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.
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