Fulham Football

Eager to be as one with the locals and to do a bit of flat bonding – the tenants of 5 Allestree road journeyed to Craven Cottage to see our local team play Werner Brenan (a German team).

Even though this was just a warm up game to the Premier league season, we were among the 12,000 fans. As it is English summer, it started pouring down (luckily we got seats under cover).  

The game itself started slow, and there was only one goal in the first half (to the Germans). At half time, we discovered that you weren’t allowed to take drinks back to your seats, as English football fans can’t be trusted not to throw bottles at people.

The passion for their local team was evident in the large amount of people wearing the Fulham shirt and singing the local chants. 

Especially this angry ginga kid, dressed in full kit, he was not shy in telling the ref what he thought of him in questionable language for an 8 year old.

The second half produced 5 goals for the Fulham team, which everyone was pleased about.

To continue on the English tradition, after the game we went to the Durrell Arms (our local) and had a few pints. A nice afternoon out, and one we will do again.

Fulham F C for life!!!

Highlight: 5 goals!

Lowlight: The weather - Summer in England = rain
Interesting Fact: Fulham is the oldest professional football team in London.
 

Bath and Stonehenge

We were keen to see more of England and to get out of the city, so we hit up Bath for a weekend getaway. Bath is situated in the south west of England 156km from London. The city was first established as a spa resort with the Latin name, Aquae Sulis ("the waters of Sulis") by the Romans in AD 43.
Waking with the sparrows we tubed to Paddington station to catch the First Western to Bath. We are still having trouble working out why you get 9 train tickets when you are going to one destination and back again….but that’s England.

We arrived to a showery, overcast and cold day but we were prepared, especially Hamish with his triple branded North Face gear! We left our bags at the charming and a little kitsch Redcar Hotel (think Fawlty Towers run by Eastern Europeans) and started exploring.

Hunger drove us to the Sally Lunn Tea House believed to have started in 1680 by Frenchwoman Sally Lunn who invented the Sally Lunn bun. We both had an idea about what a Sally Lunn cake is from back home however we were totally wrong when our order was brought out. It was MASSIVE! But delicious, especially the cinnamon butter topped bun.

Nicely full, we headed to the Bath Abbey. The cathedral is massive with really impressive stained glass windows. The Abbey was originally built in the 7th century, and has had been rebuilt numerous times on the location since then. The Abbey can fit up to 1,200 people, and there are TV screens everywhere so people can actually see the service.

The Abbey is supposedly also a monument to several ‘famous’ people (Beau Nash, Admiral Arthur Phillip and Isaac Pitman) but we didn’t recognise any of them.
We also managed to ninja into the Abbey by a side entrance by chance, which meant we didn’t have to pay. But we made a donation and lit a candle and said a prayer otherwise that would be super bad karma. 

Handily the entrance to the Roman Baths is about 4 metres from the Abbey, so that was the next stop. We were both quite impressed with the size of the Baths complex and the work that had been put into making it into an interactive learning experience. 

There were a huge amount of people there which was a drawback, but the audio guide was good - Bill Bryson narrated the commentary which was cool.

It was pretty incredible to be in the Baths that were so important to such a large number of people so many years ago. The history of the Baths is a combination of Celtic and Roman, but they both identified the god of the spring waters, Sulis for the Celts and Minerva for the Romans. 

The waters of the Spa are supposedly meant to cure crazy diseases and things, and wealthy people who were cured donated steel rings that were attached to side of the baths so people didn’t drown. Very considerate really. 

For lunch we consulted Lou’s amazing itinerary and went to a cute little restaurant called The Hole in the Wall, where we had some really nice food and wine.

The rain failed to dampen our adventurous spirits and we went for a brisk walk up to the Circus and the Royal Crescent, this is basically where the rich people live. There were designed in 1767 by John Wood and are meant to be some of the best examples of Georgian architecture. Our walking trip then took us to the Botanical Gardens which were very nice.

Keeping on the garden theme, we headed back towards the River Avon and went to the Parade Gardens which were quite incredible. Who knew that Bath was such an award winning town in the gardens category! The lion made out of vegetation followed on the theme of 100 Lion sculptures being placed around the city. 
 

We then headed back to Redcar and checked in to our hotel and rested our weary feet.

Dinner rolled around and we decided to try on the recommended Thai restaurants in the city centre, which was really great. We had to finish by 8pm though as we were booked in for the ‘Bizzare Bath Walking Tour’. This was basically a comedian who led this tour around Bath and did little skits and things, was very funny and well worth it. 

Bath Abbey at night

Parade Gardens at night

The next day we awoke to better weather and some crazy/awesome news!! David (Hamish's best mate) proposed to Donna who naturally said um...yes. Hamish was in shock and couldnt believe his best mate is soon to be married. We then headed to the lounge to sample the continental breakfast. This was different. Basically you went into the dining room and there was the cereals and juices etc laid out, and a weird looking waiter standing there who asked if you wanted toast, and we said yes, and watched as he opened a door to a cupboard where 2 toasters were sitting.

Very bizarre. 

Then we set off to the Thermae spa baths, a complex built in 2006 where we paid for 2 hours worth of soaking in mineral water. The roof top pool provided a great view of the city, but we felt that the water could have been hotter and you paid too much for what you got but at least it didn’t smell of Rotorua.

We left starving, so grabbed a bite to eat at a café before assembling at the start of our next tour - to Stonehenge.

The Scarper Tour bus took us on the hour long journey to Stonehenge, it was beautiful countryside, with really old farmhouses and little villages on the way. The countryside reminded us of home a bit. We saw the famous white horse that is carved into the hillside (as the weather had cleared up by then), that was pretty cool. 

There were so many people at Stonehenge, but luckily as we were on a tour we got to miss the queues. Its fair to say that we were quite indifferent about Stonehenge itself, it was much smaller than we thought it would be, and to be honest its just a bunch of rocks that are over 2000 years old. But we saw it and have ticked that box! 

Hamish is pretty strong...

So our weekend jaunt in Bath was drawing to a close, the only downside of the weekend was the train home running about 45 mins late which was super annoying.

But overall, we really enjoyed it and think it was our favourite place in England so far.

Highlight 1: The city – beautiful Georgian buildings all in stone made this a very pretty city.
Highlight 2: Bizarre Bath. Very funny and worth the £8 each.
Lowlight: The weather on Saturday…but hey we are living in England!
Interest fact 1: Back in the day tourists were able to hire hammers from the local blacksmith to chip of personal souvenirs from the stones at Stonehenge.
Interesting fact 2: Lord Nelson called Bath home for some of this life. 

Interesting fact 3: There is a pub in Bath called Sam Wellers! Didn't score us a free drink though.  

Buckingham Palace Tour

On recommendation from James and Emma, we bought our tickets along with thousands of other tourists to go and visit the inside of Buckingham Palace, which is only open for 8 weeks a year.
Getting off at the Hyde Park corner tube we started to walk down to the palace. Hamish quickly spotted a turquoise Koenigsegg super car that is owned by Qatari Royal Family who recently purchased Harrods. All their cars are their royal blue colour.

Hamish thought he would go with matching attire of this £1.2m Koenigsegg CCXR

After pulling Hamish away from the car we headed to the palace. The Palace puts up all these temporary structures during the summer months while the Queen is at Balmoral. And in true English style, the process of getting inside was totally confusing and required numerous of staff to stand around.

Once inside it is obvious that this palace was one that was still fully operational compared to other palaces we had seen that seemed to go over the top with the amount of furniture etc. The palace housed heaps of paintings, sculptures and other works of art.

The tour also included an exhibition on the Queen’s year that most people on the tour seemed to be interested in. From what we saw it looks like all she does is go to ceremonies and garden parties. Pretty sweet life, and she gets 8 weeks off every summer!

Even the coffees were royal

The tour ended with a visit to the garden café, which was just gorgeous, we had tea and scones as you do and then wandered around the garden a bit.

 Overall, a good visit but not one we will be rushing back to.  

Highlight: The scones. Not full strawberries, and not full jam but somewhere in between. Lowlight: The queuing system to get in. Sort out palace officials! 
Interesting fact: The Palace was bombed 9 times during World War 2, yet the King and Queen refused to leave London.

Day Trip to Brighton

We had both heard a lot about this seaside town, and both of us had been missing the ocean so last Sunday we got up early and hopped on the train to Brighton.

Brighton is on the south coast of England, and the ocean is part of the English Channel, it is approx 90kms south east of London. It was supposed to have been a ‘resort’ style town where the rich people came to get some sunshine and enjoy the ‘therapeutic’ qualities of the seawater. We think maybe as these rich people had been living in London with the filthy Thames; any seawater would have been therapeutic.

So we got to the station and found our way to the seaside. Despite being dressed for the beach, Louise had to put on her thermal and scarf until the sun came out a few hours later.

We wandered up to the West pier, which as you can see by the photos was burnt down in 2003. It was built in 1866 and is awaiting restoration. Here we found an English version of the bungy, basically it’s a large crane 51m up and the free fall is about 1 second. Very tame (aka lame) and people were queuing up to pay £50.

The beach itself is just large pebbles with hundreds of deck chairs set out (which you have to pay for of course). The sign that greeted us at the beach was ‘Award Wining Beach’, (we would like to know what award the beach has won), and then the second sight that greeted us was a man relieving himself right out in the open on the beach. The water was also freezing, although we did see some brave souls swimming later on in the day.

We then headed to the main part of Brighton, the Brighton Pier. This is basically a massive pier that has a carnival at the end. It was all a bit over the top, there was a room with lots of kids video games and then all of a sudden it turned into a place with weirdos playing the slots - Louise lost her £2 in about 14 seconds.

Again, the rides at the carnival were ridiculously expensive, for example 4 pounds for 5 mins on a trampoline. It was basically the British carnies with rickety old rides similar to the AMP shows from back home. Louise did manage to persuade Hamish to ride the bucking bull in order to win her a prize. All he had to do was to stay on for 30 seconds, but alas after 3 attempts he was still being thrown off (due to mitigating circumstances).
 

So Louise had to take matters into her own hands and have a go at another Carnival game, and of course she won herself a prize.

Nice teeth...

At the promise of ‘the best fish and chips on the south coast’, we thought we better to give them a go. In short they were rubbish!

 



 We then navigated our way through the hens parties, and sunburnt, drunk English people to the Royal Pavilion. The Royal Pavilion was built for George the 4th in the early 1800s, and is quite amazing as it was built in an Indian - Oriental style.





We did a tour of the palace where George stayed for a long period of his life - it is fair to say that the design bordered on kitsch and tacky. For example, the chandelier in the dining room, which contained 6 copper dragons, weighed in at one tonne, and one banquet had 187 different dishes.

After the Royal Pavilion, we wandered around Brighton’s Lanes which are a collection of nice boutiquey shops and pubs.

Then we headed back to the West Pier to sample some of the wares from the French market for our second lunch. Basically this was a disaster, we got ripped off and the food was awful, not to mention the ‘Battle’ cider that was a true battle to drink.

We chilled out in the sun reminiscing about beautiful beaches, nice beer and yummy food back home.

Highlight: Lou wining her prize from the mischievous carnies and boutique arty shops on boardwalk.
Lowlight1: BATTLE CIDER! 
Lowlight 2: English beaches and not being able to get on the earlier train home.
Interesting fact: John Nash (the architect behind the Royal Pavilion) was also the architect who also transformed Buckingham House into Buckingham Palace.