Last night (or more likely early this morning) I had a dream. It was about shoes and my bunions. Mind you, I do not have bunions! But I did in my dream. They were round, and a pretty variety of purple and pink colors, in a marbleized sort of pattern. I knew you’d want to know that.

I also woke up at something like 4 or 5 to the lovely sound of many bottles being put into the recycle truck. Turns out we are on a busy street even while it doesn’t look like the sort of street that would be busy. It’s a bus line. It must be a commuter street as well. Room 5 might be the favorite room of the man who gave us the key, but I’m guessing he’s not slept here! Oh, and it turns out that when you shower the bathroom reeks. Sadly their fan doesn’t work. I find it all not aggravating but just sort of hysterical. Would I stay here again? Moot point since I’m sure we won’t be back in Shrewsbury.

BUT to more important things! I neglected one important bit yesterday so —

Happy Belated Birthday, Ruth Ann! I do hope you will find moments of joy this year. You sure have taught me a great deal and shown tremendous strength.

So sorry I forgot to post that yesterday.

And now —

Happy Birthday, Brandon! I’m so glad you were born! May your year be extra special. We do hope to visit sometime in the near future if we can make it work.

(And yes, I just figured out I can do colored text. How exciting is that??)

Don’t worry, I won’t continue with colors. Promise!

Oops!

We had a bit of time before our train so we hung out in the room, then got dressed, and walked toward the station.

We figured we’d get some sort of breakfast near or at the train station. I was sort of hoping I could be strong and just have coffee no matter what Dan did. And gee, I succeeded! It was just a cappuccino for me. Finally.

One we figured out which platform to get to we were set. We were on a TFW train and easily found our seats. As it turned out this first segment of today’s trip was the most beautiful yet. Mind you, the photos are through a train window as we moved along, but I hope it captures the beauty a bit.

And then the first of two legs was done and we said hello to Chester. We had a good number of hours to enjoy the town. We first dropped off our luggage, then had a bit of lunch, followed by walking much of the Roman wall, visited the Chester Cathedral, continued on the wall for a short while, and wandered a bit. Here are gobs of photos. (In the fourth photo below Dan is doing a pose for me … we see so many doing that and it cracks us up. The ninth photo is a dropped napkin by you-know-who!)

We retrieved our luggage and had alcohol free beers.

Then we went to the station to get the second train of the day. I wasn’t sitting by the window so I took only two photos.

We caught a cab with a very unfriendly driver. I don’t know if it was that we were Americans or he didn’t like where he had to drive, but yikes, he was grumpy! He didn’t help with the luggage, and when we arrived at the hotel he didn’t even get out of the car.

But no matter about him! We arrived at our hotel … and hello Liverpool!

We have a large room. It’s quite comfortable. And there was chocolate bar and card congratulating me on my retirement!

There was a 6 to 7 o’clock reception downstairs so we enjoyed that.

Then it was time to search for dinner.

We wound up choosing Bakchich, a Lebanese restaurant, and I had the shawarma platter — it was quite yummy!

Back at the hotel I had a bit of work to do … yes, really. It was for Symphony San Jose and I’ll leave it at that. Well, except to say I heard some fine playing from my former orchestra.

And then it was sleepy time … I hope. One never knows what the throat will feel like once I hit the hay.

Goodnight!

12,913 steps, 5.12 miles, 6 flights climbed