The Last Set of Places

We returned to London the following noon, just missing the taxi strike in Paris.  The White Cliffs of Dover was our next destination, only the traffic in London slowed our progress a great deal. At last we arrived and it was worth the wait.

Of course by now we were hungry and thus, headed into Dover to find food before exploring any further.

Fish and chips with mushy peas and a view of the White Cliffs and plenty of sea gulls ready to snatch the fish from unprotected plates.  Then we were back to the cliffs.

We also stopped at Beachy Head, but it was so dark and the pictures didn't turn out so great.

The next day started late and ended earlier than others.  The hours in the middle were spent driving the scenic route to our glamping site.  O.K. we really did stop at a number of places in between.

Narrow roads

Ate lunch at this lovely little place.

Our glamping site had a few surprises for us.  The biggest surprise was finding out that there weren't lights.  Well, there was one light if we used the only outlet for a light which meant we couldn't charge other things while the light was on.  Mostly the surprises were pleasant or perhaps amusing.

Padstow

 St. Ives

Pasties for lunch.

Across the moor...

over the stile, 

 to Wistman's wood.

Then up to the top of the moor to explore the Littaford Tor.

On our final day of exploring we went to Stourhead Garden where parts of Pride and Prejudice was filmed.

 One more of these

After finding kebabs we made one last stop in Exmoor where we could look across the bay and see Wales.

Now I'm home dreaming of the places I've been and places I'd like to go and trying to motivate myself to start thinking of school.

The Next Place

We had a final wrap-up session with the choir and then it was time to say good-bye and head off in different directions.  The main part of the choir was flying back to the States together, but a few of us were doing other things.
I determined to get a bit of sleep, but the sudden transition left me unable to relax and sleep. Our small group left early the next morning (better stated as the middle of the night) for the train station.  Sometime after we arrived at the train station, we found out the station was closed the day before due to strikes/demonstrations by the ferry workers.  Tires had been burned on the train tracks.  I slept most of the 2 1/2 hours to Paris.  We arrived at 9:30.  I insisted on food for the first of many times so we started off with crepes.
The Bastille was our first stop.  We stopped for maybe a minute.  I'm not sure what we could have seen if we had looked around, but all we saw was the July Column marking the spot.

We did a lot of walking.  Really miles and miles of walking.  We continued to the Notre Dame where some of us went inside and others waited for a very long time to use the self cleaning bathrooms.

Then we continued to the Louvre, one of the biggest and most famous art museums.  Martha and I were the only ones who went in.  The others found other things to amuse themselves.  We waited in line for over an hour and then spent about 2 hours racing through the museum.  Of course we didn't see anywhere near all of the museum but we did see the Mona Lisa.

By the time we were done it was around 5:00 and the crepes had been digested many hours before and I was begging for food again.  We ate along the well-known street, Ave. des Champs Elysees, but we were too cheap to eat at any of the very expensive places and instead ate a French burger joint equivilent to McDonalds.  And no, I cannot pronounce the name of the street, nor many of the other places and streets we saw.  We laughed all day over our horrible pronunciations, but there was no time to find out the correct way to say them.

We tried to find a certain garden, but the gardens were closed.  We decided to go to a certain Metro station to catch a river cruise but somehow got the wrong train and ended up at the Eiffel Tower.  It turned out to be a good mistake, since the cruise we wanted started at the Eiffel Tower and not the other end.  The cruise was ok but we all agreed that it was the part of the busy day we should have skipped.
The Eiffel Tower.  Perhaps the lines were shorter by 9:00 in the evening than they were at midday, but they were longer than they were a few hours earlier.  I had no idea how many times you need to stand in line to go up and down the Eiffel Tower.

 This really is an accurate representation of how I felt at this point.  Walking all day on almost no sleep and hardly any food, was almost more than I could handle.

Around midnight we exited the Eiffel Tower.  One hour to get back before the Metro closed.  The next hour included a lot of running, climbing over the ticket turn stiles when my tickets disappeared, and dashing onto trains as the doors were closing.  We walked out of the station 4 minutes till 1.  Exhaustion!  And I'm out of time again so I'll finish the next time.

Other Strange Lands

Summer is here and summer is my chance to go other places and do other things.  I really do love teaching, but I usually desperately need summer by the time it comes.  It's here and I'm loving it.  This summer "other places" equaled England, Scotland, and France.  Quite the adventures we had.  Since I already put lots of pictures on Facebook, I'll stick to a few favorite spots and interesting happenings.

Being the C. S. Lewis fan that I am, I was delighted to see the lamp post and door (complete with a lion's face and fauns) that inspired Lewis to write the Chronicles of Narnia.  A number of us also ate at Eagle and Child, the pub where Lewis frequently met with the Inklings.

One of my favorite sandwiches of the tour (bacon, brie, and cranberry) and I did actually take a picture of it.  Now if only I could find this kind of bacon on this side of the pond.  Traveling always does that to me.

 We ate a hurried lunch in Thirsk, the town where James Herriot had his veterinary practice.  Later in the bus we had some James Herriot story time and the pub, Black Bull, where we had eaten lunch was mentioned in the story. The food at the Black Bull also happened to be some of the best I had the entire tour!

  Of course the group I traveled with was a great part of the tour!

Hadrian's Wall.  It was in this area that I suddenly had the contented feeling that I was seeing England as I had imagined it.  Beautiful country!

And then we got to Scotland.  I loved Scotland.  Less refined than England, it felt more closely tied to years gone by.  Of course we enjoyed hearing and struggled to fully understand the Scottish brogue.

 Singing in St. Giles where the sound kept going and going and we had to sing slower than normal so as to take it all in and not be confused.

The Shambles in York.  In this charming little street, where the bottoms of the buildings are smaller than the top, I found it difficult to imagine the days when the shop fronts were full of raw meat and the families in the upstairs rooms threw their waste out the windows and into the streets.

I think I have more favorites that I realized.  I will need to write about the additional 5 days of travel I did with a smaller group at the end of tour another time.