a perfectly perfect day

The day started deliciously today when my daughter-in-law hosted a tasting party. She is selling a line of spices, sauces and mixes that are really quite flavorful.  Then I attended the Homestead Invitational Marching Band competition. The weather was sunny, crispy cool and the spectators were seated on the west side of the bleachers so the afternoon sun wasn't in our eyes.  A perfect setting for a band competition.  We (my daughter, son-in-law and I) saw all of the class B competitors (medium size schools) and the class A bands from larger schools.  My grandson and granddaughter march in the Carroll High School band in the class A catagory. Today the band performed beautifully. It was the first time I had seen their program this year and it was excellent.  I thought they were very good and, happily, the judges agreed with me.  Carroll took first place for their division and also first place overall. Needless to say we were all very pleased. Congratulations to Carroll!!!

an evening of beautiful music

Yesterday evening a friend and I heard "Joshua Bell in Concert" at the Embassy Theater. It's always a visual treat to attend any concert there because it's such an elegant old. beautifully restored, building. Last night's program opened with Elgar's "Enigma Variations" which I had never heard before,  It was my favorite piece of the evening even though Joshua Bell didn't perform in that piece.  He played in Berstein's "Serenade, after Plato's Symposium". He is a brilliant violinist and played wonderfully, and got a huge long standing ovation, but, personally, I enjoyed the first piece more. Bell played an encore piece that I liked more than the Bernstein piece.  I admitted this to my friend who said I must prefer the more mellow sounds of a violin, and I realized he was exactly right.  All in all it was a lovely evening. 

The last day

After our tour of Stonehenge we drove through the Cotswold countryside and stopped at a little village called Bourton on the Water. This little stream ran right through the center of town. After getting caught in a torrential downpour (brief but intense) which drove us into a little Pasty shop to enjoy tea and a pasty.  A pasty is a folded over crust filled with meat, cheese, or whatever. Yumm. After the rain stopped and the suncame out we enjoyed exploring several little shops and a festival that was being put on as a fundraiser for the local church.  I found out what a Tombola is. I've seen the term in novels and always wondered. Turns out it's just a raffle. So now I know.

In the late afternoon we went back to our second night in Stratford. The picture above is a shot of the interior of Shakespeare's sister's home where we ahd dinner on our final night of the trip. I took this shot because I enjoyed how enthusiastic the docent was about this beautiful old house.

My roommate Sally and I are on the left side in this picture behind Fred. We enjoyed many fine dinners with our group on this trip and our tour guide took pictures with our cameras at each table. Too bad there was nothing more interesting than rolls on the table when this picture was taken. The next morning we headed for Heathrow and the long trip home.  At the start of our trip, it took us about an hour and a half to travel from Heathrow to downtown London.  From Stratford to Heathrow was also and hour and a half which helped us understand why we didn't return to London for our last night. It was a great trip although I would have enjoyed seeing a little more of Wales. But for now I'm turning my attention to the other side of the world. Next year I'm going to 

Australia, New Zealand and Figi.

4000 years ago someone had an idea.

One of our last stops on this trip was Stonehenge. I had seen these amazing standing stones once before, several years ago.  You still can't actually walk in among the stones (I would love to do that) but it seemed to me that we were allowed to walk much closer to the stones than I remember before. It's a very moving sight.

The stones were set in place over 4000 years ago (2000 years before the Druids who may have used the site but didn't build it), about the same time that the Egyptian and South American pyramids were being built, so some people theorize that all of these massive constructions were created, or at least inspired, by aliens. 

Theories (other than the alien one) range from uses as a burial site, (they have found burnt remains), an observatory, a gathering place, a memorial to the dead and more. There are remains of large avenues leading into the stones from miles away. My theory? It was a multi-use facility where people gathered to observe the solstices but also to shop, trade, celebrate festivals, worship and generally spend time with each other.  If I built something this fine i would want to use it all the time.

We marvel that our early ancestors hauled these huge stones from miles away, shaped them slowly with stone axes and carefully set them in place. Think of the time and labor involved, but then there wasn't a lot else to do.  It gave them something to occupy their time whe they weren't hunting or gathering.

In the museum area they showed this (fake) stone on a sled with log rollers. This is how they think the stones were moved with up to a hundred men pulling on ropes to move the stones along while others would grab the rollers from the back and move them to the front as they rolled along..  No small feat when you consider they moved them 30+ miles.  I could tell this was a fake stone because from one angle you could see a solar panel on the top of the stone.

These modest little huts are a recreation of the types of homes the workers would have lived in. Notice the thatched roofs here.  Later on our drive through the Cotswolds we saw several modern examples of thatched roofs which are really quite elaborate. I guess if you find an idea that works you might as well keep using it. 

Shakespeare anyone?

We spent a day and a half in Shakespeare's home town, Stratford. This was interesting for me because I go to Stratford, Ontario every summer for the theater.  It was interesting to see the original. 

I was interested in all the Tudor architecture. Turns out that in the 15th and 16th centuries this was a cheap way to build houses. Wood was expensive so it was only used for the framework and the space between was filled with 'wattle and daub' - basically mud with other stuff mixed in - then plastered over, inside and out.

The richer you were the more wood you could afford to have in your building. This one really impressed me. Builders would put the most wood on the front of the building.  We had dinner in a museum/restaurant that Shakespeare had built for his sister when she got married.  

And we took a boat ride on the Avon River. Yes, there were swans. This bridge is the oldest in the area, from the 1200's I think. 

On the road again

One last look at Holyrood. This is a view of the ruins of Holyrood Abbey, another victim of the reformation, so sad.

Driving through the Scottish countryside. On our way to Wales. My roomate Sally and I had our turn riding in the fromt seat of the bus. great views but scary.  All these cars and trucks kept rushing past us on the "wrong" side' roundabouts were especially exciting.

On the way, we stopped in Gretna Green. Readers of romance fiction will recognize this as the town, just across the border in Scotland, where young English couples eloped to. Back in the 1600's England passed a law that you had to be 21 years old or have your parents' consent to get married. Young couples who couldn't wait would cross the boarder into Scotland where the marriage laws were much more relaxed. The little blacksmith shop in Gretna Green was only a half mile from the boarder and became a popular wedding destination. After the blacksmith/pastor married the couple they were directed to a cnvenient little room where they could consumate the marriage - just in case mom and dad were in hot pursuit. We enjoyed a mock ceremony, see picture above, in which the groom vowed to give his bride all his money and and the bride promised to keep him supplied with several liters of wiskey per week and also rub his feet every night.

We had breakfast in Scotland, lunch in England and made it to Wales in time for a lovely dinner. We stayed at Ruthin Castle (pronounced Rithin) which is now run as a hotel. We were told that this is the only castle in Wales where you can stay because none of the others have roofs. This picture shows the tub in our bedroom, and it was in the bedroom. There was a more ordinary shower in the bathroom'

The 18th century part of the castle, which had been updated to contain the hotel, was surrounded by ruins dating back to the 1100's'

The peacocks roaming the grounds were obviously not intimidated by us. Peacocks were kept, in the early days, because they would screech and warn of intruders. If times got tough they could also be eaten. The castle was, of course, haunted, and one of the men in our group swore that there were mysterious noises in his room that night.

finally made it to Edinburg

Had great fun in Edinburgh this time except for the rain. No surprise there. We toured Hollyrood Palace. Queen Elizabeth stays here for a week each year but doesn't like it much because it's drafty. She prefers to stay at Balmoral when she's in Scotland. It's nice to have choices.  

Evidently Queen Victoria also found it drafty becaused she commissioned huge tapestries to be hung all over the place. For some reason the pictures I just added showed up in reverse order.  From top to bottom: (1) Our first view of Edinburgh Castle; (2) Hollyrood Palace; (3) Another view of Edinburgh Castle which is huge.  The oldest parts date back to 1000 years ago. (4) Me standing by Hadrian's Wall which we saw on the way to Scotland. I thought one picture of me would prove that I actually went on this trip. At one time it extended all across England to keep out the wild Scots and was over 20 feet tall. Not much left now but you can still see stretches of it. People go on walking trips along the length of it. Very close to where we viewed the wall was a small village with some very old looking buildings.  One barn looked suspiciously like it was built from stones that were once part of the wall. Our history lesson for the day concerned King James VI of Scotland who became King James I of England (the first king of both countries). He was the King James of Bible fame. If you want to know the dates you'll need to look it up. Somewhere in the 1400's I think, but after a while all the dates started running together.

a brief detour from the travelog

More about my trip tomorrow but now let me tell you about the play I sawn this evening. "A Mighty Fortress" was presented in honor of the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther nailing his 95 thesis on the church door and effectively starting the reformation. It was well done, dffectively a one-man show except for the prologue, the acting was good and the message was powerful.  As a lapsed Lutheran, it brought back memories of many things I remember from religion classes during my 9 years (K-8) of Lutheran school. His "I cannot and will not recant." speech was particularly effective. This play was produced by 'all for One productions' and staged at the Auer center. The only thing I didn't enjoy were the audience chairs, molded plastic, which I found very uncomfortable. Evidently they were molded with someone elses body in mind. 

Meanwhile in York

I find it difficult to wrap my mind around cities that are over a thousand years old. Obviously, most of the currently existing buildings aren't that old but much of what we saw dated from the 1400 and 1500's. Yorkminster (minster implies that there was a school atached) Cathedral contains the oldest (middle ages) stained glass in Great Britain.  During the Reformation era Protestants destroyed much of the art work in the big old cathedrals. At Yorkminster they didn't destroy the glass but they did pull down and shatter all of the statues on the outside of the building.  Note the empty niches.

The middle picture shows the ruins of a small chapel and the bottom picture is Clifford's Tower which dates from the 1100's. We ate dinner that evening in a supposedly haunted restaurant which was housed in an old rope making factory where hangman's ropes were made.  We didn't spot any ghosts but did enjoy our second pub experience including beer tasting. Some of us thought that the better tasting experience happened in the afternoon when a Dunkin Donut truck pulled up in a square where we were . and started passing out dozens of donuts for free to promote a new shop they were opening.  The donuts were a big hit based on the large number of people who lined up for the decadent treat. Nice to know we're sharing something of our culture over seas.

leaving London

From London we headed north to York, the only city in England that still has its city walls. We left from King's Cross Station for a two hour train ride to York, and yes I finally got to see the not so secret entrance to Platform 9 and 3/4. 

The top picture shows a little tourist "witch" pushing her luggage trolly through the wall that opens to platform 9 & 3/4. Pictures 2 and 3 are of the new and old architectural features of King's Cross. The final picture is a view of an old, old street in York called the Shambles. Notice how the upper stories of the buildings lean in over the street. Our guide told us that they were built this way because buildings were taxed on the area or square footage of the ground floor. She also said that Japaneze "Harry Potter" fans think this is "Diagon Alley". There is now, no surprise, a shop at the end of the street called "The Shoppe that Must Not Be Named". OK, that's it, no more Harry Potter references for this trip.

Woops, my bad.

Today you will see the actual pictures of Kensington Palace, among other things.

From top to bottom (not sure why this order) the entrance to the palace, Big Ben (above the scaffolding) the Tower Bridge, and, finally. I think, Kensington (or maybe Buckingham) Palace. Kensington did have an interesting exhibit of Princess Diana's dresses. I'm not a huge fan but the 20th anniversary of her death was getting lots of coverage in England. It was interesting to see how her taste evolved from her early years, very fluffly froo froo, to elegant sophistication. Actually, I thought that one of the best exhibits in the palace was one that highlighted three very intelligent princesses from the 15th and 16th centuries (all cooincidentally imports from Germany) who influenced the courts of their times. 

excuse me while I check my app

I am going to continue my travel saga but first I want to share information about two apps I heard about recently. Now, I admit there are some useful apps out there.  I appreciate school closing alerts and storm warnings but,,,earlier today a weatherperson said that we could use her station's weather app to check if it's raining before we go outside tomorrow morning. Really?  Couldn't we just open a window or look out the door. Do we really need an app to tell if it's raining? And how about this? While riding on the bus around the English countryside last week, our tour guide proudly announced that her company now had an app that we could download to our phones that would tell us where we are at that very moment in real time. Really? I was right there, sitting on the bus.  I didn't really need an app to tell me that.
Day two was spent touring around London. By the way, London was founded by the Romans in 46AD. In the morning we visited Buckingham Palace and then Kensington Palace.

I'm pretty sure that this is a picture of Kensington, the front side where tourists visit. We saw a fairly casual changing of the guard there, also floral trubutes to Diana. William, Kate and the children live at Kensington, as well as William's brother and a few other royals. A friend expressed concern tha the noise of tourists roaming all around the front rooms of the palace would bother the family, but she was assured that, in a house with 800 rooms, the noise really didn't carry to the back regions of the palace where the family live. 

During our lunch break some of our group visited Harrods, the famous old department store. Last year I had tea there which was very nice. The story is told that once, some years ago, because Harrods claims to have everything you need, a gemtleman went into the tea room and ordered an elephant sandwich. The flustered waitress coundulted with the maitre de who solumnly informed the man that "Unfortunately, we are out of elephant today." 

the first pictures

Well, so far so good. I have managed to download all of my trip pictures on to my computer and delete the blurry ones (not too many, happily).  Our first adventure, after arriving in London and checking into our hotel, was to visit the Tower of London.  As you may gather from this picture, it was not a cheerful place.  If you were hauled off to the tower, especially if you were accused of treason, the outcome was not likely to be good.  We had a wonderful guide through the tower who told us lots of fascinating stories about the people who were executed there. 

 

It seems that treason was the most popular crime.  Essentially, a king or queen could accuse anyone of treason if they happened to disagree with them on any subject.  When a person was executed at the tower (by beheading) he or she was marched out to the grassy hill outside the tower walls where a crowd of townspeople would be waiting to watch the spectacle.  The condemned would make a final speech, then offer his executioner a bag full of money to buy a swift, hopefully painless beheading.  Sadly the executioner wasn't always as skilled as one might hope and our guide regaled us with tales of botched executions. It reminded me of the Harry Potter character "Nearly Headless Nick".  On the up side, the Crown Jewels are stored in the tower and they are quite amazing.  The crowns, scepters, etc were quite amazing but I was also itrigued by the huge (3-4 feet across) gold platters and matching chalices. So many of these gold pieces seemed to have been aquired in the 1600s. This made me wonder what was going on at that time historically. I finally got an answer from one of the guards.  It seems that during that era the Spanish were bringing back lots of gold from the new world and the British pirate Sir Francis Drake was stealing it from them. Isn't history interesting?

the play's the thing.

Sorry, no travel pictures yet, but I did see the most hilarious play this evening. If you have nothing to do next weekend go see "Baskerville" at First Presbyterian Theater. Thr best way to describe it is slapstick Sherlock Holmes. Pratfalls, sight gags and not so subtle scene changes and costume alterations kept everyone laughing. My favorite bit was the prolonged unlocking of the mansion doors. I absolutely recommend this play. 7:30 next Friday and Saturday.

I'm back from my travels;

I returned yesterday from a lovely trip to England, Scotland and Wales. I've been in England and Scotland before but everywhere we went (we being the bus tour group) I saw things I had not seen on previous trips so it was very enjoyable. This tour was organized by Collette and I have always been impressed by their guides. This time was no exception. Our guide, Christina, really knew her way around. She was a font of historical, economical and statistical information, very little of which my brain retained. I was on vacation after all. In the next several posts I will be sharing some pictures (as soon as I remember the process) and more specific information but for now I'll leave you with a joke:  A Scotsman, an Englishman and and Irishman were trying to get into the Olympics but they didn't have tickets so they cast about for another way to get in.  The Englishman saw a long stck, picked it up, walked to the gate and announced "England, pole vaulting" and the guard waved him in.  The Scotsman picked up a sewer cover, announce that he was a discus thrower and was also waved in. The Irishman, observing these successes, looked around, spotted and picked up a roll of barbed wire and walked up to the guard. "Ireland," he announced, "Fencing."  I know it's a groaner but I couldn't resist.

Information you need

I won't be able to blog for the next several days so I've decided to share some information I'm sure you'll be excited to have. Did you know that Saturday was World Beard Day and yesterday was Pet Rock Day? I sincerely hope that not knowing about these two earthshaking events did not in any way dampen your Labor Day Weekend celebration. But now, looking forward, plan for these events.  September 7 is Buy a Book Day (I like that one), on the 9th we have Wonderful Weirdos Day, the 10th is Grandparents' Day, and on the 11th, Patriots Day. Then comes Fortune Cookie Day on the 13th and Eat a Hoagie Day on the 14th. I will leave it to my readers to assign the appropriate level of seriousness to each of these days. For me Fortune Cookie Day is way up on the list, not only because I like fortune cookies but also because that date happens to be the birthday of my firstborn. I will have to tell him what an auspicious day he was born on, although I have a snealy suspicion that Fortune Cookie Day hadn't been invented 46 years ago. 

making potato salad again

I'm having family over for a casual, picnicky lunch tomorrow in celebration of the fact that a niece I haven't seen for three years is coming to visit.  I decided, in keeping with the casual theme, that I would make Hot German Potato Salad following the same recipe I used a few months ago. I chopped and fried and boiled and mixed and the final result is waiting in the refrigerator to be baked tomorrow.  I love a dish that can be made ahead. I haven't tasted it yet but I've had a wonderful bacony scent wafting through the apartment all afternoon and evening. I've got to stop writing now. I'm making myself too hungry. The quandry now is do I hope the family loves it and eat it all up or do I hope they leave me lots of leftovers. I think this is a win win situation.  Wouldn't it be terrible if I turn out to be a sleep walker/eater? 

sensible shoes

I remember saying to my mother, at the wise onld age of 16, that I would never sacrifice style for comfort.  Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! Today I went shoe shopping for some brown shoes for fall, and I bought a pair. Were they cute, strappy, high heeled pumps? No! Are they snappy little dressy flats? No! They are good, sturdy brown walking shoes. Very comfortable, very plain, very boring.... Ah well, I did at least buy some fun multicolor socks. Of course, no one will see the socks under the shoes and long pants but at least I'll know I have something cute and jazzy going on. Stylish? No. Conforable, oh yes. How my mother would laugh.