Day trip to Chester

I know, I know, I don't give this blog enough attention. I might try some kind of "This has happened in my life lately" blog post later, but to be fair not much has happened so not yeah... Later!

A little while ago I went to Chester with David, and two of his team mates from uni, they are doing a masterplan for a part of Liverpool and needed inspiration. I didn't feel like staying at home alone so I tagged along.

Now, Chester is an OLD town. Very old. Information dump, it was originally founded by Romans under the more impressive name Deva Victrix in the year, now hold your horses, 79. It is surrounded by walls, with pathways on top so you can walk around. We did this, and can I just say, that was knackering. I am so not in shape anymore. I did manage to take some pictures on our way around though, so here goes!

 This is where we started. basically you climb some stairs and end up on top of the wall. By the house you can see roughly how narrow it is. It is wider at some places but that is pretty standard. The water is the Chester Canal, note how far down it is! I didn't dare to get closer and take this picture so David did it for me. Yep. Independent woman my ass.

This is a very typical Tudor black and white building, one of the things beside the city walls that Chester is very famous for. I sound like I know what I am talking about but the reality is that I just followed the others around and I am now reading up on Wikipedia.

 This is the view from the wall. The light is a bit weird but there were some pretty nice old buildings down this road, it just doesn't show... Further down you can see the tower of the Chester Town Hall, which is a very pretty building!

 No idea what this is. But it looked nice! Now it bugs me that I have NO idea what kind of building it is but I was on a wall clinging on for dear life and couldn't get down to go and find out. You will have to deal with it.

This is a park we passed on our way round that wall, further to the left is the Chester Cathedral, that i will return to.

 Again, another pretty building, who knows what it is...

And here we go, the Chester Cathedral! It used to be a Benedictine monastery and now its the seat of the Bishop of Chester. Its supposed to be very beautiful inside, but we didn't go in this time since the three architects I was with cared little for places of worship and were more intrigued by that scary wall we were walking around on... I have promised I will get to go in next time, fortunately its not too far from Liverpool.

  Cathedral and Town Hall.

Mystery Building. Possibly my future house, I would look good in that house.

King Charles Tower is along the wall, we did pass this and I did plan to take a picture, unfortunately this place was very busy and I was basically trampled by a bunch of pensioners so I gave up on that thought. You will have to make do with this little info sign.

Cathedral!

This was funny, its a bird house for pigeons, with several floors!Too bad it had a car park in the background.

Sorry for the light, the sun was being very shiny... This is another angle of the Cathedral.

Compulsory info sign!

Also the Cathedreal, there was a very beautiful green light shining through those windows, I tried to capture it and you can sort of see it, in real life it looked almost glow stick-like.

This clocktower was on tip of what used to be an original gate of the city, leading into one of the main streets that you can see below.

Notice the black and white buildings again! Here you can also see something called the Chester Rows, which are the little walkways on the first floors of the buildings. There will be more pictures of those. These were the main interest of the architects in presence. I am quite tired of Rows now... Basically they are like extra streets one floor up, and shops etc. on street level are sort of halfway below the street and you reach them by going down stairs.

This is taken on one of the rows, they sometimes have windows in the ceilings like this for light.

Look at that pretty white facade!

 The Rows are behind the rails there (note the narrow house squeezed in between the bigger ones!)

And for the Swedish potty minds, read the sign on that store on street level in the narrow house...

These sort of courtyards were found if you went into one of the narrow alleys along the main streets. Any noise from the streets on the other side of the houses were completely drowned, quite cool!

So, that's what I have!

Next time we might do pictures from the Law Ball...

M xx