London

Today our plan was to see as much of our favorite areas of London as we could.

We started this morning at Fleet River Bakery in the Holborn area to have breakfast and some coffee.

  Then we came to Apsley House, home to the person credited with defeating Napoleon, the Duke of Wellington.  J had never been here, and it seemed a good time to see it because this year is the 200th anniversary of Waterloo.
  After Apsley House, we walked through Hyde Park.  This is the Serpentine.  Herons are considered nuisance birds here, but I still like them. The Serpentine does suffer from too many people feeding too many birds, and often they are feeding birds with bread. The paths and water are a bit icky at times.
  This is one of our favorite places to get books in the UK.  Oxfam Books collects donated books and then sells them for charity.  These book stores typically have a large selection and the books are of good quality.  I know Oxfam will miss us.

We walked through Hyde Park and had a scenic bus ride over to Notting Hill, another favorite area.  After our walk through Notting Hill, we needed lunch, so we headed to Churchill Arms.  It looks great with all of its summer flowers.

  I had to sneak a picture of the inside.

  We rode through the tube station that was our “home” when we lived in London for the summer.  I was disappointed that this line didn’t go on the track which has tile pictures of Queen Victoria in profile.

  We wanted good views of London, and we decided to do something we had not yet done, The Tower Bridge Exhibition.  The Exhibition explains how the bridge was built and how it works.

This is looking roughly east towards Canary Wharf.

  One of the highlights of the exhibition is the glass floors looking onto the bridge.

  This is looking roughly west towards St Paul’s and the Shard.   Big Ben and the London Eye are also that direction, but they can’t be seen in this picture.

  The Tower of London, the Gherkin and the Sky Garden.

  The sun came out a bit more, so I took another picture.  Today is about 75 and really muggy.  It did rain a bit this morning, too.

  After seeing the top of the Tower, we came down to see how the bridge works.    These are the original coal burners that used to create steam to raise and lower the bridge. Coal-fired boilers drove steam-powered hydraulic pumps, and the bridge is raised and lowered using engines that run on hydraulic pressure. Many of the original machines were in motion, and it was amazing to see and smell. It was like the inside of a giant’s sewing machine.

This equipment is no longer used. The exhibit didn’t describe the replacement.
  The Tower of London.

  Tower Bridge. Don’t let the Tudor windows fool you, this was built in the 19th century as a modern metal-framed structure with a stone skin.
  Our last dinner in London was where we had our first, Roti Chai.  We like the upstairs where they do food that they call Indian Street Food.  It’s really good.  We ate here the first night on our preview trip and the first night after we moved, so it only seemed appropriate that it be our last.
  After dinner we went over to Covent Garden to walk around.  The other side of Covent Garden.
  The church in Covent Garden called St Paul’s Church, aka “The Actor’s Church.”  I bought a print of this at an antique stall for not much and it’s from 1830.  Crazy.  After Covent Garden, we walked over to China Town.  It’s about 9:30 now, and it’s still packed.  London and the tube tonight were really crazy.
 Our favorite market to stock up on our Asian food needs.   It looks nicer when it’s open.

Lake District to London

Not al lot of pictures today since we spent much of the day driving from the Lake District to London.  Thank goodness for Judge John Hodgman, a funny podcast we all like, which kept us entertained for most of today’s drive.

I drove in central London for the first time today, and we all survived to tell the tale.  The most harrowing part was finding the car drop off – why do they love making it so tricky when returning cars outside of airports?   We turned the car in at a train station, and had a bit of trouble finding it hidden inside of a parking garage.  This put our tightly planned schedule in peril, but we made it in the end.

We were surprised to learn that we put more than 1,000 miles on the car.  The kids mentioned that this was their first-ever real road trip, and they were correct.

  We spoke to a couple of people last night at our Lake District hotel about our drive to London.  We wanted advice on where best to stop to break up our drive.  That conversation proved useful because we got good information, and their first bit of advice was to drive through as much of the Lake District as possible on our way south because the freeway wasn’t very scenic.  That was true.

The first 45 minutes or so of the drive was south through the Lake District and on small roads with Herdwick sheep along both sides.

We pulled over to take a picture of this view, but it is nowhere near as nice as the view we saw.  You can’t pull over to take pictures in the Lake District much because there are stacked rock walls on both sides of most of the smaller roads we like to drive on.

  A photo through the car window. The woman at the hotel told us that she went to school in a very nice town that would be a perfect place for us to stop for lunch, and she was right.  The town she mentioned was Nantwitch, and it was at exactly the halfway point.

The town church.
  This town had a large town square and that’s not a common feature for England, at least in the towns we have been in.
  The woman at the hotel told us that Nantwitch was full of “black and white” buildings.  i hadn’t heard them called that before.  There really were a lot of them here.
  And more.  A big one.
  And more.
And even more.  We looked in a charity shop window, and this gem was on display.   I wanted to buy it just because the cover was so good.
  They had lots of flowers in this town. They also had a lot of retired people and teashops.
 After an excellent Malaysian dinner, we decided to ride the bus back to our hotel.  The wonderful British Summer weather is still with us.  The kids were lucky and got the front, but it was a bit hard to see.

Lake District

The weather predictions were not great for today, but we did end up with half a day without rain.  This morning was icky, but we were glad things improved around lunchtime.    The first stop of the day was a 4500 year old stone circle called Castlerigg.  Very little is known about this stone circle or why is was built.  The setting is amazing.
 I walked down the hill a bit to get a good picture of the sheep.

  The stone circle from another direction.
 We are now driving, and I pulled over to get this picture. It is pouring.
  This is in Honister, an area of slate mines, and there is slate everywhere.
 Slate.

  Sheep on the side of the road.   These sheep are a breed of sheep called Herdwick and are only in the Lake District.  We learned today that Beatrix Potter was instrumental in saving this breed.
 Dove Cottage, the home of William Wordsworth.  We just drove by and took a picture and J said the ticket checker dude gave us a dirty look.
 This is the Beatrix Potter Gallery, which is run by the National Trust.  The gallery displayed Potter’s botanical drawings as well as originals from her books.  Potter has done some very nice botanical drawings.

  This is the home of Beatrix Potter called Hillside.  She lived here for a few years, but mostly used it as an office.  Seems a rather large office for one person.

Pictures weren’t allowed inside.  The house was left exactly as Potter left it, as Potter instructed when she gave her property to the National Trust.  The house was interesting, and we saw many more of her botanical pictures as well as her various collections and furniture.

  Potter’s Garden.  Another border with lots of Lady’s Mantle.
 This is the view from Potter’s house up the hill next to her.   More sheep.
  The neighborhood across the street with some ominous clouds.  It didn’t rain.
 The view the other direction from her house.  Nice views.

  Our Garmin lady gave us a surprise ferry ride.  We just ended up in the ferry line, so we got on.  It was a short ride across Lake Windermere.
  These photos are by guest photographer J because they made me park in a row against the wall of the ferry, so I couldn’t get out. We stopped in a town called Bowness. We read that it is the inspiration for a town used in the “Swallows and Amazons” series of books for kids, written by Arthur Ransome.  J was a huge fan as a kid, and our two have read a few of them.  Maybe after this visit, we can get them to read more of them.   The kids are a bit old for the books now, but they are still good stories.

  More of the town of Bowness.  Our town was a better choice to stay in than this one.
  J took these out of a speeding car window, so not the best quality.  We think this is Lake Thirlmere.   The sun is even out a bit. Another view we liked while driving down the road.

Edinburgh to Keswick

Today we had our first perfect weather day of the trip. The temperature was more early summer but still summer.  First stop was at the Southeastern tip of Scotland to see a bird preserve called St Abbs.  We are a month late to see the masses of birds, but the views still sounded good and it was a break from being in the car.

We passed the sheep and horses on our way to the beach.  The horse had an itchy back.
  Here is the view we came to see.  The view the other direction.

My back is to the water, and I am taking a picture behind me.  The countryside views are also nice here.

  

We we were wondering if there would be anything noting the Scotland/England border.  Those flags mark the border, so we are almost back in England. 
  Second stop of the day was C’s choice, Alnwick Castle.  C wanted to come here because this castle was used as the inspiration for Hogwarts and is the castle used in the movie for the broom training scenes.  We also learned that this castle was used last year in Downton Abbey’s Christmas special and in the show was called Brancaster Castle.  The Downton Abbey show aired this past Christmas in the UK but would have aired in March or so in the US.  Alnwick Castle is privately owned and it’s the largest privately owned castle in Europe.  The family still lives in the castle, but they live elsewhere during the summer so regular folk are allowed to come see how they live.

The above is the families’ carriage and it was used recently in their daughter’s wedding.  This carriage looks like something we saw at Buckingham Palace.

 The inner courtyard of the castle, and this is where we believe the kids at Hogwarts were taught to ride their brooms.

  Another view.  This is one of the most amazing castles that we have seen.  The castle was built in the late 12th century and has been in the same family for over 700 years.  We were not allowed to take pictures inside, but that was immaculate as well.  The rooms were used almost as is in the Downton Abbey special.  The crew did do things like put a Chinese screen in front of the television, but very little needed to be changed.
  The view from the castle over the countryside.  Another side of the castle.

More castle.  This place was huge.   We are now back to driving, and we stopped to take a photo.  As usual, the photo does not do justice to what we saw.
   We are at our first Roman ruin of the day, but I like the sheep on the way in, so I took a picture of them before looking at the ruin.   These are the remains of the Barracks.  All of the Roman ruins we saw today are from the massive Hadrian’s Wall.  The specific site we are at is called Chester Roman Fort.
  The remains of the Bath. The view from the baths.

  
We are now at another Roman site along Hadrian’s Wall called Housested.   This was a massive site that housed 800 soldiers, including some entire families. 
  

The National Trust guide here told to make sure to see the latrines because they are the best-preserved ones in the UK. 

This is the Roman hospital. 

The Roman ruins were way up on a high hill. Our car is behind the big grove of trees at the bottom of the hill. The walk was ok because we got to walk through the sheep pasture. I will miss being able to walk through pastures. 

  

Looking over ruins and to the countryside. The Romans had good taste in views. 

This what this site is believed to have looked like. 

We pulled over to take a picture of these odd hills. 

There were sheep here, too 

Another view. A dark cloud came over at the wrong time. 

The other way. 

We are staying near the Lake District town called Keswick.  We got here after much was closed, but it looks to be a nice town. 

  

The lake in Keswick called Derwentwater. 

I went out on a dock to get a picture of just the lake. 

This is the view from our hotel. We don’t have a view room, but our car has this view. 

Edinburgh – Day 2

Today started out with a 20 minute drive outside of Edinburgh to see Rosslyn Chapel in Roslin, Scotland.

The chapel was in poor condition until about 20 years ago when it was made famous in the Da Vinci Code.  We did not come because of that connection, but because we had read about how amazing the chapel is to see.

  Until about five years ago, the chapel was covered with a giant second roof in order to dry out the church and prevent further damage.  It took 14 years to dry out.  The church was meant to be much larger, but the family ran out of money before it could be completed to their original plans.
  The rear of the church.  The side of the church.  This is the side where the church extension was to go, and it really looks like the church is unfinished.

The interior used to be the colors of these rocks out here, red, yellow, brown, but in the 1950s someone had the idea to cover the inside of the church with a thin layer of concrete.  This was a bad idea, and further damaged the interior.

  The back of the church.  One of the most interesting aspects of the church is all of the botanical carvings.  This one looks like cabbage.  There were other carvings inside of corn and trillium, but neither of those things grow naturally in Scotland.  Most surprising is that the carving of corn was completed 50 years before Columbus got to the New World.  Corn was not supposed to have been known by the Old World yet.  The corn shapes may instead be wheat sheaves.
 A bird eating grapes off the vine.

  There were no pictures allowed inside the church, so I had to take a picture of the postcard we bought.  All around the chapel are carvings with faces, figures or scenes.   We got to hear a talk by one of the guides who told various stories and pointed out interesting features.
We also got this postcard of the most ornate column in the church.  The top of the column shows how detailed the carvings are around the entire church.   We have never been to a church before where virtually every surface has some sort of face or design on it.

We drove back into Edinburgh and headed to our next stop which was called Gladstone’s Land.    This house was done in the style of a wealthy merchant in the 17th century.  This is a small museum, but it is full of interesting things to see and it was free with our National Trust membership.

After lunch, we headed up to Edinburgh Castle.  This is a mishmash of a variety of buildings and has both royal elements and military elements.

The main entrance gate.

A view of “new” Edinburgh from the castle.

The castle building looks like it’s coming out of the top of a rock.

A view over the castle.

We are now in the Prisoner of War rooms.  This door has carvings made those who were held here.

There were even a few American POWs held here from the Revolution.  This is a very early American flag carved by a prisoner held here in the late 18th century.  Because Britain didn’t recognize America as a nation, the American prisoners were treated poorly and given less rations than the French or Dutch prisoners in the same prison.

This is how the prisoner bunk rooms were set up.  All the beds look bad, but the poor people right below the hammocks would be especially bad.

This is an old cannon called Mons Meg.  Mons Meg was built in Belgium in 1449 and it could fire a 330 lb stone ball up to two miles.

This room is called Queen Mary’s Chamber and it is where Mary Queen of Scots gave birth to Prince James who would later become King James I of Scotland and England.

This room is called Laich Hall.  This room has recently been re-done, but they did it in the same style they believe it was done in the early 17th century.  The fireplace is wood, painted with a marble effect.  The wood is oak stained with a liquid made from walnut skins.

This is the line to get into see the Scottish Crown Jewels.  These people are going in the way where you only see the jewels, but we went in a different way where you also see information about how the crowns were made and the different styles of crowns used over the years.  There was no line to go in that way.

The jewels include the crown, scepter, sword, and various bits of jewelry, plus the ‘Stone of Destiny’ where Scottish kings were sworn in for centuries.  All were taken, lost or locked away until the 19th century, when they were brought together and put on display.

Back in another Grand Hall and this one looks much like the one we saw yesterday.  Another hammerbeam ceiling.

We had to come see this while we were here.  Supposedly, this is the main place where JK Rowling came to write Harry Potter.  We were surprised to see on the coffee house window a sign that said “Birthplace of Harry Potter.”

Edinburgh – Day 1

The weather was much better today, and we even had blue sky.  We were walking into town this morning, and we happened to pass a pub that says it’s the smallest in Edinburgh.

Our first stop of the day was the National Museum of Scotland.

They have a massive open area that is full of all sorts of things to see.

I liked this Victorian water fountain.

These weird robot looking things are actually holding displays of jewelry.   We all thought this was a silly way to display anything.

A giant piece of quartz.  This museum had a large natural history section as well as artifacts from various civilizations.  The natural history section was crammed with formerly alive animals that have since been killed and stuffed for display.  None of us are fond of seeing that, and we skipped all of it.  We much prefer seeing the animals alive.

We are done with the museum and are now walking back to the Royal Mile.  I liked this pub.

Another nice looking street.  I didn’t remember that London style cabs are used here.

St Giles Cathedral, which is mostly from the 14th century.

The inside and the blue ceiling.

More of the ceiling.

Nice stone was used for the church, and there are lots of banners here.

A church called Canongate Kirkyard.

This is a garden called Dunbar’s Close.  This garden was planted in the 1970s and is meant to look like a garden that was believed to have been here in the 17th century.

Apple trees.

A nice flower border.

A building near the Palace that I like.

Holyrood Palace, where the Queen stays when she’s in Edinburgh.

We got to the fountain just in time to hear a guard give a 10 minute explanation about it.  The main point was that the fountain is only turned on when the Queen is here, and if the Queen is here, nobodies like us don’t get to be here, so we will never see the fountain working.   The water comes out on three levels, so it sounds like it looks pretty good when it’s on.  The Queen is typically only at this castle one week a year, so the poor fountain doesn’t get to run much.

The figures include David Rizzio, the Italian secretary of Mary Queen of Scots. He was killed in the Palace with 56 stab wounds.

The subtle entry lights.  Queen Victoria worked to refurbish the castle, and she was crown crazy with this one.  There are many more crowns here than I remember seeing at Buckingham Palace.

The central courtyard.  No pictures were allowed inside.  We all thought this palace looked much more homey than either Buckingham Palace or Windsor Castle.  We have not been to the Queen’s other two palaces, one in North England and one in North Scotland, so we can’t comment on those ones.

This is Holyrood Abbey, and it is attached to the Palace.  The Abbey was founded in 1128 and eventually fell into disrepair.

The ceiling fell in the 18th century and it was never re-built.

A view over the Palace gardens.

A view from the gardens towards to ruined Abbey.

Ruined outbuildings from the Abbey and towards the hill of Arthur’s Seat.

This is now on a busy street, but the sign told us that this used to be Queen Mary’s bath house.

Entrance gates to the Palace grounds with Arthur’s Seat in the background.

Inverness to Edinburgh

Another day and lots more scenic Scotland countryside.

The drive from Inverness to Edinburgh is about three hours.  Today’s drive was improved because we happened on a Scottish tourist board “scenic drive” for part of the way, and it was just as scenic as advertised.  A bit of the view.
  Our big stop today was Stirling Castle, the childhood home of Mary Queen of Scots.  Stirling Castle is in the town of Stirling, which is also nice.  There has been a castle on this site since at least 1110.  One of the castle buildings.
  The Great Hall, which is the largest in Scotland.
The fancy ceiling. This is a “hammerbeam” ceiling.  The King’s Chambers where guests would wait to meet the King. This castle has been heavily restored, and they have put in decorations that for some reason are gaudy and cartoonish.
  A 500 year old door.  The man in costume above saw us looking at this door and stopped to tell us about it.  He pointed out that there are carvings on the right side of the door in the middle.  The word carvings in the door are something along the lines of “Mother Mary protect us.”  We never would have known those carvings were anything if he hadn’t told us.  Of course, he could have made it all up, and what would we know?
  The castle is especially known for their kitchens.  They certainly like their dummies.  More of the kitchen staff.
  The bread baker.
The Queen’s bedchamber.  A view from the castle over the countryside.
  More countryside view.  The gardens with a view of the castle.

More castle.  We are now in Edinburgh.  We have walked up Calton Hill in order to see the views of the city.
  The National Monument and the Nelson Monument on the top of Carlton Hill.  Looking over towards the hillside called Arthur’s Seat.  Arthur’s Seat is an extinct volcano.
  Looking towards Edinburgh Castle and the Royal Mile.  Another view.
  There are a lot of these narrow passages in this city and each are named.  This is our favorite name so far.  A view down the Royal Mile.
 We discovered that Arthur Conan Doyle was born close to where we are staying.

Loch Ness

The weather was much better today, and we had no thunder or hail. The temperatures are still nowhere near what one would expect July to be. We even saw people with hats, gloves and scarves, but it was not cold enough for that. We head south tomorrow, so we are hoping the temperature increases a bit.

The scenery in Scotland has fully lived up to expectations.  It is amazing and there is still much more to come.

First stop was a Loch Ness Exhibition so that we could learn all about it.  This one got the best reviews of the bunch, so we tried it.

A “research” sub used to look for Nessie.

The exhibit proved to be somewhat interesting.  It was mostly videos in a series of rooms, but they explained about the kinds of searching for Nessie that has been done, and what each group found.  They did talk about natural things that could cause so many people to “see” Nessie.  For Instance, there are multiple types of waves in the lake, which can interact and look like Nessie from afar, there are otters that live in the lake, and lots of birds fly over the lake and the birds’ wings can look like at a Nessie head and neck when you see them at just the correct angle.

Urquhart Castle on Loch Ness.  This castle was built over 1000 years ago, and it was mostly destroyed at the end of the 17th century.

The castle jail.  This does not look like a good place to spend the night.

The Grant Tower, which was rebuilt as an aristocratic home later on.

A view from the tower.  The weather was a bit wet this morning, but improved in the afternoon.

We learned that the Nessie exhibit that there are unusual wave patterns on this loch that can look animal-like to non-discriminating types.    There are lots of different wave styles in this picture, going every which way. We saw strange and suggestive wave shapes several times while we were here. B, whose interest in the Loch Ness Monster led us here, believes there may be large sturgeons that come into the lake periodically.

A view over the castle.  It’s almost sunny in this picture.

A view towards the other direction.

We are now walking into a little town called Fort Augustus for lunch.

The town locks on the Caledonian Canal, which feed the loch.

The bustling town.

They are trying to get a wire Nessie covered in ivy.  It reminded me of the ivy covered dinosaurs in Fremont.

We ended up driving around the whole of Loch Ness today.  We came down the north side of the lake this morning, and we went up the south side after lunch.  Our afternoon drive was especially scenic because we found this great smaller road with amazing views.  It was yet another narrow road with blind corners, but the stress was alleviated by all the scenery.

No sign of Nessie here.

Our small road even had wandering animals.

A baby following its mom across the street.

Great scenery with sheep.  This was a stopping spot that had almost 360 degree views.

 A view another direction.

Another direction.

There is snow off in the distance.

At the stopping point, there was a path you could take to the top of a hill and that had even better views.

Waterfall going down to a small lake. We could hear the sound all the way across the valley.

These sheep were at the view point, and they seemed very interested in people, so I wonder if they have been fed.  The mom kept baaing at people.

Leakey’s bookshop, C’s must-visit.  This is the largest used bookshop in Scotland and it’s inside an old church.   Unfortunately, C is the only one who didn’t find a book.  I am sure she will find a book or ten at one of the many charity shops before we head back home.

The inside of the bookshop.

 An Inverness street.

Dublin-Aberdeen-Inverness

We made it from Dublin to inverness today, but it wasn’t all easy.  The weather has been terrible in Scotland.  I hope improvement is coming because it feels like November here and we are still in sandals that are now sopping wet.  The good news is that we don’t have to worry about wet socks because we don’t have any.   We started this morning in Dublin at the Dublin Writer’s Museum  The building was owned by a distillery owner, and it was nice, but the museum didn’t offer as much interest as we would have liked.  The information there was pretty basic, and they could have done a much better job.  They barely even acknowledged current Irish writers.  They did have some old typewriters and handwritten manuscripts.   We took a puny plane from Dublin to Aberdeen.  18 rows of 4 seats.   We had a massive hail storm as soon as we arrived at the rental car place.  We were lucky the rain held off until we got into the car rental place because we had to walk off the plane and outside to the building and then there was a lot of outside walking to get to the rental car building.  We stayed inside for about 10 minutes hoping the rain would let up.  It eventually did.

   We stopped in a small town called Forres for a break.  Not much going on.  Everything closes around 5pm.  The town church.
Inverness Castle. We haven’t walked around here much because it is still pouring. I hope tomorrow is better.

Dublin- Day 2

Fortunately, the dire weather predictions for today didn’t prove as horrendous as predicted.  It rained a bit this morning, but not nearly as bed as yesterday when we were wet for hours.  It still doesn’t feel like July here, but today was the perfect day for museums, and we did two.  The first museum was The Little Dublin Museum, which talked about life in Dublin over the last 100 years or so.  We learned about social movements, the break with the UK, and various politicians.  They also had an entire room dedicated to U2, where we learned far more about them than we ever wanted.

The music stand above was used by John F Kennedy when he spoke here to the government.  It was traditional at the time in Ireland for politicians to lay their speeches on benches rather than use podiums, so there was no podium to be had when JFK was coming.  The night before JFK’s speech, an antique music stand was found that was deemed good enough for JFK to use.
  We liked this old Guinness ad that specifies that this leprechaun is Irish, as opposed to those other kinds of leprechauns. 
A reproduction of James Joyce’s death mask.  We saw three different death masks today, so our RDA as been met.
This is the Royal College of Surgeons. In 1916, during the Easter Rising, the British troops pinned the Irish forces against this building, and bullet holes are still visible all over the facade.
  This is George’s St Arcade that was listed in our book as having nice crafts and antiques.  We must have missed all that because this was full of mostly lame Chinese-made type stuff.  It was a neat building. Our second museum of the day was the Chester Beatty Museum.  Chester was an American who made a ton of money in coal, retired to Ireland and started buying all sorts of antiques, mostly books.  No pictures were allowed inside, but there was a ton to see here.  Really interesting books from Japan, the Middle East, India, etc.  The oldest thing we found here was a scrap with a fragment of what became the New Testament from 150 AD.  There was only small piece about 1″x2″, but it was amazing a piece of paper has lasted so long.

The kids really liked the current exhibit on “Damsels for Dinner,” a Japanese story which the museum describes as: “The Tale of Oeyama (大江山物語) is one of the best-known heroic stories from medieval Japan. It tells of the famous episode when Minamoto no Yorimitsu (948-1021), known as Raiko, slayed Shuten Doji, a demon described as an ogre, a kidnapper of pretty maidens and a cannibal disguised as a giant human being.”  The pictures that accompanied the story were really good and the decapitation of demons, with the resultant spewing of blood, got lots of interest from the whole family.

  A view from the roof of the Beatty Museum.  We are overlooking the Dublin castle.  We did not go into the Castle because it is from the time of the British and when they ruled Ireland.  We have seen plenty of UK castles.
  St Patrick’s Cathedral.  The interior.
  Our second death mask of the day is Jonathan Swift.  
Jonathan Swift is also buried here.  One of the impressive stained glass windows.  I like the orange tree.
  The other nice window.  We then moved onto another church, St Michan’s Church, which was founded in 1095.

Nothing of the interior is from 1095.  It has been re-built many times and much of the interior is from Victorian times.  We came here to see the crypt, which is from 1095.
  The church is famous for their mummies.  It isn’t clear why these people are preserved so well, but the theory is that the consistent temperatures down here combined with the limestone in the walls and the methane that rises from the ground here has some sort of preservative effect.

The guide was a character who tried to gross us out.  He moved the gate out of the way in front of the mummies and told us it was lucky to touch the finger of the man at the top of the photo.  The man died some 800 years ago and was about 6’6″, so hugely tall for his time.  Three of the four of us touched his finger for luck.  We will see how it goes, but how can you pass up the chance to touch an 800 year old finger?

  After the crypt, we needed a Guinness to restore our health.  Two of us didn’t have Guinness, but rather a sparkling non-alcoholic apple cider that they have discovered in Ireland.
 Now for the third death mask.  The third we saw was down in the crypt, and it was the face of this man Wolfe Tone.  Unfortunately, there is no photo of his one because is was too far back in the crypt. The Wolfe Tone family plotted an Irish revolution patterned after the French Revolution, but it didn’t work, and they all got drawn and quartered.

  A pub near our hotel.
 A church near our hotel.  We haven’t been in this one.