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."