Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Day Five - We Ventured 'Outside'




I know its becoming a theme but we woke up this morning at 4am…. Obviously there is no point playing the blame game but these early mornings are getting to me!

Anyways enough about my sleeping habits, I may or may not have mentioned in one of my previous posts how I had ‘cracked’ the train system! If I didn’t say it I was certainly thinking it, I was thinking about just how easy it is to use, how simple to get from one place to the other and feeling quite smug about just how easily we picked it up. Unfortunately today I learned the truth, I was talking about the light rail system, we had yet to experience ….. (dah dah dah dahhhhh) “THE UNDERGROUND”. Anyone who says the underground is easy is either crazy or lying. There is nothing simple about this form of transport, there are numerous lines with north east west and south tracks, there are transfers, there are stairs and labrynths of hallways saying ‘way out’ where you just keep walking until you almost despair you will ever find your way out…. So we thought … why don’t we ask someone.  A simple premise however this is what we were told “Take Jubilee to Baker then Bakerloo to Paddington” ….. She must have repeated this about 5 times before she realized we just were not getting it so she got one of these really cute little maps and circled every time we had to get off and transfer. So I get it, I don’t think I have it ‘cracked’ however I now know that Jubilee and Bakerloo are lines and Paddington and Baker are stations. If you don’t believe me have a little look at the map below … this is what I was working with.



Moving right along, because of the 4am start we decided we may as well make the most of our time and go to Bath instead of waiting in the city for things to open at 10am. So we made it to Paddington in one piece, got on a train and went to Bath.



We loved Bath! I should rephrase that we adore Bath, its heavenly really, its pretty and its just plain quaint. There is the most amazing bridge we just stared at for hours. There are lots of little shops and streets to walk down, there is obviously the Roman Baths but we will get to them in a minute. I cant think of anything I didn’t like about the cute little town and if we ever come back to the UK we would definitely be spending some time here.




Now the Baths! I was really looking forward to this and although they were really lovely I have to say I wasn’t “Breathless Over the Past” (One of my bucket list items) It was amazing but maybe because in the 1800’s it was redone it just felt a bit like a film set. Still amazing but im not going to tick it off the list just yet.



Finally last night I dragged the hubby to the Lyceum theatre to watch Lion King. The costumes were amazing, the music was great and the show was wonderful. However the signs saying no drinks, phones or cameras seemed to be ignored, track pants, back packs and shopping bags also seemed to be acceptable and to be honest it almost broke my heart. In Australia there is still a tiny bit of formality associated with going to the theatre, you dress appropriately, you appreciate how luck you are to be in a 200 year old venue and you respect the rules. Oh well, lets say I was shocked, but it didn’t take away from the overall experience … let us hope this means we have nice sleep in to maybe 7am tomorrow morning. 


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