Chester

The Oddfellows is a whimsical hotel.  Our room has a bath tub in the middle of the bedroom. There is a beautiful courtyard with personal fireplaces, bizarre decorations, and a marvelous tree fountain. There is a business dining room with an Alice in Wonderland tea party hanging from the ceiling. The décor and design is quite well done.  It manages to maintain the classical nature of the property while updating it to be attractive to the 20-30 crowd.

 

This is a beautiful and classically British city.

 

Outside of the walls, there is a canal with locks on one side, a huge horse racing facility on the other side, the River Dee is on the third side and the fourth side opens to the rest of the city and also contains the ruins of the Roman occupation including an amphitheater and Roman baths.

 

 

 

The wall walk is about 2 miles and would be completely continuous if not for the magnificent city clock that adorns one gate. Walking is restricted in that section of the wall as it would bugger up the pictures of the second most photographed clock in England.

Chester Cathedral looks like a relatively small church. Once inside the place is found to be massive and ornate.

We enjoy apricot cider, two different beer selections, two glasses of wine and the burger of the day in a central city pub.  All of the beverages were a half pint or less making some of you relieved and others far less impressed.

Carol deals with the rental car insurance claim while CJ climbs the 216 spiral steps of the cathedral bell tower for a view from the highest point in the city. The climb is interesting; the view of roofs not so much.

 

 

The road service people remove the mirror from the car to prevent further damage.

We dine in the library room of a quaint local favorite, The Architect. It's a lovely restaurant broken into a number of rooms.  It has great terraces overlooking the racecourse. In order to get to the puddings (deserts), we forego the main courses and dine on starters, deserts, and wine. Good food, great setting, paper napkins.



 

 

The Albion Bar came highly recommended by the locals for its World War I homage and a classic hangout of locals. For us it came as a disappointment since its reputation was hampered by the main room closed for a private meeting of local protesters, it's limited beer selection and lack of partying locals.

 

The long day was finished off with a cocktail at our hotel bar compliments of our booking agent.