Berlin

A German knight

Our last long weekend was spent in Berlin.  I was last there maybe 5 years ago, and it's amazing how much it has changed over such a short time.  Last time it still felt a little derelict, with abandoned warehouses and vast empty lots.  But this time it felt like it was kicking up a gear.  There were cranes all over the place, everyone seemed to have a job, it was really clean.  You feel like "what Euro crisis?"  Germany is definitely doing OK during this time.  Not like slightly depressive France, or Britain with it's constant obsession with immigrants

Last time I was all over the Second World War things, I really like that period of history.  But Dave had never been to Berlin and he actually isn't interested in that era at all.  Which was kind of good, because it meant this time we did all this stuff I hadn't done last time.  In the end we hardly ventured far at all.  We spent most of our time on Museum Island, which was about 10 minutes walk away from our hotel.  And I hadn't even planned it that way, it was just the way it happened.  We had learnt from our Copenhagen trip that Museums can have odd days closed.  In Berlin it was Monday, so we could make sure we didn't end up wandering the streets on that day disappointed that our museums were closed.

Oldy-times signatures - your mark attached to the paper

The awesome German Empire coat of arms

We again had a problem with the taxi driver from the airport, we were easyJetting, so landed at the airport with no late night train service.  Even though I showed the driver the address and the area, he ended up taking us to completely the wrong hotel.  Luckily the receptionist there came out and put him straight.  Airport taxis!

We hadn't any real plans for things we wanted to see.  On the first day we came across the National Museum, which was the historical museum for Germany.  That was a great museum - we spent hours in there, the only reason to leave was hunger.  It started off way back with the Germanic tribes who destroyed Rome. And went all the way through to after the Second World War.

I never really appreciated the trouble the Reformation caused for Europe.  I have been reading about that time from the perspective of the English.  And compared to Europe the Reformation basically did nothing, I mean a few Catholics and Protestants got burned at various points, but there weren't too many England wide wars.  In Europe it just felt like they all went a bit crazy and started fighting with each other for a couple of centuries.  It was impossible to keep track of them all, and in the end I had to just skim over that entire section.  It wasn't until we got close to the first world war that things started to get a bit more settled.  At least that's what it felt like.  I would like to read a bit more on this period.  But man it seems like it's going to be tough keeping all the alliances straight.

The radio tower - every city needs a big pointy object

A reconstructed Roman market gate

There were a few other great museums on this same island.  One was the Neues Museum - this is really famous because it contains the bust of Nefertiti.  Any pictures you see of Nefertiti or ancient Egyptians is generally of this bust.  It is quite an impressive bust.  Unfortunately no photos allowed. It's a bit like the German Mona Lisa, except not made by Germans.

There is also the Pergamon Museum and I think that's a bit of a must visit.  It's not very big but is has three awesome exhibits, all reconstructed artifacts.  There is the Pergamon Altar, another awesome Greek city state back in ancient times.  I think it is actually in modern day Turkey.  It had this great altar built on a hill, with this amazing frieze.  Which is now re-built in Berlin.  There is also a Roman market gate - only 60% or so of the structure is original, but it's amazing to see how big they were able to build back then.  Finally there is the Ishtar gate - built by the Babylonians.  Again amazing to see something that old (575BC) look so large and colourful.

Part of the Ishtar gate

The final museum on that island was the Bode museum.  This was really a sculpture museum, they had a few Donatello's which was kind of impressive.  The audio guide was again a good addition.  One of the Donatello's was of this little boy, the fact that there was a twist to his body was this amazing innovation at the time.  It meant that the sculpture actually had viewing angles all around the body, instead of just straight on as it had been up to that moment.

We also went to two awesome restaurants - Reinstoff and Horvath.  Reinstoff was two starred, which we would never normally go to, but work had given me an award which was money for a pretty fancy dinner for two.  So we thought why not.  It was pretty nice, though could have perhaps been served slightly faster.  There were some big gaps between the courses, and it didn't finish until midnight.  I am not a night owl, so it was a bit of a struggle eating that late.  But the courses were all great, with some slightly odd innovations, which I always like. And the ambiance of the restaurant itself was really nice, hidden inside a courtyard, very dark, but each table was well lit.  And not many people at all, yet heaps of serving staff.

The walk back to the hotel was interesting.  We had walked there as well, which was before the sun had set, and it seemed like a

Donatello - with a twist

nice neighbourhood, full of little galleries and boutiques and coffee shops.  But then it seemed as soon as the sun goes down it turns into something completely different.  In that all these prostitutes come out.  It seems that street is where they do business, I guess it was opposite a large park, maybe that helps business?  The first one I just thought, hmmm she's wearing an unusual outfit for such a cold night.  But then you pass another one, and another, and they are all wearing the same sort of clothes, I guess it's a uniform of sorts.  And then you are just wondering, holy cow, how long is this street and when will this end.  Since it's the clientele which was a bit worrying.  But then you reach the Hackescher Market and suddenly it's all over.  Pretty bizarre.  I think we should have taken the staff's offer of a taxi.

The next restaurant we went to was Horvath, which was in the old West Berlin side.  This was about the only time we really ventured much into West Berlin, and I gotta say I prefer East Berlin.  You always have this idea that the Communist side would be full of horrible concrete block apartment buildings and really run down.  But actually that was the West side.  The east was full of the historic section, and all these interesting buildings.  Perhaps it's a bit different in the other cities, or further out of the centre.

Though the area around the restaurant was a bit depressing, massive concrete blocks and thousands of TV aerials, the restaurant itself was really nice.  The food was really good, and thankfully they were much quicker at serving.  The suckling pig was a bit of a stand out.

The bunker - now art gallery

My most Berlin moment of the weekend has to go to our visit to the Sammlung Boros collection.  We were on our way to the Contemporary Art museum and had stopped at a cafe for refreshments - it was a bit of a walk.  And across the road was this massive concrete bunker (we were back in East Berlin at this point).  I'm thinking - this has got to be something, it so obviously stood out from the normal hotels and apartment blocks around it.  It turns out it was an old world war two bunker, which had been used for raves in the 90's before being bought by a rich advertising executive to house his personal collection.  Since we were looking for modern art anyway we thought, well lets have a look.

We go over the road and there is literally no sign anywhere, we walk all the way around it and there is only a single door.  We just hope that we have actually got the right bunker, and that this isn't some drug den.  But you open the door and go round a corner and suddenly there are artful pieces of driftwood laid out - so we are probably not in some drug den.  Around another corner and there's the reception, with fashionable hipster.  We ask if we can visit, but he says we can only go with a tour, and that the next open English tour is in 10 weeks time.  But he then says that a tour has just left and some people hadn't turned up so we could join in with that one if we wanted.  And we are all like "hmmm maybe, what do you think?, oh all right why not".  And he's probably thinking, there is a 10 week wait and you are umming and ahhhing over it!  Anyway I have to say we weren't the biggest squares there, since some people left halfway through.

It was some of the most modern modern art I have every seen.  Some was pretty cool, and there was usually a good idea behind it.  But some, like the rubbish bins on the wall, was not so good.  Literally someone had just stolen bins from the street, done nothing to them, and stuck them on the wall.  I'm not sure what that was trying to say.  There was also the video of someone doing the moonwalk through darkened streets.  Again not sure what the message with that was.  Being inside the bunker was pretty interesting.  They had done quite some renovations, turning 130 rooms into 80, so it wasn't quite as claustrophobic as it could have been, but still pretty full on in some parts.  And the guide was pretty good, he obviously loved it, so that level of enthusiasm certainly helped.  You just felt like a bit of a fraud, since some people were so into it, and taking notes about what he said.  Whereas you are thinking, it's just bins!  Anyway, if you know you are going to Berlin in 10 weeks time, I would try and book a spot.

Winchelsea to Hastings

A reed flower

We walked from Winchelsea to Hastings on the hunt for bluebells - and we were not disappointed!  We are going for a week long walk in the Alps soon, so wanted to make sure we were getting sufficient walking training in.  Don't want to get 2 days into 6 full days of walking and start getting massive blisters forming.  So we basically just picked the toughest walk in the book we have - the Time Out Country Walks Volume 1.  We have done a few walks from this book, and they have nearly all been good.  There was just that one disappointing one in the post-apocalyptic chilterns.

There were so many bluebells out

Bluebells in close up

But this walk was nothing like the Chilterns one, it was possibly the best we've done so far.  Great scenery and finishing in Hastings, which was a nice little town.  You start the walk in Winchelsea (which I was constantly mispronouncing, the stress is not where you think it should be).  Winchelsea used to be on the coast but apparently a big storm has meant that it is now 2km inland.  It must have been an almighty storm!

Then it's off through the great English countryside towards the coast.  This walk was opposite to the last one we did.  On the last walk we had to absolutely smash through the first half to get to the lunch spot on time.  On this one no matter how leisurely we walked we arrived at the suggested lunch spot about an hour before they would have started serving.  Luckily the walk passes through Icklesham (which is a tiny village), but in the All Saints church there was their monthly church fete.  We made the detour thinking we could go a piece of cake, or they would at least have a cup of tea on offer, this being the English country side.  But actually they were going all out, multiple types of cake, and a full ploughmans, looks like lunch was back on the cards.  It was perfect walking food, but you did have to sit through being the novelty of the fete.  I don't think they get many outsiders in Icklesham so it seemed like everyone wanted to talk to us and to know where we were from, I guess the accents stood out a bit there.  

Yet more bluebells

All Saints church at Icklesham - first lunch stop

Further on there was yet another pub, where we stopped and had another ploughmans.  I got to say this lunch was nowhere near as nice as the 3 pound one we got at the church.  There was a massive pickled onion.  Imagine a normal brown onion you might get in the supermarket, then imagine it pickled and on your plate.  I would give a lot of money to see someone eat that.  Why on earth would you serve that as a standard part of your ploughmans is beyond me.  But then according to the walking book, this pub we were eating at was meant to be closed, so maybe it was under new management - new pickled onion management.

Lambs seemed to want to feed when they got scared

Potential murderer?

The next section was mainly through fields towards the sea.  All the lambs were a bit bigger since the last walk we did.  I wonder how much longer before they are all slaughtered and we see them in Sainsburys?  There was only one field of cows, but I have to say I was a bit nervous crossing through this one.  Normally cows don't really bother me, but literally a week before we went on this walk I saw a news article about some British walkers who were crushed to death by cows.  I think they were also walking in the south of England, like we were doing.  So I was definitely on the look out for any potential human killers amongst this herd.

Staring down a train

Caterpillar exploring a fence

On the way home we got a little delayed because the train driver saw someone walking along the tracks, I saw the same person, and thought, hmmm that's a bit crazy.  But then when we get to the next station the train driver disappears to phone the police.  I'm not sure why they don't just have a phone or communication device in the engine room so the train driver can make reports at the time of witnessing them.  But apparently not, I guess he had to go find a public phone to make a police report.  He wasn't coming back anytime soon.  I've never had a train driver abandon their train before.

A carpet of bluebells

The sea shore - with added wind farm

The way this walk is advertised in the book is either swimming in the sea or bluebells.  It being an English sprautumn (as Stephen Fry calls this attempt at a season), there was no way there was going to be swimming.  Which left only the bluebells as a possible attraction.  Me in my pessimistic way was thinking maybe we'll see the odd bluebell here and there, with maybe a little glade in one of the woods.  So when we went through the next section I was a bit overwhelmed.  It was a sea of bluebells, with the trees growing out of this blue carpet and the path weaving through them. I've never seen so many, and that by itself made the walk a success, the clifftop walk was merely a bonus after this.

Gorse in full flower - with the sea beyond

Tree which has possibly lost it's roots to erosion

We did eventually hit the sea, it was a walk in two halves - the first was a fairly leisurely stroll through fields with bluebells, tea and cakes.  Whilst the second was an up and down slog along the top of the cliffs.  This 7km section was completely spectacular though.  Apparently the erosion along this part means that an average of 1.4 metres of cliff-face is lost every year.  One village is right on the edge, the path goes between the back gardens of the house and the cliff.  They really don't have many more 1.4m to go before the cliff is running through their back garden.  At one point we had to detour through the town proper since the erosion had claimed the path.  You see fences just ending in mid-air, it is slightly freaky, though there must be great views from their, especially if there is a big storm rolling in.

There are about 4 glens along this section, and in each one there are little woods, with more bluebells and wild garlic, and little streams.  And out of the glens there was bright sunshine and flowering gorse.  No post-apocalyptic feel here.  Everything was flowering - there would be these little abandoned meadows full of bluebells and other flowers (I don't know my English flowers, bluebells, dandelions and foxgloves are about the extent.)

More gorse in bloom - with more sea in the distance

Apple blossom along route

I'm pretty keen to head back to this section of the country, apparently the walk we did wasn't even the "best" in the book.  There's meant to be another one which is even more spectacular.  For those who know a little English geography I'm thinking the seven sisters at some point, so a little further west from where we did this walk.  Maybe I'll save that one for proper summer, when it might actually be possible to swim in the sea without dying from exposure later.

Hastings was a strange little town - very spread out over the cliffs.  It felt a bit like a seaside resort and yet also very old.  I mean I suppose it has been around since at least 1066.

The final view of the day - Hastings

Copenhagen

Pretty new harbour

We spent the Labour day long weekend in Copenhagen, though it's not called Labour day anymore, just early May bank holiday.  And it's not really a bank holiday since everyone gets the day off

We had a bit of a nightmare adventure trying to get there, it felt like the holiday was a bit cursed from the start.  We had another run in with the First Great Western brand - this time their Gatwick Express arm of the company.  There was a fire on the line somewhere - what is it with FGW and fires, do they employ recovering pyromaniacs or something?  I mean that's very admirable, giving them a fresh start and all, but perhaps you should be doing something to halt the excessive fire lighting?

Cherry blossom in Tivoli

Dave with one of the palaces behind him - run round II

And this was the Friday night before a long weekend, everyone wanted to get to Gatwick.  The train station was just getting more and more crowded, people were jumping over barriers to get to the platforms, it was total chaos, but nothing was moving.  So we jumped in a cab, bad move.  Central London traffic on the Friday evening of a bank holiday, man it was bad.  I was convinced we weren't going to make it.  I've never missed a flight before, but I guess the run of good luck had to end at some point.  And we were flying with one of those budget airlines which have 40 minute cut-offs for check in.  So I thought there was no way.  We leap out of the taxi, after trying to pay him in euros for some reason and sprint to the check in desk.  We actually got there about 40 minutes to spare, and since it turned out that there were a few people still waiting for the Copenhagen flight I thought we would be OK.  Or at least we should make it onto the plane.

We were flying with Norwegian air, first time with them.  It was total chaos, I thought it was just because they had to deal with the knock-on effect of the Gatwick Express breaking down.  But we were in Gatwick again last week, and walked past their check in desk and it was the same absolute chaos then as well.  So I think that's just standard.

Looking across to the Churchill park, with added swan's nest

Cherry blossom going crazy

As we are waiting there we had people who had arrived late holding their mobile phones out, telling the check-in staff that they had the pilot on the phone, and that he would hold the plane for them if they could get checked in.  There were people with babies just being completely ignored, people pushing in, desperate to get on the flight.  It was just a free-for-all.

We got checked in and then we had to run through the airport, that was a bit of fun, luckily the other people checking in late to Copenhagen were much older than us, so we knew they would take a bit of time.  And even better was that for once there was no line at security, which was a boon.  We made it fine, we were the second last people on the plane, we had passed the old couple just after duty-free.

Strange pirate ship at Tivoli

Awesome roof at the National museum

At the other end we waited like saps for our luggage to arrive.  It should have been blatantly obvious that there was no way our bags would have made it to the plane faster than we had.  So really we should have saved ourselves the 20 minute wait and gone straight to the missing baggage counter.  We fill in our form, and it is at that point I realise we really should put a name tag or some form of ID on the bag, in case these situations do arise.  They tell us that in 95% of the cases you get your bag in the next 24 hours.  The real pain was that all the Copenhagen guide books and the map I had borrowed from the library were in the bag.

No bag arrived by Saturday afternoon, so we go out to our fancy dinner, still wearing the same clothes I had worn to work on Friday, and come back hoping that our bag had arrived.  To find that there was a suitcase in our room, only problem was that it was the older couple's.  Aaaargh.  It is at this point that I'm thinking perhaps it's actually the old couple who are cursed and we are just being caught up in their bad luck.  Since they had done everything they could (their bag didn't even look like ours) they had all this ID in the front pocket of the bag (that's how we knew it was theirs).  At that point we cracked and went and bought a toothbrush.  But what happens once the tags on your bag get mixed up?  Because my name was on the luggage tag of their bag?  Luckily they must have been at home when our bag was delivered to them, because the airline company rang the hotel first thing in the morning to say that they were dropping off our actual bag that day.  And they did, so 12 hours before we were due to fly back home, we get our bag back.  Let me tell you the shower after receiving the suitcase was one of the best, knowing I could change into all clean clothes.  That's really one of the best feelings.

Really weird painting, the painting is actually reflected on the pole in the middle

Copenhagen itself was great, they are a good looking people the Danes, everyone is really tall, and fit and surprisingly well-dressed.  They definitely don't go in for the same chain shops that we get in London.  And awesome shoes.  Their shoe companies really have to expand into the rest of Europe so we can all have their great styles.  And everyone spoke English, so so well.  It really makes you feel lazy, because it wasn't just the young people, but everyone, even the really old people.  And you are thinking, when did you learn it?  Surely there was no way they were teaching English when they were at school!

It certainly made the bag re-claimation a lot easy.  But even though everyone we met spoke English, the one person who didn't was the taxi driver from the airport.  What is it with taxi drivers at airports, can they not ever get any other fares?  Every time I have caught a taxi from the airport, they haven't known where to go, we couldn't communicate with them, and then they don't even drop us off at the hotel and you have to end up wandering through the streets to get to the hotel.  And yet the taxis you catch during the rest of the stay are all really good.  It's something really weird about airport taxis.

The royal palace

Spring - time!

Overall Copenhagen was a really pretty city, and we had some great runs there.  It helped that the weather was fantastic, there's something about beautiful blue skies, not too hot and running along the sea front to put you in a good mood.  Too bad I couldn't take any photos though, since my running camera was trapped in the lost suitcase.

We went into the National Museum, which was a really good museum, they had a big sections on Greenlanders and whaling and that sort of thing.  Which was pretty interesting, I don't know how people live in that sort of environment, they had all the fur clothes they wore.  Which apparently only last a year and then they have to make whole new outfits, and everything is done completely from hand.

They also had almost like the best-of from around the world.  It wasn't very big, but every culture would have some artifact representing them in the museum, so you had a samurai knight armour, and the Indonesian shadow puppets + orchestra all laid out.  That sort of thing.  But then even more interesting was that the whole other half of the museum was purely on the Danish and Scandinavian history, man they really fought each other a lot.  You kind of imagine that they should have been banding together against the rest of Europe, but no the Danes and Swedes seemed to be constantly at war.  And Norway was actually under Danish control for hundreds of years, I never appreciated that.

The crown jewels

We also went to the royal palace - where I don't think the royals actually live there, they have another palace somewhere.  This is where the crown jewels are kept.  It was a bit of a different experience from the Tower of London, where you have to ride travelators around, no photos and hundreds of guards.  Here just a couple of bored people on stools.  Though they did have massive vault like doors.  I wonder how fast they close when the alarms go off, and how long the air supply would last.  They were very ostentatious jewels.  They didn't have the massive stones that the English jewels have, but they seemed to make up for that in sheer numbers.

They really went in for that smart phone bar scanning thing that you see around nowadays.  It made me think that perhaps it's time to install that app, no more need to hire audio guides.  The palace is built in this park, which on a lovely sunny day was full of Danes.  We even managed to have a nap on the grass.  It's not often that the weather is nice enough to fall asleep outside.  So thumbs up to Copenhagen.

The lights and roller-coaster at Tivoli

The little mermaid - without tourist or industrial estate

One thing I really wanted to see was Tivoli, it's like Luna Park in Sydney, but way nicer.  It's a fun fair, but also a garden, and a light show.  Well not really a light show as such, they just had a lot of pretty lights around the place.  It's the one thing about Copenhagen which is in all the guide books, but I'd never been.  We ended up going 30 minutes before closing time, since I wanted to see the lights, but it didn't get dark until late, and I'm too scared to go on any of the rides.  The great lady at the entrance let us go in 2-for-1, she thought that was the fairest.  Oh man I was liking the Danes.  And it was pretty fun inside, pretty big.  They have all these musical performances on as well.  It seemed to be mainly school-aged performers, I guess they are cheap.  The first thing we saw was a xylophone orchestra, I have to say I've never seen one of those before.  And with the lights, and the cherry blossoms, it was a nice way to end an evening.

The courtyard in Thorvaldsens Museum - where he is also buried

Of course the other thing which is in all the guide books is the Little Mermaid statue, it's actually a long way out of town, we only saw it because we went for our second run of the holiday, another good one, but a bit tougher than the first.  On the other side of the harbour from her is this big industrial estate, so it's actually quite hard to get a photo with (a) no tourists in shot and (b) no massive warehouses.  That's why this one is so tightly cropped.  Having seen her, I'm not 100% sure why she is so popular.  Perhaps it's more that the story she represents is so popular.

The Pope Pius VII plaster cast of the Vatican statue

The colourful interior of Thorvaldsen's museum

The other thing which is becoming much more popular in Copenhagen is good food.  I did try for Noma, but that was a bit half-hearted since I didn't hold out much hope of getting a reservation there.  In the end we went to two great places.  The first was Relae restaurant, the chef used to work at Noma, and given the fact that Noma was just getting over their poisoning of customers I wasn't too upset not to be eating there.

The food was really good, though some of it was pretty weird, we had things like caramelised kelp, I think it was the Danish version of salted caramel.  The oysters were wonderful as was the pork.  And they keep giving you lovely bread, which I was probably very ill-mannered in using to sop up every last bit of delicious food.  This restaurant was in a suburban location, near the cemetery where Hans Christian Anderson is buried, so we got to see his grave as well.  We also found it really hard to hail a taxi from the street here, it was very weird, either all the taxis were full or perhaps they aren't allowed to stop on main roads to pick people up.  So it was a bit of a trek back to the hotel.

The second place was at a much more trendy location, in the meat packing district, or what used to be the meat packing district.  It was about 500m from our hotel, so thankfully no trekking this time.  You walk into what is really a whole estate of warehouses, where you could buy fish and that sort of things.  And one of them has been converted into a fish restaurant - fiskebar.  You can't go to Denmark without trying the seafood right?  Another awesome find. I had to have the rollmops, lets just say they are better than the ones you get out of the jar, it's pickled herrings for those who may have missed trying that delicacy.

The horses exercising outside Christiansborg Palace

And once again everyone spoke the best English, oh man, it makes travelling too easy.

Jason and the fleece - with added tree stump

The final stand out for me was the Thorvaldsen museum, he was probably Denmark's most famous artist.  He was a sculptor in the late 1700-1800 and lived for a long time in Rome.  Right in the middle of Copenhagen, next to the Christiansborg Palace is his museum, just full of his sculptures.  The audio guide is really good, definitely adds to the museum.  One of his more famous pieces is probably the Pope Pius VII grave monument in St Peter's.  One slightly amusing aspects of his work is that the audio guide was saying that he liked to add a tree stump or something to the piece, to give it a more naturalistic setting, but really it was so the heavy marble had something to lean on and that the ankles wouldn't break.

Frontline Club - first Wednesdays

On the first Wednesday of each month the Frontline Club, a journalists club, hosts a discussion evening.  It is pretty good, I've never been to one of these current affairs style shows, think Q&A in Australia, but less polished and on radio instead of TV.  The month we went it was a discussion about Pakistan, so they had a guy who had written books about Pakistan, and was working on another, the Pakistani high commissioner and a couple of journalists, who report from the really crazy areas of Pakistan.  It was mainly to do with the election, which was a very important one, it being the first where one democratically elected government passed on to another one.

It must be so hard to be the moderator of one of these things, and the journalist running it did such a good job.  He has to contend with the audience members wanting to show how smart they are, panellists waffling, off topic questions, all whilst trying to remain polite, in control and on time.  Also with the topic being on Pakistan, he had to try and keep the mood upbeat.  The more the audience and panellists discussed Pakistan all you got was how very bad the country was, and how close it is to becoming a failed state.  That nobody pays taxes, that members of Parliament are constantly being killed, that the violence is almost out of control.  One interesting thing to come out of it was that according to the panellists and the people in the room, that the people in the remote areas are actually all for the drone strikes.  Which I found really surprising, and I wonder how true that is, I thought everyone in the country hated the drone strikes, since innocent Pakistanis are being killed as well.

You do get the feeling that if you went along to a few of those you would definitely be on top of politics and current affairs around the world.

Bath

Bridge in Bath - nighttime

We spent a weekend in Bath recently.  Where I first experienced First Great Western's wonderful service first hand.  That train company is a total joke.  First of all it was delayed (some sort of fire on their train - very encouraging), then when one finally did turn up, everyone RAN to get on the train.  They must have been long-time First Great Western customers, since we took our time, thinking that because we had reserved our seats there would be no worries.  Oh how naive we were.  People literally couldn't get onto the carriages they were that full, I've never seen that before on one of these inter-city trains.

There was absolutely no chance of us getting anywhere near our seats, we had to fit in a carriage about 3 carriages away.  So instead it was standing all the way, joy.  I have to say thank goodness the tender process for the Western mainlines fell through, since by some miracle First Great Western had been awarded them.  Oh the injustice.

The Roman Baths

The Baths and the cathedral

On this completely packed train, of 8 carriages, 3 of them were first class, so you can't go in them - and they were totally empty.  Why would you not have more standard class trains?  How do your trains catch on fire? Do you think they run on petrol.

Sadly it's not just me that has a deep and abiding hatred of FGW, there are a number of amusing blogs detailing the long and painful problems.  The two blogs that I found are both no longer being updated.  Not because FGW somehow figured out that to run a successful train company your trains need to be on time and sufficiently frequent for the demand.  No, they are no longer being updated because the two authors could no longer take the commute and moved somewhere else so they wouldn't be subjected to FGW.  Now that is impressive.  Perhaps this is all a secret ploy for the government to reap more stamp duty, keep awarding FGW the train lines, and watch the cash roll in.

You know what would fix this?  Not freaking privatising your train system.  Because now what you have is a completely unaccountable private company, in a monopoly situation, who not only constantly screw you over, but make you pay for that pleasure.  And there's nothing you can do.  It's not like you can catch a different train to Bath, there's only one line, and only one train company servicing it.  Sigh.

An old Roman drain in the baths

The roof of the cathedral

Anyway enough ranting about FGW (I could go on, how we were packed in like animals, but I won't).

So we arrive in Bath, slightly later than intended, but never mind.  We had a great 2 days in Bath, it's such a pretty city.  I wasn't expecting the colour and the architecture to be so consistent throughout the city.  We were staying over the Bath version of the Ponte Vecchio, though there are less jewellery stores and they actually have an outlet of the Hampstead Bazaar, or as I call it the Hampstead Bizarre.  It's this really strange clothing store for older, wealthy women, that started in our suburb in London, but has now branched out England-wide.  Currently they have a signed photo of Judi Dench in the window.  The street we were staying in was this incredibly wide avenue, with the same Georgian houses all the way along.  It was very grand.

The main highlight of Bath is always going to be the Roman Baths, I was surprised with just how good they were.  We went in right behind a massive tour group, so we were thinking, hmmm this is going to suck, following 40 people around.  But they have put so much thought into the design.  The first part is all outdoors, so everyone can really space out, then once everyone has separated sufficiently they send you into a few smaller galleries.  By that stage you aren't surrounded by a massive tour group.  Why don't all major tourist sites put the same thought into the visitor experience?

View over Bath - lovely honey-coloured buildings

A swam covered in insects

The history of the place is quite amazing, how old the Baths are, and how they were completely lost for centuries, you wonder how that happens.  They have new baths there, set on different thermal springs.  You can also drink some of the water for 50p.  You walk into their lovely tea room - which is very swish - and you can enjoy the surroundings whilst you drink a little mouthful from your plastic cup.  I wouldn't recommend it though, the water is disgusting.

You can certainly spend at least a few hours wandering around the baths - the audio guide is really worth it as well.  They seem to have at least 3 tours programmed on the guide, which seems a slightly excessive number of tours.

St Bartholomew by Damien Hirst in the Cathedral - carrying his own skin

Following the Baths we popped into the Cathedral - being right next door you kind of had to.  Highlights were definitely the lovely roof.  I've never seen one like that with the fans.  To be precise it's actually an Abbey, which I think means that it was part of a monastery, rather than a purely catholic church.  But then after the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII it fell into disrepair, until Elizabeth fixed it up again.  It is a very grand building. Whilst we were there a modern art exhibit was on inside the church, which was a more unusual way to use the space out of everything I have seen in churches.  Whilst I was admiring the freaky Damien Hirst statue of St Bartholomew the priest of the church came up and started explaining it to me, or rather why they had decided to exhibit these pieces.  I was a bit too shocked to say anything.  I've never spoken to a priest before.

The royal crescent

On the other side of the alter was, if possible, an even more freaky piece.  It was a taxidermy swan in full glide, but all over it were these little taxidermy insects, spiders and ants, they are the little black dots you can see in the photo.

Nice spot for a rugby game

We also did a walking tour - always recommended.  We learnt that Bath is a world heritage site not only for the Roman Baths, but also for the Georgian architecture of the town and the way the town is built amongst the surrounding hills.  There was also a lot of Jane Austen.

Bath is also a massive rugby town, which I didn't quite appreciate, but there was a rugby game on the weekend we visited.  And the stadium was packed, you could hear the roar throughout the town.  They don't actually have a permanent stadium anywhere in the town, it's just the grandstands set up for the season, which means the games are all literally just across the river from the main city centre, so they are very easy to get to.

Regiment forming up

Of course you can't visit Bath and not be aware of Jane Austen.  There is a Jane Austen museum there, which we visited, where you get a 20 minute talk about Jane from one of the workers before you can look at their stuff.  You got the feeling they liked Jane Austen a little too much.  And you wonder if they had moved in Jane's social circles whether she would have liked them.  It has inspired me to read Persuasion and Northanger Abbey though, since both of those were apparently set in Bath for at least some of the story.

A spot of shooting

We were also lucky enough to visit on World Heritage Day, so you would think, Bath, being a World Heritage site, that it would sort of go a bit overboard on the day.  They did have some demonstrations, but not quite as large as what I would have imagined.  There was a regiment in all their gear and they would every now and again form up and shoot some rounds in front of the Royal Crescent.  You wonder how they decide the hierarchy in these strange reenactment societies.  Is it the person with the most money, who can therefore afford to buy the best uniform, or is it the person most skilled at loading their rifles?

Bath is definitely worth a visit, and if you have the time and/or puff a walk up one of the surrounding hills gives a really great view.  You would think that since the views are one of the World Heritage-y things about the town that there would be a designated walking path up to the best viewing point.  We had to walk through a housing estate to get to what was meant to be the best view.  Which just felt slightly odd.

The leaves are bursting forth