Chester

We had a nice loooong weekend away in Cheshire.  The biggest town in Cheshire is Chester so we spent most of the time hanging out there if we weren't stuck on the M6.  The trip from London is supposed to take 3 hours but we got held up for 90min at an accident!  It doesn't take much for congestion to build on the M6, 4 lanes of traffic going nowhere.

Eventually we arrived at our hotel and were very looked after with a chilled bottle of wine waiting for us.  We relaxed in the hotel and explored the grounds before our lovely dinner.  After I enjoyed watching Barcelona thrash Man U in the Champions League final.  Brilliant.  I also enjoyed the bucket of beers we had with dinner and the footy.  Funny as everyone in the restaurant were drinking wine and we had a bucket of beers on our table.

On Sunday we didn't get up to early and had a big breakfast to energise us for the zoo.  I couldn't remember the zoo song and Nath wasn't keen to join in.  We only spent a few hours at the zoo even though it is the biggest in the UK.  We felt that both Auckland and Hamilton zoos are bigger and better.  Chester zoo had a monorail and a boat trip around the zoo - shows how lazy the Poms are!  We walked around the zoo fairly quickly and got out of there - too many bloody kids with soccer hooligan hair cuts.

We went into Chester town centre where we took a walk around the old city walls.  The walls form a 2 mile loop around the city and take in sights such as the cathedral, roman amphitheatre, university, castle and the highlight was the bear and billet pub.  Housed in an old tudor building built in 1664 it is the oldest wooden building in Chester.  It was home of an Earl before turning into a pub in the 1700s.  We did a quick spot of shopping where I managed to score a pair of Bench jeans for £15 down from £60 and they don't need to be taken up at the bottom.

Part of the old walls

The bear and billet pub

Italian was on the menu for dinner and when we found the Prezzo restaurant it was next to a Vue movie theatre.  We decided to watch Pirates of the Caribbean in 3D.  It was very cool but especially as we saw some of the set when they were filming in London.  We could clearly see the set they used in the movie and some of the buildings where the movie was filmed we have been in. 

Luckily there were no traffic hold ups on the way home.   I am looking forward to the rest of the week off work due to the mid term break.  Tomorrow is lady's morning at the squash club, so if I tidy myself up  and act like a lady I might go along (Nath and I joined the local squash club if you didn't already know).  Anna and Borrie arrived in London today after flying out from NZ on Friday and having a 2 day stop over in LA.  Good ol Borrie starts work tomorrow so Anna and I can be ladies of leisure while our men (read boys) work for us.
The lovely weather we were having has been replaced by rain for the past few days.  Hopefully this is the last of it, although it is helping our herb garden along nicely. 
We had a new teacher start work at the begining of this term and as I was still newish we made friends.  Turned out it was a good move on my behalf because she just got promoted to assistant principal so now I have friends in high places and Im just waiting for my promotion!