Picking up the pace

Spent the weekend in Cardiff, Wales. Visited Cardiff Castle and the harbour. A nice city. Cool thing is the bilingual signs: English and Welsh. Met some people at the hostel who spoke Welsh - apparently one of the oldest European languages, spoken by, I was told, 20% of the Welsh. The hostel I stayed in (Riverhouse Backpackers) was the Cadillac of hostels. Met some cool people at the hostel, including an Australian guy (shocking, I know, meeting an Aussie traveler), Zac, who I have traveled to Oxford with on Monday. We're staying here two nights. Zac is then off back to London, while I'm off to Cambridge. No, I'm not on some university-town theme right now. I'm actually heading to Cambridge primarily to catch a gig by a guy I met in Bath. He's an excellent singer-songwriter. I missed his Bath show (it was the day I left), but it looks like I'll track him down for his Cambridge gig. After Cambridge: I honestly don't know. Perhaps Liverpool. Zac, the Aussie, and I met some Liverpudlians at the Cardiff hostel - he may be headed there as well. I've heard good things about Liverpool. And there IS a Beatles museum...

St Ives

I traveled from St Ives in Cornwall to Cardiff, Wales on Friday. I enjoyed the relaxing five days I spent in St Ives, owing mostly to the great hostel I stayed in. As I mentioned in a previous post, it's a hostel with a guest house feel - which makes sense as it was once run as one. Two English university students have just recently begun running it as a hostel for the summer break. Damelza, as it is called (which comes from the name of the house), is a six (!) bed hostel right in the heart of St Ives. While one of the two guys running it was away this week, the other, Mitch, was an excellent host and he along with his visiting friend Ed made me feel at home. If you find yourself going to St Ives, book this place - but do so far in advance (you can find it on hostelworld.com) - with only six beds, it's bound to book up quick!

The weather cleared up my last couple of days in Cornwall. You already saw photos of my visit to St Michael's Mount. Here are some photos of St Ives and area, including a seaside hike I did on Thursday.

St Ives, Cornwall

Crowded, narrow streets, but it IS tourist season

Atlantic Ocean sunset

St Michael's Mount

Got a late start on the day today, but managed to fit in an afternoon visit to St Michael's Mount. While St. Ives is located on Cornwall's north coast, St Michael's Mount is located on the south coast, just near Penzance (as in "Pirates of..."). Though Penzance is only about eight or ten miles from St Ives, it took me two trains to get to there. (St Ives is on a spur off the main rail line, so everything is at least two trains away.) From Penzance, it's a local bus ride of a couple of miles to Marazion and then a boat ride out to the island. If it was low tide, I could have walked out to the island on a causeway. But it wasn't, so I couldn't.
St Michael's Mount has been at times a fortress, a port, and a monastery. Some parts of the castle date from the 12th century. Yes, I cribbed this from the brochure.

I won't go into too many details - although based on my other blog posts, you know I'm tempted to - other than to say I was very impressed with this place. And to think I almost didn't go.

Maybe the best part of the visit though were the beautiful vistas, owing to the amazing, clear weather today - a break from the overcast and grey weather of the past few days. I'll letter the photos (hopefully) speak for themselves.

Tate St Ives

Today I took in the Tate St Ives, which is affiliated with the Tate Modern in London. St Ives was - and to a lesser extent continues to be - a Mecca for artists. The Tate St Ives has a small yet impressive collection of modern art including works by Jackson Pollack and Picasso. Good descriptions provided for each work, which made it easier for the modern-art-deficient like myself to appreciate what the artist was doing. Best thing about this Tate is the seaside location. The architectural design of the museum takes advantage of this:



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Location:Fore St,St Ives,United Kingdom

A Bed in Bath, and Beyond

Come on, you love the title of this post - admit it. I can't take credit - my friend Steve used it in the subject line of an email he sent me the other day. The city of Bath is about an hour or so train ride west of London. I stayed from Tuesday until Sunday. The city is famous for - and obviously named for - its Roman baths. In addition to visiting the baths and accompanying museum, I visited Stonehenge - a quick one-hour tour bus ride away. No, these activities did not take five days to do. Spent a good amount of time just chilling out and taking a break from sightseeing.

I liked Stonehenge, and the drive out there too, which took us through Salisbury Plain. There are a lot of British military bases on Salisbury Plain, and as a result you see the unusual road sign "Tank Crossing". And you think hitting a deer would damage to your vehicle. As for Stonehenge, I think I had lowered my expectations a little, expecting it to be overly touristy. It was very cool though. Had the Spinal Tap song "Stonehenge" running through my head part of the time, though.

Bath was my first experience of staying in a hostel on this trip: it was fine, though it was a bit of an adjustment at first. It is a great way to meet people, of course. One evening, a guy staying at the hostel, Alen - a Slovenian who was just starting a business exporting Land Rovers to Sri Lanka - took me out for a spin in the countryside outside of Bath in a newly acquired refurbished Land Rover. Thank god he had a GPS. He wanted to take it off-roading in a farmer's field, but I was able to convince him that that might not be the best idea. Alen also owns a dive shop in Sri Lanka, where he lives half the year. He successfully combines the look of a dive shop-owner/surfer with the wearing of a sarong (which are commonly worn by men in Sri Lanka). He's invited me to visit him in Slovenia. And Sri Lanka too, I think. We'll see.

Sunday I was off to Cornwall, specifically the seaside town of St. Ives. I booked a place for three nights - it's a hostel, but in truth it has more of a guest house feel - only two rooms: one four-bed and one two-bed. A really great place that just opened a few weeks back. I like it - and St. Ives - so much, I've decided to stay 'til Friday.

TubeMap app for iPhone

Anyone with an iPhone who is going to be in London: a must-have app is TubeMap. It's free, and gives you not only a map of the London Underground lines, but can also plot the quickest route from one Tube station to another. It works offline (so no wifi nor 3G needed) and has been invaluable to me. As an added bonus, when you're consulting it, it looks like you're just reading a text or something on your iPhone, and not obviously a tourist who doesn't know where the hell they are going. You're welcome.

Off to Bath

Well, plans can change quick. The road trip was disappointingly called off at the eleventh hour - so an alternate plan had to be hatched. I've ended up staying in London for one more night, but today - finally - I leave London. I'm off to Bath - a short train ride to the west - on my own. I'll be staying in a hostel for the first time this trip. After staying in a flat in London for the better part of three (!) weeks, the hostel experience will be more indicative of what most of this trip will be like, I'm sure. Let the real traveling begin.

On my unexpected extra day in London, I managed to get my iPhone unlocked (for a small-ish fee) and now use a pay-and-go SIM card in it...complete with 3G data. I am very pleased. After those of you who are not into the cult of iPhone - nor are gadgety - have stopped rolling your eyes, let me explain that having the GPS map function when traveling will be like gold. Also, you'll be able to enjoy more realtime Facebook status updates (assuming you're a Facebook friend). Lucky you!

Last Week in London

Today is prepare-to-leave London day - laundry, packing, and such. Tomorrow, I'm off on a road trip for most of the week with a car-owning friend. We're planning on touring around southwest England. I've loved London, but I do look forward to hitting some more laid-back spots, too. This past week included a day trip down to Brighton. It was great to chill-out by the sea, and inhale salty sea air as opposed to central London car exhaust. Oh - I learned a valuable should-have-known-better travel lesson: always, always make sure to check the validity date on your train ticket when buying in advance. That was a 10 pound ($15) lesson. Well, 10 pounds and a portion of my dignity in trying to plead my case and convince them I wasn't trying to pull a fast one. Also, in trying to plead your case, don't use the truthful - yet dubious-to-most - excuse that you have lost track of dates. That doesn't go over well nor seem particularly believable to a lot of people.

Visited Greenwich this past week (located in Southeast London) and in particular the Royal Observatory, which includes the Prime Meridian (Zero Longitude on the map) - this will be appreciated by the one or two geographers out there who read this. Standing on the Prime Meridian wasn't the transcendent experience I had hoped for. Perhaps a visit to the equator will be better.

If you want the best place in the world to buy cool t-shirts, hit Camden Market. I had been there in the evening, but went back for a day visit. Sadly, my need to pack light precluded my from buying any of the excellent t-shirts available. My favourite was the one of Jesus dressed as a Jedi Knight, holding a light sabre which took the shape of a crucifix. You had to see it.

St. Paul's, the Beatles, Canada Day and more

Monday I went to St.Paul's Cathedral. Very impressive. Climbed the 500-plus steps to the Golden Gallery near the top of the dome, which is outside and provides a stunning view of London. Walked along Fleet Street and happened upon the Twinings tea headquarters. Went in and had a free cup of tea. Bonus.

Went on another walking tour - this time a Beatles tour which I mentioned previously. Among the many Fab Four-related things we saw was where they filmed the opening scenes of A Hard Day's Night, where John and Yoko once lived, and - the best part - the famous crosswalk at Abbey Road Studios which is featured on the cover of that album. Got some cheesy tourist pics of me crossing it. Unlike Paul, I did not go barefoot. That afternoon, I hit the British Museum (again) for a couple of hours. I then went to a Spanish pub off near Tottenham Court Road tube station to watch the Spain-Portugal football match. Was an excellent, if late, night. Suffered dearly for it the next day. Thus, Wednesday was a maintenance day - or should I say a recuperation day.

Thursday I went down to Trafalgar Square for the fairly substantial Canada Day celebrations. Canada House is right on the square, where they had a stage set up and featured performers such as Hawksley Workman and Sarah Harmer.They also had road hockey tournament, with some teams taking it fairly seriously. My former company had a team in the tournament - they did pretty well, losing in the final. I went there with an English friend who had commented she had never been around so many Canadians in her life. Lucky her.

Okay, the weekend...quickly now: Friday, chilled out in Hyde Park. Saturday, met friends down in Borough Market and hit a couple of pubs. Sunday - today - friend took me to Highgate Cemetery where some notables are buried, among them Karl Marx and Douglas Adams (of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fame). Okay, you're caught up.