Anticipating Bath - blogging during lunch break

I can't believe how warm and sunny this week has been. 29 degrees awesome weather during Autumn. London weather is same as Melbourne's. Unpredictable! Am at the garden of St Paul church during my lunch break and plenty of office workers and school children, just sitting around enjoying the sun, weather, squirrels and birds around. Can't wait for the next 4 hours to be over....so we could get on the coach for the 3 hour ride to bath..we've been to bath on a day trip before, to the lovely lovely town, and this is our trip back to spend the whole weekend there. From what I've heard from the planner of the trip, there's a lovely b&b booked, Saturday evening dinner and on Sunday, we will get to soak in the Royal Roman Baths on a rooftop place. very exciting!!! The coach trip, might be a bit of a hurdle thou....last weeks journey to Birmingham wasn't exactly exciting with traffic jams and bumpy roads..

Little room in the attic

10pm - we finally arrived at our accomodation in our little B&B in Bath - a cute little house on a stretch that many has been turned into B&Bs. We probably got the smallest room in the house - a room in the roof ( probably the old attic), but which has since been renovated. It's a cozy and personlised B n B, called the Bay Tree House with only 5 rooms, in the prime area just beside the town centre. The home cook breakfast in the morning is amazing (cooked by the owner of the BnB) - we have an option of the English breakfast, or a salmon and scramble egg choice. Well, each of the 2 days we had breakfast day, I custom made my breakfast - Salmon, tomatoes and mushroom....my favourite. Yum.

Freshly cooked Salmon & Mushroom

Freshly cooked English Breakfast

Boring Birmingham

I must say that Birmingham, although known as the 2nd largest city in England after London, is not the most exciting city in the region. It's definitely famous for its clubbing scene and young girls in skimpy clothing...last night, walking around the city in the freezing cold, I was amazed at the number of ladies wearing tiny little strapless dresses and no coat!! Even in the morning when we had breakfast, I can see that many of the patrons of the hotel are young ppl who booked the room in the city just so they could club till the early hours of the morning!! Some of them are still in their teeny weeny dresses and heavy mascara!

Since we bought the annual Merlin pass the day before which gives us free entry to various attractions around the country, and there is not much else to see in Birmigham...we decided to spend our Sunday visitng the Aquarium. I guess its just like any other aquarium ( after having seen so many in this lifetime), with fishes, sea creatures etc....Guess the 2 things that stood out for me is having the opportunity to look at baby sea horses - yes...they are tiny, and already shaped like sea horses, and the 4D happy feet movie that they play at the aquarium....hehe...yes water splashing and wind blowing at you.

Look hard enough and you'll see the tiny/skinny baby sea horses clinging on to the weed for dear life!  They're EXTREMELY small!!!

A pregnant male sea horse???? :)

Otters that do tricks?!!

For lunch we had the famous English Sunday roast in a town's pub- our very first Sunday roast in the country!!! It was yummy - with a pie, roasted vege and roast beef.  Mr T was a bit disappointed that roast beef is beef , and he was expecting steak..hahahah.






We spent the day walking around Birmingham, taking pictures of the few famous building around - see below, and shopping at the largest shopping centre in Birmingham, Selfryides, which is also very interesting architecturally.

Shopping in the streets of Birmingham

Unique modern architecture! Best building in the area.

This group of well-dressed Birmingham local were posing for my benefit! Hehe

Warwick Castle

Just under half hour away from Birmingham, there lies a little town called Warwick, which has a beautiful old castle. Since there's not much to see in Birmingham, we decided to spend a whole day in Warwick.

The streets are really quaint and nice....I guess as with all little towns in the UK.It lifted my spirits up to be in a cozy, beautiful little town setting - very refreshing.

The castle was an amazing sight...with towers to climb and dungeons to explore. A few friends came to mind , that would absolutely love exploring a castle like this. We did a tour of the dungeon, which could be quite frightening especially for young children. The tour leads you to the various rooms in the dungeon / goal of the castle, and a scary character meet you at each room to put on a scary act. There were also room full of knights in shiny armour, weapons, and even some furniture of the olden days.

 

Men practising their self defence skills on the Castle grounds

We also climbed the highest towers of the castle...and take in spectacular views of Warwick.

In the middle of the afternoon, there was a wedding that took place in one of the dining halls of the castle...wow..what a treat...to get married in a castle. Reminded me of this weird dream that I got when I was in Australia and leading up to my wedding day...I dreamt that I was getting married in Kyral Castle (a old, worn down castle in Ballarat) and I was wearing slippers, and the groom and groomsmen wore shorts with angel wings!!!! ) A 'dream' wedding? I dont know.. hahaha

Hall n the castle where the wedding will take place

In the castle grounds...if you look hard enough, you will see the wedding cars.