The Ravings of Demented Rabbits

When the Rain Comes

Winchester - 4/30/04

And today I went off to...get ready for it...Winchester. Olde Capitole of Ye Englishe around William the Conqueror's time or so. So suitably back in the day for our purposes, not to mention it was the third most important city in Roman Britain, or so they say.

I should point out that it was bloody well freezing and wet the entire time I was there, which led me on a good chase for a shop to buy a hat in, but all the hat shops seem to have fled to Oxford, since I found many in Oxford, and none in Winchester. But Winchester seems to have all the ice cream and shoe stores. Don't ask me why. But anyway. Keep in mind that I was wet and cold and hurt a lot all day.

And Waterloo Station in London is, well, big. And it's sort of impressive for being big, having as it does one of those big steel and glass vaulted ceilings that seem to be all the rage these days, since the British Museum has one, too, done just before this one. That having been said, it's a big, confusing, annoying train station. But once you figure it out, it's very very easy. Pull out ticket, present ticket, get on train, sit in reserved seat, life good. Remember this experience for later. It's important.

So, Winchester. Their train station is teh suck, but we'll be getting back to that. Also, the city isn't as cool as Oxford or Bath, which may have had something to do with the whole cold and raining thing, or maybe I've just had my fill of 19th century brick architecture. Who knows.

The whole West Gate sticking out of some random buildings over the sidewalk bit was kind of cool, as was the remains of the medieval castle, which was at one time apparently sort of important as befits the whole capitol of the realm thing, until London got all big and important. There's not even much of a castle left now, since Oliver Cromwell decided that the whole castle thing was not the way to be going, and pulled a bunch down. Very sad for us, but luckily he left the great hall, and the folks after old Ollie built some really nice law courts and things on top of it all. It looks sort of strange, but it works.

The Great Hall itself is sort of cool, as big large rooms go. Victorian stained glass windows, a random statue of Queen Vickie herself, and King Arthur's Round Table. Well, sort of. Except for how Edward I had it made, and just for kicks, Henry VIII decided to make himself look good by having it painted, complete with a big Tudor rose in the middle and a picture of King Arthur that looked oddly like Henry himself. In any event, it looks cool, so we'll just be forgiving, shall we?

Out back there's a little garden, which is a nice little garden you'll just have to see pictures of to have it be nice. Sorry 'bout that.

Out back of THAT, there are four assorted regimental museums: Light Infantry, Gurkhas, Royal Green Jackets, and, uh...Royal Hussars, I think. Very Marechalian sort of places, with lots of uniforms and medals and things like that. In the Hussars' Museum I was walking through while the curator and these other guys were talking about the best means of presenting stuff, what stories to tell, and things like that, which was really cool to listen to. Plus it was warm and dry in there, which was very important at that point in my life.

From there, I wandered around a bunch, because I got lost, and eventually stumbled into the city center, where I found the City Museum. This is a three story building with lots of really stuff in it, including some nice Roman mosaics, entire 18th and 19th century shopfronts, and these wicked cool little scale models of Winchester at various points in life: Roman, Iron Age, Anglo-Saxon, and like three medieval ones. You find a lot of those, actually - I've got a picture of this hella cool Roman fort model in the British Museum - but I don't usually find myself wanting to fall on the ground and worship the things.

Speaking of worshipping things, the Cathedral is really cool, too. Big, airy, awesome vaulting, impressive decorating though not quite as nice as Oxford's, and assorted tombs, including a whole bunch of important Bishops and Chancellors of England and things, and Jane Austen, for the literary types among us. Sadly, they were most unwith photography, so no pictures of the inside, though I've got some of the outside, which is also really sweet.

From the Cathedral, I jumped on this random road, which turned out to lead past Jane Austen's house of dying to Wolvesey Castle/Palace, which is where the Bishops of Winchester used to live back in the day. Still do, actually, at least in a part of it, except they let the whole other part go to ruin, and by ruin I mean there's some assorted walls and foundations and that's about it. And just for coolness' sake, you can climb all over them and walk through them, which is sort of fun.

On the way back from there, two random English guys pulled up in a car, and asked me for directions to the city center. So I'm like "Uh, well, you may have noticed almost immediately from the voice, but I'm sort of a tourist. However, if you go the OTHER way, this may in fact take you there." To which the reply was, since the English say this to pretty much everything, "Cheers, mate." Of course the mate bit is more of a younger crowd thing, but you know.

Anyway. Wolvesey Castle, for all its being nifty, is not dry and warm. Actually, the train station isn't either (I said we'd get back there), which perhaps has something to do with a combination of three things: First, the automatic doors trigger from like fifteen feet back. Second, about fifteen feet back from the doors is where everyone waiting for the sandwich shop likes to stand. Third, ALL the seating is directly in front of the doors. So while I wasn't exactly wet, I was freezing my ass off.

Fortunately, about the time I was about ready to pull and Empire Strikes Back, slice open one of my fellow passengers, and climb inside for warmth, the train back came. The unfortunate part, and I said we'd get back here, too, is that they nicely overbooked the damn thing, which meant I was sitting in the aisle. And then they got delayed a lot. And I had a headache. But it was dry and warm. And Waterloo Station was dry and warm, even if the attached tube station looks like crap, sort of unlike, say, Charing Cross, which has awesome Trafalgaresque designs on the walls (it's the Trafalgar Square station), or Oxford and Picadilly Circuses, which have trippy little designs on the walls, or Baker Street, which has big silohuettes of Sherlock Holmes on the walls, made up of little tiny versions of same. The tube is really awesome like that. Most of the Zone 1/Zone 2 stations are really nifty.

Anyway. Next up, Norwich.

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Just for the whole break from damp and cold part of our festivities, London this morning was...damp and cold. Norwich is having a damn near perfect day, though, which is all the better for me, now isn't it?

On the downside, though, I think I caught a cold in Winchester, which meant my nose decided to gush all the way up, which meant the train ride was rather less entertaining than fun. On the other hand, Norwich's train station is rather better than ghetto, and has a convenient Budgens, which conveniently carries both Kleenex and caffiene, which is, well, convenient.

At any rate, to quote the song, been spending most of my time walking through a shopper's paradise. What this means is this: ladies, go crazyh. The Castle Mall is the biggest I've seen in England so far, and actually feels like an honest to God US mall. If that doesn't do it, the city center is chock full of random shops, not to mention this sort of giant Saturday Marketesque place with tents. If you can't find something in all that, there's no hope. Guys, ditch the females, but not before taking the checkbook firmly in hand, and go check out the Castle and the hill it's on. Not only is the park there, where I happen to be writing this, most excellent, the castle itself is pretty nice, and has a fairly good museum, though it's no Tower of London. Even so, it kept me busy for a good two and half or three hours, which since I bought the cheap pass that doesn't let you go into the much vaster art galleries, isn't bad.

To be honest, between the shops, the gardens, and the castle, I haven't made it very far, because each was so nice, I don't think I'll make it as far as the cathedral, frex, though there are plenty of old churches here that I've seen the outsides of. I also haven't made it as far as the Norfolk Regimental Museum, though it's right next to the castle, so maybe I should.

On another note, I got a Cadbury Egg McFlurry from McDonalds. Strange. Good, but strange.

Writing rather later from Norwich station, which turns out not only to not be teh suck, but in fact to be one of those great big train stations built back in the 1800s when everyone built large ornate train stations because it was the In Thing, I after some rather convoluted displays of written acrobatics involving sentences of giant length (notice haven't had a period in quite some time, which means either the sentence is long or we're pregnant) and a whole bunch of commas, ought to make some mention of the whole Norfolk Regimental Museum thing. In brief, it's one of the better set up museums I've seen, though unless you're Marechal, if you've seen one Regimental Museum, you've seen them all. I never did make it to the Cathedral.

And at this point it's all about the train that in 34 minutes will take me home to London. Final verdict on Norwich (silent w in the pronunciation, btw) is this: Nice city, which sort of reminds me of a bizzare Corvallis/Eugene combo. It's sort of quiet and nice like Corvallis, but in places busy and Eugene-like - note the tented market. Too, Norwich got a lot of money from somewhere, because the castle museum and the great big library/civic center are both very new, and very nice. So probably, says the American tourist after a whole day of being there, a nice place to live.

And a slight postscript - I had forgotten one of the peculiarities of British rail stations - no trash containers. If you had problems with the IRA, you wouldn't have them either. Makes mundane things like throwing away things bloody inconvenient, though. And speaking of blood, nose, you can go die now. That will be all.

Posted by Dwip at May 1, 2004 1:48 PM