Hmmm, has it been a month? Well, let’s catch up. As you may recall, we didn’t take an official honeymoon after our wedding. Carolyn’s parents were most kind and gave us a couple of days in NYC in lieu of that, so we decided to just have a number of small honeymoons until we took the real one (more on the real one later). It was a lovely time. August was time for honeymoon #2, this time thanks to my parents. Since we’d done a big city US honeymoon, this time around we thought we’d try the English country-side. After a little hunting around, we found a place called Ludlow, which is the foodie capital of the small towns. At one point, it had three Michelin starred restaurants in a town of 10,000. We spent a weekend here, staying in and eating in one of those restaurants. Today, I’ll fill you in on that piece of the weekend and write about the town of Ludlow and the cool-ass castle in some other posts.

We stayed at Mr. Underhill’s, an inn and lovely restaurant on the banks of the River Teme in Ludlow. Ludlow is about 12 miles from the Welsh border surrounded by beautiful rolling hills. Mr. Underhill’s is at a perfect bend in the river with a man-made waterfall (called a weir) and an ancient one-lane bridge nearby that’s leads up into the hills. It sits right under the castle in Ludlow, which is perched above it. As a result, it had a wonderful feel of isolation, even if the town was just around the corner. And the inn and restaurant were in a private courtyard which gave a nice peaceful feel to it:

Our room was a cute, well furnished room that allowed us to watch the Olympics in the mornings. And the place included breakfast. This might not mean much except for the fact that the big draw of staying at this particular place was the food. Mr Underhill’s, while it might be in a small market town 4 hours from London, has a Michelin star. So we had breakfast in a Michelin starred restaurant (it was damn fine). I don’t think either of us had eaten at a place like this, so we were curious to give it a try. And, when we booked the room, we booked dinner for our second night there. A nice romantic dinner along a beautiful river.

Dinner was everything we expected. It was about 9 courses, most dishes being smaller taster dishes with a main course that was a little bigger. The restaurant itself was very unpretentious. It was a husband and a wife who ran the place and the wife was always out in front chatting with people and happy to answer questions. The dress was casual-ish and their cat would wander in and find a comfortable place to chill out with all the folks eating their dinner. The menu changed daily and you didn’t know what you were going to get until you sat down. Whatever they could find in the markets that day went into the meal. Here are our main courses:

Fancy and delicious food, but none of the “we have a Michelin star” pretension. Dinner took about three hours, at which point we were full and content. I have the menu scanned, but I need to dig it up. I’ll post it when I find it.

The dining room was cosy (10 tables) and comfortable. The whole place has a nice intimate and friendly atmosphere. From the rooms to the food, it was very pleasant:

Now, we did more than just hang out at this inn, but that’ll be for the next post about Ludlow.

Welcome to Cambridge. Home of — what?? Yep, that’s the sign on the train platform of Cambridge, home to one of the more famous university’s in the world, and not the one advertised on that sign. From King’s Cross (a 15 minute bus ride from our flat), it’s a fast-ass direct train to Cambridge. So Carolyn and I took our bikes and, an hour later, found ourselves there. Cambridge is an extremely bike friendly town. All the students have them and there are tons of bike lanes and good signage for getting around town.

That’s just one of the many bike parking areas around town. Bikes can be found locked up (many of them left forever). Though I must say, my crappy bike looks good compared to many of these. 🙂

The towns stretches along the River Cam and, particularly as hoards of tourists have begun to fill the town, one of the more popular activities is punting. This is a long boat with a person in the back guiding it along the river with a long pole. Think of gondolas in Venice.

Carolyn and I did not go on one. We found it more amusing to sit on the banks of the river and watch people banging into each other as they tried to maneuver between each other.

Now Cambridge is really a collection of colleges. You apply to study at a specific one of them and each of them have a certain character and many have specific fields they are best known for. They all have the feeling of an exclusive club. For example, even though they dominate the banks (both sides) of the river, the property they own is walled off, to each other and to the public. There is no way to simply wander along the river without going in and out the main entrance of each college. However, inside the colleges themselves, it’s quite impressive.

This is the courtyard to Trinity College. It’s been around since Henry VIII and has produced some obscene number of Nobel Laureates as well as where Issac Newton got his start. Needless to say, it’s got a lot of history and some beautiful buildings. The courtyard itself was where a legendary race immortalized in Chariots of Fire took place (they needed to run around it four times before the clock finished the 12 bells at noon time).

(Love that sky!)

King’s College is another one of the major historic colleges of Cambridge. It was started by Henry VI but not finished until Henry VIII (him again!). It’s obviously dominated by its chapel (all the colleges have a chapel), although a chapel would suggest to me a small church. 🙂 It is also home to the King’s College Choir, one of the more famous choirs in the world. As it were, we were there on a Sunday and they were giving their last performance before the summer break. I say performance, but it was technically a church service, open to all. In the end, it was really a performance of the choir wrapped with some religion. They were quite impressive and it was a treat to be sitting in this beautiful ancient church, listening to a talented and enjoyable choir.

Now, Cambridge, in the English speaking world, is only preceded by Oxford. So there have to be some older colleges at the university (King’s and Trinity only being around since the 16th Century or so), right? Well, that would be Peterhouse, the oldest of the colleges of Cambridge, although it was not the first.

Notice a pattern? Amazing courtyards with absurdly manicured lawns. Now, since school was out when we visited, I couldn’t tell you what student life is like, but I know I would just live on those lawns (I doubt they’d let me if I had the good fortune to go to any of these!). We really liked Peterhouse as it felt more intimate and less imposing and exclusive. We managed to actually get sort of lost in it and found some of the more modern parts of the school as well.

A couple of random thoughts. The pubs seemed to be almost entirely owned by Greene King, a large British brewer, which I thought was interesting. It makes sense since Cambridge is the closest city to the town where the brewery is based (Bury St. Edmunds). We did have a lovely lunch in one of their pubs along the river, giggling at the punters.

Let me throw in two negatives: first, too many freaking tourists. I realize that we were one, but tour and school groups of over 100 people is absurd and it made the town feel like a museum and not a place where people work, study and play. And second, the schools, while beautiful, felt so inaccessible with their impressive, but imposing architecture and the well-maintained lawns. Oh yeah, I wonder what it would be like to be a student at a school teeming with tourists. 🙂

So, mingled with our cultural and tourist outings in Brighton when we visited with Gerry and Ben, there was cause for celebration. For, yea, on this week in 1977, a Dina was born. Naturally, we needed to do some celebrating. We began the celebrations with a tasty meal at what has been called the finest vegetarian restaurant in England, Terre a Terre. We arrived to a modern, slick restaurant with some interesting organic beer and wine choices. While some of the choices were of the “make meat dishes but out of vegetarian fare”, they mostly had true vegetarian dishes done well. Take this nice one for example:

It was a Thai-inspired dish. We particularly enjoyed the sampler starter which allowed us to have a taste of all the wonderful food they had to offer. We had a seat by the windows and, an amusing sight kept walking by. In the UK, a bachelorette party is known as a Hen Party. This typically involves decorating the bride-to-be in embarassing clothes and going off to get very very drunk. We saw at least four of these groups wandering (or shall I say stumbling) past. A very amusing side note. 🙂
After dinner, we retired to Dina and Adrian’s flat for a little rest before the next phase of the outing. We also met up with their friend Heather met us. Here would be the whole happy crew at this point:

Alas, at this point, I developed a horrible, horrible headache. Since our next part of the birthday night was to be dancing at a club, I took a little time to rest. Our plan was to go to a special club night called Stick it On, in which people can submit their own playlists for a 15 minute set and be a DJ for a few moments. The idea was intriguing, so we made our way there. I shall spare you any photos of the revelers (alas, there are some thanks for Gerry 🙂 ), but it was a fun time out.  Obviously, when the DJ changes every three or four songs, you’ll get a few songs you don’t like, but there were some excellent choices of music. My headache subsided, which allowed me to enjoy ourselves and I think, when we took our leave at whatever hour it was, we were tired and content.

The following day, besides going to the Brighton Pavilion, we also enjoyed a Brighton favourite of ours, cream tea at the Mock Turtle. While we devoured scones and tea, Dina bought a Meringue. It was ginormous. See for yourself:

With a little help, it did get eaten :). We also wandered Brighton some more so Gerry and Ben could see some of the other sights of this fun little city. For those aware, on the side of a coffee shop near the train station, the graffiti artist Banksey put up one of his more famous pieces of art, two male police officers kissing:

Now, you might notice that this one actually has protective plastic over it. While most Banksey’s have a bit of a temporary aspect to them and could be removed if and when the owner of the property of the government decides to remove it (although I think now that they are quite valuable, this is increasingly less likely), this one has become quite famous and infamous. Apparently, the original was defaced by someone finding it “immoral”. It’s been fixed up and made “permenant”.

Anyhoo, we had some tasty beers, good food, and saw tons of fun things. But it was time to go backto London. Good times were had by all.

Now, I’ve spent a decent amount of time in Brighton, mooching off Dina and Adrian, trashing their place and generally making myself as unwelcome as possible. But, each time I go, there’s generally always some fun experience or time to be had. Amazingly enough, I didn’t go down there last year during the “summer” at all. It probably didn’t help that last summer was literally three months of cold and rain. But I was also working many many hours or in the US for a couple of reasons. Well, this summer has been quite pleasant and our friends Gerry and Ben had never seen Brighton while living in England for three years. To top it off, it was Dina’s birthday which seemed like the perfect time to go down, see Brighton and celebrate Dina being a year older.

The weather could not have been more perfect. The sun was shining and it was actually kind of hot. I even managed to get a sunburn (although that now only seems to take about 5 minutes of sunshine). And, this being the coast, we decided to take a little tour along the water. Weather permitting, there was to be a paddle around Brighton Pier on Sunday, and Saturday they had a little festival in advance. We wandered around the festival, seeing some beach cars and playing with some toys. This brought us to the West Pier. Brighton, for many years had two piers. The West pier eventually closed and fell into disuse. The council was debating for a while what to do with it, rather than letting it remain in ruins, until 2003. At that point, someone apparently set fire to it and the thing was burned beyond any reasonable repair. Here’s what it looks like today:

I hope they do something with it. Even in it’s current form, it’s still pretty cool looking but could use some tender loving care. Let’s compare it to the other pier, which is still in use. It’s full of arcade games and even has amusement park rides. It’s a great big festival:

Quite a bit different, no? Well, the weather on the land was lovely, but the English Channel was anything but calm:

Check out them waves and the lovely city behind it. We eventually got a little tired after about a 2.5 walk along the water and exploring the crazy beach scenes and the crowds of people enjoying a summer day along the coast. We needed a little bit of a pick-us-up. So we hit a local coffee shop with some pretty cool art painted on coffee sacks:

Once we were properly caffeinated, it was time to stop being tourists and celebrate Dina’s years of life. However, I’ll skip ahead to the following day for now and focus on the celebrating later. On Sunday, since it wasn’t nearly as nice out, we decided to soak in some cultute. The Brighton Pavilion is the iconic center of the city. When George IV was still a decadent prince, he set himself up down in Brighton to flee his creditors. In a truly modest style, he had the following built on top of the original “farmhouse” he was initially living in:

The main part of the palace has been restored to its original decadence. On both ends of it, are the magnificent music room and banquet room. They really do blow your mind. They achieve it by having a very low, almost claustrophobic entry hallway which opens into each of these enormous rooms. The banquet room has a 2-ton chandelier hanging from the center. Photos aren’t allowed in there so we (or rather Ben, who took all these lovely photos) couldn’t capture it on film. It was very impressive.

Next up: fancy vegetarian dinner and dancing!

So, let’s have a little more wedding fun with the first wedding Carolyn and I went to as a married couple. To cap off my grand American tour, we took a little road trip from NJ allll the way to Philadelphia. My dear friend Matt was about to get married to a lovely woman named Amy! We were trading groomsman spots, so it was my turn to help him enjoy his last days of single-ness (or whatever it is groomsmen do), since he’d been so kind to do me the favour the week before.

We started the grand weekend with a nice lunch at Amy’s parents place followed by a tux fitting. Matt, being a very good planner, had everything well organized, which was a nice thing to have a week after your own wedding. Things flowed nicely and I just had to be there and be a good friend. The weekend activities were all focused in the area around where Amy grew up, so nothing was more than 15 minutes away. Very nice. I hadn’t seen Matt’s parents in years, so it was a pleasure to catch up with them as well as a number of Matt’s friends and just take in the happiness that Matt and Amy exude. The rehearsal dinner was in a lovely Italian restaurant with even more people to see and enjoy. But, of course, it was just a warm-up to the next day.

Now, the groom always has what seems to be an easy task on the day of the wedding: show up showered and shaved. So, while the bride seems to spend the day of getting her hair done and all the other pieces of the puzzle together, the groom needs to do something to kill the time. In other words, the bride has the day set up for them (doing what is probably not the most fun shit in the world), while the groom needs figure out something to ease the nervousness. Matt came up with go-karting, preceded by some lunch in a local brew pub. The brew pub was good, they claimed to have an English Ale,  but they were lying (so I had an Irish red ale). The go-karting was a blast. It might seem like an odd choice of what to do before your wedding, but it’s a great way to let off some stream and release the tension that builds up if you just sit around waiting or doing nothing.

Which leads us to the wedding. It was in a beautiful country club. The ceremony was to be on an outdoor terrace but there was the perpetual threat of rain. Luckily, the rain held out, so everything could go as planned. Allow me to show you what you could look out on during the ceremony:

Tres beautiful.

The reception was in a split Southern-themed kind of rooms. It had a lovely airy feel to it. Here would be the happy couple showing off their moves in their first dance:

How cute! Meanwhile, here would be myself all Tux-ed out with my lovely wife:

All in all, it was a beautiful day. Matt and Amy have always been such a loving couple and it was so nice to be a part of their wedding and see them off so happy. Alas, the time ended quickly and my travels to London began two days later. Coming up, why don’t I do a little London blogging next.

So, when I made my last trip to the US, when I just happened to get married myself, there was a lot of love in the air. Consider this a first entry on some of that love. The week before Carolyn and I got hitched, my friend, Jackie and her long-time boyfriend JC decided to celebrate their many years together with a Celebration of Love. Jackie was one of my singing friends from college and the whole ceremony was partly a chance for people to show their feelings about this event through music and whatnot. So, I agreed to sing with some of my old friends. Jackie chose “A Single Drop of Honey” by Abigail Washburn, which is a beautiful two-part harmony acapella song. So, Carolyn and I made a short trip up from NJ to Briarcliff, NY for the event.

The location was amazing. Right next door to where Jackie grew up, there was the ruins of what was apparently an old coach house. They spent 6 months clearing the brush and remains to create a wonderful spot for the event (this was NOT a wedding):

An organically beautiful center for the ceremony. I’ll put some larger photos elsewhere that do the whole scene justice. It really was a wonderful spot.

Jackie and JC both came towards the center from opposite ends of the aisle to meet and unite at the arch. They were played down the aisles by our friend Seth who did an accordion version of All the Things You Are. Before you laugh and start thinking “polka music?!?”, Seth is very talented and did an excellent job and made it wonderful and beautiful. Of course, we knew he would as he played us down the aisle for our wedding on a piano a week later. Here is Seth with his trusted instrument:

The celebration was headed up by a local minister who knew Jackie and her family for a while. However, this being a non-religious celebration of love, he had the task of giving a secular ceremony. He was up to the task and did a very nice job. Sprinkled in were readings by some of Jackie and JC’s friends from all over, one of them even came all the way from Alaska. At various points, there were musical interludes including one in which we did a little singing:

After the ceremony, we all retired for a tasty vegetarian (ok, there was a fish dish) party and good beer. It was a fun time and a beautiful celebration.

Let’s take a little trip back in time. Picture Carolyn and I as newly weds, fresh from getting married. As a lovely gift, Carolyn’s parents got us a snazzy hotel room in the Marriott Hotel in Times Square and tickets to see Spamalot on Broadway. A pretty cool gift. Allow me to share in some of the fun.

We arrived at Port Authority and, being from the NYC area, there’s always some things I have in my head that I need to see and do. Typically, this involves food. We got there too early to check in, so we dropped off our huuuge bag and set out to get some New York pizza. One of the impressive things with NYC pizza is you can pretty much go anywhere in the city and there will be a pretty good pizza place. Here would be me and my pizza (in my hand — only cheese!) and Carolyns (the fancy looking pizza on the plate):

We wandered over to the Hudson River and just soaked in the nice weather with the view of NJ (not a bad view, I assure you!) until it was time to check in. Now, the Marriott in Times Square is known for having funky automated elevators where you go to the bank of elevators, select your floor and it tells you which of the 15 elevators you should go into and then get swept up in a glass elevator with views of all the floors below and the beautiful lobby. We checked in and were sad to see we were only on the 22nd floor (our of about 45). However, as we got to our room, we were more than pleasantly surprised:

Check out that view! With this opportunity, we decided to just spend a couple of hours sitting in our nice room and take in the view. Who needs a bar with a view when you can sit on a couch in a private room instead? Here would be my blushing bride enjoying it:

As is something of a tradition when we see a show, we sought out some Russian food. We needed something near the theatre, and we found one called Russian Samovar. They had nice food and vodka infused with various things like peppers and lemons and so on. Good stuff. Then we made our way to see a fun Broadway musical. Spamalot is a stage version of the hilarious Holy Grail by Monty Python. A number of the original members contributed in various ways with voice overs and writing. Our seats were excellent, in the front row of the first balcony. The show was good fun. The performers were obviously wonderful and the music was good. I tried my best not to compare the musical too much to the movie as, while they are based on the same story, they are obviously not the same thing.

We woke up the next morning and decided to spend a beautiful day in NYC. We went to a small exhibit of wonderful Greek artifacts found in Georgia (the country). There were some stunning gold pieces and whatnot pulled out of the ground there. Then we got me a chicken cutlet sandwich from a good deli (yum!) and then spent the afternoon wandering around Central Park. Eventually we made out way to the Upper West side to meet up with Carolyn’s friends Haley (and meet her new boyfriend — we approved) and Renu at a bar literally called Dive Bar. But. before drinks, we ate at an Argentinian steak house. Man, I missed good steak. The UK definitely lacks in it. Dive Bar had excellent beers and we had a blast with all the fine people there. Alas, eventually, it was time to go. Many thanks to Jim and Linda for such a nice time in the city.

So I take a lot of enjoyment in trains. I love just looking at transit maps and thinking about how to use public transport to get from one point to another. I love taking train trips. Back in 2002, I took a few days and took the trans-continental train from Oakland to Chicago. Two days in a train and I had a blast. I just have a fun time travelling on these machines that slice through the landscape and provide a unique perspective on the world.
So, in May, as we were driving back to NJ from the last of four weddings in April and May we were attending (including our own, of course!), we passed something called Northlandz. This was in the middle of nowhere (or at least it felt like it) on the NJ side of the Delaware River. Carolyn looks at it and says “Matt we should turn around and go there. I think you might like this”. And boy did I ever.

A number of years ago, a man named Bruce Williams Zaccagnino started building a model railroad in his house. Well, he is apparently pretty enthusiastic because, over time he needed to build additions to his house to keep it all in. Every year, he would invite friends to come and check out the amazing world he’d created. It reached a point where he decided to give it its own home and Northlandz was born. It’s a mile long walk of various landscapes with model railroads over it. He’s built it in 3-D so you walk up ramps and find yourself looking down two stories into a ravine with a railroad bridge across it and a train running along a river on the bottom. There are one way mirrors that are set up to make the scenes look bigger and yet, you cannot see yourself. There’s a huge concert hall with a gigantic organ in it. He’d collected model trains of all different sizes and they criss-crossed all of the amazing worlds he’d created. All very impressive.

Let’s take a look, shall we?

Yes, that’s two gigantic bridges spanning large crevices’.

Here’s another bridge with Carolyn to provide some perspective. Notice that she’s on a ramp climbing higher and below her is even more model landscapes created by this guy.

It’s not all imaginary Grand Canyons. This man (and he’s made this all by himself and has people helping to do maintenance) has created a large variety of worlds. Everything from the great outdoors to large cities. This picture shows a bit of a juxtaposition of that.

Anyway, it took about 2 hours to get through it all and soak it in. I was completely blown away that such a thing could exist and that it’s basically a labour of love of one man. It’s been around for a few years now and I hope it stays for many more years. Really a nice way to bring out the child in anyone (or just reaffirm the childishness of some of us 🙂 )

Hi everyone. Its been a crazy couple of months full of lots of celebrations, travel up and down the east coast, big moves, a new job and a bit of exploring. Matt will be working to catch the blog up on all the events but in the meantime, I thought I would chime in for a bit myself.

You did read correctly, it says “new job” above. It’s true, I have started work as a physiotherapist in London. I have a locum (temporary) position through an agency. I started on June 2nd and am enjoying getting into a routine. I can even walk to work.

In order to take advantage of my final few days without a work schedule, I took a day trip to Canterbury and to Leed’s Castle (some of you may remember Matt’s trip here last year) with a group called London Walks. London Walks organizes all sorts of walking tours in the city covering topics from Parliament and Big Ben to Jack the Ripper. Occasionally they do Explorer Days outside the city and I met up with the group for a chock full day of touring. We travelled by train to our first stop Canterbury. The main attraction here is the Cathedral which is home to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the destination for the pilgrims in Canterbury Tales.

The Cathedral is where the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Beckett, was killed in 1170 after King Henry II complained about his activities. The statue below is a memorial to the site of his assassination by four knights.

After visiting the cathedral, we wandered through town and were educated on many historical events and buildings. We then set out for our next destination, Leeds Castle. Leeds Castle was built in 1119 by one of William the Conqueror’s Lords. It passed into royal hands and was used by many widowed queens after the death of their husbands. King Edward IV gave the castle to a courtier in the 1500s and eventually it passed into private ownership. The castle is now open for tours, conventions, weddings and other special events.

It was jousting day at Leeds Castle so we had sometime to watch the intense competition before exploring the grounds.

It was a nice way to spend my last day as a full-time tourist in the UK.

Well, my wedding season is upon me. Four weddings in 5 weeks. This includes my own. Yikes. In the meantime, I’ve got a bunch of postings which will I’ll hopefully put online soon. Alas, Carolyn won’t help me (*cough* *cough*) so I’ve got to do it myself.

Anyhoo, the real point of this email isn’t passive aggressiveness, but to mention that, as phase one of my month of weddings, I will be passing through Chicago! For 12 hours! Since Cleveland, which is where wedding one is located, has no direct flights from London, I thought I’d spend a night in Chicagoland. I’ll be arriving on Thursday 17 April and be free by hopefully 7 or 8pm. I’m hoping to catch up with folks. I don’t know where to eat yet, but if you have any suggestions, lemme know as I’m torn between a number of places. Also, if you’re in town that night and free, drop me an email and I’ll send you the details of the plan. Hope to be able to see folks, even if for a brief moment! My flight to Cleveland leaves the next morning, so I’m not around for that long. Sniffle.

So we awoke nice and early for our second day of traveling the Rhine River valley. Unlike the previous day where we covered little ground but saw a great deal. Today, we needed to get some miles under our belt while seeing a lot. And only had until 4pm to get to the Frankfurt airport.

Our first major stop was Loreley, a large rock jutting up above the river that provides a wonderful scenic viewpoint of the area. It’s about a 400 ft climb and we decided to get some exercise. We get to the top, slightly winded to find there’s a road on the back side of it and a tour bus of people hanging around. That’s always a fun feeling. Here we worked hard to get our scenic spot and these people just sat around. Well, here’s what it looks like from atop Loreley:

Note the ginormous ship. The Rhine still gets used for a lot of shipping. This picture doesn’t show it, but along the right bank of the river in this direction, there are two castles: Burg Katz and Burg Maus. That’s right, cat and mouse. They were built by a local duke and archbishop as ways to make each other look cooler and more powerful than the other. Katz won.

We were now in castle country. We made it a goal to check out a castle that hadn’t fallen into ruins and one that had. Our choice for the former was Marksburg. It was one of the few castles that wasn’t bombed during WWII and, as a result was still well preserved after 800 years. Alas, we were hoping to do a self-guided tour of sorts, especially since time was short and we found the only way in was a guided tour, only in German, that would take an hour. So we took in the beauty of its exterior and headed onward.

We made it to the top of the area, Koblenz and made a bit of a U-turn to check out the left bank. Our first stop was a town called Boppard, which is a very nicely preserved old town. We managed to catch the beautiful main church as services were getting out:

It was a really nice town, sitting right on the river with lots of wonderful old buildings that reminded me of what I picture towns up in the Alps. And it segued into our successful tour of a castle ruin in the next town over, St Goar. This was Burg Rheinfels and used to be the largest castle in the region. Unlike Marksburg, this place was self-guided and encouraged exploration of the ruins. Some parts of it had well groomed paths among the ruins while others were crumbling staircases that led into completely unlit rooms and corridors. As someone who likes to scramble around and explore things like this, I was having a blast. It was a sprawling complex of rooms and fortifications and on many levels that you check out. Really nicely laid out.

Once the castle was mostly explored, we made our way to the last town we stopped in, Bacharach. We found a nice place for lunch and one more tasty glass of Riesling. Alas, it was time to take our leave and race back to the airport for our flights home.

So I managed to get Carolyn to post on the blog. Cool! If you think she should post more, feel free to voice your opinion and maybe she can be convinced. 🙂

As promised, it’s my turn to contribute. I’m going to break it into two parts. Last weekend, we got to spend a lovely, relaxing time in the Rhine River valley. Specifically, we hung out in the part renowned for its Riesling wine. This 60km long stretch of land is an UNESCO heritage site and it’s understandable why. It rolls along with a peaceful, beautiful pace. Every few miles, perched up high, are castles built back when people had pissing contests by building bigger fortresses along the hillside cut by the Rhine river. And at the foot of each castle is a cute German town.

We rented a car to drive into the area. Alas, the map the rental car agency provided was completely useless and we got to see a lot more of the Autobahn due to the fact that the signage is shite and the exits are pretty far apart on the A-3. However, the plus was it allowed me to open up a bit in our top-of-the-line Opal. They can in fact go 100mph. Viva speed limits! Let’s ignore the fact that I was still being passed.

After a little detour, we blindly felt our way to the main road into the right bank of the river and into Eltville. It was a cute town but very dead since it was Saturday afternoon and the quiet season. We had lunch in a place with tasty looking cakes and no English spoken. So we picked blindly on the menu and hoped for the best.

The bulk of this day was spent simply enjoying the entrance to this lovely area. We had gotten some recommendations on some places to see and, as we cruised down the road, we saw a sign for one of them: Schloss Vollrads. It turned out to be a winery with some very good wine. Now, this being Riesling country, we had to partake:

After a glass, we trekked onward to the gateway to it all: Rudesheim (pardon my misspellingingsjks!). The guidebook we have seemed to make this out as kind of a tourist trap. But, it being the slow season, we were able to soak it in. It certainly is touristy, but it’s very nice and friendly and walkable. So we parked our car and looked around.

This is the central square of the town. Those cool ass trees are everywhere. The church was rebuilt after it was bombed in World War II.

Perched above Rudesheim is a gigantic monument erected in honor of the unification of Germany. To get there, you can hike up the smallish mountain or take a chairlift up. Here would be Carolyn on the chairlift:

Look at the church and beautiful blue skies! We had wonderful weather.

Now, I mentioned that this is Riesling country. I’ve never been a white wine fan, but the stuff we had was quite tasty and refreshing. The area is covered in vineyards.

We made our way to the top of the mountain, took in the beauty around us and strolled back down. We still needed to find a hotel. We found a nice hotel where we were the only people staying there. Dinner was a local winery’s restaurant. We both had some absolutely delicious soup and wine as well as very good mains. We ended the night in the (I kid you not) pub on the ground floor of our hotel where I think the local 12 year olds go to drink (at least in the off-season). Then we retired for the night in anticipation of a very early morning so we could hit the castles and sights of the Rhine River valley. That’ll be next!

I thought some of you might be curious about what I (Carolyn) have been up to during my trip to London (while Matt has been at work). While I have been keeping busy getting settled into the apartment and job searching, I have found a fair amount of time to explore the city and do some touristy things too. I am not much of a blogger so I am just going to include a pictorial journey of my last week with some descriptions. 🙂

On St. Patrick’s Day, we celebrated with Guinness and I discovered the joy of half pints.

Last week I went to the Kew Botanical Gardens, on Dina’s recommendation, to see an exhibition of Henry Moore sculptures. I was able to get to the gardens on the London Overground rail system which is about 20 feet from the apartment for just one pound with no transfers! There were over 20 sculptures scattered throughout the gardens and I spent several hours wandering through the plants and art. Here is one sculpture set near the tropical green house.

This past weekend, I went to Germany. I got to explore Frankfurt, Germany a little bit. It is a really interesting city. Frankfurt is the financial center of Germany, extremely modern with tons of skyscrapers, and has an amazing array of museums. It was pretty much entirely rebuilt after the city was devastated by allied bombing during World War II. I spent one day wandering around the reconstructed old city, visiting museums and walking on the riverfront.

Another day, I took a train down to Heidelberg about one hour from Frankfurt. Heidelberg is a beautiful town with a large university, ruins of a historic palace, and tons of students and tourists.

Matt and I had a chance to travel in the Rhine river valley which Matt can tell you all more about tomorrow.

While we get less bank/federal holidays in England than the US, we do get a 4 day weekend for Easter. In honor of this, Carolyn and I took a trip down to see Dina and Adrian in Brighton. As it were, there’s a beer festival in Adrian’s hometown of Shoreham, which is a nice short trip from their flat. Naturally, we needed to partake of the fun and games that a beer festival has to offer.

Those of you with exceptional memory might recall my trip along the River Adur. This picture is near where it empties into the Channel in Shoreham. The cool-ass buildings in the distance make up a private school. This as a meandering route to the festival so people could take in some natural beauty.

Here stands a solitary figure guarding Britain from the Germans. I’m standing next to the Shoreham International (really) Airport on the remains of, I think, an old WWII anti-aircraft defensive thing. It was very very windy that day.

The festival was in the Red Lion which I’d been to previously. For those of you unaware of beer festivals, it’s basically where a vast number of good beers are set out for people to buy samples of (half or full pints — ok, so more than a sample). This festival had about 70 different beers on tap. Take a look see:

Lots of choices! Well, because it was a very cold March day, seating in the protected areas of the pub were highly prized. After moving tables about 4 times in the first hours, we managed to score a coveted indoor table. Here are Dina, Carolyn and Adrian soaking in some afternoon sun and beer:

It wasn’t just the four of us. We ended up with a jolly old crew consisting of Heather (former coworker of Adrian), Ben, Lou, and Heather’s brother, David. Alas, I managed to snap nothing but shit pictures of all of them, so I figure I should spare them the embarrassment of posting them online. 🙂 We spent a good 3 hours there enjoying ourselves and the nice setting. Now, this being a pretty small town in southern England, it wasn’t just a lot of beer snobs/geeks sampling beer. We had the good fortune to meet what might be described as a cross between white trash and frat boys if this weren’t England. I guess it would chavs here. Anyway, they are harmless, but it can be a little annoying when the rain and hail comes down and 100 people who all know each other come rushing into a room that normally fits about 20. And, each time one of them walks in, there’s a big “HEY!!” that goes around the room. Eventually, the sheer number of people got to be a bit too much, so we moved on to other pubs. We met up with Adrian’s parents in a pub called the Amsterdam and then went on to a pub called the Sovereign:

It was a nice local pub with a good friendly vibe. We all did what you usually do at a pub: socializing, getting to know new people and drinking. Here’s another picture of some of the happy crew:

As always happens the night winds down and everyone goes their separate ways. The four of us went back to Dina and Adrians. Alas, the next day, Carolyn was having all sorts of problems with her leg which, coupled with it being cold and snowy (yeah, it’s snowed a little for the last 3 days) meant the next day was just a nice lazy weekend kind of day. It did give us a chance to a have a freshly baked Guinness cake. Here’s the cake with the chef:

Carolyn and I are back in London now. We’ll post about our actual Easter Sunday tomorrow.