When on holidays, it’s nice to have the occasional lazy start to the day. We had tons of time to get out of Airbnb in a suitably relaxed manner. What a wonderful little place it was – though I think if I only had an upstairs bathroom in real life that’d get old pretty quick. Especially one that is only about a metre across 🙂 Still, really cool to stay somewhere so ridiculously old, yet still holding together. It must have had so many different purposes over its 500 or so years, I wonder what will come next?

We got the bags down the stairs (yes, much easier than going up), jumped through all the hoops required to return the keys to the lockbox, and walked down Micklegate one last time to go to York station. (Once, according to the bus tour, the largest train station in the world, but not nowadays).

Breakfast was at Pret – a fresh ready-to-eat sandwich shop, more or less. Kinda wish they’d expand to Australia. It was during breakfast we noticed that there was actually a Lounge at the train station. As this is our second-last train trip, I splurged (not very much) for First Class tickets, and sure enough, that gets us access to the First Class lounge, with it’s cozy and warm inning fireplace (lol), free coffee and pastries – what’s not to like? A great way to spend some time since we left absolutely nothing to chance and arrived nearly 2 hours early.

One very comfy lounge visit later it was time to head to the platform. A couple of Lifts made it much easier to get across to the platform, no stairs once again, though perhaps there were some stares at the size of our luggage, which seems to be at least twice the size of everyone else’s. Mind you, I guess the locals aren’t going to be travelling around for six weeks.

The indicator boards were super informative, even showing us where we needed to stand to make sure we were in the right place for the carriage we were booked on. Very soon we were on board and in our very comfortable seats by the window, with a good sized table.

I am guessing this is a particularly comfortable train as when we got on, the first thing we heard where the loud snores of one of our fellow passengers, happily carrying on while we boarded and while the train took off once again. Very soon after leaving someone came around to check the tickets, and for the time, to also double check our ‘two together’ railcard (which gives us about 1/3rd off all train fares). It took me an embarrassingly long time to find the railcard in the train app, but, job done and all was well.

Not one minute later another person came through asking what we’d like for our (complementary) lunch. I guess they’re not kidding when they talk about first class! I opted for a chicken Caesar roll while Perry had a hot ‘hog roast’ roll.

Not one minute later (again), (yet) another person came through asking what we’d like to drink. Grand – it’s time for more railway tea!

I’m starting to wonder what may be next in the endless parade of staff. Maybe someone offering us free kittens to borrow to make the journey nicer, or comfy pillows, a turn-down service, but no that seems to be it for the moment, but certainly can’t fault the service.

There are only a few stops, first one is Northallerton. Snory man is still snoring. I get the feeling that shortly after lunch I shall be joining him in this unpleasant chorus. Meanwhile, the train, living up to its ‘Azuma’ name, is a-zooming along at a pretty steady 200km/h, past fields and fields of lush greenery.

Also don’t worry too much about our snoring friend – he woke up in time for his stop, what a shame we don’t get to enjoy his dulcet tones all the way to Edinburgh. Of course I was a second too late to get some of the lovely landscape of Durham, but if you wanted a less than exciting picture of the train station then hey, I’m your guy!

Next stop of note was Newcastle – here is a quite literal whistle-stop tour of some nice old buildings as we zoomed by.

One downside to the seat booking was that we’re on the wrong side of the train to get pictures of the bits where we travel right along the seaside. So let’s all just imagine it was really pretty. The occasional nap later and it was time already to get off the train – hello Edinburgh!

Again as luck would have it there was step-free access to get out of the station – which consisted of three or four lifts up and down and a lot of walkways, but eventually we were duly ejected on to Princes St – wher we very quick learned that Edinburgh is a busy place, at least, near the station. People everywhere going in every direction! But the GPS held true, guiding us to where we needed to be.

We were early to the hotel, but our room was ready which was nice, we were able to check in. There was a moment of concern when looking at the massive staircase going up three or four floors, but our room was on the first floor. Which, due to the crazy-high ceilings (so lovely) was more like the second floor. We’re old hands now at lugging bit fat suitcases up stairs so we made it without too much bother.

The room is very clean and tidy – at first I thought it was absolutely tiny, but the bathroom is almost as big as the room itself, plus a kind of alcove with hanging space and drawers. And the view, well, you don’t get a much nicer blogging station than this – the only trouble is it’s really distracting with that view!

As per standard holiday operating procedure, first port of call was the local hop-on-hop-off bus. The ones here have a few different routes, so we had a go at both the short one and the long one. First things I had learnt – Edinburgh is much bigger than I thought it would be, and also, much more hilly. It also has a number of surprising ‘bridges’ – not exactly bridges in the traditional sense, but the bus commentary would note that we were on a bridge, when it looked like we were just on a normal road, then it would say “now look to your left’.. and sure enough, there’s a gap where we can see this normal street is actually 50 metres above the streets below, and we are indeed on a huge bridge. Kind of like a much more grandiose version of where Enmore Rd meats King St at Newtown – it too is a bridge (over the train line), but doesn’t feel like one.

Just about every building in central Edinburgh is really trying to set an impression and prove something. It mostly looks early 20th century, and every building is projecting solidity, permanence, and even authority, with very strong stone architecture forcefully making itself known across the whole streetscape.

The long bus route went up close to the castle, where it looks like they’re in the process of building the stadium seating for the military tattoo that happens there every year. The street approaching the castle is also, well, tourist central, with shops ranging from the almost-cute “Thistle do nicely” to the trying-a-bit-too-hard, “Bonnie wee gifts!” to the outright tacky-as-all-shit, “The Princess Diana Memorial Tartan shop”.

The castle sure is an impressive sight perched up on its almost impenetrable crag. Great location, that I kinda don’t look forward to the long ascent up to it some time later.

But tour laps done, we thought we’d find an early dinner, and stumbled across a really nice pizza place with fresh sourdough pizzas, huge but deceptively light, and soooo delicious. No, we weren’t going to launch straight into haggis on day one.

After that it was back to the hotel to collapse. Despite this day consisting mostly of sitting on trains and buses, we’re pretty exhausted. Maybe it was bringing the luggage upstairs. So even though it’s barely 7:30, I think that’s about it for the day. More fun and adventures tomorrow!

Good morning! After a lovely night’s sleep it was time for our one and only full day in beautiful York. I know you’ll all be glad to know that all the washing was dry enough, so just for fun I put another load on this morning. We were out and about before the cafe below us opened, so went to a Caffe Nero, one of many all over the country.

First fun thing on the agenda today was Jorvik – the Viking Museum. I knew very little about York’s Viking history – but I guess this is why places like Jorvik exist. It was interesting to learn just how advanced the Viking city was, and to see the excavations of a few dwellings literally beneath our feet. Unexpectedly, things took a bit of a Titanic-museum turn, as we found ourselves boarding a ride that took us through ideas of what Jorvik itself would have looked like back in the day. It was very well done, some robots were in the ‘uncanny valley’ where you couldn’t be completely sure you weren’t staring at a person, until their movement betrayed their robot origins. It was very well done, anyway. In addition to that, they also had ‘smellivision’ – as you travelled through ancient Jorvik, you were assailed with various scents – some nice, like the wood fires burning inside the huts, to the less-than-nice pig pen, or left over animal parts. It added to the experience that’s for sure. Here are some pictures (but no smells).

The Viking history of York is something I’m going to have to read on some more because it was interesting – I never realised how advanced they were. Lots of dyed fabrics, vibrant clothes, fund and games, musical instruments, all sorts of cool stuff. Apparently in this part of the city they’ve excavated over 40,000 objects, including a few skeletons, each of which had a tale to tell showing history of disease and so forth. It was a relatively quick experience, about an hour, but packed full of interesting information.

Right nearby the museum was a cool shop I remember from our visit to London years ago – Flying Tiger. In a way, it’s a kind of mini-IKEA – in so far as you have to walk the maze from end to end, and it’s chock full of small-scale Scandinavian goodness. Of course I couldn’t buy much despite wanting to. We need one in Sydney!

We popped back to the room to hang out this morning’s load of washing, then on the the hop-on-hop-off down to Exhibition Square, which has the best bit of the walls which (mostly) surround the city, and as per yesterday’s commentary, this is the part with rails, as “it’s always nice to come home with the same number of people you set out with” 🙂

The city walls were interesting, interspersed with arrow slits and little fortifications along the way, and the chance to see into a whole bunch of peoples back gardens – they must really (not) love that. One thing that might seem silly is the “TV Birds” – you know how on all English TV you hear bird noise in the background and it’s different to ours in Australia – but it eventually struck me that yes we’re hearing the proper birds now. Lovely!

We descended the wall at (I think) Monk Bar, had some gelato to refresh, then set about exploring some of the streets around the place. As luck would have it we stumbled across a Cat Cafe. It looked very closed – but you to kind of stand at the window and wave so a staff number can safely let you in. So, why not, spent half an hour with some lovely sleepy kitties, it was nice especially being away from our own cat for a while now.

Next up, we found The Shambles – the famous street in York with the wobbliest buildings, some of which almost meet in the middle in their upper storeys. Being a lovely day, the place was of course swarming with tourists, and hey we were part of the problem, but it still nice to see it. For some reason the sweet shop was super-in-demand and had a queue of maybe around 50 people just waiting to get in, go figure. Apparently it is not named because the street does happen to look like a bit of a Shambles, but the name does kinda fit. A number of tourist operators strongly suggested visiting the York Minster to see the stained glass windows within – but, nah I’m not donating £18 to a church organisation that is no doubt packed to the rafters with wealth that they’re probably not spending on those that need it.

We stopped nearby for a late-ish lunch, a kind of roast-burger, and figured out that we should be able to make it in time to the cruise that up and down the River Ouse. Sure enough we were in time, it was nice to sit for a while and watch the world go by. There weren’t too many remarkable things to be seen, but was interesting to hear how often York floods and just how high the water can get – about 5 metres for one of their serious floods, which might not be huge in the grand scale of things, but enough to cause some trouble for many of the houses and pubs near the river. The only trouble I had was keeping my eyes open, I was kinda knackered by this stage, so a brief restorative nap did the world of good :). One the interesting things they pointed out was the number of little archways in the walled banks of the river – these used to lead directly to shop basements, or even a series of tunnels, to enable fast unloading of goods, must have been handy back in the day.

After the river cruise we had a brief wander around the York Museum Gardens, and it’s derelict St. Mary’s Abbey. As it was a warm (for England) day, there were plenty of people just lying on the grass enjoying a lovely sunny afternoon, and why not. Wonderful day for it.

Dinner tonight was at a Japanese restaurant, Ipfu. To be honest it was much better than I was expecting – really delicious, beautifully cooked and presented, it was really really good. Winner winner sushi/tempura dinner!

That’s pretty much it for our time in York. What a beautiful city it is. Richly steeped in so much history – visible, tangible, in-your-face history at pretty much every turn, and I love it. For example I figured this airbnb was old, but it didn’t take much digging at all to find out it was built in the early 16th century – that kinda blows my tiny little mind. Not to mention the street itself has been known to exist since at least the 12th century.

Time to finish the evening with the mundane stuff – trying to re-pack the suitcase, slightly dreading getting it down the stairs without falling down the same. At least it’s a short walk, mostly downhill, to the train station tomorrow, for our next destination. All aboard!

Today started with a coffee and a delicious home-made cheese omelette. Yum! It was soon time however to start packing and get ready for our next destination. It was so nice staying with our friends, it had been a while since we’d seen them. And as a bonus they gave us a lift up to Derby to make our onward trip that much easier. It’s like, we went to Birmingham without ever actually going to Birmingham apart from the minutes we spent at the train station the other day. But it sounds like staying just that bit outside of Birmingham itself was a very good idea, and what can I say we’ve really enjoyed it.

I think I’ve learned a lesson with the trains I booked. I was recommended the “TrainPal” app because of the way it takes full advantage of Split Ticketing – where buying two tickets for the one train can work out cheaper than one end to end ticket, despite the trip itself being exactly the same. Makes sense, and it does work out to save money. However it doesn’t seem to have the ability to book seats or anything like that, so for most of the trips it’s down to chance if we end up with somewhere to sit or not. So in future it’s worth considering the trade off between split tickets and bookable seats. I’m sure there’ll be an app or website than manages both. We’ll know for next time.

Anyway for today’s train, fortune was smiling upon us as we found pretty much the last two seats on the train, and, a good spot for the luggage. Sweet! I’m glad we put our luggage in the correct place (as far as I know). When the cafe / snack cart came through the attendant said quite sharply to someone else “no, that luggage can’t stay there it has to be moved immediately thank you!”

So, don’t cross a cafe cart attendant! 🙂

The trip was uneventful, the scenery was green and lovely, more and more fields the further we went along, interspersed with the occasional towns of terraces winding up hill and down dale. And considering we were heading into Yorkshire, I guess they really were dales 🙂 Of course there were also a few bigger places where greenery gave way to industry, like Sheffield.

Unlike the train from Holyhead to Birmingham, this train from Derby to York had a whole 4 cars. Or, in Uk station-speak, “This train is formed of 4 carriages”. We hoped for the best when it came to overcrowding, but the train gods had other plans. Apparently some other trains had been having issues through the day so our one was the first service that ended up leaving from Leeds. So of course once we got to Leeds, there was quite backlog of people trying to get places, and heap of them piled on, making things very busy once again. This train was air-conditioned though, so it wasn’t anywhere near as unpleasant as last time. To make sure we had time to retrieve our luggage (stored in the next carriage), we stood most of the way for the last 20 minutes of the journey, which was a bit interesting, but no dramas, we reached York, we managed to get both ourselves and the luggage off the train, and took in a big breath now we had plenty of breathing space 🙂

The next bonus, just like at Derby, York had full step-free access, making it a breeze to get out of the station with our bags. It was around 11:30 that we arrived, and it quite a warm day (or, in Dublin terms, a scorcher, at 20 degrees). There were still a few hours to go before we would be able to check in to our Airbnb, so I’d found a thing called ‘Radical Storage’ – a kind of Uberisation of luggage-looking-after. For a reasonable (ish) fee, the local newsagent across the road from the Airbnb was happy to store our luggage for a few hours. The only small downside I guess was it was a bit more than the sign we saw in the window saying “luggage storage £5” – but not to worry.

Is York an old city? I get the feeling it’s an old city.

With luggage duly stashed, it was time to go to the place that was my whole reason for wanting to see York in the first place. I promise I’m not a completely sad old desperate train nerd who wears an anorak and writes down train numbers as they pass by. But. I really did want to see the National Railyway Museum in York. A month or two back when I was doing all the planning, I booked York in, all sorted and settled, for Monday and Tuesday. Then, when I checked the National Railway Museum, guess which days it is closed? If you guessed Monday and Tuesday, congratulations, that’s right! But, not a problem, just a small adjustment to our train, which is why we arrived at 11:30 today, to give plenty of time to check it out. One thing I could do nothing about was the fact that like half of the museum is closed for refurbishment, but so be it, gives me an excuse to come back some other time, when they re-open that bit some time last next year.

One thing that hit us pretty quickly is just how damn pretty this town is. For example, this is at the start of the street on which we’re staying.

I was glad to make it to the museum, and even more glad to start off with a cold drink at their cafe. Phew. Then it was time to look at trains and stuff. No I don’t know every detail about every train, the two I did know about where the first ever Bullet Train (the only one outside of Japan), and, ‘Mallard’ – the world’s fastest steam train whose record has never been beaten…well, apart from every other kind of train pretty much made since. Still, 126mph for an old steam train isn’t too shabby. There was also a replica of ‘Rocket’ – kinda the first even steam train – there’s bound to be someone in an anorak who would dispute it, but, whatever. First steam train. I guess the only other thing here I didn’t expect is just how damn big some of those old steam engines are – for some of them just the wheels are even taller than I am, and then there’s rest of the engine on top, making some of them truly enormous, I didn’t realise how much bigger some of them were compared to today’s average commuter train. Anyway, here are too many photos.

The Railway Museum wasn’t far from York Railway Station, which wasn’t far from the the York Hop-on Hop-off bus. So of course we did that next to get the lay of the land. We waited a whole 5 minutes for the bus if that, juuuust enough time to buy the ticket online before presenting the ticket to the driver just it was loading the ‘done’ screen. The tour was lovely, here’s a time lapse of some parts, and some photos of other parts.

It was also one of the funniest commentaries I’ve heard in some time, let’s see if I can get a quick voice recording working:

We did a full loop on the bus and a bit more. A fun thing we learnt on the way: York has almost no streets, they’re all called Gates. The best of these is Whip-ma-whop-ma Gate, which is believed to basically translate to “neither one thing nor the other” street. It is tiny, with only three buildings. And it seems kinda fitting that those buildings are numbered 1, 1a, and 1 1/2 🙂

After hopping-off, we elected to grab a late lunch, by which time our Airbnb would be available to check in. It was a bit of quest to get the keys – ‘Go to the gate, then find the little gate, then enter the code, then go around the corner, then go to the box, then enter the other code, then double back, defeat the dragon, break the elder wand, deliver the plans to the Death Star, steal the idol, locate the Ark, throw the Ring back into the volcano’ (some of these may not be actual steps involved) – but before too long we had keys, then back to the newsagent to retrieve the luggage, then across the road to the Airbnb itself. By now lugging luggage up stairs is a punish, but we knew it was coming, and we got through it eventually. The place itself though is small but perfectly formed – a really lovely really old building. It’s two-story, the bedroom and bathroom are upstairs, but the suitcases are 100% staying on the lower level! It also has, joy of joys, a washing machine (though tiny) and no drier, so first thing we did was prioritise laundry that really needed doing, and see what happens after that (after ducking back to the newsagent to get laundry detergent). How fascinating, a blog about how we did our laundry. I know, this is the kind of riveting content you came here for! Here are some non-laundry pictures.

Important laundry tasks completed, it was time to stop chilling and start dinner-ing. On our brief wander around this afternoon, York seems to have approximately 10 thousand different eateries, so it wasn’t a great challenge to find somewhere tasty. We’re basically staying on top of a cafe so I’m sure breakfast and coffee won’t be an issue in the morning.

The trouble with too much choice for dinner meant it took a while before we found somewhere – but seeing bangers & mash on the menu at The Three Tuns did the trick and in we went. Apparently it was built some time in the 1500s and is known to have been a pub since at least the 1700s. I knew we’d picked a good place as son as we walked in – the music was all 80s/90s Brit pop – Madness, Shakespear’s Sister, all sorts of good stuff. Nice to hear! As for the bangers’n’mash – a picture speaks a thousand words, and no I couldn’t quite finish it. As the staff member who collected our plates said “Better to be overfed than underfed now isn’t it”. Good point!

After that, we stopped in at Sainsbury’s for a bit of ice cream and then back to the airbnb to pretty much collapse (and finish off the blog). Tomorrow’s a public holiday so fingers crossed the cafe downstairs is open for breakfast! You’ll find out all about it tomorrow, plus no doubt some other exciting updates on whether or not the washing has dried. See you then!

We had a nice leisurely start to the day, with our lovely hosts making us a very tasty breakfast of eggs on toast. And coffee – can’t forget the coffee!

First agenda item of the day – a stroll around McArthur Glen, a lovely and huge outdoor shopping mall near the town of Cannock. Of course, with luggage completely stuffed to the gills there was no hope of buying even half things that looked lovely, but I guess that’s one way to save money 🙂 It was a perfect spring day, not a cloud in the sky and it felt much warmer than the 15 degrees on the thermometer would have suggested. To me it feels a little brave to build such an outdoor mall in England, but there were also quite a few barrels around full of free umbrellas to borrow while you shop. Thankfully, not needed, as the sun continued to beat down upon us in a most in-English way 🙂

It seems we had impeccable timing when it came to visit Birmingham and its surrounds – at nearby Lichfield there is a big foodie market held a few time a year, and as luck would have it, today was one of those rare days when it was in town. Man, did it get popular! Every person and their dog (quite literally) were there to checkout the many many food trucks and produce stalls, with a surprising emphasis on drinks just as much as food. Vodka slushy stall? Sure! It’s in between the cider stall and the Limoncello+Prosecco stall. And much more besides. The food on offer was equally as diverse – from Currywurst to hotdogs to ‘Indian Style Fish and Chips’, you name it, you could probably get your hands on it. In the end we all settled on a Philly Cheesesteak, just the right balance of substantial but not-too-substantial. Delicious, and they went to great pains to make sure we knew the cheese sauces was specially imported from the US at great expense. :). Whatever it was, it worked a treat and lead one very tasty lunch. There was also one not-at-all-scary looking tall slide, looking like it was ready to throw kids off it shallow edges at tearing speed. We didn’t get to see it in action, but maybe that’s actually a good thing.

The environment in which it eat that lunch was also delightful – by the side of a canal of sorts, the ‘Minster Pool’, we sat, watching ducks come and go and play on the water. Apart from the 1000 people milling around behind us from one stall the next, it was really quite serene and a lovely place to stop for our bite to eat.

Of course we had to follow that up with a vodka slushie – perfect weather for it, and it didn’t disappoint. I’m sure if I lived close by I would have bought a ton of cheese, beautiful tasty olives of many varieties, dozens of flavours of fudge, all the good stuff you usually find at that these kind of events. The one way I could clearly tell I wasn’t in Australia though – there was no Gozleme stand! I’m sure in Australia it’s a legal requirement that as soon as three food stands pop up anywhere, one of them always has to be a Gozleme stand 🙂

Next it was back to the house just to chill for a bit and catch up with our friends, remember that yes, while on holidays, it is actually quite OK to just stop for a while and do, well, nothing! 🙂

For dinner we all went out to a lovely local restaurant, with food so nice I was too busy gobbling it up to take photos of it. Dessert was particularly good with a trio of baby chocolate fondant, creme brûlée, and a mango parfait kind of thing. Delish! Whilst they weren’t the fastest place ever, forgetting some of our meals at some point, the food was all tasty, high quality stuff, and the restaurant itself was in a nice spot with lovely decor. And after a few minutes drive back home safe and sound, ready to pack, for tomorrow we’re off again to our next destination. Nighty night!

There was another one of those delightful early starts today – up around 5 to leave nothing to chance. Checking out of the hotel was super-fast, not even as much as a “was everything ok”. The experience had been slightly less than stellar, so maybe it would have been good to ask. There were no disasters, just that on the last day – the first time we’d put the ‘please make up my room’ note on the door, they didn’t. Like I’ve mentioned a few times it’s only a new place, so hopefully over time they sort their stuff out and they become as fancy as they look.

We only had a short walk to the bus stop. The big effort was before that – trying to squish everything back into the bags. I bought a sum total of two tiny espresso-size coffee cups – that’s it. Not sure how this has felt like an expansion of luggage by a few square metres 🙂

And that was about it for Dublin – at least we got to see a little bit of it, and learn a little of its history. Hopefully there’s lots of peaceful time ahead.

We caught a Stena Line ferry over to Dublin, so for the heck of it I booked the other one, Irish Ferries, for the trip back to Wales. The check in process was super simply, just ‘yeah throw your bags over there on the belt and go up the escalator’. Too easy. Just had time to smash a coffee at a little cafe in the terminal and next thing you know it was time to get on another bus to be taken over to the ferry. This time, the bus didn’t dump us inside the ferry itself, just near the front, so we walked in. Their signage was on point, before we knew it we were at the door to the Club Class lounge, where we paid a few extra bucks for some free snacks and drinks. We found seats, settled in, I grabbed a free glass of Apple juice, and … next minute it was already time to disembark!

This ride, on the ‘Swift’ did indeed live up to its name as it was all over in a little over two hours, and I slept through pretty much the whole way, too easy! The only trouble was I missed out on free snacks coz i was too busy snoozing. Still, what can I say, I had a really good sleep and woke up feeling pretty refreshed and ready to go.

When it was time to leave, this time it was a bit more of the ‘Greek approach’ where we were all corralled to the back of the ship while the crew rushed around tidying and vacuuming and getting things ready for the next load of passengers. It didn’t take long at all before we stepped off the board into to the fresh Wales air, and straight on to the bus for a crazy hellride to the station 🙂 OK that’s overstating it, I’d say the drivers was bored of doing to the same little rip over and over and chose to have a bit of fun with it. Arrivals couldn’t have been easier – in the door, the luggage was already going around on the conveyer belt, there were no customs, no border control, just straight on through and seconds later, here we are in Holyhead Wales.

The wonderful thing about Holyhead is that the port and the train station are directly connected, one right behind the other, so it was again no trouble getting to the station. We had an hour to wait, so time for a snack in the little cafe there.

Bang on time, the train arrived, a little two-carriage thing, ready to take us all the way to Birmingham. Time to relax and watch the fields and head grows and lovely little cottages whiz by. And despite being only two carriages, there was still a drinks and snacks trolley on board, so I had myself a lovely cup of tea.

Sure enough, a little more nap time ensued during the journey, but by about the time we hit Chester, things got busy. I think they’re enough passengers for a 4 carriage train, certainly enough suitcases! The last half hour or so became particularly cramped and crowded. Finally, only about 30 minutes after we were scheduled to, we arrived in Birmingham New Street, and were delighted to be reunited with a dear friend we’d not seen in nearly two years. We’re staying with these friends in their lovely home just outside of Birmingham, which is very kind of them.

We even enjoyed our first home cooked meal since the start of May, so that was a wonderful change as well. But now, it’s late, sure there are exciting things planned for tomorrow so I’ll leave it there, and see you all tomorrow.

It was a big (I guess, the big) tour day today so up and at ‘em before 6 for a quick brekky and to rendezvous with all the other people that would soon collectively make up a bus load of tourists. As luck would have it, the other critical ingredient soon arrived – the bus! On we piled for a big adventure.

Today we were heading north. Very north, up to Northern Ireland, Belfast to be a bit more exact, to visit the Titanic museum. There are no border controls, no passports, just a sign welcoming us as we cross from the republic to Northern Ireland.

Our guide gives us a potted history of Ireland and Northern Ireland along the way, a pivotal moment being Henry VIII’s formation of the Church of England so he could get himself a divorce. It’s as if those adhering to the new religion and those adhering to the old have been at loggerheads ever since. Animosity, hatred, conflicts, wars, so many lives pointlessly lost, all due to religion. As an outsider, it’s just so fucking tragic that it’s all about, well … Nothing.

The Titanic museum was all about one of the world’s more famous failures. Housed in a big impressive building, it was completed about 10 years ago.

It does a wonderful job of setting the context, talking about Belfast and the way it became a superpower in the linen trade and steel and shipbuilding. Harland and Wolff was the most efficient shipbuilder, with an excellent reputation, no wonder it had the ambition to take on the building of the unimaginably large ships like the Olympic and the Titanic. Surprisingly, the museum took a turn when it came to explaining parts of the building process – we turned a corner and were ushered into a sort of amusement park ride, most unexpected. It took us on a five minute trip, twisting and turning to show little vignettes on details of the process, such as the hardships faced by those responsible for setting the many many rivets that held the whole things together. Lucky things were working for “only” 54 hours a week.

The ride came to an end and we learned more about the launch – cleverly positioned so this room looked out over the actual slipway used by Olympic and Titanic as they moved from shipyard to waterway.

Next up we’re some mock-ups of the luxurious, and less luxurious cabins on board, first class still looks fancy, even with one of those new tangled electric lamps. But for third class, I believe there were only two. At brooms for the lot of them so that cannot have been pleasant. One thing I found interesting was that the ship had to have enough linen on board to last from port to port, as there were no facilities on board to wash it. So that’s a lot of sheets and tablecloths and serviettes and the like!

Then the bit we all know about – hey what’s that, oops too late, crunch, ow, splish, splash, blub blub blub, no you can’t share my door. There were bits of this I never knew about – like the nearest ship didn’t know titanic was calling for help because it’s radio person had clocked off for the day so nobody was listening to the radio. Unimaginable these days – indeed, one of the outcomes of this disaster was a requirement for ships to have a radio person available at all times to listen to incoming signals. I also didn’t know that there should have been a pair of binoculars up in Titanic’s crows nest but they were missing – so there was no chance to see any icebergs until they were quite close by. At least out of so much bad came some good, with the changing of rules and regulations to help prevent some of worst of the problems that befell titanic.

The next section was dedicated to its rediscovery – I’d actually forgotten it had laid there in peace and quiet until 1985. I keep taking “that’s so recent” – but that’s just me showing my age, with a reality check that it’s nearly 40 years ago.

The final room was a sort of large, artistic, multi-media representation of titanic’s lifecycle – quite effectively done. The room also had a few items recovered from a few people who didn’t make it. A pocket watch, somewhat eerliy (but understandably) stopped at 1:37, the same moment it (and its owner) hit the icy waters.

To its the credit, there was no “exit through the gift shop”, but rest assured there was one just a few steps away. It was a fascinating way to spend two hours, well worth a visit.

It’s another one of those interesting things that had it been successful, we’d never had heard of Titanic, it would have been just another boat like so many before or since. But since disaster befell people, and more to the point, rich people, it has been recorded in great detail and fussed over for more than a hundred years since. Just like the Vasa ship in Sweden, it’s the failure that gives it a certain immortality. It’s a good note to yourself should you fail at something – just look how important and useful failure can actually be 🙂

Back on the bus we all then piled, for our next destination – Dunluce Castle, or rather the remains thereof. I don’t know much about the castle’s history (yes let’s all just Google it later) but it was a lovely old crumbling thing, ripe for the crawling-over by bus loads of happy-snappers like myself. Here are probably too many photos.

Too soon it was bus time again for a quick trip to our next major stop, the Giant’s Causewqy. And more importantly, lunch! We decided on eating first as the rain which we have pretty much avoided for our whole trip was starting to catch up with us. Of course several other bus loads of people had the same idea, but we managed to get a table in “The Nook”, a nice old pub, and got our hands on a ridiculously good lunch – I swear my smoked salmon sandwich had salmon an inch thick in parts, and Perry’s steak and Guinness pie looked delicious. This was accompanied with garlic chips, which by the time we got through them, were literally swimming in garlic butter at the bottom of their dish. Very good!

We waited a good bit of time for a bus down to the causeway, to the point where our best option was to line back up immediately for the bus going back up to the top. But we were able to tag team and still go for a little wander to get some pictures. It was raining so I wasn’t at all keen to try clambering around, knowing I’d be the first to be going arse-over-tit at a moment’s notice. Interestingly they had a few staff positioned at points on the causeway, there to try and reduce the number of dumb people doing dumb things – discouraging them from the more dangerous bits.

Our bus back to the top got us there in time to get back to our other bus, the one that would ultimately take us back home (with a brief comfort stop on the way, peppered with additional drama that only one loo was available!).

Lasting some 14 hours, it’s a big day for the tour operators and tourists alike, mind you I managed a few good naps, a nice luxury not afforded our driver 🙂 We were returned to Dublin and left the coach, feeling richer (though not financially!) for the experience.

We thought we’d just opt for a quick dinner in the hotel to end the night early. Except I think it’s been at least an hour waiting for the food – guess they’re having a no good very bad kind of day, poor things. But it’s kinda been fun listening to other tables threaten to walk because of all the time it’s taking. This place has only been open a few weeks, I guess kitchen staffing or service still hasn’t settled in yet. Still, it gives me time to write a paragraph about someone else having a shit day, and it’s not us, so that’s a thing? Hmm if I put my mind to it I may yet finish a novel, the way things are going 🙂

And so, our time in Ireland is at an end. Of course most of it was spent in a hotel room feeling poorly, but at least it was a comfortable place to recover. It’s a shame we didn’t get to see as much of Dublin as we might have liked, but for these kind of things you just have to roll with it and be grateful for the things that we did get a chance to see and experience. After all, as we learned today, worse things happen at sea!

Another slow start to the day, but Perry was well enough to be up and about, so we did get to see a little bit of Dublin today. After a quick breakfast it was over to our good old tourist staple, the hop-on-hop-off bus, for a breezy trip around Dublin on a beautiful spring day (reaching the dizzingly scorching heights of 18 degrees).

I didn’t even take a billion photos. Perhaps unsurprisingly we drove past about 1000 churches give or take, plus some interesting things as well, like the Guinness factory, and a number of other old buildings around the place.

We grabbed some lunch at a place caller SuperMac’s – no it wasn’t full of Apple computers, instead of was a McDonaldKFCsubwayPizzaHut kind of place, trying to be all things to all people. Sure made a nice chicken burger though. We also saw a department store called Arnott’s – at first I had my hopes up that it was just five floors of biscuits, but alas no.

While we were in the neighbourhood we booked in to see The Long Room in trinity college. Just google that and you’ll get 1000 photographs better than mine :). To get in to the see The Long Room you also need to pay for an exhibit about the Book of Kells. There was no Book of Kath though. I guess the remarkable thing about the Book of Kells is that it was being put together in around the year 900 or so, and the pigments on the pages are still fairly vibrant – so it’s a wonder of archiving if nothing else. It’s interesting to see how people tried to draw things 1,000 years ago but the book itself is just some bits from the bible so to be honest that doesn’t hold a lot of interest. But still kinda cool to see an actual page from a 1,000 year old book. For some reason they had it open and one page and wouldn’t let you just pick it up and flick through to your heart’s content 🙂

After that, the Long Room itself. Just me, Perry, and a hundred other people, and staff who are currently in the process of removing all of the books so that they can be digitised and repaired if necessary. So perhaps it doesn’t give the full effect with a great many of the shelves empty, but it’s still a super-impressive space, 64 metres long, a beautiful vaulted ceiling, and room for a great many books. There were no ghosts whizzing about like in Harry Potter, no creepy atmosphere whatsoever, but it sure was beautiful, and old enough to have a filing system older than the letters J and U for example.

That was enough adventure for one day so back to the hotel to chill and regain some energy. We ventured as far as the ground floor for dinner, time to rest for a big day tomorrow.

A quieter morning – quieter in the best way, with less coughing and a slightly more restful sleep for all.

But as the title would suggest, Perry tested positive for Covid 😦 That means I probably have it too, but I’ll save the remaining tests for him for now.

We’ve moved a tour we had planned over to Thursday, in the hope we’ll be OK to travel by then – at the vaguely extortionate price of 70 euro to change a date in a system somewhere – but that’s much better than not being able to attend at all.

I went for a bit of a wander outdoors, to go to the shops for some food, and to get a little closer to one of the pretty bridges over the River Liffey that runs through Dublin, that’s about all to report today. There were some cool sculptures including a harrowing one depicting the great famine. I am guessing the area we’re staying is going through its gentrification phase, there’s a bit of local colour very close by including some cool street art.

Other than that, just lots of rest and not mixing with people. Let’s hope things are going a bit better tomorrow.

After a looong sleep, unfortunately Perry’s still feeling unwell, so it was up to me to take on this morning’s tour solo. As a precaution, I wore a mask, just in case I was coming down with anything, in order to protect my fellow passengers and crew.

Today’s little tour was the Vintage Dublin Afternoon Tea. In the morning. Makes perfect sense. On board, already waiting was a selection of little cakes and sandwiches, lovely! And just to ad to the quaint factor the bus was decorated with little garlands of flowers. We were introduced to our bus, her name is Pauline, and she was born in 1961 as a London Routemaster bus, now living her best life here in Dublin.

Of course tea was on the menu, and I had to choose Irish Breakfast. The journey got off to very slow start due to someone parking right on the very edge of a corner meaning there was no chance the bus would be able to turn left. Eventually, they moved and we were able to proceed. I have to give full credit to all the bus drivers we’ve encountered so far – manoeuvring these big lumps of metal through the tiniest gaps, threading through bollards and traffic lights, it really is impressive. We drove past some lovely old buildings, past the massive Guinness factory – and this is where I learnt something I didn’t know. Which country drinks the most Guinness? It’s not Ireland, Australia, USA or even the UK. Nope, it’s actually Nigeria!

We drove into Phoenix Gardens, a massive park, any by massive I mean twice the size of Central Park in New York. It’s also home to the president, and to the United States Ambassador to Ireland.

It was soon time to enjoy a freshly heated scone that was delivered to my table, accompanied with clotted cream and jam, as we trundled through Georgian Dublin, which was of course quite beautiful with its Georgian terraces and their massive windows – if you’d like to live in one of those terraces, to going rate is around 5 or 6 million euro. We learnt a little about the rich-suburb trait of everybody trying hard just to out-do everyone else – even the number of steps leading up to your front door was a status symbol as more steps meant more cost. Go figure. As with Volendam, Vaucluse, and every other posh place in the world, always to see the super-rich making such sensible use of their extra dollars

Having finished my scone, the tour concluded and I was able to get a few more pictures on the way back to the hotel. Also, they gave me the leftovers to take back to Perry which was nice.

Much of the afternoon was spent quietly in the hotel, doing a bit of admin like moving tomorrow’s tour to Thursday just in case, and booking a bus to get us from Dublin to Dublin Port when we leave on Friday. I picked up some snacks and painkillers, and also took a few pictures of the surrounding area including a pub Oscar Wilde worked at when he was young.

There are interesting bits of Victorian-era infrastructure popping up all over the place. I guess back then it was more “I don’t care how it will look, it has to go here, and here is where it will go”. Nowadays can you imagine the outcry? Some of these things I guess were a massive blot on the landscape, but over time are now more often though of as ‘charming’. I wonder who’s more right?

Anyway, I stopped pondering infrastructure for long enough to have a good laugh at this ad I saw on Facebook, which managed to use “scorcher’ and “21 degrees” in the same sentence 🙂

On that slightly hilarious note, it’s time to call it a day. No plans set for tomorrow, so it can be another day of recovery if needed.

After the Grand Final, we got back to hotel maybe around 12:30 in the morning. That left us tons of time (heh) to finish packing up and be ready around 7AM to hopefully find a car that could take us to the train station.

That translated to roughly 5 hours of bad sleep, like, waking up every half hour wondering “did I sleep through an alarm?” sleep. Suffice to say the day started very much in Zombie mode. At the hotel reception I tried to check out of a room that didn’t exist, but we got that cleared up pretty quickly. As everybody would be trying to gat out of the city all at once, I was bit concerned we’d have trouble finding an Uber, but I think it was only about 15 minutes before we were able to get one. We built in a lot of extra time just in case (worst case scenario would have been walking 2 km to the station with out luggage, eek!) – but in the end we got there with a bit over and hour to spare. Beats stressing about it though.

Happily there was somewhere to get coffee and somewhere to sit while we waited, and found our way down to ‘Platform A’ from where we’d catch our train. And here’s platform A just because.

First leg was from Liverpool Lime Street to Chester, the train wasn’t crowded so it was not much bother with us and the luggage. At Chester we had about a 25 minute changeover time, so that was just enough time to lug the bags up some stairs (always such a joy) and over to the correct platform. Again we found somewhere for the luggage, and saw some beautiful countryside roll by, including a stop at THAT train station in Wales:

This train, despite being only 3 carriages, still had someone going up and down with a refreshments cart, which was kinda cool – I guess this leg was a little over 2 hours so it makes sense. After all the scenery (and much that was missed due to snoozing), we arrived at Holyhead, Wales. Happily, the start of the Ferry terminal is directed connected to the end of the train platform, so that couldn’t get much easier if we tried. Again to be on the safe side we allowed a ton of time in case trains were late etc, but they weren’t, so we had about 2 hours to kill at Holyhead. They had a comfy cafe/shop area with some lounges so we baggsed one of those and settled in for the wait, had some machine coffee and refreshingly cheap bags of chips (crisps).

Boarding was fine, we booked a spot in the “Hygge lounge” on the ferry, not so much for its “luxury seating” but more for the “children under 8 are not permitted”. It was indeed quiet, still some dick decided watching videos on his phone at full volume was totally ok. Super glad of the earplugs I had in my pocket, originally for Eurovision but now to make the quiet room actually quiet. Bliss.

The Irish Sea ferry crossing has a bit of a reputation for being pretty rough, so I did the right thing and bought some travel sickness medication just in case. But to cut a long story short, the whole thing was about as smooth as glass, at least the small bits I remembered, as happily I slept for at least two of the three hours it took to get to Dublin. I remember back in the day when we caught these super big ferries to Mykonos and Santorini we were all herded up like cattle with all the cars in order to get us out of there as quick as possible. Stena Line was a bit more refined -calling truck drives, then car drivers, and lastly foot passengers. WE ended up kinda herded into a stairwell for quite some time, but that was OK. So, down the stairs, into a bus (which is on the ferry), which then drives off the ferry and deposits us at the port, where we pick up our luggage (so glad we were able to check that in and not manhandle it up and down the ferry!), then onto another bus to get us in to the middle of town.

It was then just a short walk to the Hotel, which is really quite nice because it wasn’t even open when we booked it – so everything is super super fresh. It looks like an area that is undergoing a bit of gentrification because among the brand new hotel and graffiti-ridden smashed-window old warehouses, but hey at least it creates some contrast.

We were both so totally chock full of energy we just went down to the hotel restaurant, which was pretty nice, and all that’s left to do is finish this blog and have a bit of an early night to hopefully help make up for last night.

Dublin, we have arrived!