You must appreciate these photos....

We were tailed by a police car for several streets and police jumped on us the moment we stopped, and asked whether hubby had been drinking. Well, of course we said no!

Actually, we did have a glass of cocktail during dinner. K brought us to an exclusive private dining place which is really IN in Bristol. And the thing which impressed me most about this was was they could actually shut their doors and make their customers wait in the freezing cold in the middle of winter! And their customers would actually wait....... till exactly 7 pm.. for the door to open! I was complaining of the cold, but deep inside, I was thinking of BRAVING it no matter what just to check out WHY. WHY can they do this and people still patronise? They dont even provide you with those outdoor heaters! And if you come after 7;30pm... too bad. No dinner for you.. and you cannot leave early. Sounds worse than a dinner appointment with your future in laws.

That place had great ambiance, and impressive concept... too bad we did not bring cameras!

.... and what was those "dots" almost got us into trouble?

The famous suspension bridge of Bristol.

Bath-the place

Since we got to pay like £10 per person to enter this place, hubby was snapping anything, everything like crazy............


The sunset-- light reflected on the cathedral outside the bath. I missed this magnificent sights as I was ....

................acting "cultured" and busy looking at stuff like this... (which to hubby is just pieces of old stones...and therefore he was so bored and went out to the "pool")






The main bath-on top, and the even more "holy" one-below. You are supposed to see bubbles/steam coming out.






I like this one... of "warriors" and "kings" watching the bath-ie the pool. I wondered if it was Yang Kuei Fei is bathing here naked....how else could you get men fixing their eyes at a pool of water?

Bath-after the sun sets

These photos were taken after the sun sets. No, we did not photoshop or did anything like that. It is pretty obvious we are amateur photographers. I still have not understood why the sky here remains THAT BLUE after it turns dark!!!


The churches above... and the river Avon below. Bath just look so magical after the sun sets. The photos did not manage to do justice to the sights.


Statue of a busty and big sized woman...I wonder when busty and big will be in fashion again....

Burton on the water...

The little bits of leaves left on the tree convinced me to come back again next autumn-- right in the middle of autumn!

The Cotswolds photo

This photos did not do justice to this little "village" which we found just off M5. Houses were built on both sides of the hill, and it is really charming! Reminds me of Ohara in Kyoto... with English architecture, and type of trees. It is a pity that we did not manage to catch the Autumn foliage at the best time.


The photo below is at Burford, at the famous traffic light at the bridge. Only one car can pass at a time. To the left, there is a glimpse of river Avon. Burford is where we went again to shop!!


The above photo is taken in the middle of no where, when we decided to take a turn into a small road and take a short break.

This is the church at North Leach, if IIRC.

Ill day and dreams of summer strawberries

Today I have been ill. No particular reasons. Just felt dizzy, and on my way to shop for christmas presents, I felt ill at the bus-stop, nauseous and dizzy. I quickly walked home before I get a chance to faint.

The moment I reached home...... to the toilet I went.. and.........puked.... puked.... puked...
Probably ate too much steamboat yesterday. We had MS and SH over, and we had hotpot! Just dumped some LauGanMa szechuan hotpot soup base into a rice cooker.. add ingredients, and fed ourselves silly. Ate and ate until we could not move anymore. Hotpot in winter is sooooooooo comfy, and a good "cure" for my chili cravings. I will definitely do it again over Christmas :) and also CNY.

Oh yeah, some very "chinese" friend of hubby actually remember than 22nd Dec is "guo dong". Haha. Hmmm.... A "banana" like me does not attach much significance to that, but I will consider cooking some tang yuan and taking in some lonely hearts who attach Guo Dong as togetherness with family and friends. Then... we can have enough people for another hot pot session... (heee ... heee..., and also I get excuse to cook/eat Tang Yuan, since the joker does not eat it)

SH told me about their fruit plucking in summer (when I was not around!!). They had such good fun. Cherries, strawberries, blue berries, blackberries.. all my favourites! There is a big farm somewhere near oxford, and you could visit for free and eat as you pluck. (Fresh berries!!!! ) You only pay for what you bring home! Of course, most of what they plucked went into their tummies. :) I am definitely going to do this next year. I will want to pluck everything. From strawberries to lemons and apples and pears. Apparently they had so much apples around their house, that no one was bothered to eat them! Yumm....

That is all I could manage to "document" today. Firm reminder to visit orchards right after Easter to dig asparagus.... and then visit again, and again, and again to pluck pluck pluck all the way to the last fruits in autumn.

Bath and Cotswolds, here I come!!!

We got the car this morning :) Brand new Vauxhall Corsa. That is really a very good deal for £30+, for 3 days' rental.

... and the latest weather prediction says that it is going to be sunny for Bath tomorrow, and sunny for Cotswolds areas on Sunday. Perfect!

We are setting off early tomorrow, drive pass Stonehenge, and the pick up K from Bristol before going to Bath. Then we will go to some nice place where K recommended for leave viewing, before going back to Bristol for dinner and zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.. Everyone is telling me Bristol is lovely at night. I will see!

We still have not fixed the route on Sunday, but hubby is thinking of doing the "Romantic Route".

Did not do my shopping tdday, saving all energy for tomorrow!

Royal Holloway and Harry Porter land!

We went out for a meeting, and it went quite well.

Boss was damn happy with me.

So, my treat? She took a detour and showed me Egham (you are not supposed to pronounced the H-she had a laughing fit when i mentioned egg-ham!) , Royal Holloway (BEAUTIFUL!!!), Runny mead, Victoria lake, and also the fields and places where Harry Porter was filmed.

Like what LYC said, ENGLAND IS JUST SO DAMN PRETTY!!!

Even when the leaves are half fallen, and there were uneven patches of leaves on the trees. Imagine 2 weeks ago! The the full glory of Autumn. Imagine it in spring! Imagine!

I did not know that Royal Holloway was a ladies college.

It was supposed to be called Holloway college, built by Holloway (who else!) for his wife. However, Queen Vic had a slip of tongue when she opened the college, and it became ROYAL.

If I meet the Queen, would she have a slip of the tongue and introduce me as Royal......

I dont mind !

This weekend, we are off to Coltswold, Bath and Bristol!!! :)

and I found out the equivalent of Ahmad here is James. When we took M's Renault convertible (yeah, a car fit for that millionaire's son!), my boss said, "hey tell James here where to go"!

Well, that car was cool....

Never ever call your son JAMES!

Yipee! Pleasant summer countryside drive!!

Yipee! Next week we are gonna hire a car to drive around the countryside, Most likely we will ROAM COTSWOLD, although I am tempted to do Northumberland as well. Britain is just so scenic, that watching those driving programs on tv will make you salivate....

Hubby found a site which is frills free, and a car goes for £27 a day or £125/week! That is less than 1/2 the prices that some major companies charge! And the best thing is the price seems to be the same, even if you do last minute booking. That is great, because we can check the weather forecast first before booking. Well, hubby seems to always find good deals, I think that guy just Google and Google and maybe click on every single ad availble as well???

Too bad we decided to beat the crowds and head off with just the two of us. If it is a weekend, the whole gang could join, £27 for 4 person is really peanuts! We got to pay for the petrol, though, but it won’t come up to that much, less than £20?

At first, I thought of renting the car from London, and then return it in another city, then take a bus home. But we don't have enough time to plan, and book early enough for those £1 tickets which we used to visit Oxford from megabus.com. The usual tickets will be costing around £10/person, so might as well drive!

It is summer now(or is it? I got to turn on heater yesterday, cos it was windy, rainy and was around 14C?). The sun rises around 4:30am, and sets around 9:30 at night. So , a day trip is a LONG trip, and we just got to maximise the time. The only limitation is we got to collect the car betwen 8:00am to 6pm. Hmmm.. that means that it is not possible to set off at 6 am and come back at 9pm.

Nah... I am not gonna to break my brains about this one. Let the "driver" decide. I am just gonna to snooze in the car, and only open my eyes whenever hubby shouts "sheep", "cow","horse", "canola", "beautiful hill", and any of the "wows!" :)

Shucks, I am not sure if he is able to recognise these things properly or not. I think I better make him go through some picture books, just in case he shouts "elephant" when he sees a big cow.