UK Trip Summary

The map below shows our travels (purple line), where we stayed (blue dots and names in black), and some of the major things we saw (blue in italics):

Miscellaneous Stuff

Worst name for a restaurant ever (in York):

Cool place near Bridge of Allan. You can see a new bridge made over an older bridge. There is quite a ravine and is much deeper than shown here. When the water rushes though in the spring, they say you can hear the rocks tumbling in the river --hence the name Rumbling Bridge:

Had to take a picture of this. It is in Culross, Scotland and goes to an Abbey.

The ground floor of buildings are the 0 level. So what is the basement? Negative 1 of course:

They had bike storage facilities at the train station in Bridge of Allan including the blue lockers:

Sausage rolls are pretty common. Here is one I tried. It is some type of sausage put in a crust. They put everything in a "pie." Even saw macaroni pie.

Saw these 20 mph signs with a cute saying:

Gayle ordered this. She actually claims it was good.

Driving was always "fun." Here is a typical main road (listen for Gayle's scream):

In Wales, we stayed at a B&B out in a small village on a farm. We took a walk about a mile down the road. I had to laugh at this "neighborhood watch" sign which I saw nailed to a tree several feet off the road:

The reason I laughed is that this is the neighborhood:

At a cafe I ordered a veggie burger. This is what I got. Turns out you have to order it with a bun if you want it that way.

Interesting graphic warning sign:

Paris

We had a wonderful experience being to able to see Paris, even if for just a short time. We had an 18 hour layover in Paris. We arrived in Paris at 7 pm and left the next day having to be at the airport by 10:30.

From the airport, we took a 40-minute train ride to Paris. Here's Meemo anxiously waiting to see Paris.  The trains were not air conditioned and at times were prettty warm.

 Our hotel was near this intersection in the Latin district.

Gayle was craving macarons. They were pretty tasty.  She got salted caramel and Marc got lemon.  She loved it!  Marc thought they were good.

With just a few hours to walk around, we walked a lot (actually almost four hours). Here's Notre Dame:

There were thousands of people around town, including the many tour boats that were floating on the Seine.  We had thought maybe we would do it, but before arriving decided to just do it on our own. 

There are many bridges like this one all over Europe and the UK.  We forgot to bring a lock with us.  You are supposed to declare your love for each other and lock it onto the fence and throw the key into the river. You can see part of the Louvre in the background.  It is HUGE!  This picture was taken around 9:30 or so that evening.  Meemo was enjoying the brreeze.

It started getting dark while we sere still on the way to the Eiffel Tower.

We had expected the tower to be lit up with white lights and were surprized when we saw it these primary colors.  so beautiful!!  We couldn't believe we were actually there to see it in person!!  After we saw the tower we were so hungry and found a cafe that was still open at 11 pm.  We ordered quiche lorraine and a ham omelet that looked like Julia Child made it.  We then headed back to our little hotel and finally got to bed around 1 am.

We had the classic French breakfast le petite dejeuner:  chocolate, warm croissant, baguette with butter and jam, and orange juice.  It was at the  Saint Germaine cafe.  So surreal to be eating on a Paris street!  It was the perfect end to a great vacation!

Cambridge

After York, we proceeded on to RAF Alconbury. It is a US base and about the size of Training Center Petaluma. It was in the beautiful rolling hills of central England. There are quite a few Royal Air Force bases that were set up here during World War II.

On the way we went through Sherwood Forest.

Cambridge was about a half hour from the base. It is a historic town like York in some ways. Here are some shots of the campus of King's College. 

There is a river  that is next to Trinity College which had a lot of punt boats floating.  The "driver" pushes a long pole onto the bottom of the riverbed to move forward.  One of the punters had about 12 people in it and he wasn't a very big guy.  You could hire them and try to do it yourself as well as hire a driver.  It was so beautiful!

This is King's College Chapel.  We just took pictures from the outside.  Pretty much every place charged about 10 pounds to visit.  It had gorgeous architecture.

York

After leaving Newcastle we stopped and spent some time in the historic town of York. The most impressive site was the York Minster, the largest Gothic church north of the Alps.

It is hard to convey the size with these pictures. The cathedral is 540 feet long (almost 2 football fields) and 200 feet tall. The windows were amazing. At one end, the windows take up the size of two tennis courts.

Here is a shot of part of the ceiling.

This area is called "the choir." It is in the middle of the cathedral. We sat in these box seats for an Anglican (Church of England) evensong service to which the public is invited. It was awesome. You can imagine what the acoustics were like.

This area was taken over by the Romans at one point and also the Vikings. There is a really nice Viking exhibit that shows what Viking life was like based on archeological evidence.

Pandon Street

We stayed one night in Newcastle upon Tyne so we could go to the street that Gayle's great-grandparents lived according to an English census in 1850. It was nerve-racking driving through the city and trying to find it. It was about a mile and a half from the hotel but one-way streets and a lack of street signs made it difficult. We almost gave up after about a half hour but finally found it, almost by accident. It is all modern now. Here is a shot of the street sign and the street. It is all modern now but it was cool to be where some ancestors actually lived.  The second picture is approximately where the house used to be.

Lochs and Locks

Within walking distance from where we stayed in Fort William, there was a series of eight locks called Neptune's Staircase:

A few days later, in the lowlands of Scotland, we saw an innovative way to move boats from one level to another. The Falkirk Wheel takes a boat from the higher level and moves it to the lower, and vice versa. Here's a picture and also a video:

Incidentally, we attended the Falkirk Branch meetings on Sunday. It was a great experience. The branch members were very friendly.

Three Castles

For our last three nights in Scotland we stayed in Bridge of Allan just north of Stirling and an hour train ride from Edinburgh. The B&;B we stayed in was built in the 1850's.

Castle 1: Stirling Castle. The oldest part of the castle dates to 1381.

To our surprise, castles were usually entirely painted (to show off a bit). The yellow in this building is likely the same color used on many castles.

There were many people who represented people of that time period.  The gentleman below asked if Marc could take my picture with him.  He said I could take his arm and look adoringly up at him!

Castle 2: Edinburgh

This was the firing of the one o'clock gun.

While in Edinburgh we ate at the birthplace of Harry Potter. This is the cafe that JK Rowling wrote most of the first book.

Castle 3: Castle Campbell. We went to this one because Gayle has some Campbells in her ancestry and likely came from the Campbell Clan.