June 14 Kinsale

Take a look at the sign. The top words are in Gaelic.

Our group took a tour of historic Kinsale and nearby Charles Fort. This little town and fort was the site of the defeat of two Irish clans and Spanish troops by the British in 1601. Charles Fort was occupied by the British until Irish independence in 1922. It was a beautiful, blue-sky day - what a great day to be on this hill overlooking Kinsale Harbor.

Inside Charles Fort

View of Kinsale Harbor.  It has been in use before the Viking arrived.

After lunch we did some shopping and took a walk along Pier Road to see the boats and yachts in the harbor.  We found the signs directing motorists to Bandon, Ireland, the town that Bandon in SW Oregon is named after.

On our way back to the hotel we stopped to tour St. Multose Church, featuring many grave sites of those who died in 1915 when the Germans torpedoed the Lusitania 10 miles from the harbor.

We were also able to tour the Kinsale Regional Museum, which houses relics from the Lusitania, and a display of personal objects belonging to Kinsale's 8'3" giant who lived here in the 1700's.

These are only a few of the colorful houses and shops in Kinsale.

June 12 On the way to Kinsale

We're off on the coach from Dublin to the villages of Ireland.  Our first stop was a visit to Powercourt Gardens near the village of Enniskerry.  This is a beautiful mansion set on 16,000 acres in the heart of the Irish countryside.  The mansion was gutted by fire in the 1970's, and is now a souvenir-rich shopping mall.  The grounds were laid out in the mid 1800's, and are beautifully designed and maintained.

One of many expansive lawns

Japanese Gardens

Another part of the Japanese Garden

We then went inland to the Rock of Cashal, first stopping at the Bru Boru Cultural Center for an excellent video/museum tour.  We took a rainy, windy guided tour of the church on the rock. We are tough tourists, though, and braved the weather to see the church where St. Patrick baptized King Aengus in about A.D. 450, bringing Christianity to clan leaders of the region.

Tonight we're in county Cork in the town of Kinsale.  It seems like we did a lot of driving today.  It's hard to remember that Ireland is about as large as the state of Maine, and we can reach our tourist destinations quickly.

June 10 Dublin

The zippers held together, but boarding at Heathrow proved to be the most interesting.  We arrived at the correct terminal (they have 5), passed through security and were ready to head to our gate.  But, the airlines here don't give you a gate until 20 to 30 minutes before the flight,  we waited with coffee and finally were notified to move to gate #8.  No problem.  We arrived to find that it really is "gate #8 area" and you have  Gates #8 A - F. We waited well past boarding time until they announced that we needed to move to gate 77, a hardy jaunt down several walkways.  We waited again and were finally able to board.  We couldn't take off, however, until they took a suitcase out the baggage compartment belonging to someone who did not board the flight. (Frustrating, but a good idea.)  A 50 minute flight to Dublin.

We arrived at our hotel to meet our tour group members.  They seem like a really nice people.  We had a great dinner together and Declan (deck lan), our guide, shepherded us around Dublin to start our history lesson with an explanation of the neighborhoods and a brief primer on Irish history.  The politics of Ireland is going to be very interesting.

June 9 - Making the Most of our Last Day in London

Weather report - The rain stopped and the sun graced us with its presence today.   

Right now it is 20:00 and it is twilight.

Portobello Road Market - Notting Hill

Nancy and I burrowed into the Underground for a trip to the Portobello Road Saturday Market, with a combination of portable stalls, permanent shops and arcades full of antiques, souvenirs, and food.  The market stretches four long blocks on both sides of the street and down some side streets. They haven't banned cars from the area yet, so it's a jumble of sprinting tourists and honking horns.  Two of the blocks are open for traffic on these narrow streets, plus sidewalks are narrow and uneven.  Now add a car or two every few minutes. We had a great lunch at Gail's about midway down the market, then shouldered our way back to the tube.

One stop of many and many and many.  Pretty interesting stuff over-all.

Some would say it was a pilgrimage.

 

River Cruise

After another trip to the underworld, we arrived at the Westminster Pier for a river cruise to Greenwich.  We enjoyed the narrated tour first to the Tower of London, then on to Greenwich.  We walked past the Old Royal Naval College to the Trafalgar Tavern, the spot Dickens used as the setting for the wedding breakfast in Our Mutual Friend.  Then it was off to find the "line" marking the prime meridian.  The only sign marking the meridian is at the observatory at the top of a very steep hill.  We estimated that the line was close to the gas station we passed at the Trafalgar Street intersection.

Views from the Thames River

Big Ben and the Parliament Building

The Tower of London

They are filming a James Bond movie.  The camera is on the nose of the helicopter.

The pilot just cleared the flag poles.  Watch for us in the movie.

The Trafalgar Tavern in Greenwich.  I am sure after a few pints it is Greenwich happy time.  We sat in the same spot that C. Dickens sat, maybe.

Trafalgar Square

We went to Trafalgar Square to take photos and to have dinner at the Crypt at St. Martin-in-the-Field church. The food was excellent, after you get over the fact that you're walking on someone's tomb.  One of the galleries had an exhibition of portraits called 100 Faces of London.

Tomorrow we fly to Dublin for the last leg of our adventure.  Hope everything fits in our suitcase!

Trafalgar Square

June 8th a Palace, an Abbey and a Mouse

News Flash from Buckingham Palace  ....  --.   --.  ..   .--- -...   .--.   --- (simulated Morse code)
We ambled over to see the changing of the guard with a thousand or so other tourists.  People were outside the fence looking in at a couple of guards marching their ceremonial route of 10 or 12 steps.  The scene reminded me of people at the zoo.  The guards entered on horseback in full dress uniforms.  That part lasted about 2 minutes.  We couldn't get close to the courtyard fence to see any more.  The ceremony was cut short because it rained just prior to the scheduled time. The grandstands from the Jubilee were partially taken down, with large picturesque orange and white barricades surrounding the Victoria Monument, so the tourist viewing area was very limited. 

A quick slide through St. James park to Westminster Abbey.  Oops, we found Big Ben and the Parliament Building - it looked like a church to us.  Westminster is on the other side of the street.  We found a spot in the Abbey's cloister and had our picnic lunch next to the 1740 grave of the church's plumber.  As noted on his tombstone, he was a "great service" to the church.   The Abbey is home to many famous and humble people, mostly just rich.  It is a walk though centuries of English history.

A quick trip home to drop excess gear and freshen up for dinner and a play.

We had excellent oysters and mussels at Loch Fyne restaurant in Covent Gardens and, after four more turns than we needed, we arrived at St. Martin's Theater for the 24,801st performance of Agatha Christie's play The Mousetrap.  We met a family from Sussex who were seeing the play with their two teens.  The dad said that this was the third generation to see the play. He said his grandmother brought his mother, his mother brought him and he brought his two children to this performance.  Granted, this is the celebration of the play's 60 years of performances.

Tube stops on our way.   More on that later...

June 7th Through the Tube

Our new friend.  He said he was a barber, but his blade looked a little big for my whiskers.

 Adventures come in many forms.  Today, we wormed our way through the ground and popped up like gophers.   The first pop-up was the Tower of London and a shopping trip for Nancy, but alas no extra crown jewels. I dodged that bullet. Believe me, they are really impressive.  Big diamonds (one over 500 karats), precious stones of all kinds and  gold in so many forms, it is hard to list.   We toured the castle and buildings around the tower for five hours and we didn't make it to all of the different areas.   The history, treachery, noble causes and many severed heads filled the stories of the Beefeaters and guides.  We sat in a 900 year old chapel, walked in the foot steps of kings and prisoners going to the tower for a severe hair cut just below their chin.  I will say that the Brits saved everything from the rack to a royal spoon that held the oil that anointed the kings and queens since 1100's.   It was a very good experience.  Down the tube again.

After a trip to Starbucks to get out of the rain, we scurried over to St. Paul's Cathedral for a short service at 5:00.  We were going to the service to avoid the 10 pound charge to tour the cathedral.  Our short evensong service was the Feast of Corpus Christi with a sung mass, choir, organ, incense and communion, with 300 or 400 people in attendance. Impressive.   St. Paul's was first considered for the wedding of Prince William and Kate, but it was too small.  This church is enormous and stunningly beautiful.  The present St Paul's is the fifth cathedral to have stood on the site since 604, and was built between 1675 and 1710.

A brief gopher trip over to the Porter's Pub for two scrumptious English pies and, of course, a couple of pints of Guinness fresh from the tap.

Porter's Pub

We hop scotched back through the tubes to the hotel via the Piccadilly Line to the Circle Line.  It is nice to finally get a handle on the different routes for the undergound.  It is easier to travel during off peak hours.  I think sardines had more room in the can than we did today.  No doubt the transit people would like to have stuffing plungers if they could, but I do not think they could have gotten us much closer together. 

Nancy in the tube

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We are closing our 14 hour day now.  We have a sunny day plan and a rainy day plan for tomorrow.

This is London's City Hall.  A local resident said when I asked him what the building was, he said " that ugly egg looking building is London's city hall and you need to take lots of toilet paper there, because that is all they serve."  I guess some things don't change around the world.

Important things to consider in the Tower of London,

June 6th - On to London

Six of us took a taxi to Edinburgh Airport this morning at 06:30.   We arrived well before our flight time and sailed through security.  We kept our shoes on, gathered our belongings and headed off to another interesting breakfast.  

The trip to London via Gatwick airport was uneventful. This London airport has a north and a south terminal that is connected by train.  We must have been at the farthest gate in the north terminal from the train connection in the south.  My guess is that we walked close to a half mile or more to reach the train.  Then we had another good stroll to get to the express train which took us to Victoria station and our tube connection.  Passes were purchased, we figured out the directions the trains were going and out of the ground we popped - three blocks from our hotel.  No lift, but it is only 45 steps to a great room.  We are centrally located and are close to some pubs, plus a grocery store to stock our kitchenette.  Started the pub crawl at the Prince Edward Public House tonight with a couple of pints, good pub food and dessert.
 Tomorrow the tour begins.   

June 5th - Back to Edinburgh

We made a dash from Oban to Edinburgh with many stops for photo opportunities. We drove down the highway next to Loch Lomond.  This is the area where the Highlands (rocky foothills formed by glaciers) become the Lowlands (flat valleys suited for farming).
 
The guided tour of Stirling Castle was a highlight.  After the tour we were able to visit the museum and the grounds.  Along the road to lunch we saw the Wallace Monument and the Barnockburn Battlefield.  Lunch was at Dobbie's - a combination garden center and New Seasons food court.

We finished the evening with a great dinner, a wee dram of Oban, plus some wine after the scotch.  We all said our goodbyes and invited our tour friends to join us in the northwest.

June 3

Glenfinnan - Hogwarts

This is the view of Glenfinnan where Bonnie Prince Charlie landed to convince the Scottish clans to wage war on England.

This is the bridge where they photographed the steam train on its way to Hogwarts.  Glennfinnan is directly to my back.

      
Fort William
 We saw Ben Nevis, the tallest mountain in Great Britain at 4,409 ft.  The lunch stop was a meat pie and a warm diet Coke.  The valleys or glens were created by the glaciers, and the valley walls still show the scars from the ice.  The glaciers rounded everything.

Glencoe was the area where the MacDonalds were massacred by Campbells.   The history is complex and is full of back stabbing, loyal fighters and bravery.  I would try to tell you, but I don't think I would have enough ale to explain it.

June 1 & 2 - Inverness to the Isle of Skye

Busy day.  Traveled to Loch Ness and took our group picture.

Rick Steve's Scotland Tour Group 2012 at Loch Ness

 Didn't see anything unusual in Loch Ness. It's one of the lakes and canals that are part of the Caledonian Canal that crosses Scotland from the North Sea to the Atlantic Ocean. 

 

Loch Ness contains more water than all the freshwater bodies of England and Wales combined.

We stopped at Fort Augustus for lunch, a Guinness and to watch a two boats go through the first of three locks.  We toured both Urquhart (ruined) and Eileen Donan (refurbished) castles.  We stayed at the MacKinnon Country House Hotel in Kyleakin on the Isle of Skye.  During and after dinner we were entertained by Alex MacFie.  He played the guitar, whistle, accordion and bodhran (a drum). Sample music

Day 2 of our time on the Isle of Skye found us at Talisker Distillery for a tour and scotch tasting. Excellent tour, excellent scotch!  After a hike in the Black Cuillin Hills we went on to Portree for lunch. Our tour spent some extra time there watching a special Diamond Jubilee parade featuring teen-age bagpipers and highland dancers.  All the villages have their own celebrations this weekend marking the 60th year of Queen Elizabeth's reign.

We spent the afternoon touring the Trotternish Peninsula, stopping at all the viewpoints and museums.  The sun was shining, but the wind was howling.  It's a wild, windy, rocky part of Scotland. 

                   

May 31 Inverness

Our expeditions today were within 1/2 hour of Inverness.  We began at the Culloden Battlefield.  This is the site where thousands of Highlanders lost their lives in a bloody battle.  As a result, the Scottish clans were broken up, and it was forbidden to wear kilts and tartans.  This museum is excellent - a wonderful history lesson.......

We stopped at Clava Cairns - a prehistoric burial ground featuring burial mounds and rock formations similar to Stonehenge.

At lunch time we stopped at Cawdor Castle.  We had a tour of the castle and the beautiful gardens, plus some homemade soup and scones in the cafe.

Our group got back to Inverness in time to shop at Marks and Spencer and all the fun town shops.

May 30th Inverness

The weather in Scotland is just like Oregon in the spring.  Sunny, cloudy, misty, light rain, sprinkling and back to partly cloudy.  Of course, that is just the morning. The weather is going back to partly cloudy for the next few days. 

After a hearty breakfast we rolled down the road about a mile to one of Scotland's Crannog Interpretive Centers.   Very interesting look into life in Scotland 2500 years ago.

We traveled to Pitlochry, a little village near Balmoral Castle, for a couple of meat pies and a stroll around the village. Pitlochry marks the boundary of the Scottish Highlands. 

We proceeded north to a sheep ranch near Kingussie and watched Neil Ross, a professional shepherd, use his 7 dogs to herd sheep. It was pretty amazing to watch Neil manage the dogs with body movements, whistles and voice commands.  He would use one, two  or all of the dogs to retrieve, herd and corral the sheep. It was amazing to watch the shepherd and dogs work as a team.

We'll stay two days in Inverness, located on the River Ness.  We're enjoying all the fresh seafood and lamb that Scotland is famous for.



 

May 29 On the road to Kenmore

We left Edinburgh and drove over the Firth of Forth (firth means estuary) on our way to the quaint little village of Culross.  At Culross we toured the home of the coal and salt baron who built an empire there. 

The original owner (Sir George Bruce of Carnock) started making salt by mining coal, then started mining coal and invented a method to pump water out of the coal mine and made even more money.

Then it was on to St. Andrews.  We toured the ruins of the cathedral, castle, and churchyard before we headed for the golf course.  It was great to watch the golfers - bright golf attire never goes out of style!

The Ruins of St. Andrews Cathedral.  The sea is just on the other side of the outer wall.

The  Swilken Bridge at St. Andrews Golf course.  Picture for golfers.

    


We stopped at Black Linn Falls at the Hermitage in Birnham Woods on our way to the hotel.  This was close to the spot where Beatrix Potter spent her childhood summers.  We didn't see any of Shakespeare's witches, and none of Miss Potter's famous rabbits.

Our group spent the night in Scotland's oldest inn in Kenmore.

Our room was in the upper right gable

View across from our hotel.  The store front on the far left is the post office, store and telegraph office

View from the back of the Kenmore Hotel looking over Loch Tay. 

Room at the Kenmore

Street in St. Andrews.  Wonder why the sign gets stolen?

Nancy introducing the Queen.

  

May 28 Edinburgh - The Royal Miles

Walk, Walk, Walk.    About 6 miles plus miles today. 

The highlights are: the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh Castle, the new Scottish Parliament building, St. Giles' Cathedral, a trip down the Royal Mile and the Queen's Palace of Holyroodhouse.   We had a great quiche lunch at St. Giles' outdoor cafe, mussels and fish & chips at the Mussel Inn and a pint at Dirty Dick's.  Just short of 12 hours of sight seeing, eating and drinking.

 The Elephant House is the coffee house where J.K. Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter book.

A picture is worth a thousand words, maybe.

Phone Home

This is the "backyard" of Holyroodhouse.  The extinct volcano in the background is called Arthur's Seat.  It's a short hike that offers a beautiful view of Edinburgh.  See if you can see the hikers.

A pint before we headed to the hotel.

May 27 Edinburgh

The flight to Amsterdam was long, with lots of seat time.  We got two side seats by ourselves and that was better than being in the four middle seats.   We flew so far north (over Hudson's Bay, southern Greenland and Iceland) and so high (35,000 feet) that the sun never set.  Everyone shut their window screens so we could nap.

Arrived in Amsterdam 11:20 PM, Saturday - our time.  Local time is 8:20 AM, Sunday.   Yes, a long day.  Waiting for the Edinburgh flight.   This flight will be quick.  Of course, we'll sleep most of the way.

We spent our first hour in the UK entertaining ourselves at customs, waiting for bags, determining the right bus, getting off at the right stop, wandering toward our hotel with one moment of indecision.  We solved our direction problem by asking a very dignified gentleman with a cane, coat and vest the name of a street.  He corrected me, ever so gently, as he said the street name with a lyrical Scottish brogue.  We made it to the first hotel on our tour and it is great!  After a bit of freshening up, it looks like lunch at a nearby pub.  We need a beer and a short nap before we meet our tour partners. Right now, excluding some cat naps, we have been up about 20 hours.

 Bedroom The Bonham in Edinburgh.

 

Edinburgh Castle

Howies.  Place for the first group dinner together.

The trip begins May 26

We are in the final stage of packing. The prep seems pretty thorough, but we can buy anything we forgot. We start at 1:30 pm from Portland to Amsterdam, then a short hop to Edinburgh, Scotland.   We have been looking forward to this trip for several years.  Look for new updates of our adventure.

Fishing Report

Steelhead Salmon

Fishing

Landing a Steelhead

Doug and I with our Steelhead from the Clackamas River

View from the boat on the Columbia River

My first sturgeon, 41 inches long

You can only fish for sturgeon for a short while on the Columbia and Willamette Rivers.  Keepers have to be between 38" to 54" and all others are put safely back in the river.  To add to the challenge, you have to use barb-less hooks. The one in this picture is 15 to 20 years old.  Some live to be over 100 years old and 11 - 13 feet long.  Special thanks to Mike, Bill and Jim for the trip.

Fishing

fishing

fishing