Manchester

Now to sum up the trip with pictures we took in between our traveling.

When she first arrived I amazed my sister with my cooking skills. When I say amazed, its not that she was impressed. She was amazed that my kitchen was so small and that I was using tools other than a microwave. I made us some quesadillas and took her to Platt Fields.

 

Where I showed her the baby swans that are so cute!

 

And the amazing greenery that you just don't get in NM.

I also took her down to Media City because we had things to print. I took her all over the place on the day she arrived. Had to keep her moving so she'd get over jet lag as quickly as possible.

 

Then after all the fiasco in Germany, we came home and I took her to the Bar Burrito in Picadilly Gardens. I was need of some good comfort food. I really like this restaurant, it is similar to Chipolte in ABQ, but actually Bar Burrito's food is better.

 

I had bought this coke just to share with my sister :) We must have been loopy on caffeine because we took a lot of silly pictures with Coke on our trip O.o

 

Then we get back from London and Bristol and took pictures with a newspaper to remember where we were when all this happened. 

My sister wasn't sure she wanted to, but I convinced her to go to yet another art gallery. This time we went to the gallery at the University of Salford. There was a temporary exhibit up which featured all these canine sculptures. It was so cute! You could even buy one of the dogs, but they were way out of our price range.

They were adorable though! You can see more about it at Olivia Brown's webpage, just click here.

There is also a VERY cool exhibit downstairs. They have a recreation of a street from Victorian times.  Lots of cool details. We loved it. Really dark though so our pictures are not the greatest. 

They also had sound effects that went with the street so if you were standing by the blacksmith's shop you heard the sound of someone working with an anvil or stoking the fire. It is just a really well done exhibit.

Our souvenirs from Germany.

London maps and tickets to the Tower of London.

 

Baker Street souvenirs!

 

GROMIT TRAIL!

I bought a mug and tea towel. My sister got the cute Gromit that doubles as a screen cleaner.

 

We went to the mall and saw this cellphone and passport holder. It's true. Without your passport, you are nothing. D:

Then it was time to say goodbye :'(

 

I am on my own again. Time to get serious about writing. I don't have a copy of my work visa so I cannot be distracted by making a steady income now. Just gives me more time to do what I'm actually getting a degree for...this is a good thing, right? I'll be back to updating on Sundays again now. I hope you guys enjoyed the pictures!

Bristol

In our amazing plans we made for this trip we allotted one day for Bristol just to see the Gromit Trail. My sister and I are fans of Wallace and Gromit and I have been following the Gromit Unleashed Facebook page for months as they prepped for the trail.

You can go to their web page here -> Gromit Unleashed

The Gromit Trail is a collection of 80 statues scattered around Bristol and in September they will be taken down again and auctioned off for charity. We were told by someone we met along the way that they have done this kind of thing for the last two years in Bristol. Last time it was gorilla sculptures.

I think this was one of my favorite days of our vacation. London was fun but really crowded. In Bristol we knew exactly what we wanted to do and we weren't packed in a subway or crowded in the plazas. Coming to Bristol I wasn't sure about the scale of the trail and how much we would be able to see so we took a bus from London and decided to just stay the day then take the bus back to Manchester that night rather than staying the night. We were in Bristol from 11:00 AM, to 6 PM and we saw 42 out of 80 gromits in that time. We had a blast. I'm just going to share some of my favorites of the ones we saw, not all 42 that we got pictures of :)

"Bumble Boogie"

The first gromit we saw! Just across the street from where the bus dropped us off.

"A Close Shave"

We went to the tourist info center to get our passports and map. This one is a cute idea, and of course refers to the Wallace and Gromit movie which just makes it cooler :D

"Salty Sea Dog"

This one had a lot of cool details that made us smile, like the tattoos!

"Hero"

Super Gromit is fantastic! Plus the Wallace and Gromit mural behind him is very cool.

"Blazing Saddles"

Isn't he cute?

He's cute from behind too :P

"Watch Out Gromit"

Oh we were so upset. We walked to this one at the M Shed to get our passports stamped and they are closed on Mondays. We could see a guy sitting at a desk inside but he wouldn't let us in to stamp our passports, or see the other Gromit that is somewhere in the building. If they want to be closed, that's fine but then why not keep the Gromits outside so we can see them? :(

"Gromberry"

Another gromit with a cute booty O.o

"Patches"

Walking to this one nearly killed my sister. Since we didn't have a room for the night my sister was carrying our backpack of stuff which was pretty heavy. To see this one looked like a simple walk on the map, but actually there was a really steep road that we had to walk up. I was tired and all I was carrying was my purse. But we did it! We saw Patches!

We saw this gorilla and took a picture and it was only later that we met the person who told us that the gorillas had been part of last year's exhibit. I'm guessing this was one of them :)

We stopped at a Costa for smoothies. It was warm and we had been walking a lot. They were the best drinks I had ever had. My look says "Focus, sis. We have strategizing to do." We only had a limited amount of time and so many Gromits to see!

"Vincent Van Gromit"

I thought this one was really neat. The ear bandage is a great touch!

"TutanGromit"

We found out later this one was painted by a friend of a friend from church. Small world! This was one of the more creative ones in that the artist went beyond just painting and really changed up the sculpture which was cool.

"Newshound"

This one is neat because Wallace is there, but the Gromit is so cute by himself too!

All the paper "pasted" on him had cute little headlines on them. Very cleverly done.

"Gromit Lightyear"

We were so excited to see this one! His foot has John Lassiter's signature and everything. So cool.

"Doodles"

My sister wanted to be sure we got to see this one because she follows the comic - Simon's Cat. I chose a close-up picture of this one so you can see some the doodles ;)

"What a Wind Up!"

We only saw this one from across the river, but we are counting it anyways. We were running out of time at this point so we couldn't walk on the other side of river. There were more to see on our side.

"The King"

He was never in a building.

"Where's Wallace"

SO Adorable!

"Jack"

This one was on our list of Gromits we couldn't miss! You can order mini figurines of this one, A Close Shave, and more from the website. We were going to buy some while we were there but Jack was out of stock. We'll just have to pay for shipping, but they are worth it.

"Gromit-o-Matic"

Blueprint for your own Gromit. Lots of funny text on this one too. Did you know his ears are mufflers/nonsense filters?

As we walked around there were a few places that had passport stamp stations. We collected three of them. M Shed was closed and the mall was too far away to walk to :(

 

So these are some of my favorites from Bristol! After a day of walking we took a bus back to London to catch a bus to Manchester because it was cheaper to do that than if we took a bus straight back to Manchester. Go figure.

We had a bit of time to kill waiting for our connecting bus in London so we went to a bar to just hang out and chill. That was where we heard the news about the new royal baby. The people in our bar were calm but the interviews of the people standing in front of the palace and hospital were entertaining.

We were excited though :)

But it had been a long day. Excitement could only keep me awake for so long. I was a grumpy traveling companion on this bus ride. My sister let me sleep :P

That was our fun filled adventure to Bristol! One more blog post, a collection of pictures of what we saw in Manchester at the beginning, middle, and end.

London

After Berlin we went back to Manchester to try and get some replacement cards and such, then we continued the trip as planned. London!

 

I was tired but my sister was ready to continue the photo documentary the moment we hit the ground. This is from the Victoria underground.

 

After checking into our hostel and leaving or backpack we went to the National Gallery. I'm fairly certain we were able to see every room. We took about 3-4 hours and were surprisingly exhausted by our gallery viewing, but I loved it! I stopped and did rough sketches of some of the pictures and wrote down titles and names to look up later. I would go back here in a heart beat. No pictures of the inside for you though, no pictures allowed.

 

Have to take a picture with a phone booth!

We walked down to Parliament and Westminster Abbey before calling it a day. We met someone who was kind enough to take a picture of the two of us in front of Big Ben. There are very few pictures of us together from our trip.

 

Next day we went straight back to where we had been the day before. It had been getting dark the day before so we wanted to come back and take a few more pictures :)

Then it was across the bridge to see the London Eye. Didn't ride it because we weren't impressed with the line or prices. Too much else to go see that day, but maybe next time.

 

 

Mmmm, we stopped and bought waffles covered in whipped cream, strawberries, and chocolate. They were really good but I think they would have been better without the chocolate. 

Next we went to Buckingham Palace. We were interested in going inside but they weren't open so just pictures of the outside for this one.

 

Plenty of people in front of the gates, but not nearly as many as there would be in two days...but that'll be in the "Bristol" update.

After the palace we went to Green Park right beside it and saw this cool fountain. My sister tells me later that there was a plaque that lets you know it is a Canadian memorial fountain.

Last thing that day we went to the Natural History Museum. I know we didn't see everything here. A lot of really cool things though and we were impressed with what we did see.

Part of the geology section. There is an earthquake simulation room normally apparently, but it was out of order when we went :(

 

New day! This time we run straight to Baker Street to see...

The Sherlock Holmes Museum! We were super excited to see this! We show up and the line is HUGE. A two hour wait to go inside we are told. We consider it, we had really been looking forward to it, but then were told we could go to the gift shop half and we decided that would be good enough and we would push on with our sight seeing.

The Gherkin building. I teased my sister mercilessly about her enthusiasm to see a pickle building. It was cool though.

 

And seriously big.

To go along with the Gherkin's unusual architecture the area around was peppered with some interesting sculpture that we had fun playing with.

 

Then we found it!

 

A TRASH CAN.

 

We spent a lot of our time in London looking for trash cans. We generally bought food on the go from street vendors which were plentiful but we always ended up carrying our trash around for ages because there were either no trash cans around, or they were just really cleverly disguised. There are signs in the subway telling people to throw their trash away because it blows onto the subway lines and causes delays...but I can't blame the litter bugs when we could never find trashcans down there to throw trash in...

The Tower of London.

 

This one was recommended to me by a friend of mine, so since it was our last day my sister and I decided that we were going to pay the entrance price though it was frustrating that we couldn't get student discounts. We were glad that we picked this one to pay for. It had a variety of things to see and we had a very entertaining tour guide :D

One of the display cases. Bedazzled guns, though that's not what the sign called them :P I think it was called The Art of Guns or something along those lines.

A dragon sculpture! What's not to love? Look at that face :P

First castle I have been to in Europe and that is one of the main things I have wanted to see. I loved this one and I will just have to make a point of going out and seeing others on my own now.

View of the London Bridge from inside the Tower.

 

And those are the highlights from our weekend in London. On our last night in London we decided to actually go inside to eat and that was a nice change. Refreshing drink, air conditioning, plates. The UK was experiencing a heat wave that weekend. I found it really pleasant. It was in the low 80s so it felt like summer for the first time! I think it was summer for a whole two weeks (most of which we were shivering in Germany), then my sister left and the temperature dropped 15 degrees.

UK weather is such a tease sometimes. A little bit of sunshine then it hides behind a cloud, little bit of summer, then jumps straight into cool fall weather, little bit of rain but rarely a good storm...Its mild mannered but not to be trusted :P

Bristol pictures up next!