Diwrnod arall, castell arall! (Another day, another castle - Welsh edition!)

6 November 2016

Diwrnod arall, castell arall!
Translation from Welsh: Another day, another castle!

What do you do to get a feel for a new place? Visit castles, of course! On our recent visit to Cardiff in Wales, we went to see two castles in two days. So much fun!

Caerphilly Castle (Sounds like Care-filly) - Only a 15 min train ride from Cardiff to a cute town with a great castle! The fact that they rebuilt sections in the 1930's (they tried to keep it accurate) means that this is a very impressive castle.

View of the gatehouse from inside the main walls. The leaning turret is the one on the left :)

They do a great job presenting it with sounds, visual aids, and other interactive displays. The room above the gate has a portcullis projected on the wall, so you know exactly what it's used for. The guard room latrine has a motion-activated person who farts when you walk into the room!

There is no doubt what this room is for when you walk in and he lets out a huge fart!
It may seem immature, but so memorable and great for kids!

Nico and the leaning turret. His new nickname: Ho-turret (doesn't sound quite as good as Hodor)

Cardiff Castle, in the middle of Cardiff, was also cool, with a history of being used as a Roman fort (3rd Century), Norman Castle (11th Century), Welsh Royal College of Music and Drama (1950s-1998, Anthony Hopkins went here!), and finally as an air-raid shelter during WWII.

Inside Cardiff Castle on a beautiful fall day!

World War II bunker exhibit, complete with wartime sounds and propaganda. 'Be like dad, keep mum!' [Cardiff Castle]

Some of the beauty here is the detail inside the castle: intricately decorated stairways, rooms inlaid with gold, and a library with polished agate shelves!

Five languages represented in the intricate statues in the library!

The walls outside the castle were beautiful as well - the most unusual collection of animal statues on top of the wall in lifelike poses. How often do you see things like racoons and anteaters represented beside jaguars and lions?

The Cardiff Castle wall has a great selection of cool animals in really life-like poses! Just a few pictured here :) 

A few more photos from our Welsh weekend filled with castles:

We travel to Wales and bump into a Scottish piper at the castle... [Caerphilly Castle]

Caerphilly Castle

Crenelations you can sit on! Yay! [Caerphilly Castle]

Fancy lights in the handrails for the old, spiral staircases at Caerphilly Castle - wish more castles had this!

Something we've never seen at a castle before: Wooden structures built out over the castle walls so that you can look down over the attackers. Makes sense, but cool to see reconstructed! [Caerphilly Castle]

Duck! Unique sign - only in a castle! [Caerphilly Castle]

Nico playing with weapons :) Bombs away! [Caerphilly Castle]

Cardiff Castle 

View from Cardiff Castle with nice autumn colours :)

Beautiful ceiling in Cardiff Castle

Detail on stairway at Cardiff Castle

The blind leading the blind in the Scottish Highlands

30-31 July 2014

Nico and I have spent a lot of time in Edinburgh, enjoying many pubs, restaurants, and tourist landmarks. However, Ronda and Ryan gave us the chance to get out of our comfort zone and see a bit more of this beautiful country. Since we hadn't ventured this direction, it was essentially a case of the (mostly) blind leading the blind.

Ronda and Ryan rented a car and Ronda drove - slightly more complicated in a manual, but she did a great job. However, it was sometimes a group effort when it came to sorting out directions :) As a recurring theme in a Scottish blog, castles were the main attractions, although we managed to fit in a distillery and hiking as well. A good, all-purpose trip to the Scottish Highlands. On the first day, we saw Lochleven, then toured the Blair Atholl distillery, spent the night tucked away at a B&B with adorable pine martens, went hiking, hunted some highland cows, and visited Stirling Castle and Doune Castle on the way home. Quite a lot to pack into two days! I think I would budget longer in the future - I can't wait to go back and see more!

Thanks again to Ryan & Ronda for the excuse to get out of town!

Lochleven: A castle on an island. 

A beautiful castle tower all to ourselves - perfect for Ryan and Ronda to re-enact a beautiful romance story with a princess in a tower :)

We stopped at Blair Atholl distillery for a tour. 
Fun to see how they make the tasty beverage, despite the fact that none of us are whisky connoisseurs :)

Trying a new whisky. 

Beautiful scenery on the drive.

Our bed & breakfast for the night. Well off the beaten path and chosen specifically for its frequent, wild visitors. 

Pine martens played outside!

Hiked in Glen Nevis. Tons of waterfalls and it didn't rain on us!

Sometimes the small can be as beautiful as the big.

The destination of our hike, but the rest of the rocky and picturesque hike was almost as gorgeous!

Ronda enthusiastically showing off her rock collection that is supposedly 'for a friend'.
We may turn her into a geologist yet! 

Hunting (with a camera) the elusive 'eelin coo' (Highland Cow):

We specifically stopped several places in the highlands that were rumored to have a cow. No luck! We even stopped by the Ben Nevis distillery that was said to have two cows named Ben and Nevis. They had recently passed away and the baby coos were not ready to be on display just yet, so no luck there. On the way to our hike, we were supposed to see tons of them in the valley - No luck again! We had essentially given up hope and were driving home when we saw these cute guys in a field across from a tourist cafe and gift shop! The pouring rain made it a bit tougher, but I guess this is a more natural state for these guys :)

Stirling Castle - The most intact and stunning castle I've seen in Scotland yet. Edinburgh castle is neat, but Stirling feels more like a castle and it's fun to see sections restored to their previous elegance. It definitely gave us a more complete picture of what these castles might have been like when people actually lived in them. 

We picked up an extra member of our group at the castle. 

You'd never know, but we hosted royalty!

My love affair with crenelations continues :)

Doune castle - Famous for its starring roles in Monty Python and the Holy Grail as well as the being part of Winterfell in the first episode of Game of Thrones. In honor of its ties to Winterfell, Ronda beheaded me in front of the castle :)  We got here after it closed, so no view inside, but still worth stopping by!

Not long after this trip, our guests headed home and life settled back down to 'normal' - which still includes a walking commute past a castle and amazing history on a daily basis. We absolutely don't take our time here for granted and I can't wait to get out and see more of the country!

Touristing at home: Ryan & Ronda

28 July 2014

Our first shot at being tour guides in Scotland. Our friends, Ryan & Ronda, came over to visit for a week. As luck would have it, they had coincidentally booked the same flight as us back to the UK!

Ryan and Ronda joined us for our Philadelphia to Edinburgh flight on our way home from the States. Ryan was great at capturing Nico being himself as we boarded.

Although I've been here more than a year, we haven't spent as much time seeing the rest of Scotland as we have working and seeing Edinburgh.

Welcome to my historic building workplace!

Edinburgh Castle
I've seen it every day for a year and I finally got a chance to see it for myself from the inside! Beautiful views and lots of history. The hilltop has been occupied or had fortifications since at least the 1300s. I think that much history warrants its own post at a later date :)  Here are some highlights:

View of the castle from the entrance area. 

Looking out at the city along one of the canons.

Looking along the row of flags with the Firth of Forth in the background.

Dog cemetery at the castle for regimental mascots and officers' dogs. The names we could read: Winkle, Yum Yum, and Sheena. 

One of the advantages of having friends in town is the excuse to try new restaurants. We went to Tuk Tuk (Indian street food) and had a good meal. The idea is essentially small dishes of food to share (like tapas). At the end, we were getting ready to pay and they said they had a special deal for everyone on Mondays: if you roll a die and get a 6, your food is free. We passed it to Ronda and she 'paid' for our meal by rolling a 6! Good food AND it was free!

Ronda's good luck got us a free dinner for four! Yay for Matka Monday!

Eating at semi-famous places: One of the locations where JK Rowling wrote part of Harry Potter.
There's another one right near my building.

Enjoying a nice dinner out after a long day of touristing (or working, in Nico's case).

Tune in next time for the trip to the highlands!

Castles, castles, and more castles!

5 July 2014
There is a distinct lack of castles in the United States whereas Scotland seems to have plenty of castles to explore. You can't throw a rock without hitting a castle (and chances are good that rock would have came from a castle!). With our brand new Historic Scotland Pass (we get in to all the castles and other historic areas for free now), we have started exploring the castles that are close to Edinburgh. We haven't had to venture out very far and we still haven't exhausted the castles within a day trip from our place! And this list doesn't include the really famous one we walk past every day on our 'commute' to work...

Tantallon, North Berwick (~30 minutes by train)

My first castle here - a fun ruin to explore. There was a nice walk along the top with a beautiful view of the coast and the beautiful, green rolling hills the opposite direction.

The view of the castle as we first approached it.

 A view of the ruins with Bass Rock in the background, which is known for its gannet population. Close to the sea bird center - puffins! I got to add several new birds, including puffins, to my life list :) Puffins are smaller and cuter than I thought and they are now one of my favorite birds.

Craigmillar, 4 miles from our flat (45 minutes by bus or a little more than an hour walking)

Cute castle ruins that are on the outskirts of town. We took a bus and then walked through some forest and fields to get to the castle.

The inside was beautiful and peaceful (the sun helped!). Our picnic was great and we had the castle to ourselves in most places.

There were two amazingly beautiful trees just inside the main doors that gave the courtyard a very ancient feeling.

The view from the top was nice, but this weird guy photobombed my panoramic :)

Linlithgow (~15 minutes by train)

Very cool castle, but we were there when it was crowded so I think we'll have to go back on a non-festival day to enjoy it properly. Jousting was fun to see, but we've really enjoyed exploring on our own at the other castles. At least it's close enough to easily go back!

View from the entrance gate:

The individual rooms and details are amazing - the fountain is spectacular and the Great Hall was the most spectacular one we've seen at any of the castles.

The fountain ran with red wine when one of the kings visited in the castle's prime!

The Great Room was enormous!

The view from the back of the castle as you walk around the loch.

I can't explain why, but I love anything with buttressing :) This was the gun defence added on after other parts had already been built, and they used the buttressing to support a weaker portion of the wall.

 A view out a window in the Queen's Bower.

The view from the very top of the tower with the loch to one side, a small part of the jousting field in the middle, and the peel (the outside park area) on the right.

The jousting event was lots of fun, but too much to add in a regular post on castles. It will have to wait!