I’m back. And I’m still a bit jetlagged. I’m getting better, though — today I managed to sleep in until 6:30.
Here’s the quick summary: S and I flew to Glasgow to meet up with my parents, who had been in the UK for a week already. After Glasgow, we took the train over to Oban and took a day trip to Mull and Iona. Then we took the train down to Conwy, Wales, and then on to a tiny town called Corris. Finally we took the train (the britrail passes were worth it) into London and stayed there for the final two nights of the trip.
Glasgow was nice, but we landed at about 8 am pacific time (4 pm locally) and hadn’t slept, so we weren’t in great shape for exploration. We did wander around town just a bit, and visited Glasgow Cathedral. In addition to my pictures of the cathedral (see link below), there are some decent ones here. We stayed with old friends of my parents, and it was a pretty comfortable place to crash and recover.
Oban was pretty, and not too big, and we stayed in a very nice bed & breakfast for the two nights we were there. Oban was also the place I encountered something that I believe was called a “pizza crispy” — this is a normal pizza that is then battered and fried. It’s a disturbing amount of grease.
Most of the day trip to Iona was spent on the ferry to Mull, the bus across Mull, and the ferry to Iona. We had a couple of hours on Iona, enough for lunch and a bit of wandering around. My parents visited Iona Abbey and probably have decent pictures of it, but S and I just wandered around in the rain.
I took most of my pictures in Conwy, at Conwy Castle. This is the first and only time I’ve seen a real castle (Hearst Castle doesn’t count). It was pretty awesome that you could wander throughout the castle unsupervised — I don’t expect that sort of freedom in the US. We arrived in Conwy in the late afternoon, and left the next day at midday, so we didn’t have much time to look at anything else. In general this trip involved a lot of travel: we spent 7 nights in 5 towns all across the UK. It was nice to see so much, but it was a little hectic, and I think if there’s a next time I’ll move more slowly.
Corris was my favorite part of the trip, although I was sad that my dad couldn’t join us (he was at a conference for the last bit of the week). Corris is a small town in mid Wales, and it doesn’t seem to get many tourists, but it does have a hostel and a lot of nice walking trails. It’s also near Cader Idris, which we wanted to visit (for the mythology, and for the connection to the Susan Cooper books), but there wasn’t time.
London was decent enough, but actually it underwhelmed me. There was no real culture shock. It felt like just another US city with better architecture and slightly odd accents. We were at the end of the trip, so S and I took it easy for the day in London, only going out to eat, buy books, and visit the British Library (which was actually pretty neat, even if it was effectively more of a museum). We did get a chance to take the underground (which was more straightforward and intuitive than I expected) and at S’s request I took a picture of her at Platform 9 3/4 at King’s Cross.
It was a good week. :) Here’s a visual representation of the trip (Google Maps). And here’s a link to my full set of pictures.
