Radiohead

One of the few things that I definitely wanted to do was hopefully hit up a Radiohead concert while here, pending if Radiohead did tour in London as they never come to Edmonton, AB and just usually hit up the bigger cities in Canada. I grabbed tickets as soon as they went on sale and was not disappointed with the show that they gave although it would have been nice if they interacted a bit more with the crowd and played a few more hits from the past.

When they played Karma Police, the entire crowd sang along and it was chilling. Also, their older songs got the biggest applause but they’re probably tired of playing their older stuff as they have slowly been pumping out more and more experimental music that is slowly starting to turn into just noise to me.

Regardless, awesome show, awesome stage/light show too.

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Bath

The second part of our tour included also seeing Bath, which had Leone getting very excited about finally being able to see these locations after studying them and their histories for about 5 years. Unfortunately, my knowledge of places outside of Canada and part of the United States is extremely limited so I had never heard of Bath until we bought the Groupon to go there.

It turns out, Bath is quite famous and the tour guide also said that one of the flats was owned by Nicolas Cage at one point but had recently sold it, which was quite a neat fact but would have been cooler to actually have known which one it was.

The first place that the tour guide took us was to the the The Circus at the top of the hill in Bath which was really quite interesting to see and be in the center of it all. Afterwards she took us to The Royal Crescent which was about a 3 minute walk from the Circus and that was placed in a much more open area that lets you see over some of Bath

What are we looking at?

The main place that Leone wanted to check out though was the Roman Baths that still pump out their mineral rich waters. They provided more prerecorded devices so you could find out more information as you went along but we didn’t really pay attention to these ones either. The main bath was quite impressive and I was wondering how deep it is but the water is quite rich in something and you can’t really see through it.

There were a few other smaller baths inside but they do not let people near them as there really wasn’t anywhere to stand around them so we had to look through openings in the walls to view them.

What was really fascinating was seeing how well kept the structures were in some areas that showed how they distributed the water and also heated up rooms. The water also for the most part was really quite warm to the touch and near the exit of the Roman Baths has a fountain where you can grab a cup and drink the water if you want. We all tried a sip and it wasn’t too bad but warm water isn’t ever something that I like going out of my way for.

Bath is a beautiful city where the architecture is incredible and it sort of feels like we went back in time walking around everywhere.

Stonehenge

Thanks to Groupon, we were able to visit Stonehenge rather cheaply I think considering we didn’t have to worry about getting there and we also had a tour guide that made the trip really fast as she relayed information about her studies and the sites around us. I can’t remember her name but she was very enthusiastic about it which made for a very engaging trip.

Unfortunately the weather wasn’t as warm as we hoped it would have been because Stonehenge is in the middle of nowhere with no wind protection so it was pretty windy and it was a touch chilly.

A huge disappointment was that they didn’t let people go up close to the actual stones anymore as they said people were chipping away at the rocks to take as souvenirs for some reason. I suppose to some, having a piece of the actual stone means something but those people ruined it for the rest of us who just want to admire these awesome creations. I think the closest we were able to get was about 20-30 feet away.

I was also quite surprised at how small they were. I don’t know why but I thought they would be a lot bigger than they were. At most, I think they were about 15-20 feet tall and I was expecting that would tower over you casting it’s shadow wherever it pleases. Still awesome to see despite it being just rocks. They’re cool rocks!

 

York

After becoming friends and hanging out with Robin a fair amount, he offered to take us to one of his favourite places. Being the nice guy that he is, we even got to meet his parents and they made us a wonderful roast dinner and let us stay the night rather than a hotel.

The trip to York was about a 3 hours drive from his parents place which was about an hour train ride outside of London. I’ve never heard of York but I also haven’t heard of many places in the UK so that isn’t really saying much but York

I’m sure Robin mentioned previously before the road trip but it turns out that York was where he went to University to study and we also found out that he’s been to every pub and club in York which has over 300 facilities.

Josh! No! We are law abiding citizens…

Once we arrived, we checked into our hotel and Robin started us on our guided tour of York. I couldn’t tell you anything he told us as I’ve already forgotten everything about York but I do remember that York is a very beautiful city. One part of the tour had us go along the wall which was  pretty interesting and awesome to walk along.

We also discovered that York has a fair amount of churches and we checked out a handful of them but their Minster was huge. It was amazing to see in person especially after seeing London’s main cathedral, this one was magnificent.

Josh, get out of the picture…

York was a very beautiful city and a great place to visit. Also, after looking at rentals posted in windows, I couldn’t believe how cheap it is to rent outside of London. I suppose being in London is the price you pay for being so connected to everything.