Chester & Liverpool: Part II

You just lost The Game. Sorry. If it's any consolation, so did I and all those in Liverpool who saw this graffiti. After escaping Barnacre Farm, Hayley and I couchsurfed in Liverpool for three nights with a guy named Julian who offered to take us in in the middle of the week with only 24 hours notice. Not only did he give us space on his couch, he gave us an entire room, blankets, shampoo, tours around Liverpool and a plethora of gnome stories. When I realized I left my phone charger at the farm (and thus lost it forever), he also offered me a manual phone charger (think those flashlights that you wind up to get light), but after some 15 minutes of cranking, I gave up. Being without a phone my last 2 weeks of traveling won't kill me, I suppose.

Julian, our host, gave us a tour of the football clubs in Liverpool. I know literally nothing about football, or any sports really, unless rock climbing and my brief stint on a softball team in the 4th grade count, so I'm afraid most of it was lost on me, but it was interesting nonetheless. This is at the Everton Football Club, walking distance from where Julian lived. It's a memorial to about 100 fathers and sons who got trampled to death during a game, leading to all the stadium rooms phasing out all standing room seats in favor of actual sitting down seats only.

My friend Hayley's cousin really likes football, so she made them a sign to take a picture with in front of the Liverpool Football Club. This sort of turned into an experiment to see how many places we could get pictures with this sign. This is me on the left and our host on the right. I've never met you Patty and Kiz, but I hope you're having a great time in Australia.

Our best one though was convincing the guy at the chip shop to let us take his picture with the sign. Salt and vinegar? What a good sport.

I was bad at taking photos in Liverpool. We met up with Holly and her friends at some point, spent a lot of time at the Egg Cafe, catching up on internet and eating delicious veg food and going to bed at 9:00 pm. Then it was off back to Chester! On our first day back, we walked along the medieval walls and were given a bit of a tour of the city. Here is what I'm assuming is one of the guard towers built into the walls.

Here's the front of the Designated Pidgeon Feeding Area. Possibly the biggest birdhouse I've ever seen. We could also call this the designated pidgeon shitting area perhaps, which was the plan, as Chester was tired of them going everywhere and thus attempted to lure them to this one specific location.

Chester Cathedral. I always have the same problem photographing cathedrals: You can never get the whole thing in the photo from where you're standing and you can never get far back enough to fix that.

The main street in Chester. It's apparently somewhat unique in that in some places it has two floors of stores. This is especially handy when it rains, so you can walk around the second floor uninhibited by the drizzly grossness.

During our tour, Ollie led us into a Spud-U-Like jacket potato makin' chain to our surprise. As none of us had mentioned wanted to order a potato, I was a bit confused. Lo and behold, in the downstairs seating area was an ancient Roman Hypocaust, which is an ancient Roman system of central heating. As it was not advertised as such from above, it was an exciting surprise. Above you typical brightly colored and plastic-y chain fast food scheme, below....ancient ruins!

Here's a better picture of the Hypocaust.

We took a short trip to Habitat so Gulli could buy some silicone cupcake containers with his tax refund. Okay, I lied, it wasn't short. We love home decorating stores and pretty kitchen appliances. Hayley found a tipi. Now that we're tipi experts we had to check it out. Our verdict? The decorating scheme was much better, but you REALLY wouldn't fit 12 people in here. I also found a really badass fort bed. Want.

Chester has a river and it is pretty. View from one side of the bridge.

View from the other side.

Walking through the park, which has a TINY TRAIN YOU CAN RIDE ON!! I would have taken a whirl if it had cost less than 50p, but alas, it cost 80. I'm currently very, very cheap.

A tomb built into the structure of these ruins up high! Uhhh whaaaat?!

No, f'realz. Crazy shit.

Ollie gazing longingly into the window space. Everyone was abnormally attracted to this area.

Example A: We Love Small Spaces. And taking pictures in them.

More of the ruins. There are lots of them in Chester.

Gulli says, "I want to have a party right here!" Let's do it. Only really small-footed people so we can all fit on the stone.

So there you go, a proper touristy post about Chester. I would have done it last time, but it was way too cold and rainy so I chose sitting inside, eating vegan custard doughnuts instead.