新春快乐！！！牛年到了！！！

祝所有朋友
新春愉快！
万事如意！

Bristol, an empty city

Compared to Bath, Bristol, the 2nd largest city and the biggest port of South England, is so empty! Though Bristol is only 15 minutes' train away from Bath.

Sightseeing bus? Not available in winter days... Ferry? No in winter days... "To Let" can be seen every where. Only one thing is plenty: seagulls.

Luck we still had a great time there: View the city from the top of the hill park; Walked from one church to another: some are brilliant beautiful while some are half destroyed during WWII.

first post via Mac

1. can't find backspace, so can't delete words from left to right

2. can't find many shortcuts

3. can't find pageup and page down

4. strong battery

5. many user friendly settings. for example, function is used to activate F1~F12, while the default will be some "function buttons" like sounds, bright...

Bath, interesting sides

1. Besides the abbey and the museums...Bath itself is a beautiful place. The buildings and even the plants are quite unique. Maybe this explains why it has a fashion museum!

2. After the 2-hour tour in the Roman Spa Museum, we were treated to two glasses of water and some people even paid to drink it. However, I have to say the water doesn't taste good ... Why? It's the water from the Roman Spa Spring!

3. In the cold water pool, a set of laser projections showed people at that time using this pool. Interesting is: there are many many coins in this pool!!! In Chinese temples, especially those famous ones, people used to throw money into the water to get good luck. I never knew people here liked doing the same thing. Haha. However, according to the commentary, the Romans used donations like coins or animals for all kinds of demands. Some demands asked for bad things to happen to other people. This is different from Chinese wishes.

4. This is the second time I saw an eagle in a church. Another one is in the Queen's College's chapel. Very beautiful.


5. Special interactive guides for children.

I saw special guided tours for children in both Bath Abbey and the Roman Spa. These forms used questions instead of explanations, which led children to learn by themselves. In the fashion museum, you can try certain pieces of clothing. All these are quite rare in China.

6. Sweet clock.

This is not a real clock, it's telling tourists when and where they can find a guided tour. Again, I saw it many times and it's more convenient for tourists managing their time and also more flexible for the crew change schedule according to the numbers of visiting people than a fixed schedule printed on the leaflet.

7. The most impressive ladies' room:

"This window is fitted with ONE-WAY glass". haha, it is in the Roman Spa.

Bath, a small yet big town

Bath was supposed to be a small town. However, I feel it's not small at all: the grand Bath Abbey, the huge Roman Spa, even the "mini" fashion museum...each took me hours. And the famous Sally Lunn cafe, it's the place for tea, how can I have an afternoon tea in a such a short amount of time? I spent a long time in here as well!

Bath Abbey.
The outer building is full of details.

The interior is beautiful too.

The grand ceiling:

When the sunshine came in, even the hard stone looked soft.

I love the golden colour that came from the sunshine. (You can see, the walls are full of tomb stones. These tomb stones came from different years and it might take you hours to read even just some of the epitaphs. )

---continue---

If it were not for me, Xiao wouldn't have gone to Bath Abbey. And after the visit, she totally agreed this is a great place. If it weren't for Xiao, I wouldn't have visited Bath Spa! After the 2-hour tour, I found it's definitely a place you must go if you are not familiar with the history of Bath, England or Rome at that time.

Roman Spa Museum

The Museum is very well organized. Old building remains, 3D simulations, laser projections, quite detailed and vivid commentaries gave me a sense of the whole experience...I felt as if I was put in a time machine going back to that ancient time, watching the Romans building this huge building and enjoying the hot spring.

The major sites took up too much time that we almost missed the famous Sally Lunn cafe. Luckily we finally made it! After a quick look at the kitchen museum (so many museums in this Bath trip...), we sat there and enjoyed the tea - taking our time.

It's snowing, let's go enjoying Rome Bath Spa

January 5th, 2009
Oxford
Snow
January 5th, 2009
Bath Spa
Hot spring and sunny day

Do you understand the coats of arms of your college?

Do you understand the coats of arms of your college? I didn't.

I asked several people about the meaning of it and no one can answer me.

However, this article reveiled the meaning of the characters in the coats of arms. And it cuots many Oxford Colleges' coats of arms! What a coincidence.

http://www.unicornblog.cn/user1/unicornblog/2008111712221.html

纹章学：符号的象征意义
独角兽资讯 发表于 2008-11-17 12:02:00

作者：不详
各种纹章

Colors and Metals色彩与金属色
注：一些颜色词汇属于纹章学专用单词而渐旧，原作者也仅将其列出供参考，这里不予多加解释，比如or/yellow/gold，其实表示的只是对同一种颜色的不同称呼而已

Or, yellow or gold - Generosity.金色、黄色和金黄色－宽容、宽大、丰饶。
Argent, white or silver - Peace and sincerity.银色、白色或银白色－和平与诚实。
Azure or blue - Loyalty and truth.蓝色－忠诚与真理。
Gules or red - Military fortitude and magnanimity.红色－军人的坚忍与刚毅，高尚的行为。

...