Bath and London: ENGLAND
I payed a visit to the motherland. Went over to see Cam and Jodi and just to visit... made the most of being here so close! Flew from Geneva (with Easyjet, cheap as) to Bristol on a Wednesday afternoon. I spent the Thusday and Friday in Bath (an hour and a half west of London) which is where they live, then we spent the weekend in London. I loved it! Cool to have such a similar culture to NZ's over here on the other side of the world... Well compared to the French culture, I felt quite at home in England. It was everything I imagined - all the clichés are true. London IS full of double decker red buses and black taxis!
The luuuvlaah town of Bath. They say it's quite posh. It's all Georgian architec-ture constructed around the same time, so it goes together very nicely.
There ARE pubs on every corner! Seriously you pass about 5 in the space of 100m. Of course one night we went out to see what pints tasted like in England
It'd be fair to say Bath's attraction is the Roman Baths, so I checked them out. It's built on thermal springs, these baths were constructed in Roman times. Pretty fascinating, such incredible engineering for the era... actually after seeing a few examples of Roman construction I'm astounded at what they managed to come up with. This bath which is pictured had a roof over it back in the day, a huge arc roof without supports. Luckily it disintergrated, so now we have this great view of the Abbey in the background.
The hot water appearing from the earth was seen as something very spiritual to the Romans. People would come from all over to visit this site, so they had all these objects on display, things that had been found in the spring. Thousands of Roman coins were thrown in as gifts to the goddess so they have used these to research where the people came from. The photo is of notes which were found in the sacred spring, notes to the goddess people scrated in Latin onto sheets of lead. Some of them were quite entertaining, writted by pissed off Romans who had had things stolen from the changing rooms while they were bathing... like "Dear goddess, I ask that the person who stole my two gloves loses his mind and his eyes." So interesting to read these and imagine that they were written thousands of years ago.
Pulteney Bridge is a rarity, one of only two in the world which is lined with shops. Constructed in Bath stone like everything here
Saturday: train to LONDON! This is the huge advertising in Picadilly Circus at night.
Regent St with all of it's Xmas decor-ations. This trip brought back plenty of childhood souvenirs - I recognised so many things from Monopoly!! Oxford St, Kings Cross Station, Pall Mall, Trafalgar square etc! Also you know that song The London Bridge is falling down, falling down...." we had that explained to us, it came about after a huge fire in London, when the London Bridge actually did fall down. Travelling is educational.
Big Ben! and look at all of those double decker buses in front of it, they are every-where!
St Paul's Cathedral, where Diana was married. Went past lots of sights like this on the open-top bus tour we did. This is a great way to get a quick summary of a place.
Buckingham Palace... Cam and I came here at 11:30am on Sunday (like any good royal watcher would) for the changing of the guards ceremony. We didn't see much due to the hundreds of other royal watchers 10 times kenner than us, who took all the good places earlier. Still cool to see the palace tho, no sign of the Queen unfortunately - I was watching for a curtain to move.
Some of the guards leaving the ceremony. It's pretty cool how some of the police get around on horses!
Friendly reminders for us Frenchies who don't know which way to look for cars
I did the London Eye, this huge ferris wheel which takes you up in these capsules with about 10 others. Got some great views out over the city, this one looking down on the river Thames. Expensive though, in fact everything in this country was expensive, France is bad enough but this was even worse! Looking forward to spending the $NZ again
The luuuvlaah town of Bath. They say it's quite posh. It's all Georgian architec-ture constructed around the same time, so it goes together very nicely.
There ARE pubs on every corner! Seriously you pass about 5 in the space of 100m. Of course one night we went out to see what pints tasted like in England
It'd be fair to say Bath's attraction is the Roman Baths, so I checked them out. It's built on thermal springs, these baths were constructed in Roman times. Pretty fascinating, such incredible engineering for the era... actually after seeing a few examples of Roman construction I'm astounded at what they managed to come up with. This bath which is pictured had a roof over it back in the day, a huge arc roof without supports. Luckily it disintergrated, so now we have this great view of the Abbey in the background.
The hot water appearing from the earth was seen as something very spiritual to the Romans. People would come from all over to visit this site, so they had all these objects on display, things that had been found in the spring. Thousands of Roman coins were thrown in as gifts to the goddess so they have used these to research where the people came from. The photo is of notes which were found in the sacred spring, notes to the goddess people scrated in Latin onto sheets of lead. Some of them were quite entertaining, writted by pissed off Romans who had had things stolen from the changing rooms while they were bathing... like "Dear goddess, I ask that the person who stole my two gloves loses his mind and his eyes." So interesting to read these and imagine that they were written thousands of years ago.
Pulteney Bridge is a rarity, one of only two in the world which is lined with shops. Constructed in Bath stone like everything here
Saturday: train to LONDON! This is the huge advertising in Picadilly Circus at night.
Regent St with all of it's Xmas decor-ations. This trip brought back plenty of childhood souvenirs - I recognised so many things from Monopoly!! Oxford St, Kings Cross Station, Pall Mall, Trafalgar square etc! Also you know that song The London Bridge is falling down, falling down...." we had that explained to us, it came about after a huge fire in London, when the London Bridge actually did fall down. Travelling is educational.
Big Ben! and look at all of those double decker buses in front of it, they are every-where!
St Paul's Cathedral, where Diana was married. Went past lots of sights like this on the open-top bus tour we did. This is a great way to get a quick summary of a place.
Buckingham Palace... Cam and I came here at 11:30am on Sunday (like any good royal watcher would) for the changing of the guards ceremony. We didn't see much due to the hundreds of other royal watchers 10 times kenner than us, who took all the good places earlier. Still cool to see the palace tho, no sign of the Queen unfortunately - I was watching for a curtain to move.
Some of the guards leaving the ceremony. It's pretty cool how some of the police get around on horses!
Friendly reminders for us Frenchies who don't know which way to look for cars
I did the London Eye, this huge ferris wheel which takes you up in these capsules with about 10 others. Got some great views out over the city, this one looking down on the river Thames. Expensive though, in fact everything in this country was expensive, France is bad enough but this was even worse! Looking forward to spending the $NZ again
That'd be Big Ben slightly to the right, with Parliament to the left of it.
This is a Memorial for all of the New Zealand soldiers who died in WWII, as well as that it is a bit of a celebration of England's relationship with New Zealand, it was great to see that over here! Each stand was engraved and inscribed with quotes, images etc. In 'Hyde Park Corner' the street intersection in front of the enourmous Hyde Park.
This is Harrods, London's exclusive department store! MASSIVE, this place has everything. A cool atmosphere for christmas too. It's not the cheapest place to shop so the wallet pretty much stayed in the pocket.
BIG BEN AGEEN, very christmassy with the tree in front. And in the background on the left is the London Eye, that ferris wheel i went up.
All in all it was yet another great trip! I loved England, it was great to see this country which we in NZ hear so much about.
Not long now till I'm back in the Land of the Long White Cloud!
posted by Nick at 6:27 PM
2 Comments:
So proud,
Good profiting mate.
See you soon!!!!
Can`t wait.
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