Day 9: Chester Troubles

(First of all, since I'm doing a bunch of posts more or less at once and it puts the most recent at the top, reading the previous ones first will probably help in understanding why I'm in some place called Chester in the middle of the night).

When you're paranoid about missing your stop on a bus, sleep becomes incredibly hard. I slept for maybe an hour off and on, but by the time we finally go to Chester I was feeling pretty sore and tired. I then got off the bus in the pitch black of night, weighed down by my backpack and satchel, into the very cold, windy drizzle of Chester, having no idea where I was in town or where to go. I hadn't slept significantly since 4:30am the previous morning, and after wandering around the nearby streets of the bus dropoff the weight of my bags started to feel pretty heavy. I eventually found the local train station, and I knew roughly where my hotel was from there, so I found it pretty fast. Check-in time wasn't until 2pm though, so I wandered back to the train station (which was open-air and still very cold, but at least had cover from the rain) and huddled there spacing out and listening to my ipod for a couple hours until 7am or so, when things started to open. I went back to the hotel, and they were gracious enough to let me stash my bags there until I checked in later. Since I had a good deal of time and didn't really have much of a plan I just started walking. Despite my exhaustion and soreness the town is a very neat place. Most of the buildings around the city center have an old, charming look, and there are lots of cobblestone alleys and old city walls and bridges. There are lots of shops and restaurants very close by and it really is a nice mix of modern convenience and old history. I bought a word puzzle book in one of the shops and found a neat little alcove in the Cathedral's garden that had shelter from the rain and did some puzzles until I got too cold, then wandered some more until I found a library which I hung out in until I could check into my hotel. I finally got my hotel room with much relief only to discover I had lost the charger for my tablet at this point. The part I was most worried about was the USB to tablet charger since I wasn't even sure if UK had compatible models. Luckily they do, and I bought the charger, as well as an global socket converter thing (amusingly even when I return to Canada I'm going to have to have to use one to convert our sockets to the UK plug the charger has). Now I plan to get a good night's sleep, do some laundry in the morning and hopefully have a quiet, uneventful day tomorrow. I have 3 nights here (considerably more expensive then the hostel was, but it's only for 3 nights and the extra comfort and privacy is much appreciated right now) and then I'm debating if I should dip into Wales, go to York, or move on directly to Edinburgh.

Here are some pictures from the day. Since it was just wandering around I was playing with my camera more and trying to find interesting pictures instead of just snapping photos of buildings and monuments like in London.

This is one of the main streets in the commercial area. This was around 7 or 8am so it's still pretty quiet. It picked up a lot later in the day.

Fishermen: The only other people crazy enough to be out and about in the cold drizzle so early in the morning.

The Cathedral through nearby cherry blossoms. I have normal pictures of the Cathedral I'll put up tomorrow, I just find this one a bit more interesting.

A typical restaurant/shop in the city center, just to give an idea of the architecture and style

Anyway, that catches everything back up to date. Should be a bit less drama for the next couple days at least!