world? Be careful… it’s alive!' With some trepidation, I lift the lid. It’s an old gag - I knew there would be a mirror inside. But I was still pretty wary; after all, one day I might open a box only to be savaged by say, a lesser-spotted flying alligator.

And still the children are bustling around. One small girl pulls out one of the many drawers of fossils and dead bugs, sees a display of calcified larvae lined up in rows, and says the longest 'Ewwwwwwwww' I’ve ever heard in my life. A boy is gaping at the antennae of a ladybird on a TV microscope. If there’s any better way to get kids interested in biology, I don’t know of it.

Photo: A whale dropping on show in the Natural History Centre at Liverpool Museum. Courtesy of National Museums Liverpool

Liverpool Museum is undergoing a great deal of renovation work at the moment; although you wouldn’t notice just from walking around inside. The new museum will have space for a whopping 30,000 extra exhibits, as well as an aquarium and special children’s activity centre.

The Natural History Centre has plans to be even more interactive. The aforementioned tarantula is the harbinger of the new Bug House, part of the Exploration Zone due to open in 2005. Not only will children be able to look at creepies under the microscope, but there may even be live insects, bugs and butterflies fluttering and creeping around the room. I’m sure that children are going to relish the prospect of this - perhaps adults might take some convincing.

Liverpool, too, is being rebuilt. After it was voted European City of Culture 2008, EU funding and money from the Heritage Lottery Fund began pouring into the city. Squares are being rebuilt. Scaffolding hangs across the city. There’s an air of excitement, of expectation, and the place no longer feels forgotten and maligned. All of this makes the faded, washed-out adverts telling people to vote for the UK Independence Party look slightly absurd.

Photo: Natural History Centre at Liverpool Museum. Courtesy of National Museums Liverpool

Later, I’m down in the Cavern Club. (And when I say 'down', I mean that it’s so far underground that you could probably survive a nuclear winter there, and then visit all the cockroaches in the Natural History Centre that would have made it through too.) I tell the friend whom I’m visiting for the weekend about what I’ve seen.

"My granddad used to take me to Liverpool Museum when I was small. It was great," he said. "But I went back for the first time a couple of months ago and saw all these little kids with their granddads. It really took me back… I’ve visited the city centre so much more in the past few months. I’ve connected with it again." It’s heartwarming to hear that even Liverpool’s own residents are now rediscovering the city.

Of course, you can’t visit a place like Liverpool without taking home some souvenirs. When I return to London, I unpack a Yellow Submarine paperweight, a t-shirt with a picture of Taro Chiezo’s surreal dockside sculpture The Super Lamb Banana, and a couple of postcards.

Unfortunately, my 'authentic' John Lennon sunglasses are in smithereens (squashed by an overcrowded Virgin train luggage rack) but I’m surprised to find a curious red spider crawling all over them. Thank you, Liverpool, for making me like spiders.