Yeah, don't go to England!!* Just kidding. It was one of the most memorable trips. Here is what I did in UK.
London:
I spent the first two days in London. As far as the city is concerned it is as good as Chennai and in some aspects Chennai looks better - I am not joking. If you take the tower bridge out of London, there is nothing much to tell you it is London. Buckingham palace was disappointingly plain. I wasn't expecting a mysore palace but still... Then there is the Tower of London which has some nice history attached to it. But beyond this facade there are two good museums - the British museum, which is the best museum I have ever seen and the maritime museum in Greenwich (pronounced Grenitch for some reason). British museum is simply a display of loots from Egypt, Greece, Mesopotamia, India and China during the "glorious past" of Britain. They have literally hundreds of relics and artifacts from the pyramids of Egypt and sometimes even entire temples brought piecemeal from Greece. For us it is one place where you can see a lot of archealogical stuff from all known civilizations. The maritime museum explores the history of human exploration of far away places in high seas. If you are interested in history these are the places to see.
Bath:
The moment you are out of London though, you are in a completely different place. The English countryside deserves to be praised. Miles after miles of rolling meadows and farmlands make for a splendid drive. I think 90% of UKs population lives in London! - Except for the occasional fences there is little evidence that people live in these places. Bath is an ancient city that still contains remains of Britain's Roman past. They call it Bath because that is where Roman's took bath. In the rest of the places they simply used perfumes!..... I am just joking. Bath is called so because it has natural hot springs. The pagan romans made a pond out of it and constructed a temple next to it for the Goddess "Minerva", who is the healing God. The idea was that if you took bath in that pond your disease will go away. After Romans turned to christianity they constructed churches, remains of which still exist. Thus it is a 2000 year old city which contains both churches and pagan temples. Feels good to just walk around and absorb the history. I vowed to come back and spend a week there. No wonder "Lonely planet" asserts that if there is only one city you would see in UK, it should be Bath. So go there.
Blenheim palace:
This is the birthplace of Winston Churchill, the great and only leader from UK! His great great grand daddy, John Churchill was awarded by the Queen this 300 acre odd place along with 240,000 pounds as a generous gift for defeating the French in one of those perpetual battles between them. People's tax money well spent. Someone said the residents today live on the earnings that visitor's offer to see the place. Apparently Indians do not work for free any more.
Warwick Castle:
One of Britain's better maintained castles. Climb 500 narrow steps to the top of one of the towers and you can see a staggering view of the rest of the castle and the landscape of Warwickshire. Or you could simply look at the photograph here. I relished on the strategy with which the castle was built. Every tower, every room had a certain functionality. It would take an entirely different post to discuss about them all. But I would like to mention something I heard from the guide about laying siege to a castle. Apparently the besiegers would use big sling shots to throw chemicals that would create eye irritating fumes and dead animals/ human refuse to spread disease among other things in an attempt to obtain a surrender without have to break through the mighty walls of the castle. Hmm...so chemical and biological warfare aren't new after all.
Chatsworth house:
And then an 'out of this world', beautiful stately house - this time it belongs to the Duck of Derbyshire....or rather the Duke of Derbyshire (if you have seen Clint Eastwood's 'Unforgiven'). A walk along the brook will make anyone want to write a poem. It would be very hard to describe the beauty of this place. So, I am simply posting a picture of it.
Edinburgh, Scotland:
Lake District:
This is the most beautiful national park I have ever seen. It has a lot of hills of different shades of green with large lakes littered among them. I was going to spend only one day there and move on to Cambridge. But the moment I saw it on the first light of the day (I reached there when it was dark as hell), I said, "Screw Cambridge". It was that beautiful. You could easily spend a week there. And I will, sometime in the future. It is a perfect place for honeymooners for sure.
Roads:
P.S. That dialog is from "Snatch". You can't miss that movie.
London:
I spent the first two days in London. As far as the city is concerned it is as good as Chennai and in some aspects Chennai looks better - I am not joking. If you take the tower bridge out of London, there is nothing much to tell you it is London. Buckingham palace was disappointingly plain. I wasn't expecting a mysore palace but still... Then there is the Tower of London which has some nice history attached to it. But beyond this facade there are two good museums - the British museum, which is the best museum I have ever seen and the maritime museum in Greenwich (pronounced Grenitch for some reason). British museum is simply a display of loots from Egypt, Greece, Mesopotamia, India and China during the "glorious past" of Britain. They have literally hundreds of relics and artifacts from the pyramids of Egypt and sometimes even entire temples brought piecemeal from Greece. For us it is one place where you can see a lot of archealogical stuff from all known civilizations. The maritime museum explores the history of human exploration of far away places in high seas. If you are interested in history these are the places to see.
Bath:
The moment you are out of London though, you are in a completely different place. The English countryside deserves to be praised. Miles after miles of rolling meadows and farmlands make for a splendid drive. I think 90% of UKs population lives in London! - Except for the occasional fences there is little evidence that people live in these places. Bath is an ancient city that still contains remains of Britain's Roman past. They call it Bath because that is where Roman's took bath. In the rest of the places they simply used perfumes!..... I am just joking. Bath is called so because it has natural hot springs. The pagan romans made a pond out of it and constructed a temple next to it for the Goddess "Minerva", who is the healing God. The idea was that if you took bath in that pond your disease will go away. After Romans turned to christianity they constructed churches, remains of which still exist. Thus it is a 2000 year old city which contains both churches and pagan temples. Feels good to just walk around and absorb the history. I vowed to come back and spend a week there. No wonder "Lonely planet" asserts that if there is only one city you would see in UK, it should be Bath. So go there.
Blenheim palace:
This is the birthplace of Winston Churchill, the great and only leader from UK! His great great grand daddy, John Churchill was awarded by the Queen this 300 acre odd place along with 240,000 pounds as a generous gift for defeating the French in one of those perpetual battles between them. People's tax money well spent. Someone said the residents today live on the earnings that visitor's offer to see the place. Apparently Indians do not work for free any more.
Warwick Castle:
One of Britain's better maintained castles. Climb 500 narrow steps to the top of one of the towers and you can see a staggering view of the rest of the castle and the landscape of Warwickshire. Or you could simply look at the photograph here. I relished on the strategy with which the castle was built. Every tower, every room had a certain functionality. It would take an entirely different post to discuss about them all. But I would like to mention something I heard from the guide about laying siege to a castle. Apparently the besiegers would use big sling shots to throw chemicals that would create eye irritating fumes and dead animals/ human refuse to spread disease among other things in an attempt to obtain a surrender without have to break through the mighty walls of the castle. Hmm...so chemical and biological warfare aren't new after all.
Chatsworth house:
And then an 'out of this world', beautiful stately house - this time it belongs to the Duck of Derbyshire....or rather the Duke of Derbyshire (if you have seen Clint Eastwood's 'Unforgiven'). A walk along the brook will make anyone want to write a poem. It would be very hard to describe the beauty of this place. So, I am simply posting a picture of it. Edinburgh, Scotland:
Edinburgh was the most historic looking city in UK that I visited. Edinburgh castle was the best. Built on top of a hill it offers a view of the north sea along with the entire city of Edinburgh. This castle played a main part in the Scottish battle of independence. If any one of you remember Robert, the Bruce (No one can beat me seven times in a row), one of the greatest Scottish generals, he wrestled this castle back from the English.
Lake District:
This is the most beautiful national park I have ever seen. It has a lot of hills of different shades of green with large lakes littered among them. I was going to spend only one day there and move on to Cambridge. But the moment I saw it on the first light of the day (I reached there when it was dark as hell), I said, "Screw Cambridge". It was that beautiful. You could easily spend a week there. And I will, sometime in the future. It is a perfect place for honeymooners for sure.
Roads:
Yep, the roads of UK need a special mentioning. I wont be doing them Justice if I simply said they were narrow. If you drove a small car like VW Golf or Maruti 800, you would feel like you were driving a lorry. You could smell the paint of the car that crosses you on the opposite direction. As for the shoulder there is none whatsoever. Right were the side of the road ends they have stacked sharp shapeless black stones to remind you were the road ends! If you go to your left a little more than you should, you will not only puncture your tires, but you will also get a nice design on the otherwise plain looking side of your car. So then this is the British version of a rumble strip. If this isn't enough, there is another dimension to these roads. The British haven't heard of a simple geometrical instrument called "the ruler". Roads, even in desolate open lands, looked like they had a strand of spaghetti for inspiration. In US, car manuals say that after a certain thousand miles you have to change the tires or the brakes or the timing belt. I was going through my car manual to see if there was any mentioning of changing the steering wheel! There wasn't, but there should have been. Remember the ridiculous car driving scenes from old movies where the driver is constantly turning the steering either way? That is exactly how you will drive on a UK road.
P.S. That dialog is from "Snatch". You can't miss that movie.
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