Easter Holidays: Part 2

Have been away from Portsmouth for the past 3 days, attending a course in Southampton University. Anyway as promised this is part 2 of the Easter holidays jalan jalan trip. Actually we planned to stay over at Penzance in Cornwall and take in the breath taking sights there, but bring easter holidays, every hotel and B&B's were fully booked... and I literally mean EVERY... the other reason is that being the procastinators we were, we actually called 2 days before the holidays only hahaha. Anyway some other time... so Winchester here we come...

Red: Planned route with detours. Green: Taken route with bunch of lazy bums

Anyway we didn't expect to see much in Winchester, mainly coz the trip was pretty impromptu, but boy were we mesmerized by the buildings over there. Sorry for the poor quality of the pictures as the camera didn't work well in low lighthings (anyone wanna sponsor a Nikon D80?... =P). Basically Winchester is the capital of the district we are in which is called Hampshire. It was the capital of England during the 10th and 11th century. Coming out from the parking lots, we were greeted by the English version of the "pasar malam"... ;). A number of tents arranged in a row selling everything from food stuff, clothes, farm produces (few pig legs were dangling around) to furniture and flowers.

The "English" Pasar Malam

The flower Stall

Girly flowers

A public park in Winchester

Walking towards Winchester Castle we walk through a street called Ancient High Street, the street was preserved to this date from the 15th century and is now a potpourri of classic and modern buildings, with buskers and performers lining up the streets for a lively atmosphere.

Ancient High Street

Busker: Nice Guitar and an even better guitarist

The Winchester Castle was built in 1067, but what's left is just the Great Hall and some ruins around it. The Great Hall houses the mythical King Arthur's Round Table which was built by one the English kings in 1275 something like tat.

Winchester Castle: The Great Hall

The Round Table

Silhoutte of a huge bronze statue of a King against stained glass with England's coat of arms

Next stop was the Winchester cathedral. This was where certain portions from the Da Vinci Code movie was shot (shown as The Vatican in the movie)... ironical isn't it? It is the 2nd longest cathedral in whole of Europe. Construction of the cathedral started in 1079. The cathedral is simply massive. Once we entered, we just sat at the back and took in the whole atmosphere. It was simply majestic. One thing that came of a surprise that there are a number of prominent people that is buried WITHIN the cathedral, a number of bishops and also Jane Austen.More information and history can be obtained at the official website http://www.winchester-cathedral.org.uk/. I'll just leave you guys with some pics.

Front Portion of the Winchester Cathedral

Side view of the Cathedral


Hall being prepared for Easter Service

Mid section of the cathedral, whole room is surrounded by wooden carvings.

Stone carvings adorn major sections in the cathedral

The corridor along the cathedral

All rights, that's all for now. Haven't been going around this weekend, juz spending a lazy weekend. Hopefully can head to Cambridge next week if all the plans work out well. Till then.... cheers....

Easter Holidays: Part 1

Had been a very busy few weeks prior to these Easter holiday. Yups... it was a holiday last weekend... from April 6th to 9th, it was a long weekend, so we decided to make a few short trips around to looksee. We headed to Oxford (feeling a bit intellectual... ahaha)...

Anyway we've switched cars and right now we're using the Chrysler Grand Voyager. A huge gas guzzling van (we call it a bus actually), extremely bad turning radius, very difficult to park... BUT... it has a real cool GPS Navigation System. It can direct you to anywhere in the UK with a digital lady voice instructing where to turn and stuff. I imagine if they were to produce one in Malaysia it should be in Manglish... "You have overshoot la. Please gostan"... or something like that... =P

Navigation System: Off Road (means it doesn't know where it is... =P)

Anyway after a 2 hours plus drive to Oxford we parked at the outskirts of Oxford and board the bus (Easier to travel around and avoid the limited and expensive parking). They call it the "Park and Ride". Most major towns would have this facility. Sat on my first double decker bus. You'll be amazed how these drivers can drive this huge buses through small roads... here am I complaining about the van.

The "Park and ride" Bus

Oxford is city famous for it's colleges and it's history stretches to over 800 years. So our first stop was Trinity College as it was the only college that opens it's doors to visitors at that time. It has a small beautiful chapel within it which was built in 1691. The college was originally built in 1286 and was known as Durham college, however it was later bought over some guy and Trinity College was established in 1555. The 4 female statues at the top of the tower actually represents Astronomy, Geometry, Medicine and Theology.

Trinity College with 4 female statues at the top

Front Portion of chapel

Stained glass and intricate carvings at the top in chapel

Back/Top portion of Chapel: Pipe organ, carvings and painting at the top.

Next place that we headed to was the Ashmolean Museum. There's a nubmer of interesting things on display and the major themes are Roman scultures, Egyptian History (there were mummies on display too!), and of course English history and culture. As it is a museum. So not many pictures were taken but it was a real eye opener.

Lost in Oxford

The Ashmolean Museum

Up next is a short walk to one of the main landmarks of Oxford, The Radcliffe Camera. It's a circular shaped building built in the English Baroque style (same period as the Baroque period some of ya guys learn in music history)... took more than a decade to built (1737-1749). Currently it is used as part of the Bodleian Library. Nearby is the University Church of St. Mary, which portions of it were built since 1280. We didn't manage to get into the church as there was a service going on and didn't wanna disrupt it mid-way. However we climbed to the top of the tower to get a beautiful panaromic view of the City if Oxford. The stairs were pretty steep and narrow... and yea... I was pretty out of shape... =P.

The Radcliffe Camera

St. Mary's University Church

Panoramic view 1

Panaromic View 2

Finally we ended our trip at Christ Church Cathederal, one of the film locations of the Harry Potter series, located near the river Thames. We didn't go in the cathedral though. (As u all can see I'm getting lazy to describe stuff... so since a picture paints a thousand words... nah...)

Christ Church Cathedral

One of the tributaries to the Thames River

Thames River

It was really an interesting day and sights, stay tuned to the next part for the trip to Winchester... it was mind blowing... Cheers