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On Sunday, on my last full day in England, Dad and I went to Oxford. The train to Oxford leaves from Ealing so it was a convenient outing. Oxford was one of my favorite places. The connection to both history of all sorts and education make it a place anyone who’s ever dabbled in Academia would enjoy. In fact it’s a little overwhelming when all these connections across time converge in this one locale.

Oxford's own bridge of sighs

The colleges are all over the place in Oxford, and I got a real sense of how in the ivory tower education was. Every college was gated and walled off from the town and each other.

A little old school discipline.

We saw the oldest library in Europe, the Bodleian. There was a very cool exhibit on book binding techniques and the art of book binding. Some of the books on the display were ancient from the 1000′s and I think a couple were even a little earlier. Also cool little bit of trivia, at one point books were displayed with the spine to the back of the shelf and the pages facing out.

The Music Library. This pics for Kim.

I was excited to visit the pub where C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien hung out and worked on their drinking and writing. Dad and I had lunch there, actually in the same room where their club met.

The room the inklings hung out in

Magdalene College or Maudlin as Savio told us the Oxford grad would call it.

We also walked by the college where Lewis and Oscar Wilde graduated from (and of course lots of others), Magdalene. We went to the Natural History Museum, which is free to the public. Like everywhere else there was a Darwin display for his anniversary. The museum was awesome.

Ceiling of the museum.

The interior is steel and glass and displays of bones and other things. Each column was made from stone that was natural to different areas in England.

One area of the museum was filled with all sorts of cultural items from all kinds of people across the world cluttered into Victorian display cases. There was even a saddle from Texas. I really liked this museum. It felt like the old curiosity shop to the 10th degree.

Room filled with curios

It was a great day. Good to spend it with Dad.

Bicycles parked at the train station. Obviously a college town.

Savio and Ninu came by that evening after we got back from Oxford. We had a nice evening and then it was time to pack and get ready to return back to the States.

Tags: family, travel, UK vacation

I think every English major probably has some connection to Shakespeare. Going to his birthplace is like a pilgrimage to all those years of studies, all those plays you’ve muddled through. Stratford-Upon-Avon is a bit of train trip from London, lot of stops on the weekend jaunts out, but it is an adorable town with lots of Elizabethan structures left or rebuilt. Also this is a city where the RSC is based, so a real acting town. I imagine it might be something of a mecca to the acting crowd and not just the literary.

Statue of Shakespeare

Dad, Mike, Lynda, and I left early on Saturday morning to take the train from Marleybone Station to Stratford-Upon-Avon. I was pretty excited. I was finally going to birthplace of one of the most significant writers really in the world. Now I can’t stress this enough but if you ever happen to be in Stratford-Upon-Avon and want to see some of the Shakespeare Sites, buy your ticket at the birthplace first thing. The cost covers not only the birthplace, but a few other sites along the way and can add a little on and see the Anne Hathaway Cottage about a mile outside of town. Also places of significance in UK tend to close at 5Pm at the latest so it is key to buy this pass first thing. We did not. And so I’ve been to and walked by all the Shakespeare sites in town, but didn’t actually go in anything but the gift shops of the birthplace and Anne Hathaway Cottage. We also didn’t get to see his grave, because there was a wedding. It was a little disappointing.

Man entertaining the festival crowd at the market.

Trinity Church

At the same time it was a gorgeous day and the town is pretty, that was fun. We saw the outside of Trinity Church. The way the sunlight hit the church was really quite nice.

We walked for a good while and then had lunch at the Anne Hathaway Tearoom in an ancient building that is a family owned and operated tearoom and bakery. I had the best mincemeat cake thing there and would recommend eating there to anyone. Then we headed out to Anne Hathaway’s Cottage. It was a nice walk out there and it looked like a lovely garden from the street, but we had to turn around pretty quickly as it was getting late.

Finally, we made it to the birthplace only to discover that there was no ticket option for just that house only a group ticket option and it was too late in the day to go and see anything else again. Needless to say, I’d love to go back to Stratford-Upon-Avon with some slightly better planning. A slideshow of my pictures below:

Tags: family, travel, UK vacation

Friday was my last day wandering around London. Dad works half days on Fridays, so I waited for him to get back from work and then we headed out. We actually wound up having an even later start then expected though, because of a delay on the tube. There was a person under the train, which caused the whole system to back up. I was actually surprised that they would announce there was a person under the train. Made me think, though, Anna Karenina really screwed up the time tables the day she stepped off the platform. Tolstoy really missed it by not including that little detail in his novel. Anna jumped and Vronsky was made late.

After about a 1/2 hour delay we made it into town and went to the British Museum. The museum is huge, and I had it slightly mixed up with the Natural History Museum with the dinosaur in the entry. But I wasn’t entirely confused, because this is the museum with the Sutton Hoo treasures (mostly out on loan this time).

The Millenium Pavillion.

This time we saw the Egyptian and Greek, Ancient Roman Britain and Ancient Britain stuff and the Assyrian stuff for the first time that I can recall. The Assyrian panels and statuary were taken from the palace at Nimrod, which indirectly connects back to Edward Elgar since one of his most famous works is the Nimrod from the Enigma Variations (listen to it below).

The Assyrian section was hands down my favorite. Part of what the museum has a displayed are huge reliefs of the king’s lion hunt. I don’t know if the lion hunt had religious significance to the Assyrians or if it was just a way for the king to display his power and prowess. Looking at the images of dozens of captive lions being released for the hunt, the archers stationed carefully around, the horses and chariots both driving down and being attacked by the lions, the reliefs certainly felt significant.

Picture of the detailing on one of the horse's heads.

The king killing one of the lions up close and personally.

The captions in the room were pretty great as well. Next to one image of a small figure sitting on top of a lion’s cage and opening the door. The caption pointed out that it could be a child or short man and notice that on top of the cage was another cage for the little boy to jump into after letting the lion out.  Another caption noted the people either gathering on a hill for a better look or they were fleeing for their lives from the hunt and the lions. I can imagine the accidents that probably occurred on this hunt. The other thing I noticed and of course I’ve no idea if this is true or not, but the imagery reminded me so much of the Chronicles of Narnia or at least of the drawings contained in the book.

Anyone else reminded of the Horse and His Boy in this relief.

And this guy couldn't help but remind me of Tash.

The whole museum though had moments that reminded me of C.S. Lewis’s children classics. Even in the Greek section, I felt like I was seeing some of his possible inspiration.

Centaur beating a fellow up.

Nothing in the museum really hit me quite like the Assyrian works. It was my aesthetic moment for the day. I swear in the lion hunt room, you could glance from wall to wall and imagine the sounds of the hunt, the heat, the dust, the stench. It was a moment of connection across time and space.

After finishing up at the museum, Dad and I headed out to Leichester Square and the famous Day of Ticket Booth to see about catching a show. Our first and second choices of shows had only the bad seats left so we settled for We Will Rock You, a musical that used Queen’s songs. We walked around the the area past the Charing Cross Book Shops, Carnaby Street and the famous crazy suits, dress shirts, and ties for men, ending up in Covent Gardens for dinner. The string group from the other day was playing in the courtyard again, so got to point them out to Dad. He’d never seen them there before.

We Will Rock You plays in the Dominion Theater, which is a pretty big theater. The show is not big with critics, but I had no idea what I was getting into when we went to watch it. Although as I was leaving I noticed that one of the press quotes being used to advertise how great the show is, only commented on the big size of the video monitors used as set decorating. What I can say about the show is that I had a great time with Dad and I would not recommend the show to anyone to actually go and see. Just reading a little bit about the show on the Wikipedia entry about it, I find myself in complete agreement with the following quote, “The Guardian wrote that the premise ‘really is as sixth form as it sounds.’” Also, I have to admit despite sitting through the musical I completely missed that the lead male was supposed to be Freddy Mercury reincarnated at the end. Oh, well.

Even still going to the theater on the West End is better than not. I had a good time and got to see something new at the British Museum. All my photos taken in London are in the slideshow below.

Tags: family, travel, UK vacation

Thursday, Lynda and I hit the Imperial War Museum. The Imperial War Museum contains exhibits centered around WWI and WWII. The entrance is filled with aircraft and vehicles used during both World Wars, including the smallest vessel used in the retreat from Dunkirk and a double decker bus used as transport for soldiers during WWI.

Double Decker bus used for troop transport during WWI

Custom hood ornament on the bus.

The picture of the jeep below is for Mary. It was driven by a nurse during WWII and she hung onto it after the world. She finally donated it to the museum in the 80′s.

Jeep from WWII

Lynda and I weren’t sure where to begin in the museum. Finally, we decided to start with the exhibit called the Children’s War. The exhibit went through the experiences of children sent from London during WWII. It opened with LCD screens with photos of children that turned into current photos of the children as adults. One did not morph since the child died during the Blitz. It was pretty moving. The display cases were filled with drawings kids made while they were sent away or of the planes and bombs. There was a small suitcase that was filled with the items children brought with them when sent out of London and into the country. There were a lot of young school kids walking through the exhibit. Overheard one of the teachers asking her kids to remember their class project to pack their evacuee suitcases and then asked them if they thought the playstation would fit in the little suitcase.

The exhibit concluded by walking through a complete 1940′s home.  It started in the top floor of the home and then worked way down into ground floor. Everything in the house was about what one would expect, until came into the living room and there was this large metal cage.

Family dining table and bomb shelter in 1940's home.

The cage was a family bomb shelter. The older man in the photo above was actually a London evacuee as a child. The museum had a program inviting seniors who were evacuees to come to the museum and share their stories with people wondering through the exhibit.

The 1940's House exhibit.

After working our way through the remainder of the exhibit, Lynda and I entered the permanent exhibit on WWI. The display cases are overwhelming in most of the museum. Just the amount of artifacts, guns, uniforms, letters, photos, journals, grenades, etc. One display case contained the taxidermied mascot of one of the military units. But the museum also exhibit called the Trench Experience. A room off from the main exhibit recreates a 1918 trench, including sound and smells. The experience was pretty disorienting and kind of freaked me out a little. I hurried through a little faster than I really meant to.

The WWII exhibit was similar to the WWI exhibit. Display cases filled with guns, bombs, texts, uniforms, posters, ship models, etc. The exhibit between the wars showed the different fascist organizations stirring throughout Europe, including the British Fascist movement. I’m pretty sure I’d heard about the movement and not just in a PG Wodehouse novel, but I hadn’t ever really heard or seen much about it till the museum. The interactive exhibit on the WWII side was called the Blitz experience. Lynda and I began by sitting in an air raid bunker with some other people visiting the museum. The older gentleman sitting next to me turned to his friend and said, “I think I spent more time in one of these than school,” which made me smile. The bomb hits and the bunker’s seats shake, then a man comes in and leads us around the interactive display of a bombed out London. The whole scenario is narrated by the Air Raid Warden and other characters that supposedly lived on the street and were in the bunker with us. When you first stepped out there was even the sounds of a man trapped in rubble. I realize that living through the blitz will never be incredibly real to me, but the exhibit tried not to pull any punches.

After finishing out WWII, Lynda and I decided it was past time for lunch and that we really couldn’t look at any more guns that day, so we ate at the museum and then headed out to Covent Garden. Covent Garden is a place anyone who’s seen My Fair Lady would recognize. It’s where Eliza sells her flowers. It’s also famous for its market, shops, and street performers. Lynda and I saw a really good group of musicians. The cellist in this video below is the same from the group we saw.

String group in Covent Garden.

I got to see them twice actually. Once with Lynda and then again on Friday with Dad.

After seeing all that, etc. I headed home and met up with Ninu for dinner at her flat. It was a very nice day and a lovely evening. It was too bad that Savio had had to work late. But I had a good time hanging out. I look forward to seeing them both again next time in England.

Ninu and her friend dropped me off back at Dad’s flat and that’s when I saw my fox. He was sitting there in the middle of the road staring at me. At first I thought it was just a dog, but when I looked back to check, he jumped onto the top of a neighbor’s fence. No do dog could that so nimbly, and I knew it was a fox. Because it was late and quiet it felt practically like meeting a spirit animal or something.

Tags: family, travel, UK vacation

As we wander on Monday, Lynda mentioned that she had been on some neat walking tours of London (including a Jack the Ripper tour twice) and that there was a Beatles walking tour she’d been trying to get Mike to go on and had even asked her musically inclined son if he’d be interested, but so far hadn’t had any takers. I said let’s do it, and lo our Tuesday was planned.

We recognized our tour guide by the jacket. Hard to miss.

We met our tour guide, Richard P., outside of Marylebone Station. Marylebone is both a tube station and a train station. (In fact, we wound up back at this station on Saturday, because the train to Stratford-upon-Avon left from here.) The station is pretty and open feeling and connected to the Beatles. Marylebone is the station that was used in the beginning of A Hard Day’s Night, and the little street the Beatles run from their fans from in the beginning of the movie is right next to the station.

Head of a lion at the registry where Paul and Ringo got married.

After seeing the grocery store that once housed the phone booths John, Ringo, and George hid in while fans ran past in the movie and approximately where the bench would’ve been that Paul tried to hide out on, we move on to the registry where Ringo and Paul were married and also our Beatles tour guide – a true fan. The most exciting stop on the tour occurred next. This next stop was exciting, not so much because of what we were looking at, but because we got our very own heckler.

Richard P, tour guide extraordinaire, had his patter for the tour down like a carnival barker and to help us see what buildings and folks looked like that were connected to the Beatles he had a thick black notebook filled with 8×10 glossies. We stopped in a quiet neighborhood to stand across the lane from a Beatles (60′s music scene) important flat. Facing the iron fencing of the neighborhood’s private garden sat an old grizzled bum (our very own nowhere man) his camp stuff taking up sidewalk, who upon seeing our group and our tour guide said, “Not that guy again. I hate that guy. Our guide pulled out his notebook and started his spiel (you can listen to this actual part of the tour here) never breaking his pitch despite the bum singing an off-key Ave Maria and snarling invectives against Richard P. and the Beatles. The flat we were looking at was actually the site of the famous nude album cover photo of John and Yoko was taken. It was owned by Ringo Starr and at one point Jimi Hendrix was living in the basement with his girlfriend. Not surprisingly Jimi and his girlfriend upset the neighbors with loud parties and louder fights and were forced to move out, but now at least twice a week there’s tourist standing on the doorstep taking pictures, a tour guide loudly going through his pitch, and a homeless mad shouting and singing off-key. Somehow I think Jimi might be taking his revenge on the sleepy borough.

The tour continued in peace after our one heckler and we saw where Paul lived with Jane Asher. He wrote “Yesterday” there. Apparently, Paul woke up one morning with a song in his head and couldn’t figure out where he heard it before. He kept asking people if they recognized it, and finally someone told Paul to quit asking he’d never heard it before. The tune turned out to be “Yesterday,” which Paul originally called Scrambled Eggs and the lyrics at first went, “Scrambled eggs, girl you’ve got beautiful legs.” After the site of Scrambled Eggs, we saw the site of the Beatles’ failed, fashion business venture the Apple Boutique. According Richard P. the labels in their clothing line cost more to make than the clothes themselves and the Beatles wound up having to close the shop not long after opening it.

The famous crosswalk.

Our final stop was Abbey Road Studios. Despite the Beatles connection, my favorite thing about the studio is that is also connected to classical music history. There is a large recording studio where symphonies still record, and the studio was opened by Sir Edward Elgar (who is rather unfairly most famous for “Pomp & Circumstance” in the States) in the 30′s.

Me on the steps up to Abbey Road Studios

Also Sir Thomas Beecham, a famous conductor lived near the studio. The walls around the studio are covered daily in graffiti from tourists and lovers of the Beatles.

Graffiti on the studio walls.

Richard P. said that they had actually just repainted the walls 3 weeks ago. Abbey Road Studios apparently goes through quite a bit of paint. The studio was our final stop, and the tour was a good way to see London and find out a little more about its recent history. At the end of it, it was time for lunch and time to see St. Paul Cathedral.

St. Paul Cathedral with the statue of Queen Anne out front.

I’d never been to St. Paul, so I was utterly unprepared for just how gorgeous it is inside. The mosaics are beautiful, the whispering gallery fantastic, the organ gorgeous, but my favorite bit was the American Memorial Chapel. It was built to commemorate those Americans based in Britain who died during the WWII. The chapel looks like something very old, but in fact is a modern twist on older craft forms. The stained glass windows represent each of the 50 states. The woodwork is of distinctly American flora and fauna and, oh yeah, Eisenhower’s head. It’s a beautiful and touching memorial chapel. St. Paul ended Lynda and my day of trekking about.

Tags: family, travel, UK vacation

After Wales and driving around, I wanted to slow it down a little on Monday. Lynda and I planned on checking out one of her favorite tea house/restaurants in Kensington Palace Gardens for lunch, The Orangery. We also decided to start searching for new shoes for Orson, hit up Portobello Road, (Portobello Road, street where the riches of ages are stowed), and go to the Sherlock Holmes Museum.

We began the day at the store where Kim and Lynda had originally found Orson his cool dragon shoes, but sadly the store did not carry any larger sizes so we made it a brief stop and went on to Kensington Gardens. Kensington Gardens is one of London’s big parks and contains the famous statue of Peter Pan. It also contains Kensington Palace where Queen Victoria was born and Princess Diana’s official residence (and obviously due to that huge gap in time a lot of other Royals in between). There is a Diana Memorial Playground in the park that was a highlight for Kim and Orson and a Diana Memorial Garden, which was in the process of being replanted so one side was dug up while the other was a riot of color. (By the way, all this writing about UK trip keeps making me want to spell words with extra letters. I nearly wrote colour in that sentence above.)

Marsh Hen hanging out on the gardener's sweatshirt.

Diana Memorial Garden

Diana Memorial Garden and The Orangery in the background.

The Orangery is a restaurant that once was the hot house for tropical fruit trees like orange trees, etc. The inside is all white columned, with large windows overlooking the gardens and letting the light in for little orange trees growing in pots on each table. Lynda and I had lunch inside since the wait was long for the outside tables. We had an excellent lunch here. The food is really good. I had a sweet potato tart for lunch and orange cake for dessert. Tasty. Can’t wait to eat there again.

After lunch we went to Portobello Road for a look around. It’s important to arrive not to early to Portobello on a weekday since the shops tend to open late. Although the weekday doesn’t have as many shops open, you can actually get inside the shops without a million people pressing in all sides like on the weekend market days. The shops are fascinating to look through. I saw a silver stamp case (it worked kind of like this one, only more ornate) and a coin locket (you could place a pound or so inside the locket for safe keeping), beautiful china, antique sporting goods, and a shop that sold hats of all sorts including bowlers and top hats.

We wandered around Portobello for awhile, checking out all the fascinating shops and then hurried off to make the Sherlock Holmes Museum before closing. The Sherlock Holmes Museum is located at 221b Baker Street. Actually, no such address existed when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle first wrote Sherlock Holmes. It wasn’t till after the museum opened in 1990 that the address was given to building that housed the museum.

Outside the Sherlock Holmes Museum

The museum is fascinating just from the Victorian decor, etc.

Holmes's book on fiddle playing.

Wearing Watson's hat. Watson had a big head.

Also neat is the book of letters that have been written to Holmes over the years by fans, etc.

Letter from little boy in Miami.

The picture above is of a letter from a little boy in Miami, who was offering his services to Holmes if he was ever over in America. The thing that interests me in Sherlock Holmes is the early development of Fan culture and Fan Fiction. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wound up having to start writing more Holmes fiction after killing the detective off, because other people were writing and selling fan fiction based on his characters. There is a whole groups who play the Great Game and pretend Holmes was a historical figure. The cult around Holmes is fascinating. Funnily, enough just saw this strip in one of the webcomics I read semi-regularly.

Click on the comic to go to the fullsize image.

Day 1 around London was a lot of fun. Lynda and I actually wound up returning back to Ealing a little later than expected ending up at the pub next door to the museum. Also for future reference the best Rock & Roll memorabilia stores are right near the Sherlock Holmes museum. There are three shops on that end of the street, one for the Beatles, one for Elvis, and one for everyone else. All around a good day of browsing, shopping and seeing the sites.

Tags: family, travel, UK vacation

On Sunday we had our breakfast (smoked kippers for me, which I liked) and headed out of Wales. The morning clouds and mists were burning off in the early sunlight. As we were driving through one of the small towns in Wales, we noticed a lot of people out with expensive camera equipment taking photos. We stopped to see what was up and saw practically a scene from a fairytale come to life.

This was a tea room/ gallery in the local community.

This place just looked like Little Red Riding Hood should be skipping by.

River Narrows Sign and Watch out for the cones.

Below is a slideshow of all the pictures I took while in Wales and also some photos of me taken by either Dad or Lynda.

After spending some time taking photos and trying to figure out why there were traffic signs in the river, (The river may actually narrow ahead, but general consensus amongst us was someone was pretty upset w/ the with the roadwork or drunken hoodlums did it. Although, drunken hoodlums just seems so prosaic.) we continued on our way. Instead of taking a Welcome Break from being on the road awhile, we stopped in Shrewsbury for a stretch of the legs. Shrewsbury is the birthplace of Charles Darwin and this year is the 200th aniversay of his birth. Shrewsbury has a handy website for helping tourist find Darwin sites around the town. It would’ve been good to know a little more about the place before we walked around, but Shrewsbury has some really lovely buildings and is really clean. We found the town’s Quarry Park, where a 5K was running through and some members of the RAF were going to lay a wreath for the anniversary for the Battle of Britain, which happened to be that Sunday.

5k run in Shrewsbury.

RAF members raising a flag. They had a hard time getting it tied off correctly.

The town has a lot of 15th and 16th century buildings left, and I found my favorite architectural detail on a building – a literary lion.

Old Architecture

A Lion of Literature on the Old Market Building

Once the legs were stretched out, and we saw a meter maid placing parking tickets, it became clear it was time to hurry back to the car. We had failed to put any money into a machine anywhere, because we missed the machine entirely when left the car to start walking around. Fortunately, we avoided being ticketed, but remember when in England mostly all parking no matter the time, no matter the day is pay parking, and yes, the parking ticket writers are out enforcing.

Our second stop of the day before returning home was Warwick Castle. Originally, we had talked about stopping in Stratford Upon Avon on the return trip, but a guy who worked with Dad and Mike had talked about how much he enjoyed Warwick with his wife. They had attended some sort of medieval style feast there given around Christmas. Warwick Castle is certainly connected to a lot of the early history of England. Edward II possible lover and best friend forever, Piers Gaveston, was tried for treason here and sentenced to death in the 14th century. Richard Neville (the Kingmaker) was the Earl of Warwick and helped depose Henry VI and Edward the IV and wound up playing on both sides during the War of the Roses. Today the castle is owned by Madame Tussauds and has plenty of creepy waxwork figures like you’d expect.

Warwick Castle Main Entrance

Honestly, there was something just a little too trying to be a theme park about this castle. The website for the castle helps to illustrate the strange mixture of historical with Renaissance Fair vibe that the place gives off. It was probably my least favorite place I visited on my entire trip. The place seemed mildly exploitive. For instance, even though Henry VIII and any of 6 wives never visited nor lived at the castle, one room furnished in 18th century decor contained their waxwork likenesses. The sign explaining why the figures were there tenuously tried to connect the place with Henry, but it just felt like the waxworks were there only because tourists would recognize them. That pretty much explains the feeling of the entire place.

The place was filled with strange things to entertain families, like the throw the beanbag rats through a quidditch hoop game that kept the kids visiting the castle highly entertained or the Princess tower, which felt almost like a copy of the Disney princess dress-up stuff. There was also a dungeon, but that cost extra so we skipped it thankfully. Although the view from the walls was pretty and the castle was in pretty good shape, I had a hard time getting a feel for the history of the place. Instead it felt like one of the cheesiest places I’ve been too. We headed home from Warwick a bit disappointed with the experience really. Below is a slideshow of my pictures from Shrewsbury and Warwick.

Tags: family, travel, UK vacation

Saturday was our first and only full day in Wales. of course the day couldn’t begin with breakfast, particularly since the hotel had breakfast included. So I had tried my first full Welsh breakfast, which consisted of the following items: eggs, bacon (which looked more like a strip of ham), welsh sausage, blood pudding, tomatoes, mushrooms, and fried bread (which is bread fried in the breakfast meats’ fat. I didn’t actually finish this meal or even bother eating the bacon or fried bread. In all a hearty meal, as in I could feel the arteries to the heart hardening. By the way the pepper in the UK is really finely ground, a little goes a long ways, often to the point of ruining whatever you were trying to enjoy.

After our breakfast, we drove off to see the Isle of Anglesey, Holy Island and to ride the Rheilffordd Ffestiniog. We started out well, stopping to see one of Thomas Telford’s early, suspension bridges, Menai Suspension Bridge, in Llanfair Pwllgwyngyll.The bridge was completed in 1826.

Menai Suspension Bridge.

Llanfair Pwllgwyngyll actually has another name, Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, which is the longest name of any town in UK. The name of the town was changed in the 1860s as a publicity stunt to have the longest name of any Railway Station in UK. One day I’ll be able to say it without tripping all over it. Got to have goals.

After watching sailboats speeding down the river with the tide (the boats even had their sails down, since the tide was moving so fast), we continued our drive stopping at Beaumaris to see Beaumaris Castle, built by guess who? Edward I again. That man was busy building castles all over Wales. Beaumaris Castle was never completed. Basically, Edward I didn’t have the resources to finish off the castle, because he decided to start subjugating the Scottish. The guidebook describe the castle as a perfect example of Edward I style of castles. Well, after seeing it we decided it was perfect, perfectly incomplete. I’ve done a little research why something not finished is described as perfect. It appears that the plan for Beaumaris was pretty perfect and very symmetrical. To give you some idea about the amount of castles Edward I built, Beaumaris has a playground, bowling green, and picnic spots surrounding it. It looked like a neighborhood park that just happened to have a ruined, incomplete castle on it.

Beaumaris Castle

After Beaumaris we continued our drive and this is when the navigator (Mike), the GPS (Ma’am), and Dad managed to find the backroads way across Anglesey. Very scenic in that we found sheep, hedgerows, possibly one stone henge. We also managed to find the roads so narrow only a single car could fit with traffic on it running both ways. Finally, we arrived at Caernarfon and briefly glimpsed Caernarfon Castle where Charles,  Prince of Wales was invested with his title, etc. Edward II was born in Carenarfon Castle, and supposedly Edward I promised the Welsh that he would name “a prince born in Wales, who did not speak a word of English” as his heir. So after raising up the hopes of the Welsh, he proceeded to pull out his infant son in what I imagine was a bit of a Lion King moment, but rainier. We stopped quickly at Caernarfon Castle on our way to Holyhead Island, so we pretty much saw the castle from it’s backside. It backs right into some lovely warehouses.

Caernarfon Castle

Holyhead & the search for South Stack

The second part of the day took us to Holyhead on Holy Island. Holyhead is the largest town in the county of Anglesey. Ferries leave from Holyhead to Ireland. In fact boats between Holyhead and Ireland have been traveling these waters for they think 4000 years or so. Dad had heard of this place called South Stack, which he wanted to check out. It was another of those find the signs kind of drives, but eventually we found it. South Stack is a beautiful lighthouse. The area around it has several prehistoric stone hut circles, part of a Roman wall, and sometimes puffins. Sadly there were no puffins while we were there. Wrong time of year for them. Walking down to the birding tower, we saw some people dressed in period-ish clothes and others with film cameras. We’d stumbled upon a film being shot on the cliffs. Rumor (Rumor being a very nice couple from Liverpool. The woman had even been to Tampa and the man (sounding so much like a Beatle) had lived in Walnut Creek, CA where Matt was born.) had it as some sort of Sherlock Holmes flick.

Film crew on the cliffs.

South Stack Lighthouse

The lighthouse reminded me very much of the lighthouse at Point Reyes in California. There are a lot of steps down to it and it sits on a little island. The cliffs were really something. I enjoyed getting to the edge, looking down and then getting a little sense of vertigo.

Cliffside vegetation.

After we’d seen what we could at South Stack we headed off to ride an old, coal burning, steam engine, mining train through the forest of Snowdonia. The train left from a small, port town called Porthmadog. The town was sweet and we had time to walk around a bit before the train left, which meant time for ice cream. Lynda and I also got to check out a few shops and I found a Welsh dragon for Orson.

Our steam engine.

The train was actually a newly built, steam engine based on older designs that would have a enough power to pull the train up the mountain, but still fit the narrow gauge mining tracks. Traveling by coal-burning, steam engine gave me a whole new appreciation for what the inhabitants of the Industrial Revolution got to experience. Because there’s no air conditioning on the train, we left the windows down (also better photography without glass in the way), but the smoke of the engine of course streamed behind, leaving flakes of coal dust, etc which then drifted into the passenger cars and onto everything. It wasn’t particularly bad when we were outside, but when you went through a tunnel, the smell of burning coal and the heat of the steam fogged up all the windows. Blowing my nose after riding the train, was a little disgusting, since it was the same color as the coal.

Train engine hidden in the streaming steam.

Snowdonia was beautiful. The forests reminded me more of like the forests in America than other forests in UK. The trees must not live as long, because it felt like they got a lot of new growth and there was lots of wild undergrowth.

Some of the scenery off the train

More scenery from the train.

We had a great day wandering through Wales. Although, it was a long day too.

Tags: family, travel, UK vacation