Location: Bath

This first part was written on the 19.06.2010. (At around 3pm.)

We’re still recovering from whatever cold/flu thing we brought over from the USA. This, I believe, has completely scrambled Ri’s brain. While I have slowly been getting better, Ri got really ill, recovered in a day, had a couple of good days, and got really sick again.
He will live.
Scrambled brain behaviour has included packing up and heading down to reception to checkout an entire day early from London (the night before hand – night four - he’d said we’re leaving tomorrow, and I said ‘I thought we had five nights here.’ He briefly checked his watch and declared that he was wrong – he later admitted that he didn’t actually take in what was on the watch, or else he would have seen it was the 13th not the 14th). It’s partially my fault I guess. I’ve insisted we keep the lap top on Brisbane time/date so we can look and know right away if it’s a good time to call our families. So Ri convinced himself that it was the 14th when it was the 13th because it had just clicked over to midnight in Oz.
So we dragged all our staff back upstairs and went out to explore London – on bonus day.
I used bonus day to get a haircut. My hair is shorter again and a little blonder. After my impromptu haircut we went for a walk to the palace. It was cold. Rainy. But beautiful.
The next day our first day out in London for that stay (every other time we went out it was at least 3pm). We went to Westminster abbey. I particularly enjoyed seeing Newton’s memorial, which made our auto tour say this: “The man who discovered gravity” and right next door was Darwin “A scientist that strongly supported the theory of evolution.” Oh you. You auto-tour.

After our first morning out in London we hired a car (which we have for 10 days) and we drove South to Brighton. I loved Brighton! The shopping was great – not that Ri lets me buy anything! I tried my very first red velvet cupcake. I had never heard of red velvet before I saw Cake Boss in the states. And may I say Nom nom nom nom! So good. And I’m sure you can get it in Oz but there is something about finding new foods in a different country, that makes it... Nommyer.
Brighton is a seaside town, so we went for a walk down to the ‘beach.’ I couldn’t believe it. It really was just stones. The beach crunched as you walked on it.
We took the advice from a local jeweller and the next day we made our way west to Arundel, and visited Arundel Castle on the same day, as it turns out, as Madonna. No we didn’t see Madonna, but we can say we were in a Castle at the same time as Madonna. Cool. Story.

From Arundel we drove North-Westish to Amesbury/ Salisbury. We spent sometime in the shops. I’m looking for a super cute dress, as we have our fifth (FIFTH- half a decade, one fifth of Ri’s life) dating anniversary coming up next week and his birthday is exactly one week later. I saw the cutest dress in Brighton and am absolutely kicking myself for not buying it. (Um yeah it came with like a massive hoop-type thing to wear under it – so it would have taken up half our luggage space – but it was so cute! Let it be the only thing I wear!).
This morning we got up at quarter to 4am and drove down to Stonehenge to watch the sunrise (two days shy of the summer solstice). You can’t actually ‘get in’ until 9am, so we took a few snaps over the fence and came back at 10am after a morning nap, so we could do the audio tour! And find out ‘no one will ever know why blue stone is warmer than other stone’. Ever seen a grown man argue with an audio-tour?
Hi-larious
We drove to Bath thinking that we had four nights booked at a hotel there. Um wrong. The hotel is not in Bath, just outside of Bristol, it’s in Coventry, east of Birmingham. My female mind guess would be that we are staying about 300kms from where we originally thought. And Bath looked so beautiful too.
Oh well, we have two nights not booked yet before we are due back in London, maybe we’ll go back to Bath instead of to Oxford, which is where we planned to go when we thought we were staying in Bath. Birmingham seems close to Wales, maybe we’ll do a trip to Wales. .
I’m still loving England. They drive REALLY FAST, still have Big Brother (there is an Aussie in the house atm, I pointed out the accent to Ri and his response was ‘he must be a tradie’), they love Peter Andre , they charge you for looking at anything and everything plus you can buy V for 99p. .
Advice for travellers. While my sister in law did an awesome job of making up a book for us that has helped compensate for our poor research prior to leaving (I’m going to be blaming the wedding for that) here is one thing we did not know that I thought I would add.
Washington DC: We were advised to visit the White House. What we didn’t know was that if you want to do the tour of the White House, you need to apply to the embassy at least 30 days – 6 months before hand.

Written on the 22nd: Back in Bath.
Apparently there is a saying that to be ‘sent to Coventry’ is like being sent to the sinbin/naughty corner. I wish I’d known that. Because its dead on. We had 4 prepaid nights, but cut our losses after 2 nights and left Coventry for Cardiff (Wales!). I loved Wales. A bit like New Zealand, except they have ‘come out’ about their love of sheep. We went to Cardiff castle (ooh if you go, you must watch the 7 minute video. There is no audio so I may have misunderstood, but from what I can tell the Roman’s left Wales because they were beaten over the head by a school girl’s sketch book. )
And so we’ve driven back to Bath. Take two. Ri decided that after telling me we were staying in Bath for 4 nights in a three star hotel that turned out to be 300 km’s away, that he would make up for it with 2 nights in a five star hotel. On the most expensive street in Bath.
Ooooh I am a princess!
(I feel I need to add this for mum, this five star place was only $10 more than a Best Western that was about 3 miles away, so that is why we're here!)

Photo's to come later as blogger isn't allowing me to post them without a fight and Ri is about ready to have a tantrum if we don't go out for dinner now.