Our Travels

About a year ago we ended a trip in Rouen. This is as close as you can
get to Paris in ocean going vessels. On that trip we caught a cab,
picked up a car and left town without being very impressed.

I am glad we came back! This is a beautiful medieval [can you believe
that spell check corrected my spelling?] city. We were planning to
catch the train and return to Honfleur, but after taking a walking
tour yesterday, we decided just to hang around here today. Many of the houses are made with exposed timber that give a very unique style.
There is, of course, a large Cathedral. WHen they were building the cathedral, the Bishop kept trying to persuade the people to give up a
small parish church to make room for the cathedral [they resisted].
Finally the bishop agreed to rebuild the parish church in the forward
tower of the cathedral, so you have a small church just inside the
front door!

One of the big landmarks of the town is the "Great Clock".Built in the
14th century, it was very advanced for its time and is one of the
oldest clock mechanisms in Europe. Being the geek that I am, I took
the tour inside the clock --- really cool! JoAnne left me on my own to
take that tour [go figure].

Yesterday had lots of showers, but today turned out to be a pretty
nice day, by noon it was up to about 22 degrees C, about 70 F [note to
the engineers out there, I do not need the exact conversion for 22.0 degrees C into F "about 70 will do just fine!]

Thanks for all the nice notes, apologies if I have not replied to each one.
Denis

Pronounced "Silly", I keep thinking this would have been a great Monty Python sketch. ... " and with our hidden cameras we can observe the inhabitants and see why these are called Scilly".

This is about 30 miles off of Land End in Cornwall. These islands have a total population of about 2100. Other than a sub tropical garden on Tresco, there is not a lot here. The seas were rough coming in and the winds were high. Believe it or not, most people treated this as a day at sea.

It was a relaxing day, they had a jazz brunch that was really nice to take it easy!

A little trivia [in case you dont come to the Isles of Scilly]. In 1651 the Netherlands [then Dutch Republic] declared war on Scilly. Not a shot was ever fired, but the 'conflict lasted 335 years, until 1986 when a treaty was signed!

BTW, in yesterday's msg I should have referred to the ceremony for naming a prince as 'inverstature' .... I hope that didn't put anyone off too much!

Denis

We arrived in Holyhead ["Holly head"], the second largest city in N Wales. I think I saw the sun peak out at once today!

We visited Caenarfor castle, one of the forts erected by Edward I to try to contain the Welsh. It is still in remarkable condition. This is where Prince Charles was installed as the Prince of Wales [also where edward VIII (who left for Wallis Simpson) was installed]. This was also the site of a Roman fort many years earlier.

After Edward built the fort, the locals were not very happy with the English presence. When his so [Edward II] was born, he announced to the populace that he was installing a Prince that he thought would be to their liking. The new Prince didn't even speak a single word of English [of course he was an infant and didn't speak a single word of any language!].

While we drove around the area, we drove past the RAF base where Prince William and Kate live.

We also drove through the village with the longest name in the world. No, I did not writ it down, it was a name made up in the 1800s to attract tourists!

All is well.

Denis

What an interesting city! This is a very young city [46% of the population is 26 or younger]. The IT boom that hit here 15 years ago brought a lot of young people back to Ireland from the states and other places. This boom was a miracle to the Irish economy. Of course the boom went away and they discovered that much of the money that had come into the country had been squandered by the Govt [sound familiar??] and now they are struggling again.

The country has such a long history of strife; this impacted all facets of life in the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland. It sounds like things are getting somewhat better. They don't talk about the warfare in N Ireland, it is referred to as "The Troubles".

We toured Dublin. We had a really funny lady serving as our guide. we visited the Cathedral, walked through the grounds of Trinity COllege. We didn't go back to the ship, so we had lunch at a local pub. Then JoAnne went shopping and I went to the library at Trinity COllege. This library has copies of everything published in the British Isles [comic books, Harry Potter ...]. The jewel of the library is the Book of Kells; an illuminated manuscript [of the 4 Gospels] prepared by Irish monks in 8th century. The exhibit discusses the materials and methods used to prepare these manuscripts. The pages are still beautiful after all these years. They have them under glass and turn only 1 page per day.

The weather turned sunny and it was a pleasant day to be outside. When we got back to the ship, people were running around in shorts and T-shirts. Our guide said that this sort of weather is bad for the economy, because everyone takes a holiday [whether it is legal or not!].

Tonight we leave Dublin at midnight to go to Wales.

Take care... Denis

yesterday we visited the beautiful Isle of Skye in Scotland's western islands. We visited Castle Dunvegan. This is the home of the McLoed clan and has been in their possession for about 800 years. The castle features the stories of the Chieftains from way, over that time there are some great stories and traditions [and at least one pretty bad guy!], The castle is still the residence of the current chieftain [number 30].

The Isle has marker stones similar to those we saw at Kirkwall, and lots of live stock. There are very few trees to be seen at the last few stops, the only real crops are for feeding animals or making Scotch!

We left Scotland last night and have travelled about 400 miles to Dublin [just pulled in about 5 PM]. We will be in Dublin until late tomorrow night.

SOrry for not checking in yesterday, we haven't had internet access for most of the last 24 hours.