Nottingham and Milton Keynes now - you'll have to wait for Lviv. And all the other crap that I have built up to talk about. It's a busy life at the moment, and I just can't find time to consider doing this. Now I'm sitting in a Mister Snack with time to kill, so I'll do it now.

During the period between my Eurotour and coming back to Kyiv, my two buddies (one of whom reads this blog regularly) decided that we should go somewhere for a weekend of fun. The shortlist was drawn up, and Nottingham was the winner. I'd never really been there before, so I thought it'd be the best place to go. I'll always try something new.

We stayed in a very cheap, but very good hostel (Pete wasn't pleased about it, as he has the cash to blow on a hotel). I figured a hostel was the best option as there was three of us, it was cheap, and it was relatively close to the centre of town. This is the view walking towards the centre of town.




The city centre is rather compact. I thought Nottingham was very big, but I think it's just the surrounding residential areas that make it so big. The actual city centre is not that big, really. This is a building.





And this is the town square in front of said building. As you can see, it was a Saturday, so there was stuff happening, like rides and things.






Woohoo. Not sure about the weather though.








I don't know if this is normal in Nottingham.








But it certainly made things interesting. Not that we actually had a ride or anything.







Onto the historical stuff. Here's the entrance to the castle in the city.







I think the weather was better than it appears here. This is the courtyard area, after passing through the gate.







Aw, look what they did.








And this is even more interesting: it's in the shape of cricket stumps being hit by a ball. Look carefully.







Guess what this building is. No, not a sports stadium, but the offices of the tax people. WTF?







Inside the building is a little museum dedicated to the castle, and Nottingham itself. There's a nice model.







Guess who. One key reason for the Nottingham tourist industry.











Here's a real tourist attraction: the 'Oldest Inn in England'. Several make this claim, but there's no disputing that this building is very old.






Inside it's very small and cramped, but has a wonderful atmosphere. What annoyed us was that people kept walking into this room, taking pictures, and walking out again. Have a drink, damn it! The beer was pretty good, actually.





Here's another old building, near the inn.








Chuuuuuuuurch. Incidentally, us English are such heathens that we build bars and even clubs inside old churches.







Such as this one. Don't know the name, but it has lovely windows.











The rest of it looks nice, too. Apologies for the poor photo, but my camera doesn't do indoors too well, as regular viewers will know.







Along with Robin Hood, here's another hero of Nottingham: Brian Clough. One of English football's greatest ever managers. This is a very recent statue.









Finally, a nice water thing in the city centre.








In order to get a job in Ukraine, I was told to get an apostille for my CELTA certificate. What it basically means is personally going to Milton Keynes and paying a substantial amount of money to a government organisation so that they can stick something to it, saying it's real. Ultimately the whole thing appears to be pointless, but hey, at least I got a day out in lovely MK! Let's check it out!

MK is a weird place. For those that don't know, it was made in the 50s as a new town, rather than 99% of British towns that evolved naturally. This means that the location of everything is carefully planned. Thus, I don't think there's a town centre as such, but it's a DREAM to drive around, ridiculously simple. Birmingham, by contrast, is a nightmare.

Anyway, onto the city. Here is a shopping centre. MK has quite a few of these.







One of the most famous things about MK is, incidentally, concrete cows. I was afraid that, as they're normally in a field somewhere, I'd miss them. But lo! They'd been loaned to this shopping centre! What luck.





Speaking of cows... don't ask me about this one. It's in another huge shopping centre with a funny name.







It's a magical place. This building has rock climbing...











...a simulator...








...and even a ski slope. Impressive. If I had the time, I might have even had a go at it, but I think I'd need a bit of teaching.







This is the centre from the outside. Big.








Yet another centre. This is MK in a nutshell, really: lots of big shopping centres, with a simple road system and very cheap parking. It's the future.






To round off this update, I had lunch at Burger King before leaving, and this cheeky bird tried to have some of my food. Well, he can bugger off. And he did.






Right, I'm getting closer to being up-to-date. I have to report on Chernihiv next (my first trip to a Ukrainian town since my return), then Lviv (my second). After that, I'll update with the miscellaneous crap I've seen and taken pics of around Kyiv. See you then.