A Gypsy's Book Of Shadows: Newcastle

Seeing as I'm not smothering everyone with enough pictures as it it, *cough* sarcasm *cough* I've decided I might as well be enthusiastically blogging about the trip to Newcastle Judith and I went on roughly ten days ago!

It was brilliant.

Ice-cold in Holland, so that I woke up, looked at the sky, and told it it might as well snow, for all the cold it had been giving us.

At the train station, standing there with a bag, I was suddenly showered in little white flakes I hadn't seen since the end of last year.

So happy! :D

Tad sad I was leaving, I mean, seriously? Universe? Not cool.

It was wonderfully sunny in England, though. Very spring-like. Also very nice. :)

And it made my companion a lot more cheerful than she would have been had it snowed. So yeah. It worked both ways ;)

We did spend more time on the boat than Newcastle itself, mind!

Quite a boat, too. It was like a wobbly hotel on water.

I do now totally understand and sympathize with the way Jack Sparrow walks on land.

I was doing a rather good imitation, if I say so myself.

Everybody else on the boat was either English, just back from a few days of Amsterdam, (ie. Space-cake, and the Red-light district ) or Dutch and ready to go shopping the hell out of that little town. Luckily, the M-genes need some cultural sniffing as well.

We went to the Travel Info center, went to a coffee shop to figure out what we were going to do that day, walked all the way to Gateshead, passing Castle's Keep on the way, the castle where Newcastle gets it's name, admiring Newcastle's big (and different) bridges, looked into a couple of shops in Gateshead, took a bus to the Angel of the North, took the bus all the way back to Eldon's Square after we were dead tired, and slowly walked our way (through the market) back to the train station, where the bus would take us back to the Port of Tyne.

A few facts about people from Newcastle:

- They think everything more than a ten minute walk is "Not Walkable".

- Geordie (their accent) is quite as unmanageable as Scottish.

- They do not articulate.

- They drink to get drunk.

- They get drunk very easily.

- They are quite obnoxious when drunk. (Very girl-unfriendly. Or rather, girl too-friendly?)

- Those we asked for directions were very friendly and helpful.

Lots of walking around on the cruise as well. And we danced, ate cake with two girls we had met on the way there, and all in all had a wonderful few days.

Our bodies did, however, beg us for some vegetables the day we arrived, both of us not really looking forward to the pancakes in Judith's refrigerator.

And now, those long-waited for pictures, Enjoy!