Miss M goes to Newcastle part II

Whoo hooo! There is growth! I said I would tell you about Newcastle AND I AM!!! David will be so happy with me.

SO I had a BALL in Newcastle. Seriously loved it. I got up some ungodly hour and got ready and made my way down to my nearest Tube station which is Tottenham Court Road. Scary at 5:30am let me tell you! ANYWAY it wasn't open as yet (1st train is 5:45) and so we had to wait outside for a little while. Seriously. There are CREEPY people in this world. Shiver.

Got To Liverpool Street Station and hoped on a Stanstead Express.... to Stanstead which was quite a nice ride. About 45mins with two stops... which kind of deafeats the purpose of an EXPRESS if you ask me... but it's not a bad trip.

THEN I got to the airport which is actully a nice little one... SOOOOO much better than Heathrow. I HATE Heathrow. A lot.

We had a slight delay, but all things were good (Easy Jet you are great even though you have that horrible orange which makes me gag) and I got into Newcastle at about oooooo 9:45ish and was met by the lovely Maria.

Had a really lovely time with her and her beautiful family who just made me feel right at home! Was really just nice to feel at home when you live so far from it! Maria then spend the day showing me and another friend Liz around the town which I loved. Seriously can you believe this. The council (or what ever they call the council of the town .... not up with local politics here!) have decided that most of the buildings which were built in the 60s and 70s were ugly and so are now systematically going through a knocking them all down! Man... I have never HEARD of such sense coming out of a bureaucracy!

Across the river is a bizarrely familiar sight... I looked at one of the bridges and thought... hmmmm... familiar... where have I seen that....

Yep... from what I can gather... this was kind of the proto type for Sydney Harbour Bridge... it's pretty much exactly the same... but... titchy! Even the lamps are the same. Apparently you can climb this bridge too and it doesn't cost a mint.

We had a great time wondering the streets checking out the Art Gallery which had some interesting stuff... as well as this installation which was... in effect a massive dark room with mirrors. We had NO idea what we were meant to do once we got inside. So after clinging to each other.... we edged our way to the light of the door and came out rather confused. Weeeeeeird.

We had a great lunch which between the three of us came to £11... £11 FOR THREE of us.... I'm not sure you understand how amazed I was .... but I'll leave it at that.

We then had to rush home and get dressed for Mass and a poshy dinner which was marking the 40th Anniversary of Humane Vitae and we had a really nice night. Great people, great food a BEAUTIFUL surroundings. It was a the Assembly Rooms which kind of made me think of Pride and Prejudice. I can't find a pic of the inside so this one will have to do!

The next morning we got up and Pat, Maria's lovely mother made us all breakfast. We hoped over to the Cathedral for Mass which was really lovely (Mass and the Cathedral!) It's a Pugin church and it's BEAUTIFUL! Here's the link to some photos of it. I don't have any :( my camera had run out of battery and I forgot to take my charger up. Seriously beautiful... scroll through til you get one from the nave of the altar. The ceiling is just brilliant.

Anyway we had a nice time just hanging around. Then it was time to go again and I flew back into Standstead at about 10ish and got into bed around 1pm... sooooo tired the next day but it was worth it of course!