Palais des Papes (Palace of the Popes) was built in the 14th century during the Avignon papacy.
I was not too impressed by the Palace. Set aside its history, the only thing that worth mentioning is perhaps its enormous size. There might be some interesting stuff in the palace, but I didn’t have much time to explore it… we were just stopping at Avignon for lunch and a short break as we were heading for Nice.
A few more pictures taken at Notre Dame de Paris. You can read my stories about the cathedral from my previous post instead.
After a short break at the hotel, we hopped on to our bus again and headed for our first travel destination in Paris… the Notre Dame (Cathédrale Notre Dame de Paris).
Read the rest of this post »
I grabbed a sandwich and found a bench just outside of the Bath Abbey’s West Front. They were some street performers playing musical instruments and doing some tricks at the small square; and a group of Japanese girls were there to show a short Japanese traditional dance too.
Lacock is a small place to navigate, and it’s impossible not to bump into the St Cyriac’s Church.
The wooden door of the entrance was pretty heavy; I got into the church and I was the only person around. The church was so quiet and peaceful, I felt like I could spend hours just sitting in the church even though I am not a Christian.
Read the rest of this post »
The Clock Tower, famously known as Big Ben, is the name of the tower at Houses of Parliament in Westminster, London. Big Ben is actually the nickname of the clock’s main bell; and the official name of the main bell should be the Grand Bell instead.
Regardless, everyone is calling the clock tower as Big Ben these days.
‘Culture Shock’ at Big Ben
I encountered some annoying people around Big Ben… they were handling ribbons and little paper-souvenirs and then asked for money saying that it was for charity.
‘Handling’ is actually an understatement… they basically forced those stuffs into my palm and pocket, and demanded money for it…
I spent a few pounds just to get out of trouble; I was not sure if the money would be channeled into charities… regardless, I felt like daylight robbery honestly; or perhaps I should call it a culture shock instead.
(Later at night my sister told me that it’s pretty common stuff in London; what I could do was to hand back the thing to them… let’s just hope that my money was getting into the right hands at the end of the day)
Btw, Big Ben wouldn’t have existed if it wasn’t for the fire in 1834 that destroyed most of the Parliament building. A commission was set up to choose a new building design, and Charles Barry’s plan (with the clock tower obviously), was the eventual winner. The clock swung into action in July 1859.
