We're currently lying in bed at midday in London, being very relaxed and comfortable. This hotel is really bad for waking up; our room has no windows, so it stays dark forever and you lose all track of time. That plus we're really lazy.
From Derry we drove down to Galway, which was just beautiful. We stayed at a lovely B&B there and headed to Quay St for dinner. This street is basically the place to go at night in Galway; it's nothing but restaurants, pubs, and a few nice odd shops, all lit up and looking lovely. The next day was unfortunately quite rainy, but we headed out to the Connemara area anyway and saw a little waterfall, a beach in the middle of Irish hills, and some other lovely sights. The rain spoiled it a bit, but felt quite fitting for the environment we were in.
After that we headed down past Limerick to visit Knockaderry and Newcastlewest, the home towns for Tom's boss and his wife. We passed through one particular tiny town that was just bursting with history - old buildings everywhere, abbeys, all of it! Definitely an area we'd like to re-visit. We spent the night at a hotel in Cappoquin after almost dying to get there ... the fog on the roads was incredibly thick, on winding tight roads going up a mountainside, with hairpins thrown in for giggles. Not. Fun. But we rested up nicely and got on the way the next day to Waterford, which we honestly didn't do much in! Had breakfast, saw a church briefly, then drove on to Dublin.
We were in Dublin for St Patrick's Day, and there were tourists everywhere. Probably more of them than Irish! We found a semi-decent spot for the parade - we could see most things - and watched the weirdness. The theme to this year was Science, and the parade floats aimed to (kind of) answer some basic queries such as 'why do we dream', 'how is electricity made', etc. The answers were a bit weird though, as the photos and videos of the float might indicate!
We hung around after the parade for a bit to see the entire city centre become a wasteland of drunks and weirdos, see a shoplifter get forcibly stopped, watch people almost get run over, etc. We then decided this wasn't really for us, got a bus home and some Chinese takeaway and watched a movie in the car. Bah humbug.
Next day we rested up a bit and did basically nothing with our day apart from laundry. Monday was our day of departure, but first we saw the Guinness Storehouse brewery. Quite fascinating and well done actually. Then off on the ferry to Holyhead in Wales! It was relatively uneventful, and we stayed in a lovely little independent apartment there for the night. Then we headed down to Caernarfon and saw the castle, which was utterly brilliant. A very well preserved ruin, as in nothing is inhabited but it very clearly has been well kept. To anyone reading who knows Game of Thrones, it felt very much like Winterfell might. The town itself was fantastic, with lots of quaint little lanes and locals speaking the Welsh language out and about. Wales in general seems very, very attached to its cultural heritage, more so than Ireland or Scotland. The north is even more concentrated on this, with huge amounts of castles built and preserved, a very strong use of the Welsh language, and a lot of Welsh patriotism everywhere. In Ireland they used the traditional Irish language on their official signage with English translations, but you didn't see much Irish on shopfronts or non-official writings. Wales had Welsh on basically every store or piece of writing anywhere - very charming, and a very silly language to read!
After Caernafon we had lunch in Machynlleth and stayed the night in Cardiff. The next day we saw Cardiff properly, including the lovely St Fagans open-air museum. It's basically a collection of old buildings such as a 'castle' - really a manor house - all restored and with original furnishings and items, showing how life used to be in Wales. We also saw a bit of the Roman history at Caerleon, which I desperately wanted to see due to it being used in a much beloved book series of mine! After Cardiff we went on to Cricklade, a little town about an hour north of Stonehenge. We stayed the night in a pub/hotel that has GOT to be the most askew building ever. Once above the ground floor everything tilts very strangely, which amused us no end. Great place though, filled with charming old pubs and such.
The next day was Bath, which was just beautiful. The Roman baths there are quite well preserved, and have been fixed up and expanded upon several times over the centuries. The town itself was beautiful, as they've evidently kept to the Roman dignity of buildings and prospered well over the years. I highly recommend that one to anyone travelling Britain. After that we travelled to Salisbury for dinner and stayed the night outside Amesbury, ready to hit up Stonehenge in the morning.
We got there in time for a nice breakfast, and then did the walk around Stonehenge. It really is a wonderful sight to see, and to imagine fully put together. A lot of history and speculation going hand in hand too. After that it was back to London, to return the rental car and check into our hotel for another few days. We met up with Emma for dinner and The Hunger Games (good movie) then rested up before doing Windsor Castle and Legoland the next day.
After oversleeping a bit we headed out and caught the changing of the guard at Windsor, and toured the grounds. The State Apartments were closed, which we guessed are the nice official rooms inside, but as that shaved £10 off the entry price we were completely okay with that. It's a lovely castle, utterly huge and well maintained, with beautiful gardens and artifacts just everywhere. They also had a Diamond Jubilee exhibit there of photos of the Queen throughout her life, which was actually quite good. After that we got the bus to Legoland, whereupon Tom exploded with glee at being surrounded by Lego and Star Wars at the same time. Turned out that weekend was celebrating the opening of the Lego Star Wars exhibit, and people in costume were overruning the park and generally being awesome. We went on a rollercoaster and got wet on a white water kind of ride, and generally got to see lots of cool things and be annoyed by lots of little kids. Tom pretty much lost his mind with happiness the whole time!
Anyway, by the time I'm done writing this it's almost the end of our last full day in London, which has been spent doing very little - more laundry, and discovering the Brick Lane/Spitalfield markets, which it turns is Hipster Central here. We kind of just turned a corner and BAM, hundreds and hundreds of hipsters swarming the road and selling produce, clothes, foods, just everything. We avoided that on the return.
Tomorrow, we get the train to Brussels and begin the mainland leg of the journey! Photos will be up on Facebook when possible; currently the internet here is so bad Facebook won't even consider the possibility of uploading. Ouch.
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Glaswegian Adventures + Northern Ireland
Our time in Scotland is done, and I write this from our B&B in Londonderry/Derry (depends on who you ask). It's been an interesting couple of days!
On Wednesday we wandered Glasgow with Heather, our friend who now resides there (another Australian). We did a spot of shopping and got nice proper hiking shoes, saw the city centre, and Tom experienced seaweed beer! The next day we headed up to the Highlands, Inverness in particular. There we did a lovely walk around Loch Einlan (with its own little ruin on an island) and saw the Highlands Wildlife Park, which had an awesome little safari feature. We saw a polar bear! Having him in an enclosure near some deer seemed mean; the deer and he were just staring each other down. We got back on Friday and went to see The Dark Crystal, which was both awesome and a hoot. I think everyone forgot how often the Chamberlain makes his weird 'hrrrrrrmnn!' sound.
Saturday was an incredibly lazy day, which wasn't originally planned but was in fact awesome. We did do a bit of Glasgow sightseeing, wandering around to the Kelvingrove Museum and seeing some of the university architecture. Heather made us incredibly awesome pork and apple sausages! Turns out UK sausages are far superior to Australian ones. We were going to head out to Glasgow comedy club The Stand, but tickets were sold out :( Instead we went drinking and dominated the jukebox!
Sunday we made a day trip to Edinburgh and went to see the Zoo. This turned out to be a fantastic decision due to the huge number of awesome penguins. We also got cute monkeys, lots of kickass predators, and many more. We went to Edinburgh Castle afterwards, but it wasn't taking any more people that day. So instead I got a new Scotland pin for my satchel and we had a delightful early dinner before tripping back to Glasgow and going to see The Presidents of the United States of America (band, obviously). They w;ere actually pretty fucking awesome and fun, and played their entire first album.
Monday we sadly left bid Heather and Glasgow farewell and traveled down to Cairnryan for the ferry over to Belfast. This was done at the most breakneck pace we could manage due to the need to check on before 11am and our big delay getting to an internet cafe to print out the confirmation. We had accepted we were probably going to fail, and turned up at 11.10am, only to be told this was fine! I haven't been that relieved in a long time. We chilled out on the ferry for a few hours - which was pleasantly calm, after being warned we'd probably get seasick - and then popped off to Belfast.
Belfast and much of what we've seen of Northern Ireland can probably be best described as "grim". There are some lovely buildings such as the Town Hall (with a great exhibit on Belfast's history) and the Victoria Square shopping centre, but much of the back streets and buildings are very much damaged and vandalised. While everyone was quite friendly, the town itself just doesn't look very welcoming.
After poking around there for a few hours and seeing a movie we drove up to Coleraine for dinner. Turns out at 9pm not much is open in Coleraine! We had one of those genuine small-town experiences were strangers walk into a bar and every head in the place turns to look. Everyone was friendly though and we discovered garlic fries - FUCKING EXCELLENT - at a local 'Chinese' restaurant. We stayed the night in the van up near the Giant's Causeway and went to see that early this morning. It was great fun and makes you feel like a kid, clambering over all the rocks. Once that was done we came to Derry and did some of the tourist things - walked around the still-standing city walls (left over from the 1600s), saw a museum about the history of Bloody Sunday and civil conflict in Derry, saw a few lovely churches, and then came out to the B&B with our very chatty hosts.
So there's a lot of activity summarised very, very quickly!
On Wednesday we wandered Glasgow with Heather, our friend who now resides there (another Australian). We did a spot of shopping and got nice proper hiking shoes, saw the city centre, and Tom experienced seaweed beer! The next day we headed up to the Highlands, Inverness in particular. There we did a lovely walk around Loch Einlan (with its own little ruin on an island) and saw the Highlands Wildlife Park, which had an awesome little safari feature. We saw a polar bear! Having him in an enclosure near some deer seemed mean; the deer and he were just staring each other down. We got back on Friday and went to see The Dark Crystal, which was both awesome and a hoot. I think everyone forgot how often the Chamberlain makes his weird 'hrrrrrrmnn!' sound.
Saturday was an incredibly lazy day, which wasn't originally planned but was in fact awesome. We did do a bit of Glasgow sightseeing, wandering around to the Kelvingrove Museum and seeing some of the university architecture. Heather made us incredibly awesome pork and apple sausages! Turns out UK sausages are far superior to Australian ones. We were going to head out to Glasgow comedy club The Stand, but tickets were sold out :( Instead we went drinking and dominated the jukebox!
Sunday we made a day trip to Edinburgh and went to see the Zoo. This turned out to be a fantastic decision due to the huge number of awesome penguins. We also got cute monkeys, lots of kickass predators, and many more. We went to Edinburgh Castle afterwards, but it wasn't taking any more people that day. So instead I got a new Scotland pin for my satchel and we had a delightful early dinner before tripping back to Glasgow and going to see The Presidents of the United States of America (band, obviously). They w;ere actually pretty fucking awesome and fun, and played their entire first album.
Monday we sadly left bid Heather and Glasgow farewell and traveled down to Cairnryan for the ferry over to Belfast. This was done at the most breakneck pace we could manage due to the need to check on before 11am and our big delay getting to an internet cafe to print out the confirmation. We had accepted we were probably going to fail, and turned up at 11.10am, only to be told this was fine! I haven't been that relieved in a long time. We chilled out on the ferry for a few hours - which was pleasantly calm, after being warned we'd probably get seasick - and then popped off to Belfast.
Belfast and much of what we've seen of Northern Ireland can probably be best described as "grim". There are some lovely buildings such as the Town Hall (with a great exhibit on Belfast's history) and the Victoria Square shopping centre, but much of the back streets and buildings are very much damaged and vandalised. While everyone was quite friendly, the town itself just doesn't look very welcoming.
After poking around there for a few hours and seeing a movie we drove up to Coleraine for dinner. Turns out at 9pm not much is open in Coleraine! We had one of those genuine small-town experiences were strangers walk into a bar and every head in the place turns to look. Everyone was friendly though and we discovered garlic fries - FUCKING EXCELLENT - at a local 'Chinese' restaurant. We stayed the night in the van up near the Giant's Causeway and went to see that early this morning. It was great fun and makes you feel like a kid, clambering over all the rocks. Once that was done we came to Derry and did some of the tourist things - walked around the still-standing city walls (left over from the 1600s), saw a museum about the history of Bloody Sunday and civil conflict in Derry, saw a few lovely churches, and then came out to the B&B with our very chatty hosts.
So there's a lot of activity summarised very, very quickly!
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
London to Glasgow
Alright, doing a proper update to this thing! We left London 2nd March and arrived in Glasgow on the 6th March. We drove through a lot of little towns and stayed in a few bigger ones, and generally loved it! I'll go through town by town:
Oxford: we drove up here and stayed in a caravan park overnight, and had a delightful pub dinner - two fish and chips for £7! All the drinks here are in pints and wonderfully cheap, from about £2 - £4 for your average beers and ciders. The next day we tripped in and saw a few campuses of the Oxford University (turns out there's 42) and wandered around the Ashmolean Museum looking at very old things for a fair while.
Nottingham: this place was just awesome, though very gimmicky with Robin Hood stuff. We arrived there late in the day but managed to get into the last tour around the Galleries of Justice, which was a fantastic attraction. It's a tour through the Nottingham Courthouse and prison underneath, with character actors and lots of information on jail-life and shipping to Australia (which was weird). We ended up staying in a hotel at the last minute, as the caravan park reception closed early and we decided fuck it, we needed a shower and a warm room. The van is great for travel, but the duvet can't keep your face warm when it gets to zero!
The next day we headed to the City of Caves, a huge range of man-made caves under Nottingham. There are up to 1000 years old from the first settlement in the town, and were used for bomb shelters, shelter for criminals, tanneries, and kinds of fun drunken past-times. Nottingham likes to drink. After that we headed up to Sherwood Forest in the pouring rain and traipsed to the Major Oak, a massive tree there. It's 10m around, largely hollow and lovely to look at. We didn't linger too long due to the rain and mud, but we did see a squirrel!
Lincoln: owner of a very beautiful cathedral. We turned up there too late to get in and instead braved the utterly FREEZING winds to walk around and look at it, then sought refuge in a local pub for dinner. We stayed road-side that night (and kind of regretted it due to the intense cold) and went to the Lincoln Cathedral the next day. It's honestly one of the most beautiful buildings I've ever seen, and with restoration would probably be as lovely as St Pauls in London.
Scarborough: the same day we went through Scarborough briefly. We did a spot of shopping for some cold weather gear, wandered along the beach-front (English beaches are hilarious) and then buggered off to Whitby!
Whitby: probably the favourite of this leg of the trip. Whitby is a small town with next to no chain stores, no real cinema, and a lot of charm. We stayed in the best B&B of all time with the nicest hosts possible, and had a fantastic seafood dinner at The Magpie Cafe. Turns out magpies in England are pretty little things and Australian magpies are a whole different species. Whitby also has a fantastic Abbey, but unfortunately it was closed over this period so we could only admire from afar. But we did get to feed ponies, so it all balances out.
We also briefly stopped in Penrith for lunch, but to honest there's not much to say there - old English buildings, but not so nice as to be exceptional. Tom didn't like the cheese on his panini, if anyone cares.
So now we're in Glasgow, which outdoes Melbourne for changeable weather from what we've seen so far. It's moved between overcast, raining, and blinding sunlight every few minutes, and even had sleet that almost was snow for a while there. We're staying with Heather in her shared apartment and spent the first day wandering and doing some shopping - we all got proper hiking shoes - and tomorrow are tripping up to the Scottish Highlands!
So that's that - photos on Facebook :)
Oxford: we drove up here and stayed in a caravan park overnight, and had a delightful pub dinner - two fish and chips for £7! All the drinks here are in pints and wonderfully cheap, from about £2 - £4 for your average beers and ciders. The next day we tripped in and saw a few campuses of the Oxford University (turns out there's 42) and wandered around the Ashmolean Museum looking at very old things for a fair while.
Nottingham: this place was just awesome, though very gimmicky with Robin Hood stuff. We arrived there late in the day but managed to get into the last tour around the Galleries of Justice, which was a fantastic attraction. It's a tour through the Nottingham Courthouse and prison underneath, with character actors and lots of information on jail-life and shipping to Australia (which was weird). We ended up staying in a hotel at the last minute, as the caravan park reception closed early and we decided fuck it, we needed a shower and a warm room. The van is great for travel, but the duvet can't keep your face warm when it gets to zero!
The next day we headed to the City of Caves, a huge range of man-made caves under Nottingham. There are up to 1000 years old from the first settlement in the town, and were used for bomb shelters, shelter for criminals, tanneries, and kinds of fun drunken past-times. Nottingham likes to drink. After that we headed up to Sherwood Forest in the pouring rain and traipsed to the Major Oak, a massive tree there. It's 10m around, largely hollow and lovely to look at. We didn't linger too long due to the rain and mud, but we did see a squirrel!
Lincoln: owner of a very beautiful cathedral. We turned up there too late to get in and instead braved the utterly FREEZING winds to walk around and look at it, then sought refuge in a local pub for dinner. We stayed road-side that night (and kind of regretted it due to the intense cold) and went to the Lincoln Cathedral the next day. It's honestly one of the most beautiful buildings I've ever seen, and with restoration would probably be as lovely as St Pauls in London.
Scarborough: the same day we went through Scarborough briefly. We did a spot of shopping for some cold weather gear, wandered along the beach-front (English beaches are hilarious) and then buggered off to Whitby!
Whitby: probably the favourite of this leg of the trip. Whitby is a small town with next to no chain stores, no real cinema, and a lot of charm. We stayed in the best B&B of all time with the nicest hosts possible, and had a fantastic seafood dinner at The Magpie Cafe. Turns out magpies in England are pretty little things and Australian magpies are a whole different species. Whitby also has a fantastic Abbey, but unfortunately it was closed over this period so we could only admire from afar. But we did get to feed ponies, so it all balances out.
We also briefly stopped in Penrith for lunch, but to honest there's not much to say there - old English buildings, but not so nice as to be exceptional. Tom didn't like the cheese on his panini, if anyone cares.
So now we're in Glasgow, which outdoes Melbourne for changeable weather from what we've seen so far. It's moved between overcast, raining, and blinding sunlight every few minutes, and even had sleet that almost was snow for a while there. We're staying with Heather in her shared apartment and spent the first day wandering and doing some shopping - we all got proper hiking shoes - and tomorrow are tripping up to the Scottish Highlands!
So that's that - photos on Facebook :)
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