The moment we turned left from the parking lot and saw the castle I instantly knew Rochester wasn’t any regular English town. After our tour of the ancient Rochester Cathedral close by,  it was as simple as crossing the street to get to Rochester’s jewel box ruin of a medieval castle, done incidentally by the same man who designed the Tower of London. Not bad for a Friday morning.

How convenient is it that the top two attractions in Rochester are right smack next to each other. This sure made it easy for us 21st century tourists on a time crunch – and also coincidentally for King John who hit two birds with one catapult back in the 13th century when he pillaged both.

As great as the town was, however, there must have been a Rochester witch having fun with us as things started going wrong the moment we were about to leave. Teko lost his mobile – same as losing one’s left hand pretty much – retraced his steps and luckily was able to retrieve it from the castle’s cleaning woman, and we got a parking fine even though our pay and display ticket was laid out on the dashboard – except it was showing the wrong side. As these things come in three’s I’m still waiting for the third shoe to drop – that is, if it hasn’t yet.