Sunday morning brought rain, and the departure of Katie. Originally, we had planned on dropping Katie at the airport and then hanging out in Manchester for the day. However, when we dropped Katie off, we looked at the clock and realized that it was only 7:15am. Nothing in Manchester would be open until at least 10. Driving to the airport, I had seen signs indicating that the town of Chester wasn’t too far away. According to the English Heritage book, Chester housed England’s largest Roman Amphitheater that was conveniently open at “any reasonable hour” along with a castle so we decided to head to Chester for the day.
Since Chester is only about 24 miles from the airport, we still arrived in the very early hours of the morning. We decided to start our day with a walk on the city walls. Once a city completely walled in for protection, much of the original city walls remain, and can be walked on. The walls reminded me of the walls in York, but not quite as extensive. 
Cailin was VERY cold, so she tried jumping up and down. When that failed, she bought an ice coffee…my sister the genius
By the time we finished, it was 9:00 am. Kevin was hungry (is anyone surprised?) so we decided to get some breakfast. Cailin and I vetoed the first place that we saw as it looked fancy. We then spent the next hour wandering around the shopping area looking for a place that was actually open besides McDonalds while Kevin got mad at us for not just eating in the first place we found an hour earlier. We finally found a pub that served breakfast, and Kevin and I got various forms of breakfast sandwiches and hash browns while Cailin attempted to warm up, still drinking her ice coffee. While it was only 9 am, the pub had about 20 people drinking pints of beer. This not only upset my stomach at the thought of drinking beer so early, but it was also quite sad.
After we re-fueled Kevin, we decided to walk around the shopping area. They had quite a selection of stores, and the best part was that you could walk under-cover around the shopping area. Very useful for us as it had started raining and my umbrella had broken. We spent an hour or so walking around, admiring the Tudor architecture of the buildings and doing a little shopping -a new wind-resistant umbrella for me and a little something for John Felty (no, not more scotch).
Right near the shopping area was a huge cathedral. Being Sunday, we couldn’t go inside and check it out (unless we wanted to sit through mass which is quite painful for a couple of girls who grew up going to a Baptist church that had much shorter services and didn’t require kneeling and sitting and kneeling and standing.) We did however get a few pictures of the outside. 
When we emerged on the other side of the cathedral, Cailin and I saw one of our favorite things – McDonalds. Cailin didn’t eat any breakfast so she was hungry and I can never turn down a double-cheeseburger so we made a quick pit stop into McDonalds. Cailin, like myself, has an ongoing contest to eat at McDonalds in every country she goes to. So far, she has the US, South Africa, The Netherlands and now England. I have the US, France, England, Belgium, and South Africa. I should also have Greece, but Kevin refused to let me eat there when we were in Athens on our honeymoon. I’m hoping (but doubtful) that there is a McDonalds in Venice so I can add Italy to my list this weekend.
After our brief stop at McDonalds, we set out to check out Chester castle. We found the castle easy enough, but it took us forever to find a way to get in. Once we did find a way in, we realized that the castle was inexplicably closed for the day. Boo! 
We decided to head back to the car and make our way back to Manchester for the James Morrison concert. On the way back, I realized we had never seen the Roman Amphitheater, which was located right near where we had parked. However, once we got to the Amphitheater, we realized that it was, like the castle, closed-this time because they were doing work to it. It looked pretty cool, and I wish I had gotten a chance to see it up close, but a picture from the city wall will have to do for now.
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