Having Bath?

Few weeks back we took a trip over to this place called Bath, famous because of the 3 hot springs that flows to this town. It's the only natural hot spring in the UK so kinda a major tourist attraction for Brits and tourist alike.

First stop was to the Roman Bath. It actually started of as a shrine built by the Celts dedicated to the goddess Sulis, but when the Romans invaded during the 1st to the 4th century, this town was a hotbed of temples and bathing complexes, and this was the major bath coz of it's association with the goddess and the place being sacred. Due to it's age, the place look like a ruin with a pond in the middle actually... =P, but major reconstruction and "facelift" were done... I think to justify the 10 pounds (RM70!!) that tourist have to pay.

The Roman Bath against the backdrop of Bath Abbey

The Roman Bath

The original plan of the Roman Bath.

A juggler outside the Roman Bath.

Reflection of Bath Abbey on a Fudge Shop

The next place is the Royal crescent. Famous for it's Georgian architecture, a row of buildings shaped into a crescent. As it's difficult to show the shape from ground view pics, I nicked of a public domain pic, so that you guys can see a good overall pic.

The Royal Crescent. Where you can see the front and back portion

Since we've quite some time, with excellant weather, we just walked around and below are some miscelleanous pics.

Fully decorated scooter. Can give the Melakan trishaws a run for their money!


Parade Gardens: The Brits juz love the SUN!

The weir of Avon River against the backdrop of the Pulteney Bridge built in 1773.

The Avon River along Bath

So since we still had some more time after walking round, we decided to drop by Stonehenge. Personally i think this site is just much ado about nothing.... =P. Just a couple of stones someone arranged couple of tousand years ago.... hei but I'm no historian.... the plains with sheeps around it were more interesting... =P. So that's all till the next update!

Stonehenge

Fields around Stonehenge

Random thoughts...

Have not updated this blog for sometime. Ran out of ideas. =P. Personally I don't really like the idea of publishing personal emo stuffs for everyone to see... feels weird and strange. No offence to those who do that, I do keep up with those also ahaha... So anyway here's a list of what I've been up to:

• Went to Bath (it's a place ok, not the shower stuff)... pics later
• Went to Exbury Gardens... pics later
• Went to Bealieu (pronounced Beuly) and blew 17.25 pounds to see something not worth seeing.... pics later
• Watched spiderman 3. The tickets here cost RM50. So better be thankful for the ticket prices in Malaysia... and say NO to piracy... ;)
• Wrote a song and recorded in Linux:Ubuntu
• Finished reading Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons, Deception Point by Dan Brown.
• Forced to buy jeans coz my jeans tore at the knees both sides, cost me RM175!!!
• Finished reading Jack Higgins: Season in Hell and Alistair McLean's Force 10.
• Play acoustic guitar, electric guitar and piano for a local church here
• Jam with some of the church guys every Wednesday
• Borrowed a Takamine and play it when I'm bored.

Boring life yea... 2 more months of these.... *pengsan*

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

Good News and Bad News

OK First the GOOD NEWS. I came out of my semi-retirement in blogging and I yam back. BAD NEWS. I didn't bring my camera coz the CCD was defective. Could hardly take any pictures. But anyway... got meself a better camera phone so hopefully gonna get better pics...

Actually have been here for 2 weeks already. But the first week kinda wasted with jet lag and the 2nd week spend recovering from the 3in1 i got... fever, cough and cold (mebbe withdrawal symptom from the glorious CNY food I indulged in... haha...). So actually still feeling under the weather but well enough to do some jalan-jalan this weekend. This is my ride for the past 2 weeks. First time driving a Beemer. It's a 320D, diesel powered and has 6 gears. The pickup is super cekap man...



All right, this weekend took juz a short trip to Portsmouth town, where the famous or infamous Spinnaker Tower is. It was supposed to be completed in 1999 in time for Milennium celebrations, but only managed to be completed in 2005... with delays and cost overruns (sounds familiar eh!). It's 170m in height and supposed to be the 2nd tallest tower in the UK which is accesible by the public. (I didn't take the trip up... coz... hehe.. I got vertigo.... ya know... scared of heights?... =P). It's located in a newly developed area called Gun Wharf Quays, combining shopping areas, bars & restaurants, and also a Harbour. There's also a nearby Historic Naval Dockyard. (more on this in another post.). Manage to also catch a public performance of "The jive Aces", basically a jive and swing band and plays really good music. Enjoyed their performance with some members of the public taking the opportunity to dance in front.... I believe if any Malaysian aunties were there they would start line dancing... hahaha

Spinnaker Tower

Shopping in Gunwharf quays

The Harbour @ Gunwharf Quays

The Jive Aces public performance... double bass, trumpet, saxophone... coolness...

Fountain of Belgian Chocolate... 2 pounds for a shot!

All rights... gonna end with this fountain of chocolate pic... I need to get one and put in my house!!!... free flow of belgian chocolate... wooohooo... priceless....