Jersey is the largest of the islands, with a population of about 90,000 (about the same as Kelowna, only no strip malls and much closer to France). I flew out on Saturday morning (another really early morning flight - I had to get up at 3:00am).
Jersey is really nice, although I have to admit that I prefer Guernsey. When I arrived, it was overcast and drizzled a bit on and off. Despite the weather, we had a great time - we took a boat/bus thing (basically a bus which had been raised higher than a normal bus, and a propeller installed on the back end - I assume they also did some waterproofing) to Elizabeth Castle, which was built by Sir Walter Raleigh and named after Joan Simpson. (not really)
Having had enough of sight-seeing and general touristism, we took the boat/bus thing back to St. Helier and found a restaurant which had been recommended by some of Jamie's Jersey co-workers for lunch. Then, for something different, we found a pub and spent a fantastic afternoon at an outdoor table having various snacky-type items and perhaps a few beverages.
Later that afternoon we met up with one of Jamie's co-workers and had a decent dinner at the hotel restaurant. Ben and Debbie are our kind of people
- they enjoy good food and good wine, and as far as we could tell have the best behaved baby in the world - not a peep out of her the entire time we were sitting at dinner (at one point I checked to see if she was a) real, and not a doll, and b) still alive).Sunday dawned early and rather too brightly, in my opinion (okay, if you want the strict truth, it was 10am and slightly overcast). We had made plans to visit the old War Tunnels in the middle of the island (left over from the German occupation during the war), but decided that it was just too beautiful out to spend the afternoon in a tunnel in the side of a hill. Instead, we went to visit some of my relatives at Durrell Zoo (I assume distant relatives of some sort based on the similarity in back hair at the gorilla enclosure).
We spent a few hours wandering around in the beautiful sunshine (which is so rare for Britain) and looked at any number of almost-extinct species such as...well...I can't remember their names. There were rare bats, andalusian bears, hopping rat things, aye ayes which are odd little vampire squirrel things, and other freaks of natural selection.
I took the evening flight home. Not much to say about that.
The following weekend we took the train to Chichester to see Ken in his new production of "The Music Man" at the Chichester Theatre Festival. We caught the 9:38 from Clapham Junction and I managed to stay awake the whole way, which is unusual for me - normally I fall asleep on my morning train journey to work.
Chichester is an interesting little shop town - very small but all the high street shops you could ever want to see. Very busy, full entirely of people under the age of 18, over the age of 55, and us.
We stayed at a pub at the edge of the interesting bit of town. Seriously. It was called The Nags Head and in addition to a very nice pub, a decent restaurant, it also featured a dozen or so half-decent rooms (better than I'd expected for a pub to be honest). We spent the day wandering around with Christie, Steve and John, after meeting Ken for a quick drink before he headed off to do his matinee show.
Ken's show was fantastic - it features Brian Conley who is an odd combination of Dick Van Dyck and Neil Diamond, both in looks and more specifically in sound. The show was light and moved along quickly - it was done in what seemed like minutes despite it's 2.5 hour run time. Ken was, as expected, fantastic (interesting side-note - as I type this, Nickleback is being used as the backing track for a DFS commercial - DFS being a British furniture company...odd). We met Ken backstage after the show and went to the bar with all the other performers for a pint or two.
Sunday morning, Jamie and I grabbed a copy of the Sunday Times and went to the park to read a bit after breakfast. We arranged to meet Ken and John for lunch at the fancy-pants hotel in town, during which Christie and Steve joined us. After lunch, Ken took off to do his matinee and Christie and Steve took off back to London.
Jamie, John and I thought we'd try to get to the beach to catch some sun and sand but were put off by the MASSIVE line of traffic heading out. We took the executive decision to head back to the park and spend the afternoon relaxing in the sun on the grass. We spent a few hours reading the rest of the Time Times before Jamie and I had to catch the 5:15 back to London. Yet again I managed to stay awake the whole trip back to London, which I count as a major victory. It was a fantastic weekend.
1 comment:
Well said.
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