Lazing around London

We’ve had a bit of a break from being tourists for the last 2 and a half weeks in London, but we’re back into the swing of things tomorrow when we head up to the north of England; camera in hand.
My cousin Rowena and her husband Gary have been kind enough to let us stay in their house in Crouch End (north London) while they take their 3 lovely, but hyperactive boys on holiday. We’ve not done very much in that time, apart from visiting family, planning our next trip, and learning some French, so haven’t taken many photos. What we have taken you can take a look at here.

Soon after we arrived, we headed down to Highgate Cemetery, one of the most impressive cemeteries in the city. Karl Marx and Douglas Adams among other well known people are buried there. We only got to see the East side of the cemetery though because you need to book ahead to get a tour of the more atmospheric West side.

On one of the days when we felt particularly touristy and had a couple of 2 for 1 tickets, we headed into the centre of London and decided to have a look at both the recently rebuilt Globe Theatre and the Salvador Dali ‘Universe’. The Globe itself was unfortunately closed to tours because there was a performance going on at the time, but we did get to look around the large and impressive museum which had a captivating live display of a couple of actors sword-fighting. We also took an tour to the original site of the Globe and the Rose Theatres of which there isn’t much left.
The Dali Universe had a huge number of sculptures, prints and paintings from the truly warped mind of Salvador Dali. We spent at least a couple of hours there and throughly enjoyed most of his works. I’d recommend it if you like Dali’s works at all.

Another day we went to the British Museum; a huge building full with interesting displays from around the world. Because it was during the hight of the tourist season and during school holidays, the entire place was absolutely chocka-block full of people. When we looked around the Egyptian section, there was always a crowd, at least 3 people deep, trying to get a look at the Rosetta Stone. We moved on to slightly quieter sections but ended up seeing only a small part of the entire museum. We’ll have to head back another time when it’s a bit less busy.

It was Tanya’s birthday last Monday, so to celebrate I bought a couple of tickets to see the Monty Python musical Spamalot at the West End. We both enjoyed the show, which is based on the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and were still humming some of the tunes a couple of days after.

I’ve also had an interview for a job already which went quite well I think. My ex-workmate Tony helped set it up (thanks Tony!) as he knows the Director of the company. I haven’t heard back yet, so I’ll have to see what happens.

As I mentioned before, we’re off to the north of England tomorrow via train. We’re going to Liverpool, York, Newcastle, then back down to Cambridge and finally, Canterbury.
Soon after that, we’ll head off to Europe on our Eurail passes. We planning to go to France, Switzerland then Italy.

Oarsome Oxford

We enjoyed our 2 days in the university city of Oxford, it’s full of history and old buildings which we took lots of photos of that you can see here. We did find it interesting that there is no central university campus. The university is made up of 39 independent colleges that are scattered around Oxford, which is a bit different compared to what we’re used to seeing back in New Zealand.

We arrived late afternoon in Oxford and went straight to the B&B we were staying out – The Ridings, which is about 2km out of the city centre. As we were tired, we didn’t head out until we were hungry. We found most of the restaurants to be busy, especially Jamie Oliver’s restaurant which had a huge queue, but found a table at an ASK restaurant (Italian) and had a good meal.

For our first and only full day in Oxford, we decided to pack in as much as possible. We started by getting an overview of the city. We did this by getting another open top bus tour (like the one in Bristol). By the time we finished the tour of Oxford, the previously quiet streets were packed with tourists: the out of town tour buses had arrived.
We made our way to Broadway which is a wide street with shops and a couple of colleges. We had a look in an old Blackwell’s bookshop which had a massive underground room packed with books. We continued along Broadway until we met and joined a guided tour of some of the colleges and sites around Oxford; the most impressive being New College, ironically one of the older colleges in Oxford.

After the tour, we went into St. Mary’s and went up the high tower, which had fantastic views of the city, but barely enough room for people to squeeze past each other on the landing.
The next interesting place we visited was the remains of Oxford Castle which ended up being quite commercialised. We paid for entry and a tour of the castle which had been mostly converted into a prison. The most interesting part was the old pre-Norman tower that was still standing intact that had been used as a prison for most of it’s life.

An early start to the next day meant we got to the popular tourist attraction of Christ Church college when there was no queues and few people about. It was easily the most impressive college we saw and also the place where Lewis Carroll wrote Alice in Wonderland.
After we toured the huge quad, the great hall and the cathedral of Christ Church, we went to the Bodleian Library. The main building was built in 1489 and then rebuilt in 1602. Its collection extends to underground caverns and other surrounding buildings too. We got a tour around the main parts of the building, we even saw a functioning pneumatic tube messaging system they still have going.
After we finished the tour, we popped around the corner to the Sheldonian Theatre. We couldn’t see inside the main theatre because of extensive renovations, but did go up to the cupola – a room at the top with a 360° view.

After our tourist filled morning we made our way to the train station to head back to London to stay with my cousin Rowena. We’re still there now actually.

Bustling Bristol

Tanya wrote this blog entry; enjoy!

We arrived to Bristol feeling it was a poorer cousin to the superior Bath, with a miss-match of modern infrastructure and Georgian architecture spasmodically placed throughout the city. Bristol was not without its own charms, and appears to be very passionate about the arts (we were there when the harbour festival was on – involving a number of music, dance and acrobatic acts) and recycling (dedicating a whole ‘recycled’ infrastructural building to the cause). We took a few photos of Bristol that you can see here.

As we were only in Bristol for one and a half days we had to make the most of the time available to tour the city. So we toured in class, by way of a double decker red bus. This was a great way to see the city in the time available; however we only stopped in three key places: the SS Britain, the Bristol museum and art gallery and the Clifton Suspension bridge.

The SS Great Britain, designed by Brunel was one of the world’s first first metal hull and propeller driven ships, originally starting its life as a luxury cruise liner it eventually reinvented itself as a immigrant ship predominately transporting passengers to Australia (I’m not too sure why this choice of destination; maybe Muldoon said it best when he noted that the IQ of both countries would increase). The SS Great Britain has been lovingly restored to its previous grander after being scuttled in the Falkland Islands in the 60’s; the exhibit also contained an enlightening museum on the history of the boat itself.

The City Museum and Art gallery was nothing extraordinary; although the Egyptian section was a key draw card.

The Clifton Suspension Bridge, also designed by Brunel is considered to be an engineering masterpiece due to the length of the bridge (700 ft across and 250 ft above the Avon). While in the area we visited a building housing a camera obscura (revolutionary in its time, verging on derelict now) and the Giant’s Cave (ending in a rusting wire framed lookout to the suspension bridge and gorge; a little intimidating standing on the thing when all I had screaming through my head was ‘cave creek!!!!’).

Overall a very enjoyable experience.
Next stop, Oxford!

Carefree Cornwall

My dad’s cousin Marian (also known as Orange) and her husband Mike own a hotel (Mount Haven Hotel) in Marazion, Cornwall. They were kind enough to give us a room in their house even though it was during their peak season and so had a full house at the hotel. Our stay was brilliant for the first few days when we had some great weather, but it changed to being windy and rainy for the last few days which meant we ended up with not much to do. We took quite a few photos, mostly while the weather was good. You can see them here.

On our first day we were tasked to take their dog Meg, and another dog, Freddy out for a walk. It was a great day, so we walked for about a total of 3 hours along the coast east of Marazion. There’s some fantastic scenery along there which you can see in our photos.
When we got back we were a bit sunburned and tired, so decided to take it easy and just have a look around Marazion itself. Its quite a small, quaint town that had more than its fair share of tourists wandering the streets. We popped into the surf shop where Marian and Mike’s son Duncan works as a certified surf instructor. He said he would take us out surfing at some point, but unfortunately he came down with a chest infection during our stay, so had to stay on dry land.

We decided to go to St. Ives for our second day, so got the train there (via bus to the station). It’s a classic Cornish seaside town with great beaches, winding narrow streets on a bit of a peninsula. It also had tourists. Lots of tourists. We had trouble keeping to the pavements most of the time!
Despite the hordes, we still enjoyed it and went to a local art gallery there.

The next day we got the 300 bus that does a round trip of Penwith Peninsula – the tip of Cornwall. We went clockwise around the peninsula so started off in Penzance to begin with. There isn’t much to say about Penzance, not that it’s horrible or anything, just nothing worth mentioning.
Next stop was Land’s End. We were warned beforehand that it was commercialised, but that doesn’t quite cut it. There’s a shameless theme park there that might be good for families, but is a blight on a beautiful landscape.
We didn’t go for the theme park though, we went for the 2km walk along the coast up to Sennen Cove which was a great little walk. Sennen Cove is a nice little town too. We grabbed an ice cream before continuing our tour, but didn’t get off again till we ended up back at Marazion.
That night we had a fantastic 3 course meal at the hotel. I’d recommend it if you’re in the area looking for a feed.

The weather started to turn the next day. We headed up to St. Michael’s Mount, a tall rocky island with a castle on top that’s right across from Marazion. It’s even possible to walk over to it at low tide.
It was high tide for us, so we got a boat over. We went up into the castle which was quite impressive and has a long history. The views were good too, but it would have been awesome on a sunny day.

We didn’t do too much on our last 2 days in Cornwall due to the wet weather. We did go back to St. Ives via bus again for an afternoon. It was still full with tourists, and we ended up getting soaked from the rain, but it got us out of the house and into the Barbara Hepworth Museum where we saw lots of interesting abstract sculptures.

Mike dropped us off at the train station on our last day and we headed off to Bristol.

Exeter Excursion

On our way to Cornwall we stopped off in Exeter for a couple of nights and took the opportunity to discover some of the city. It’s a university city on the Exe river and a nice place to visit. We took some photos of Exeter as well, and I’ve uploaded them here.

We arrived in Exeter St Davids train station about midday, checked into our hotel, and made our way down to the Quay in search of some grub. We found the cafes and restaurants along the old harbour to bit be a bit pricey for our wallets, but found a sign outside a cheap looking cafe set back from the river advertising a special that looked pretty good and was within our price range. We went in to order the special (for some reason called OAP) and the conversation went something like this:

“Is the special still going?”
“…. err has OAP been removed from the sign??”
“Um, no. What’s OAP?”
“Ha ha, it’s Old Age Pensioners luv. I don’t think you’re quite old enough yet.”

After our initial embarrassment, I ordered a Ploughman’s Lunch and Tanya got some soup, both of which were tasty and more than filling.
We continued our adventure by visiting the Medieval Exe Bridge. This was built in the 13th century, but the river has since changed it’s course slightly, so it’s now high and dry. We also took a look at some of the old city wall some of which dates right back to when the Romans originally built it.

The next day we got up bright and early and were one of the first ones into Exeter Cathedral. We had a good look around the impressive building and then moved outside to find a free Exeter red coat guide. These guides take visitors around a set route and talk about the history of the area and point out interesting features; all for free. We went on the Catacombs and the Mint tour and our guide was really good. The most interesting part of the tour was going into the Catacombs, which were built in 1837 to entomb up to about 3500 rich dead people, but only 11 people ended up being entombed there. With the catacombs being dark, damp and with the sounds of ravens cawing outside, it was quite creepy.
We finished our touring day by heading off to the Underground Passages, a popular attraction of underground tunnels built in the 13th and 14th centuries to bring fresh water into the city. We got to stumble around some of the passages which was kind of fun.

We caught a train the next day and continued further west to sunny Cornwall.