Chester

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On Saturday I visited the town of Chester. It's a very charming town with (like many charming English towns) a long interesting history dating decidedly back to Roman times. They had built a wall around the town, many buildings, an arena, and lots of columns (as was their custom.) The Normans made their contribution with the Chester Cathedral which is absolutely beautiful and huge. In the Tudor period they build plenty of those "black and white" buildings. Many were rebuilt during the Victorian era, because they looked quaint. Also, a great covered shopping area was perfected over time now called the Chester "rows" Basically, the 1st floor of buildings has a covered area on the facade that allows shoppers to wander around in dry comfort.

We had a nice tour in the morning, then in the afternoon, I convinced some people to nerd it up with me in the local museum. It was really nice for a small town museum, and I'm feeling a theme of such places, that they'll have everything from locally excavated roman artifacts to collections of butterfly specimens. Which really is a great and sort of vexing variety. This particular museum also had a reproduction Victorian home, which reminded me of childhood vacations.
Afterwards, we lost a few less nerdy people, and headed to the cathedral. All of my excursions with the school begin like a bad joke. "Four women from Germany, France, America, and China walked into a cathedral...."
It is very nice and worth the admission fee. It is said that a Roman temple stood on the same site, but the current building dates back to the 11th century, has a ton of history, and was happily spared from destruction by Henry VIII (who had a penchant for destroying churches he didn't like.)
When we'd had our fill of the grand atmosphere and the practicing church choir, we headed back to waste the rest of our time in the shopping district.
We walked through the main shopping area and in one store I saw a box of American cereal for sale for £8. It was not an especially large box. And until yesterday I didn't realize importance and cultural significance of this cereal. The cereal was Lucky Charms, and it was in a candy store. I am missing my calling to import US goods. Really, an $12 box of cereal?!
Happily back to the bus after dodging variable rain clouds, we headed home.

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