A Castle In Shambles In Mumbles.

Aug 31, 2012

You can see ALL of today's photos - look for the link at the bottom of this post.

I'm writing from Hamburg where we will spend the next week exploring this city and visiting my nephew, Kris, and his wife, Mirjam and their two girls, Jona and Maya. Wales is now behind us but not forgotten. It was a magical week spent with good friends in a very special place. Ann and Alex stayed behind but they leave for the States in a day or so. Jane and Mark flew back to New York yesterday. Stacey and I travelled on to Germany.

The last few days in Wales were varied and rewarding. On Day Two we did what became a usual routine:  breakfast at one of the beach cafés. These breakfasts have been variations on the full English breakfast,i.e. eggs, bacon or sausage, roasted tomato, toast, coffee (which has been excellent here) and then, to work off those calories, a long walk on the beach path. This time we headed into the nearby town of Mumbles. We were off to see the restored ruins of a Norman castle and then explore the sweet shopping street that comprises the center of the town. Mumbles is just a hop and skip away from the larger city of Swansee but has its own small-town flavor.

Alex orders breakfast. "Well send it to your table."

Mumbles is a lovely little Welsh seashore village. Small and neat houses are spread out on a hill with the bay and shopping street down below. In the distance, Oystermouth Castle, a Norman stronghold built in the 12th century.

Back street of Mumbles with Oystermouth Castle in the distance.
CLICK PICTURE TO SEE IT LARGE!

Newton Road, the main shopping strip in Mumbles.

Oystermouth Castle overlooks Mumbles.

The castle overlooks Mumbles Bay and the town of the same name.

The castle had a commanding view of the town and bay, but the short film shown inside said that at the time of its construction in the 1100's the bay was much lower in level and thus, further away than it is now and that trees obscured any view of the water. 

We climbed the parapets of the restored ruin and took in the views. And we stopped to shoot some photos of historic characters. 

Two Norman lassies and their bodyguard,
L-R: Anastasia The Fair, Janetha The Short and Anndrewth The Flamboyant.

Marcus The Magnificent.

A group self-portrait.

After the castle, we strolled the streets of the town ducking into this store and that to check the wares. 

Heading back home after a day in Mumbles.

My next post marks the end of our Wales trip - a visit to Janie's cousin in the interior of Wales and a National Trust historic house. After that, we're off to Hamburg and a week in Germany. Please come along with us.  - Matt

CLICK HERE to see all of today's photos.

Wales Is Wonderful ... And Beautiful ... and ...

Aug 29, 2012

Saturday, August 25th was our first full day in Wales. We arrived late the night before after an all day affair with British roads (and no maps, guides, and a dodgy GPS/smart phone). Our friends, Ann and Alex, were patiently expecting our arrival and we kept in touch by mobile as we slowly made our way to their home. Alex is quite a cook and after some drinks, he prepared a superb salmon dinner, accompanied by wine, salad, dessicated kale (wow!) and risotto with brocolli rabe. Quite sumptuous - we were impressed.

Old friends: Jane, Ann and Stacey.
NOTE: you can click any photo to see it larger.

We turned in after some convivial conversation. The next morning, we did what Ann and Alex do almost every morning - we set out for a walk on Langland Bay, on which body of water sits their apartment.

Alex graciously made our morning cups of java.

A brief word about their location: Wales juts out west from England, separated from it on the east by the Severn River. It is an semi-autonomous part of the United Kingdom (composed of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales) and has its very own history (one of subordination by England, and others, and a fierce sense of independence and autonomy), language and culture.

Click to see larger.

Many well-known people hail from Whales, among them Tom Jones, Richard Burton, Anthony Hopkins, Catherine Zeta Jones (Jones is the most common Welsh name, by the way) and the late, great poet, Dylan Thomas.

Note from the map that the sea plays an important part in Welsh history. Ann and Alex's place is just outside of one of Wales three larger towns or cities, Swansea. The other two are Cardiff, the capitol and Bangor in the north. Swansea and Cardiff are both on the Bristol Channel, bordered on the north by Wales and on the south by England's south west region. On its west, Wales is bordered by the Irish Sea.

Coal played an enormous part in Wales' economic development but most of that is gone now. Margaret Thatcher closed many of the mines and widespread poverty and near- destruction of the powerful miner's union was the result. There have been rebounds in later years due to tourism and special economic projects which were put in place to replace mining which had been so central.

The southern coastline is incredibly beautiful. It's filled with one wide bay after another as small peninsulas jut out into the sea, lined with rugged cliffs and broad beaches. There's lots of weather as the wind blows in moisture from the Atlantic - rain is plentiful but so are brilliant blue skies filled with white clouds. In minutes that can change to dark and ominous skies, winds and pelting rain which can change quickly back again to sunny and pleasant. Every minute or so brings a new kaleidoscopic scene through which view the Channel and its churning surf.

Ann and Alex's place was once the mansion/palace of a coal baron from the early 20th century. Later, ironically, it became a convalescent home for aged miners who had been the source of the mine-owner's wealth. Now, after having lain derelict for many years, it has been converted into condos and it's, well, incredible, Perched on a hill above the bay, their place offers wonderful views of the Bristol Channel with the Devon coast visible (weather permitting) across the water, some 26 miles distant.

Waiting for the others on our first morning walk.
Our friends' apartment is on the top two floors
plus a roof deck at the top of the tower. Beautiful!

But I digressed. I was telling you about Ann and Alex on their daily routine. Note that this is their vacation house. Their other home is northern California. So when they're here, it's the life and routine of vacation. A morning walk, a little breakfast at the cafe down by the beach, hanging out, checking email and browsing the web, reading, visiting friends or Welsh attractions - all the sort of things that make retirement so pleasurable. We set out to duplicate the routine. Walking out of their development and then just across the road, one quickly reaches the beach. A paved  hiking path goes off in either direction, along, but high above, the water. Each turn in the path gives you another exquisite view of the water, the rocks, the beach, the bathers and surfers and the surrounding cliffs. Outstanding beauty!

We had breakfast at the Brasserie, one of several restaurants/cafés that dot the hiking path and beach. And it was lovely - eggs, bacon (think Canadian bacon), toast, lox (smoked salmon over here), and so on.

Mark and Jane frame our  hosts' apartment.

At the Brasserie for breakfast. Jane and Alex.

After breakfast we took a long walk on the path, heading east toward Bracelet Bay. From there we'd hop on a tour bus and ride into Swansea to the Dylan Thomas center which memorializes the life of the great Welch poet.

Thomasian Philosophy.

It had been a great day: breakfast at the beach, a long walk on a spectacular footpath, a visit to the Dylan Thomas center. We took a cab back home, rested a bit and met up on the deck on top of the castle-like tower that Ann and Alex live in for a pre-dinner cocktail. That granted us even more spectacular views of the sky and the sea.

Views to the sea from the roof deck.

We then sat down to a lovely dinner, once again prepared by Chef Alex: but not before some singing and chatting. Alex prepared a dinner of Welsh hill lamb was on the menu. Superb!

                   PRESS PLAY for a video ... Mark led us in some good ol' singing.

A perfect dinner caps a perfect first day in Wales!

Our first day in Wales was, to the say the least, memorable. Tomorrow, we visit Janie's cousin in the countryside. You can join us. Just follow us in my next post.

See you on the left side of the road.
- Matt

If you'd like to see all of today's photos, simply go HERE.

The Call Of The Cotswolds

Aug 27, 2012

On Thursday, August 23rd, we awoke early, packed our bags, had breakfast and then picked up our rental car at the airport - the convenience  of claiming our car at the airport and not dealing with London traffic is why we stayed at Heathrow instead of London proper.

We thought we would use the GPS that Google offers (and it's great ... as long as one has a cell connection) to guide us around England. So, stupidly, we had no map, no guide book, no nothing. We are such laid back travelers that we believed that we could find our way around a strange country without any help save our smart phone. Well, that was true but only to some extent and that hubris did get us into trouble a couple of times. Nothing serious, just delays, which I'll detail later on.

Our Peugeot 3008 mini-van.
NOTE: You can clck on any photo to see it larger.

Oxford, the famous, and ancient, university town of the aristocracy and privileged, is only an hour or so from London and even closer from Heathrow. That was our first stopping point of the day. We'd have a nice lunch (didn't happen) and a walk around the town with its midieval buildings and sprawling meadows.

We parked our car in an underground lot and set out to explore.

Mark checks out the lay of Oxford town.

We popped into the local tourist office and picked up a map with a short walking tour that would take us through some of the university's more interesting buildings. Our first stop was Bodleian Library which is a working library to this day. It is one of the oldest libraries in Europe, dating back to the early 17th century but with roots to the 15th.

The Bod, as it's called, is one of a group of buildings that form the historic heart of the university. One outstanding building is the Radcliffe Camera - camera referring to the Italian word for "room." It was built in 1734 and houses a science library today.

Radcliffe Camera on Catte Street.

Further along our walk, we came to Merton College and its chapel. The University is made up of many colleges and this one bordered beautiful Merton Field and beyond that a vast meadow: Christ Church Meadow, its green fields vanishing into the distance. A broad dirt promenade divided the two fields and people strolled along it to enjoy the view in all directions.

This the chapel of Merton College.

Mark strolls along Merton Field.

Lunch was at a coffee shop but was a disappointment. Mark's "caesar" salad consisted of some pale iceberg lettuce topped with bottled ranch dressing. My "homemade" tomato soup was bland and tasteless. I hasten to add that the cafe was not typical of the basically good cuisine that we enjoyed throughout our trip.

We strolled back to the car park to start our drive to our evening's inn: The Old Stocks Hotel in Stow-On-The-Wold. [MAP].

The Cotswolds are a region of hills in central and southwestern England. A wold, we read, is a high and open place. The region is dotted with lovely and quaint market towns, situated on the wolds and many populated with midieval buildings. Back in the day, sheep farming required the driving of your herd to market in the center of town. Our hotel was situated on Market Square, one such sheep-trading plaza.

Market Square in Stow-On-The-Wold.

After unpacking, we had a couple of drinks at the hotel bar and noted that the price of cocktails here were about a quarter of those in our fancy-shmancy London hotel. Dinner was at a wonderful Indian restaurant recommended by a friendly British woman and her daughter who happened to be walking down the street with us. Indian cuisine is ubiquitous throughout England and is very popular.

The next day we strolled about the town, taking in old St. Edward's church, cute tourist shops and its beautiful and narrow streets.

St. Edwards Church. He's the patron saint of Stow.

Mark outside a saddlery in Stow.

A Cotswold gent out for a shop.

We checked out of the hotel and packed the car. We were on our way to Wales and our friends, Ann and Alex, who have an apartment there. But first, I suggested that we take a look at a couple of other Cotswold towns. We drove to Moreton-On-Marsh and spent another hour there, perusing the shops and the street. Not as old as Stow but nevertheless, another lovely Cotswold town.

From Oxford to Stow to Moreton-on-Marsh.
Click to see larger.

It was starting to rain and the forecast called for more, so it was time to get started on the road to Wales. The GPS said 2 hours or so and that became the standing joke of the day. No matter how far and how long we drove, Wales was just "2 hours away." The final length of our trip? Seven hours! Many factors intruded: our smartphone constantly lost its cell connection in the country, leaving us alone with our wits, and nothing more, to find our way. Once, after driving for an hour away from Stow, we came across a signpost that said "Stow, 9 miles." My brain would not accept it and I offered an interpretation: "that just means a road that goes toward Stow. It's not referring to the town itself." Sure, sure. But wrong! No, we had gone, somehow, in a complete circle, ending up just about where we started.

The second factor, turning two hours into seven: the traffic. Aside from the modern Motorways, the so-called "M" roads, Britain has many old and very narrow roads and they intersect other old and very narrow roads at roundabouts (what we call traffic circles in the States). Roundabouts are great but only when they serve a limited number of cars. Trouble is this: there are too many freakin' cars on the road and then the elegant fluidity of the circles fails and they become huge bottlenecks. Signage testifies to that as they warn you: "may be queues ahead." And there sure were. Every few miles - another two mile backup as cars negotiated the roundabout.

Finally, we reached the Severn Bridge which crosses the river of the same name and separates England from Wales. The river then broadens to become the Bristol Channel which opens into the Atlantic. Hurrah! Only two more hours to Swansea and our friends' house. But it wasn't to be. The M4 motorway was clogged and almost at a standstill. We hadn't realized it but the Friday we were travelling on was the beginning of Britain's August Bank Holiday (equivalent to our Labor Day and marking the end of summer vacations). Londoners were streaming to holiday in Wales and we were part of that vast and very slow moving migration. Three of us four voted to get off the M4 and follow our belabored GPS along a parallel route. It worked - the road was moving and we just sailed along. About 40 minutes passed when we came to a sign that said "Welcome To England." It seems that our navigator had us correctly following the A48. However, we were following it in the wrong direction - east instead of west! We stared at the sign in disbelief. Again, denying the reality of our mistake, I tried to make it go away by concocting a scenario that the Wales / English border was convoluted and we must just have passed temporarily back into England but that, nevertheless, we were on the right road. But it was not to be:. We had, in fact, gone the wrong way and were back, once again, at the Severn River where we had been an hour before. Again, it was only "two hours to Swansea" ... all over again.

This time we proceeded, still staying off the clogged M4, westward to our destination and we finally reached it and our friends at 9:30 pm. Such good friends, who waited so patiently for us. A fine meal there for us - our travails only served to make our repast that much better. It didn't matter that our two hour trip took us seven. We were finally in Wales!

Our Wales of a story continues in my next post. Don't miss it.

To see all of our Cotswolds photos, just CLICK HERE. 

Leaving For London

Aug 26, 2012

I write this from Wales in the United Kingdom on Day 6 of our European trip. We left the States on the 21st of August with friends, Jane and Mark, and flew to London. There we would stay two nights at the Hilton in Heathrow. After landing and spending the night at the hotel we started out, via the Underground, for a day of walking around the historic center of England's capitol city.

Mark, with his laptop and mobile, at Newark as we waited to board our plane for London. 

We boarded the Underground at the airport and took the Piccadilly line to Hyde Park. It took us about an hour, door-to-door. When we emerged, we were at the southeast corner of London's beautiful central park. It was very exciting, cars, double-decker buses and bicycles whizzing by around us and the peaceful and quiet oasis of the park beckoning us inwards.

Stacey in Hyde Park's Rose Garden. Stunning!

We strolled around an extraordinarily beautiful rose garden for a while and then headed eastwards through the posh neighborhood of Mayfair. Wending our way through streets, both small, quaint and quiet and then noisy and teeming, we made our way eventually toward Piccadilly. 

At a pub for lunch.

We were getting tired of walking and also started to talk about lunch so we found what looked like a nice pub where Jane and Stacey tried the traditional fish and chips. Mark had a hamburger and I had a Ploughman's platter of bread and cheese. We all had some proper British beer as well. 

We kept on our long march and made our way Trafalgar square. With its tall column surmounted by Lord Nelson and its extraordinary lions which served as the perfect backdrop for posed photos, it was a real center for meet-ups and hang outs. The sun was shining brilliantly, people were everywhere: standing or sitting on steps and ledges. It was quite beautiful and very popular.

Posing for pictures in Trafalgar Square. Smile! You too, Leo.

We ended our one-day, whirlwind walking tour of London town at the Thames, down on The Embankment. We took a down-and-dirty circular boat ride up to the Tower Bridge and then back down, ending at Westminster and its famous tower with the Big Ben clock at its top. What a great way to see the old city and its skyline. We passed under many bridges. Here was Blackfriar's Bridge and London Bridge. There was Christopher Wren's St. Paul's Cathedral and finally the famous Tower Bridge (thought by many of us Americans to be London Bridge). On the way back up the river we passed some of London's new architecture, including an awesome building that looks like glass needle (said to be the tallest building in western Europe), the Tate modern art museum and the famous London Eye which is an enormous, slowly-rotating wheel which one can ride around for fantastic views from aloft.

Tower Bridge.

The London Eye

We finished our boat ride at Big Ben. It was after five and the streets were crowded with after-work walkers, bikers, cars and buses. It was quite frenetic. People were standing with friends and beers outside of pubs for a bit of after-hours socializing.

We made our way northwards again, not knowing whether we should  pick up some take-away (as they say here) for a dinner in our hotel room. But it was so late we figured that we wouldn't end up eating "dinner" until nine o'clock what with an hour Undeground ride back to Heathrow and our hotel. So we opted for Indian food on a Yelp-recommended restaurant on Denman Street. The only problem was, we couldn't find Denman Street. In trying to locate it, we happened upon Chinatown - we didn't even know it existed! But it was filled with lots of restaurants and lots of Londoners and other tourists. We were so tired, we picked one that looked good and, guess what? It was!

Hanging out after work at the pub. Chatting outside with a cold one.

Bikers rule! Lots of  people on bicycles and this is rush hour after work!

After our really good Chinese dinner.

A good dinner, an hour train ride home and a good night's sleep ended our first full day in the U.K.

An interesting side note: our niece Marlo was in London as well - she was here to promote her Thro products that manufactures and sells. She was going to be live on QVC, the sales channel but we couldn't get it in our room. Stacey cajoled the hotel staff to turn it on on the telly in lobby (without sound, however). And we watched Marlo live on UK television - grand!

         I filmed Marlo live on QVC - right off the hotel lobby telly. There's no sound though.

Tomorrow, we pick up our rental car and head to Oxford and the glorious British countryside in the Cotswolds. We'll see you there. - Matt

If you want to see the rest of our London walking tour photos, just CLICK HERE.