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Published: October 10th 2010
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We caught a mid morning service to Chester on 24 April. The station is a bit further out from the city centre, and so we took a taxi to Grosvenor Hotel. The hotel owners at Grosvenor Place weren't there when we arrived. We managed to catch one of the owners while we were looking round the Chester Visitor Centre.
After having a rest, we started exploring the town centre. Chester is famous for continuous Rows with double-tiered arrangement of shops. We enjoyed looking round the medieval buildings. We found the Cathedral and Town Hall, which is used as Tourist Information Centre. We had lunch at the cafe near the Cathedral.
Chester Cathedral
After the lunch, we entered the Chester Cathedral. Standing in England's territory, there was no place hoisting the flag with a red dragon. As a typical English town, St George's flag was hoisted on Chester Cathedral. We started looking round the inside of the Cathedral after paying for the admission fees. There was a beautiful chapel called St Werburgh's Chapel, where the daughter of a Mercian King, Werburgh was born in 650 and renowned for her holy works. We found a beautiful stained glass picture depicting
the nativity of Jesus drawn on the lancet windows. We strolled through the Quire consisting of authentic wooden seats. Each canopy had intricate carvings of religious symbols and a variety of animals. What's more, there were lots of monuments and tombs for local celebrities and people who made history for Chester Cathedral.
Finally, we walked round the Cloister Garden where the monk once studied. There was a romantic sculpture representing "Water of Life", depicting the story of Jesus and the woman of Samaria.
City Wall
We then began walking on the City Wall from Northgate. We walked past the residential houses with gardens, courtyard of Chester Cathedral. Following the City Wall on the clockwise direction, we encountered Eastgate Clock, which is one of the landmarks in Chester. We noted the initials of VR and the year on the Victorian style clock. The clock was erected to commemorate the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria. The ongoing construction between Eastgate and Angel Tower made us stray from the City Wall. We returned to the CIty Wall from the New Wall. There were lines of cherry blossoms flowering in the Roman Garden. We overlooked the peaceful garden and riverside, while
walking along the Groves Park. We came across the downhill path, and it led us to the riverside. The sun kept shining throughout afternoon. We sat down in the tree avenue along the river Dee. After that, we went back to hotel.
We had sumptious English meal at the pub restaurant on 24 April. I had a glass of red wine and beef and ale pie with vegetables. Mark had a gammon steak. We really enjoyed eating decent English meals.
Unfortunately, it seems that continuous big meals coupled with alcoholic drinks during the holiday made my stomach upset. I didn't feel like eating English breakfast in the morning on 25 April. I just had some grapefruits, tea, and orange juice.
We left the hotel around 10am. We walked round the shopping mall via St Michael's Row, and went to the post office. We then browsed through the market behind the Town Hall. The market was bigger than Colwyn's Tuesday Market. We saw scores of stalls selling dairy products, clothes, vegetables, fruits, DVDs, videos, and second hand books, to name just a few.
Riverside Walk
Next, we walked to the riverside. We rambled through the Roman
relics e.g. Roman Garden, Hypocaust, which is the ancient central heating system, amphitheatre, and St John's Church. The remains of Amphitheatre truly convinced us the fact that Chester has been renowned as a Roman City. A number of the Roman and Greek materials and artefacts were discovered at a few years from the CIty wall in the 1960s. We spotted the South East Angle Tower and stage. It is one of the biggest stone-built amphitheatres in Britain, measuring some 110 x 93 yards (110x85m) and accommodating up to 7,000 spectators.
It was cool and drizzling in the morning on 25 April. We therefore carried umbrellas. The breezy and cool climate somewhat helped me heal my stomach upset. My appetite came back. We had lunch at the riverside cafe. We decided to get on a boat trip in the afternoon. The boat was steering in south east direction, and it showed us terraced houses with valley gardens, nature reserve, etc. The terraced houses looked very elegant, and we guessed there must be wealthy people living there
After the boat tour, we walked on the suspention bridge to the opposite bank, and ambled along the riverside. It started raining while
were on the opposite bank, ambled along the riverside.
We crossed over the Old Dee Bridge, and popped in the museum. The exhibition panels contained the history and details of unique features of the Rows, which may well have been dating from the 13th century. As a typical medieval building, ground floor rooms were used for business purposes and the owners lived on the upper floors. The bedrock prevented building the undercrofts below ground, thereby raising the halls. From the 16th century, the upper chambers were enlarged, and supporting posts set into the street.
Grosvenor Museum
Next, we went to Grosvenor Museum. The collection of Grosvenor Museum showed us sound insight of development of the domestic life, history, archaelogical findings, nature, and treasure.
We looked at Georgian Drawing Room, Victorian Entrance Hall, Victorian Parlour, Kitchen, Day Nursery, and Victorian Bedroom. The showrooms contained various types of furniture, music instruments, cooking items, several pieces of porcelain, and waxworks of characters, and thus conveyed us a real picture of the middle and upper class people's life in Victorian era.
The Grosvenor Museum possesses the largest number of Roman tombs, most of which were discovered inside of the Wall and in decent condition. There were many distinctive and vivid tombstones representing their life, e.g. the dead person enjoying a banquet in the after life, junior officer standing and a funeral banquet scene showing a bearded man reclining on a coach. There were also scores of Roman treasures which were used for everyday life and religious purposes e.g. bronze owl, Sumarian bowl, coins, Cupid, medieval leather shoes, medieval jug.
We were a little tired to look round the rest of the collections, but we hope to come back there soon.
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