Country England

After we left London we spent four nights in other parts of England. We went to Bath, Okehampton, Cornwall and Tetbury.  This is Bath Circus which is a round about in Bath that has curved apartments all around the edge of the road.  It is a very popular place to live in Bath.

We went to the Jane Austen centre and had devonshire tea.  Jane Austen is a very famous author from England.  I think her most famous novel is Pride and Prejudice and her most famous character is Mr Darcy.  You can see on the wall behind Matt and me a painted portrait of Mr Darcy from the BBC movie of Pride and Prejudice.

This is a photo of a restuarant we visited in Bath.

Bath is called Bath because it is home to some ancient Roman baths.  This is the only location in Europe that has natural warm mineral springs where the water comes from deep under ground and is already warm.  A long time ago England was part of the Roman Empire and was ruled by the Romans.

Another famous structure in Bath is Bath Abbey which is a church.  This is a photo from inside the Abbey.  It was quite spectacular with pillars and a high decorated ceiling.

We hired bikes and went for a long bike ride from Bath heading towards Bitton.  It was a beautiful day for a bike ride.

At the end of our time in Bath we picked up a hire car and drove around other parts of southern England.  We went to Cornwall and visited the Tintagel Castle Ruins.

 We went to see the ancient site of Stonehenge.  We walked all around the rocks and listened to an audi guide.  We heard about how Stonehenge is some kind of sundial and also measured the seasons.  We also learnt that there are lots of lumps of earth around the rocks and on hills in the surrounding area.  These lumps of earth are called barrows.  These are tombs of people who lived at the time.  Nobody really knows how Stonehenge was made or what it was used for.  It remains a mystery today.  The large blocks were probably carried a long way down river to get to the site.

This is one of the little Cotswold villages we drove through.  It was very old and the doorways were tiny because people who lived a long time ago were much shorter than people who live today.

We went to Stratford Upon Avon and went to some other tourist attractions.  This is Anne Hathaway's cottage.  Anne Hathaway was the wife of William Shakespeare.  The Hathaway family owned and lived in this cottage for hundreds of years.

This is William Shakespeare's birthplace.  It is the house he was born in and lived in his early life.

London

We left for our honeymoon very early in the morning on 17th April 2013 and arrived at Gatwick airport in London about 24 hours later.  We had three very long flights and when we arrived we were pretty tired.  We stayed in London for five nights and saw lots of things.  We went to Hyde Park.  It was Spring in London but it was still quite cold.

I really like to go to see msucials and theatre shows so I was excited to see some West End shows while we were in London.  Matt and I saw two shows.  They were Singin' in the Rain and Matilda.  In Singin' in the Rain actual water/rain came down on the set and made huge puddles.  The performers kicked the water at the audience and the people in the first few rows got really wet.

Matilda is the number one show in London at the moment.  It is based on Roald Dahl's book and it was the show I was most looking forward to seeing.  It was very hard to get tickets because most of them had sold out in advance.  To get tickets we had to line up early in the morning at the theatre so that when the theatre opened we could see if there were any cancellations for the next few nights.  This is a photo of me in the queue.  We did manage to get tickets for the Saturday night and we had really good seats.

This is a photo of part of the set.  There were lots of blocks of letters because Matilda likes to read.

While we were in London we went to Buckingham Palace to see the changing of the guard.

We went to Trafalgar Square where we saw some beautiful foutains and sculptures.  The National Gallery of London is at Trafalgar Square.  We went to the gallery and I especially enjoyed seeing some impressionist paintings by Monet, Manet and Van Gogh.  This is my favourite style of painting.

We also had a cruise down the River Thames and from the ferry we saw lots of famous icons and landmarks.  We saw Tower Bridge, the houses of parliament, The London Eye, the clocktower containing Big Ben and some of the new buildings that are shaped in interesting ways.

We went to Harrods department store and had a very expensive ice-cream sundae.

We saw red double decker buses and lots of other interesting buildings.