The road more (or less) travelled

Well it's about time for another rushed installment of (cue drumroll) "The Unofficial Europe".

I left off last time in Aix-en-Provence... I don't really have much to say about this place as it was not very interesting at all.

Nice

By this time the weather in France had been getting us down, so we booked 5 nights in a nice hotel in Nice, which is a "beach town" in the south of France. To our great surprise, the shit weather that had followed us for the past while, did not make it to Nice, and we managed to enjoy hot weather and sunshine pretty much the entire time there. We did a couple of sightseeing type things like visiting the old fortress on top of the hill (with a spectacular view), and explored the old town with its many markets and restaurants (one really good meal at a place named after Jesus).
Really though, we just spent heaps of time on the beach.
Nice's beaches can be described as a vast expanse of budgie smugglers, boobies, and a surreal walking style that comes from trying to navigate hot stones in bare feet, which has to be seen to be fully appreciated as I can't come up with an adequate description.
So we lay down on our bamboo mats (used to disperse your weight evenly over the rocky terrain) and got very, very burnt.

We happened to be there for Bastille Day (France's national holiday), which started off with a very uninspiring military parade, but ended up with a cool fireworks display over the bay, watched from the beach.

Lyon

We spent a night in Lyon as a stopover on our way back to Paris to catch the Eurostar to London.
It seemed like a nice place but we didn't really have enough time to check it out properly.

London

We arrived at London Waterloo off the Eurostar (which is an awesome ride), and met my cousin Stephen at who's place in West Hampstead we would be staying for the next 5 nights or so, and I can tell you that after Nice we were very glad to not have to pay for accommodation for a while!

I was glad to finally be in a country that takes breakfast seriously, and quickly became acquainted with local culinary delights such as meat and ale pies with Yorkshire pudding, and Cumberland sausage, just to name a couple.

Steve and his wife Kat had just gotten back from a whirlwind 15 day (I think) tour of Europe on which they had been joined by Kat's twin sister Amy and her fiancee Andy. So for the first 3 nights there was 6 of us all staying in the one apartment, and we got to know each other very well! We actually spent a fair amount of our first couple of days exploring London with Amy and Andy (as Steve and Kat were at work), which was great fun. Andy had popped the question about 5 or 6 days earlier while in Switzerland (I think...) and they were still all lovey dovey... congrats!

The list of things we did and saw in London is long, but some highlights include: National Museum, Downing Street (where the PM lives), 221b Baker street (where Sherlock Holmes lives), Westminster Abbey (where lots of dead monarchs live), Regent st, Leicester Square, Picadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square, Mayfair, and lots of other Monopoly places. We waived at the policeman outside Margaret Thatchers house and he waived back! I don't know why, but it seemed cool at the time.

Westminster Abbey is definitely one of the coolest churches I've been to, and is highly recommended. It has flying buttresses on its flying buttresses!
We managed to catch the Tower Bridge over the Thames opening and closing while on a short cruise on the river, which apparently only happens a few times a week nowadays.

We happened to find ourselves at one point in the Baker Street Tube station, which is actually the oldest subway station in the world, dating back to 1863! Definitely worth a look if you like old style underground architecture. As a matter of fact I could have spent ages just exploring the tube stations, as some of the larger ones are really cool. e.g. Huge cavernous expanses with mazes of escalators extending deep into the ground... (We could be happy underground...)

We also went on a guided "Horror Tour", which took us around a bunch of Jack the Ripper related spots, which was pretty cool.

On a more soggy note, we got caught in a huge downpour (hear about the floods anyone?) whilst watching the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace (over-rated) and got absolutely saturated. I ended up having to buy a new pair of shoes as it took about 4 days for mine to dry!

Staying with Steve and Kat was really cool, as they took us to heaps of awesome bars, markets, restaurants etc. that we just wouldn't have known were there otherwise, and it was great to just hang out with people we knew for a while... and on a happy note, my liver is expected to make a full recovery!
London is probably my favourite city so far, and if you haven't been there, get off your arse and go!


Stewartby

On the Sunday afternoon we were picked up from Steve's place by Lucy's uncle Mick and his partner Patsy (much appreciated) and headed out to where they live in a little place called Stewartby, about an hour north.

While there we did an afternoon trip out to check out Cambridge, where Lucy promptly decided that she was going to try get transferred there for her masters! It's full of old buildings and lots of students and bicycles (surprise!), and is quite a cool place. Very cool actually.

We also did a day trip out to Bletchley Park, which was a secret installation during the 2nd world war, and was where all the code breaking of intercepted encrypted enemy communications went on. It's now a museum-ish place with lots of WW2 era collections, and military stuff.
The highlight (for me) was a working replica of "Colossus", which was the first ever computer. It was built to help break encrypted messages and is very cool. Unfortunately (and supposedly) the original was dismantled right after the war for security reasons...

Seascale

We are now in a little place called Seascale, which is on the north-ish west coast of England, in Cumbria, near the Lakes District. We are staying with Lucy's dad's cousin and his wife, Tam and Amanda, in an awesome house on top of a hill overlooking the ocean in one direction, the Cumbrian countryside in another (which is spectacular), and the first ever Nuclear power plant in the other!



Today our gracious hosts took us on a driving tour of the Lakes district including such higlights as Beatrix Potter's holiday house. The scenery is so amazing that it just has to be seen.

Off to Glasgow tomorrow!

We'll it's time for dinner so I must go.

I apologise if this post seems at all incoherent as I'm rushing due to hungriness!

Pics soon.

J