Sights in Bournemouth
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Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum
The Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum is an ostentatious mix of Italianate villa, Scottish baronial pile and Japanese gardens. It was built at the end of the 1800s for Merton and Annie Russell-Cotes as somewhere to showcase the remarkable range of souvenirs gathered on their world travels - look out for a plaster version of the Parthenon frieze by the stairs, Maori woodcarving and Persian tiles.
The house is also dripping with Victorian art and paintings by Rossetti, Edwin Landseer and William Frith.
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7-Mile Beach
Backed by 3000 deck chairs, Bournemouth's big draw is its 7-mile sandy beach. Regularly clocking up seaside awards, it stretches from Southborne in the far east to Alum Chine in the west - an immense promenade backed by ornamental gardens, cafés and toilets. It also prides itself on two piers (Bournemouth and Boscombe).
Around Bournemouth Pier you can be part of centuries of tradition and hire beach chalets, deck chairs, windbreaks and parasols, as well as sit-on-board kayaks.
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Oceanarium
Underwater tunnels bring you eye-to-eye with mean-looking sharks, massive moray eels and giant turtles in watery worlds ranging from Key West and the Ganges to Africa and the Med.
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Pleasure Gardens
Bournemouth's Pleasure Gardens are one bit of the Victorian town that have survived - they're even Grade II-listed. This colourful belt of greenery, shrubs and herbaceous perennials stretches one and a half miles north west from the seafront.
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Russell-Cotes
This ostentatious mix of Italianate villa and Scottish baronial pile was built at the end of the 1800s for Merton and Annie Russell-Cotes as somewhere to showcase the remarkable range of souvenirs gathered on their world travels. Look out for a plaster version of the Parthenon frieze by the stairs, Maori woodcarvings and Persian tiles. The house also boasts fine art, including paintings by Rossetti, Edwin Landseer and William Frith.
reviewed
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Bournemouth Beach
Backed by 3000 deckchairs, Bournemouth's expansive, sandy shoreline regularly clocks up seaside awards. It stretches from Southborne in the far east to Alum Chine in the west – an immense promenade backed by ornamental gardens, cafes and toilets. The resort also prides itself on two piers (Bournemouth and Boscombe). Around Bournemouth Pier you can hire beach chalets, deckchairs (£2 per day), windbreaks (£2.50) and parasols (£4).
At the East Cliff Lift Railway, cable cars on rails wiz up bracken-covered slopes, cutting out the short, steep hike up the zigzag paths.
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Alum Chine
This award-winning subtropical enclave dates from the 1920s, providing a taste of Bournemouth's golden age. Set 1.5 miles west from Bournemouth Pier, its plants include those from the Canary Islands, New Zealand, Mexico and the Himalayas; their bright-red bracts, silver thistles and purple flowers frame views of a glittering sea.
In the centre of Bournemouth, the Pleasure Gardens stretch back for 1.5 miles from behind Bournemouth Pier in three colourful sweeps.
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