"Who is Ted Yannick?"

Wales!

We left the hostel in Dublin at 6 am to make the 2 hr trek to Rosslare to the ferry. Lotssss of time to make it for 9am, yes?

No. Not.

The ferry didn't have an address--it just said Rosslare. So, we figured it would be like Cairnryan in Scotland-- we would simply show up to the town and it would be the only thing around. We got to Rosslare at 8:10am for a 9am departure (had to be on the boat by 8:45), and there was no ferry to be seen. We drove around until we found someone walking their dog as we asked him where it was.

"ah, yous want Rosslare harbour, you do.It's back around the roundabout, first exit, about 15 minutes."

Uhh...damn. We raced back on the wrong side of the road (it was 8am...who's to care) and got to the ferry terminal at 8:30. I ran in, with one hobbled foot, and got us a ticket on the boat to Wales... we boarded at 8:42am. We weren't the lone stragglers though--there were two others cars as well.

The ferry to Wales is over 3 hrs long. It wasn't particularly busy, but did seem to be filled with a disproportionally large number of irritating people. Particularly loud, obnoxious people. Kathleen and I sat and ate our English breakfast on the boat, then went to find a place to nap/read. I curled up on a long bench and slept for the entire trip--apparently Kathleen wasn't so lucky. It was very cold-- I'm pretty sure the wind from the Irish Sea was coming through the crap insulation at every window.

After our freezing trip, we got in to Wales and found our first field of Welsh sheep! I really wanted to stop and ask a farmer if I could go meet his sheep, but KDu seemed humiliated by this option. I would happily have gone to play at a farm... alas.

On our way to Cardiff (we decided to skip Swansea because we were running out of time) we saw the signs for Dylan Thomas' Boathouse. I had resigned myself to skipping this, but since we were so close... why not? We got off the beaten track and headed to Laugharne...aka middle of nowhere.

Dylan Thomas is most famous for "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night!", but he wrote many other wonderful works for fiction and verse. I've always loved poetry and have a vast repetoire of random quotations contained in my memory, so I was very excited to see the place where Thomas wrote and lived (it's apprently haunted, but I saw no ghosts. This time.)

We had to scale a cliff in the rain to get to the cabin, but we did make it. It is very simply and nestled on a literal cliff overlooking the water. A few hundred feet away is the remains of Llansteffan Castle. A beautiful area, to be certain, and it only lost a small fraction of its majesty due to the crap weather.

We drove straight to Cardiff after this, and checked into a wodnerful hostel. They had the best parking/breakfast situation of any we had visited, so I liked them the best (I will later do a post about places to stay when you visit all these fabulous places!). Cardiff has a reputation for being "hard". It was an industrial town, and people were thought to be kind of unhappy and mean. We met some lively people... but driving around the city everyone has an angry expression and seems a bit unhappy to be there. We only spent a day walking around, but that was the general expereince.

Wales has so much to see! It isn't marketed as being a hotspot, but there are castles and beautiful scenes at every turn. We saw Cardiff Castle (can't miss its massive walls) but we didn't have time to go in and do it properly-and it was too expensive to just pay to go thru the gate and leave. Most importantly, we found a place that sold YARN, my mother's only requested item from the trip. I got us some more wonderful Indian food (korma!) and we went shopping on the Queen's Arcade. Kdu really wanted to see Roald Dahl Plas, so we headed over to Millennium Center to see it... except that if you didn't know it was there, you would have no idea it was dedicated to him. There is a statue of Ivor Novello close by, and just a plaque to Dahl. We were confused.

After a night in Cardiff, we were on our last day. Sadly. We were to hit Tintern and Stonehenge this day, but we knew the chances were slim. We left Cardiff for the 45 min trip to Tintern--another literary heritage site that I insisted on visiting. Kathleen hates Wordsworth, so it meant less to her. But, regardless of personal interest in the Wordsworth poem, the site of Tintern Abbey is increible to see. It was founded in 1131 by Cistercian monks, and was only the second foundation in Britain. Cistercian monks (or "White Monks") who lived at Tintern followed the Rule of St Benedict-- the Carta Caritatis (Charter of Love) laid out their basic principles, namely: Obedience , Poverty, Chastity, Silence, Prayer, and Work . The remote location was ideal for the Cistercians, whose desire was to follow a strict life of prayer and self-sufficiency with as little contact as possible with the outside world. They chose well--calling it remote is an understatement.

The present-day remains of Tintern are a mixture of building sites covering a 400-year period between 1136 and 1536. In the reign of King Henry VIII traditional monastic life in England and Wales was brought to an abrupt end by his policy of establishing total control over the church, partly to take advantage of the considerable wealth of the monasteries (and to get a divorce and chop off Anne Boleyn's head...). On September 3, 1536 Abbot Wyche surrendered Tintern Abbey to the King's visitors and ended a way of life which had lasted 400 years. The Abbey sat in ruins for 200 years,... and the rest you can read on Wikipedia. Point = I LOVED it. We also got some fun presents for people here-- in particular, cards and bookmarks made of sheep poo. Apparently, only 50% of the contents of a sheep's stomach is digested--the other 50% is usable fiber... so it is now made into paper products.

We took off for Stonehenge, just north of Salisbury, England. Unfortunaetly, it gets dark quite early in England and we didn't have time to get there. We didn't know if it could be seen from the road, but we thought we should try.

Lesson: Stonehenge cannot be seen from the road. At night, at least. (Or ever, I think).

The parking lot is even barricaded, so you can't even stop to take a picture. We pulled over and got a picture of darkness....somewhere out there is Stonehenge. Alas, next time!

At this point we were tragically late to meet my friend Elise, who we stayed with in Oxford. We got in around 8:30 and headed out for food-- but it was Friday night and super busy everywhere, so we ended up getting wine and pasta at a Sainsburys and cooking in the basement kitchenette of her dorm house. This turned out to be far better, as we ate, drank, swore and gossiped with abandon.

Dear Elise-- I adore you and we must find a way to traverse the world and see each other more often! xo

6am came too early--we hopped in the car and headed off towards Heathrow. It was only an hr and a bit away, but we anticipated something would go wrong. The "something" turned out to be that the GPS was not programmed with the right address for the car rental return. It took us an hr of visiting each terminal and driving around in circles before finally found the return depot. I was a little harsh with the attendants...but they didn't care. They already had my credit card. And here it ends--we checked in (with the nicest AirCanada lady ever...who let me have my massively overweight bag of clothes checked for free!), went through security relatively unscathed (KDu got felt up), and we sat at our gate until they let us board the plane. It was only half full, so we each got our own section of seats, and I curled up and slept the entire way back. I was really cold, so the nice space waitress got me a Dasani bottle filled with boiling water-- a water bottle. She said she was going through menopause and was having hot flashes, and even she was cold...so I must be. It was pretty nice. She also brought me extra flax chips, my favourite airline snack.

It was a wonderful trip... and now we are back. I don't know what is next (Italy, maybe?), but I know I will escape again soon to another fabulous destination.

Oh, and are you wondering about Ted Yannick?

We were driving past Southhampton and I exclaimed "Oh, that's where Titanic is from!" Kathleen, half deaf, misheard (for the 10th time on the trip) and looked at me, puzzled, saying "Who is Ted Yannick?"

Probably only funny if you were there. But, funny, I promise.

xoxo

C