Weekend in Wales

22-23 September 2007

What a lovely weekend.

Here’s all the photos: www.amanda.com.au/uk/wales/

First stop: Chester – near the England / Wales border. Very cute town. Most of the streets were shut off – so there were just people walking everywhere. There was some kite festival going on as well. Was quickly coming to the realisation that our driver/tour guide was actually the man who gives the tour of the Box Factory in the Simpsons.

Anyways, next stop – Conwy – just gorgeous. Beautiful green hills, big castle, also home to the Britain’s smallest house. We climbed the city walls and got some great views.

Next stop was the resort / seaside town of Llandudno. Gorgeous old buildings lined the beach. The water was blue and flat, sun was shining, no wind – perfect. And we got to stay in a proper hotel! Ie - not a crummy hostel, with 12 people crammed into a loft with bunk beds and 2 showers that dribble cold water – our room overlooked the bay, was twinshare, and we had our own bathroom! Strangely – it had an electric toilet with in built shredder which was very loud.

We were then left to our own devices for the evening and me and my roomie / fellow Aussie Tory headed off that evening and walked along the beach while the sun was still up. We had a small wander around the town – nothing much was open on a Saturday night – but we found a nice pub and had dinner there. Mid dinner, a group of 20 rowdy, drunk Welsh women on a hen’s night *burst* into the pub, yelling, squealing and yahooing. Was cringing slightly on the inside – the bride was .. old. Then all of a sudden, a “fireman” entered the pub.

Now having worked with firemen / at emergency services before, I can assure you that the sexy fireman is actually a myth. They’re generally overweight, old, or both. So stripper fireman provided well, everyone in the pub with a bit of entertainment / eye candy / beefcake. Was funny to say the least. Later me and Tory went for a walk down the pier and stopped and played air hockey on the way back (I love air hockey!). We called it a night soon after.

Next morning – we had a cooked breakfast in the hotel and we set off in the minibus to the nearby peninsula of Great Orme next to Llandudno (where we stayed). I don’t know what happened, but all of a sudden the skies opened up and it felt like a cyclone outside standing up on this peninsula. I thought my face was going to fall off. It was SO cold and windy, that you could lean forward like you were going to fall over and the wind would keep you propped up. And when you walked, the wind pushed you along like a leaf in the wind. After we left, we saw a lost sheep that had been “pulled over” by police who’d cornered him on a roundabout. Cute.

We then drove over to the Island of Anglesey, and stopped at the longest town name place: Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch which means: St Mary's church in the hollow of the white hazel near the rapid whirlpool of St Tysillio's church, by the red cave. Seriously the welsh language looks like someone has just mashed randomly into a keyboard – and to pronounce it is completely different again. We then headed to Caernarfon – where there was another castle. It had a swing bridge and I kind of got stuck on the other side when a boat came through. Luckily the bridge soon swung back.

We then headed to Snowdonia National Park. Which was “nice” but the scenery was very similar to the Lake District. For some reason I was expecting something more visually dramatic or more mountainous – but it was still pretty and we went on a steam train which was ok, but very squished and hot inside because none of us could figure out how to open the windows.

After that we had a long drive back to London via Cambridge (grrr) – so didn’t get home until after 10pm. Always good to get out of London I say. Next trip: PARIS (in October)! Oh and tomorrow night I’m going to see the only full live recording of Queen when they played in Montreal in 1981 on the big screen and in surround sound in Leicester Square – should be fantastic and the closest I’m ever gunna get to seeing Queen / Freddy Mercury live. AND I’m coming home for a couple of weeks at Xmas – from 25 Dec - 10 Jan. Flights are now all booked – YAAAY!!

Thames River Festival, 1000 gorillas, St Paul's Cathedral, and I'm coming home at Xmas for 2 weeks!

Photos: www.amanda.com.au/uk/thames

Transe Express perform Maudits Sonnants at the Thames River Festival – Saturday 15 September 2007

A giant moving mechanical chandelier contraption is suspended from a crane. The dropback is the London Eye and Big Ben. Platforms with fire torches surround. The musicians come out in silver costumes ringing bells, jumping around and yelling French from the fiery platforms. Eventually they make their way to the chandelier contraption and all of a sudden it lights up, expands and raises into the sky. The musicians dangle from it like christmas tree decorations and they play music mid air with trapeze artists moving and swinging around above them. The music is sweet and loud, like music box with tinkling bells, but amplified and with drums. If you are familiar with Sigur Ros – they sounded similar to some of their songs that sound like a music box or songs with bells in them. The chandelier expanded and contracted, changed colours, moved up and down and climaxed with a reddish pink smokey explosion below. Truly amazing.

Earlier that day I also went to St Paul’s Cathedral, and climbed the 1 million stairs all the way to the top – it’s worth it and the view is fantastic – and the weather was surprisingly nice – blue skies and even the “Sun” decided to make a rare appearance. I love St Paul’s – it’s so beautiful inside - I could just sit there for hours looking at the ceilings. In the gift shop afterwards, I was looking at books and postcards, and this old man had a name badge on for some reason. His name was Douglas Home. I’m not sure if he was deaf or just didn’t understand my accent, but we established that we both had the surname eventually. Strangely, if your surname is Home over here, you’re actually supposed to pronounce it “Hume” – weird. People have hard a hard enough time spelling Home (they like to add L or S), I think it’d even be a bigger pain to tell people how to pronounce it, so I think I’ll just stick to spelling it and pronouncing it HOME. Apparently there’s some society for people with the surname Home with about 4000 people in it (who knew there were so many?). His wife said we probably have the same ancestors in Scotland. He also said, gee you’ve come a long way visit here. Made me sound like an alien who’d travelled many light years from a far away planet to get here. Hmm.

Speaking of HOME, I’m coming home for Christmas for 2 weeks (hoorah!). It’ll be great to see family and friends, my cat!!, go to a real beach, go to my favourite restaurants, drive a car, see my Dad’s new house, dive in his new pool etc etc etc. It'll be nice to get a few things out of my system and also temporarily escape the middle of British winter and.. defrost. Meanwhile, I’ve got a few things to keep me going/busy – next weekend – Wales. October – Paris, November – Edinborough (these are all weekend trips), and 4 concerts to go to before the year is over (yes, poor me, life is tough). It’s so incredibly cheap to travel here – I can’t wait to plan more weekends away for next year when I get back! And all my favourite bands seem to play here all the time – whereas normally you have to wait ages for them to come to Brisbane – IF they come to Brisbane.

I also wanted to attend / watch the Annual Running of the Gorillas charity fun run, but alas, I got the date wrong and I’ll be in Wales next weekend when it happens. But I encourage you all to at least watch the video via the link above (it’s very funny) or if you’re feeling inspired, donate. More people run in this race dressed in gorilla suits than there actually are real gorillas in the wild :( And someone needs to organise a race like this is Brisbane or Australia. Anyways, that’s all for now. I’ve also included some photos extra random photos from here and there such as when I went to the Dali exhibition the other weekend. Enjoy! Amanda :)

PS: here's a link to the photos again: www.amanda.com.au/uk/thames