Clifton Suspension Bridge

This here is the Clifton Suspension Bridge. It was completed in 1864 and is freaking huge! And quite a ways up from the river (75m, to be exact). It would've been quite an amazing sight at night, but unfortunately I didn't stay past 10 p.m., which is when it starts to get dark.

Here's the view of the sweeping countryside in the background. Sure looks lovely and quaint and English.

This is the old building of what would'be been the observatory. Unfortunately, like a lot of buildings in Bristol, it was boarded up and condemned. Not sure how old the building is, or if it had any historical significance, but it's still sad to see.

I see. I've done some research on Wikipedia and it looks as though the observatory was built in 1777 using parts from an original mill that was built in 1766 and damaged by fire soon after. It is currently on the English Heritage's Buildings at Risk - so hopefully they will do something with it. There is a passage that runs from the observatory through the rock to a tiny little balcony perches on the side of the cliff.

This passageway goes through St. Vincent's Cave. This cave was first mentioned as being a chapel in the year A.D. 305 and excavations, in which Romano-British pottery has been found, have revealed that it has been both a holy place and a place of refuge at various times in its history. Although the cave is in limestone, there are few formations in the natural passages.

So, again, too bad I couldn't go in, but hopefully they will fix it up soon.

Bristol

Hello everyone, and welcome to Bristol. I spent a night and two days here a week or so ago to visit the Banksy vs Bristol Museum exhibition, but since the queues for the museum were expected to be at least an hour, I thought I'd make an overnight trip of it and queue up early the next morning. Turns out Bristol has a fair amount to offer - some lovely churches and an interesting vibe to it. We'll get started with some standard pictures of the city:

This is the Bristol Hippodrome - some kind of theatre where all the shows happen.
This is the planetarium at the @ Science centre in Bristol. Unfortunately the Science centre wasn't the best I'd been too, but I got a free planetarium show out of it, so that was cool.
They had a bunch of lights on strings just outside the planetarium which the children loved to play with.
It was a rather cloudy day - unfortunately the sun didn't come out much.
But I did find some colorful houses! Not sure if there is any historical significance to these buildings or if they are just fancy-colored since they are up on a hill.
And a fountain! I saw this on the way to Clifton Suspension Bridge, which you will see in another post.

Another post coming up!

Inglorious Basterds Premiere

While I am working on my photos from my Bristol mini-break, I thought you might enjoy the pictures of the London premiere of Inglorious Basterds. It's some war movie with Brad Pitt in it, directed by Quentin Tarantino. Brad Pitt didn't show, but there were some other people (most of whom I don't recognize.) Either way, it was good fun.

This is Bella Fisher. I have no idea who she is and Google isn't helping me. Nice dress, though.
This is Christoph Waltz. He is German and has been in a lot of German movies.
And this, of course, is Quentin Tarantino. He did smile, I assure you... well, a bit. He always looks so grumpy.
This is Diane Kruger. She is the token lady in the movie, I guess. I really know nothing about the movie. She was in both National Treasure movies, if you were wondering. That's about it. She was also the only one that came down towards where we were standing to sign things.
Neve Campbell was also there. She can fall into the category of people who had nothing to do with the movie showing up.
Like this guy. His name is Ronan Keating or something. Apparently he is in BoyZone or some other comparable pop singing group. People seemed to like him.
And Mickey Rourke was also there. Smoking and looking like he hadn't washed his hair in a long time.

Rihanna also made an appearance, but she walked away so fast I didn't get a picture. It didn't seem as though this premiere was as organized as the Harry Potter premiere, but still good fun. People were rather agressive, and I did have to shove an obnoxious french couple away every now and then for being too shovey. Plus there were two men who were obviously autograph-hunters discussing all the celebrities that they had 'gotten', which I found a bit creepy. Still, good fun.

Covent Garden's Giant(ish) Cupcake!

Last Wednesday I was in Covent Garden to enjoy a slice of a rather large cupcake. Now, I can't remember if it was supposed to be the world's largest cupcake, or the UK's largest cupcake, or even London's biggest cupcake. Either way, it was the largest cupcake I've ever seen... even if it wasn't big enough to terrorize Tokyo Godzilla-style.

You can see the London Transport Museum in the background - an excellent museum.
See? It's not as big as you thought right? Still, I figured I'd better queue up to grab a slice.
Here's the cupcake-cutting. People started going a bit mad when they started cutting, thinking that they were going to run out of cupcake or something.
Either way, I got some! And it was very tasty. And vanilla, which is the best.

I didn't stick around to see if it all got handed out, or what was in the centre of it.... but I did definitely enjoy my cupcake slice.

Warwick Castle Bird Show

We actually saw the bird show twice while at Warick Castle, because the man said that there were two different sets of birds. These were some of the biggest birds I've ever seen, and I would've paid 15 quid to see the birds alone, so the castle was just an extra.

At the same time, I only know the types of about 2 of these birds, so don't ask. I was too busy snapping photos to take notes! Heh.

I do know this one, though. He's a bald eagle!

If I remember correctly, he was a baby bald eagle.


Not sure about these.
It's the bald eagle again!
And here's a vulture! He was pretty awesome.
You can see a blurry Kirsten and Brennan behind this bird. We somehow managed to place ourselves directly across from each other.

This is my favorite picture. I like that you can see his little tongue.
Afterwards we went to the place where they kept the birds after the show, and snapped some more pictures. Here's the bald eagle again.

And here's a bald eagle in a bathtub! For some reason I find this very amusing. He's like a big duck, really. Just having a bath in the tub. Hahaha.

Unfortunately we didn't get to see much of the city of Warwick, mainly because we took a wrong turn coming out of the castle and went the long way out, causing a bit of a rush to the train station where we missed the train and had to wait for the next one. The city itself looks lovely, though, and I will be heading back in the future to snap some more pictures!

That's all for the mini-break. Stay tuned for pictures of a rather large cupcake that was in Covent Garden yesterday (back in London!).

Warwick Castle

Welcome to Warwick Castle. I like to think of Warwick Castle as the "Medieval Disneyland" of Warwick. It's good fun, and includes people in costume doing medieval-ly things like bow and arrows and dressing up as princesses. They also had a pretty wicked bird show, but I took so many pictures of the birds, again, that'll need its own post.

It's hard to figure out the age of the castle, since it was lacking somewhat in historical information. As far as I can tell from Wikipedia, there was a motte and bailey style castle built on a mound within the grounds about 1068. There's nothing left of this besides a big hill.

Apparently after that a stone castle was built on the mound during the 1100s. Not sure if the stone structure on top of the hill is part of that castle or not.

Then again, during the 1300s more stuff was added, including a tower and some big additions.

Then more towers were added in the 1480s.

Then over the years more stuff was added, and I can't keep it straight anymore. It's an old castle, just take it at that. It's also now owned by Madam Tussards, home of the famous wax people.
This was taken in the rose garden... which oddly, didn't have a whole lot of roses.
Although it did have rocks that were given to them from the Giant's Causeway.
And a Victorian Ice House! They date back to the 1830s and are built on a bank facing away from the sun. They were still being used in 1869... although not used anymore.
Can you see the archer man over the huge amount of school children with their information booklets? He's using a crossbow, although he did switch it up and shoot with a bow and arrow once in a while, too. He was a very good shot.


This was the little chapel inside the Great Hall and State Rooms. Not sure how old it is, but it sure was tiny.
The Great Hall and State Rooms themselves were quite well done. They followed the history of a family who was having a party there, and they had all the people done up as wax figures (a la Madam Tussards) in costume. The rooms were nicely decorated - and they let me take pictures!
Here is the old mill and dam. We'll get closer later. You can, however, see what appears to be the ruins of an old bridge in the background.

They had a huge population of peacocks that roamed the grounds. They were very lovely and awful noisy! Now I know where the Pixar folk got the sounds for the bird 'Kevin' in the movie Up. Sqwack!
Here is the view looking down onto the center green area from the first level of the wall. I think they performed something in the middle, but we didn't see anything.

And here is the view from the top of the tower! That's quite a ways up a very narrow staircase!
In the back of the picture you can see the original mound and stone bit up top. We did go up the mound, but there isn't anything left of any original structure, just a nice view over the rolling hills.
This is a Victorian boat shed. I love the wood patterns along the roof. In the background is the field where the jousting takes place, although they weren't jousting when we were there.

Here's a cloer look at the mill and the river. It was still an operational mill, although I don't think they made anything. It had been converted to make electricity for the castle, which it might still do.
And one last look back onto the castle before we left for the day! Even though we had one half-hour spell of hurricane-force rain, the weather generally was quite perfect that day! Up next I'll show you the pictures I took of the bird show, which was the best part!