After a good first experience with Road Scholar last summer, I decided to try it again—this time to Wales. I added 4 days in London on my own to the end and three days in Toronto with Glenna to the beginning.
So Toronto first. Glenna had been there in high school on a band trip, but it was my first time. We both liked it very much. We had an awesome room in the Sheraton Centre; our 10th floor room overlooked City Hall with its wonderful Toronto spelled out in big block letters on the plaza. I took lots of pictures of it just because I liked it.
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| City Hall from our room |
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| The TORONTO sign |
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| View to the right |
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| View to the left |
Thursday when we arrived, we took the Union-Express train from the airport to Union Station and then walked to the hotel. That simple and efficient experience with their public transportation system was the first of many, all equally good. Easy city to get around in even though it’s big—which means you sometimes have to take Lyft.
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| The iconic CN Tower |
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| The varied architecture of the city |
We no sooner got to our room than we had to leave because Glenna had a 2:00 appointment at the Royal Ontario Museum. (We went to Toronto to visit museums—as you will see.) We took the metro, easy to figure out and clean. The museum had an exhibit called It’s Alive! (French title is Sauve Qui Peut meaning ‘every man for himself’) which will be coming to the Columbia Museum of Art, where Glenna is the senior manager of education and interpretation, in February 2020.
While she talked to the lady, I roamed around. I really liked this museum. It’s a bit hard to classify. They have traditional art museum exhibits but also natural history exhibits and world culture exhibits. I’m not sure how that happened, but it made it interesting.
It is housed in an old building that has had a crazy modern piece added on, producing really odd exhibit spaces. I don’t think there were any two walls that were perpendicular to one another in the new part. The old entrance was retained and is now a wall of the huge modern foyer. Most museums these days have some sort of seating space in many of the rooms which are typically all alike. This place had all kinds of seating spaces which matched the contents of the rooms (none of which I took pictures of for some reason)—like an ancient bench in the Egyptian area and a modern chair in the contemporary gallery. What a great idea. They also have placed objects from a period in a room that is architecturally of that era. The wall labels were really good—in both French and English, of course. Overall an impressive place.
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| Metro stop at the ROM |
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| Old facade in lobby of ROM |
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| Part of old building with addition to right
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As I was looking through the East Asian section a docent came up to me and a man. She carried an artifact with her and asked us if we could tell the future. She then went on to tell the story of the oracle bone she was holding—how it was used to answer yes or no questions the ancient Chinese (as long as 3000 years ago) asked about the future. The direction of a crack gave the answer. Of the 100,000 existing, the ROM has 8000. I found this technique (not a formal tour but just a chance meeting with a docent to learn about one object you might not have taken the time to read about had you seen it in a case) to be intriguing.
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Oracle bone docent showed us
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| Chinese tomb |
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| Chinese litter carriers |
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| School boy on assignment
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I also did the Canadian history and culture rooms before I met Glenna and we went to the top floor to see the It’s Alive! exhibit. My pictures will give those who plan to see it at the CMA a preview. I thought this space also was a particularly good one for this exhibit. Because of the architecture of the building, there are all kinds of small, odd-shaped spaces at that point. That only made this exhibition—of classic movie posters of horror movies collected by Kirk Hammett of Metallica--seem all the more eerie. Twice I heard kids ask at the entrance if it was scary or if things would jump out at them.
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| King Kong poster |
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| Frankenstein poster |
Next was the South Asian and Mediterranean permanent collections, the European collection and an exhibit of pieces from the time of Rembrandt (they own three)—all the Dutch school paintings that I’ve always liked.
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| Posters for It's Alive & Rembrandt |
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Lion wall relief from palace of
Nebuchadnezzar II |
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| Greek mosaic |
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| One of ROM's Rembrandts |
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| Beautiful ceiling |
The natural history section has both stuffed specimens and skeletons, especially of dinosaurs. Almost everyone is fascinated with dinosaurs, and I am one of them.
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| Sea life exhibit |
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| Sea creature |
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| Sloth |
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| T-rex |
Another exhibition we saw was Treasures of a Desert Kingdom, the Royal Arts of Jodhpur. Very nice and of much interest to us because of our connection to India.
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| Treasures of a Desert Kingdom poster |
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| Desert tent |
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| Jewelry piece |
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| Miniature elephant |
By this time my feet and back were screaming at me. We took the metro back to near the hotel and stopped at a coffee shop for a welcome rest.
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| Glenna at coffeehouse |
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Betty at coffeehouse
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| TORONTO sign lit up at night |
Glenna went on to a bookstore where she found 5 books on her searching-for list. When she got back, we went to a nice little Mediterranean fast casual place for dinner. Really good food—fragrant rice, lamb kabobs, cucumber salad, hummus, fries with cheese and zaatar cheese sticks. Back at the hotel Glenna went to the sauna (I can never remember to bring a bathing suit) while I relaxed and wrote my journal entry. 15,624 steps today for me.
Friday we had beautiful weather again. We found a consortium of food stands from noted area chefs right across the street from the hotel and went there several times—for breakfast this morning. After, we hopped on the street car and then walked several blocks through a lovely section to the St Lawrence market. One of the gardens we walked through was patterned after a 19th c garden and was a gift of the Garden Club of Toronto to the city.
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| St James Garden |
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| Black squirrel in the garden |
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Glenna near one of the interesting
public chairs we saw |
The market was food and kitchen implements—beautiful displays and some really interesting-looking food preparations—something it’s often hard to take advantage of when you’re a tourist.
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| Fruits in the market |
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| Snacks we couldn't take away |
After another ride on the Queen Street streetcar, we walked south to the Old Distillery District, an area where whiskey was once made. The distillery buildings are still there, but today it is a crafts, eating, arts and entertainment mecca. I love places like that, so it was a fun stop. And no one who knows me will be surprised to hear that I got a couple pairs of earrings here as well as from the vendors outside the St Lawrence market.
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| Once Spirit of York distillery |
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| The distillery market |
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| A Glenna specialty--something old and rusty |
Glenna always researches restaurants and coffee shops as much as typical tourist stops before she goes somewhere. Our next stop after a long walk and another ride on the Queen St streetcar was a café/kitchen that had great poutine. For those who haven’t been to Canada, poutine in its original incarnation (I had a different version of it in Quebec City when I was there with Diane) is a cholesterol-laden combination of French fries, cheese curds and rich, brown gravy. It was good, as was the macaroni/peas/bacon dish most of which we brought back to the hotel and which I ate for dinner.
Even farther east was a little crafts consortium where Glenna got a few things. Then it was back on the streetcar to head west to the Textile Museum of Canada, a wonderful little place on two floors of an ordinary high rise. On the lower floor was an exhibition by Nadia Myre, a First Nation member who does beadwork, textiles, photography, video and sculpture and who “intends to represent belonging within a framework of resistance and resilience."
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| First Nation wallpaper |
What I found really wonderful was the exhibit called Tapestry of Spirit: The Torah Stitch by Stitch Project. The project is to produce the entire Torah in panels of cross stitch. More than 1500 people from 28 countries have produced panels. Each is given a passage and can decorate spaces between sections however they like within a given color palate. It makes for a fabulous variety of embellishment. Groups were invited to add sections of the Qu’ran and the Scriptures also so that the two other Abrahamic religions are also represented. When finished there will be 1464 panels. They were just plain beautiful.
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| Grapevines |
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| Coat of many colors |
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| Pomegranate |
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| The Bible in Greek |
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| The Qu'ran in Arabic |
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| Comment from a young visitor |
Before leaving we stopped by an interactive room where Glenna tried her hand at weaving.
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| Glenna weaving |
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| Toronto sign at street level |
By this time I was done. Glenna went on to dinner with a friend from India who is now the manager of a Toronto restaurant. I had a microwave delivered to the room so I could heat up the macaroni for my dinner. I really wanted some wine to go with it. I googled a wine shop and set out to get it. On the way back I somehow dropped it as someone brushed by me, and it smashed to bits. The bar in the consortium said they couldn’t sell me a glass to take out. So did the restaurant in the hotel! So I had to do room service where I paid more for the glass than I had for the bottle. But I had my wine along with the macaroni, some salad from the previous night and a cookie. After Glenna’s dinner she went to the Art Gallery of Toronto—just too many steps for me. Today was 12,251 steps.
Saturday was another beautiful day. Wow. This time we took a bus down to the harbor where we spotted a water taxi which took us out to Centre Island in Lake Ontario. We walked around a good bit and watched the natives out for the weekend. We also admired the beautiful views of the Toronto skyline. The architecture of the city is quite varied; I always like that.
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| Toronto skyline from Centre Island |
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| The two of us on the island |
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| Low flying plane heading toward the airport |
We came back on a different water taxi to a different slip, walked a good way to the streetcar which took us near the lunch place Glenna had scouted—eclectic Indian. Their claim to fame is a cross between a paratha and a roti which they call a parotha. It was flaky and tasty, and we dipped it in our butter chicken and tandoori chicken and potatoes.
Another streetcar took us to Kensington Market where there was a pretty small flea market. The area was a lot like Fells Point in Baltimore. I found a park to sit in (and watch the kids play in the shallow pool) while Glenna set off to find a particular mural that she wanted to take a picture of (you can see what detailed planning she does).
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| Cute utility box |
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| And cute magnets |
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| The park where I sat |
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| A nice mural |
Then we Lyfted to the Portuguese district where we first stopped at a bookstore. No purchases though it was an interesting shop. Then it was on to an arts market—not as good as yesterday’s. After a long walk to a tea shop with our palates getting ready, we were told that all spaces were booked for the day. What a bummer. Instead we went to a coffee shop, ok but a poor substitute.
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| The interesting bookshop |
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| Sidewalk art |
A very long Lyft ride got us to the Aga Khan Museum which Glenna has wanted to visit since it was built—one reason she was happy to be able to call this a work trip because of her interview at the ROM. This happened to be their fifth anniversary celebration, so there was lots of entertainment outside. We first visited the exhibits of Islamic art inside, one of her specialties. Very nice but probably in all not as spectacular as other collections I’ve seen.
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Aga Khan Museum reflected
in the pool |
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Glenna by a field of lavender
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| Nice screen inside |
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| Comfy couch in the exhibition |
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| Beautiful bowl with script |
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| Plate with floral decoration |
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| Model of fountain |
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| Islamic script on a wall plaque |
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| Beautiful script in stitchery |
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The moon from a previous
exhibition |
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| The two of us at the museum |
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| Festival stage and audience |
Back outside, we got some food while we listened to the end of one singing group (folk instruments). We were staying because next up was bhangra which Glenna performs herself. We didn’t stay too long because after a first number they were going to teach it—plus it was getting really cool.
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| Bhangra dancers |
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| Betty at our awesome late dinner |
Then it was a shorter Lyft ride back to the hotel where we packed up for our early morning flight. But not before we had some awesome red dragon ramen and roasted Brussel sprouts with Parmesan and lemon at our favorite eating place across the street. 13,621 steps.
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| Last view of the lit-up Toronto sign |
I generally write my impressions of a place afterward. For Toronto I wrote clean and organized, more smoking that we would have thought, more people on streetcars than on metro, people quite nice, great public transportation system, poutine widespread, very international. The organized comment was in part the airport check-in and customs procedures on Sunday—best I’ve ever experienced. Back in Greenville Glenna was soon on her way back to Columbia; she had a pool party to go to. By the way, the whole time I was there I was coughing. I wrote in my journal: “sure hope I can get rid of it soon.” Unfortunately that was not to be. I had it the entire time in Wales and London, bothering my fellow Road Scholars enormously, I’m sure.
After Monday at home, I was off to Manchester on Tuesday afternoon via Philadelphia. The flight over was fine despite the fact that the plane was ancient—had the monitors hanging from the ceiling! I mostly read my book on Wales, one that Road Scholar had recommended. We arrived Wednesday morning to a ridiculously long customs line in Manchester. The locals said they had never seen it like that. We were early; maybe that wasn’t such a good thing.
I got the shuttle to the hotel (Crowne Plaza Manchester). Our rooms weren’t ready, so I sat in the lobby getting to know some of my fellow Road Scholars. I fell asleep when I finally got into my room since I hadn’t slept well on the plane. My roommate, Pam Fitch from California, came while we were eating lunch. At 5:00 we had a meeting with our group leader, Neil Flather, who is English. My first impression of him—funny and supremely organized, maybe a result of his military training. It’s fun to hear a bit about everyone—where they’re from, what they did or do, why they are on the trip. There are 21 from all over the US. After dinner in the hotel, Pam and I listened in our room to the debate in Parliament on Brexit. It was a big topic for most of the trip, both in the news and in our group.
Thursday we set off in a big coach (plenty of room to spread out) for Wales. It was a bit gloomy, but we made good time and were an hour early at our first stop—the national trust property of Bodnant Gardens near Tal-y-Cafn. Along the way we learned some facts—Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have populations of 5.5, 3.2 and 2 million respectively whereas England’s population is 56 million. Greater London alone is 9 million. 20% of the Welsh speak Welsh, a ridiculously difficult language for those who do not grow up with it. Rugby is the national sport. There are more castles per square mile in Wales than anywhere else—a consequence of Edward I’s attempts to control them. There are four times as many sheep as people, but as we traveled along it sure seemed as if the ratio was higher.
At the Gardens we met our tour guide, the Welshman Conway Davies, an expert on Wales and its history and culture. And, boy, was he. We learned so many interesting things from him in the next seven days and got to experience his wonderful sense of humor and his easy banter with Neil about their two countries. We used the whisperers several times as we did last year—the system of hearing the guide through ear phones so as not to disturb people who are not on your tour.
What follows is some of what Conway told us—the stories and the history that brought Wales alive for us. If my notes were incomplete or wrong in places, my apologies to Conway.
After a little introduction from Conway we were set loose to explore the gardens on our own with a map. They are famous for their laburnum arch (not in bloom in September) and their acid-loving plants: 50 species of rhododendrons (not in bloom either, of course), azaleas and hydrangeas. Bodnant Hall was built by the chemist Henry Pochin who invented a process using resin that made the normal brown soap white, among other inventions. He built the gardens and had plants brought from all over the world—whatever would grow in the climate of this part of Wales. In 1911 the prime minister David Lloyd George (a Welshman about whom we would hear much) imposed a death tax which forced many families to cede their properties to the government, Henry Pochin among them. The government got too much land and property to handle, so they created the National Trust, an example of a bad proposition for some that turned out to be a good thing for the nation.
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| Bodnant Garden sign |
I walked around a good share of the grounds. There was a fair amount in bloom, enough to believe that in spring and earlier in summer it must be gorgeous. I especially liked the unusual varieties of hydrangea. We met for lunch at their tearoom and had Welsh rarebit which somehow I had never had before. Good.
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| Bodnant Hall with its greenhouse |
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| Threatening sky we often encountered |
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| Drooping hydrangea |
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| Famous laburnum arch |
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| Flowers along the path |
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| More flowers along the path |
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| Rake that put the grass in rows |
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Baler which formed the bale and spit it out--
I thought of it as birthing the baby |
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| Pretty stretch of lawn |
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| Rose garden |
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| Pretty rose in September! |
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| The pin mill |
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| A very old sculpture |
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| Beautiful waterlily |
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| Bodnant Hall from the lily pond |
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| Bug on the rose |
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| One of the unusual hydrangeas |
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| Odd but beautiful flowers |
Then it was on to Conwy Castle where I had been before when Glenna
was very small but which I didn’t remember well. I really liked it this time. It was one of the many castles built by Edward I in his attempt to control the Welsh beginning in 1277. This particular one was built on a triangular strip of land bordered on two sides by the River Conwy and the third by a rocky escarpment, making it virtually impregnable. In the one small area of vulnerability he put the entrance with its drawbridge, portcullis, battlements (from which rocks could be thrown down on encroachers) and murder holes in the roof (through which objects were dropped on unsuspecting heads).
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| The rocky escarpment |
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| Town from the castle |
Edward I had a grand plan to control the Welsh (as well as the Scots, Irish and French). In Wales he first built castles to establish political authority, then churches and abbeys to impose his version of Christianity and then more slowly changed the culture by imposing his traditions. In the years and centuries that followed there was almost constant fighting on Welsh soil. The Welsh claimed victory in 1485 when Henry VII came to the English throne and established the Tudor dynasty. Henry was the grandson of Owen Tudor of the Isle of Anglesey.
I tramped all over the castle, including to the top of the chapel tower for a good view of the river and the bridges over it. The castle, for all its imposing façade, was only ever visited briefly by three monarchs: Edward I, Edward II and Richard II.
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| View of the castle courtyard |
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| Window in great hall |
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| Castle chapel |
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| View of River Conwy from the top of the tower |
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| Castle precinct through window in the royal apartments |
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| Modern crown sculpture hanging in the royal apartments |
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| Good view of the castle interior from the top of the tower |
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| Royal Oak Hotel--our home for 4 nights |
After our visit we backtracked to Betws-y-Coed and the Royal Oak Hotel, a very nice place that had fabulous food. We learned along the way that the town name means church in the woods. We also learned to pronounce it (I hadn’t said anything near this previously)—bet—oos—eh—co’—eed.
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| One of our menus at the Royal Oak |
We awoke Friday morning to gloom and intermittent rain. After breakfast we set off for the Great Orme Copper Mine on a little peninsula near Llandudno. To get there we took a short tram ride up the mountain and then walked to the mine entrance. The mines, excavated beginning in1987, were first thought to be 19th century until they started to find stone and animal bones. It turns out that the mine was Bronze Age—about 3000 years ago! These ancient peoples chipped the rock with big stones and got the copper out of the malachite using animal bone. They also learned to combine the copper with tin (the closest place they could have gotten tin was Cornwall which shows there was long-distance trading going on) to make bronze which is much stronger than the two elements individually which are soft. Bronze axes were found there. Archaeologists have since identified copper from Great Orme in Germany, Poland, Sweden, France and the Netherlands. At the time they uncovered the mine (which had been covered with slag from the 19th century miners working the Bronze Age seams), a man had just written a book saying there was no bronze in Britain before the Romans. Guess that book was pretty worthless.
After a short film and a little explanation we went down into the mine. The passage was very narrow, claustrophobic for some I would think, but it was a very cool experience.
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| The Great Orme Tramway |
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| Down into the mine |
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| In the mine |
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| Copper vein |
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| Lights on the mine wall |
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| More colored lights |
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| Excavation debris |
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| Conway and Neil in hard hats |
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| Diorama of Bronze Age life |
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| Going back down the mountain |
On the way back we drove through Lladugno which is a resort town on the Irish Sea. In Victorian times it was called the Queen of Resorts. It was the coming of the railroad which made these places possible—people had a way to get to the seaside and time to do it.
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| View of the countryside |
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| Llandugno Hotel |
On our way back to Betws-y-Coed for lunch, there was an accident on the road where we were traveling, causing us to detour onto smaller roads. And I do mean smaller. Our big bus had no business being on roads barely wide enough for two-way car traffic. Twice cars had to squeeze by us with the help of pedestrians; the second time a car actually hit our side and drove right on.
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| Car trying to get by... |
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| ...and later a truck |
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| More pretty countryside |
After lunch on our own I walked down to a bridge over the River Llugwy for the beautiful view of the numerous falls, just as Glenna and I had done several years ago.
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| Gentle falls on Afon Llugwy |
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| Another view of the river |
In the afternoon Conway lectured to us on the topic of “What or Where was Wales?” Some of the bits and pieces I recount here. We heard about the movement of people in and out of Wales and of the border being defined by Offa who built a dyke 280 mi long in the 8th century. That line is still the border between Wales and England. The notion of Britain is as old as the Greeks, but it was the Romans, who came first in 55 BC and left by 410 AD, who left their mark. There were numerous Celtic tribes in the British Isles who warred against one another until the Angles and Saxons joined to defeat the rest and push them into Wales—which may account for their nature. The Welsh weren’t as affected by the potato famine as the Irish because they also grew oats and barley. The Irish had big families and small plots of land, so they had to grow what would feed their families which was potatoes. Plague was left by the Romans; it waxed and waned depending on crowding and weather conditions. It was particularly bad in the 13th century when it devastated Wales.
After breakfast on Saturday some of us met Conwy for a walk in the area. Along the River Llugwy we learned about the trees of the area. During World War II they cut down trees to help with the war effort and had school children (many from at risk cities who were sent to the countryside for safety) plant pine trees in their place. It turns out they were not a good fit for the area because they polluted the rivers with their droppings. Now they are gradually being replaced.
We walked over to the Victorian train station which is built of a little brick and a lot of stone. Later the fashion among the upper classes was for brick, so it was taxed heavily. Later still stone became expensive. Another interesting fact was that, before the railroad, noon in a place was whenever the sun was overhead, so it was different every 20 miles or so. With the need for reliable train schedules, time had to be standardized.
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| Another section of Afon Llugwy |
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Betwys-y-Coed railway station
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We then walked down to the 14th century St Michael’s Church which was built over an older church--beside the River Conwy and with a circular churchyard making it Celtic. This one has a lychgate which is a covered entrance. When someone died, the body was placed under the lychgate before it was consecrated (and to be sure it was wrapped in wool). Women were cleansed after childbirth in the lychgate also. This church was Catholic before Henry VIII, became Catholic with obedience to Henry VIII during his reign, changed to Lutheran and then Calvinist and finally to Anglican during the reign of Elizabeth I.
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| St Michael's Church |
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| The old lychgate |
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| Churchyard of St Michael's |
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| Elaborate pulpit |
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Lion at the foot of Gruffydd ap Dafydd's
grave from 1283 showing he was in battle |
I walked around the pretty churchyard and crossed the river on a footbridge and then walked back to the hotel by a different route.
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| River Conwy from the footbridge |
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| Bucolic pasture from the bridge |
After lunch we set off for Beaumaris on the Isle of Anglesey, the northwesternmost part of Wales. Along the way we learned that much land in Wales early on was unclaimed. If you could put up a structure from which smoke could rise in one day, you could claim the land around you as far as you could throw an axe. The floors of these early houses were dirt which was probably pretty cold.
The oldest geologic age in Wales is Cambrian (540-485 millions years ago). Adam Sedgwick was an early 19th century Welsh priest and geologist, in fact a founder of modern geology. He proposed the Cambrian and Devonian geologic periods and was a mentor of Charles Darwin. As a priest he was upset by Darwin’s Origin of Species which he saw as anti-Biblical.
Slate, which at one time was very important to the economy of Wales, was formed during the Cambrian period as deep water mudstones on the sea floor. It was used mostly for roof tiles. In splitting the slate, there is 95% waste. The area we passed through where these waste tiles lie is being proposed as a World Heritage Site.
We noted the place names as we rode through Snowdonia; if the Welsh place names are Biblical (like Bethesda) they were named by the non-conformists (anyone who was not Anglican). We passed by the town with the longest Welsh name: LLanfairpwlllgwngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. The town name was not originally that long; the townspeople changed it to get tourists to stop there. It means St Mary’s Church in the hollow of the white hazel near the rapid whirlpool of Llandysilio of the red cave. We also passed a beautiful valley, going and coming.
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| Beaumaris harbor |
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| Kids having fun in the pool |
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| Gull calling out from the rooftop |
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| House claiming to be one of the oldest in UK |
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| Beaumaris Court House |
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| Playing bowls on the castle grounds |
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| Beautiful valley through the rain-speckled bus window |
A little more history of Wales: The Celt areas are Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Cornwall and Brittany. These peoples all stayed in touch. The Angles and Saxons who invaded spoke Germanic languages and were pagan and illiterate; they changed the name of the isles from Britannie to Angleland. Christianity persisted in the Celtic lands while the other areas remained pagan. Augustine of Canterbury was dispatched in the early 7th century to convert them to his form of Christianity, and by the end of the 600’s they had been converted. The Celts didn’t want to change their form of Christianity, so one compromise the missionaries made was to let them use the Celtic circle together with the Roman cross to produce what we now know as the Celtic cross.
We arrived at Penmon Priory, perhaps the first Christian site in the UK. We first went into the church, the oldest parts of which date from 1140 and show signs of Norman influence (chevrons, for example). One cross from that era remains, the Celtic cross I just described.
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| St Seiriol's Priory Church nave |
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| Stained glass window in church |
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| Arch from 1140 section of the church |
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| Ceiling beams |
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| Very old Celtic cross |
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| St Seiriol's Priory Church |
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| Our group of 21 Road Scholars |
The refectory and dovecote remain also. The dovecote can house 1000 doves and dates from 1600. From the church, we followed a path to get to what is considered to be the cell of St. Seiriol near the Holy Well, the reason for the designation as oldest Christian site.
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| The Holy Well |
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| Foundation of St Seiriol's cell |
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| Inside the large dovecote |
Anglesey was a Druidic center. Druids were learned men; the origin of the word is an oak meaning wisdom. They were shamans and fortune tellers as well as teachers, scientists, judges, and philosophers. The Romans feared them and eventually defeated them, killing them all. Since Druids were considered to be shape-shifters, they killed the other people of Anglesey also just in case as well as all the animals. Always lots of turmoil in Wales.
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Menai Bridge over the Menai Straits between
Anglesey and the Welsh mainland |
Sunday we woke to sunshine. After breakfast we had a lecture on the formidable Welsh language which is Indo-European. In the Bronze Age they spoke a Brithonic language with no German in it. By the 8th century BC there was an identifiable group called Celts. The primary language of that time remaining today is Welsh. It is so different from other European languages because it borrowed less from others. Church was Latin until the 1588 Bible translation into Welsh. Welsh is a living language unlike Latin. It has masculine and feminine and personal and impersonal though the latter may soon be gone. The alphabet is A B C Ch D DD E F FF G H I L LL M N Ng O P Ph R Rh S T Th U W Y. The one most noticeable is Ll since it is in so many place names. That is pronounced with the tongue up and blowing out of the sides of the mouth. Another tough one is Rh. It’s like saying h and r at the same time. The dd is a soft version of th (as in then). W is a vowel pronounced ooh as in the town where we were (Betws-y-Coed) as is y pronounced like a cross between eu or eh. I asked why languages are in that basic order always; Conway said that goes back to the Minoans and has been that way ever since.
Video of Conway reciting the Welsh alphabet
After our language lesson we left for the Ffestiniog Railway, a narrow gauge train which we took from Blaenau Ffestiniog in the mountains to Porthmadog at the seaside. The railroad was built in 1832 by W.A. Madocks and is the oldest railway company in the world (second oldest is the Great Western in the US). The train’s max speed was 20 mph. Its purpose was to take the slate down the mountain to the processing factory.
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| Train pulling in to the station |
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| Train cars |
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| Our group on the trip |
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| View from the train |
On the way we passed a stone circle (not an ancient one) which means an Eisteddfod was held there. That is the 8-day competitive poetry and music festival held in Wales every year. The word means a place to sit with the poet in the middle. The poems are always accompanied by harp music. The prize for the best poem is a chair.
The train ride went quickly. We ate our bag lunches and watched the scenery go by. At the bottom we got back on the bus and went to Caernarfon, famous for its castle, another one built by Edward I but different from the others in that it has reddish rings of stone and polygonal towers as in Constantinople.
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| View of Caernarfon Castle |
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| Caernarfon with its reddish stone rings and polygonal towers |
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| Nice windows in one of the towers |
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| Bird on David Lloyd George's head near the castle |
On the way we heard the story of Magnus Maximus who, in the 3rd century AD, heard that the Picti (in modern-day Scotland) had moved south to Hadrian’s Wall and went north to fight them. He got a message that the Irish were going to invade Wales and came back to drive them out. After victories he was told that he should be the emperor in Rome instead of the one who was there. In 372 he went to Gaul and persuaded French and Spanish troops to march with him to Rome. He was met on the border by Roman troops and was defeated, captured and hanged. But the Welsh have another version of the story. In it Magnus is the emperor of Rome and one day takes a nap and has a dream about the sea, the mountains, a great fortress and a beautiful woman. He asked everyone where this could be. A merchant from Britain said he knew where and described Caernarfon. Magnus goes there, finds the woman, marries her, has three children and stays for seven years (seven and three occur over and over in Welsh stories). He then left for Rome with his two sons, leaving his daughter who becomes the founding mother of the Princes of Wales. His one son is Constantine who Christianizes the Roman world. The Welsh also say that from age 12 to age 30 Jesus was in Wales. Later Edward I builds Caernarfon Castle with a nod to Constantine. Conway continued: In 1969 a mother had a son whom she wanted to give a big party on his 21st birthday. Some suggested they have it in London; others said Cardiff (current capital of Wales) or Aberystwyth (the center of learning). But she said no, she was going to have it in Caernarfon Castle. The mother, of course, is the Queen and the son is Prince Charles. It so happens I was there in 1970 when the structure they built for the investiture was still standing.
This time we didn’t go in the castle. I walked around it and then did a bit of shopping (where I got a Celtic cross affixed to a piece of slate).
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| My Celtic cross, local wood on slate |
The business that made the slate enclosure for the investiture is now closed, but that was our next stop. They have turned it into the Llanberis Slate Museum. We saw a movie about the process and the place and then a demonstration of splitting slate and finishing the edges which was fascinating. Slate splits as it does because of the way it was formed in the earth millions of years ago.
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| Starting the split of a piece of slate |
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| The split is visible |
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| Trimming the edges |
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| 1861 miner's cottage |
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| 1901 miner's cottage |
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| 1969 miner's cottage |
We also saw the mountain from which much slate has been cut (Cambrian—no fossils), the rail cars, the huge water wheel providing power, the engineering workshops and the quarrymen’s cottages.
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| The giant waterwheel |
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| Slate mountain near museum |
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| Slate mountain and pool |
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| Closeup of slate |
We heard about the lives of the miners and their families, not all of whom lived where they worked. They often had to walk a long distance on Sunday to be ready for Monday morning work. They worked as a family group in an area. The most experienced would bid to work on a section. If they won, they started at the top and worked their way down, extracting the slate—punching holes, dynamiting and splitting and finishing the slate in place. It was very dangerous work. A horn would sound once for an injury and more times for a death. The wives would come down to the mine to see what was happening and to tend the injured. For a death they went back home and waited for the sound of the hobnail boots to pass their house, knowing with relief that this time it wasn’t for them.
The men working the mines would take a break for lunch. On Monday they discussed Sunday’s sermon. On Tuesday it was politics. Wednesday was economics. Thursday was poetry recitations and singing. Friday was sports after they had won a half-day off on Saturday and could go to the rugby match (national sport of Wales).
On the way back we drove through Snowdonia National Park. It was too foggy to see Mt. Snowdon as it was the next day when we passed by again.
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| View from the bus |
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| View of the valley |
That evening was magical. We attended a Welsh men’s choir concert in St. Mary’s Church next to our hotel. The Welsh have long been famous for their singing, and I have always wanted to attend a male voices concert (something about women’s voices that is less appealing in its sometimes high-pitched screechiness though I am a first soprano). We heard the group Cor y Penrhyn who sang solos and group songs from many countries with piano and drum accompaniment. They ended with the Battle Hymn of the Republic, no doubt for us Americans. I bought one of their CD’s.
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| Banner announcing concert |
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| Interior of St Mary's Church |
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| Beautiful altar cloth |
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| Cor y Penrhyn choir |
Monday morning we left for the south of Wales in bleak weather. We had rain off and on all day but only when we were on the bus. Though the peaks in Snowdonia aren’t all that high, there are no trees on them because the soil is too acidic. Sir Edmund Hilary practiced before scaling Mt. Everest on one of the peaks because he said the conditions were like those on Everest.
We stopped in the village of Beddgelert and heard the legend of Sir LLywelyn, the 13th century Prince of Gwynedd, who had to leave home suddenly at a time when his wife wasn’t home and so left his newborn son in the care of his favorite dog Gelert. When he came back, he went to the bedroom where he was greeted lovingly by Gelert. The dog had blood on his mouth, and he heard no baby. Assuming the worst, Llywelyn killed his beloved dog but then heard a baby crying. Behind the curtain was his safe baby and a dead wolf. He sorrowfully buried his dog and built a church. People make pilgrimages to the town to see his grave.
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| Scene near Beddgelert |
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| Also near Beddgelert |
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| Demo of use of longbow |
The next stop was in Machynlleth, the town where the first Welsh parliament was convened. Owain Glyndwr led a rebellion against the English from 1400-1415. Early successes led many Welsh to come home and join the fight. Henry IV of England came into Wales six times but never found Owain. The rebellion eventually failed, but the spirit of Welshness lived on. Owain’s standard had four fields with alternating yellow and red dragons; it became the emblem for all of Wales and is the reason there is a dragon on the Welsh flag today. In the midst of the extended fighting, a Parliament was established in 1404. We visited the half-timbered building where it was held and saw a demonstration of a long bow, a crossbow and a very long spear. As we listened to Conway upstairs, we enjoyed a piece of bara brith, a delicious Welsh fruitcake (and this from someone who has never cared for fruitcake).
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| Mural in first Parliament building |
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| Red dragon on Welsh flag |
Then it was on to Aberystwyth, the cultural capital of Wales, to the National Library. We had a lunch of sandwiches, chips and cake in the café, saw a short movie about the library and then were taken on a tour—a fascinating look behind the scenes to see reading rooms and the stacks. On the bottom floor were locked rooms called cells opened only by a special key where the most important documents rest. The air in the rooms is carbon dioxide rather than oxygen to prevent a fire from destroying the contents. Their most precious document is the Black Book which mentions Arthur and Merlin—the oldest mention anywhere. They also have a 1588 Bible and a Canterbury Tales among other treasures. We also saw a map from the 1570’s of Wales in Latin, Brythonic and English.
On the trip farther south, we heard some about the life of Dylan Thomas and heard poems and a story. We drove through the Preseli Mountains from which the bluestones at Stonehenge came. We arrived late in the afternoon to the Lamphey Court Hotel which is an old manor house. Another good meal.
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| Pretty block in Aberaeron |
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| Puncheston countryside |
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| Lamphey Court Hotel |
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| Bucolic view from our front door |
Tuesday morning we set off for Castell Henllys, a reconstructed Iron Age fort of about 350-343 BC on the hilltop site where it had been. Excavators dug down and found a circle of holes with stones around them and carbon in the middle. The carbon is what was left of the wooden poles that had rotted away but which once held up the dwelling. There are eight buildings, among them the chief’s house, the meeting house, the cook house, the forge and a granary on stilts. Archaeologists think about 70 people would have lived there. The chief’s house had partitions for bedrooms. They knew how to weave, so there would have been rugs and curtains. The exterior walls were wattle and daub between sticks which stretched from pole to pole. There were no holes in the roof because any sparks from the hearth in the center would have caught fire from the oxygen coming in. So the smoke simply rose to the top and out of their eyes since the dwellings were tall. There are about 8000 such settlements in the UK.
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| A roundhouse being constructed |
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| Roundhouses at Castell Henllys |
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| Interior of chief's house with bedrooms |
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| Rudimentary loom |
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| Ceiling of roundhouse |
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| Interior of community roundhouse with decorations on wall |
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| Our group at Castell Henllys |
Our next stop was St Brynach’s Church in Nevern, home of a famous and very old bleeding yew tree. It is said to bleed on Good Friday--the sap is red. They also have there the oldest Celtic cross in situ in Wales with beautiful carvings of Celtic knots. It didn’t even appear to be weathered because it also is made of dolorite bluestone. Another standing stone in the churchyard was from 500 AD; it had barely visible inscriptions in Latin and Irish, a rosetta stone for Irish. We could tell that the site was pre-Christian from the round churchyard near a stream. The town was one of the pilgrimage stops for those going from Penmon to St David’s.
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| Beautiful bird at Nevern |
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| Nice house and garden in Nevern |
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| Old Celtic cross at St Brynach's |
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| Detail of Celtic knots on cross |
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| The bleeding yew tree |
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Another stream and round churchyard--
a pre-Christian site |
We had lunch of shepherd’s pie, chips, peas and meringue with strawberries in a pub in Newport—as well as my first lager and lime of the trip.
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| Royal Oak pub in Newport |
Then it was on to St David’s and its magnificent cathedral, named for the only Welsh saint recognized by Rome. I’ve been to most of the cathedrals in the UK, and this one added to my list. The church was down a sloping street from the town and then down a lot of steps; I didn’t relish the walk back up. The saintly David (Dafydd in Welsh) had his cell here in the 6th century, so others gathered around. William the Conqueror came in the early 11th century to see the small wooden church. The present-day stone church is 12th century. Edmund Tudor, the father of Henry VII and wife of Margaret Beaufort, was buried here. He died of the plague before Henry was born (all of this wonderful history comes alive in the historical fiction of Philippa Gregory, all of which I have devoured). The nave of the church has a beautiful Irish oak ceiling, very unusual. The style is Gothic though not high. For support they had to add internal flying buttresses; usually they are on the outside.
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| St David's Cathedral |
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| Here we are in front of the cathedral |
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| Ceiling of nave |
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| Nave of cathedral |
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| The internal flying buttress |
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| Original wall painting |
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| The altar |
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| Brass plate on tomb of Edmund Tudor |
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| Ceiling of shrine room of St David |
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| Cloisters |
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| Conway, Phil (our bus driver) and Neil with Tammi |
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| Harriet with one of her harps |
On our way back to the hotel we passed by the harbor where the ships and supplies were staged for D-Day. At the time there were thousands of GI’s living in barracks nearby.
After dinner we had a wonderful harp concert by Harriet Earis, a world-class musician. I didn’t know the harp could play so many styles of music. She played the Irish harp and an older one that was smaller.
Wednesday we set off in the rain for Drefach Felindre in Carmarthenshire where we visited the National Woolen Museum located in the old Cambrian Mills, the largest one of 52 mills once operating in the area. The primary output of the mill was flannel shirts, underwear and blankets for people in the area but also for the international market. We had a tour of the museum where we saw a loom making a quite wide fabric with an intricate pattern; it was very fast and very loud. We also saw a willower which takes out the impurities in the raw wool and the carder which stretches it out. The spinning mule spins the fibers into yarn and could do the work of 400 hand spinners; there were originally six of these in this mill.
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| Looking down on the weaving machines |
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| Wool coming out of the willower |
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| Wool on the carding machine |
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| Wool on the rollers |
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| Spinning to make one-ply thread |
The museum also had displays of the lives of mill workers and their families. I liked especially the very large nursing shawl which was folded into a triangle and wrapped around a woman to hold her baby which kept both her arms free while she worked. I learned something that I did not know: wool is good for all seasons; it is warm in winter but cooling in summer. I always wondered why men wore their wool jackets all year long. Flannel is especially good because it absorbs the body sweat. Anyone could gather wool that was dropped in the field during shearing; women typically could gather enough to make clothes for their families as well as other household textiles.
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| Picture of woman with baby in nursing shawl |
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| Close-up of a wool shirt |
While traveling on the bus we learned that the Welsh laws were codified (agreed upon and written down) by King Howell the Good in the early 10th century. Twelve men debated and decided what should be a law. There were 400 offenses that got you deported and 200 for which you were hanged. The churches refused to apply all of the laws, so later the hanging offenses were reduced to murder, treason, and arson.
Another legend followed: Culhwch and Olwen fell in love. Olwen’s father would not give his permission to marry since Culhwch had been disinherited and was thus an unsuitable husband. He said he would only give his consent if Culhwch could capture and kill a magical Irish boar and get a magical cauldron and a magical sword. Culhwch went to Arthur, his uncle, to ask for help. But Arthur was meeting with twelve men in a circle, so Culhwch was denied entry until he boasted about what he would do if he wasn’t allowed in. Arthur went with him to Ireland to do the three deeds. The boar ran to Wales (??) and was captured in Carmarthen. So the father agreed to the marriage. He had promised to cut off his beard if Culhwch fulfilled all three conditions, something a Welshman just would not do. Read on.
This led to a further discussion of offenses. The Welsh are pretty short-tempered, according to Conway. Every part of the body was assigned a value. An offense against a thumb was fined twice as heavily as an offense against a finger, for example. A woman in Wales had more rights than in most other places at the time; for example, she got her inheritance as soon as her father died. On her wedding day the groom had to pay a fee to his wife and her father unless the woman was seen not to be a virgin in which case the father had to pay. A wife could divorce her husband after seven years, and she got half of the family’s resources. In that case, boys seven or older were in the custody of the father whereas girls and boys younger than seven went to the mother. A man could beat his wife only if she was sleeping with another man, was kissing a man or was rude about his beard (see story above). Hanging in Wales was rare because then no more fines could be exacted. We learned of the Law of the Cat. The penalty for killing or stealing a cat (which was valued for its rat-killing propensity) was determined as follows: it was held up by its tail with its whiskers just touching the ground. Grain was then poured around it until the tail was covered. That amount of grain was the fine.
In 1536 the English laws were adopted in Wales, and everything changed. No more fines for offenses against fingers and thumbs or cats or errant wives. Prior to this time there was no primogeniture in Wales so that no one could build up a fortune. That changed too.
Carmarthen, where we had some free time to roam around in the afternoon, is pre-Roman. In the mid-10th century it was the largest town in Wales with a population of 6000. Its trade was agriculture and shipping. With the advent of the iron and coal industries and later the railroad, it decreased in importance. At one time they thought that stuff in the air (miasma) caused diseases. Later they found that cholera was caused by bad water. (This fact came after the discussion of Carmarthen in my notes--not sure what the transition was!)
Horatio Nelson regularly visited Carmarthen and stayed in Ivy Bush Hotel in order to visit Lady Hamilton with whom he had a daughter. He provided for his daughter in his will, but she was ignored. When he died at Trafalgar, they put his body in a barrel of rum in order to preserve it until they got back to England.
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| Plain looking Ivy Bush hotel in Carmarthen |
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| Funny street sign |
In Carmarthen I stopped at Boots for some more cough medicine, strolled through the indoor and outdoor market booths (it was market day), visited St Peter’s Church (nice but not really special), a gallery and an antique shop and had a panini for lunch.
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| Interesting advertising |
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| St Peter's Church through the entry arch |
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| St Peter's nave |
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Choir ceiling--I really like
ceilings |
Our next stop was Laugharne. From our vantage point outside Laugharne Castle, we could see several more along the bay, all built on the order of Edward I. The original castle on Laugharne’s site was a motte and bailey. I always knew that term but not what it meant. Motte means mound and bailey means flat. On top of that flat mound they would build a keep. The 14th century owner Guy de Brian very smartly gave land to the people around—an acre each. 220 yards was about as far as a horse could pull a plow through a furrow without resting (turning around). That 220 yards, the furrow’s length, became known as a furlong.
We took a walk around the castle, along the bay, stopping by a house that Dylan Thomas once lived in, and then on to his famous Writing Shed, the place where his wife Caitlin locked him in each day and from which he could not escape until he had written something. Their lives were pretty chaotic; he was a drunk and their marriage was an open one. She was an artist’s muse and accustomed to nudity. Each day young men walked along the path we had traversed to see her sunbathing. They were not good parents to their three children. His poetry often doesn’t make sense, but it has a lilt and cadenza reminiscent of the Welsh he had heard as a youth without learning to speak it himself. Conway recited one of his poems in Welsh and English in his beautiful tones. I greatly regret that I didn’t record it.
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| Laugharne Castle |
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| Conway lecturing at Dylan Thomas home |
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| Interior of Thomas' writing shed |
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| More lecture at the Writing Shed |
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| View from the writing shed |
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| The castle keep later in the day |
We ate at a pub in Laugharne and after enjoyed another concert, this time a mixed-voice choir, in a disused Congregational church.
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| Pub sign at the Carpenters Arms |
To our astonishment (and Neil’s also!) Conway was in the choir. His fellow choir members obviously have great affection for him. They sang mostly contemporary songs with great enthusiasm and ended with the Welsh national anthem (‘Land of my Fathers’—listen to it on YouTube--beautiful). What a fitting end to our time with Conway. We said goodbye; he went back home and we returned to our hotel.
He is far too modest. He is so accomplished and a true Renaissance man. Wonderful sense of humor, beautiful voice, full of knowledge on so many subjects, former rugby player as well as singer—and unabashed Welsh patriot. He has done many surveys and projects for the government (his specialty being poverty and mental health in the 19th and 20th centuries) and has written two books and, I’m sure, much more that we didn’t find out. He truly made this Celtic Wales tour for us. I hope he will be able to continue giving tours for Americans eager to learn and experience Wales.
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| Choir members; Conway second from right on top row |
Road Scholar always recommends books to read before a trip. I read one called A Concise History of Wales by Geraint H. Jenkins. The overall impression of Wales and the Welsh left by the book was one of oppression and poverty. From all that Conway told us, that pretty much has been the history. But there is something else too. And that is pride. Pride in the land and in their history. Pride in who they are as a people. I hope it doesn’t lead them down a path away from the rest of the United Kingdom into the unknown of greater Europe with whom they have much less in common than they do with their fellow islanders. Just the point of a view of a long time Anglophile.
Thursday we left our hotel and traveled to Cardiff to St Fagan’s National Museum of History, an open-air museum chronicling the historical lifestyle, culture and architecture of the Welsh people. They have brought buildings from numerous periods from all over Wales and placed them in an appropriate setting. I walked around and visited a good bit of the place. There were also good exhibits in the main building—clothing, toys, clocks, household goods, etc.
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| Farm kitchen of 1850 |
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| Pigsty of 1800 |
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| Tollhouse of 1771 |
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| Saddler's workshop of 1926 |
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| Cottage of 1805 |
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| Smithy |
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| General store of 1880 |
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| Sign in the general store |
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| Sawmill of 1892 |
We continued on the M4 to London, staying for our last night at the Radisson Blu Edwardian Heathrow Hotel, a beautiful, modern place. Dinner was in the Indian restaurant without Indian food to Neil’s disappointment. Afterward we met for the last time to deal with logistics and have a recap of the trip. 15,519 steps and 17 floors this day.
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Map of our path around Wales starting in upper right as we drove across the north from
Manchester, visiting the northern sites while staying in Betwys-y-Coed and then traveling down the coast and exploring the south of the country while staying in Lamphey |
Friday morning after an amazing breakfast at the hotel I took the shuttle to Heathrow and then Heathrow Express to Paddington Station. Paddington is my favorite area to stay in after sampling many areas because of its convenience—good restaurants around and four tube lines at the station. This hotel, O Paddington, was a new one for me. I’d go back.
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| Sign for the Bethnal Green Museum |
My first visit of the day was to the Victoria and Albert Museum of Childhood, a museum at Bethnal Green, a new site for me. Bethnal Green is in East London, a place I’ve been exploring for the last couple of trips. The museum was quite nice, static as well as interactive displays as is the norm these days.
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| Display of dolls houses |
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| Medieval scene |
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| Alice chess set |
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| Train set |
I tubed to London Bridge and walked along Bermondsey Street to the famous Bermondsey Antique Market that Denny and I once visited regularly. I was late so there weren’t too many dealers left, but it was fun to poke around and pick up a few royal pieces. Then it was back to London Bridge station area for a welcome lunch—I had walked quite a long way.
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Old and new--train station and
the Shard |
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| Display of medicinal herbs |
After lunch I went to another new venue for me, the Old Operating Theatre, in this area. It is in the attic of St Thomas’ Church and was the hospital in this area of East London during the late 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. There were lots of herbs and powders once used medicinally (and perhaps should be more utilized today) and lots of frightening surgical instruments. There was also an operating room from the time. The table was wooden with a raised wooden rectangular piece for the head. There was a gruesome photo of a man being held down—they were probably cutting off a limb.
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| Victorian surgical instruments |
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| More surgical instruments |
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| Poster on the miserable lives of poor Victorian children |
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| Model of internal organs |
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| Model of the heart |
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| More gruesome instruments |
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| Wooden operating tables |
I left the area and went to Covent Garden, always a fun place with its constant stream of performers. I watched a contortionist doing unbelievable things with his body. Inside I listened to a string quartet in the lower area. I found a place to sit without buying anything and did a puzzle to rest a bit.
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| Contortionist |
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| Another crazy pose |
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| Adrian Mole marquee |
Dinner was noodle soup (pho) at a Vietnamese restaurant nearby. I was in the area because I was going to the theatre that evening to see The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, a musical about a 13 3/4-year old boy, based on a series of humorous children’s books. It was clever and inventive, and the audience absolutely loved it, showing their appreciation loudly and often.
Saturday morning I set off for Westminster Abbey, a place that I have visited several times but wanted to see again.
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David Lloyd George again--this time
in Parliament Square Gardens |
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| North door of Westminster Abbey |
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| West towers from north side |
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| Detail of north door arch |
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| Cleaned up west end |
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| East end with George V |
The line was pretty long but went pretty fast. Everyone gets a self-guided audio tour (that’s getting more common—I like it) with visuals also. There is very little crowding because everyone is guided on the same path. I’ve always liked their shop, and I got several things there.
No pictures were allowed inside, just in the cloisters. Of course, there are many famous people honored with a tomb or a memorial plaque in the Abbey. Most just list the name and dates and are pretty boring, so I was really pleased to see the plaque in the floor honoring Stephen Hawking (taken from a postcard--I didn't sneak the picture).
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| Stephen Hawking's memorial in the Abbey |
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| Abbey cloisters |
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| Chapter House windows and ceiling |
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Medieval wall painting
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| Abbey from the Cloisters |
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| Pyx Chamber from late 11th c |
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Coronation chair without the
Stone of Scone |
I thought I would go next to the Jewel Tower, a 14th century surviving part (that didn’t burn down) of the Palace of Westminster. I did go to it, a bit beyond the Abbey on Abingdon Street, but not up in it. I couldn’t face another narrow spiral staircase.
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Jewel Tower, part of original
Palace of Westminster |
The buildings in the area were having serious work done on them. I decided that they were either preparing for another anniversary on the throne (70th would be next) or a coronation.
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Totally shrouded Tower of Big
Ben--I felt bad for the first
time visitors |
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Richard I and a shrouded
Houses of Parliament |
I then made my way to Piccadilly Circus via Green Park, a mistake because of the long wait for the train and the fact that it was so hot in the tube station.
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Levitating performer--I've seen him
before and it is amazing |
I had just enough time for a lunch of chicken schwarma and salad before going next door to see the Book of Mormon. I had resisted seeing it for a long time but decided to go. It was terrific. The bumbling lead was particularly good, but everyone did well. Once again the audience was really appreciative; they hooted and hollered after each song--maybe because they were a little tipsy! I decided that theatre in London now has become an excuse to drink. People go early to queue at the bar and hightail it back there at the interval. The guy sitting in front of me had four beers at his seat.
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| Selfie at the play |
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| Book of Mormon marquee |
I sat for a bit reading an e-book I had brought and decided to have an early dinner. I walked up to Chinatown for egg roll, pork with veg and rice and wine. That killed some time, waiting for the next play.
The evening's performance was Bitter Wheat by David Mamet with John Malkovich who was outstanding. It was a pretty barbed fictional take on Harvey Weinstein and Hollywood.
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| Bitter Wheat marquee |
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| Chinatown street |
Sunday I was off to Buckingham Palace. I intended to take the tube, but my watch battery was on its last legs, making my watch slow, and I had to be there at 9. I tried to hail a taxi, but they were scarce. The Heathrow Express was shut down because of a train breakdown on the tracks, so everyone was obviously getting taxis to the airport. In addition, there was to be a huge concert in Hyde Park, so the driver, when I finally got one, said many other drivers had just stayed home.
I’ve toured the Palace twice before (only available when the queen does her summer holiday at Balmoral) but wanted to do it again also. It’s a beautiful place. And another great self-guided tour with visuals—and no pictures allowed inside. I took my time (another benefit of not being with a live guide) even looking at each painting in the Picture Gallery. Because 2019 is the 200th anniversary of Victoria’s birth (and she was the first monarch to live in the palace), they had an exhibition throughout about how Victoria and Albert added to and decorated the Palace. On the back porch where you exit there was a life-sized wall panel of one of the images taken on the balcony of the Royal Family on the Queen’s birthday. They had a low curtain in front of it to simulate the balcony wall. Anyone could stand behind the curtain and get “in” the picture. That was fun. I really like the shop here also and always get things.
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| Me with the royal family |
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| Back of Buckingham Palace |
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| Ducks doing their thing |
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| Pond in palace gardens |
I continued through the back gardens and exited onto Grovesnor Place and walked up to Hyde Park Corner tube—full of people going to the concert.
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| Wellington Arch at Hyde Park Corner |
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| Escalator full of concert goers |
I took the tube down to South Kensington and then the long walk down the tunnel to the Natural History Museum, well-regarded but a place I hadn’t been.
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| Natural History Museum |
I was hungry so first I ate in one of their cafés. The museum is very large, so I didn’t cover it all. On the first floor is the most complete stegosauros skeleton ever found—from Wyoming. How did the NHM get it?
In little windows all around there were other fossils and minerals formed a long time ago. Some of them were really beautiful—as nature is.
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| Most complete stegosaurus skeleton |
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| Giant clubmoss fossil |
Upstairs there was a huge exhibition about volcanoes and earthquakes. It was really well done; they didn’t overwhelm you with verbiage. In one area, you got to experience one. I stepped onto the platform not knowing what was coming; that was a shock. I almost fell. Then I went into the human evolution exhibit because I find that fascinating. I didn’t go to the dinosaur section which I always do in such places or see other animals. I knew I had a lot of walking ahead, and I had done my quota here.
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| Family of man display |
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Wooly rhino from 45,000 years ago--
preserved in an oil seep |
I walked south from the museum through a shopping and restaurant area. There were lots of people about because it was Sunday and a beautiful day. I took the long walk down to Chelsea Embankment, another place I hadn't been before.
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| Nice row of houses on Onslow Sq |
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| Half-timbered house |
I visited Chelsea Old Church which was bedecked with floral arrangements just as Westminster Abbey had been.
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| Nave of the church |
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| Chelsea Old Church |
In front of the church was a lovely statue of Sir Thomas More, one of my favorite figures from English history. I sat for awhile and read. I always mean to do more of that, just soaking up an area, but don’t do it enough.
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| Sir Thomas More in front of the church |
I continued down Cheyne Walk going east past the beautiful Albert Bridge over the Thames and past nice town homes, some previously occupied by famous figures like Oscar Wilde and George Eliot.
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| Cheyne Walk street sign |
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| Albert Bridge over the River Thames |
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| Pretty detail of the bridge |
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| Once Oscar Wilde's home |
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| Once George Eliot's home |
I turned off the embankment and up Royal Hospital Road and past the hospital where the Chelsea pensioners live. I have long known of them and think it such a nice thing to provide a home for older veterans. I saw three of them on my walk; one gave me a big smile and spoke to me. Then it was up to Sloane Square for the tube and back to Paddington. 13,654 steps.
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| Royal Hospital Chelsea |
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| Picture of the Chelsea Pensioners |
Monday, my last day in London, was my day for Kew Gardens. It was cloudy all day so yesterday would have been better, but oh well. Late summer isn’t the best season for Kew, but I haven’t been there for fifty years, so I went. It was a long tube ride and then an easy walk to Victoria Gate. I decided to pay for the train to get around the grounds also though I only took it once, for the initial ride around the whole property which I couldn’t have done on foot. It was mostly green, very little in bloom except annuals in a few places.
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| The just green Kew Garden |
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| Lovely Japanese Gateway |
I hopped off the train at Kew Palace, the home of George III, Queen Charlotte and some of their 15 children. The period they were depicting was 1804 when the children were grown and only the unmarried daughters lived with them. This was a time when the king was not in his right mind and was kept away from the rest of the family. A docent told me that the current thinking is that he had porphyria, a genetic mutation which can produce mental problems, coupled with his grief over losing a son and daughter. I came away with a picture of him as a loving father and well-intentioned person, not exactly what American school children are taught. Charlotte was portrayed as strong and very focused on raising her children well. George, of course, was the grandfather of Queen Victoria who came to the throne only because her older uncles (George IV and William IV) had no issue and her father had died. The explanations on the wall panels were really good.
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| Kew Palace |
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| George III and Charlotte |
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| Herbal garden out back |
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| Game room in the palace |
The kitchens were in a separate building as was customary at the time but weren’t terribly impressive except for the big log books of purchases and guests at meals.
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| Fall flowers in kitchen garden |
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| Beautiful ornamental cabbages |
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| View of the kitchen of 1804 |
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| Chef's journal |
The 330-acre Gardens of Kew were created in 1772 from the merger of the estates or Richmond and Kew. Instrumental in the creation was Augusta, the Princess of Wales, the wife of Frederick. Later her son, George III, and wife Charlotte greatly enriched the gardens.
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| Flowers along the path |
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| And more flowers |
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| I just liked the unusual look of these |
After lunch at the Orangery, I went through the incredibly humid Waterlily House and then the Palm House, supposedly one of the highlights but not spectacular to me. I liked better the huge Temperate House.
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| Garden outside Palm House |
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| Trimming the bushes |
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| Temperate House |
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| Gorgeous flower in Temperate House |
What made the whole trip worth doing in this season was the Chihuly exhibit, some pieces of which I had seen in either Atlanta or Biltmore or his museum in St Petersburg, but other pieces ones I hadn’t seen. They were strategically placed on the grounds as he always does it.
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| Red and yellow Chihuly |
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| Red spikes |
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| In the Waterlily House--my favorite |
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| Near the Palm House |
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| Purple and turquoise |
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| White tubes in Temperate House |
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| Unusual red and white in Temperate House |
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| Gorgeous blue hanging in Temperate House |
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| Blue and white spray |
The Marianne North gallery had tons of botanical paintings, way too many to absorb or certainly appreciate. They were stacked floor to ceiling all around the gallery. The Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botannical Art had many Chihuly’s of the type that are in his St Pete museum.
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| Ethereal turquoise sculpture |
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| Silver tube |
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| Yellow dish with pink rings |
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| Yellow dish |
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| Orange bowl with multi-colored veins |
Before walking back to the station, I sat down for an English afternoon piece of cake—but no tea. Back in Paddington I tried a new Italian restaurant for dinner. I’ll go back there too. Then I had to pack.
Tuesday it was back home via Charlotte where I had a long layover. The check-in process at Heathrow was really automated and efficient. At baggage check, I put my suitcase on a conveyor, answered a few questions on a monitor and scanned my ticket. A baggage tag was spit out. I put it on my bag, pushed a button and away it went. No person necessary. What are people going to do for jobs in a very automated world? At security the buckets were on a conveyor belt under the shelf where you put your carry-ons, so all you had to do was reach down for one.
On the first flight I watched Tolkien about his early life—very nice. Martha was at GSP when I got there, so I was soon home. That trip was long enough for me—15 days. I know I will not lose my love of travel and adventure. I just hope my legs and energy hold out for years to come.
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