Youval and Roni's English Adventure part 2

Before leaving Liverpool to head to Newcastle we decided to walk through Stanley Park (the future site of Liverpool's new stadium) to the other stadium in Liverpool, Goodison Park where Everton plays. Now, as a Liverpool supporters, we know that we're supposed to hate Everton but considering Timmy Howard is their goalkeeper its really hard for us to hate them. We wandered around the stadium a bit, took some pictures, and marvelled at the, shall we say, interestingness of the new Everton kit. Lets just say it is pink. That is all that needs to be said about it.

We got on a train from Liverpool to Newcastle and once we had dropped our backs off at the hostel decided that we hadn't seen enough stadiums yet that day so we headed up to St James Park where Newcastle plays. St James is a relatively new stadium but there wasn't much to see from the outside so we just walked around it once and moved on.


We wandered around Newcastle a bit more that evening, walking through Chinatown and seeing the old walls of the city. We then got dinner and an early bedtime so as to wake up early and get the most of our full day in Newcastle.

The next morning we began down on the River Tyne, walking along Quayside. There are 9 bridges spanning the Tyne in Newcastle and the first that we saw was the High Level Bridge. At the time it was developed it was one of the first to have a road on one level with railroad tracks on a second level. A bit further up river we saw a blue bridge but I don't remember which bridge that was. Just down river from the High Level bridge is the Swing Bridge, one of the only swing bridges still in operation in England. The next bridge over was the Tyne Bridge, one of the most recognizable landmarks along the River Tyne.
The next bridge is equally recognizable, but it a very different way. This pedestrian bridge is the Gateshead Millennium Bridge and it is a rotating bridge and tilts to allow boats to pass underneath.

In between the Tyne and Gateshead bridges is the Sage Gateshead, a music venue, conference centre, and education centre. This extremely unique (or weird) building is a striking part of the Tyne landscape.

We walked across the Millenium bridge, along the river past the Sage Gateshead, and back across the Tyne Bridge to the Castle Keep and Black Gate. The Castle Keep is whats left over from the castle that gave Newcastle its name. This castle was built by William the Conquerers eldest (but illegitimate) son.

From the Castle Keep we walked to Grainger market, a large covered market that sells anything from bread to sandwiches to meat to fish to clothing to fabrics to books to hardware equipment to greeting cards to fireplaces. Yes, they sell fireplaces. Anyways, we made note to come back and get lunch in the market. Just outside the market is a large monument to Earl Grey who was Prime Minister but is really better known for the tea that takes him name.
We continued north to the Great North Museum which is a sort of Natural History/History museum that had an exhibit on Hadrian's Wall, some information about the Anglo-Saxons, Romans, Greeks, and Egyptians. They had an actual mummy that was unwrapped, which was pretty cool to see.

From the Great North we backtracked a bit and went to the Laing Art Gallery. This gallery had a large exhibit of Japanese art including the famous Wave painting. If you know anything about art then you'll know what I'm talking about. There was also a couple galleries of English painters, one of them had a really cool painting on Sodom and Gommorah.

We then returned to the market, got some sandwiches and raspberries, and ate them out on Earl Grey's monument. Sitting down felt really good and we didn't really want to get up afterwards but we did anyways and headed to the Discovery Museum which advertised itself as a museum where you could learn about life Tyneside.

That is most definitely what is was and it was a really cool museum. We started in the Life in Newcastle exhibit but, such is our luck, we went through it backwards. So we started out in modern times and went back towards the time of the Romans. Oh well, it was interesting anyways....

The next exhibit we saw was about the bridges across the Tyne which is the only reason we knew those random facts about the bridges that I mentioned earlier. After this we saw an exhibit about the life of soldiers from 19th century onwards. The next exhibit was about life on the Tyne, including the shipping and work that went on/goes on on the river. After that we wandered through an exhibit about clothing, then once that had just a bunch of random sciencey stuff (there were tons of obnoxious teens in there so we kind of left in a hurry) and then we saw an exhibit about inventions. In this one we were very proud to successfully construct 2 arch bridges and a cantilever bridge as well as help discover the lightbulb and fit together some cool puzzles. We looked as some placards that talked about life in Newcastle during the coalminer strikes (Billy Elliot anyone??) and then wandered through a Steampunk exhibit that was even stranger than the one I saw in Oxford a few months ago. You can check out Michal's blog if you want to read about that.

From the Discovery Museum we went to the Life Centre which we thought was a science museum similar to the Discover Science Center. We got there and realized that is was more about evolution and life sciences and, while there was Doctor Who exhibition similar to the one in Cardiff going on, we didn't really want to pay for a museum that neither of us was all that interested in to begin with. So instead we walked back down to the river and went into the Baltic Tower which is now a modern art museum. The tower has several viewing decks from which you can see the Millenium Bridge, the Sage Gateshead, and the Tyne Bridge, and while we were hoping to see the Millenium Bridge lit up, it is summer and it therefore gets dark really late and so we were too early for that. By this time, however, we were both pretty exhausted from a long day of lots and lots of walking so we decided to call it a night. We got some takeout Chinese food from Chinatown and ate it in the hostel kitchen. We read some atrociously bad books in the hostel lounge (I have never read such a soap opera of a book in my life) and then went to sleep.

Unfortunately we were both up at the crack of dawn this morning and had nothing to do before we caught out train back to Oxford. We finished the horrible books we had started the night before and then went and waiting at the train station for our lovely 4 hour ride back to Ox. Once back in Ox we walked through the Museum of Oxford (where Michal used to work) and then got some Ben's cookies before heading back home. Tonight I have football training and then we'll probably watch Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade because Youval hasn't seen it. Tomorrow is Stratford and after that, who knows???