on Thursday, after my lesson ended at 12noon, i boarded the train at Central Station for Southampton. i was prepared for the 6 hour journey this time round, The Guardian, 3 storybooks, tea & muffin from Millie's, and a salad i prepared in the morning. i got there alright, had dinner at the city centre and had a good night's rest.
home of the English Premier League...and violence. it was terribly disturbing reading about and seeing the pictures of violent football in the papers.
this is Saint John's Hospital, no, not a typical hospital, but one for hospitality, constructed originally for the poor who came to Bath to cure their diseases.
an example of Gregorian mathematical symmetry - each side of the building had to have the same number of windows, this was filled in so that one could place his furniture at the side of the wall. today, Saint John's Hospital has flats for the elderly, which i thought was really thoughtful, given that you could retire there even if you're not a resident of Bath.
you would think that the houses in Bath are typical...
the few minutes of sunshine we had, before yet another shower. more fickle than a lady, the weather.
the Royal Crescent, a World Heritage Site. built by the younger John Wood, of course for the wealthy and famous of their time. a house in the Royal Crescent would set you back around SGD15million i think. my photography skills weren't good enough to capture the grandeur of the architecture...
so i tried again. okay, just go google and you'll see the beautiful pictures of Royal Crescent.
lunch. at a Turkish restaurant by River Avon, where i decided to be adventurous and order a really foreign sounding dish. i saw 'fish roe' somewhere in its description and decided that i had to try it. the verdict? fantastic, like nothing that i've tried before, thats what i love about dining in foreign countries, you never know what you'll get. we were so intrigued, before the waiter served our main course, he asked 'do you want me to take this away, or do you want to play around with it longer?'
dawen's roast lamb, with really sweet peas and potatoes.
my more delicious shish kebab with rice. ahhhh.
because we were so stuffed from lunch, we had to do some walking - in the form of window shopping. jie, i saw this tin tin window display and was reminded of you. haha.
Habitat, the land of pretty plates, intricate ornaments, red pots/pans/peppergrinder and trendy home furnishing. somewhere in between i felt quite sick from the cold and rapidly changing weather, that we had to seek refuge in a cafe, sipping Earl Grey tea quietly.
when i felt strong enough again, we walked around the (small) city center, to take a look at Bath Abbey.
and the Roman Bath was nearby. this is the Pump Room next to the Roman Bath, where the rich and famous went to socialize after their bath in their time. an extremely grand room, almost opulent in a way (no pictures of the Pump Room because i thought it was rude to take pictures when people were having tea inside).
we were choosing between a cheap 2-for-1 pub dinner, fish at a French Bistro which had tons of newspaper clippings on its window and Sally Lunn's, Bath's oldest house. Heritage and history won in the end, especially so after we visited the museum below the cozy restaurant.
dawen's starter - carrot soup with Sally Lunn bun. Sally Lunn's buns were famous and extremely popular in Gregorian England, a delicacy of sorts, perhaps due to the fact that it was baked in French style. so we were really excited to try it, but it er, tasted like the kind of soft bread that your mom would buy from the bread shop downstairs in Singapore. but given the standards of English bread, these French buns must have been fantastically different.
my toasted Sally Lunn bun, which was great when it was hot, after that, it got soggy.
in Trencher tradition, bread was served underneath the main dish. the bread is supposed to absorb the flavour of the dish and to be eaten as part of the meal. i had medium rare steak, i haven't tasted beef for so long that i forgot how good it can be...
and this is dawen's lamb with rosemary sauce. his second serving of lamb for the day and apparently Sally Lunn's had 'the best lamb i've ever tasted'.
dawen's friend said that there's some really good shopping at Portsmouth. factory outlets. since Stonehenge was too windy for me, surely shopping centers with their central heating would be more than acceptable eh? before we took the hour long train journey into Portsmouth, we had lunch at Southampton's major shopping centre, Westquay.
why is it that almost at every place they call their own fish and chips 'world famous'? at least this one wasn't too greasy...
this really amusing kid we met on the train who really loved his ribena and m&ms. after i showed him his picture on my digital camera, he frowned in concentration and shock. priceless expression.
okay, fastfoward to dinner, because all the shopping and scenic pictures are in dawen's camera. we had dinner at a spanish place by the quayside (Portsmouth is located along the coast). we wanted a paella but we could only order it after 6pm, and it took 45 minutes to prepare. we waited for over an hour...
we were bored...
and famished.
see how his eyes light up?
needless to say, the paella was finished quickly - tiger prawns, baby lobsters, mussels, squid, tuna with rice. we can't wait till we get to Spain to try their tapas and paellas. Easter break shouldn't be too far off...Labels: Bath, Portsmouth
