Chester, Day One

Today was our first day in Chester. Our plane touched down around 8:15, and after a long line at customs and an hour car ride to the city, we finally made it. I was really surprised with how well I was surviving on one hour of sleep. We decided to take a nap anyway though after we arrived at our hotel. We scarfed down a quick breakfast at the hotel restaurant and then slept for two and a half hours. Let me tell you, your body will not like you when it thinks it needs to sleep for eight hours and you can only give it a small fraction of that time. I was quite bleary-eyed for a good four hours after we woke up. Our sleep was nice and uninterrupted though, thank goodness. We were concerned that the maid might wake us, so we made sure that didn't happen.

My dad was finished working around 2:30, an hour after we woke up from our nap, and headed out with us for some afternoon tea. Just a heads up, clotted cream is delicious. We need to have that back in the states.

Dad was too manly for our tea and scones though, so he had a sandwich instead.

 The restaurant we had tea in was really neat. There were signs up everywhere talking about the history of it. Apparently it used to be some sort of underground bunker. In the same historical mindset, we decided to take a walk around the old Chester wall, which was built in the 1700s. It is about two miles in circumference. Yay for exercise. There were lots of great photo ops along the way.

Dad and I in front of the wall

Mom and I on the wall, right underneath the clock tower in the previous picture.

Dad and I in front of the old Chester castle which is now part of the University of Chester.

The watchtower door. Anyone home?

Once we finished our walk, we headed back to the hotel to get ready for dinner. My mom wanted to take a photo of the flower arrangement she received from my dad's company for her birthday/Mother's Day, so I decided to give her a hand.

If this looks odd to you, its because my mom wanted a solid color backdrop for her flowers and this was the only place in the room that had one. Seeing as there was no table over there, I became the table. I thought I did a really great job.

Then we got cleaned up and headed out downstairs to the hotel restaurant to meet up with Dad's coworkers for dinner. We had a difficult time finding a place to eat, since the horse race track here is having its opening weekend. All of the restaurants were packed, and we were even turned away from a few places because we were too "casual" to eat there, even though they usually let people in who wear jeans. So we wandered to a pub and sampled some cask beer (please note: the drinking age in England is 18 so I am legal here), which was definitely interesting considering it is more room temperature than actually cold. Finally, we went to a restaurant called Duttons where I had some scotch eggs, steak fritz (which I was informed would be "quite rare" and it was actually well done, if I do say so myself), and some toffee pudding for dessert. All in all, a great first day. We hit the hay early since we were only running on a few hours of sleep, and despite the metal springs that pushed into my back in my pullout bed, I have never fallen asleep faster.

Photo creds to Brian Geitner. At the hotel restaurant.