Europe and the UAE in 2003
We visited a lot of places during this trip so we’ve listed a few highlights rather than try to include everything.
England
We began our trip in England on Tuesday 2 September with a visit to Emma’s grandparents, Frank and June, who were kind enough to put us up for a couple of days to sleep off the long plane flight. (Eleven hours to Dubai, a few hours stopover, then seven hours to Gatwick. Strewth!) From here we made a few trips to the local area, particularly Leigh-on-Sea, Hadleigh and Southend-on-Sea.
We moved on to Eastwood where Emma’s aunt Pat put us up for a while (thanks heaps Pat!). From here we visited Southend again where we ate some cockles and took the train out on the Pier.
The Southend Pier train
After this we visited London a number of times. Had lunch with Andrew at St Katharine’s Docks and saw Tower Bridge, Hampton Court Palace, and the Tower of London. We loved the Tower of London—the Yeoman Warder gave us a graphic introduction to the place complete with all the head-chopping! Two of Henry VIII’s wives and Sir Walter Raleigh had their heads removed here. William Wallace, made famous more recently by the Mel Gibson movie, spent a short time here before he was given the full treatment (hanged until nearly dead, disembowelled, his bowels burned, then he was beheaded and quartered) elsewhere.
The White Tower at the Tower of London
We toured the White Tower, with a museum containing an armoury laid out as it may have looked when it was used as a store for England’s war machine, and had the obligatory look at the Crown Jewels—baubles, despite their expense.
Cambridge was wonderful—it was as if everyone rode a bike to work! We toured the colleges before deciding on dinner and beer at The Eagle, the pub where Watson and Crick announced their discovery of DNA in 1953. I never thought I would be able to say this, but bangers and mash was delicious washed down with a few nice beers—Old Speckled Hen was good, and so was Abbott’s Ale.
A descendent of Isaac Newton’s apple tree near Trinity College,
Cambridge
We took the long way to Finchingfield the next day with Frank and June, mostly because we got lost, but it was a far better trip because of it. We passed some tiny little thatched-roof houses with huge hedges and negotiated the narrowest streets. Very English and we were glad to have seen it.
In London we did a big walk that took in the Thames, London Eye, Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey and then over to Buckingham Palace, Pall Mall, Trafalgar Square and Nelson’s Column. Big Ben was much more impressive than we expected with the sun shining on the gold spire. The gold and black statues at Buckingham Palace, along Pall Mall and at Trafalgar Square were stunning too. I decided about here that the English knock together a bloody good monument! It helps having so much history too.
Big Ben and London Eye
Spent some time—hours actually—in a net cafe in Salisbury with Andrew transferring images from my digital camera to CD. This process is much harder than it should be. I found more problems later in Madrid, especially because they did not understand what I wanted and was a technical misunderstanding rather than a language problem. I missed having some sort of large disk drive so I could spend less time archiving and more time holidaying. I might write this up as a separate article.
Stonehenge was as busy as I expected, and despite the number of tourists I was glad to have seen this icon. Later in the afternoon we visited Old Wardour Castle, which was virtually empty and we could touch it. Magic.
We decided after that to go to Avebury, but when we got there, we went looking in the wrong place for the stones and thought we had missed them. After dinner in the local pub we had another look and found them in fields closer to the pub. Walking amongst huge stone monuments by moonlight is an experience! The quietness made it quite eerie. Andrew took some photos of Emma and I silhouetted against the moon, and he might put these online if we ask him nicely.
Old Wardour Castle
The York Minster was wonderful, especially the crypt underneath the main floor. It contains the ruins of a Norman cathedral, and underneath this a Roman military headquarters. A culvert underneath the settlement is in perfect working order—still carrying its water to the River Ouse. The ruins were excavated during engineering work to prop up the Minster in the late 1960’s, when it became obvious that the central tower was collapsing.
The walls of York’s old city surround the central area and we walked along the wall in a few places to take in the view. In some places the wall is the back fence to local homes!
Inside York Minster
A train was derailed near Kings Cross station causing a delay to our return to London and when we arrived the news cameras were everywhere. Nobody was hurt because the train was just leaving the station and apparently the driver noticed the problem in time to start braking. The maintenance company was at fault again.
Wales
We visited Cardiff and tried the local brew, Brains SA. SA represents the brewer’s name, but the locals call it Skull Attack for the effect felt after downing a few too many. A really good tasting lager. We also went for a bike ride that I felt repercussions for into the next week!
In Machynlleth we visited the Centre for Alternative Technology, a showcase for how to build homes and generally make use of modern environmentally friendly technologies such as solar panels, good housing design and permaculture. The lift train that takes you up the hill to the displays is driven by gravity. People get in the bottom carriage then the top one is filled with enough water to make it a bit heavier than the bottom one. When the brakes are removed, the top one pulls the bottom one with the people inside up the hill. When the top one gets to the bottom, the water is let out and the cycle goes around again. Cool!
Gravity-driven lift train at the CAT, the incline looking up is probably
over 60°!
Probably the highlight of our time in Wales was the train trip back from Harlech Castle. When we got to the Dyfi Valley, the tide was coming in and the sun was shining. The late afternoon light was bringing a deep gold colour out of the sedges growing in the estuary alongside the dark blue water. We had the whole carriage to ourselves so we moved from seat to seat to get the best view possible. Unfortunately, the train was moving too quick for good photographs, so we just enjoyed the view.
Harlech Castle
England (again)
After Wales, we went back to England via the train to Shrewsbury. In Shrewsbury we were amazed at the number of Tudor buildings. The quality of the buildings was much better than other cities that promoted themselves as tourism meccas for Tudor buildings. Shrewsbury also has a great statue of Charles Darwin which deserved a visit.
Emma in front of one of
the best examples of a leaning Tudor building in Shrewsbury, England.
Spain
Our introduction to Madrid was a series of farcical attempts at Spanish when trying to give directions to a taxi driver. A month in England and Wales before we landed in Spain ensured that our attempts at learning some basic Spanish had been forgotten. We kept working at it and by the end of our holiday we had a small collection of basic phrases worked out. Requests for beer and coffee were well used!
The big Tio Pepe sign in Puerta del Sol,
Madrid’s central point
We went for a walk around Madrid’s city centre on the first night we arrived, and came across Puerta del Sol, the central point of the city, with its distinctive Tio Pepe sign at one end of the plaza. Madrid at 8 PM feels very vibrant because standard business hours mean that shops are often open until after 8 PM.
View of Generalife from the Alhambra
The Alhambra is an amazing mix of Moorish (Arabic), Roman and 18th century buildings intermingled because each successive generation of rulers chose the site as their preferred palace. The water gardens in Generalife were the best part, with cascades of water coming down stairways to link separate water features.
Ronda’s Puente Nuevo (New
Bridge) over the El Tajo Gorge and Rio Guadalevín
Ronda is the home of one style of bull-fighting, and the Puente Nuevo is mentioned in Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom The Bell Tolls. I haven’t read the book, but there you have it. The bridge stretches over the El Tajo Gorge and the Rio Guadalevín winds its way through the gorge. The town is worth a visit for this bridge alone, but the views from the town’s main park into the valley are stunning too.
Building in the garden at
the Alcázar in Seville
In so many places in Spain, the water features and gardens were the most interesting parts of the palaces we visited. Often the water was moved through the garden from feature to feature in small channels, and the garden was arranged in a way that echoed parts of the religion.
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
We stayed a few days in Dubai rather than attempt another of those long-haul flights and enjoyed the stop-over immensely. A day or two more would have made it perfect, as there wasn’t enough time to see even the major sights in just over a day. When we arrived in Dubai and we passed through customs and out into the night air, it was after 1 AM, but the temperature was still over 30°C. The humidity was so high it made the air feel heavy to push through.
With a few days stop-over in Dubai, the transition between timezones became bearable. Wallowing in the hotel pool helped too.
Dubai’s shiny new
waterfront
Dubai comes across as a shiny new metropolis built over a primitive old world. The buildings on the waterfront are stunning in their curved metal and glass designs, yet hand drawn carts are common in the older sections of town. The gold and tinted glass Twin Towers are a major feature.
We had a ride in an Abra, which is a wooden boat used as a water taxi for 50 fils (about 20 Aussie cents). This was to get across the Dubai Creek to the suburb of Bur Dubai where many of the old buildings have been restored, including some that had wind towers.
Wind towers in the old section of
Dubai
More photographs can be found in my Flickr photostream.
Modified: Monday, 12 May 2008