Jay and Ashley's European Adventure

Scotland

2009-06-16T21:39:00.016+01:00

Okay, this is just funny!

Okay, we have definitely slacked off on the blog, so we figured we should at least get Scotland done before we leave England.
Scotland started off with every golfer’s dream. . . St. Andrews. St. Andrews has 7 courses, a little tidbit we learned is that originally golf was made up of 22 holes - they would play 11 holes and then go back and play them again. The decision was made to change that to 9 holes out and 9 holes back in at St Andrews and all others followed suit.

Here is Jay teeing off on the Strathyrum course.

The course:

The course wasn’t all that impressive – Jay said he’s played nicer courses in the States, but to play at the birthplace of golf was worth the experience.
While Jay was golfing mom, Bonnie and I explored the town of St. Andrews and the coastal area surrounding St. Andrews. St. Andrews is a cool little town; the university is made up of beautiful stone building with pretty lawns and gardens. There are also the ruins of a huge cathedral in the city. Jay had our camera, so you will have to catch a glimpse of mom and Bonnie’s pictures to see the city.
After golf and exploring we stopped at the St. Andrews Clubhouse for some lunch.

Outside the clubhouse is a putting green, people just stroll up with their putters and start putting. It seemed to be a popular activity throughout Scotland. We stopped at seaside towns and found putting greens with 18 holes everywhere. I guess it makes golf accessible to all, kind of a philosophy of Scotland.

Next, we headed back along the coast to the Seaton Cliffs. Now, after the cliffs we have seen in Ireland , Wales and England I have to say these weren’t as impressive.

Of course Jay had to go exploring..

Check out the Japanese Tourist:

Day 2 we headed to Stirling Castle….just a little history.
During a long and bloody history Stirling Castle has been attacked or besieged at least 16 times. Three battles have been fought in its immediate vicinity, two of which were turning points in Scottish history: and a fourth equally important battle took place just a few miles to the north.
A number of Scottish Kings and Queens have been baptized, or crowned, or died within or near Stirling Castle. At least one King was murdered nearby: while another committed murder within its walls.

The Great Hall:

Bonnie and I walking along the wall:

Next onto one of Jay’s other favorite things . . . Scotch. (Apparently mom likes Scotch too, well expensive Scotch and Whiskey that is.)
We stopped at Edradour, the smallest distillery in Scotland:

We took a tour of the distillery and learned how they make their Scotch.
Here is a picture of some of the equipment:

Apparently their single-malt Scotch was really smooth according to mom and Jay. Bonnie and I of course did not taste the smoothness.
Next, off to Blair Athol, one of 32 (or so) whisky blends used in Bell’s Whisky. They offered a single-malt of their brew for tasting:

The tour was pretty good, but no pictures were allowed. The whisky was not that great, so we now understand why it’s blended with 32 others…
We did learn that there is a union of barrel makers in the US that years ago made a law that whiskey barrels could only be used once. So the US sells their barrels to other distilleries to use. I forget the name she used for the union, but we looked it up and couldn’t find the name, so the union theory may not be true. It is true they only use the barrels once, but I don’t know if it’s because of a union.
Next we headed down the road and came upon the Beatrix Potter Garden; the museum was already closed, so we just wandered around the gardens.

Day 3 we were off to Edinburgh for a tour of the city. We did the hop-on hop-off bus and took full advantage of the tours.

Scottish Parliament, so strange looking if you ask me.

Here are some random pictures around the city:

A little croquet park:

Edinburgh Castle:

View of the city from the castle:

A pimp cab in Edinburgh:

The Palace in Edinburgh:

Now I have to say that I didn’t expect normal people to wear kilts in Scotland, I thought it was a “special occasion” thing. I was wrong, people seem to wear them everyday. We met up with a friend of mine who lives in Scotland who told me that you see people in Glasgow wearing kilts and Grateful Dead t-shirts. I wish I had seen that, but no such luck.

After a long day in Edinburgh we headed back to Perth.

We found a great restaurant in downtown attached to Famous Grouse Bar. A really great spot to relax in their leather chairs and reminisce about our travels so far..

Mom and Bonnie at the Famous Grouse Bar:

Day 4, our last day we headed back along the coast.
Gardens in Direlton:

It was an eventful night with a 3am fire alarm in our hotel thanks to someone smoking in their non-smoking room. (Second one of the night, the first one was around 11pm). One thing we all learned is that it never really gets dark in Scotland during this time of year. The sun starts to go down around 10pm, but as we discovered, at 3am it still isn’t that dark outside.

By Day 4 it was actually warming up for Scotland, here is Bonnie enjoying the warmth and sun:

Scotty Dog on the beach:

Shell searching???

We finally got a picture of all of us, apparently mom and Bonnie think I am really short:

The girls:

Another castle on the coast, we had to trespass to get this picture:

We headed back to England and went on a short trip to Cambridge.
One of the most popular things to do in Cambridge is punt along the river Cam. We ended up having beautiful weather and beat the crowds for a relaxing trip. Here’s Bonnie and mom punting down the Cam:

Some views of the college backs:

Bonnie and mom were relieved when we got there and Jay took over the driving. We really enjoyed having Bonnie and mom along to enjoy Scotland with. The country was beautiful, the city and castles were amazing and the company was great. I am sure those two will have comments to add to this blog. Hint, hint.

I don’t know if we will get our weekend in Poland posted before we head to Amsterdam this weekend since we head back to Atlanta on Monday. But keep checking, we’ll get it posted sooner than later.

Tuscany – Heaven on Earth

2009-05-18T22:27:00.015+01:00

We flew into Pisa flying over the French Alps. Now I always wonder, why does it take so LONG to get a rental car? You fill out all this info online, but then you have to fill it out again when you arrive?
An hour and a half of precious Italy time gone, we finally got our car and headed to Volterra, a small town on the top of a mountain in Tuscany. Of course when we arrived we were starving and started our trip perfectly, huge pizza’s and calzones for $5 ! After polishing off our meal we headed out to explore the town. There are amazing views over the region from this village.

Things were going great until we decided to walk along the wall that surrounds the city and someone decided he needed to see more and tried to jump up on the wall. Big mistake, he caught his hand on something (we aren’t sure what) and ended up with a huge gash. So our next adventure was to the pharmacy to get it patched up and buy some Band-Aids. The pharmacist was very nice and cleaned it up for Jay (she did say he needed to get stitches, but we ignored that warning) and then bandaged it up. So with Jay all bandaged up, we headed for our hotel in San Gimignano. Of course, at this point it is pouring down rain. We rented an apartment for a few days in the town and picked up our keys at the bakery. Needless to say, we were both soaked at this point. The apartment was huge and had some great views of Tuscany.

We wandered around the town, and explored the area in the rain, had dinner and finished off the day with Gelato.
We woke up and decided to really see San Gimignano. We headed to the Torre Gemelle and climbed to the top of the tower for some more great views of the city.

A few other shots in San Gimignano:

Communist posters (not the only one we saw on our travels):

After that we explored a few museums in town and more of the city. San Gimignano is a smaller city, so after lunch we headed to Sienna. Quite the difference from the small towns we had been to thus far.

They have a huge Duomo there that to me looks like a prison with the black and white strips. Of course, this color combination is very common in Italy. We weren’t that impressed with Sienna, so we didn’t stay long – just grabbed a gelato as we looked over the town center and headed to another small town, Monteriggioni.
Caught with another gelato…

It took all of five minutes to see this town, not much going on here, so we headed back to our favorite town, San Gimignano and stopped for a glass of wine at this great Enoteca:

After setting the tone for a relaxing evening at the wine bar, we had the most delicious bruschetta and dug into some traditional meals at a restaurant tucked away in a back alley, with stone archways and ceilings, lit up by candles. Ahh yes, and the wine – Chianti by the liter for $5.50.. You just can’t turn the corner without finding good, cheap wine. We polished the night off with some gelato and went to bed.

The next day we packed up and headed to tour more of Tuscany. Friday was May Day, so we were warned that most everything would be closed. We drove around and spotted a small family winery down some small back road that was open. We stopped in for a tasting and were joined by another American group from Iowa. The Chianti was excellent as was the olive oil. The girl giving the tour explained that each of the wine-label designs were based on the owner’s children. Some of the coolest designs we’ve seen.

After our tasting we headed to Greve, the village I stayed in during my stay a few years ago. Yet again another great meal, look at the size of this pizza.

The weather was perfect for sitting outside and enjoying the warmth after being in cold England.
After lunch we headed out again and stumbled upon another winery. We discovered that you can actually get this wine in the states, Gabianno which is owed by Beringer.

Next stop, yet another small winery, where we had to wait for someone to come from the house to help us with the tasting.

At this point we had enough wine tasting for one day and headed to our next hotel in San Miniato. Now we paid a few bucks more for a room with a view, and a room with a view is what we got!

Outside of hotel:

San Miniato isn’t a very happening town as we discovered.

So the next day we headed into Florence. Trying to park a car in Florence is near impossible. While hunting for a parking garage we got stuck on streets that were covered in people, I don’t really know how we drove through there, but I guess staying close to the cab in front of us helped – we literally drove right between the Ponte Vecchio and Ufizi museum. Florence was packed, we could barely walk across the Ponte Vecchio because there were so many people.

This was a big change from all the small towns we had been exploring. Needless to say, every museum had insane lines, so we decided not to spend 3 hours of our day waiting in them. We did catch a glimpse of a replica of David.

All this walking deserves some Gelatto.

After spending a few hours in Florence, and tracking down some gelato, we had enough of the crowds and headed to Lucca, a smaller town north of Florence.

Well this wasn’t much better; it was jam packed with people.

The mistake we made was starting our trip with the slower paced cities – they spoiled us by providing a picture perfect experience of what you imagine Tuscany to be. So after a little while we had enough of this town and headed back to the heavenly town of Volterra for dinner, this time without any injuries.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, our hotel room had a fresco, which we were very amused with one night.

Our last day we headed to Pisa to see the Leaning Tower of Pisa. We parked the car and were immediately greeted with people selling watches, sunglasses, basically the same stuff you see in NYC. We walked towards the Leaning Tower and pretty much the whole way these guys were trying to sell you crap. Finally we made it to the Leaning Tower, which I must say, is not that impressive. I thought it would be much bigger than it was.

Of course, everyone is lined up taking pictures of themselves holding it up, we tried to capture a big line of them posing.

We only had a couple of hours in Pisa, but it was a little tacky, so we grabbed lunch from one of the pushy restaurants and began our journey back to England, leaving the warm weather, great food and cheap wine behind.
Needless to say, Tuscany is one of my favorite places to visit, I can’t get enough of the beautiful views and I love the cypress trees.

Dublin Éire

2009-05-14T19:47:00.012+01:00

Good things come to those who wait.. yeah, we’re behind on our blog :) It’s been a busy April and beginning of May, but I hope you enjoy the entry. In April alone we went to Wales, Barcelona, Ireland and left for Italy. So, here’s an attempt to remember what happened in Dublin…

It didn’t start well; typical Irish weather: cloudy, rainy and a bit of dreariness. Add on top of that the worst hotel we’ve stayed in so far, so it wasn’t the most pleasant start to a weekend!

Good news is, we didn’t plan on spending much time at the hotel and our plan for the first day was to spend them indoors. First destination: Guinness Brewery. No surprises there I’m sure, as you remember from our first trip to Ireland a month or so ago, Guinness drives this country. But along the way, we explored downtown Dublin.

First stop, Trinity College, famous alumni: Bram Stoker and Oscar Wilde.

View in front of the Cricket Field:

Some old building on the grounds:

Pomodoro’s sphere. Another is located at the Vatican. Supposed to represent the earth in the center and Christianity enveloping or larger than the world. Interesting either way.. has a “Matrix” feel to it:

As we wandered from Trinity College towards Guinness, we walked through the party scene of Dublin, Temple Bar. Temple Bar is both an actual bar, as well as the name of an area of Dublin.

THE Temple Bar (Bono supposedly frequents the place, don't think he was in town while we were there):

No shortage of other bars here though. Not sure if I've mentioned this in a previous post, but I plan on putting together a book of pub pictures from our travels. I captured one or two while we walked around:

Finally, after another downpour (I love Irish weather), we were closing in on the brewery:

Surviving the ghetto, we followed the helpful signs and finally arrived!

Paraphernalia inside the storehouse:

Original 9,000 year lease:

Finishing off the perfect pour:

Certified expert:

No reason to stay here any longer. Still rainy, so we’re off to the Jameson Distillery to stay dry……

A complete joke of a tour, it was like “It’s a Small World” for adults. Actually, it would have been more fun if they played a song while you rode around the distillery in a boat.. Anyway, the distillery is no longer in use, so it’s a bunch of fake props and video. A bit disappointing, but there was a whiskey tasting at the end.

Took the tram back downtown and found a really interesting scultupre along the river front. It was originally proposed to be installed in Boston, but they thought it was too depressing. Amazingly life-like depiction of the Irish famine:

Famine Memorial

Leaning tower of Dublin:

Found a great Italian restaurant to finish our night off and rest up for the next day – Gaelic Football at Croke Park!

I had never heard of Gaelic football until doing some research on Ireland. Along with Hurling (another Gaelic sport), they make up two of the most popular spectator sports in Ireland.

Essentially, here’s how it works, you’ve got a soccer goal on each end, with rugby/football uprights above it (see pic below). They use a ball that is slightly heavier than a soccer ball but stitched like a volleyball. They can kick the ball down the field like soccer, or they can kick the ball into their hands and take it down the field, but they have to pass or kick it back into their hands every 4 steps or it’s “travelling” (similar to basketball).

So they’ve already combined a bit of soccer, handball, basketball, volleyball and rugby… so to top it off, they throw in some Hockey rules..

They can hit each other, like a check in Hockey but can’t tackle. Only problem is, they don’t wear any protective gear, so there were injuries every 5 minutes. But the best part is they ignore the hurt guy on the field and play around him, even with medical staff treating him!

Gotta love the Irish

Goals, 3 points for kicking it into the soccer net, 1 point for kicking or punching it through the uprights:

Confused Canadian:

Security at the end of the game… that orange fence is supposed to stop the fans from rushing the field..

Before heading to the airport, we couldn’t leave Ireland without a traditional Irish meal, although the Italian was delicious:

Stuffed and ready for Italy.. Only a couple days to go.

Catalunya

2009-04-23T22:15:00.010+01:00

April has become quite the travel month for us. We flew out Friday night to Barcelona and after a long adventure by bus, plane and train we finally arrived at our hotel around 12am.

We spent our first two days in Barcelona touring each of the different quarters. The main areas are Las Ramblas, Barri Gotic, La Ribera, Montjuic and L’Eixample.

Las Ramblas is an interesting part of town – it’s a tree lined pedestrian walkway loaded with shops, fresh food markets, and stalls - you can basically buy anything imaginable including birds, turtles or rabbits?? The strip is about a mile long strip and ends at the Mediterranean Sea.

As we strolled the distance we came across La Rambla fountain.

It tasted a little like lead to me, but apparently that’s the price you pay to become life-long citizens of Barcelona.

The Ramblas is also filled with street “performers.” Pretty weak if you ask me – they basically get dressed up in some crazy outfit and sit on a box and expect you to pay them for it?? Not impressed, but we did snap a pic so you could enjoy the same experience we had:

The Ramblas is capped off with a massive statue of Christopher Columbus pointing to the new world..

Next we went down to the sea to climb a scary looking tower take a cable car up to Montjuic (translated to Hill of the Jews). The view from the tower and the top of Mountjuic provided some amazing views of the entire city:

The tree lined street is Las Ramblas:

After an hour or so and a long hike around the mountain, we were ready for some food ! So we went to the Gothic quarter (Barri Gotic). This is the oldest part of the city and is made up of tiny side streets that zigzag throughout the entire quarter. We managed to find this tiny café in the bottom of some medieval building and grabbed some tapas and a burger to replenish our energy!

We continued to follow our walking tour throughout this labyrinth and happened upon the square where the Catholic Monarch received Columbus when he arrived home from the new world.

Standing in the square was a man that sang opera with his incredible voice echoing off the walls.

Throughout the quarter there were performers that actually had skills, from playing a range of instruments to more singing within the random side streets and their voices echoing down the lanes. It was a great soundtrack to one of our favorite areas of Barcelona.

Some other pictures of the area:

Oh yeah, one thing I forgot to mention is that they LOVE to graffiti everything there. Every store, restaurant, etc has a metal door they open and close and I don’t think we saw one in Barcelona that wasn’t painted.

After enjoying some gelato and browsing paintings in an open air market, we visited this Cathedral where you can still see the marks in the stones from bombs during the Spanish Civil War.

Right next to the Gothic quarter is La Ribera – the Picasso museum is here along with plenty of trendy clothes shops and some good food! Here are some pics of the area.

The ticket window at the Opera House:

Eternal Flame of Catalonia, celebrating their own 9/11. 9/11/1714 which commemorates the royal sacking of Barcelona. Catalonia has its own language and generally did not want to become part of Spain – there are flyers and propaganda you come across that still point to the fact that people want to separate from Spain.

Barcelona is well known for its amazing architecture. I would say the most famous architect was a man named Antoni Gaudi. So, Sunday was our Gaudi day. His architecture is like nothing I have ever seen and some of it looks like it’s straight out of Candyland!

We walked all over the city exploring some of his work.

In front of the Familia Sagrada, Gaudi’s still unfinished work (he died before completion) we saw some human towers. As they approached the fourth level or so, all of the people started to shake like crazy so this little girl climbed up for about 2 seconds and immediately slid down before the entire structure collapsed – the entire crowd holds their breath as you watch, then erupt in applause and cheers as they complete the tower and get everyone down safely.

Park Guell, more of Gaudi’s works:

After two exhausting days of walking, at least 15 miles a day, our feet were tired so we headed to the water to enjoy some Cava Sangria’s and dinner at a street side cafe. At this point we finally relaxed and realized what a rough life we are living. What a great way to end the day.

Oh yes, here is a picture of some food, Paella – delicious!

On Monday we got up and ventured to Girona where we actually flew in, the city was very quaint, parts of it reminded me a little of Italy.

We ventured into the Call, the old Jewish area, before they decided to expel them from Spain in 1492:

Of course, it had been perfect weather for the entire weekend, so it started to rain on our last day. We got out of the rain and explored the Jewish museum which talked about life in the Call and made a quick stop at the Arab baths - which after seeing the Roman baths in Bath, was pretty unimpressive.

To finish off our trip, and stay out of the rain until we left for the airport, we ended with a good Spanish beer at an Irish Bar. The perfect transition to our trip this weekend to Dublin!

Wales - land of Wrestling Fans

2009-04-09T21:13:00.013+01:00

We had an extension on the car; this really was our final weekend. Guess we can start with the new wheels:

Picked this up off ebay from a retired bike cop. One week down – besides getting lost a couple times on back roads, it wasn’t too bad. We live just under 5 miles from work, so it’s a good ride.

Back to the weekend, we visited the land of Greame’s. The Welsh were an interesting people; it’s hard to pinpoint the accents – somewhere between Austrian/German and British. There were a lot of French around too..

We headed out straight after work on Friday and stayed in Newport, outside of the capital Cardiff Friday night. Saturday morning we had an appointment for a tour at the only Welsh Whisky distillery. Prince Charles is a big fan and has visited a couple of times. The distillery was located in the Brecon Beacon’s national park – in the middle of nowhere.

Opened in 2004, only the second distillery in 160+ years. Here’s some pics:

One of the two remaining bottles from the last Welsh Distillery. Prince Charles is rumored to own the other one.. although he won't admit it:

The staff was pretty entertaining. There was some weight-lifting junky that was running the place and we got into a conversation about football, American-football, rugby and oddly, Professional Wrestling – WWF or WWE (whatever it is now). This guy was a huge fan, telling us about how he holds Wrestlemania parties and stays up all night with his buddies eating pizza, drinking beer, and watching Wrestling! Ahhh, the Welsh. Not the best first impression..

Next, we randomly decided to take a side trip on our way to the coast. Stopped at the Aberdulais Falls for a quick education on the history of the Welsh Tin industry. This was the heart of the prosperity of Wales until America took over the business creating an influx of Welsh Immigrants..

Here are some pics of the ruins of this small Tin Industrial town – currently powered completely by the electricity generated from its water wheel. The unneeded power is pumped into the national grid:

Smoke stack remaining from the ruins of the old Tin factories:

They love the ruins over here... the different buildings that made up this Tin town:

The falls.. The National Heritage Society places a strong emphasis on renewable energy and it's pretty impressive that this site is entirely powered by water and then some:

Sidetracked, we headed back to our original destination, the coast! We arrived in Mumbles and snapped some pics:

The train that circles the bay:

Then we started out further up the coast in search of the elusive ‘Three Cliffs Bay’:

Three Cliffs:

Finally, we made our way to the small coastal town of Rhossili. Possibly the sweetest ocean front property in the world:

And we capped the day off sitting atop the cliffs in Rhossili, watching the sunset:

Yes, we were here, these are our photographs. Unbelievable:

There were some hang gliders and para-gliders hovering above us for a few hours as we sat and waited for the sun to go down:

It’s hard to top that, and unfortunately, Cardiff didn’t. On our way to the capital we stopped at the Welsh National Museum and visited a cheesy re-creation of a Welsh town:

Lots of baby lambs out and about:

Toll house of the 1700-1800's to raise funds to improve the notorious roads of Wales. They charged depending on the animal that was pulling your carriage:

And, of course, Ye Olde Cocke Fighting ring. They built an entire building just for this. Standing in the center of this place you can imagine the energy and entertainment this brought in those times:

On the outskirts of this “open-air museum” there was a small castle with beautiful gardens and cascading ponds:

Just a quaint little castle.. built by a rich lawyer at the time that never even bothered to live there after building it!!

After that random stop, we headed into the capital and explored what it had to offer. There’s a massive castle in the center of the city, surprisingly called, Cardiff Castle; without much else to do in town, we took the tour.

Here’s some pics of Cardiff and our castle tour:

The rugby cathedral of Wales. If you remember, we were in Ireland and watched the championship game of Ireland vs Wales a couple weeks ago. This came up a few times while we were in Wales - ahh the sad faces of the people we spoke to as Wales lost to Ireland in the last 2 minutes:

Cardiff Castle, right in the center of the capital:

Click the picture, Ashley is looking down on us from the 2nd story window. We took a couple more with her at the top, but she was just a speck..

Some controversial architecture at the Castle. The rare colorful decorations that adorn the outside of this clock tower:

Ashley posing with the coolest symbol for a country, a red dragon on the castle grounds:

Lastly, Ashley wants everyone to see the Welsh Cakes – although Sally’s recipe is better. Mmmm, welsh cakes:

Wales had the most beautiful coast of any we’ve seen, so it was a great way to spend our last weekend with the car. But there’s plenty more adventure to come – we’ll be going to Scotland in May and have already booked flights to Barcelona; Dublin, Pisa (Florence and Tuscany); Amsterdam; and Krakow, Poland.

A full schedule and plenty more blog entries to come….

Ireland

2009-03-23T21:04:00.013Z

I'm back! Ashley took over the blog for a few weeks as I studied for my GMAT. Well worth the effort; my score improved considerably, especially in the "Maths" as they say here.

We’re going to skip our second trip to London and go straight to our trip to Ireland this past weekend. We’ll go back to London later – had a great time, finally got some Mexican in Camden, but more about that next week.

We booked our trip to Shannon, Ireland, £10 round-trip for BOTH of us – on an airplane!!! Yes, I don’t know how they do it, but we did it. Rented a sweet Panda to ride around in:

Hard to tell from the pic, but it’s about the size of a riding lawnmower. First time driving a manual transmission and having to shift with the left hand, but once I adjusted I was taking full advantage of all 35 HP the Panda had to offer.

Ireland is not part of the UK (Northern Ireland is, but do not call Ireland “Southern Ireland” as I quickly learned from our Ireland Sales Rep a couple months ago. He also taught me a lot about Rugby, which was handy for this trip). So Ireland measures speed and distance in Kilometers.

I set the GPS to avoid highways. The speed limit did not match the terrain in my opinion, but it made for a hell of a fun journey. Speed limit on this road 100 KMH:

Backtrack a bit, we spent the first night in Limerick. A major city, nothing that special about it. Guinness fuels this country. So we had to track down a pub to have a pint, even if Ashley isn’t a big fan:

Ooops, a little souvenir from the pub:

Pub that the glass wandered away from:

From Limerick we were heading to the Moher Cliffs. Just riding through the countryside of Ireland, soaking in the rawness that is Ireland – such a contrast to England’s perfectly manicured/farmed landscape, Ireland is all natural. It really represents it’s people – here I am, beauty in it’s natural form.

We arrive at the Cliffs of Moher – major tourist attraction. Very cool, although I don’t like that guy that’s constantly looking over my shoulder to make sure I don’t lean too far with my camera or lean too close to the edge, or touch something I’m not supposed to. Still breathtaking views:

All that bureaucracy, it takes some of the fun away… I’m still a 10 year-old at heart, I don’t want my parents constantly on my back. Oh wait, what’s this sign:

Hmmm.. “Please Do Not Go”… sounds like a “request” to me…

YES. This is what I’m talking about.. standing on the edge of a ledge, your heart thumping in your chest for a great pic and a great experience that will last a lifetime. Forget the walls and constrictions, going to the edge for an experience is what it’s about:

Well, Ashley still wasn’t satisfied – she wants to go to the coast and get closer to the water. So we head back down towards the village to find our way to the coast.

Some pics of the land and homes along the ocean:

Until we find our way to the water…

After I get completely soaked from getting just a rock too close, we decide to head into town and find a pub to enjoy another fine Irish beverage to relax and enjoy the beach.

It wasn’t too hard to find one of the most popular spots on the strip, grab a Smithwick and watch the surfers! Yes, 50 degrees and these fools are in the waves:

A brief side-trip to a town called Doonbeg in search of a recommendation from a co-worker that lead to a dead end, we started towards our next destination Galway – the 4th largest city in Ireland.

Along the route, there were a few opportunities to pull to the side of these tiny roads to get a few snapshots:

We arrive in Galway at sunset. Our hotel was right on the bay, so we ran out to get some last minute photos:

Then we were off to find dinner! I’m starving… the food in Ireland is fantastic!!

Every time we leave England, we quickly realize how horrible the food is. By the time we make it into town the Ireland vs Wales Rugby match is mid-game. No chance for food until this is over.. so we choose a pub (every single one is packed to the walls), manage to get a drink order in and watch the rest of the game. Ireland goes on to win its first Grand Slam in SIXTY-ONE YEARS in the last two minutes against Wales. The town erupts! I think Ashley is afraid; people are going nuts, what an atmosphere, what an experience.

We make our way to the back of the Pub to find the chef standing there with his arms crossed with nothing to do. He seats us, finds a waitress and we enjoy a fantastic meal as the crowd continues to go crazy in front of us..

Sorry, no pics of this experience. We weren’t going to risk being “tourists” in this atmosphere. Hopefully my words paint the picture.

Our final day, we toured around Galway’s downtown, visited a bunch of shops, grabbed a quick lunch and headed back to Shannon:

Ashley did manage to catch 2/3rds of the “Welcome to Ireland” sign at the airport:

Returned our Panda and back to England after a very enjoyable weekend of Ireland. I don’t know why, but much of the experience reminded me of America – maybe I’m starting to feel a bit homesick, but there were moments when I felt like I was back in NY and would be turning any minute to see my parents or that we’d be jumping on I-75 and on our way to see some long missed friends.

All except that I was sitting on the wrong side of the car and driving on the other side of the road, oh and the sheep… yeah, so we were definitely in Ireland. J

Canterbury, Dover, and Suffolk

2009-03-10T21:42:00.008Z

The weather was questionable all week, so we didn’t really make our travel plans until Friday night. We woke up Saturday morning and headed to Canterbury.

We saw a VW that had a strange sign on it, not for Wicked the play.

We have a habit of just putting in High Street into the GPS since that is generally the city center. Normally this works okay, but in Canterbury High Street is a pedestrian only road. We traveled on some little narrow streets and eventually had to turn around and quickly find the park-in-ride. If you are ever driving to a larger city in England, always go for the park-in-ride, it is just easier than the little streets around the city!

We finally arrive in the city center and start off by walking on the city wall towards the Canterbury Castle which was built in the 11th century.

Here are some pictures in the castle:

Then we headed off to the Canterbury Tales Visitor’s Attraction. This was a little silly; they have reconstructed different scenes from Canterbury tales.

Here is one of the characters telling us a story:

Next we headed down High Street and caught some glimpses of the Canterbury Cathedral.

We didn’t go into the cathedral, since it was a little pricey and all the cathedrals are really starting to blend together.

Jay found a “typical” looking British man he tried to get a shot of, he is wearing a tweed suit and carrying his top hat and umbrella (on a bright shiny day).

We finally ended up at the Canterbury museum which is housed in an old Priests’ hospital. It had a cool piece of artwork that explained Thomas Becket’s life. It also houses the Rupert Bear museum…it is some book/cartoon that must be big over here, but we have never heard of it.

Cool ceilings:

We did a little shopping before we left; I got 2 pashmina’s for about $6 from a street vendor, that is cheaper than NYC.

We left Canterbury around 3pm and decided to head to Dover since I was dying to see the coast.

We headed to the White Cliffs of Dover, and after we got there I think we both wished we had more daylight. It was a little foggy, however they say on a clear day you can see to France. We will defiantly go back to Dover and explore Dover Castle and spend more time at the White Cliffs.

The pictures don’t really do it justice:

A perfect view to end our day:

We decided that we would go check out Suffolk on Sunday, if it looked nice. It was supposed to a pretty rainy day. We woke up and it looked okay outside, I checked the weather reports and it didn’t look like rain until late afternoon. So off we go, headed to Aldeburgh which Jay was told has the best fish and chips in southern England.

We walked along the beach and saw everyone had paper bags from this fish and chip place and were eating on the beach.

As you can see there is quiet a line for the fish and chips – an hour later we strolled by and the line was twice as long!

Jay did say it is the best fish and chips he has had in England. He’s tried it 4 or 5 times at some local places in Stevenage and Hitchin (where we live and work), and until eating fish and chips in Aldeburgh he said it was forgettable – nothing that would be missed back in the States. When everyone says you have to have fish and chips in England, this is what they are talking about. (My chicken was like Mc D’s, but I guess that is what I get for not liking fish).

The North Sea is quiet different from any beach I have ever seen, it is covered in rocks. Apparently it is illegal to pick up rocks from any beach in England. Oops.

Here we are checking the water temperature, yes it is COLD.

They have little shacks on the beach were they sell fresh seafood, they pull their boats right out of the water up to the shack.

A mini rainbow row:

Since there was still some sun, we headed to Southwold, which we also told was a “better beach.”

Jay breaking another law and climbing on the rocks:

Not as many rocks on this beach:

I don’t know what this person was thinking, but they got in:

They have these little huts that they pull put on the beach, I guess for the winter they were in the parking lot – Jay was told they cost 55,000 pounds each! I really thought they were cute, so we got a little hut keychain to turn into a Christmas ornament.

Southwold had a pier with an “Under the Pier” show, which consisted of some very strange games.

Fly Driving:

Rent a dog:

Jay’s getting his daily exercise:

By this time, the storm finally caught up and it started raining, so we headed home.

There is a cool tunnel on the way we have driven through a couple of times:

So where to this weekend, well we don’t know yet. This is our last weekend with the company car, so I am sure we are off on another adventure…

Leeds, York and Nottingham

2009-03-05T22:39:00.011Z

We started out after work on Friday on the infamous M1…infamous for accidents that cause major traffic jams! The weekend before, what should have taken us an hour to get home, took 4 hours thanks to an accident that closed down the motorway – luckily this trip was only delayed by 2 hours.. never thought we’d miss Atlanta traffic.

Finally we arrive at our nice hotel, ye ole Holiday Inn Express in Leeds. Most of Leeds is very new; the area we were staying in pretty much had demolished all the old buildings and put up strip malls and a casino! Oh yeah, the Brits are huge gamblers… more to come on that at the Leeds United match.

We get up and wander around the town center, if you want to shop this is the place to go. We started off in the market, which was interesting…you can buy everything from fresh seafood to a washer or a TV. However, you cannot buy a football jersey in this market. We did find a sporting goods store and purchased an Everton jersey for Chip, mission accomplished.

After wandering through town, we headed to the Royal Armouries Museum. This museum is huge and surprisingly free.

Here are some pictures of what is in the museum, Chris’s dream vacation. I think he would live here if they’d let him:

Then onto our first football match, Leeds Untied vs Scunthorpe. We thought an hour to go 2.9 miles in the car would be plenty of time…when we pulled off the exit we were surprised. There were about 29.000 people at the game, and Leeds United is just League 1, not the Premier league. After finally finding a place to park, surprisingly we paid about $8 and were right next to the stadium.

Here is a shot of the crowd outside the stadium:

An odd thing about going to a football match in the UK is that you can buy beer, but you can’t bring it to your seat, but you can buy mini bottles of whiskey in the stadium store and bring that in with you???

Also there isn’t a scoreboard, so you just have to keep track in your head. The crowd did a lot of chanting, singing and taunting, but we couldn’t really understand what they were saying because of their cockney accents. The one thing I did understand was “The ref is a wanker! The ref is a wanker!”

Here’s a few more “action shots” from the match:

After the game, off to York, about 30 mins north of Leeds. We checked into our hotel and headed into town for our Ghost Tour. The group was pretty large, at least 50 people total. Our guide was exactly what you would expect leading the tour, very theatrical and dramatic. We got some good historical facts and a nice tour of the city to help us plan out or activities for the next day.

Jay, blinding the tour guide as he tries to tell a scary story…

Now that we have the lay of the land, we head out to York during the day. Here’s some shots:

In 1190, 150 Jews sought protection in the wooden version of this castle and rather than denounce their faith, murdered each other.. Supposedly when this stone castle was built, the stones bled.. you can still see pink on the stone:

York Castle, which houses some great recreations of old York, as well as debtor prison cells:

So random! The museum had these crazy cutouts in their courtyard.. Of course we snapped a couple shots:

More CRAZY cutouts… what’s the deal??

Condemned cell. Comfy bed, think it’s about the size of our bed at the flat:

Street performer:

Obligatory massive medieval cathedral:

Robert, food picture! Traditional Roast lunch:

The Shambles…. Wait a minute, holy crap! Is that a hobbit!?? Didn’t even see it, it’s like when you take a picture in an empty room in the middle of the night and people say there’s a ghost in the picture. That’s pretty cool.. I didn’t know hobbits showed up in pictures:

The old city wall that still surrounds the York city centre (yep, re):

A couple of cars for Robert:

That concluded our trip to York. Time to start heading towards home.. On our way we had one final destination for the weekend. Nottingham – the home of Robin Hood!

This city is in bad shape.. I think 1/3rd of the homes were for “let”, a lot of business closed down and hooligans out and about. It was quite sad as we drove deeper into the center. But we had two main destinations: Nottingham Castle and Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem. Here’s some pics:

Nottingham Castle – there are some really cool spots where they built it directly into the stone beneath it:

Main Entrance:

The Grounds (we had to sneak in, they were closed when we showed up):

Robin Hood and his Merry Men tribute:

On to the pub! 1189 AD !!?? Yes, the Crusaders drank here… supposedly the oldest pub in England. What an amazing atmosphere. This is again, built directly into the stone, literally beneath the foot of Nottingham Castle.

A couple pints of “Nottingham ale” and “Ye Olde Trip”:

After watching this British tool spend 15 minutes trying to play this game of throwing a ring and trying to catch it on a bull’s horn, I decided to give it a go, as they say. 3 minutes later.. yep, got it. J Of course, not wanting to be outdone, and stealing my style, the Brit got back up and finally got it on the horn. Cheater.

Notice the form.. back straight, eye on the target… haha:

The Horn:

Definitely the coolest pub in England:

So that’s it! What a great weekend. I don’t think we could have taken in anymore in a single weekend. As the time ticks away, and the looming deadline of giving the car back, I honestly feel we’ve experienced some of the best England has to offer. I look forward to the next couple of weeks and absorbing what’s left of our English travels before we start off for some serious European sight-seeing.

St. Albans and Windsor Castle

2009-03-03T20:11:00.006Z

Okay, so we are a little behind on this, but we will try to catch up this week.

We took off Saturday morning intending to do a quick stop in St. Albans and then head to Windsor Caste. We arrived in St. Albans and discovered a huge market. The market was pretty neat, less junk than many others we have been to, meaning not a track suit in site or any “trainers”. After browsing the market we ventured to St. Albans cathedral which has the oldest true nave in England.

At this point all the cathedrals are really starting to blend together. This one did have one very odd feature, the blue people:

After wandering through the cathedral, we headed back to town and saw the medieval Clock Tower, built between 1403 and 1412.

At this point we realized there was a lot to see here so Windsor Castle would have to wait a day. We left the town and then headed to the Verulamium Museum which displays’ Roman Britain. The museum was pretty cool; it had a lot of old coins and mosaics that they have discovered in the area. Also tombs, I didn’t think that part was so cool and was pretty gross.

Then off to the remains of the old Roman theater which was build around 130 AD. It was interesting to see that one column remains upright even today.

This is what it might have looked like in 130 AD.

Oh, I forgot to mention it was actually sunny for a change and we weren’t freezing cold.

After leaving St. Alban’s we drove to Letchworth Gardens, home of the first round-about in the UK.

Sunday morning we woke up and headed to Windsor Castle. It was a rough start to the day as we got to the parking lot and Jay realized that he left all the cash at home, so he had to find an ATM so we could pay to park. If you do ever drive to Windsor, take the park-in-ride into town, it is pretty expensive to park inside the city – around $15 for 5-6 hours!

Ok, a little history, Windsor Castle is the oldest and largest occupied castle in the world. The Queen spends weekends at the castle and this is also the place where people are knighted. It’s where Prince Edward and Miss Sophie Rhys-Jones were married in 1999. (We did some studying up on the royal family.)

Here is an overview of the castle:

The Queen was at the castle while we were there, you can tell by the flag that is flown:

We toured some of the staterooms, however no pictures were allowed. After viewing these rooms, you have a new appreciation of the Biltmore. The rooms were done in a similar fashion, but of course, with tax payer money. They had some extensive collections of guns and swords that were loaded down with diamonds.

Here is a picture of the gardens:

This is where the Queen stays:

It was awkward, people were walking up and posing with this guard, he didn’t blink, didn’t move, nothing. Here I am next to the guard, it seemed like I was closer than this picture shows:

Stay tuned for the next post, it was a busy weekend in Leeds, York and Nottingham, and yes our first football game.

Paris, the REST of the story...

2009-02-25T21:52:00.012Z

I’ve been slacking on the blog, we’ve already done another trip and I haven’t finished this one.

So here it is: Day 2, we get a late start to the day thanks to a couple baby bottles of wine and a stop at the Chat Noir for a follow-up. 11am, we’re ready to hit the tour bus for an overview of the city. We pick up the 2 day hop-on hop-off for $100+, I don’t even want to do the conversion for a bus ride!

First stop, the Louvre:

The Louvre is hardcore about it's art, even the "rule" signs are art:

The Louvre is utterly impressive.. as I’ve probably said fifty times before, you just can’t put a lot of these experiences into a 256kb pic on a blog. I’m almost doing this more to trigger the feelings and memories of our journeys than to share with the rest of you what we’re seeing. I’m just not skilled enough to express or photograph the experience properly, so I apologize.

To sum up the Louvre – I think I was more in awe of the museum or building itself than the priceless art and sculptures it contains. Although, Yan Pei-Ming’s art exhibition is not to be missed if it ever comes to a museum near you. We saw Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, maybe it was the hype, it was cool to see, but not the reaction I thought I would have seeing it in person. I mean, I have a slightly more than average interest in art, I’ve read “History of Art” for fun (the leading textbook used in most every art history major’s curriculum). So I have a good appreciation for the classics; but Yan Pei-Ming’s interpretation was just a smack in the face of freshness. Enough said, check out his work if you can.

Perpsective..

Some American's that we bartered photo skills with to take pics, I think they got the better deal, is that his friggin thumb in the bottom left of the shot?? Thanks.

Inside the Louvre:

Those are all the pics of what you’ve probably seen a thousand times before. We also took the time to check out the history of the Louvre. Here are some pics of the underground, the medieval history of the Louvre:

Model of the Castle that stood in the location of the current Louvre:

Some of the ruins:

Finished as much as our feet could handle of the Louvre, back to the tour bus!

Here’s some pics from around Paris:

Arc de Triomphe:

La Madeleine's Paris. Supposed to have some great acoustics, no windows:

What the....... Brit Car:

Holy crap, is that my dad!? Scooters are popular in France. They are EVERYWHERE... didn't realize what a man of the world my dad was:

Notre Dame, yep, we went to Paris. Here's the proof:

Point ZERO. This is where all distances to Paris are measured from.

La Bastille!

Back to the museums, we visited Musee D’Orsay the last day of our trip. There just isn’t enough time or scar tissue on the bottom of my feet to appreciate all that Paris has to offer. Great exhibits, from Roman sculptures to impressionist paintings, to da Vinci, to once again the structure itself.. Here’s a pic from the top floor of the Musee D’Orsay:

Finally, we got a tip from someone Ashley knows that has spent a lot of time in Paris. We skipped the huge lines to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower (feeling a little regret, but hopefully we’ll go back), instead we went to the top of Tour Montparnasse. As I said, Paris does not have a lot of tall buildings, but Montparnasse is one of the few, it’s 56 stories tall. You can go to the roof and get a 360 degree view of all of Paris, truly one of the best tips we’ve been given. Have a look at some of the pics from that experience and I think you’ll agree:

Just before sunset...

The Eiffel tower at Sunset:

Les Invalides!

The Tower sparkles on the hour with thousands of bulbs...

Unfortunately I injured my ankle weeks ago on a previous weekend trip, around the Stratford-Upon-Avon timeframe. Ashley wears her pedometer all the time – we’ve averaged 20+ miles a weekend walking. My ankle cut our trip a couple hours short in Paris as we haven’t exactly been sitting around to give it time to heal. I held out until it got to the point where I doubted I would be able to make it to our airplane without high-jacking a Rascal (scooter old people ride). :) I can’t begin to tell you the immense pain I was in, three steps and I had to stop.. it got bad! According to Ashley we still pulled off about 15 miles that day alone !!

Naturally, we took a lot more pics than we’ve posted. But Paris is a city that filled the appetite from many aspects and left you wanting more: aesthetically with it’s architecture and layout, visually with it’s unending supply of art/museums, culturally with it’s lackadaisical side street café’s and way of life, culinarily with it’s selection of restaurants that produce some of the best food we’ve had in months.. time and the beating your body takes trying to absorb everything it offers is the only limitation. Worth the pain.

Oh yeah, and they still serve beer at Mcd’s !

Paris in a nutshell. We went to St Albans & Windsor Castle this past weekend, maybe I'll have something posted up before the weekend. We'll see...

Bonne Saint Valentin

2009-02-18T23:18:00.008Z

Four years of French, straight A’s and couldn’t understand a word. Ash and I spent Valentine's weekend in Paris. There’s a street named Franklin Roosevelt, which in French is apparently pronounced “Frrron Rrroooooooos”. No hope if we can’t even understand English.

We flew Easyjet, which everyone scoffed at - as if we were going to be strapped to a plywood seat and water-boarded on the flight over (ouch, sorry, has Obama signed any bills to fight that yet? Maybe a few hundred billion should take care of it). Maybe we got lucky, but I found it pretty much the same as flying any other airline. It was a bit hectic flying back from Charles De Gaulle; it wasn’t as organized as the flight from Luton, so you had to be a little aggressive to make it to the front of the line since they don’t assign seats, but otherwise, a comfortable flight, polite flight attendants. We will definitely fly with them again.

The first night we checked into the hotel and immediately ventured out to find a fondue restaurant I came across online:

It was full of French charm from the time we walked through the door… hot and stuffy, no personal space, rude staff and belligerent owners. All that I hoped it would be!

Two long communal tables, you sit shoulder to shoulder, the girls have to climb over the table to their seat and they serve wine in baby bottles:

Apparently wine served in stemmed glasses are taxed, so this restaurant came up with a convenient way around the law…

I placed our order in French, fairly straightforward, cheese or meat fondue are your only options and red or white wine. Fromage et rouge s’il vous plait. Appetizing, non?

So as we eat our dinner of bread and hot cheese, sipping on vin rouge, it’s inevitable to make friends with those next to you. Luckily we had a couple of Brits next to us – ahh, English, you gain such an appreciation. They were celebrating their birthdays, which were only days apart. We made the London connection and got past all the basics, working there until June, blah blah, so I asked how old they were – 19 and the other 20 !! Wow, we’re getting old. Haha.. I knew they were younger, but 19??? Geez.

At this point we’re down a couple baby bottles, I had to run out and find an ATM since the place doesn’t take cards and we hadn’t stopped to get cash yet, so by the time I get back (an adventure in and of itself), the owner’s are ready for us to leave. It’s a prix-fixed menu, we’ve been talking to this other couple for an hour plus since we finished dinner, so the owner comes over and bangs on the table and tells all of us to leave. Ahhh, Paris…

It’s late, but our night isn’t over… we’re in the Montmartre area of Paris. We grab a glass of wine at the famous Chat Noir and wander by another famous place:

Then it’s back to the metro:

5 flights of stairs... THAT'S why everyone was lining up for the elevator. Eh, after a bowl of cheese, I suppose we could use the exercise :)

The Eiffel tower looks amazing at night, a monstrosity in a city of low lying buildings, but when the tens of thousands of lights sparkle on the hour, it is a sight to see. We make our way through the quiet streets to the base of the tower, no crowds, it’s like we have it all to ourselves. So we take advantage of the opportunity for some great pictures before going back to the hotel for a long night’s sleep to prepare for the miles of walking to take place over the next few days:

I’ve dreamed of coming to Paris since 8th grade when I started taking French. It intrigued me from day one - who knew I would have such an opportunity this early, I thought it would happen at some point in the future, when I retired.. the first night lived up to all of my expectations and more..

This is just the beginning, but it’s late and I’ve got a lot more pics to share.. stay tuned!

Let is Snow!

2009-02-11T22:01:00.004Z

Last weekend we didn’t get to do too much because of the biggest snow storm in 20 years. The storm was a front from Russia and pretty much lasted the entire week. Of course the British aren’t used to this sort of snow and ran out of “grit” (dirt) and had to order tons of table salt to put down on the roads.

Here are some pictures:

This is a crappy job; they are shoveling the grocery store parking lot.

I don't know what someone was doing here, but it is funny looking.

Making a snowman.

The kids are trying to "sledge" down this little hill. There is a bigger hill in town, but it was muddy from everyone sledging on it all day.

St. Mary's Church:

We did venture out to the biggest Saturday market in England. The GPS took us down some narrow road. I don’t know how you would fit two cars down it; luckily we didn’t have to find out. The one road was so iced over that it took several tries for us to make it up the hill. If it weren’t for Jay’s Yankee driving skills we would have turned around. Finally we made it to this market and ahh, wasn’t so impressed. But, if you need an Adidas track suit, let us know because that was about the only thing to buy. Very disappointing, but we did end up seeing Slum Dog Millionaire later. At the movie theater here, you get two choices of popcorn, sweet or salty. The sweet is basically kettle corn and the salty is American popcorn, minus the extra butter. So if you ever venture to the movies in England I would recommend the sweet.

We are off to Paris for the weekend, and I am sure Jay will have some more interesting things to share next week.

Need a Bath

2009-02-03T21:20:00.019Z

Warning - This post is potentially NSFW. If you don't know what that means, you'll figure it out when you get to the bottom and the title of this post will become clear.

I'm going to let the pictures do most of the talking. We went to Bath, Swindon and Oxford this past weekend. Working the adventure backwards on this one...

Sunday was spent in Oxford.

First objective, find some sort of medeival structure to climb... lucky for us every friggin town we go to has one! Here are some pics from the top of Carfax tower located in the center of Oxford:

Carfax tower - the name was derived from the french for Crossroads.. not the company that researches your car VIN and gives you a report. They haven't started selling off sponsorships for their ancient buildings in England yet.

After freezing our butts off on the top of the tower, we grabbed some lunch at a great little cafe Ashley spotted down a random side street and tried to warm up a bit before our 2 hour walking tour.

The walking adventure begins.. we had the most awkward tour guide assigned to us, Ashley remembered her name for some reason - Sally. Sally would provide some great little piece of trivia, then stare at everyone for 30-45 seconds without saying anything, not moving, just staring. Then we'd move on.

Sally: "George Washington's Great-Great-Grandfather went to this school and took off without paying his debt. In 1924 some Canadian & American lawyers visited and paid off the debt without interest."

staring....... silence......everyone else looking around at everyone else....... silence......

Sally: "Let's go, um, over, um, this, um, way....."

UHHHHH.... great Sally, you're friggin riveting.

Back to the pics:

Exeter College, famous graduate: J.R.R. Tolkien and RICHARD BURTON ! No idea who he is.

Crew is the most popular sport at Oxford, with their biggest rival being Cambridge, of course. When a crew on crew gets 4 "bumps" in a season (which is apparently difficult, I'm sure you guys are all Crew experts), they get to do some art on the side of the buildings at the college. Here's an example from 2005... there's still remnants going back into the early 90's on some walls.

From Exeter, we went on to New College. Famous graduate: Hugh Grant, Fellow: Richard Dawkins.

New College also maintains a section of the original wall that surrounded the city.

New College courtyard. You can also see part of the New College Cathedral:

The students dining hall. The students come to dinner in gowns, which is a tradition they voted to keep. Fellows and their guests are seated at the front of the room. The hall is exactly as it would have been when it was originally built:

And finally, a really intense sculpture in the nave of New College Cathedral... when we walked in I was so focused on trying to get feeling back in my face from the blistering cold that when I looked up and saw this, it caught me by surprise, my eyes popped open and I fell in love with it immediately. It's probably 8 feet high and the freaky way the head was contorted and looking over the shoulder of a wrapped body was completely unexpected. Probably the coolest piece of art I've seen the entire trip.. it represents Lazarus in the tomb..

The walking tour finally concluded and we remembered that our tour guide pointed out a Science Museum near us that had free admission - so to get out of the cold (and find a bathroom), we ran in and found this:

It's an original chalkboard that was preserved following a lecture from Albert Einstein. Random, but pretty neat.

Finally - on our way out of Oxford, we bumped into the 4th street vendor on our trip:

Back to Swindon. Ashley's favorite trip in the UK so far.... why would that be? Ancient relics? Rare finds? Unexplored territories? Oh no, wait a minute, they have OUTLETS in England??

Whew, made it just in time to spend a couple hundred bucks. That was close. :)

That's all I have to say about Swindon, except you get what you pay for when it comes to hotels. Just know that and you're good.

Now it's Saturday. We set out for Bath Park & Ride and some 4 yr old kid, who's mouth never stopped running the entire trip from Park & Ride to City Center, points out a random pig in a schoolyard. Then we saw another one in a market, so I was on the hunt for pigs for the rest of our stay in Bath.. later found out it was part of a massive public art project, these are the remants that never made it through auction I guess. You'll see them scattered among the posts below..

Hey look, another medieval cathedral! It really does show the power and wealth the Church held. This is Bath Abbey, quite imposing in the center of town, it easily outclasses any surrounding buildings:

After a tour of the Abbey, we made our way to the Roman baths. Quick fact, the baths are still fed via the same pump system the Romans built. Approximately 250,000 gallons a day of piping hot spring water... they throw in a free glass of it at the end of the tour, it's delicious, you should really try some.....

The red-nosed romans. A campaign to raise money through laughter to help disadvantaged people in the UK and Africa..

This place is enormous. The pictures don't do it justice, here's a random pool that sick people would float in to get healed by the waters.

Lookout.. random pig!

Trying to catch a breather and let my feet rest. Ahh.. nice comfy rock.

PIGS

Pulteney Bridge with shops lining both sides. From gift shops to clothing stores.

Found this maze in a park below the bridge as we wandered randomly around bath.. Ashley sat around freezing, hoping some of the little kids would run into me so she could catch it on camera. And to point out that I was the only adult trying to make it through... :)

Hey, it's the 3rd street vendor we encountered on our trip... this is getting interesting.. that's a guy. Probably the most obscene thing we'll see in Bath... mwahaha

Yep, found another one. This pig was in the middle of nowhere, I barely caught it out of the corner of my eye and made Ashley walk down to the building it was on so I could get a pic:

-------------------------------------------------

Well, we're back to the beginning of our weekend trip and the Grande Finale! We made it to Bath, a properous, sophisticated, classy city. A city of nobles. We jump off the bus in the city center, turn the corner and see a crowd gathering. What the......

Is that dude wearing a thong, in 30 degree weather? Holy crap, it's two dudes....

Playing with fire. But just when you thought it couldn't get any better... keep scrolling down.

Look closely at the next pic... yep, those are sparklers.

The first two street vendors of our trip!

I need a bath.

Close to "Home"

2009-01-28T21:32:00.011Z

Ash and I decided to keep it local this past weekend. Every weekend we’ve taken off to visit other cities and never experienced what our “hometown” has to offer on the weekend. So Saturday was spent exploring Hitchin, in all it’s glory.

The town really starts to bustle first thing - all the shops are open, the town center gets setup with some carnival rides for the kids, a violinist & vocalist set up shop with their speakers and CD’s for the adults, the farmer’s market in full swing and crazy costumed marketers are out pushing their local store’s wares.

We started the morning off at the bakery – a sausage roll for me and a cheese twist for Ashley. Breakfast £1.85

Unfortunately, with our focus on fighting our way to the frontlines to place our order, we failed to order anything to wash down our freshly baked breakfast… ugh.. no way we’re fighting that crowd again for a chocolate milk, so we opt for the old Starbucks.

Hot chocolate and a coffee £5.50… haha. Yes almost 4 times the amount of our breakfast for two drinks, gotta love paying the American premium!

Oh yeah, side note, finally converted my keyboard to UK standard – I held out as long as I could, but the fact that I work in an Accounting dept in the UK it was getting old typing out the word “pounds” instead of having the symbol and my colleagues were really getting tired of me calling everything dollars, it tends to cause confusion. Especially given the fact we have three bank accounts: Dollar, Euro and Pound and I have been assigned the fun task of switching all of our accounts to a new bank! It’s critical to use the correct terminology referring to money or I could get us into some trouble…..

So a quick note on the exchange rate.. Starbucks £5.50 equals about $7.98 !!!!! Gasoline (Petrol) prices, of course they charge per liter because it looks better, but I worked the formula out for you all:

£0.84 per liter. 3.8 liters per gallon. £0.84 * 3.8 = £3.19 per gallon * $1.45 (Avg FX Rate) = $4.63/Gallon !!!! And this is the lowest it’s been in around 8 years !

Enough math, back to Hitchin, wish I could say I had some pics to share, but apparently we took all of ONE picture during our adventure… haha.. here it is:

Dude was rocking the electric violin.. We spent a good 15-20 mins just soaking in the amazing music and singing that these guys were pumping into the streets:

After visiting every shop in Hitchin, we spent some time at the Hitchin museum (all the way across the street from our flat) studying up on the history of this great little town. It was time well spent getting to know all the in’s and out’s of our home for the next 5 months (time is flying)...

On Sunday, we went to Cambridge! What a crappy day to tour around… the temperature just kept dropping as the day went on and the rain got stronger. But in spite of it all, we had our best shopping experience yet. They had an amazing craft market in the town center. Here’s some pics from our day in Cambridge:

Cambridge is just an amazing city to see. The entire town seems to be plucked from the middle ages - new shops occupy these amazing structures everywhere, it's a very cool experience. In the middle of it all is the market:

None of the pictures i'm posting do it justice - the weather was miserable. You can see the sidewalks..

This was more of a crafts market.. there was a lot to see here. We picked up some great hemp shopping bags (because we're hippies now... the UK is VERY environmentally conscious, if you use plastic bags you get evil looks everywhere! haha). The bags came in handy as Ashley found some art to make our flat more comfortable. We came across a home brewer of flavored liquors and bought a bottle of some "damskin" flavored Gin in a cool looking bottle.. this is what we were looking for, some local talent and craftsmanship.

All this shopping was making me hungry, it was getting closer to lunch time. Luckily for me there were some vendors in the market. Here I am, clearly enjoying an Ostrich burger.. mmmm:

I also sampled some Ostrich sausage.. it was actually pretty good. Supposedly more healthy than beef, it tasted pretty similar.. I could eat more.

From the market, we explored the colleges that surround us on every side. Cambridge is literally a college town. You could close yours eyes and walk in any direction and you'd manage to encounter some world-renowned school.

Here's a shot of the courtyard entrance to King's college:

And the famous mathematical bridge at Queen's college. Yep. I'm sure Omer will appreciate this more than the rest of us, with his love of engineering.

As the day got worse, we tried to wait out the evensong ceremony at King's College. We went to a pub to dry out, waste some time and watch some football (soccer), had a beer, then off to church.

Wow. The sun was setting on this dreary day by the time the service was beginning. People were huddled in the arch of the entrance to stay out of the rain. You enter the cathedral and even with the amazing church's we've experienced so far, you can truly understand the awe that is inspired when you entire a place like this. The ceilings 100 ft high, with intricate tracing and a detailed wood organ screen carved with amazing detail. I wish pictures were allowed, but because we entered a service, they were restricted.

The choir enters and the service begins, and I don't care what you believe, I'm not catholic, not very familiar with their rituals, but the choir's echo off the walls of this building sets you at ease and allows you to forget the rest of the world for an hour.

We were ready to go home after the service. A perfect way to end the day, at peace, a little cold, but ready to face another week before our next adventure.

That's all for our trip.. a new British word for the week: Daft.

Used in a sentence: It's daft to spend two hours in the rain to see a 30 minute service. :)

Bath and Oxford this weekend!

Happy 30th Tom!

Salisbury

2009-01-20T19:40:00.009Z

Forget weather forecasts – supposed to be rainy all weekend. We contemplated staying home; thankfully we took the chance and decided to book a hotel room in Salisbury.

Interesting choice as far as my colleagues were concerned. Again, now that they know we are planning a trip every weekend, they want to know when, where and WHY. To most people around the office, Salisbury is a “nice place to visit.” To me, it was always on the agenda – an absolute. Really it’s all about my father-in-law and a book called Sarum.

About 2 years ago I was given this book by Ashley’s father which traces the history of the southern part of England from prehistoric times through today. It’s a fictional history based on fact (as far as the facts can be discerned). It was one of his favorites, if not his favorite book. Now, I’m not saying it was an easy read, the longest book I’ve ever read, 1344 pages – I think even he would agree it isn’t an “easy read.” Although, nothing worth having is ever easy.

I finished the book before ever knowing we would have the opportunity to come to England – I made it about halfway through before her father passed away and got motivated to finish the book when we went on vacation with Ashley’s family in Topsail North Carolina in July 2008. I ultimately finished it around the beginning of September. In November I found out we had the opportunity to come to the UK.

Immediately, my first thought centered around visiting Old Sarum and walking the grounds this book covered. When explaining to everyone at work where we planned to visit, it was interesting to see that none of them had even heard of “Old Sarum” ! They were like “old what????” They’ve long given into the idea that I’ll know their country better than them (scary thought); sadly, just as most foreigners could pass a test granting them citizenship to the US that 80% of American’s couldn’t get through.

Anyway, getting off on a tangent – but this was easily one of my favorite trips so far. I reserved seats at one of “britain’s most sought after restaurants” for dinner. We played it safe though - steaks and mashed potatoes for our main and deep fried goat cheese with cranberry for an appetizer. Absolutely delicious ! We stayed away from the Kidney pudding and the Wild Boar and Venison Sausages.

Okay okay, enough talk, I know, let’s see some pics… before dinner we visited Salisbury Cathedral. I managed to get us into the single tour they offer, limited to 12 people for the “tower tour.” Here’s some pics from this amazing experience:

Our approach to the cathedral:

A shot from the restaurant at the cathedral...

A level up, a view of this medieval Cathedral:

Yup, this is how you work your way up the spire... The local boy scouts built a new spiral staircase for us to climb. I'm sure it's safe:

Here's the inner workings of the spiral. Remember, this is the tallest spire in all of England - this is what holds it all together:

A view of the Cathedral at night.. quite breathtaking:

Before the cathedral, we arrived and spent our day at the market. Just follow the signs to some areas you may have heard of:

Ahhhh... feel so at home. Just follow the sign:

The Salisbury Cathedral is also home to one of the 4 remaining copies of the Magna Carta. They house one of the most well preserved copies from 1215. This is the basis of most of the Constitution of the United States of America. Obviously no pictures were allowed here, so unfortunately I can’t share them with you.

I would describe most of this trip as a “spiritual” experience. Truly, you are placing yourself into the hands of what created modern history as we know it. To be within inches of an original document that gave birth to the US Constitution is quite an experience.

Prior to Salisbury, there was a city among itself that King’s visited frequently and traces back to ancient times, Old Sarum. Here are some pics from our visit:

Me, trying to absorb whatever I can from the site:

The old Cathedral foundation. They were very environmentally conscious.. once they decided to move the town 5 miles south, they used all available resources. Including the stones from the old cathedral and castle in Old Sarum to create the new town of Salisbury:

Okay.. it's hard to resist, stones are sticking out of the wall:

Um, yeah..

Finally, Stonehenge. You come to England, you have to visit the tourist sites. We gave in and visited one of the most visited areas in the world and listened to the speculation of the site. Interestingly, the most powerful feeling is when you come over a hill on a highway and Stonehenge comes into view. It’s one of those things that hits the center of your belly in a way you never would have thought. That feeling supersedes anything you experience once you actually stand before it, so here’s some pics of us once we were within feet of the monument:

The obligatory holding of the stones, Ashley was too afraid to make a fool of herself. Me - not so much:

A shot of the henge... what was the purpose?

We also had a chance to catch a play while in Salisbury. I got some front seat tix to “A Convicts Opera”. The story centered around Britain sending their convicts to Australia and a group of convicts were tasked with putting on a play for the Captain. Of course I was pulled out of the audience and brought on stage to be harassed. I had some horrible smelling shaving cream put all over my face and shaved with a dull straight razor in front of the crowd. Entertaining for Ashley as I played along with the actors on their trip to Australia.. again no pics allowed, sorry kids.

Oh! Yes, have to share some British with you. So many choices, my life is filled with terms that are entertaining to hear as an American.

British word of the week: Dodgy.

Used in a sentence: We did not encounter any dodgy characters on our trip, although some of the construction we encountered in the cathedral tour was quite dodgy and held together by the grace of God. You have the pics, what do you think?

Weekend Trip #1 - Stratford-Upon-Avon and Warwick Castle

2009-01-11T19:57:00.020Z

Okay, this is a long one. If you manage to get to the bottom, there's a special prize for you though.

As I said in the last blog, the company has given me a car. As luck goes, here's what they gave me..

Sporty huh? Oh yeah, and realized the antenna is gone, so I get to listen to the one AM radio station that comes in until I get that fixed.

Day 1 with the car:

Yep, snow. England is going through an unusual cold spell at the moment so the day I get the car we are hit with a blizzard. Since the temperature in our area doesn't normally remain below freezing, they don't do anything with the snow as they think it will just melt quickly anyway. Due to the cold spell, it ices over instead!

I get the keys from our HR woman and head out to the car (4pm, dark), find the car by hitting the panic button on the key fob, and jump in......... the passenger seat. Hmm.. things aren't boding well for a safe journey home.

It's easy to think about everything and say, well it's simple enough, everthing is just on the opposite side. Right. Now put that into practice. Ignore everything you've known your entire life. Come to England and see how long it is before you start looking the right way before crossing the street. Now jump in a car, in the dark, on icy roads and drive yourself home!

Thank God for GPS! and the internet, for giving us the European maps. Traffic is horrible at rush hour, rivaling Atlanta traffic even. That's actually a good thing though, because I only have to make decisions at 15-20 MPH as opposed to 70 MPH (the speed limit when no sign is posted here in the UK). The roundabouts are the most stressful part of driving - there seems to be one every 2-3 miles and there are roads that shoot off of them every few feet. Roundabouts vary in size, they aren't all like the one you see in National Lampoons European Vacation, sometimes they're just a concrete circle in the ground - 5 feet across and 3 inches high - but it's still a roundabout, although most of them are rather large with 4 or 5 exits off of them.

I did have a little bit of a "look kids, there's Big Ben!" moment on my first trip home though: the road to our flat is immediately after exiting a roundabout. So you literally have to jump into the roundabout, shoot off the 2nd exit, get to the right lane immediately and make the turn. Well, I got it the 3rd time around. I could see the flat, I just couldn't get there the first two times...

I had a whole week to practice, so with the wagon fueled up we're ready for our first weekend daytrip! First plan, hit Birmingham - the second largest city in England. I run it by the girls at work and they laugh and say, "Why would you go to Birmingham???" I bump into a few other people at work and they all have the same response.. Well, I'm determined we at least go for dinner since there is an Indian dish called Balti that supposedly originated here.

With that said, I get opinions from everyone on where we should visit, Stratford-Upon-Avon and Warwick castle were mentioned - so, with a little research, we're in.

First stop, Warwick Castle. Built in 1068 by William the Conqueror, with many restorations over the years. Here's some pics from that visit:

Ashley in the stocks:

The main living quarters entrance:

Library in the living quarters:

One of the many bedrooms, this particular one was given to the Duke of Wales since he visited the castle so often. The woodwork throughout this entire bedroom was amazing. The bed is a pretty good example:

Ashley, beginning our journey to the top of the towers! They warn you before you begin that it's over 500 steps or so on spiraling, STEEP steps. They weren't kidding:

A look back down the first stairwell....

Whew, first break, we took a pic of ourselves a quarter of the way up:

Steps to the next level, good thing Earl of Warwick thought to install handrails :)

To give you a little perspective of how tight the stairwells in the tower are.. onto the final steps:

Wow, we're at the top. The second tower's stairwell was no joke; I didn't think we were ever going to make it to the top. But, check out the views! This is a shot looking down to where we took the pic of ourselves that I posted above:

A pic of the oldest and original section of the castle:

A look down on the living quarters:

Caesar’s Tower, dungeon in the basement (which was blocked off when we went):

Oh yeah, didn’t mention the weather on the day of our trip. This is typical of what we’ve seen almost everyday. Foggy, mists of rain/snow flurries. You can really see it in this pic of Warwick Cathedral, located in town:

That will do it for pics of the castle. There were many more taken, but it’s too much work to post them all! Overall, we really enjoyed the castle and reading the history that took place there. Check out the Wikipedia page to read more about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warwick_Castle

*************

Next, we drove about 10 miles west of Warwick and visited the birthplace of William Shakespeare, Stratford-Upon-Avon. We bought a ticket that gave us access to the home he was born in, the home he retired in and the home of his son-in-law, a prominent doctor at the time.

Ashley and I are certainly not experts on Shakespeare, we didn’t even bother to research anything about the significance of the homes we were visiting prior to going. It was great; I looked at Ashley on our way to Nash’s House and was like “So what’s the deal with this place?” She responds “I don’t know.. it was 3 for 1 on the ticket.” Haha, well, that works for me. I like a deal.

Each place had very knowledgeable guides (as far as we know), some even dressed in period clothing, that gave you a thorough overview of the history of the home, the significance and an idea of life in the time of Shakespeare.

Pictures weren’t allowed inside of the homes, but here’s some of the outside for the rest of you. At least you won’t be as ignorant as we were if you ever get a chance to visit.

Shakespeare’s birthplace. Pretty self-explanatory:

Front of the home:

Nash House/New Place. This is where Shakespeare retired and ultimately died in 1616. His wife Anne is also believed to have died here in 1623. The guide at this place was really long-winded, but gave a pretty good history of Shakespeare’s life and how he came to be successful, as well as discussing some of the controversies of the Shakespeare family.

Side view and gardens:

The final destination on our 3 for 1 ticket! Hall’s Croft. Shakespeare’s daughter Susannah married a Cambridge educated doctor, Dr John Hall. John Hall bought and enlargened this home, with portions of it dating back to the 1500’s. Some great paintings from the 16th and 17th Century are here as well, again no pics on the inside, but here’s the outside:

A cool tree in the backyard:

Finally, with a headache from ALL of the knowledge we now possess of Shakespeare, we hit up the oldest pub in Stratford-Upon-Avon for a beer before our trip home:

On our way out of town we did manage to catch a glimpse of Ye Olde Pizza Hut:

So that's all for our first trip. We probably took another 100 pics to chronicle our adventure, someday we'll post them all up on Kodakgallery or something for those of you that just haven't had enough!

As promised, British word of the week: Gobsmacked.

Used in a sentence: I'd be gobsmacked if half of you read this entire long-winded post!

Next week, we're thinking Bath or Salisbury... until then.

London - Overview

2009-01-05T21:36:00.010Z

We decided to make a trip to London Saturday. The plan was to jump on an open-top bus tour and get an overview of the city. Step 1, always check the weather before you plan your trip. Step 2, travel arrangements.

Weather: 0 degrees (celsius of course), but sunny ! This should be PERFECT for an open-top bus tour... hmm.

Travel: It's simple! We walk to the train station in Hitchin, no problem. Purchase a ridiculously priced ticket to London, easy enough. Make the train on time (we already know about Ashley's issues with making trains), should be doable. Then we'll just conveniently jump on-board the bus tour that's going to stop right outside Kings Cross. So on we go.

We make the train out of Hitchin; arrive at Kings Cross, flawlessly; then walk out to catch our tour bus. We're thinking, easy enough, just look for a red double-decker bus. See London metro bus pic below:

Twenty minutes later, Ashley spots our stop, only 45 minutes until the next time it comes around! (0 degrees).. We jump on board and begin the tour.

Kings Cross is in the North of London, nothing really to see there, a lot of rundown buildings and renovation, so we decide to stay downstairs and warm up as much as possible until we join the main tour line, beginning at Speaker's Corner - the place where those condemned to hanging were allowed to give their last words, along with a pint of Ale.

Nothing really special to speak of regarding the tour that you probably haven't already seen on TV. We did decide to ride on the top of the bus for most of the tour, which was absolutely freezing but otherwise not worth being there. A couple observations though: One is that Big Ben isn't nearly as big as I thought it would be. Two, the buildings and architecture in London blow away anything I've seen in NYC. The palaces contained within the City would be worth a second look. Most of the newer areas could be found in any other major city in the world, no character, franchised shopping, blah blah, etc...

We did the typical Buckingham palace stop, took some pics that I'll post below. Rode over the Tower Bridge (commonly mistaken as London Bridge), rode under London Bridge (just a normal bridge, not impressive, didn't even take a pic, wasn't worth the 250kb of reusable camera memory).

Hey, look it's one of those guards that don't notice you, walking back and forth in sub-zero temps.

Ashley standing at the gates of Buckingham Palace (she's the one on the right, bundled up so much you can barely tell there's a person inside the jacket, scarf and british hat):

Little Ben, so much cooler than Big Ben:

TOWER BRIDGE, yeah that's right, you thought it was London Bridge:

After the tour, we decided to stick around and check out China town and eat some good chinese food. The Chinatown in london is VERY small and is composed of about 100 chinese restaurants all right next to each other, very few merchants and not a single Coach knockoff in sight! Seriously, why go to Chinatown if you aren't going to purchase mass quantities of illegal items and sell them on ebay for 3 times the price?? The kung-pow chicken was delicious though.

Entrance to the largest Chinese food court in the world:

After a few days here and having had the chance to travel around, we've found that there are a lot of chains in England, including the pubs. Although few manage to retain the character that Hitchin has to offer. Don't ask if they are going to put American Football on the tv either (even though they subscribe to Sky sports that I KNOW is airing the game), especially when some apparently important soccer, oh sorry, football, games are on. Oh yeah, and DARTS?? Who the H-E-Double-Hockey-Stick (kid friendly) watches darts??? Enjoy the playoffs jerks.

PS - We did finally get feeling back in our fingers and toes after our tour... Note: Do not do Open Top tours in London in Winter, even when it's "sunny." Oh yeah, and we got a car today! Stay tuned for the next adventure..

Goodbye ATL, Hello Hitchin

2009-01-01T17:30:00.012Z

Well, I didn't really believe it was going to happen, but we started our blog. Hopefully we'll stay on top of it - i'm sure we'll be harrassed by friends and family if we start to let it slide! So here goes..

Pre-departure: First and foremost, the entertainment center I started to build around March (?) was completed and moved from the garage to the living room before the end of the year. (ok, so it's not exactly completed to the original specs, and I think I said it would be done by May, but whatever, it's functional).

With the entertainment center finally setup, a thorough house-cleaning, a seemingly endless list of "to-do's" finally completed and minutes ticking away before we leave for the UK for 6 months, there was a feeling of sadness of all the things we're going to miss - hanging out with friends, a couple birthdays (the big 3-0 for a couple people, goodbye 20's old people, you know who you are), and the familiarity and comfort of everyday life to name a few - Atlanta was sure to give us one last reminder of what we won't miss, the traffic! A sluggish trip through downtown to make sure we burn some lasting images of home before we go.

We finally arrive at the airport with 3 large bags, 3 carry-ons and, of course, a golf bag - making sure to take full advantage of the airline weight limits, we ended up checking 200 lbs and carrying on almost another 100 (this is in addition to the 6 boxes we shipped before we left).

A horrible 8 1/2 hour flight (for Jay) and we find out the trains don't run on New Year's, but we have our taxi waiting for us and our bags. The driver assists with a look of amazement on his face that two americans have brought this much junk on vacation and I say, "We're moving here for 6 months." He quickly replies "It shows." Which brings us to:

THE BRITISH WORD OF THE WEEK: Rubbish

Used in a sentence: Ashley's running skills are rubbish, so we missed our train to Stevenage.

Toured Hitchin on New Year's day, everything closed, except a couple restaurants. Had some AMAZING pizza (this is Jay writing, yes, i'm as surprised as you, pizza was great). Jan 2nd, went to Stevenage to give the train system a test run. Ashley made her first British clothing purchase, a new hat!

That's all for now. Here's some pics Hitchin and our flat:

Main street into Hitchin:

St Mary's Church, believed to have been built upon a church dating back to 792 AD, portions of the current structure date back to 1115:

The view of our building from the outside:

Master bedroom 1 of 2 (fancy):

Master bedroom 2 of 2 (ooh, ahh, 7 inch tv):

Living room/dining room/Ashley's home office:

Off to London tomorrow, until next time....