The GCW Tour, A Few Bits of the UK and Ireland: Chester, Chester, Chester...

 Ok, this will be the one and only time I address Chester...

I'm sure it's a nice enough town. The old central square is old and pretty, and the old city is surrounded by an old Roman wall which, admittedly, is pretty cool. But...

Chester is currently in the process of tearing up their roads. Thus, you go around and around in circles trying to get to the street your GPS tells you ought to be there, but which is currently blocked off. And so it takes significantly longer to get to where you're going than expected, if you can get there at all.

Which would not be a problem, except that I'm learning that most of the independent hotels in England, while they use Travelocity and the like, don't like paying the 10-15% premium that Travelocity and the rest charge, so they want you to contact them directly to make bookings. 

Yeah, right, I'm seven hours away and have things to do. Like I'm going to individually call up all these hotels to make arrangements. Not likely. Anyway...

In confirming my reservation, Travelocity failed to include the provision that you needed to contact the hotel -- actually, a B&B -- by 6:00 pm, since at that point they close up shop. I didn't get that detail until we arrived at 6:23 pm to find the place closed and abandoned. At that point, I went to their website and learned about closing time.

Oops. A hotel with a closing time. Go figure.

So I called all of the numbers listed on their site and each time got voice mail.

Oops.

So I went back on Travelocity to look for an alternative spot for the evening. A few came up but, having learned my lesson, I decided to call them directly before driving off to find them.

I reached the first place...

"Any chance you have a room for tonight for three people?"

"How many people?"

"Three"

"Oh, no. We won't rent a room for three, and besides, we're completely booked." Ok, so why did you ask me how many people?

I had roughly the same conversation with the second place, and then the same again with the third. Long story short, it seemed unlikely I would find a room in Chester or within, say, twenty miles of Chester.

So I started gearing the boys up for sleeping in the car. (Not exactly the same as a backpacker sleeping in the train station, but equally unpleasant in its own unique way.)

But before resigning ourselves to that end I decided to cycle through our B&B's numbers again. This time, I got an answer at the second. And the very nice woman asked, without my even prompting, if I'd like her to come back out and let us in.

Uhh, yes, that would be quite lovely.

So though the bed the boys had to share for the two nights we stayed in Chester was awfully narrow for a double, especially after the giant thing the night before, as compared to sleeping in the car it was quite nice.

And that's pretty much all I have to say about Chester.