"That thing in the corner bugs me. Don't know what it is... It's up there, though." -Chester
Having wrested control of this post away from Angie, as she is asleepy, I will now convey to you the details of our arduous journey to and from the city of Chester.
Like most days, it began with an auspicious breakfast of toast and beans. The traditional British foodstuffs of yogurt and Coco Puffs were also present. After the pretty standard getting ready routine, we boarded a train across the English countryside to the River Dee. Transport For Wales has much nicer trains than the Northern Line, that's for damn sure. Very comfy, all facing the correct direction, almost £3 cheaper than the standard Northern Line train going to the same place.
We walked the lonely road from the station into the town and visited Grosvenor Park. Now I, being an uneducated American, assumed this was some Cheeky British Spelluing of Governor. But no! This is someone's last name, apparently? It was a nice park, full of lovely walking and semi-lovely wood pigeons. Angie will insert some photos... now!
[Angie here! Apparently Jeff forgot all about the church St John the Baptist in which we were blessed with the best souvenir yet at their tiny, used book sale! I'm sure miracles like this happen all the time as it is the oldest church in Chester, built in 689 AD! It's right outside the Roman amphitheater and might have been built as an apology to the hundreds of Christians the Romans slaughtered there once Christianity was the official religion again (so theorizes our ghost tour guide). Anyway, here's that miraculous book. It cracked us up to find this among the small, parish book sale with a bunch of religious books!]
A walk to the Walled City and Cathedral followed, with some ambling and shopping and donuts and Christendom.
Chester Cathedral is bananas-huge, full of many artefacts and several artifacts. There was a Lego version of the cathedral within the cathedral, which I can only assume contained an even smaller micro-blocks version.
Per several r/UKtravel posts, we tried out Dinky Donuts (pronounced like you're talking about a very small thing, with a bit of rising action on the IN part) [No no, pronounced like Conner4Real]. It was lovely. Exactly what you imagine when someone says they have fresh made donuts. Ten stars.
Some more walking followed, [I, Angie, hobbled up some steps to see one of the sections of the wall while Jeff stayed safely below. If I was more mobile that day I would have loved to walk the town. The views were gorgeous!]while we killed time until the Chester Ghost Tour. Fear not, fair Sifl and Olly fans. It was not the ghost of Chester (or Precious Roy, despite my best efforts), but ghosts from the City of Chester.
Angie did her absolute best to keep her commentary to herself, but even her implacable façade can only withstand so much Conjecture and Hearsay. Look, Chester Ghost Tours, if you're using third-party information about second hand stories, at least add some details to make those *interesting*. You could learn a thing or two from the guy who runs Miamitowne Ghost Adventures back home. When he finds a boring ghost story, he just keeps adding fabricated details until it's at least semi-interesting.
[Our guide, Michael Bird, is a professor of history at the University of Chester, and he told his ghostly stories of conjecture like Giles from Buffy in a low, accented, calm, storytelling voice. While the stories themselves weren't scary, I enjoyed the actual history bits of the tour, and he even sang us a ballad about the Chester castle, so that was cool. But I booked this tour so that it would be more about history than theatrics. But a very tame tour, for sure. I just wish I had brought something warmer and that my stupid ankle wasn't in so much pain, but all that's on me.]
There was a bit of a kerfuffle with the train home that I won't bore you with, but we ended up getting back to the hotel at nearly 1 AM local time. It was... a lot. [The kerfuffle being that the current state of the trains is a lot of cancellations and delays and (thankfully not while we were here) strikes that makes train times not as often and harder to buy tickets ahead of time.]
That's what I've got. Angie is currently icing her ankle, so I will pass the keyboard over to her to bring this home.
Angie! Drop a train on 'em.
[This is Angie, if you haven't figured it out by now, I have been writing all the comments in these little brackets here, so you will find I have peppered my commentary throughout the post and added links and pictures as engaging flourish! Here's to hoping I can hobble my way through York today because we get to do a chocolate tour! I will hobble anywhere for chocolate.]
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