Things are rather quiet here in Dublin at the moment. I made banana cake on the weekend, a maintenance guy came to repaint the bathroom ceiling today, I had a bagel for lunch… not too much to report really.
Of course it may seem quieter than normal right now because Matt is in San Francisco for work this week and next!
Nevertheless, there is still news to write about! Two weekends ago we were in the UK on a bank holiday road trip. We posted photos (1), (2) & (3) when we got back but now here’s a run down of what we got up to…
We flew into London Stansted at lunchtime on Saturday and drove a rental car to Oxford. We managed to find a lot of slow outer-London traffic on the motorways but eventually made it to Oxford late in the afternoon. We wandered around the town center admiring the old college buildings. Oxford really seems like a lovely place – gorgeous old architecture but also with the buzz of a student town and lots of nice looking cafes and bars around. We decided to see an outdoor performance of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night that evening which we both really enjoyed. There were some great comedic performances from the cast and it was very cool to see Shakepeare performed in a small, relaxed, outdoor arena. Perfect thing to do on a summer evening in Oxford!
On Sunday we left Oxford and drove down towards Bath with a detour to Stonehenge on the way. Stonehenge was a little disappointing – interesting enough but kind of expensive to see, not as big as I imagined it and surrounded by a throng of tourists. Anyway, we went, we saw, we crossed it off our list.
We spent the afternoon exploring Bath. We walked around the town for a while before making our way to the Roman Baths – the central attraction of the town. Bath is built on a thermal hot water source. Back in the day, the Romans built the impressive Bath houses here so people could come an enjoy the restorative waters. Quite picturesque and interesting to see the remains of the whole series of pools that used to be in use there.
I was impressed with the food in Bath. At lunch we had some amazing woodfired pizzabread topped with pesto, garlic oil and chopped tomatoes. Then for dinner we ate at a restaurant called Gascoyne Place where I had beautifully cooked lamb with roasted vegetables and tomato pesto finished off with an apple and cinnamon crème brûlée for dessert. Making anyone hungry? hehe
Our Monday our plans fell apart on us. We intended to see the Banksy exhibit at the Bristol Museum but we’d somewhat underestimated the queues and when we got to Bristol mid-morning the wait time was about 2 1/2 hours. We decided to give it a miss! It was probably a good choice because Matt ended up feeling progressively worse as the day wore on and ended up with a flu that he spent the next week recovering from! We headed back past Oxford and to Luton airport to catch our flight home later in the evening.
Apart from a disappointing Bristol and the beginnings of a flu on Monday we had a really fun weekend.
Comment from Gill on 2009-08-20
Did you eat all the banana cake all by yourself?