Reuben and Katie: London, Part 2

We've spent some more time seeing the sights of London (the British Museum, Westminster Abbey, Piccadilly, Covent Garden and the Spittalfield Markets), and have also made some trips further afield:

On Wednesday we visited Oxford for the day. We caught up with Hayley (a NZ friend) and started with a climb to the top of the St Mary the Virgin church tower for a great aerial view of the city. Oxford has the same kind of 'student city' feel to it as Dunedin has, and one can imagine that being a student at Oxford could be a lot of fun. Unfortunately for us tourists, if you want to go into any of the various colleges (that make up the University) it costs $, so you end up wandering the streets admiring the buildings from the outside but feeling a little excluded from what is going on inside. The weather also turned to pelting rain in the afternoon, which meant we couldn't do quite as much as we had planned, but we still enjoyed wandering the streets and got an idea of the place! We also visited the Natural History Museum which has cool things like dinosaur bones and a stuffed dodo (and a stuffed South Island kiwi!!!) among other unusual things :)

On Thursday we caught the train to Bath. We explored the fascinating Roman baths for a couple of hours, and walked up to the Royal Crescent and Circus, and past the Argyle Bridge and Weir - Bath has a lovely atmosphere which we really enjoyed. We stayed two nights with Uncle Tony and Rowena in nearby Stoke St Michael (in Somerset) and were very well looked after. During the day on Friday we visited Glastonbury and Wells. In Glastonbury is the Glastonbury Tor (a naturally formed hill with the remains of a tower at the top from an old church) and the ruins of a once enormous abbey. You will see in the photos that the ruins are quite impressive, although we felt it was symbolic that the ruins were in the centre of a town clearly turned to mysticism (the whole township felt rather oppressive spiritually, and every second shop had some new age/'alternative' service on offer). In comparison, the stunning Wells Cathedral had an atmosphere of peace and joy, and a sense of the majesty of God which was quite humbling.