In due course, we arrived at Bristol Temple Meads, one of the two stations in the city. We'd been told Bristol would be jammed with football fans that weekend - a big match was being played in nearby Cardiff and, apparently, a lot of them decided to stay in Bristol instead. Fortunately, we were on a fairly early train, so missed all the travellers who were coming after work. We were still bringing the bags into our cute (Britain was chock full of cuteness!) hotel room, when the phone rang. It was our other travelling companions, Thelma and Louise (otherwise known as the AETFs), who had been in town since Wednesday. Anxious to see them (it had been almost 2 weeks!), we invited them straight up, and spent a busy hour catching up on everything that had happened in the three days we'd been out of email contact. LOL They briefed us on the layout of Bristol, gave details about the venue, and suggested an immediate adjournment to the restaurant for tea. We jumped at the suggestion! Tea was another of the highlights of the trip. Our initial plan was to have high tea in every town we visited in the UK, but that proved to be more difficult than we anticipated. First, even though "tea" is usually available, "high tea" has limited hours, usually between 2:00 and 6:00 p.m. (though that varied widely, too), and it's not as common as we thought it'd be.  The
difference between the two is that high tea (also called afternoon tea
in some places) comes with the same scones, clotted cream, jam assortment,
and sometimes pastries, as regular tea, but with the addition of finger
sandwiches, enough to last us until after the concert.
Actually, I detest tea...can't drink it, can barely tolerate the smell (this goes back to my childhood, I think, when Mom made us drink tea when we were sick), so I usually had coffee. Another thing that was not common in the UK was the "Sweet and Low" we use in our coffee, so we added to our stash whenever we found a supply, but still ended up using lots of the granulated brown sugar so popular in England. The weather in Bristol wasn't a lot different than it had been in Paris, so jackets were still the order of the day, but since it was nice and sunny, we spent a good bit of time outdoors. There wasn't really much to see within walking distance of the hotel, except for the shops and the park full of skateboarders. 
Friday night, we celebrated Thelma's birthday by going to the Firkin Brewery. We must've been overcome by temporary insanity to agree to that. It was obviously a place for a much younger clientele, and though I've sat in front of the speakers at a great many Moodies concerts with no problem, I needed earplugs at the Brewery! Maybe the fact that I like Moodies music was the difference. The crowd swelled as the evening wore on, until we were unable to get across the room to the bar, and our eyes hurt from the strobe lights flashing off the body piercings.  There
was a stage at one end of the warehouse-type room, and all too soon the
reason for the big turnout became apparent. Seems the self-billed
"Most dangerous cover band in the world", Gunz and Rozes, was a popular
live act in town. After three songs, we ran screaming from the joint.
We wandered around town a bit, looking for food. Finding none, we went back to the hotel, where there was also nothing to eat. Food in England after 10:30 at night is a rare commodity. A few of the bigger hotels have 24-hour room service, consisting of sandwiches and nothing else. Since we nearly always eat after the concerts, it got to be depressing after a while, and we got damned tired of sandwiches. Oh, here's a helpful hint on sandwiches overseas...if you want tuna salad, egg salad, or chicken salad, do not order it from the menu! To get one of those, you must order mayo, as in tuna mayo, etc. If you order egg salad, you'll get sliced hard-boiled eggs with lettuce and, if you're lucky, tomato. I never did see a ham mayo, so if you want ham salad, you're out of luck. On Saturday, Maggie was up and down to breakfast (more on that later) before I woke up. (For some reason, this tour was the exact opposite of our usual routine...Maggie was up very early every morning, and I slept in. I averaged more hours of sleep each night on the tour than I ever do at home.) I hung around the room and listened to one of our neighbors practicing her vocal scales in the enclosed courtyard. I hope she has a day job! 
Even making coffee in the room was an adventure. They don't have coffeemakers, just pitchers to heat the water for instant coffee. That wasn't hard to figure out, but I didn't know I had to turn the electrical outlet on first. Yep, it was like that everywhere...every outlet had an on/off switch, so we had to remember to turn it on, as well as the appliance. It was the first time I've ever had trouble boiling water. HAHA We met up with the AETFs for tea again in the afternoon, then headed for the concert. I'd heard about the ice cream vendors in the halls at RAH, but at Colston Hall, they wheeled their carts right into the showroom, and parked against the stage! I was amazed! Apparently, the Brits are big ice cream fans, as the same thing happened at nearly every venue on the tour. I'm not, so never did buy any, although I was tempted just so I could say I did. |
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OXFORD |
