Tuesday morning the convention ended as it had begun, with us running into Paul and Maureen at breakfast. We had a lovely time gossiping about Charlie Stross and others before heading out to obtain train reservations and change our Scottish money for English (nominally it’s legal tender but it had been direly hinted that it would be less and less likely to be accepted as you head south). The first bank we tried wouldn’t exchange money for non-customers, and recommended the post office. The post office wouldn’t do it at all, and recommended a bank — specifically an English rather than Scottish bank. We found one, but for no visible reason as soon as we got to the front of the queue all transactions suddenly became tremendously involved and we waited, and waited, and waited… meanwhile Kate went to sit down, because she felt a migraine coming on. Eventually I did get the money exchanged and we went back to the hotel, where Kate lay down for a bit while I checked out. As warned by the convention daily zine, the hotel charged my card in US dollars, at an exchange rate north of $1.80, so I asked them to do it again in pounds. By the time I got back upstairs Kate had thrown up, which usually helps but did tend to slow her down as we lugged all our worldly goods to the station. I was getting pretty worried about making the train, but we did make it in time… and then Kate threw up again, and again a little while later. There was nothing I could do for her (she hates being fussed over when she’s sick) so I just sat next to her and tried to read. Kate slept most of the way through to Chester, by which time she felt somewhat better. We piled our worldly goods on our backs again and headed out toward our B&B, for which we discovered we had an address but not an exact location. The address was #10 Hoole Road, and we found #7, 9, and 11, but across the street was a park. Behind the park maybe? No, that was a different road. I asked at a pub and was told it was just a little way further along, and indeed it was, about two blocks later. Addresses here are just plain meaningless (and often not posted at all, anyway). Our B&B was a large and tasteful house, painted inside all in bright orange and yellow. Once checked in, we went out and found the nearby shopping street, in search of something for Kate to eat (for she hadn’t kept a thing down all day). We found a bakery that still had a few things left and got her a “fudge donut” (no chocolate to it that I could see, the gooey topping was more caramel colored and it wasn’t filled) and me a “flake cake” (chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and a piece of Cadbury Flake on top), which we devoured while exploring the rest of the street — including butcher, fruit & veg shop, fishmonger, natural foods emporium, Chinese takeaway, delightful-looking old pub, Internet café, stereo shop, laundromat, and laundry. We considered the latter two options and decided to pay a bit more to have our laundry done for us tomorrow rather than hanging around the laundromat. From there we headed into town, and by happenstance caught a free bus from the train station to the city walls. The town of Chester is a delightful melange of half-timbered, classical, and modern buildings, some dating back to the 1200’s, with an intact city wall completely surrounding the old city center, a canal, and the ruins of a Roman amphitheatre. One of the town’s most notable features is the “rows”, a second level of sidewalks above the street-level shops, delightfully cool after a hot day dragging luggage hither and yon. After familiarizing ourselves with the city we set out in search of dinner, but had poor luck finding anything, complicated by the fact that Kate desperately needed a bathroom. And once that was accomplished she determined that she really wasn’t hungry — she needed to lie down, now. Tried calling a cab, but was told it would be 20 or 30 minutes. So I asked around for a cab stand and was directed to the cab company office, where there was a queue waiting outside. Kate sat down in the office and I talked with one of the boiler room phone operators (probably the same one I’d just phoned), who took my name and promised a cab would be along shortly. We waited there for what seemed like not shortly, watching cabs arrive and pick people off the queue, and finally when a cab arrived and there was no one who’d been waiting longer than us I just bundled Kate into it. “If we ever need to call a cab again in this town we’ll give your name,” I told her, and got her back into the room, where she threw up again. Poor thing! But these migraines usually last only one day. I pulled the blinds and left Kate to sleep while I slipped out to call Tom Brennan from a nearby pay phone. I left a message with his wife, and when I got back to the B&B and told the girl on duty to expect a call for me she told me she’d just gotten one and thought it was a wrong number. She let me use her phone to return the call, and I got Tom’s wife again, who relayed the call to Tom at work, who called me back at the B&B, and this is the lunch date that Jack made. Kate was still asleep, so I went out and had dinner at a nerarby place that I thought was a coffee house but turned out to be a pleasant very modern pub (well, the sign out front did brag about cappucinos, lattes, and mochas and say nothing about beer). I had a Thai beef salad which turned out to be a very nice grilled steak, sliced and served with a spicy dressing on top of “assorted leaves” (what we’d call “greens”) and “sauteed potatoes” (what we’d call “French fries”). Good, though. I also got a bread roll to take home for Kate to gnaw on, which she was glad to have. And we went to sleep early, and that was Tuesday. Wednesday morning Kate was feeling better. Breakfast at the B&B was a bit more complex than at our hotel in Glasgow, with a huge variety of cereals as well as the full cooked breakfast (this time with baked beans instead of the black pudding). After the first day we got selective and ordered only a subset of the breakfast — our host seemed a bit taken aback but managed to cope. After breakfast we lugged a couple of bags of dirty clothes to the laundry and gave them over to be professionally cleaned — which consisted of them being dumped in a washer before we left the establishment (but we didn’t have to hang around and wait). Then we walked down to the train station to catch one of the frequent trains to Liverpool. While waiting for the train we bought some Liverpool maps, an issue of Private Eye, and the Time Out guide to London for future reference. The train itself was small and cute — just two cars — but unlike Portland’s light rail it was a real actual train. I begin to see the attraction of trainspotting. With so many different kinds of trains, and so much concrete difference between the various types in terms of comfort, features, and noise, it would be easy to start caring about which type of train you were getting on. Add a dollop of obsessive-compulsion and/or Asperger’s and you’d have a classic sad anorak trainspotting git. On the train, when I finished Private Eye (like The Onion only classier and British) the fellow in the next seat offered me his Sun. The Sun is truly appalling — like the Weekly World News except that it seems to take itself seriously. It also has a large picture of a topless woman on page 3. It was from the page 3 girl that I learned the space shuttle Discovery had landed safely. Swear to God. We arrived at the Lime Street station (picked up some more maps) and wandered out into a rather gray day, full of bustle and traffic and modern buildings and the huge St. George’s Hall (rather like the Parthenon only not nearly as ruined). We read a few of the tourist information signs, then wandered off in search of something interesting to do in the hour or so before our lunch date with Tom. One area that looked on the map like old and interesting streets turned out to be a place where the old and interesting streets had been torn down for a modern shopping center, but we also found the tourist information office (more maps!) and were interviewed about our experience in Liverpool so far by someone from the local ministry of culture. From there we headed to the Cavern Quarter, AKA the Let’s Cash In On the Beatles Quarter. The original Cavern Club was torn down, but has since been reconstructed brick-by-brick and is now surrounded by various tacky clubs and shops. But there was also some interesting Beatles-related public art, including a bizarre shrine showing the Virgin Mary (?) holding three of the four lads (portrayed as infants) and a life-size bronze of John leaning against a wall. We paused for a scone and something to drink before continuing on to St. John’s Garden, in the shadow of St. George’s Hall where we’d started. There we met Tom and his wife Sylvia (just as charming and shy as Tom himself — they were high school sweethearts, aww) and went for lunch at the café in the Conservation Centre, a museum about the art of preservation and care of old and fragile objects. After lunch Tom walked with us down to the waterfront, where he pointed out the amazing art deco ziggurat that is the offices and air shaft for a tunnel under the Mersey, and the three huge office buildings of the Port of Liverpool, Cunard Lines, and Royal Liver (pronounced with a long i) Insurance. These three beautiful buildings are known as the Three Graces and are significant to Liverpool’s maritime heritage. Over nine million people and untold tons of goods passed through this port in its heyday. The Royal Liver building is still the headquarters of Royal Liver Insurance and is topped with two enormous sculptures of the mythical Liver Bird from which the city gets its name (the bird’s name, in turn, is related to laver, a kind of seaweed). We said goodbye to Tom and walked out on the docks. There we toured the portmaster’s house, which is currently furnished as it was during WWII, complete with a working victory garden. Liverpool, being one of England’s key ports, was bombed nearly as heavily as London. Then we visited the Maritime Museum, where we learned all about the great age of ocean liners, including the mystery of the Lusitania and, of course, the Titanic. One room was filled with artifacts related to these two famous disasters, including a deck chair from the Lusitania and the twenty-foot-long builder’s model of the Titanic (later revised into the Britannic and finally the Olympic). Other exhibits included the emigrant experience, the slave trade, and the modern customs and excise service. Despite the museum’s best efforts, they couldn’t make customs and excise exciting, but the rest of it was fascinating. The exhibits on the slave trade made it plain that these people had cultures of their own — they weren’t just products. As the museum closed we wandered off, past the memorial to the Titanic, in search of dinner. We wound up at a Portugese restaurant — one cuisine we don’t have at home — before catching the cute little train back to Chester and our B&B. Thursday was our day for touristing in Chester itself. We walked down to the train station and caught the free bus again; upon alighting we immediately found several charity shops, where we picked up some cheap CDs. After picking up a walking map at the tourist info office, we wandered upstairs to learn about the Roman amphitheatre across the street. Turns out it was not discovered until the 1920s, and is currently being actively excavated; the archaeologists were working right there in plain sight and we could have asked questions if we’d been of a mind to. The exhibit was fascinating — a great mix of information about Roman amphitheatres in Britain (the practice of beast fighting as an entertainment was responsible for the near extinction of fierce beasts in Europe; over here, post holes from small booths are accompanied by chicken wing bones and beef ribs, indicating fast-food stands) with honest exposure of the messiness and open questions of real-world archaeology (many stones are missing here, probably taken away for other uses during the middle ages, but this wall was apparently untouched and we don’t know why; elsewhere, the amphitheatre is disrupted by a medieval road, which is in turn interrupted by a 20th century garage foundation). Following the walking map, we proceeded around the amphitheatre itself, down the riverfront, and up some stairs to a marvelous ruined church. I love these ruins, and thanks to Henry VIII England is full of them; I took gobs of pictures. Then we headed up onto the city walls, walking under Chester’s famous clock and spending several happy hours in the various book and antique stores which are apparently only reachable from the pedestrian walkway on top of the wall. From the wall we had a nice view of the canal that skirts the city and into people’s back gardens. Everything in these old towns is infill — houses, shops, and services wedged into the spaces between other things, and not a right angle anywhere. By now we were getting hungry and stupid, and set off in search of Chez Jules, a French restaurant Kate had read about in some guidebook. But, once again, the street numbers were irregularly assigned and rarely displayed, and we were just about to give up when we blundered into the place by chance. I’m really glad we persevered, because the food was delightful. From there we made our way to the local cathedral. I’m always astonished by the enormous churches one can find in small European towns, and I wonder what they were like in their heyday. Today Chester’s cathedral offers a digital audio guide to its art (ranging from the 1500s to the 20th century, including some spectacular Victorian mosaics and a tiny “cobweb painting” done on tent caterpillar webbing), tombs (including the alcove behind the organ where at least five organists are memorialized), and the amusingly quirky carved figures in the “quire.” Not too far from the cathedral was the local market, a cavernous building filled with stalls selling fresh vegetables, CDs, clothing, jewelry, and everything in between. Nothing touristy here — this was where the locals did their shopping. We had an interesting conversation with one of the locals about American turns of phrase — she had trouble with the expression “to meet with” someone, feeling that the “with” was unnecessary. I thought about it a moment and tried to explain that, in American at least, “to meet” someone is to encounter them for the first time or briefly, while “to meet with” someone is to engage in a more protracted encounter, typically a business meeting. We also sampled, and purchased, some truly spectacular cheeses. Some of the local cheddars explode with flavor. By then we were flagging a bit again, so we stumbled into Katie’s Tea Room for a bit of a sit-down and an afternoon snack: pastries, and tea served in antique silver (which transmits the heat very well — ouch!). The proprietor looked a lot more like an Ahmed than a Katie, but the tea and crumpets hit the spot and building was quite impressive — dating back to the 1300s, with some of the original wattle-and-daub construction still visible in spots. Afternoon tea gave us sufficient energy for a trip to the local Waterstone’s, where we picked up many of the books we hadn’t managed to find in the convention dealer’s room, such as a paperback of The Iron Council by China Miéville (it was only one of this year’s Hugo nominees, for pity’s sake!). But the energy didn’t last very long, so we dragged ourselves back to our room and fell over. Later we roused ourselves sufficiently to put together ham and cheese sandwiches from our market finds for dinner, but otherwise spent the rest of the evening watching local TV (including something that gave every impression of being CSI: Glasgow), listening to newly-acquired CDs, and reading newly-acquired books. Touristing is hard work, and sometimes you need a rest. Especially since the next morning we would be heading for London. To be continued…
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