UK TRIP - Day 2

Day 2 (15/11/06) – Wednesday:
- Got up early the next day. Alfred went to pick the car and I made some simple breakfast (not that I made it anyway, just heated up last night’s food), but it was darn good, even if it was left-over.
- It was a cold sunny morning, at least the combination that I could wish for, not cold without any sunshine (that’d be dreadful).
- It was a nice hired car we got, a Volkswagen. The plan for the day was to drive down to Cardiff to see his sister, Sharleen and stay a night there.
- On the way, we stopped at Windsor Castle and had a fantastic walk down the town. It was a beautiful day, all that I could remember. People on bikes, family with children, just strolling along the park; they are all so happy.
- Commentary: Windsor Castle – off London – the Queen visits every weekend; some parts of the castle caught fire; it was renovated then; it’s a big castle.
- Just walked along the road and admired the view along the way. Took some pictures, didn’t go inside the castle though, the reason being, it was boring to spend our time looking at some prehistoric building on my first day in the UK.

Windsor Castle

- We bought some ice-cream in Ben & Jerry’s. It was so good!
- We continued our journey heading towards Bath, a tourist attraction town known for its hot springs and the Roman Baths. Commentary: It was a Roman city with the original Roman baths and remains. Bath has been home to historic writers such as Jane Austen.

- It was a beautiful drive to Bath. Views along the way are magnificent with beautiful cliffs.

- We had some trouble to find the way to famous tourist spots in the town. Well, it was more because of my incapability of reading the map, or rather was stressed out looking at the map; and it is such an elaborate map; not that it’s not good, but I had to take a long time to find the streets, in which the printing is darn small; and I get confused with all the names of the streets! I was darn stressed in the car for being such a bad navigator. This is compounded by my ‘failing’ memory; I keep forgetting the names of the places, which is darn confusing, being my first time there. I felt like the stupidest person on earth.

- So, enough of my ranting on the ‘navigation’ issues. So, finally decided to follow the “Bath Sightseeing Bus” rather than relying on my poor navigation skills, hehe. That was kinda funny, following the sightseeing bus and stopping wherever it stopped, and laughed about it. And so, the sightseeing bus took us on a sightseeing tour for free, hehe. And finally we found our way into the main attractions of Bath.

Spies! (with Pink Panther music in the background)

- Indeed, Bath is a beautiful city with some amazing architectures.

- We drove around the town and had our lunch there. We had pork stew and vegetable lasagna, it was darn big serving, and we had to struggle to finish our meals. The food was good!
- After our lunch, we took a walk along the park. It was darn windy, and was such a lovely day with a beautiful park. Along the park, there is a pond of ducks and swans. As usual, I got excited and took lots of pictures there.

- We continued our journey with our bellies filled with pork stew and lasagna.
- We headed towards Cardiff to see his sister. It was already evening by the time we reached Cardiff. Met up with his sister and went to Tesco to do some shopping. Went to dine in a restaurant (can’t remember which restaurant), with a nice ambience near the dock. It was darn windy that night, and I enjoyed our walk to the restaurant. The food was good, but I couldn’t eat much, especially since my stomach was blotted due to constipation.

Alfred and Sharlene

- Had a nice walk back to the car; sooooooooooooooo windy.

- We have to catch a 6.50 a.m. flight to Edinburgh the next morning. We were dead tired by the time we reached the hotel. Had a short good night sleep and woke up at about 4 something since we had to return the car at the airport.