Friday 2 November 2007

London: Part II

So after our very serendipitous meeting with our Aussie mates, we arrived safe and sound in Old London Town. We were staying with Bronwyn again (thanks Bronnie!) and decided it only right to cook her a home-cooked dinner and buy her (okay us too!) a couple of bottles of wine to bring in the evening.

We had really planned our second trip to London to be a relaxing couple of days to get over our busy driving tour, so we've pretty much been doing just that. We were thinking of taking in a show, but decided to put it off until we come back to London (probably before Christams). We're starting to get a bit touristed out!

The one thing that we really arranged to do was catch up with Jay, Hitch, Mika (one final time before they headed off home) and my friend Kimmi from Brisbane for dinner on our second night. I also had my first pint of cider, which I may or may not have loved!! Bring on the cider that doesn't taste like Strongbow, I say. And we were tipsy enough to feel like another sing-song along but unfortunately the only karaoke bar we could find cost £90 - what the?! So we decided it probably wasn't the best way to spend our pounds. Matt and I still can't stop converting the pounds back to dollars, so everything is pretty much super expensive here! Arrrgh!



Tomorrow we leave London for the second time and head off to visit the Guernsey Parkers and to help celebrate my cousin Lyndsey's 30th birthday - can't wait!

Ye Olde York

We tried hard to take full advantage of our time in York because unfortunately we arrived late afternoon and we had to get a bus back to London the next morning. So most of the afternoon and early evening was spent walking around the old town, the shopping district, and taking as many photos of old castles as we could.

We'd read that York rivals Edinburgh as the second best sight-seeing city (after London) in the UK and we could see why. We read up on a bit of the history of the city - the northern most city in the Roman empire where merchants had to pay taxes to enter the city walls, which parts of still stand. So we took photos of it!




The city seemed quite nice and if we'd had another night we probably would have been better tourists and done a bus tour and visited some of the castles, but we just didn't have the time. We may go back and visit.

The only crazy part about our trip to York was that on our way back into London our bus just happened to stop in front of a random Pizza Hut where our mates Jay, Hitch, and Mika had decided to stop for some lunch. So in a city of 7 million people, we still managed to run into our fellow Aussie travellers - brilliant!

Village life in the Lakes District

The Lakes District was spectacular! We decided to do a drive that was recommended in our travel book that we got from Chris and Lissa (thanks guys!) that proved to be fantastic, even in the overcast weather.

We drove through some tiny towns on our way to a town called Keswich. We drove up Kirkstone Pass which was just a single lane road with pull-ins should you encounter oncoming traffic (or sheep on the road!). It was quite overcast when we drove up and we never got above 3rd gear, but when we got to the top there was a tiny pub where we had cream tea and soup to warm us up - it was freezing! You couldn't see much from the top, but the views as we were driving were so different to what we've seen so far. Think Braveheart meets Wuthering Heights - overcast, cold, dreary, foggy, yet magnificent moors and dramatic valleys and grassy hills covered in long-haired sheep, well we think they're sheep, could have been goats...


We also saw some lovely lakes, as you would expect, and when the clouds parted and the sun came through they looked almost inviting. But we knew better! And at one point we wondered if we were doing our tour of the lakes district all wrong because there were a lot of hikers about. But then we looked at our dashboard to see that it was a chilly 7 degrees out, and realised that *we* were the ones doing it right!

We also did a drive on our second day that was described as 'trying' in our travel book - and that put it quite mild. Driving on the side of a steep mountain on a single lane road with an oncoming four wheel drive and no pull-in pretty much freaked me out. But we pushed through, mostly in first gear, to finally reach the top and again the views were spectacular and we could see them clearly with no fog!


We experienced village life when we decided to try and watch a football match - walked into the pub and it turned out it was the only pub that showed the game. The locals obviously knew this and had arrived quite early to claim seats...absolutely no space for visitors! We laughed about it later over our cheap curry and red wine.

From Keswich and the Lakes District we drove south-east to York.

The bright lights of Blackpool

The only way into Blackpool was through a massive carpark that was half full, so from the get go there were loads of people everywhere. Even though it was overcast and dreary that didn't seem to stop all the holiday-makers. And we soon discovered that Blackpool is pretty much a seaside town where those who can't afford to spend their summer holidays in Spain seem to visit. And we were there to experience it all with them!

At first we were a bit sceptical, the city seemed a bit dodgy and dirty. But when the "sun" went down and the lights came on it completely changed and turned into a mini Las Vegas with lights all down the street and lots and lots of amusement arcades to keep us busy. We had such a great time. Once we looked past the grottiness, tackiness and screaming sugar-high kiddies we started to have fun. We spent lots of time (and money) in the amusement arcades trying to beat the system - Matt tried his hardest to win some fluffy toys and I discovered the 2p machines which I soon became addicted to.


We pretty much became two big kids in Blackpool, we were completely overly stimulated by bright lights and crazy characters everywhere we went. Such fun! We found Pleasure Beach which was a big amusement park with rides everywhere and more lollies and more arcades. Yet again though, I just couldn't convince Matt to get on a ride! We also discovered a Doctor Who Museum (much to Matt's delight) so we spent some time looking at a lot of collectables from the early Doctor Who years.


So Blackpool totally took us by surprise! And once we came down off our sugar highs, we continued north the the Lake District.

Sunday 28 October 2007

Feeling very English near Roman Baths

Well we fell in love with Bath! As soon as we arrived and walked towards our very English hotel we both felt we'd arrived in real England, as opposed to fake England in London. It was so beautiful and we had a great time relaxing, drinking lots of tea and eating lots of biscuits!

We arrived fairly late in the afternoon of our first night so we spent the arvo doing our much needed laundry and the usual internet email check. We picked up our car the next day and headed straight for Avebury, which we'd read was like Stonehenge but not as busy and much bigger. We stopped off for photos and more tea and it was well worth it. You could actually walk near to and touch the stones, which you can't do at Stonehenge but pay for the privilege of it. We did decide to drive past Stonehenge though, how could we not, on our way to Glastonbury. The drive was a bit of a hike and we managed to find a 'local detour' where we were the only car amongst tractors, bit scary on a winding road! We stopped in Glastonbury for 'world famous pasties' and a look at their Abbey and Tor - all very English, especially as it was freezing and a bit gloomy. But nice scenery anyway. We finished our trip driving through another wee town called Wells and headed into Bath straight for rush-hour traffic. A nice 8-hour or so day of driving.

On our last day we spent the morning touring the Roman Baths which was really quite interesting, I wasn't expecting too much, but I was nicely surprised! We took loads of photos (which doesn't help now, but we'll upload them soon) which are much better than me trying to describe them. It was quite impressive that the baths still remain after so long!

We then hopped in our little Astra and headed for Blackpool to sample as much rock as we could in 48 hours!

London: Part I

We arrived safe and sound in London and were immediately hit by the number of people that we encountered EVERYWHERE we went. Where do all these people go at night?! ;) So so busy, especially in the ever reliable *cough cough* tube. Gosh, the number of times we went down into the tube and then had to turn around and come out cause the lines were down...surprised there isn't anymore whinging about it.

So we had a bit of whirlwind three nights - the first night we spent with Matt's good friend Bronwyn (he used to work and live with her a few years ago in Brisbane). She took us round the back streets of her suburb, Bethnal Green - we walked through Brick Lane, down to Liverpool Street, saw St. Paul's and then across a foot bridge to the Tate Modern and saw their latest exibition called "The Crack" - basically a crack going from one end of the building floor to the other - they call it art..hmm..




We had rushed to London primarily for Bronwyn's 30th party which was good because it was on the same night as the Rugby World Cub, which (ahahahaha) England didn't win, how good was that! So me, Matt, a Scottish guy and a Turkish girl were quietly celebrating at the back of the pub we were in so as not to draw attention to ourselves! Fun! We also caught up with another old Treasury workmate who we hadn't seen for like 7 or so years, so that was good too.




We spent the rest of our trip being tourists and doing quite a bit of walking - we saw Leicester Square, Trafalgar Square, Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, St. James and Green Gardens, did the London Eye (bit of an overcast day but it was good nontheless), and managed to stop into a couple of pubs along the way for some well earned beers!




So we left London for Bath where we were picking up a car and heading off on a bit of a driving tour of the English countryside, fun! We were secretly relieved to get out of London and it's craziness, but in saying that, we're going back for a Part II.

(Oh and cause internet is so so expensive we haven't had a chance to upload all our photos, but will do ASAP...)