From cold to colder.....

Kung Hei Fat Choi! May your year of the rat be healthy, wealthy and prosperous! We started our's by visiting the Mother Country. With a week's holiday, cheap flights and a mere 13 hours of flying time we felt that it was too good to refuse a trip to the UK. Landing in dawn twilight at Gatwick, we navigated (rather successfully we think) the maze that is the ticketing and transport of English rail that was of course until we hit the Tube.... Track work brought us slightly undone, however, we felt it probably gave Fran & Greg an opportunity to be slight more awake for our arrival at such an unreasonable hour on their weekend!! We had a lovely time with two of them, and truly appreciated their hospitality (thank you once again!). As well as seeing the joys of living in London, we felt that we should do the tourist sites to some extent. We walked through all sorts of historical sites, did the Original bus tour, jumping on and off where we wanted and generally played the part of a good tourist!!

From the snap viewing of key tourist attractions it was jump on a train to Edinburgh (in case London wasn't cold enough) to spend a couple of days exploring a city neither of us been to. We both thoroughly enjoy the relaxed pace of the train through green fields (really green, hurt your eyes kind of English green, Australian's don't quite understand green) tidy with little hedge rows, and little houses - very quaint, and beautiful.Edinburgh was stunning! A very easy place to see because it was so compact, and so very cold (no snow though, apparently that was the week before). The history was spectacular, the accents fabulous, the pubs refreshingly warm, and the beer.... (we now understand why the Brits drink it warm, it wards off chills) Sam introduced Trent to Haggis (while I chuckled to myself) only for both of us to pleasantly surprised - Trent's now a fan, and I'd contemplate eating more than the mouthful I had! Again many thanks to Sam for showing the tempting culinary pleasures found in Scotland.......the deep fried mars bar was great if you didn't eat the batter (slightly fishy - not sure if my heart or arteries will agree with me..... let it also be known that Sam merely helped us find them, but did recommend against partaking)!

Again, we took the snappy version of seeing the tourist delights of Edinburgh, while applying the legendary tight pursed approach of the Scots, and while we made an exception of paying to get into the Castle, there was no way they were conning me out of £9 to see Palace Hollyrood.... Besides by that time we were freezing in our open top bus on a drizzly Edinburgh day so the 9 quid was better spent on steak & ale pie and beer!

Our second day was lovely, rain had cleared but it was still pretty cold (as you can see). We decided that we should climb the Sir Walter Scott monument because we could, and because they were 15 mins off closing we got in for free! The views from the 3 levels of viewing decks were spectacular and confirmed for both us what a delightful city it is!!
Even if the last one was a bit of a squeeze and required some careful manoeuvers to negotiate!!
Sir Walter Scott monument....
So from Edinburgh it was onto another city high on tourist's agendas - Newcastle! Ok so we're stretching it a bit here. However, Paula & Andy do happen to live in Newcastle, and it's on the same train line and we thought it would be nice to pop in. They kindly showed us the lovely side of the city (yes it does exist, they've done a lot of work, and it looks to be reshaping itself quite nicely) and we had a great night with them! Thanks again for letting us stay!

From there it was onto York, a city that many have raved about, and others remember from school excursions.... not sure my Year 9 excursion to Sydney as the same ring about it. Either way, York was stunning with Trent declaring it the most historical town he'd been to yet. We walked about half the wall before I got hungry. We had asked for advice on the best places to see at the tourist info centre with less than 48 hours to do it. We were told "the wall, the York Minster, the Jorvik centre and the shambles". And we guess 3 out of 4 wasn't too bad! The wall was very interesting, and quite impressive that so much has remained intact for so long. The Shambles was a quaint street that would have fitted in perfectly in Harry Potter (photo below). The York Minster was sensational, so that leaves the Jorvik centre...... Tourist trap couldn't describe it more aptly - you literally couldn't get out without going through the entire "time machine" and slow moving ride which took you through 967 AD York...... although interesting from a historical perspective, the "I'm not a small child" sense had a pretty strong effect on feeling like we'd been taken for a ride.... literally and metaphorically! However, we did escape, and York's other tourist attractions more than made up for it!The York Minster is a seriously stunning cathedral! The chapter and undercroft were quite amazing (although also had this obsession with time travel) some truly amazing pieces, and was fascinating to see how the 3 places of worship on this site were interlinked and what remained of their history! Inside the actual cathedral, the stain glass work was amazing, truly beautiful. They were performing restoration work on one end of the building which was interesting to see in action. We decide the climb the 287 steps to the top of the tower, and like the Sir Walter Scott monument it afforded fabulous views of the cathedral and the whole of York!


We also enjoyed the mason's sense of humour - how nice of him to include Prince Charles as part of this church.
Anyway, from York it was back on the train to London again, where we again enjoyed the vast expanses of green land (something you don't get a whole lot in HK). A Friday night in London can only be spent one way, it had to be a curry in Brick Lane. We caught up with Paul and his fellow MacBank mates and entered the world of bartering for your dinner, and witnessed haggling that could only have been trained in Asia! A good night had by all. Saturday was a relaxed affair, a bit of shopping, a quiet coffee with Sarah & Fran before we packed up and headed home.
We counted our lucky stars, the gods were obviously shining on us - we had 8 days in the UK, it only rained 1 day, and otherwise, it had been blue skies, not too windy, and although very cold by HK/Aussie standards, no where near what it can turn on from what everyone told us! The Year of the Rat has begun well!
It was fabulous to catch up with everyone! Thank you all for your generosity, good advice and generally make our holiday all that bit more special! See you all again soon.