(The incredibly charming) Chester, England

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This morning after an early breakfast, we caught a taxi to Dublin Ferry Port for our 8:45am ferry (Irish Ferries) to Holyhead, Wales. The port is about 10 minutes ride from the city center but cost about 16 euro (expensive, like everything else in Ireland). We checked in checked our luggage, and were on our way right on time. The ferry isn’t quite as nice as the Stena Line and it was quite crowded so we had to share a table with another man. They had a currency exchange on board so we exchanged all of our remaining euros for British pounds.

We arrived in Holyhead at 10:45am and took the 11:23am train (Arriva Train Wales) to Bangor, where we had to get off and get our next set of tickets before boarding the next train to Chester.. Our next train left Chester at 12:24pm and the experience was a bit of a nightmare. It was a Virgin train going toward London Euston Station and it was filling up with people (lots of them dirty, muddy kids coming back from the Oxegen Festival in Ireland) faster than we could find a place to store our luggage. We finally made our way to Coach A and set our bags in the empty disabled section because there was nowhere else to put them. We grabbed the first seats we could find, only to discover along the way that two of them were reserved at one of the other stations. We finally got settled into non-reserved seats and then watched a few other people have to get up out of their seats because they were reserved as well. There were so many people on the train that there were people standing and our tickets were never checked because of all the chaos. During all this the two boys next to us were getting drunk the whole trip. Needless to say, we were VERY happy to arrive in Chester and get off the train!

We walked to our hotel (Brookside Hotel) on Brook Lane, dropped off our bags and then walked to the city center. Chester is such a cute town, full of cobbled streets, shops, pubs, and lots of charm. We went first to Chester Cathedral (5.50 pounds for adult admission) and walked around on a self-guided tour. It is huge (!) and worth a look. There’s a lovely little courtyard inside with a fountain and benches to rest up before walking around the shops.

After the cathedral we wandered through the main streets (full of shops, including an indoor shopping center) and then walked over to the Roman Amphitheater. Chester was one of the great military bases in Roman England, and the amphitheatre is believed to have been the largest wooden amphitheatre in the Roman Empire outside of Rome (for its time)..

We then walked over to the River Dee (about a block away) and over to one of the staircases leading up to the Roman Walls that circle the city. You can climb up to the top and walk the walls all the way around, which offers great views of the entire city. The walls have several staircases along the way so you can go up and down at all the major locations. They are doing construction on one section of the walls, so we were forced to walk down through the shopping center and back onto Eastgate.

We made our way over to Northgate and stopped at the Red Lion pub for dinner. It was SO CHEAP compared to Ireland!!! Three meals (I had the Vegetarian Plougman’s plate, full of cheese, bread, chutney and salad) plus 3 pints of Carling, came to less than 15 pounds. Pubs really are the best places to eat in the UK (and the food is good!). While we were eating it started pouring down rain outside (did it follow us from Ireland?) but fortunately it had stopped by the time we left. We walked back through the town and walked along the Roman Walls back to Northgate Street and down Liverpool Road to our hotel, stopping at a shop for drinks and snacks along the way.

We loved Chester. It is definitely worth a visit if you’re in the area. Tomorrow we are going to Cardiff, Wales!

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