Trekkin

Day 50 Sunday 10 July 2016

Up at 7am, some blog writing, a really great breakfast, comparable to the best we have had anywhere in Europe, some photo sorting then off at 10.20am for the half hour walk to Klaras. Near our hotel there is a large park so we walk through that, very pleasant with lots of parents out with their children playing in the park. There are lots of large trees with some good formed paths & the shade is welcoming. The temperature in Novi Sad (Hungarian name Uj Videk) is around 28C & a lot warmer than we have been used to in the rest of Europe so we start to get hot by the time we get to Klara’s & have to walk in the sun a bit.

This morning we drive with Klara & Zoli to visit the cemetery & the grave of Tereza’s cousin Gizika & her husband Kosta. When we were in Novi Sad 5 years ago we stayed a week with them & had a wonderful time enjoying their company. It is so difficult to believe that just 2 years after that they had both succumbed to illness & passed away within 2 months of each other. We placed some flowers & remembered the good times, it was very sad that two such nice people have left us.

Back at Klara & Zoli’s we chatted more & they prepared a delicious lunch, soup followed by baked rainbow trout, truly delightful, then superb floating island they had cooked to make sure our tummies were bursting. Later that afternoon another cousin, Dejan, came & picked us up & we went back to his apartment & spent some pleasant hours chatting with his wife Aleksandra & him plus meeting their 2 sons again, they have both grown so much in 5 years. They have enlarged their apartment & put in a new kitchen since our last visit & it looks great. Some more delicious gibenica (a Serbian speciality) with coffee before Dejan took us back to Klara’s where we spent the evening chatting further, some more food, as if we need it, but delicious sausages, speck, smoked pork & other delicious tidbits. Then the final of the European Cup football was on so we watched that until the end, then Zoli & Klara kindly delivered us back to our hotel at 11.30pm where we fell into bed. A very tiring but great day.

It has been so wonderful to see our young cousins they are all grown up with teenage children, it is such a shame we are not closer so that we could spend time with them all.

We are in Serbia but it used to be Hungary, my cousins & their children are so clever they speak Hungarian, Serb, German & English very fluently but they are fiercely Hungarian.

Our Hotel & the food I would class as one of the best we have been in so far. Everything is spotless & tastefully decorated & the food is delicious.

Tomorrow we will be driving to Kikinda, an even more remote & Hungarian place & my cousins (they are my age) will have very limited English, Ron will really have to learn more Hungarian, actually he has a reasonable vocabulary already (my clever sweetheart). Internet most likely will be non-existent. I am so looking forward to seeing my lovely cousin Katica & her family.

Day 49 Saturday 9 July 2016

Awake at 6am & a bit of email checking, blogging & photo sorting before some fantastic homemade treats for breakfast. The umbilical cord has been cut, we are on our own. We departed Subotica at 10am & Google Maps guided us on our journey south towards Novi Sad. Again lots of very flat farmland, lots of sunflowers & corn & a good dual carriageway Motorway with a 120km/hr speed limit. Some cars sped past us going a lot faster than that. An hour & 20 minutes later we parked near cousin Klarika’s unit & rang the bell. It is 5 years since we have seen Klara & Zoli & their children Dora & David, again very very good to catch up. They can all speak English, the children especially well, so we chatted for ages before sharing a magnificent Hungarian goulash, it was delicious & I helped myself to a 2^nd bowl. More chatting then around 4pm we drove around to our hotel & checked in, this is one of the best hotels we have stayed in on our European travels. Very pleasantly surprised, didn’t expect the hotel to be so lovely in Serbia.

Next was a walk around the city centre of Novi Sad, the footpaths & cafes are teeming with people, we lucked in, this weekend is the EXIT Festival, one of the largest music festivals in Europe & there are young people everywhere. There are lots of sidewalk cafes & bars, packed & humming with activity. The old Hungarian era buildings around the city square are beautiful, there are a couple of communist era buildings that are downright ugly & neglected. We also have an obligatory ice cream. We then walk down to the Danube River & stroll along the banks, along with what seems the other half of the population of Novi Sad. The EXIT Festival is being held at the old fortress of Petrovaradin on the other bank of the Danube & we can hear music floating across the river. There are young people everywhere sitting on the edges listening to the music & talking. Around 8.30pm we head back to Klaras for pizza & more chatting before getting back to our hotel around 11pm. Another great day.

Day 48 Friday 8 July 2016

A sleep-in this morning until 8am (we would have missed the bus), no 6 am wakeup call this morning. We had a very nice breakfast of home-cured smoked pork neck, homemade salami, fresh hot capsicum, tomatoes, feta cheese, yogurt & toast. Starting with a shot of Palinka to cleanse the palate. We repacked our bags, leaving all the warm clothing in one bag as it is now summer (in the 30C’s), the weather is lovely, warm & sunny in Budapest (we left all those cold countries). We leave at 10am for the drive to Subotica where Bela & Gyorgyi have a house & spend most weekends at. The drive through the Hungarian countryside is beautiful, it is very flat land & there are farms & small forests, the main crops are wheat, sunflower (out in full yellow heads) & corn. After about an hour of driving we get off the Motorway & drive along a minor road through Soltvadkert (we didn’t know that we would go that way, we have friends living there so thought that we will just knock on their door but unfortunately they were at their house at Lake Balaton). Just before the Serbian border we turn off to a small town where Bela has a car parked at a friend’s house near the railway station, because Bela & his wife travel on the train usually as all Hungarian citizens aged 65 & over travel on all public transport free of charge so they haven’t the hassle to drive through Budapest’s busy roads. He drives his car & leads me across the border where there are only a few cars waiting to pass through passport control. In the no-man’s land between the two border posts a group of refugees are camped, waiting to be accepted somewhere in Europe. It is not long before we reach Subotica, a large former Hungarian city now in Serbia. After unloading the car we have a Palinka then a nice lunch, more chatting & a siesta before heading off on a short drive out to a local beauty spot, a large lake. We had an ice cream as we strolled along.

Lake Palic is the local site for strolling, boating & casual eating. There is a small nature park & a lot of hotels near the lake. We have a long walk, admiring some of the old buildings, one is notable, a narrow & tall lakeside villa that was formerly owned by a famous Hungarian cyclist. The building was confiscated during the communist regime, neglected & only recently handed back to the family in need of restoration. The sailing club has a collection of old boats, interestingly, most with English names. We finish our walk through the trees of the nature park then back to the lake as twilight starts.

Next is a visit to the Subotica city square, full of people & very beautiful old buildings artfully highlighted by lights, it does look very good. The fountain in the park is also very artfully lit, looks very dramatic of a night. Back to Bela’s house & a light supper & a nice red wine & very long chat until after 11 pm. Tereza & Bela reminisced about all the childhood adventures they had at the grandparent’s farm. Bed time. Another great day.

Day 47 Thursday 7 July 2016

Breakfast at 7.30am where we met up with some of our fellow travellers & have some breakfast together before saying our goodbyes. We catch up with some mail, pay some bills & sort some photos before catching our car at 10.30am for Heathrow airport. The traffic was heavy & very slow for the first few miles but we had a very nice chat with our driver, a Jamaican who has lived in London for around 50 years & has driven some interesting & notable people, including Richard Branson who owns the Virgin brand of companies & Clive Lloyd the West Indian cricketer. Our trip to Heathrow was around an hour, then the usual queues for check-in, passports, security then a bit of shopping before a little time in the British Airways lounge & some lunch. The plane was on time departing & after 2 ½ hours flying we landed in Budapest. One of our bags was close to the last dropped onto the luggage carousel so a delay getting out. We were met by Tereza’s cousin Bela at the exit & it was great to see him again. There was a fair wait at the rental car counter before we were handed the keys to a near new Ford Fiesta. We drove Bela back into Budapest & he guided us to his house very close to the centre of the city. My back was very sweaty by the time we got to Bela’s it was peak hour traffic in a big city, my first time driving a manual left-hand drive car anywhere & it was a bit nerve wracking at times.

We were greeted by Gyorgyi, she had been busy preparing a nice Hungarian meal for dinner, but first a homemade Palinka (Hungarian fruit whisky) or two & some very tasty savoury bread/cake she made. We chatted for ages & I got the occasional English translation. It is difficult that I can’t speak or understand much Hungarian, just the basics. Dinner was a delicious meat goulash washed down with some nice home-made red wine. It was very late before we got to bed, very tired.

Day 46 Wednesday 6 July 2016

A solid breakfast & on the road at 7.45am from Saltash, however, we had a few delays as someone on the tour did not get their laundry back this morning so we spent a bit of time waiting for the laundry to be delivered to the coach when we stopped down the road a bit for it. No luck so we kept going. Another pleasant drive through the countryside, again glad that we are on a coach & see over the top of the hedges along the farm fences, if we were in a car we would only see the hedges. Lots of beautiful green manicured paddocks, some freshly cut for hay, some with lots of haybales still out in the paddocks. A fair few fat sheep & contented cows with the odd small village dotted here & there. It took us a couple of hours to reach our destination of Stonehenge, another bucket list item for us. Today is our last day on the tour & only have one agenda on the list, to see Stonehenge. On the bus our minds are starting to move out of no gear zone – it is time for us to think of all the things we have to organize for next adventure. We won’t have our tour director to senior sit us after the bus stops in London. We need to organise our own dinner, car rental, confirm flights, get cousins address’/phone numbers, (we always used email & skype to keep in touch).

Stonehenge Visitor Centre is that far from Stonehenge that you need a bus to get to see the standing stones, or else walk a long way. Apparently once the road went right up to it & you could walk through the standing stones & touch them, not any more. Part of the admission price is a ticket on a shuttle bus that drives us around 2 miles along a straight road where, once we crest a hill we can see the stones in the distance. The journey by bus takes around 6 minutes, then once dropped off there is still another 200m to walk. Stonehenge is packed with tourists, there are hundreds on the walking path & hundreds more on the path & viewing platform around Stonehenge. The collection of stones is spectacular. To think that these were cut, transported in some cases 40km, others from 240km away, then stood upright, then capped with other very large stones is amazing. More so when it was 4,000 – 5,000 years ago. The stones are not all, there are lots burial mounds that date from 6,000 years ago scattered around the plains nearby plus large ditches & a very long avenue that stretches down to the River Avon 2 miles away. Archaeologists have discovered evidence that this was an important site 10,000 years ago & more is being discovered all the time.

We stick to seeing the standing stones & join the hundreds of others walking slowly around the path stopping at various strategic points to listen to the audio guides provided as part of the admission. Lots of photos of course before we start heading back, it is very impressive. I think we timed our visit well, as we head back there are 6 busloads on the road heading towards the stones & at the visitor centre there are hundreds more tourists waiting for shuttle buses, good timing. Only time for a quick look around the exhibitions then on the coach again. Off to London, more beautiful countryside along the way, including crops of poppy fields, before pulling up outside the Amba Hotel at 3.30pm. We did have a good run through London up until the last couple of miles. It took us about half an hour to travel 2 miles, the vehicles were very close at times, glad I’m not driving.

After settling in we wandered out onto Oxford Street, popped into Selfridges & looked for a pharmacy to pick up some anti histamines because Ron got a terrible hay fever out in the paddock at Stonehenge. We also got some maps for the next part of our adventure in Hungary. We picked up some sushi from Selfridges & walking back to our hotel we stopped at a nearby park that had been set up with yellow deck chairs & blankets with a large TV screen to watch the Wimbledon tennis championships on a balmy warm afternoon. We sat & ate our dinner out there with the Londoners in the park.

A great trip around England, Scotland, Ireland & Wales seeing lots of very interesting sites & beautiful sights with a group of people we had never met before & becoming friends with them. A little bit sad to think it has all finished. The last 22 days we travelled about 6000 km. we travelled a lot on the coach. Sometimes it was tiring, moving always into another hotel & hard to live out of our suit cases for 46 days now, (we have 14 more days) we also missed the family, but it was great as well, we have seen such a lot of beautiful & interesting places.

Day 45 Tuesday 5 July 2016

Away at 8.30am for the short drive to Saltash & the Tamar River waterfront under the twin bridges where we waited for our cruise boat. The bridges are both more than 100 feet above mean high spring tide. The Royal Albert Bridge looks unusual with two large cylindrical trusses that supports the railway bridge. Opened in 1859 it still carries rail traffic & is the main line into & out of Cornwall. The Tamar Bridge opened in 1962 & carries the road traffic. Our boat was a little late getting to us & had fun docking due to the strength of the tide pushing the bow around. We motored upriver of the two bridges a little, watched our coach drive over the bridge, they gave us a toot, then motored back under the bridges & the rushing tide carried us downstream. The temperature was a little fresh with a light breeze off the water. We spent most of the time passing the naval dockyards, they are huge here in Plymouth. There were a few large naval ships tied up in various stages of maintenance. We also saw the conning towers of 8 or 9 nuclear submarines docked & in the process of being de-commissioned. Apparently it takes 30 years for the nuclear reactors to cool down so that they can be removed safely. There are a lot of old buildings at the docks, one for making the hemp rope for sailing ships, another for cutting & making the sails, others for slaughtering & butchering animals in the days of sail. Some of these old buildings are no longer required & have been sold & converted to other uses, such as up-market waterfront apartments. Others are being used for the manufacture of pleasure boats, currently the largest single employer outside defence in Plymouth. We pass the Plymouth Hoe, replete with old lighthouses & the naval garrison overlooking the harbour, still in use.

At Plymouth pleasure boat marina it is guarded by a magnificent statue of a prawn with dragon teeth. We disembark at the Barbican, near an old wharf where the Pilgrim Fathers left for America, before walking through this very old dock area with lots of nice old stone buildings. Just as we are leaving we notice a plaque on the wall commemorating the sailing of the two First Fleet ships Charlotte & Friendship from Plymouth in March 1787 bound for Australia. Leaving Plymouth Harbour we drove south-west through rolling hills full of green fenced pastures, it does look beautiful, to the small seaside beach town of Looe. It is great that we are in a coach high up, if we would be driving in a car we would only see the high stone fences or hedging shrubs on either side of the road.

The streets are very narrow getting into Looe & we have to make a few stops to allow vehicles pass from the other direction. Once again we are so glad that someone else is doing the driving. These coach drivers have amazing driving skills. The water in the river is low & the tide is still running out when we pull up & disembark. Looe is a pretty little town, it was a major fishing port (now mainly an overseas tourist destination) a lot of the old buildings have been converted into cafes/restaurants or some other tourist shop. Everywhere they are after the tourist business. We walk through the narrow streets checking out the pastry shops as we walk past them, Ron is keen to try a Cornish Pasty seeing we are in Cornwall (anywhere else it is only a pretend Cornish pastry). The narrow streets are packed with tourists. We walk to the beach & surprised this one does have sand & a lot of it (but not beautiful like in Australia), the tide is a long way out. There are groups of kids playing on the beach & people sunbathing, yes, the sun is out & the temperature is 16C.   After we stop for a short bite to eat we go for the obligatory walk out to the end of the break-wall, a very civilised concrete wall with a large round concrete buttress at the end with plenty of seating around it. On the way back we stop at a very small old pasty shop with a very low roof & indulge in a Cornish pasty, so we walk back to the river & find a nice bench in the sun & out of the cold wind. It tasted pretty good, lots of pepper, a bit of meat, lots of diced potato & some corn kernels plus diced onion etc. Walking back up to the bridge we noticed the tide had receded even further & all the boats were high & dry, not something I am familiar or comfortable with.

Next it was back to Saltash & then up into Dartmoor again, this time sunshine & a little bit further than yesterday. We pass lots of sheep & cows wandering around & a few wild Dartmoor wild ponies. We pass the old Dartmoor Prison & continue through grassy fields with lots of rocks & very few trees. We come to a plateau & there are lots of wild ponies grazing near a convenient parking lot so we stop & walk around the ponies (they seem to be used to tourists, not shy at all) for a while & enjoying the splendid views across the Cornwall countryside. We stopped at Tavistock, just out of Dartmoor & have a look around the village, again lots of tourists with some very nicely preserved old buildings. The town is renowned as the birthplace of Francis Drake & a statue honouring him graces a roundabout. More lovely rolling green countryside on the way back to our hotel.

This is our last night dinner as a group so it is a celebratory dinner with all our fellow travellers. We have a lovely dinner with champagne & another nice chat, there were a few short speeches thanking people then to bed. Another great day.

Day 44 Monday 4 July 2016

Departure at 8am from Cardiff & traffic was fairly heavy for a while then once we got onto the motorway things improved as we sped through the Welsh countryside. We crossed the Severn Estuary over a newish bridge over 5km long, the tide was out, all 14 metres of it & there were mudflats everywhere. Looking upriver the old Severn Bridge could be seen in the distance. We have passed back into England & the change is instant, all the road signs are in English only. The journey was uneventful but beautiful countryside, more sheep & cattle, wheat. We arrived in the old Roman bath city of Bath. To see Bath has been on Ron’s bucket list for a long time.

Bath as we enter is full of ordered rows of limestone Georgian houses, cheek to jowl, lining the roads on both sides. We stop near the cathedral & walk the short distance to the ancient Roman Baths. The baths were originally built by the Romans about AD60 around some natural hot springs, then over the ensuing centuries rebuilt & remodelled & expanded. In the 18^th Century Bath was very fashionable & now over 4 million tourists visit every year (only to see not to bath, in fact you are warned not to touch the water because it is toxic). The Roman Bathhouse Museum is very interesting & informative, we are given audio guides & walk ourselves around the bath house complex & view everything at our own pace. The Roman engineers were amazing, the ability to tap the hot spring then build all manner of bathing areas with different degrees of heat, having lead piping, overflow drainage, the ability to drain the baths for cleaning, the structural design. It really is something to see. Needless to say we spent a fair bit of time inside reading the different informative signs, looking at the displays & listening to the audio guides at the appropriate points. We can’t seem to get away from Japanese brides, there was one down in the main bathhouse having wedding photographs taken. Also on display were Roman artefacts recovered from the spring, plenty of coins, some curse plate & amazingly, a bronze safety pin. Yes, the Romans had safety pins 2,000 years ago. When you see how advanced these people were you question –   all these years later how much have we progressed?

After the Roman baths we walked along the high street & up to the area of town known as the Circus, a circular row of stately Georgian houses, this is the expensive part of town. The houses do look good. In a nearby real estate agent’s window we saw one of these places up for sale for a mere 2,995,000 pounds. We then walked a little further uphill to the Royal Crescent, more Georgian houses in a crescent formation & this is the very expensive part of town with good elevated views over the Somerset countryside. We did like the new black Ferrari parked outside one of the houses. Ron said the reason he doesn’t want one is because he cannot get in & out of low cars anymore. (ha, ha not because of the price tag), We walked back to the main part of town & have a look along the Avon River at the Pulteney Bridge, a covered bridge that was built around 1770 & used as a shopping arcade as well as a means to cross the river. It looks very similar to the Rialto Bridge in Venice & the Ponte Vecchio in Florence.

Our next stop is Glastonbury, famous in more recent times for the large music festival of the same name, but famous in the past for the Abbey that was founded in the 7^th Century. The Abbey is now a ruin but was once the richest in all of England with vast estates. The last abbot was hanged, drawn & quartered in 1539 on Glastonbury Tor overlooking the Abbey by King Henry 8^th because he would not change from Catholic religion to the new Anglican faith. The town now is full of alternative lifestyle shops & people, with every shop having some form of crystal, incense, magic, alternative/hippie/goth clothing. Some of the people working the streets appear unusual & there is the smell of more than incense in the air. Lots of tourists stop in this bohemian town just to see something that is so unconventional. We looked around for about an hour, it is only a small town, before we were on the bus again.

More countryside with stone fences, sheep, wheat & some corn before we get to our hotel near Saltash & close to Plymouth. Our hotel is on a golf course & our room looks out over the fairways. We had a short time to unpack, change & get ready for our dinner, then a half hour drive up into Dartmoor & The Skylark Inn in the small village of Clearbrook, an old pub built in 1735 & originally a whisky house that traded with the tin miners in the area (the inn is heritage listed & it must always remain a pub). Dinner was superb, the Guinness pie was a standout, everyone enjoyed it & the pint of Guinness washing it down was also very good. The atmosphere in the pub is great, small, low exposed beams on the ceilings. Victor & his family running the place very nice & friendly. As we were leaving the fog & Irish mist (light rain, maybe it is English mist now) closed in & visibility was reduced considerably. It is easy to imagine the hound of the Baskervilles bounding along the Dartmoor. Yesterday’s beautiful summers day fooled us, today was an overcast misty day but not cold perhaps we are getting acclimatised. Another great day.

Day 43 Sunday 3 July 2016

Away from Chester at 7.45am & a drive in the Welsh countryside to our first stop at Ludlow, a small town with a walled castle. An antique market was set up in the town’s market square & we had a good look through that. There were lots of very interesting pieces in there, however, not interesting enough to buy anything. A walk around the base of the castle & the castle walls was next on the agenda & it was very pleasant, a few nice wild flowers out & the sound of falling water from the river below. Out the front of the castle was a gun captured at Sevastopol in 1855. Next was a short walk in the town, full of beautiful old Tudor buildings, probably the most stunning is the Feathers Hotel. An ice-cream on the way back to the coach & off again.

Next stop is Cardiff, through more fields of sheep, dairy cattle & wheat fields. We stop outside Cardiff Castle & the grounds inside the castle are packed with kids & their parents, there is a Welsh Festival being held to celebrate their Welshness, there are all sorts of activities for the kids. Under the British umbrella (except for the Republic of Ireland) Welsh, Irish & Scottish are very passionate about their own identity & language, the children are learning it in schools so that their language & customs won’t die out. All the road signs in Wales are in both Welsh & English, similar to Ireland where the road signs are in both Gaelic & English. The castle tower is stunning with a beautiful clock face on all 4 sides. Our guide takes us through some locked rooms in the castle to show us the rooms as they were in the 1800s. The opulence & thought in the design is amazing, there are carved figures & elaborate painting of the walls & ceilings, even the doors are extraordinary. The tower rooftop has an enclosed garden & again it is very well done. Our last stop is in the library & the timber work is amazing, the cost of each separate bookcase was $100,000. Outside again we pick our way through the crowd & walk to the central keep, surrounded by a deep moat. There are lots of steps up a spiral stone staircase (in the castle as well) & I am impressed that Tereza managed to make it all the way to the top. The view from the top is amazing right around Cardiff. It was just as tough coming back down as the stairs are so steep.

We find out that the castle is only a shade over a block away from our hotel when we go for a walk around the shopping mall. We come across more market stalls however, being Sunday & after 5pm most of the shops were either shut or closing.

Tonight we went to the Millennium Centre down near the Cardiff docks, right on the bay & were treated to a delightful session of entertainment & singing from a small band of Welsh singers, they were superb & hugely entertaining. They included a couple of men from our group in the evening entertainment & everyone was laughing. A good day again. The first day on our tour that there has not been any rain, & the sun was shining. Is summer here, should we dare take off our winter woollies tomorrow?

Day 42 Saturday 2 July 2016

Early away at 7am as we had the ferry to catch & it was departing Dublin port at 8.05am. This is the largest vehicle/passenger ferry in Europe, the Stena Line ship, the Ulysses. Even though the wind was very strong & there was a lot of waves on the Irish Sea the sheer size & weight of the ship smoothed most of it out. Tereza & I found a comfy lounge to rest/ sleep on & we read the local papers & I did the Sudoku puzzles to while the time. We docked at Holyhead on the island of Anglesey in Wales around 11.30pm & drove off the ferry the short distance to our first stop, a small Welsh town with a great tourism idea. In the 1860s the town invented a 58 character name for itself in order to attract people to the town & it worked, we stopped along with the other 8 coaches & around 50 cars. The town is called Llanfair­pwllgwyngyll­gogery­chwyrn­drobwll­llan­tysilio­gogo­goch in the Welsh language. This means “St Marys church in the hollow of the white hazel near to the rapid whirlpool of Llantysilio of the red cave”. The gift shop is huge & was very busy, packed with people looking for a souvenir. Photos taken & we were off again.

Only a short distance through sheep & cattle paddocks hugging the coastline & through a number of tunnels through the cliffs overlooking the Irish Sea to the old Roman city of Conway enclosed in intact Roman walls. The walls & castle were built between 1283-1287. We walked outside the walls to start with & found a nice place on the grass in the sun to eat our lunch, with a magnificent view of Conway castle & a decent stretch of the walls. After lunch we climbed the lengthy staircase up one of the wall towers & walked a fair length of the wall towards the castle, more great views. Next we walked around to the bridge crossing the river in front of the castle & are amazed at how far out the tide is & still running out. The boats close to shore are sitting on the sand against the jetty. We walk along the jetty a bit before returning back through the walls into town & on the coach again.

Further along the coast we spot hundreds of giant wind generators out in the ocean miles offshore harvesting the plentiful wind that seems to be our constant companion. Our quick travel along the motorway meant that we were in Chester in what seemed no time at all, or maybe I slept a little. Chester is another old Roman city that was established around AD70. We stopped near the old Roman Amphitheatre built to hold between 8,000 & 10,000 people & believed to be the largest in Britain. Today it was being used for an organised play area for children 2,000 years later. Our next stop was in a garden created from old pieces of Roman stones recovered from various parts around the city. An example of a Roman bathhouse was on display in the garden as well.

We then walked up Bridge Street & this street is full of old Tudor buildings, extremely well preserved, one I noticed was built in 1274. As we walked up this street & started to take photos the rain started again, on went the rain coats, up went the umbrellas & on we went. We turned the corner down Eastgate Street, admiring a magnificent wrought iron clock dated 1897 from the time of Queen Victoria. Onwards to Chester Cathedral, the 3^rd most important in Britain, where we were greeted with another very large & impressive building, this time built of red sandstone. Inside a church service was being conducted so we were very quiet & discrete walking around. Right at the back of the church was the Consistory Court, dealing with all manner of things, including witchcraft. In 1555 a man was sentenced to death & burnt at the stake for heresy. The church had the usual collection of buried people inside & memorials everywhere. There was a courtyard garden with a nice statue. The stained glass windows looked good as well as the organ pipes. The service being conducted had a choir singing that performed beautifully, it would have been nice to sit & listen. Back to our coach & hotel.

Our hotel is Victorian era & decorated with Victorian era statues & paintings all through. Out in the garden is Roman style statues, it all looks good, not tacky at all. The Hotel looks like an art gallery/museum. Our room has ornate 12 foot ceilings & a chandelier.

We had our dinner at the hotel, it was more relaxed no coach was waiting for us, we could sit longer & chat with our fellow travellers. We stayed up longer to phone Ron’s dad for his 92^nd birthday, it was a good fix for us to hear how they are & how the rest of the family is. It is great that James, Venetia & little River will be there for dad’s birthday too.

Day 41 Friday 1 July 2016

Departure at 8.30am for the Guinness factory so that we are the first group in & before the factory opens to the general public. The queuing lines set up at the entrance must mean that there are big crowds in there at times, we are met by our guide & walk straight in. We are shown the full brewing process from the drying barley & roasting process to the hops, some sourced from Australia, to the water sourced from a spring in the mountains (pure with very little minerals) near Dublin. (not the River Liffey as most people think) The yeast is a constant as some yeast from each brew is kept for the next, since at least the early 19^th Century, with a supply of the strain of yeast kept in the Guinness Director’s safe. The display is very well set up with us moving up a floor at a time as we move through the different stages of the brewing process. There is various pieces of old machinery on display with simple explanations of each & where it fitted into the process. Guinness even made their own oak barrels for storage & transport plus owned a varied transport fleet for delivering the beer, from trucks & trains to ships.

Next it was the tasting room where there are four containers that waft out the aromas of the different stages of the brewing process, we move from smell to smell trying to pick the smell they are describing. It needs a better nose than mine. Taste test is next & our guide explains the tasting process, the breathing in & holding the breath then taking a mouthful & swirling the beer around the mouth, then breathing out. I can’t taste the distinguishing features either. It does taste good though. We have a good look at a display of the advertising that Guinness has used over the years, some of it is very innovative, the more recent ones using animal caricatures. One ad is a fish riding a bike with a strange slogan………….an Australian woman thought it up. Also on display was an ancient harp, made in 1702 & once owned & played by a great Irish Musician. The Irish harp is the official trademark of Guinness.

Tour over we then head up to the Gravity Bar, a glass circular room on top of the building for a pint of Guinness to round the tour off. The view from here over the city of Dublin is spectacular through the full 360 degrees. Apparently this was the first sky scraper built. Had to hurry up with the photographing because a heavy black cloud was rolling in. We had to make a dash for the coach because that “Irish mist” was really coming down.

Our next adventure was a bus tour around Dublin city for 1 ½ hours with a local guide. She was very knowledgeable & interesting, though a lot harder to appreciate all of the sights because we are on a bus & have to keep on moving so no hands on when we wanted to see more. We got dropped off in the city outside the National Library, then walked across to the Grafton Street pedestrian mall for a slow stroll along window shopping & enjoying the streetscape. At the end of Grafton Street we found St Stephens Green, a large park with lots of trees, garden beds, park benches & ponds. We find a spare bench in the sunshine & have our lunch, then just as we finish, rain & a cold wind rolled in so we rug up & shelter under some large trees for a while until it settles down enough for us to walk again.

We walk out of the park down Kildare Street to the Irish National Museum. The building the Museum is housed in is beautiful itself, with ornate carved stonework & colourful ceramic tiling around the doors, plus magnificent exposed ornate roof trusses. The primary display is around Celtic gold discovered in various hoards around Ireland in bogs when being dug for peat. The detail & craftsmanship is extraordinary & revealed a very sophisticated society before the Viking invasions. There is also a display on the Vikings, with a focus on the various weapons & tools that have been recovered. There is also displayed some moulds cut from stone that were used for the casting of bronze tools & also a bronze short sword. On display were some unbelievably well preserved human remains that were found in bogs & the oldest of these is around 2,400 years old. The information they have on these people is amazing, the research has been very extensive. They even know what they had been eating, wearing & how they died.

Some of the religious artefacts in the museum were very significant, I though the most interesting & historically significant was the Cross of Cong, it was made to enshrine a small portion of the True Cross. There were other reliquaries used to store & preserve other treasures, such as small body parts of various saints, or holy books. A bell said to belong to St Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland is also on display alongside its reliquary. A great museum & good displays.

On the way to our coach pick-up point a building we passed had some very interesting stone carvings on the base of some pillars, one was of 3 monkeys playing billiards, another of a dog chasing a rabbit.

A bit over an hour later we were bused to our dinner venue, a traditional old Irish pub called “The Old Punch Bowl”, established in 1719. We had traditional Irish food, vegetable soup, bacon, cabbage & mashed potatoes, & apple pie, washed down again by a pint of Guinness. There was an interesting display of old artefacts around the walls. Just on time, just as we were to walk out the door to catch our coach, that Irish mist bucketed down again. Thankfully our coach driver ran up to us with an armful of umbrellas, we were very thankful. On the way back the rainbow was very colourful as the sun shone through. We were looking out towards the ends of the rainbow but we couldn’t spot the elusive little leprechauns with their pot of gold. The temperature was 11C. We give thanks every day that we came in summer.

Another great day.