Our next stop: Newcastle. What a treasure! We loved it there. We stayed in a downtown hotel, an old building, but refurbished and in middle of much activity. It was a Bank Holiday ( in other words a three day weekend ). The town was buzzing with young people and beautiful they were and very fun to watch. It amazed me the groups of men together; four, six and sometimes eight at a time. Laughing, singing, reveling and just plain having a great time. Young women dressed to the nines in everything from hot pants to mini skirts ( and if you think mini skirts of the 70s were short, think again) hung out where the men were, of course. Gee, it was fun to take it all in.
We fell in love with the walkway along the River Tyne. There were five different bridges crossing the river and all of them with different architecture and one them was a double decker. The most interesting and beautiful was the newest named the Millennium Bridge that part of it rises a few times a day. Not that that is so unusual, but the way it was hinged to come up was an engineering feat. Absolutely amazing! Photos help tell about that. One whole half circle with a walkway is lifted to let boats come under this huge surface. Crowds gather to watch with big eyes and opened mouths. The city is home to two universities and several public parks. We walked about three miles to find a public market advertised in a brochure, only to find out that the market has not been at the place mentioned for about 4 years. It was okay anyway. We saw lots of dwellings and came into a big, green, lovely park that had a sweet gift shop. The park officials showed us the way back from whence we came. Also, I must mention that one of the nights we were awakened to the sound of the fire alarm. We put on our pants and grabbed our shoes ( Dan did not put his on?????). When we opened our door we could smell smoke. We followed the fire escape route and ended up in an alley where no one else was. Half asleep, we walked around to the front of the building and found the front door. We were the only ones who heeded the fire instructions. We were told that all was fine. Someone had candles lit in a bathroom and it set off the alarm. We only believed half of that story, but went back up a couple of flights of stairs and tried to go back to sleep. The next day was a Sunday and we had a good breakfast outside in the sun at The Quay restaurant where many people had the same idea.
We got in on a birthday party with some women that asked to share our table. A fun game was played and we even got the table of young darling men behind us involved. Photos tell that story somewhat as well. We'll always remember that very fun morning. It was a short stay in Newcastle, but very
No comments:
Post a Comment