This post comes to you from Hamburg, where I am spending several days visiting friends from my former company and catching up on my writing. Steve has gone back to Amsterdam, the subject of this post, for a few days for some rest and relaxation. On The Grand Tour every so often we separate for a few days to maintain our sanity … Continue reading
I write this from Amsterdam, our first foray into Europe on the Grand Tour. This will be my last post on the UK this go-around, although Steve has promised write-ups on the malts of Islay and our experiences in working at beer festivals in England. We’ll see… I have always wanted to write a proper … Continue reading
Geez, has it been that long since I have posted?!? Outrageous. So much has happened since then. We have seen Belfast (a surprisingly lovely city), Dublin, Galway, did a week in Wales, spent almost two weeks in Shropshire, including a week in the gastronomic town of Ludlow, visited Peterborough for a CAMRA Beer Festival at which we had the … Continue reading
Still playing catch up! Here’s a bit about our last few weeks in Scotland: Samuel Johnson, author, essayist, literary critic and famous for his work on the Dictionary of the English Language, took a trip to Scotland in the 1770s, the event recorded in A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland. Scotland was still … Continue reading
Edinburgh has room for only one queen. You will recall that I was proclaimed Queen of Dalriada at Dunadd in Argyll which entitles me to do pretty much whatever I damn well please. Yet, I soon realized otherwise the day we decided to visit the Palace of Holyroodhouse, the grand turreted structure with requisite ruined … Continue reading
In case you were wondering, Steve and I did manage to make nice after the coffee/missed train fiasco in York. It ended up being a good day after all! We’re still playing catch up with these posts. The Isle of Islay (pronounced Eye-la. It took me a while to remember this.) was about two weeks ago but memories are still … Continue reading
I apologize for being incommunicado for a while. Since we left York our wireless access has been minimal, and the times where we have been able to locate a hot spot the connection has been weak. Needless to say this has been frustrating, but I think about how travel and travel writing used to be … Continue reading
Taking a break from city life is a good thing to do from time to time. Not that York can ever be considered akin to a New York or a London, but it is still a city and for some unfathomable reason THE place to go for hen and stag parties in North Yorkshire (hot … Continue reading
We have the Romans to thank for York. Eboracum, they called it after establishing the colonia, later morphing into Jorvik when the Vikings took over and finally, York. This is the city where Constantine the Great was proclaimed Emperor, Richard II wanted to relocate the English capital, Guy Fawkes was born, the Parliamentarians routed the … Continue reading
Three weeks was not long enough. We are not tired of London and we are certainly not tired of life. This city has been called a modern Babylon, a populous and smoky city where no one is ever healthy, a place for love and scandal, the epitome of our times, going beyond any boundary or … Continue reading
grand tour of the middling sort 