England: Middle Bits

If you go to London, you will be left with the impression that England is entirely populated by tourists.

To learn that England is not entirely populated by tourists, stay with real English people! I was the guest of some very lovely people in the middle of nowhere! This involved a lovely thatched roof cottage, which was older than America (the cottage, not the people). It was a really great break from tourists. Tourists are the bane of my vacation! (Clearly, there is no double standard here...)

The town was very small, and very cute. It had a church that was very small and very cute.

Proportional place of worship!

With faces! 

Stone cold.

And from this tiny town, we took a day trip to the much larger but pretty small city of Lincoln. This city contained a very large Cathedral. Perhaps disproportionately large.

Small town, big cathedral.

This Lincoln cathedral is pretty huge and elaborate. Much less cozy than the tiny church. Contains highly elaborate stonework. Such as the green man hiding in an archway below: 

Decoration within decoration,
because the masons had nothing better to do.

And drove over a massively enormous bridge, which was once upon a time the longest suspension bridge in the world. Now it's not the largest, but it remains disproportionately massive.

Bridge in the middle of nowhere: suspension of disbelief
made easy.

This is getting disordered--somewhere in there, in England, I went out driving with a couple of cool people. No, of course I didn't drive, I would have ended up in the wrong lane, and it would've been awkward.

We blazed by the Stratford upon Avon tourist trap.

House: not quite authentic.

Really, the most authentic part was the gift shop!

Not pictured: Shakesbear shirts. 

And Stonehenge! We found some stones.

Stonehenge is a dish best served old.

Oh yeah, and there was Liverpool.

I still have no idea why these towers were being towed...

The straws that broke the Costa's roof.

Very unfortunately, I ran out of time and didn't get to see the slavery museum. I wanted to compare/contrast the presentation to Virginia's approach. (Later, in Glasgow, I went on a slavery walking tour, which was all about merchant triangle traders. Sorry, the chronology is starting to fracture around the edges). But I did see the Beatles museum! It was a rare example of audio tour done right.

And you can't hang out in Liverpool without going to the precise and detailed replica of the most popular venue of the Beatles' heyday. The Cavern!

Second Cavern replica I walked into that day.

Unforgivably unchronological tangent:
Back in London, once upon a time there was a train station:

How do you know when the King's Cross?

And I think that's about it for England.

Swan heard Mumbles, but what did the Swansea?

Wales Part III:

Good God! Are we still in Wales? You are so behind on your blog! At least get to Scotland before you leave Ireland! Sheesh.

Ahem.

As I was saying, I was instructed by those in the know that the cities are not the reasons to go to Wales. That the natural beauty and sea cliffs are where it's at. Thanks to those in the know, I definitely had to check out Swansea.

Not pictured or present anywhere: swans.

It was decided that a boat tour was necessary. I learned quite a lot about the coal history of the region. I think. Maybe learning was the wrong word. It was a whole lot more industrial than I ever dreamed. And they have bubblers in the river so the fish won't die. JUST LIKE THE POND AT HOME.

Irrelevant: ducklings.

And that was cool. But I had wanted to see some things in Swansea, like, I don't know, any of their museums. Bad luck for me: the entire city was under construction, so all the museums were closed.

Good luck for me: the Mumbles are just a short bus ride away! And they had a castle!

When choosing a preservative, remember:
salt > direct assault by an army.

The castle was nice and quiet but for the sound of pigeons cooing. They also had a great view of the other Mumbly bits:

Pier also closed for construction.

Fortuitously, neither ocean nor rocks were closed for construction!

Scale note: It's a lighthouse, not a milk bottle.

There were also some more rocks and ocean bits:

Why is the sky more washed out than shore?

And you could walk on rocky bits:

It was pretty. 

That's obviously too many pictures of ocean and rocks. Here's a famous Swansean boat:

You have to wonder just what the quote marks are implying.

Overall, Mumbles was a wonderful harmonious area. It was quiet, as mumbling is mandated by law. I even saw some nature running around, coexisting in peace.

Bunnies. I was reminded not to trust them in a future episode.

It was a really great place to wander around and appreciate the nature things. It also answered a question that has plagued me for years: 

What would Red XIII look like as a boat? 

Answer: Pretty Badass.

Did I mention there were rocks and water?

Note: picture contains rocks and water.

It's great in person. Trust me.

Pembroke: All the Stairs. Tenby: more like 10-Sea.

Despite the good Doctor, it doesn't take too long to run out of things to do in Cardiff. Sure, you can sit around the glorious sun filled bay and drink cider. But when in Wales, consider taking the time to see some nature. Sea-cliffs come highly recommended.

I wandered around for a couple days. Heard there were some castles in the country. I decided to go to Pembroke Castle.

This was no simple voyage. A three point five hour train ride that turned into a three hour train ride plus an hour of bus and waiting for the bus. See, we were most of the way there when one of the train cabins started filling with smoke and the train just kind of stopped. But they fixed it enough to get us to the next station and dump us unceremoniously onto the pavement! It's cool, they sent a bus. Seven sunburns later, the bus arrived, and I finally reached the land of Pembroke.

Medieval-era learning tent outside.

It was a strikingly well preserved medieval castle, with all the charm of bare stone castles. Plus displays inside with mannequin/sculptures acting out historical scenes. I couldn't decide if it was cheesy or creepy. Maybe just cheapy. But it DID have a tall tower with a very high ceiling. I think there used to be intermediate floors. The obvious upshot: THE TOWER INSIDE LOOKS LIKE AN ARTISTIC ROBOT EYE.

Do castle towers dream of Welsh sheep?

So Pembroke was nice, but it didn't have sea cliffs.

Note the distinct lack of sea cliffs.

So I took the advice of the nice people I had been train-stranded with, and took the first train to Tenby, which was back towards Cardiff. (Yes, this was a psychotically planned daytrip).

Lo and behold, though I could have sworn I smelled smoke, the train transported me safely to Tenby!

Rocky ain't got nothin on this.

In case you aren't well versed in Welsh beach hotspots, Tenby is a picturesque beach community with cute shops and a medieval wall jutting out of the cliffs. It even has sand!

Sand > Brighton's pebbles

It was a beautiful day. I'm talking sunshine and lollipops nice. I was all ready to buy a summer house there when people started warning me that the weather was not, in fact, typical.

Condemned monastery (too easy). 

Nice is not the typical weather? Suddenly it made a lot more sense that the whole place had a weird sort of Florida retiree vibe. And by vibe, I mean, I passed a couple stores that were advertising walkers, and some places that used Bingo as a selling point.

They also had some mini-sea-cliffs.

Hard to traverse with a walker.

It was pretty. And windy. 

Not pictured; the 75,000 snails that live there.

On the whole it was a disappointing day. I went to all the trouble of coming to wales, and I didn't see a single whale.

Much like the rest of my trip, I saw some seagulls:

Unlike the gulls of Bath, this bird is at least thinking about eating sea creatures.

Cardiff: The Tardis of Wales

Wait, wait, I didn't post about Wales yet? The experience that transcended time and space? Let's talk Cardiff. For starters, it has a castle right at the top of the city.

The castle, being invaded by the alien sportscraft landing behind it.

If you're in Cardiff, you probably should take the time to see Cardiff Castle (above). There is a wall and some battlements and a keep (see below). The keep (below) is exactly as old and rundown as it looks. But the Castle (above) is a castle.

Once a hardcore Norman fortress, the keep is now flagging.

But I'm talking about the castle. You wouldn't know looking at the bleak stones outside, but some rich people owned it! A coal baron's acquired it and died, and his son, with all the whimsy of a medieval enthusiast, hired some decorators.He liked color and medieval-style murals. If you don't go inside, you will miss things like this:

signs and ropes telling you not to touch things!

Which is nice and all, but you also get rooms like this:

"The Arab Room" designed by a guy who dropped acid through a kaleidoscope!

They also have some birds that would be happier if they were elsewhere.

Owl, performing "Howl", by Ginsberg.
Or maybe he was just telling me his fav. tv show.

But you didn't come to Cardiff to see a castle or listen to the hooters. You came there to see the Doctor Who Experience. You might worry it's disproportionately geared towards children. And it is. But don't let details like that get in the way of finding a blue police box. The Experience was an interactive funthrough, part animatronics, part Matt Smith  in a video. We, the "shoppers" were trying to save the Doctor from...well, I won't give you spoilers. But at the end is a museum of props and costumes and all of the Doctor's worst enemies.

It didn't work.

They had all kinds of models to demonstrate the progression through the gazillion years this show has been on the air.

It was close, but I was not exterminated. 

You can't get to The Experience without passing through Mermaid Quay. Well, you can, but it's right there. It's a nice place to hang out and have a drink in the sunshine, and smell the mix of sea breeze and evidence of lax drug control.

I don't light up, but a torchwood.

If you watch Torchwood, you can see a plot relevant memorial on Mermaid Quay. If you don't watch Torchwood, you can see the memorial anyway, but it's totally a spoiler in the middle of the street. Warning: spoiler below.

Warning: spoiler, but you already looked at it.

And all around Cardiff you can see bits and bobs of the Doctor. The variety of Victorian and futurist architecture is pretty conveniently located for filming.

But sometimes you just need stairs.

You're a Pandorkica.

And there are just generally a lot of stores around the places that are fun to look at. There is a chain in the UK called Americandy.

An improbable astronaut. 

Have I mentioned I miss space programs?

Bath: when in England, do as the Romans

Bath is highly recommended. Showers are OK too. If you have functional eyes or a casual appreciation for history, you may want to go there. And you will probably find much to recommend. (Unless you're Jane Austen.) If you're a tourist, you'll find the city perfectly sized for a day-trip. If you stay for a couple days and make friends, you'll leave way too soon.

The city has lots of nice architecture that isn't anything like early colonial brick. 

Notable bits include an Abbey that has nothing to do with Abbey Road! 

Had I gone inside, I would've been a fan.

Bath also has the first semicircle in Britain!

The Royal Crescent, rumour has it, houses a Python.
By the size of the structure, it's a really big one.

But you don't go to bath to look at a crescent. You go to look at the bath. It wasn't recent, but maybe you've heard--the Romans were in England once upon a time. And when they were in England, they decided that the supply lines were getting too long to trek back to Rome for a daily bath. So they built amenities. 

Or at least they took a Celtic shrine site, and between year 60 and 370, built a temple and some baths. They left the tub.

Romans once bathed here. Possibly dyed green; certainly dead now.

 Actually the water wasn't green then. There was a big roof covering the whole thing, so that the Romans didn't have to stare at the 11th century abbey. Thanks to the roof, no algae grew in the bath, and bathing was more effective. Unfortunately, the pipes bringing in the water were made of lead. To make matters even healthier, this was a religious center as well as a spa. People with a chip on their shoulder came from all over to write petty curses in tiny sheets of lead--most commonly due to stolen swim trunks. The complainers then took the sheets and threw them into their enemies' bathwater to give them extra lead poisoning. Kidding. But they did throw the curses into the water, and sacrificed something. (If the lead curse sank, the gods heard them. If it floated, the laws of physics were obviously suspended, and someone turned into a cow.)

Cubist terra cotta warriors.

These columns used to hold up a floor, which was raised so that they could do something with the temperature. The Bath Rooms had names like frigidarium (cold bath) and caldarium (bubbling cauldron bath). Presumably the floor was not invisible then.

The really old bit pretty much cracked itself up, and the nice above ground strucure is Victorian, so you can't even stick an ankle in the water. In the museum you can see some old Roman things that have been archaeologed out of the ground. Like the Medusa.

Medusa needed a shave; Perseus obliged with a Sweeney Todd cut.

This mysterious face was discovered around the baths. It's called the Medusa because of the fashionable snakes-for-hair look. This seems bizarre to anyone familiar with Medusa, lady gorgon, who wasn't actually reputed to be a bearded lady or married to anyone closeted. This is pretty clearly a dude. But there are some other theories floating around. Something about Oceanus, a water god, or a Celtic sun god, or that time your uncle got drunk and tried to wear a Christmas wreath.

Enough about the bath of Bath. There is a city, too. And a very nice free walking tour that doesn't even want tips.

Walking tour talking point: soot.

 Fun fact: If you walk around the city of bath, you see a lot of very pretty pale stone buildings. But some eons ago when those chimneys (everywhere with the chimneys) were burning coal, there was a lot of air pollution. They hadn't invented cleaning in those days, so the city of bath used to be covered in soot and dirt. This house has been carefully left caked in dirt and soot to preserve the visual of a bygone era.

Inevitably, you'll get bored of all the pretty buildings and shops that are closed when you need them and streets teeming with American tourists. Escape on a nice river walk!

It's a nice controlled river. As you can see, the sky is more washed out than the banks. 

Not to be arch.

And don't forget Jane Austen. As I mentioned, Austen-tacious used to live here. She kind of hated her time in Bath. And by 'kind of', I mean, she agitated to move back to wherever it was that she grew up. Her parents said no--then her father died suddenly. They moved promptly back to wherever. Not that I'm suggesting anything untoward. I'm just saying that everyone ever told me to avoid the Austen museum. There is one, though. Might even be more informational than this blog post.