Cardiff, Wales

Cardiff. Home of Roald Dahl and Doctor Who. City of arcades and castles, of the beautiful Bute Park and the Ianto Jones memorial shrine. I loved it there. I’d live there. I’d live at my hostel forever. It was absolutely brilliant, with free breakfast and dinner most nights, and even free cider on one occasion. It was also warm and clean, which was a definite step up from other hostels I’ve been to.

The people there were brilliant - Aussies and Germans for the most part. We went out on a pub crawl on the first night, and got to a grand total of three before everything shut down at 11pm. Each pub had two or three ciders on tap! We were the only ones out apart from a group of older Welsh men, but to be fair, it was a Monday night.

I spent the first day touring a couple of nearby castles with Laura, a lovely Melbournian I met at the hostel. I chose not to go to the Cardiff Castle, due to the fact that the entry price cost more than the combined entry prices of my chosen castles. I still can’t pronounce either of the castles’ names: Castle Coch and Castle Caerphilly. Both were stunning, Coch for the gorgeous interiors and Caerphilly for the dramatic exteriors. They’d been done up in the late 19^th century to look like they would have in the 15^th century when they were built.

Castle Caerphilly requires special mention for the fact that its keep housed a certain big blue box. I found the tardis in a sprawling stone castle in Wales!

When I asked at the information desk, I was told that there’d been some recent Dr Who filming at the castle, and would I like a free poster and postcard? Yes, yes I would – and I also got quite a few embarrassing photos with the tardis.

My second day was spent in an equally Who-related fashion. I caught a bus to Cardiff Bay on a beautiful sunny morning, and spent ages just strolling up and down the pier. I also spent ages taking photos of Roald Dahl plass. It’s beautiful, lies at the front of the Wales Millenium Centre, and is where Torchwood was filmed.

I also visited the Norwegian Church where Roald Dahl was christened. It’s now a café slash gallery. It’s situated rather beautifully on the edge of the bay. It also turns out that I was in Cardiff for Roald Dahl Day (his birthday) – awesome.

I spent my third night out on the town again, this time at a little club with a set of three bands. The headliners, Joint Pop (of Trinidad), were actually staying at our hostel, hence how we found out about it. We weren’t expecting much, especially after the two warm-up bands, but Joint Pop was brilliant! They had a great reggae sound. It was a really great night out.

So that’s Cardiff: a beautiful, relaxed sort of city with a beautiful castle-side park in the centre, a couple of magnificent castles nearby, great vintage shops, lots of Doctor Who locations and the best hostel in the UK, possibly the world. I’d go back in a heartbeat. Might still have to, if this train doesn’t keep breaking down. Next stop: Oxford, with any luck.

Stratford-Upon-Avon, Warwickshire

From the moment I bought the train tickets, I second-guessed my decision to visit Stratford-Upon-Avon. Would it be worth it? Would it be tacky, touristy and Shakespeare-manic? Yes. Yes, it would. And I thoroughly enjoyed it all. In fact, I’d say that anyone who travels to England and has even the most remote interest in Shakespeare must visit Stratford.

My hostel was ages away from the train station – a good half hour walk, as I discovered during the next couple of days. As it was, my suitcase required a taxi and a set of strong taxi driver arms. Once I arrived, I was pretty impressed with what I found there. Sure, there were downsides to the hostel. There was a surprise surcharge for non-members, and you had to pay extra for breakfast and wifi. On the other hand, the room was enormous, I’d been placed in an all-female room, and every single person in that room was incredibly friendly.

I spent my first night in Stratford trudging to a supermarket for essentials in the rain and getting to know my roommates. I bought a microwavable meal for dinner, mostly because it didn’t contain peanut butter and did contain meat. One of the girls in my room, Claire, suggested that we sightsee around Stratford together; another woman promptly handed us a brochure full of two-for-one deals, and we were set.

We left the hostel bright and early in the morning. Well, not early, but definitely bright: it was a wonderful, sunny day. Once we’d reached the town centre, we crossed one of the picturesque bridges and found our way to the bank of the River Avon. It was a great little boat ride. The commentary wasn’t exactly historical, but it was pretty entertaining. The guide seemed largely concerned with pointing out all the weird and wonderful things that rich people had done to their river-facing gardens.

After the cruise, we decided to head towards Shakespeare’s birthplace and museum. Along the way, we saw a good part of the town. It felt like I’d wandered right back into Hogsmeade in Harry Potter World! All the houses are decked out in the Tudor style, with cream walls and dark wooden slats.

Here’s me with Hamlet.

The street containing Shakespeare’s birthplace was an incontestable tourist trap. I saw life-sized toy soldiers, Shakespeare’s ghost, more bookshops than you could throw a stick at… It was great.

Like the boat cruise, our tickets for the birthplace museum were effectively half price, and it was well worth the money once we got in. First off, they stick you in front of a short film of Shakespeare history, then you enter the beautifully arranged gardens before continuing into the actual house where the bard was born. Every room contained a costumed guide who gave you a summary of how the place would have operated in Shakespeare’s time.

Best of all, our birthplace tickets let us into two other Shakespeare houses for free! We headed off for Nash’s house, the final home of Shakespeare and, currently, the site of an archaeological dig. We didn’t spend much time there as it was mainly targeted at children, so we hurried off and joined a walking tour – again half price! – of Stratford. The guide was incredibly enthusiastic about Shakespearean history, so the tour was very fun and informative. Apparently Shakespeare’s dad, John Shakespeare, was a person of questionable character. As well as becoming mayor of the town, he had a series of jobs dealing with the treatment of animal skins and illicit money-lending operations.

The tour took us all over the city, and ended nearby the church containing Shakespeare’s tomb, as well as those of his wife, sister and brother-in-law. The guide ended the tour with a neat little poem about Shakespearean idioms, and we then walked on to our second free house visit, Hall’s Croft. This was the house owned by Shakespeare’s sister’s husband, the eminent Doctor Hall. It was filled with medical instruments, plants and dubious bottles of bile.

Having used every minute of the day to the best Shakespearean advantage, Claire and I finally sat down in a pub and had a great pork roast dinner. [To beef or not to beef? This was on the wall.] Yorkshire puddings are the best. The plate contained two different types of potatoes but alas! no chips. Two of the girls in my room, both from Somerset, informed me that the best place to eat chips is out of newspaper on a dodgy beach in the rain. This is, apparently, the authentic experience.

So that was Stratford! I really enjoyed it. It was definitely one of the most interesting and attractive places I’ve visited on this trip so far. Next up is Cardiff.

Windermere, Cumbria

A couple of things made my short time in Windermere a little dodgy. These included the fact that, despite booking a bed in an all female room at the hostel, I wound up as the only female in a room full of guys. Furthermore, there was nobody on reception in the hostel at any point during the day and a half I was there. It worked on an honesty system. This meant I couldn’t complain about my lodgings or get switched to another room. Additionally, after walking for half an hour to reach the famous Windermere lake and taking a million photos, I basically ran out of things to do.

A couple of things made my stay in Windermere pretty awesome. Firstly, everybody at the hostel was incredibly friendly. Better yet, nobody in my room was too friendly. I spent quite a while chatting with some of the backpackers, who came from a range of places, including France, India, Germany and Oxfordshire. Finally, before I went to the station on the morning I was due to leave, I hiked up to Orrest Head, a lookout point over the lake. It was incredible. The views were breathtaking in every direction. And I was the only one up there! Those views made my trip to Windermere completely worth it.

It was so Jane Austen.

Also, I managed to pick up two books – Wuthering Heights and Sherlock Holmes – for a total of 1.99 pounds. Sweet! And now I don’t have to read my Emily Bronte on my mobile, which is greatly appreciated.

And while I think of it, can someone explain to me whether or not I need to turn off my wifi in order to use my phone network’s internet? I fiddled with something and now I can’t get an internet connection. Aaahhh, why did I buy a phone that’s smarter than me?

Sparket Mill, Cumbria

Hello, England!

Everything about my stay at Sparket Mill was fantastic. I arrived on Wednesday afternoon and was greeted at the station by Alan and Sylvia, who relieved me of my suitcase, drove me home and set me up. I got my own bedroom and bathroom – essentially one whole side of the house! I was very well looked after.

After a cup of coffee (the first of many) we set out for a walk across the nearby fields, which quickly turned into a hike through the rain. We were sodden in minutes. The landscape was incredible, all green fields and rolling fells and ancient iron gateposts. I thought the rain made the whole thing feel quite authentic. We finally arrived at the local pub in Dacre and I enjoyed my first British lager. Verdict: much better than the watery stuff in Melbourne (though I’d still prefer a cider).

Before turning back, we had a quick look at the Dacre castle. I spent much of our walk home pointing out the numerous ‘beware: red squirrels’ signs. Apparently red squirrels are becoming endangered, and aren’t much helped by their tendency to freeze when faced with car headlights. Back home, we watched a dvd of the Tinning Family Reunion, pausing every time Mum, Mel or Grandma appeared.

Thursday was a big day. I think by the end of it I’d seen just about every inch of the Lake District except for Windermere, which is my next destination. I woke up and opened the curtains to find a much nicer day – and a red squirrel! Good timing. After breakfast, Alan and Sylvia drove me out to Pooley Bridge, where we got out and walked around a short stretch of Ullswater, the nearest lake. It was beautiful. There was a tugboat on the water, and ducks, and everything!

Next we went to Dalemain Manor, an enormous old house fitted out with a cobblestone courtyard and, more importantly, a deer-filled field! The nice old gardener noticed my interest in the deer and called them over with a bag of brown bread. He gave me a few slices and I gave them, in turn, to the deer – or, rather, to one greedy-guts deer who kept coming back for more. They were lovely and dainty looking until they started moving, and then they just looked ridiculous. They have this strange way of prancing along, two sets of hooves moving together, like Pop-E at high speed.

The gardener then told me to hold out my hand. Once I’d finally worked out what he meant, he tipped a small measure of nuts onto my palm. I just stood there, wondering if I was meant to give these to the deer as well, when tiny birds – chaffinches – started landing on my hand. I screamed, and entertained all the other visitors. Just like Mary Poppins!

From Dalemain, we went to Penrith, the closest town to Sparket Mill. We had a coffee and scone in a café and checked out the architecture of the local shops. Afterwards we headed out to Greystoke, where we visited a thirteenth century church and graveyard. Next stop was Penruddock, home of Janie Tinning’s [distant relative] primary school. When he spotted me taking photos of the schoolyard, the headmaster came over (presumably to determine whether or not we were paedophiles) and invited us in once he’d heard that I’d come on a family history tour. He was very nice, and we learnt a good few things, including the fact that ‘Penruddock’ and ‘Penrith’ are both named for their ‘red hills’.

We returned to Sparket Mill for lunch, then drove the whole length of Ullswater to reach Aira Force, a stunning waterfall at the end of a short hike.

We next drove down past Brotherswater and found ourselves stuck in a bit of a traffic jam. I’ll just stop and mention that the road was extremely, extremely narrow. Bike-lane narrow. It had obviously been built as a carriageway, and like many other roads we drove on that day, my heart leapt every time a car squeezed by on the other side. So there we were, for a grand total of five minutes, as we watched an emergency helicopter take off with the victim of a very foreseeable road accident.

We finally got to Ambleside, a favourite for tourists due to its pretty houses and lakeside location. A point of interest was a tiny two-storey house that had once held an eight-person family. It was an ‘old lady who lived in a shoe’ sort of situation. I can’t really imagine how eight people could fit standing up, let alone sleep or use furniture.

Next up was a definite highlight: Grasmere, home of Wordsworth’s house, museum and grave. There was a little daffodil garden set up with park benches and an engraved stone footpath, the first of which started with, ‘I wandered, lonely as a cloud…’ We then had a glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice in a café on the opposite bank of the river. It was great, but might have been better without all the orange-seeking bees. There were also some rather interesting ducks in the river, which Alan later labelled as grebes. Thank you, Great British Book of Birds.

Afterwards we drove past Thirlmere, another lake, and dropped in at Keswick by mistake when we got a bit lost. When we got back on track, we made our way to the Castlerigg Stone Circle, which was very much like Stonehenge except that you’re allowed to approach – and even sit on – the stones. We then finally made our way home, prepared dinner, and washed our ‘welly boots’.

Observations of the UK: Swedes (as in the vegetable) are incredibly massive in England. In Australia, they’re about the size of a cricket ball, something Alan couldn’t believe. Also, carrots taste better in Britain. And I’m really struggling to suppress the word ‘pants’ from my vocabulary. And people drink a lot of coffee. Here I was thinking of England as the land of the tea-drinking people; apparently not.

While the roast pork cooked, I was taken on a very comprehensive tour of the mill and all its workings. There was about five times the amount of machinery that I expected. Alan and Sylvia have compiled a mass of historical mill pieces and curios. It was like visiting a mill museum. I also got a proper tour of the house, which Alan and Sylvia have done up beyond recognition, especially considering its condition when they bought it. It was great to have this kind of look into how Janie would have lived, and how everything would have looked like in her day.

Before leaving the next morning, I was shown a whole pile of legal documents and manuscripts relating to the ownership of the mill. Believe it or not, it was incredibly interesting to see how title deeds have changed over the decades. And then Alan and Sylvia drove me to the train station, where I said goodbye and started off for my next location: Windermere.

Edinburgh, Scotland

Having thwacked myself in the ankle with my suitcase on the way off the train, I was almost too preoccupied with pain to notice Aunt Margaret waving at me on the platform at the Edinburgh Waverley Station. After she’d finally managed to get my attention, she took me home, offered me Madeira cake, and immediately started spoiling me in every way. We soon left to have dinner with Margaret’s friend Sonia: a buffet consisting of different types of roast beast. It was a lovely introduction to Edinburgh.

The next morning, Margaret and I set out on the bus to the city. We had coffee and a scone in a building that had started off life as a surgery, transformed into a bank, and finally wound up as a fairly glamorous-looking restaurant-café. We then walked across to the tourist information centre near the station, where we parted ways. Map in hand, I headed up the Mound and towards the Royal Mile. I followed the stream of tourists to the Edinburgh Castle and took a few photos, but didn’t go inside due to the extreme price and the fact that I’d seen it all already a couple of years back.

Heading back down the Mile, I took a turn on a side street and made my way to the National Museum of Scotland. A very nice museum employee helped me to track down the tour group I’d just missed due to my lack of map-reading abilities. Highlights included an authentic iron maiden, an original King James bible (now celebrating its 400^th year) and an aromatic bracelet worn by Mary Queen of Scots to block the stench of the laypeople.

I left the museum, walked around the block, and found myself at the University of Edinburgh. It’s a good-looking place, and it’s absolutely surrounded by cheap vegetarian food. I had to say ‘hummus’ quite a few times before the guy behind the counter understood what I was saying. I walked a little further down the street and bumped into the café in which J.K. Rowling first started writing Harry Potter! I didn’t go in due to the tourist-trapping prices, but instead crossed the street and went into the National Library of Scotland.

There was a fascinating exhibition on banned books in recent times. Harry Potter featured in the Religion section, and Animal Farm was in the Politics section. I expected to find both of these, but a lot of other banned books came as quite a surprise. Apparently The BFG was challenged in the US for being ‘too sophisticated, too sinister’ and for encouraging kids to disobey their parents. Meanwhile, the Diary of Anne Frank was banned in Lebanon for portraying Jews favourably. Mein Kampf is still banned in Germany.

I left the library and wandered down the Royal Mile, picking out a few postcards and informing the cashier that no, Sydney is not the capital of Australia, and yes, nobody really visits the actual capital. Next stop was the National Gallery of Scotland. I’d only left twenty minutes to see everything before the gallery closed, so I rushed around from Rembrandt to Da Vinci and saw the highlights. Once kicked out, I headed over to the Princes Street Gardens – a long green strip of flowered, people-strewn picnic-perfect grass – and sat down to admire the view. The castle hangs over the city like something out of a gothic fairytale. If I lived in Edinburgh, I’d picnic in the gardens every day.

I spent the next day travelling around Fife with Margaret, visiting all the most picturesque places, including Leven, the village where Margaret grew up. Most noteworthy was St Andrews, home of the famous golf course and university. St Andrews has the most incredible ruins of a cathedral and a castle perched right on a cliff overlooking the North Sea.

This morning Margaret and I walked out to the Botanic Gardens and had an amazing time looking around at all the trees and bushes. There was an enchanted wood and everything!

Today I’m leaving for Sparket Mill, but I have a feeling I’ll be coming back to Edinburgh. It’d be a fantastic place to live in. With its festivals and galleries and museums, it strongly reminds me of Melbourne – a more dramatically beautiful Melbourne with better gardens and accents. But we have the footy, so it’s all balanced out.

Glasgow, Scotland

Oh look, I’m in Glasgow! How do I know this? Because I suffered through three plane trips in fifteen hours. Because the customs officer finally let me through after I opened up my laptop and spent an awkward ten minutes waiting for Word to load and then searching for a visa-necessary file. Because I just embarrassed myself by mistaking a bus driver’s query for a come on.

Him: “Single?”

Me: “Um… well, I’m travelling alone…”

Him: “Single or return? I’m not asking about your boyfriend.”

While humiliating, my mistake came as quite a relief. (His wonderful Scottish accent somehow didn’t manage to outweigh his advanced age.)

Glasgow seemed to pull out all the Scottish clichés for my arrival. As there was apparently a Scots vs Czech football match happening, every single male in the place was dressed in a kilt and football jersey. It was this strange combination of ugly-soccer-macho and, well, skirt. It just looked like a school skirt. But I was too scared of being bashed up by kilt-wearing skinheads to take photos. (“Which one of you ____ wants to dance?”)

I spent my first evening largely at Tescos. Hung over on jetlag and general sleeplessness, all I wanted was some food, and so I walked away with a loaf of bread, peanut butter (sound familiar, Lucy and Matt?), and some peaches. And then I got noodles from this place called ‘Wok to Walk’ because I wasn’t man enough to eat at a restaurant alone.

I spent the next day roaming the streets of Glasgow. It is incredibly hilly, mountainous even. And my hostel was right up the top of one of those mountainous hills. I got some fantastic views of the city, though I couldn’t see the river and its gorgeous bridges until I walked right up to it. My first priority when walking into town was to get a working sim card. Email me for the number if you’d like it.

I spent much of the day walking in and out of shops. What can I say? Those shops know me. They contain everything that I want to buy. It’s incredible. Even the cheapest shops, like Primark, are twelve times the quality at Cotton On. Somehow I managed to restrict myself to a total of 14.50 pounds for the day. (I really need to work out how to use the pounds symbol.)

As an aside, breakfast at the hostel was incredible. It was a ‘full Scottish breakfast’, containing eggs, bacon, toast, beans (hurray!), potato scone and tomato. (And they had weetabix! It looks like weetbix! My cereal dilemmas are solved!) The hostel itself was a catacomb of corridors and stairs, just as a British hostel should be. Even the people on the desk fit the stereotype, being prickly and verging on impolite. I really enjoyed my stay.

This morning, on my way to the train station – destination: Edinburgh – I was stopped in my tracks by a proper city marathon. I had to wait for about twenty minutes for everyone to jog past. It was on the news this evening. I’m still not entirely sure why it was happening, but it was a welcome break from lugging around my enormous suitcase.

In conclusion, Glasgow is a beautiful city with some fabulous architecture, shopping and street buskers, but I probably wouldn’t want to spend too much time being a tourist there. One and a half days were quite enough.

Next up: Edinburgh!

Boston, Massachusetts

I spent a good part of my first day in Boston asking myself whether it was really worth all the pain, expense, frustration and train-wrangling. Turns out it absolutely was. Good thing too, or I might have written some very angry letters to Amtrak about two-hour train delays, and to the hostel for being fairly dodgy, smelly and isolating. Also, it would have made today’s stomach bug seem even more horrifyingly inconvenient.

Boston: love it. I spent this morning on a guided tour of the Freedom Trail, this afternoon exploring Harvard, and this evening hobbling around feeling nauseous and eating pop tarts. I don’t think the pop tarts really made me feel any better, but it’s my last night in the US and I’m living on the edge.

I left the hostel quite early this morning, having decided to walk to Boston Common and take in the local sights. The city is beautiful; eighteenth century architecture crops up everywhere, and public gardens are taken seriously. Also, cars don’t try to kill pedestrians like they do in New York, which is definitely a bonus. The whole area is very green and squirrel-filled. I originally thought the Boston Public Gardens were the Boston Common. When I walked a bit further and spotted a herd of tour guides dressed in revolutionary garb in the distance, I realised my mistake.

I adopted a guide (British redcoat) and followed his tour, which started at the Boston Common information centre, and followed the Freedom Trail path-marker to historically significant sites. The most impressive of these was the third-oldest cemetery in Boston, which contained Samuel Adams, Ben Franklin’s parents and Old Mother Goose! (Possibly.) We also visited the site of the Boston Massacre and many other small, pompous red-bricked buildings, all of large historical consequence.

Harvard was definitely a highlight. American colleges have just started for the year, so Harvard Square was full of activity. I took a student-run tour from a sophomore guide sporting a ‘Hahvahd’ t-shirt and a boater hat. He was great fun and full of amazing stories about Harvard history. For example, back in the seventeenth century, a student decided to nick one of the college founder’s ancient texts. He took it home for the night, thinking nobody would notice, and returned the next day to find that the library had burned to the ground. Having in his possession the sole surviving college text, he presented it to the Harvard President, expecting praise and gratitude. Instead, he found himself suspended for breaking college rules by taking the book.

I also learned quite a lot about the traditional Harvard-Cambridge grudge. The most expensive building per square foot in Harvard is a tiny security house by the front gate. Its cost was rather hiked up by the 300 applications that it took for Cambridge to accept its blueprints. Another time, Cambridge was trying to build a firehouse on Harvard grounds, and Harvard only gave its permission on the condition that the new building match the architectural design of the surrounding college. This cost a lot more than Cambridge was happy with. A few years later, as the Harvard Memorial Hall burnt merrily away a mere fifty metres from the Cambridge firehouse, the fire engines took a good half hour to emerge and start fire fighting. When Harvard complained about this, Cambridge gave a public ‘apology’ essentially blaming Harvard for demanding an architectural design that failed to allow adequate room for ladders on top of the fire trucks.

There was also an enormous library dedicated to a wealthy student who had died on the Titanic. Although this student had a first class ticket and therefore access to a lifeboat, he leapt off at the last minute on remembering that he had left his prized collection of first edition books in his room. He returned to find that the boats had left and went down with the ship, books and all. His mother donated an enormous amount of money to Harvard on the condition that they build a library in the name of her son and reserved one room for her son’s ghost to inhabit. Apparently Harvard students aren’t allowed to enter this room. Should Harvard ever remove her son’s name from the library, or use his room for something else, all the books within the library are to go to Cambridge. She clearly had a keen sense of humour.

Oh, and the Harvard law library kicked the Monash law library's butt.

I spent the rest of the day wandering through central Boston, reading my book in the public gardens and taking a free tour of their parliament house (or whatever they call it). Their parliament house is even shinier and more ornate than ours, with murals on every inch of the ceiling and historic artefacts hanging off the walls. The best thing I discovered during the tour is that each house of parliament has its own brass fish mascot. The House of Reps only holds session in the presence of the Sacred Cod that hangs from the ceiling (and is occasionally pinched by Harvard students). The Sacred Cod is a reminder that the House of Reps must never curtail the rights of the fishing industry.


The Senate has its own fish: the Holy Mackerel. :) One thing I found really interesting about the Senate is that all the seats are set at different heights so that the senators see eye to eye.

One final note about Boston: beware of scungy hostels. I left it this morning as a bedbug buffet. While every inch of me is currently spotted and itchy, I did manage to get all my money back from the hostel, plus ten bucks to spend on ointment at the chemist. So if you want a couple of free nights in Boston, stay where I stayed.

(Incidentally, if anyone knows whether I should be worried about all these bedbug bites, please tell me. I got a bit freaked out by the way the hostel people basically shoved my money back at me without needing to be asked.)

Tonight I leave the US – and import bedbugs to the UK.