Day trips in England

We had two day trips while in Britain. The first was from Cardiff back into London for a day as we had tickets to the Arsenal game. We got this amazing hook up from Kate's dad who works for Mitsubishi Electric, a company that installs the giant screens in stadiums, and they put in the screens at the new Emirates stadium.

We took the morning bus into London and headed straight to the game as we were to meet Sandra - the company's representative - and her friend Sian for lunch in the stadium's club level. We met them outside of the merchandise store then showed our little VIP passes to get up and into the restaurant where we shown to our table for the match. We picked out our three-course meals and selected our half-time complimentary drink preferences as we would be coming back to this same table for a little half-time cheese and wine soiree. While introducing ourselves and dining away on the gourmet cuisine, I noticed that our VIP cards listed the price for the meal we were having: £72.50 a person, or a very expensive lunch. Our waitress then worried us further when she asked if we'd like to pay our bill before the game or at half-time. We said half-time and were left wondering if we'd mistakenly assumed the lunch was free, but the bill was just for the extra wine we'd ordered with the meal.

When we finished, we headed down to our seats which, I think you can agree, are quite spectacular. First row in the section, right on the halfway line, just elevated enough to see everything better... which reminds me, we'd worn our Sunday best as we were in the club level and didn't know what to expect; we were fine where we were sitting but right across the way, you could easily tell which box was the owner's - everyone was wearing suits.

The game ended up being little disappointing - 0-0 draw against Sunderland - but it was notable as being the Arsenal debut of Andrei Arshavin, the Russian who helped spearhead their run in last year's Euro 2008 Cup. He had a couple good shots but nothing went in and play got a bit sloppy at the end. I think we can all agree that the the real stars of the game were the DiamondVision™ screens with their incredible high-definition LED display solutions.

Day trip number two was actually from London when we went back for our last couple nights with Theo before flying off to Spain. We decided to splurge for the £50 package tour to Stonehenge and Bath. I'd been to both before on an 8th grade trip but it'd been about 13 years and Kate had never been so we hopped on our tour bus at 8AM and cruised on out the plains of Salisbury where we encountered the megalithic marvel of Stonehenge.

The site provides free audio guides that explain the whole thing according to numbers beside the walkway... but while informative, it led to us being forced to jam these wands to our ears, alternating hands every 10 seconds or so due to the icy wind whipping through the place. But we braved it and have now seen the giant stones and the nearby burial mounds scattered throughout the plains. It's impressive, but Stonehenge for us isn't one of those must-see things that's better in life than in the pictures. You can't really imagine the space being used. And it probably doesn't help that the circle of stones is now in a rather random field with sheep grazing nearby. Just seemed a bit anti-climactic.

Basically as soon as the audio tour was finished, we were whisked back onto the bus for another hour or two long drive out to Bath. Bath got it's name, appropriately enough, from the Roman baths founded on top of the local hot springs way back in the early ADs. But while Bath was important in ancient times, it wasn't until Georgian Britain that it had it's resurgence thanks to about 100 years of ongoing facelifts to make the town into a beautiful little homogenous tourist city based on the latest architectural principles. Encouraged, of course, by the owner of the nearby quarry of eponymous Bath Stone who was able to pass an edict stating that every building in town needed a Bath Stone facade. Unfortunately, Bath Stone is porous and dirties and is expensive to upkeep... but the town is beautiful, as is their abbey which you can see in the background.

As are the Roman baths. They're extremely impressive - probably the best preserved structure from antiquity that we've seen on our trip, though it is, admittedly, a little hard to tell as there has been some restoration throughout the millennia as the bath's have been in use for over 1500 years. The whole complex is, to some degree, still preserved; you have the main baths, of course, plus parts of the nearby temples, the changing rooms, the saunas, the plumbing... really an interesting site where you can see exactly how things once were. Again, you get a free audio guide but this one is supplemented with commentary from author Bill Bryson who adds a bit of flavor through his imagination of what life would have been like for those at the baths.

For 50 pence, you can also have a glass of the sulfurous miracle water that cures most ailments at the fancy restaurant upstairs. It doesn't taste great but not that bad either... though it doesn't fill you up. For that crucial sustenance, we headed to Sally Lunns Buns, the oldest restaurant in an old town dating back to the 16th century. They're known for what are apparently very famous and certainly very giant buns. We split three orders: salmon and cream cheese, brie and cranberry, and for the dessert course, buns with clotted cream and jam. So delicious, though the clotted cream is intensely rich and while I really liked it, you probably want to stay away from it if you place a high priority on arterial functionality.

Then it was back on the bus. We slept most of the way back to London as I'd been up all night dealing with cleaning off and preparing our old, cracked screen computer for sale - which was much more difficult than normal as I couldn't see the buttons I needed to click. But I sold it at 7AM before the trip. Which is completely unrelated to this post and an awkward point to end on.