I’d been planning to meet up with my good university friend Tee ever since we both came to the UK.

Having gone to the same classes together since second year, Tee and I worked in the same lab for our FYPs, applied for university admissions and received the same scholarship together. Tee now studies at the University of Warwick and last week, we planned a reunion trip to Chester!

Shuyi had been to Chester and highly recommended it. I think Chester is one of those last small cities in Britain that are bursting with history and attractions and yet not suffocating under the deadly weight of tourism.

It’s like one of those hidden jewels to explore in Britain… It’s funny how lots of students hadn’t heard of Chester when I told them I was going!

One of the main features of Chester is her ancient city walls. When I say ancient I mean like almost two millennia old!

The Romans started the construction of the city walls back in the 1st century A.D. And now, after so many years, the walls are still quite intact (there’ve been frequent restorations and constructions, of course) and Chester is one of the best preserved wall-cities in Britain!

Looks like a miniature version of the Great Wall of China.

These walls surrounds the ancient town centre of Chester, which was founded as a Roman fort in the first century A.D.

I wouldn’t say that the city walls were incredibly high, but it shouldn’t matter. From my experience from playing Civilization, attacking walled cities can be extremely annoying LOL!

There was a tower on one side of the wall (now under renovation) called the Phoenix Tower or King Charles’ Tower. This was apparently the tower on which King Charles I stood on as he watched his army being defeated by republicans during the English Civil War.

You know what happens when you are a king and you see your army being defeated?

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You’re dead.

King Charles was eventually executed, like, beheaded.

Anyway, it was a very chilling day. There was cloud cover for almost the entire day and temperature was close to zero. Nevertheless, with the help of my faithful TripAdvisor.com iPad app, we were able to see most of the attractions!

One particular interesting attraction was the Roman Amphitheatre:

Built by the Romans again back in the first century, this is the largest amphitheatre ever uncovered in Britain!

There were probably gladiators fighting on this thing two thousand years ago lol.

Today, this place is a listed building and scheduled monument. This protects it from being demolished or changed or anything without special permission. So that’s how you suddenly get a huge piece of land in the middle of the city with ruined stones and destroyed structures. Classic!

Had a stroll along the peaceful bank of River Dee, the main river which flows through Chester (originating from Wales).

I really love how there is almost always a ‘main’ river in every major English city and they are so well maintained! You almost never see floating rubbish or anything but instead see seagulls and swans and ducks etc.

Another interesting thing about the Chester city centre that I must mention is the Chester Rows.

These are basically multi-storied shophouses that date back to the medieval era. On the street level there are shoplots and on top of these there is another walkway with a whole new row of shops along its side.

Two-storied shops! Talk about capitalism.

The Chester Rows are unique to the city of Chester and nothing precisely similar exists anywhere else in the world. True story.

At night, I finally did the thing that I had painfully regretted not having done in Edinburgh… go on a ghost tour!

Not all cities are ideal for ghost tours. Only those that have ancient and perhaps brutal medieval histories like Edinburgh, York and Cardiff are great for these things. London? LOL too many Prada and HSBC branches to be scary.

Chester’s not bad too, when it comes to ancient history. We went in a small group with this nice old chap:

He basically took us on a 90-minute stroll around town in the dead darkness of the night. Climbing the dimly-lit ancient walls, visiting chilling graveyards and old churches… all the while telling ghost and mysterious stories…

I must admit that sometimes the tales weren’t that scary, and you’ll be left with your mouth dangling open as you pretend (out of courtesy) to be horrified by the ending…

But in other times, some stories really did send chills down my spine, and a few of us kept looking behind to quell the feeling that someone/thing was observing us out of the darkness.

I remember this scene where we were standing in total darkness underneath the ruins of the old St John’s Church, shivering in the cold and dry air, when we were suddenly told to look up and there was an ancient coffin on top of our heads!

There was a chilling story behind it and the man told us that if somebody asked us for directions ‘home’ later that night, and we felt something odd about that person, it would be safest to stay calm and point towards the coffin, to which it would ‘return’ and not disturb us…

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zzz

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Yeah… I know I suck in telling ghost stories.

So let’s move on to the next, bright morning!

We spent the entire day at Chester Zoo! It was out of the city centre and we had to take a bus ride to get there.

But why the ZOO, you ask?

Because Chester Zoo is no ordinary zoo. LOL. It is the most visited zoo in Britain and ranked as one of the top 15 zoos in the world!

It was rather unconventional for anybody to visit a zoo on a day with near freezing temperatures. But who cares? I was in Chester, and I wanted to visit the damn zoo!

I admit. A zoo’s target visitors are usually children. So I had to tune my mind into that of a child’s too!

So look at Sonic:

Dumbo:

Pumbaa:

Mumble with Happy Feet:

A black cat? No… a panther! … NO, it’s Toothless, the Night Fury:

Timon:

Simba and Nala:

If you are around my age and have no idea what I was talking about… Jeez, what happened to your childhood?

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I shall end this post and leave you with an evil grinning lizard we found at the zoo.

It’s the time of the year again! Merry Christmas!!

We will be going to switzerland for new year’s celebration next week so we thought we wouldn’t be going anywhere for Christmas.

But one does not simply stay in Bristol for Christmas! So we decided to stay in London for the week.

We intended to stay for six days but felt it would be too shameless for us to crash over and stay at cousin Rebecca’s place for the whole week. So we found this cosy little studio near Paddington for rent!

Considering the perfect location, this studio was not bad at all!

With a bathroom, microwave oven, fridge, induction stove, cutleries and kitchenware (all pots, pans, dishes, glasses etc), LCD TV, free wifi, two closets and a study table… I could almost live there forever!

We required a place with all these facilities because we expected London to be completely shut down on Christmas day, literally.

Unlike Malaysia where Christmas Day is a busy, ultra-commercial day, the 25th in the UK is more of a family reunion day and most shops will be closed and public transportation completely shut down (no buses, no tube, no trains).

BUT… The days before and after the 25th were ultra awesome and extremely exciting!

We had a few ‘core’ things to do for Christmas – going to the South Bank Christmas market, visiting Hyde Park Winter Wonderland, Oxford Street shopping on boxing day, visiting my cousin, and in our last evening watch a Nutcracker performance.

But other than these things, we were free to just enjoy the Christmas atmosphere!

We’d already visited a large portion of London’s attractions in our last visit back in March, so we hunted for the smaller, but equally interesting, ones!

… such as 221b Baker Street – Sherlock Holmes’s home!

Everything in Sherlock Holmes Museum was modelled after Sherlock Holmes era. Here’s a Victorian metropolitan policeman guarding the entrance to the museum. His duties were real: no ticket, no entry!

Do you want to work as the Victorian policeman? The job is vacant! 

When the Sherlock Holmes books were published in the late 1800s, Baker Street was a high-class residential district and houses along the street did not go up to number 221b. (That was probably why Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the author, chose that number)

In the 1900s Baker Street was extended and 221b finally existed! Since then Sherlock Holmes fans have been writing real, physical letters addressed to the detective at this address.

And cutely, the owner of 221b (and later the museum) has employed a ‘Secretary to Sherlock Holmes’ to actually reply to these letters!

Anyway, the entire museum is styled after Sherlock Holmes’ late-nineteenth-century apartment exactly as described in the novels:

I found Prof. Moriarty staring at me so I stared back at his face. Hehe. Problem?

Anyway the museum was such a joy to visit. Although I wasn’t a great fan of Sherlock Holmes, I  had watched the films and I loved their depiction of his place. There was even a girl dressed as a Victorian maid to tell us stories about the place and answer questions!

So I decided to buy the book! Haha actually it’s Shuyi who decided to buy the book for me!

It was drizzling that evening, but we ignored the rain and moved on towards South Bank and found the Christmas market!

It was quite a scene! With landmarks such as London Eye and the Houses of Parliament in the background, the  market stretched along the bank of river Thames and included a carousel!  

Some of the most popular products in Christmas markets are German. This is because the whole Christmas market concept can be traced back to the German-speaking part of Europe.

It was cold and windy, but you can’t help but smile when you hear the cheerful Christmas songs being played on loudspeakers and the sheer variety of stuff on sale!

Check out the novelty items:

… but most importantly, the food!

Steaks:

Bratwurst (German sausage) and Gluhwein (hot mulled wine):

Churros and cholcolate:

Marshmallows and candy apples:

Liquorice:

And of course… roasted chestnuts!

We bought almost something from each and were so damn full afterwards. Totally worth getting fat for all this!

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On Christmas eve, most of the shops were closed early and we simply loitered around the city until sunset. We just spent time together and it really didn’t matter if we had no destination in mind… Our main (and most anticipated) activity of the day was at night…

Oh just for the record:

Back in March we were at University College London, having stayed literally across the street of one of its schools.

In our previous trip to London to see Shuyi’s parents off at the airport last month, we visited Imperial College London:

And so this time we stopped by The London School of Economics! Being an economics student, one couldn’t help but admire this school! I’d wanted to apply to LSE earlier this year but dammit their international student fees were just… astronomical.

These three constituent colleges, along with several other, form the University of London.

So who cares about academics when night came and we headed straight to Hyde Park!!!

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for….

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WINTER WONDERLAND!!!

Even from across Hyde Park, it looks like a goddamn alien city!

I think this is the most famous Christmas theme park in the UK and has been set up every Christmas since 1996.

To me, Christmas has been really important since childhood, so what better place to go on Christmas eve than an ultra awesome theme park!

The other reason we chose to visit Winter Wonderland on Christmas eve had been that since the temperature was freezing and people would usually stay home with their families on Christmas eve, the theme park wouldn’t be so crowded. Or so we thought…

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… we were so damn wrong.

The place was absolutely flooded with people… not just with people, but also with excitement and screams and merry music!

Thrill rides were everywhere… Gentle rides were filled with gleeful kids… Stalls selling hot food and drinks were all over the place… Every here and there were Christmas trees, snowman and Santa figures and decorative presents! This was INDEED the most Christmasey of all Christmasey places!!!

I must confess that it’d been a long time since I was this excited about going to a theme park.

Of course almost all of the usual rides and attractions were present, but this theme park also had lots of other special stuff! My jaws drop and eyes widen in excitement with almost every corner turn… I think for those few hours I was suddenly a five-year-old kid all over again…

Check this out: there are no kinds on this carousel. Why? Because it sells beer and liquor… a revolving bar!

Everybody gathered around this old tree that moved and talked and made cold jokes LOL.

The usual but brightly decorated game stalls:

A Winter Wonderland must have an ice-skating rink!

The usual tower for people too chicken to jump off a real building (not that I have the guts to do it).

But I think the most special of all was this ‘barrel of laughter’!!

Four years ago, back in Malaysia, I wrote about a theme park ride with rapidly spinning and rotating arms that almost made me puke. I called that ride the ‘washing machine ride’ in this entry and described it as the dizziest ride that I’d ever been on.

Today, I look back and say: LOL bitch, please.

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… Welcome to the REAL washing machine ride!!!!

I knew that was going to mess up the dinner in my stomach, but I had to try out this ride.

Basically, there is this huge barrel in the middle of the ‘house’, you enter the barrel, and the barrel starts spinning…

… like… real… bloody… FAST!!! Can’t describe – so I recorded a video from the outside:

So halfway through the spin, the floor is lowered and you will be vertically stuck to the wall by centrifugal force! How awesome is that??

In fact, the outward force was so insanely strong that we could hardly even raise our arms! Simply felt like a super strong magnet sucking you onto the wall and you were at its mercy.

Haha I actually have a video of the entire process while we were spinning in the barrel and here’s a screenshot of the people beside me with their feet off the ground.

I am, however, regrettably unable to post the video online because I was screaming like a totally retarded guy.

I think they should rename the ride to ‘barrel of dizziness’ or ‘barrel of pukes’.

… or just ‘Panasonic VX3 with Washnavi and tumble dry’.

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Entry getting much too long… Splitting into two parts!

We arrived in Dublin without much of a plan to do anything.

It was intended to be a free-and-easy trip. We would just spend a long weekend here in the Irish capital, stay in a decent hotel and explore the city spontaneously.

I think it’s precisely because European countries are so very tightly clustered around each other that trips within the EU are not so tiring. The 1-hour flight from Bristol-Dublin went hardly noticed and before we knew it, we were in Ireland!

To add to the relaxation, our twin room was automatically upgraded to triple room for no reason! Lots of space. Lucky!! 

It was one week to Christmas and everything was so christmasey! There is simply no better time to travel and breathe in the (albeit super cold) festive air!

I get so totally excited whenever I see a nice, Christmas-decorated room. Our hotel gave me just that pleasurable pump of endorphins:

We spent our first day just going through the streets in the city centre. There were several Christmas markets around town and you could find street performers playing Christmas carols on almost every major street.

And since it was a long weekend, people were flooding the streets to buy last minute Christmas stuff!

Dublin, just like almost every major European city, has got a beautiful river cutting through the heart of it.

River Liffey serves this capital. Further down the river (below) the historic Ha’penny Bridge (now simply Liffey Bridge) is visible.

The reason the bridge was historically called Ha’penny Bridge is because, two hundred years ago, people in Dublin had to board ferries to cross the Liffey. When this bridge was finally built in 1816, the company imposed a ‘half a penny’ toll charge on whoever using it – hence the name.

That’s interesting! If this naming convention was used in Malaysia, our LDP would be called Wa’-ringgit-sixty Road.

Crossing the river and heading south, we found ourselves in Trinity College Dublin, an ancient university founded in 1592 and is currently the number one university in Ireland.

A friend of mine studied here but has since graduated and returned to Malaysia. According to a 2010 survey by Forbes, Trinity College Dublin was voted to have the 6th most beautiful campus in the world.

Well, I don’t doubt! Just look at it:

We visited two of what arguably are the college’s most amazing assets:

The Book of Kells:

We had to pay 8 euros each to see this! But it is understandable – the Book of Kells is widely regarded as Ireland’s finest national treasure!

Created by Celtic monks more than a thousand years ago, the Book of Kells is an illuminated manuscript (meaning certain parts of the text is extravagantly decorated) of the four gospels of the Bible’s New Testament.

As usual, we were not allowed to take photos of anything within the exhibition, which according to my Asian mentality makes no sense.

Let’s analyse the three reasons why in certain situations photography may legitimately be disallowed:

1) Copyright issues – Unless I am to fail my Law & Economics paper this June, I am pretty sure that EU Directive 2006/116/EC made it clear that copyright term in the EU is life of author plus seventy years. These authors died 1,200 years ago. No copyright infringement here.

2) Art protection – Okay I concede that theoretically, photons from a camera’s flash will collide with the particles on the artwork and over (a long, long) time, fade them. So all we need to do is limit FLASH photography, not making it a sin to even touch one’s camera!

3) Annoyance – It is true that flashes coming from cameras (especially repeated ones from huge DSLRs) can be very annoying in dark rooms such as this one. But again, just ban flash photography!

Ahh, whatever. Google images always comes to the rescue!

If you look closely at each of the initials, you’d find that it is delicately drawn with very intricate designs and strokes. This applies to all the text in the whole book!

So moving on to the other (greater) wonder of Trinity College Dublin:

The Long Room of the Old Library:

Holy God… Would you just look at that! Dumbledore’s library.

Again no photography here so thanks to Google… again.

Those, my friend, are books on either side of the hall!! Two stories high!!

The tall oak shelves, the oversized books, the white marble busts of ancient to modern philosophers on both sides of the library… I felt so damn intellectual just by walking past them.

If there was a fire in this place, the world’s human intelligence would probably plunge by half or something…  

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So after that we went back to O’Connell Street.

This is the place where we had to step foot on several times, every single day.

It is the most central and busy street with very handsome commercial buildings on both sides. I think this street is intended to be to Ireland what Oxford Street is to London and Champs-Elysees to Paris.

At the middle of the street is the O’Connell Monument, the memorial to Daniel O’Connell – the Irish Nationalist leader who championed Catholic emancipation in Westminster and later campaigned for Irish independence.

Right behind O’Connell Monument is an extremely tall steel rod. At 121 metres tall, the Spire of Dublin is the tallest sculpture in the world.

Interestingly, the Spire of Dublin, which dominates the skyline of central Dublin, serves no purpose. I was continually baffled by what such a huge rod could be for in the middle of the street – not for telecommunications, occupation, anything! Just plain decoration!

Or it could be a gigantic lightning rod.

It was just so damn tall and straight that if you stood at its base and looked up, you’d think it pierced straight into outer space (or heaven).

Another landmark on O’Connell Street, the general post office, which despite its present modest function, served as the headquarters of Irish nationalist leaders during the 1916 Easter Rising, which eventually led to the Irish War of Independence.

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The next day, we visited Christ Church Cathedral:

Dating back to the 11th century, this is officially the oldest building in Dublin.

Several particularly interesting things in the cathedral include the purported effigy of Strongbow (not the cider), a lord famous for his leading role in the Norman invasion of Ireland.

But most famous of all is the cathedral’s underground crypt!

Not only is the crypt older than the cathedral itself, it is also the largest crypt in both Britain and Ireland!

Haha, unfortunately crypts open to visitors such as this do not have bones and skeletons and skulls on the walls… Instead, this was pretty well maintained and lighted!

There were plenty exhibitions to see in the crypt and this one gave me a long lasting impression:

It’s a true story of a cat chasing a rat and both got stuck in an organ pipe in the church back in the 1850s. Unable to escape, they were eventually mummified in these positions and their bodies preserved until this day!

I tried to put myself into both the cat and the rat’s minds but couldn’t decide which was worse:

To die of starvation with a ferocious predator stuck in front of you trying to tear you apart; or to die of starvation with a tasty, juicy dinner stuck in front of you, squeaking but just out of reach.

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Oh just let me die.

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You can hardly visit a European city without going to a castle, so that’s what we did! Dublin Castle:

During the days when Ireland was ruled by the British, Dublin Castle was the primary place of administration. Of course, Irish nationalists hated the building and saw it as a symbol of tyranny and forced rule by the British.

Typical to many buildings with judiciary functions, Dublin Castle had a statue of Lady Justice on top of one of its gates. While Lady Justice was traditionally depicted with a blindfold (representing objectivity and impartiality), this had not.

Furthermore, despite standing on the top of an entrance, this statue faced the interior of the castle rather than the exterior, giving the people of Dublin an impression that they had Lady Justice’s back turned against them.

None can put it more boldly than our humorous guide: “Lady Justice was built to have her eyes on the English King (the castle) and her arse against the nation.” LOL.

So with the castle tour we visited the grand, modern, renovated state apartments for government functions…

… and the ancient 13th century parts of the castle that laid underneath the present castle:

It was also surprising to learn that the Irish Crown Jewels had been stolen from this very castle in 1907 by some thief and had never been recovered.

Treasure hunt anyone?

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At night, we had dinner at one of the – no, probably the - finest nightspot in Dublin!

Temple Bar is an area that is promoted as Dublin’s cultural spot. Although one would not help but notice that lively bars and nightclubs and and pubs dominate the district.

… IRISH.

We had dinner at a very nice restaurant in Temple Bar…

What do you have for dinner in Ireland? Irish lamb stew!

And the next day we had some Irish Coffee in The Temple Bar itself.

Let me explain: The Temple Bar is a bar in Temple Bar in Dublin. Yes, confusion done on purpose.

Everything was decorated for Christmas, and this almost two-hundred-year-old business would not lose to any of its competitors!

Just check out the bar!

We had an Irish Coffee and a Bailey’s Coffee. Bailey’s Coffee is made of Baileys, arguably Shuyi’s favourite liquor; and Irish Coffee is made of… well.. what the Irish like most – Irish whiskey.

Also check out the Irish smoked salmon and trout platter… Seriously, we wouldn’t have ordered this if there had not been the word ‘Irish’ at the beginning of its name.

On our last day, we visited the birthplace of what probably makes Dublin so famous in Malaysia (and the world):

… Guinness.

It was probably a sin to walk into a pub in Dublin and order anything other than Guinness. Our dear Malaysian blogger-turned-businessman Kenny Sia raved so much about Guinness while he was in Dublin.

So here we were! The St. James’s Gate Brewery!

Even for student price we had to pay 10.60 euros to enter. There was a complimentary pint of Guinness for us, of course, but to pay for a propaganda session?! Come on! Haha…

But the whole exhibition was really quite impressive.

From raw barley, hops and yeast, we journeyed through the entire process of brewing – malting, roasting, milling, mashing, boiling, fermenting, clarifying, maturing and packaging. 

Of course, throughout the entire process they wasted no time brainwashing us about how they only used the very finest possible ingredients, process and technology known to humankind in brewing the world-famous black stout.

Every step down the brewing process you’d find your mouth watering and taste buds demanding to taste the heavenly water that was being described.  

They must have precisely engineered the experience because at the end of the tour, our dreams came true and were served the liquid that we’d all been yearning for.

Not sure if it was due to all the indoctrination earlier… but the pint of Guinness tasted absolutely heavenly…

We also went on a little lesson that taught us how to pour the perfect pint of Guinness. I think I did horribly, but who cares?! Got an official certificate from the official birthplace of Guinness = OWNAGE.

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It has always been an absolute joy travelling with Shuyi. It really does make a difference when your travel companion is someone who plans a trip with you, think of places to go, solves problems together, and doesn’t simply leave everything to you.