We decided to visit Chester, a nearby town that was a major Roman fort just before Rome pulled out of England. Fred and Lynn gave us a ride to the train station (just down the street) and we took the train into central Liverpool and then switched to the Wirral line to get there. We didn’t realise that different trains ran on the same track and a very friendly lady stopped us from getting on the wrong train and showed us the sign that told what train was coming next. Everyone we encountered was super-friendly and I just adore their accents! So, after an hour or so we arrived in Chester. We walked to the town and easily found the main shopping street. The town still has the Roman walls built around it, which were kept up and improved over the years. The really cool thing is that one can actually walk along the walls all the way around the old town, so we walked along most of it. As soon as we got onto the wall we encountered a used bookstore (with an entrance on the wall – how cool is that??) and I bought a used book and Dan found some old sheet music. He bought Y Gwanwyn, one of the most well known Welsh songs. We continued along the Northeast wall until we came in behind the Cathedral and were tempted to visit, but there was an organ recital going on so we couldn’t have looked around too much and decided to keep going. We came down to the site of the Roman Ampitheatre, which was being excavated by students from the University of Liverpool. They had erected a fence to keep people off the dig site of course. People doing archeological digs always look exhasuted and dirty and this group was no exception. I felt like I was at the zoo where with a cage full of students and a sign that said “do not feed the students”. Anyway, the ampitheatre was really interesting since it had been built and abandoned only 80 years later, and seemed to be very well preseved. Then we walked to the river Dee and relaxed there for a bit. There was a flock of pigeons trlying around the river that were flying in formation and looping around all over the place, as if they wanted to put on a show for us. It reminded me of Manfred in Accelerando. We walked back to the train station, took the train home, and had supper (Lynn prepared a stew for us).
We went to visit another one of my aunts who was married to my uncle Tom (sadly, he passed away of abdominal cancer shortly after they got married). She served us tea and snacks and we had a very nice evening chatting with her. She was a very friendly person and I am glad I finally met her!
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