Cambridge, Cardiff and Paris, April 2012

We started off in London and picked up our rental car, a little Skoda. I was a little worried about that, since it was my first experience driving a Czech car and I had requested a VW Golf, but it turned out OK. It was easy to park, got decent mileage, and actually had decent power for an automatic compact with a dinky engine. Plus I think they must get a lot of their parts from the same supplier as VW anyway, since all of the interior controls were identical to a VW!

Although it was probably not the most brilliant idea, given our complete lack of sleep on the plane, we had scheduled ourselves to sleep for the first night in Cambridge, so we hit the road. Navigation via GPS (with updated maps) is just awesome, BTW. Especially in Europe, where the road network generally resembles a cobweb instead of anything logical :) We found our hotel with no problems and it turned out to be very nice ( Best Western Gonville Hotel ). It had the advantage of having a parking lot, which is a rarity in Cambridge.

After a nice evening meeting some of my newly acquired relatives, we started our next day with a walk around town (after an inaugural full English breakfast of course :) ).  Cambridge has some very cool buildings with all of its various colleges and churches, and more bicycles than I've seen anywhere since Amsterdam. There's a very Hogwarts feel to the place.




I understand that punting in Cambridge is the thing to do, but we just went for a walk. We had limited time, and it was raining off and on, and I was getting over a cold (and I'm good at making excuses!). The boats are nice and scenic though.










We spent the rest of the day and the next morning with relatives, and then drove up to Harrogate. I gave S a quick tour around part of the town center and we checked into our hotel. It was a little weird being back, but it reminded me what a great little town it is (yes, still a bit homesick for the place!).  We had a nice dinner at Thai Pavilion and called it a night. The next day began with a tour of my old neighborhood, and then we proceeded to the marvelous wedding, which involved much eating, drinking and dancing (I really MUST get back into a salsa class!). It was great to see so many people in person again whom I have only been seeing online for the past year or two! It was great fun, and thanks so much for the invite, guys!

Unfortunately, our time was limited, so we had to leave the next morning for the next leg of our journey and drive down to Cardiff. This was a bit of hike, and involved driving through some awesome off-again/on-again micro-monsoons. Gotta love that British weather :)  We made it down to Cardiff by late afternoon and found our hotel ( Cardiff Holiday Inn ) This is another one we chose because it had a parking lot, although since it was Cardiff, we had to pay extra for it.  We had a nice evening with a new set of relatives (new to me anyway ;) and planned for a day of sightseeing around town the next day.

Unfortunately, we were there on the wrong day of the week to go on the Doctor Who tour (D'oh!) , but we did manage to see several cool things.

Look!  A Dalek!



We got on one of the tour buses to see the sights of the city, since we figured it would be a good way to get down to Cardiff Bay, because that's where we would find Torchwood headquarters!!!!   (Or the Wales Millennium Centre if you want be all mundane)... We were seriously geeking out here, looking for some kind of plaque honoring the place where Captain Jack or Gwen or Ianto walked.






We hung out in the bay for a while, stopping in at the Norwegian Church to see an art exhibit, and giving S a chance to try Nando's for the first time. (Yes, they have them in DC and Annapolis now, but it's tasty :) ).

After finishing the bus tour, we had a few hours left in the day, so decided to have a go at Cardiff Castle. This is an interesting site, since most of what you see today was put up in the Victorian era by the 3rd Marquess of Bute, who was something like the 5th richest human being on the planet at the time. Other buildings on the site are from Norman and Roman periods, so there's quite a bit of history here. We took the super-duper behind the scenes guided tour, which was pretty neat, and got us into some rooms that weren't generally accessible. Seriously though, really rich people do some ridiculous things with their cash.









This open-air fountain garden room was actually on the roof of one of the castle towers! The fountain is currently turned off because if they turn it on, it leaks onto the floors below now. The Marquess was very religious, hence all of the imagery here and in the other rooms as well.





The Norman keep on the grounds of the current castle...






The next we went for a visit of some more relatives outside Cardiff, as well as some additional sightseeing. First was a stop at the 14 Locks Canal near Newport. This was a series of canal locks from the late 1700s that has been restored into a park. They used to use the canals to transport coal from the mines in the valleys down to transportation links. We also visited the village of Cwmcarn.




But that unfortunately brings the UK leg of journey pretty much to a close. The next day we drove back to Heathrow to drop the car off and spent the night at an airport-adjacent hotel, so we'd be ready for our morning flight to...... PARIS!  w000T! :)



Ah, Paris, such a lovely city. This was my third trip and my wife's first, so we had to play tourist. Plus, it was our honeymoon, so we were allowed to be goofy as well. Our hotel was excellent, not too far from the Eiffel Tower  ( Hotel Ares Eiffel ), a metro stop right around the corner, lots of great restaurants nearby, and a big old church nearby that played REALLY loud bell solos at odd times (why 6:40pm, exactly?).







First order of business? Tour bus, natch, to show S the lay of the land and how awesome the city looks. Of course, we brought the rain with us from the UK, so we had to put an umbrella up every now and then (yes we were on the upper deck of an open top bus in the rain. We're rebels.)



Les Invalides


Place de la Concorde


Tourism in the rain :)


For our first meal in Paris, we decided on, oddly enough, Italian food, mainly because the restaurant happened to be open early (the French sure like to eat dinner late!). It turned out to be a highly rated, fantastically awesome restaurant, and the best Italian food I've had in ages. Goldoni's. Try it, if you're in Paris over by the Eiffel Tower. Seriously! :)


First order of business on Paris Day 2 was the Musee D'Orsay, which in my humble opinion is the most awesome of art museums. Mainly because of this particular painting: Le Moulin de la Galette, by Renoir. There's also tons of other impressionist work by Monet, van Gogh, Denis, cool art nouveau stuff, great sculpture, etc. and the building itself is amazing. But that particular painting is probably my favorite. I can't say why. It just is. :)  This one's nice too, but it was out on loan or something at this particular time... The museum has now forbidden all photography inside the building, so I have no pictures, but I got tons a few years ago (starting at the bottom of this page), and the official site of the museum has pictures of a huge number of the works inside the museum (and you can order some awesome books from their shop).


After spending a few hours in the museum, we took another bus tour around the Latin Quarter to use up the rest of our bus ticket, and then found a French restaurant for an earlyish dinner.

Day 3 was a day to check out the spookier side of Paris, starting with a vist to the catacombs. This place was downright creepy. Check out the link for details, but basically they had to empty out most of the cemetaries in Paris at the end of the 18th century to prevent disease, and they transferred the bones to an underground quarry in this part of the city. So what you have here is stacks upon stacks of bones, semi-artistically arranged. Six million people worth of bones. Eeep. And it's dimly lit too. Not really recommended for the squeamish ;) 

These first couple pictures are of sculptures of Paris landmarks created by one of the quarry inspectors.




It was very dark, and you weren't supposed to use flashes (although I think I was the only one obeying the signs!), so I don't have too many pictures of the bones. There are plenty of pictures online though if you're keen on stacks o bones :)


We climbed back to the surface into a nice drizzling rain, had another nice Italian lunch, and headed over to the Montparnasse cemetery, since they are always interesting places. There are a ton of famous people here although we didn't spot any famous gravesites when we were there.




Day 4 was Louvre day! We thought we'd be all clever and go in the back door to avoid the big line at the pyramid, but apparently that's no longer a secret. After about 45 minutes in line, we finally got in and started looking at some art! I could spend a couple of weeks in this place, particularly with their new multimedia guide. They are using a nintendo 3ds now, that tracks where you are in the museum and does a full a/v presentation on various selected works and historical periods. Very cool.  Of course, since my lovely wife doesn't subscribe to my philosophy of touristing whereby one utilizes every hour of a museum's opening time and keeps going until the feet blister, the knees ache, and one starts to beg for water and hallucinate, we missed literally up to 9 hours of opening time at the Louvre and Musee d'Orsay. So, I guess we'll have to go back to Paris or something. :)






So, there you have it. Another fine adventure concluded.  Hmm, where to next?

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