My trip to the UK

I've taken my time, but finally I'm going to write about my trip to the UK :P

I went there for almost a week, leaving Lyon on Tuesday and coming back on Sunday. However, the last day was mainly spent in the airport, so that doesn't really count...so we could call it a 5-day trip.

First I went to London (I took a flight from Lyon) The first day there I didn't really see much; for one thing I didn't really know what I wanted to see (sad, but true...lol), and which places were close together (so that I could visit them together...I wasn't going to go from one end of London to the other and then back again, right? Even if I had bought a day ticket...) It also rained (actually it rained every single day I was in the UK, just a little more or a little less (or a little earlier or a little later :P)) so I took shelter in the National Gallery for some time :P So for the first day I went to the tourism office, and that night I went through the brochures and made plans for the next day! Luckily it was pretty sunny on Wednesday (a little rain, but only for a moment) so I could go around easily, and get some pretty nice photos :)

The Buckingham Palace was a must, of course, and I got lucky: I didn't even know at what time was the changing of guards (I didn't even think of it!), but when I arrived there were already quite a lot of people waiting for it, so I decided to wait as well. There is a downside to it, though: I believe it was there that I used up most of my camera batteries' power, so at the end of the day (luckily it wasn't earlier) my batteries died out on me. But then the best photos were already taken, so it wasn't that bad :)

And an extra: For anyone who's going to London, I have something to recommend: Brazilian cheese bread! It's warm and...uh, nice :P Well, in any case, I liked it. It's like a bun...a bit oily, though :P (It costs 1 pound) Hehe, I'm sure you're wondering how on earth I managed to stumble upon Brazilian stuff in London. On the flight I looked through the flight magazine, and it recommended several restaurants for several towns. So I checked out London, and noted this one:
Brasil by Kilo
17 Oxford Street, W1
It's actually a buffet-style restaurant (they called it buffet-style, but in Malaysia we'd call it mixed rice ;) ), the difference is that you pay by weight. So if you don't eat a lot, you can just take a little and pay for that (and not for a ready-made portion that you can't finish...) But besides the cheese bread, I didn't find it very special... And oh yeah, if you go looking for it you'll have to look carefully...it's above a telephone shop, so there's just a small sign at the bottom of the stairs.

On Thursday I flew to Edinburgh. When I reached there, Wei-Iou (a Kuantan friend who's studying in Edinburgh) had class, so I spent some time walking around by myself first. I like Edinburgh, it reminds me of Angoulême! :D Then when Wei-Iou got back we walked around a bit more before it got dark, we walked up to the Edinburgh castle, but didn't go in. That night she took me to try haggis, a Scottish dish (hehe, heard of it before?), I found it nice! ;)

The next day Wei-Iou had class, and I went to Glasgow. I went first to the Botanic Gardens, the greenhouses were nice, but since it was winter there wasn't mush to see outside. Then I went to the Tall Ship, which is an actual ship that was used before, it's now open to the public, we can go into the ship to look around (there's an entrance fee, though :P) After that I went to the Museum of Transport. One notable thing there was that they had recreated an actual street in a corridor, there were cars parked on the side, displays in shop windows, and we could even go into the "cinema". At the end of the corridor there's a painted wall that gives the illusion that the street goes on...

A few hours before returning to Edinburgh, I met up with an online friend who lives in Stirling and we walked about in the town of Glasgow. (the places I mentioned earlier were a bit further from town, I had to take the subway to get to each place...and walk a bit from each subway station!) He made me try a Scottish soft drink called Irn Bru (read "iron brew"), supposedly only found in Scotland...but somehow it reminded me of something, only I can't figure out what.

On Saturday I went to the Royal Botanic Gardens of Edinburgh with Wei-Iou, we also went to the Museum of Childhood, and to a shopping complex called Ocean Terminal (beside the sea...or ocean :P) Another Scottish speciality I tried was fried Mars bar, it's a Mars bar dipped in batter and deep-fried. I don't specially like Mars bars, but the fried one was great! (hmm...now who's gonna fry one for me? :P)

That night I met up with Hanaë, a friend from my first year in INSA who's also studying in Edinburgh. We chatted over dinner, exchanging news.

Sunday I had to get back to Lyon...I had class on Monday! I left Edinburgh early in the morning, but only to reach Stansted airport in London at about 10am, where I had to wait 8 hours for my next flight to Lyon! I spent that time mostly reading...I finished reading all the issues of Newsweek that I hadn't had time to read (there was the current issue and a special issue that I had put off reading for some time...), and when I had finished, I went into a bookshop and stood there for almost 2 hours reading an Agatha Christie book. I wasn't sure whether we were allowed to read there, so each time someone came by, I had to pretend I wasn't really reading the book, that I was just looking at a few pages... but in the end I managed to finish it! :D (it was a book of short stories on Miss Marple)

So now that my text report is written, let's move on to the photos! :D There aren't many special ones, though, especially since London stuff are pretty much well-known...you've probably seen all of them before.

Trafalgar Square, taken from the National Gallery

London Eye

Big Ben and Westminster Hall, taken from across the Thames (from the London Eye’s side)

Temple Church (I read Da Vinci Code, so I decided to go and take a look. I couldn't go in, though, there was a concert)

Tower Bridge

the Tall Ship

the recreated street in the Museum of Transport

Edinburgh Castle

haggis, potatoes and turnips

Palace of Holyroodhouse (I didn’t want to pay to go in, so I had to take photos from between the bars of the gate; it didn't turn out too bad, though)