Southern England Part 1
Sep. 20th, 2007 03:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwaevalarinVery image heavy!
Day 0 - Arrival
My father was so kind to drive us to the airport. Luckily we arrived there early enough not to be worried by the fact that the whole check-in area was blocked and police was walking around. I still have no idea what was going on there but it didn't take too long until we could check in.
Question to my Asylum girls: Do you remember when we joked about how our plane'd probably be a prop airliner?
...
This time it was. Want proof?
That's actually the one we flew back to Frankfurt with but it's the same type of plane.
We were originally seated in the last row (row 21) until the stewardess came back to us asking if we might move to row 6 for a better balance. Luckily they didn't aks us to make flying movements with our arms to get the plane in the air. ;)
We got to Southampton safely, which is nowhere near as cute as Birmingham when you look down at it. We took the train to Winchester and then stood there on a dark parking space looking for but not finding a taxi. So![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
verena158 asked someone at the station and we found out that we had just walked by the sign pointing the right direction twice. D'oh!
The taxi driver asked us if we were "From this country". So we sounded British to him? o.O
Winchester is a maze of One Way streets and I have no idea what way the taxi driver took to our B&B that was a somewhat outside of the town pretty much at the end of St. Cross Road. I scanned two maps of Winchester so you can maybe imagine it a little better:
That's our B&B:
We were greeted with a cheerful: "Ah, it's the girls!" which instantly made me feel comfortable there. Roy was really nice. He gave us a small map where he had marked the B&B and an Inn we could go to. He told us where the nearest bus station was and that there was a beautiful pathway alongside the river Itchen that lead to the city. Then he gave us the key to our room and the front door showed us our room which was pretty small and very... flowery. The bathroom was right next to it and we basically had the whole floor to ourselves since the aunt and uncle who usually live in the other room where in Spain.
Here's some pictures of our room:
And that's what we saw when we looked out the window. The hill you can see in the background is St. Catherine's Hill:
We were pretty tired so we didn't do much more that day and went to bed rather early. I was sleeping in the bed closer to the door so I decided that meant that I was Dean and therefore allowed to eat onverena158's bed. ;)
By the way: Supernatural really haunted us all week. For no apparent reason the key fob said "Lawrence" and I'll tell you about all the Deans later
Day 1 - Winchester
The next morning we had our first real English breakfast. The same we should get all week. It started with some cerials, the a platter with eggs on toast, some ham, a sausage and baked tomatoes and finally croissants. Plus tea, orange juice and the news and weather forecast on BBC. And no, we didn't need much more to eat during the day.
We had the whole day planned for visiting Winchester and getting some information on our planned day trip destinations in the tourist information center.
By the way, Winchester has a slogan that let my mind wander into the gutter as soon as I read it:
Explore every Winchester
There's not really much I can tell you about Winchester other than the fact that it's the former capital of England so I'll just show you the pictures I took.
Winchester Cathedral. By the way there's a really small, hidden garden called "Dean Garnier Garden" next to Cathedral. And since I bought myself a book called "The Ghosthunter's Guide to England" on our last day there I can tell you now that that the Cathedral Green is said to be haunted by a limping monk:
St. Giles Hill from where you have a great view on the city. It looks a little like it was build into the middle of a forest, doesn't it?
That's King Alfred the Great (or Aelfred which sounds very Tolkien to me):
The Guildhall where the tourist information center is located.
The (view from the) westgate which houses a small museums. Talking about museums they are much more fun in England with all their little puzzles and quizzes. That are probably meant for the children visiting but I had a lot of fun with them as well. *g*
The building you can see on the last picture of the above is the famous Great Hall, the only remaining part of Winchester Castle. It houeses the legendary Arthurian Round Table that unfortuanetly was build a few hundred years later that Arthur is said to have lived. But it's impressive nonetheless:
A statue of Queen Victoria:
When you leave the Great Hall through the back door you enter Queen Eleanor's Garden, which is small but very cute:
Close by is the Peninsula Baracks and quite some museums with military themes. One of them a rifle museum but we didn't visit that one:
That's Celtic, I think. It's inside the City Museum:
The King's Gate and some buildings nearby. The house Jane Austin died in is somewhere in that area as well but we didn't see any signs that could tell us which one it is:
Wolvesey Castle. It took us a while to find it. I think it was some bishop's palace and the wedding of Phillip II of Spain and Mary Tudor took place there. Notice the blue sky. That's what the weather was like most of the week. But since it wasn't too warm - around 20°C - I really enjoyed it:
When we walked back to 67 St. Cross Road we took the path Roy had recommended. A really beautiful footpath surrounded by the Itchen that splits there. It's unbelievable how many joggers and people with dogs we met on that way during that week:
In the afternoon we climed up St. Catherine's Hill, because, yeah, we hadn't been walking enough already or anything. But our map said that the Miz Maze was up there and we were curious what exactly that might be.
That's the view from the hill. The big, grey building should be the Hospital of St. Cross if I'm not completely mistaken:
And that's the mysterious Miz Maze. We didn't even see it at first. It seems like no one really knows what it is exactly or how it got there:
Well, that picture was supposed to show you how steep the path down St. Catherine's Hill was, but of course it doesn't look steep at all:
Later we walked into the city center again to grab something to eat at Subway. I wonder how many miles we walked that day.
To be continued...
(pics are clickable)
Day 0 - Arrival
My father was so kind to drive us to the airport. Luckily we arrived there early enough not to be worried by the fact that the whole check-in area was blocked and police was walking around. I still have no idea what was going on there but it didn't take too long until we could check in.
Question to my Asylum girls: Do you remember when we joked about how our plane'd probably be a prop airliner?
...
This time it was. Want proof?
That's actually the one we flew back to Frankfurt with but it's the same type of plane.
We were originally seated in the last row (row 21) until the stewardess came back to us asking if we might move to row 6 for a better balance. Luckily they didn't aks us to make flying movements with our arms to get the plane in the air. ;)
We got to Southampton safely, which is nowhere near as cute as Birmingham when you look down at it. We took the train to Winchester and then stood there on a dark parking space looking for but not finding a taxi. So
verena158 asked someone at the station and we found out that we had just walked by the sign pointing the right direction twice. D'oh!The taxi driver asked us if we were "From this country". So we sounded British to him? o.O
Winchester is a maze of One Way streets and I have no idea what way the taxi driver took to our B&B that was a somewhat outside of the town pretty much at the end of St. Cross Road. I scanned two maps of Winchester so you can maybe imagine it a little better:
That's our B&B:
We were greeted with a cheerful: "Ah, it's the girls!" which instantly made me feel comfortable there. Roy was really nice. He gave us a small map where he had marked the B&B and an Inn we could go to. He told us where the nearest bus station was and that there was a beautiful pathway alongside the river Itchen that lead to the city. Then he gave us the key to our room and the front door showed us our room which was pretty small and very... flowery. The bathroom was right next to it and we basically had the whole floor to ourselves since the aunt and uncle who usually live in the other room where in Spain.
Here's some pictures of our room:
And that's what we saw when we looked out the window. The hill you can see in the background is St. Catherine's Hill:
We were pretty tired so we didn't do much more that day and went to bed rather early. I was sleeping in the bed closer to the door so I decided that meant that I was Dean and therefore allowed to eat on
verena158's bed. ;)By the way: Supernatural really haunted us all week. For no apparent reason the key fob said "Lawrence" and I'll tell you about all the Deans later
Day 1 - Winchester
The next morning we had our first real English breakfast. The same we should get all week. It started with some cerials, the a platter with eggs on toast, some ham, a sausage and baked tomatoes and finally croissants. Plus tea, orange juice and the news and weather forecast on BBC. And no, we didn't need much more to eat during the day.
We had the whole day planned for visiting Winchester and getting some information on our planned day trip destinations in the tourist information center.
By the way, Winchester has a slogan that let my mind wander into the gutter as soon as I read it:
There's not really much I can tell you about Winchester other than the fact that it's the former capital of England so I'll just show you the pictures I took.
Winchester Cathedral. By the way there's a really small, hidden garden called "Dean Garnier Garden" next to Cathedral. And since I bought myself a book called "The Ghosthunter's Guide to England" on our last day there I can tell you now that that the Cathedral Green is said to be haunted by a limping monk:
St. Giles Hill from where you have a great view on the city. It looks a little like it was build into the middle of a forest, doesn't it?
That's King Alfred the Great (or Aelfred which sounds very Tolkien to me):
The Guildhall where the tourist information center is located.
The (view from the) westgate which houses a small museums. Talking about museums they are much more fun in England with all their little puzzles and quizzes. That are probably meant for the children visiting but I had a lot of fun with them as well. *g*
The building you can see on the last picture of the above is the famous Great Hall, the only remaining part of Winchester Castle. It houeses the legendary Arthurian Round Table that unfortuanetly was build a few hundred years later that Arthur is said to have lived. But it's impressive nonetheless:
A statue of Queen Victoria:
When you leave the Great Hall through the back door you enter Queen Eleanor's Garden, which is small but very cute:
Close by is the Peninsula Baracks and quite some museums with military themes. One of them a rifle museum but we didn't visit that one:
That's Celtic, I think. It's inside the City Museum:
The King's Gate and some buildings nearby. The house Jane Austin died in is somewhere in that area as well but we didn't see any signs that could tell us which one it is:
Wolvesey Castle. It took us a while to find it. I think it was some bishop's palace and the wedding of Phillip II of Spain and Mary Tudor took place there. Notice the blue sky. That's what the weather was like most of the week. But since it wasn't too warm - around 20°C - I really enjoyed it:
When we walked back to 67 St. Cross Road we took the path Roy had recommended. A really beautiful footpath surrounded by the Itchen that splits there. It's unbelievable how many joggers and people with dogs we met on that way during that week:
In the afternoon we climed up St. Catherine's Hill, because, yeah, we hadn't been walking enough already or anything. But our map said that the Miz Maze was up there and we were curious what exactly that might be.
That's the view from the hill. The big, grey building should be the Hospital of St. Cross if I'm not completely mistaken:
And that's the mysterious Miz Maze. We didn't even see it at first. It seems like no one really knows what it is exactly or how it got there:
Well, that picture was supposed to show you how steep the path down St. Catherine's Hill was, but of course it doesn't look steep at all:
Later we walked into the city center again to grab something to eat at Subway. I wonder how many miles we walked that day.
To be continued...
(pics are clickable)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-09-20 02:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-20 03:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-20 11:02 pm (UTC)Beautiful pictures all around, looks like you got sunny weather as well. England is such a lovely country. Also, limping monk, huh. Hope you had your salt ready ;p
Thanks for sharing all of this!
no subject
Date: 2007-09-21 12:33 pm (UTC)I didn't have any salt with me but luckily the limping monk only appears about once a year. ;)