Trip To England 2017

Sherri slept until 8:47 am. I slept until 8:46 am! That's the first time in years I have slept past 7:00 am. I am normally up between 5:30 and 6:00. Being well rested, we headed out for Cardiff Castle. When I say headed out, we stepped out of the hotel entrance, crossed the street and walked along the castle wall to the entrance. Instead of the self guided tour, we signed up for the guided tour. It included more rooms. This castle was owned by the same lord that built the Fairytale castle we toured yesterday. The Cardiff Castle was bigger, with more comfortable accommodations and grand. But like the Fairytale castle it was only used about 6 weeks out of the year. That's 12 weeks between two castles. I am certain the lord wasn't homeless the other 40 weeks of the year. There were lots of activities on the grounds. The Wales guard reenactors and Zulu reenactors did battle on the castle grounds. It was very entertaining to watch. The castle was your typical, run of the mill,...

Today we decided to visit one of the local castles. Castell Coch castle is about 6 miles from our hotel. Instead of driving, we took the bus. The castle was about 1/2 mile from the bus stop. That's 1/2 mile up hill. Really up hill. We had to visit the tea room for a rest and a snack before touring the castle. Castell Coch was built on medieval castle ruins in the mid-1800s. It was rebuilt by a lord for occasional use. They attempted to rebuild a true copy of the 14th century castle ruins it sits on. Some of the dungeon and another basement room are original. On the way back to the bus stop, we stopped for lunch at The Lewis Arms. Nice Pub with great food. I had another beef and ale pie. Catching coach 132 and 21 stops later, Sherri and I returned to the hotel for a rest. Tonight we had dinner at a very nice Italian restaurant. Food and atmosphere was very nice. Sherri and I had a nice visit with the lady at the next table. Her daughter was in a wheel chair with very limited mob...

This morning started out with a good breakfast. If you haven't traveled in Europe, upon you first trip, you will quickly learn that ice is a guarded secret. The DoubleTree had one ice maker behind the bar and it was empty. I was up early so I drove across the motorway to a BP. The expression on the attended face when I asked if the sold bagged ice was that of confusion annoyance. She had never heard of ice sold in bags and certainly didn't sell it at this location. I backed away and left the store.  Sherri and I had a good English breakfast at the hotel (free) and headed out for Downton Abbey to visit our good friends the Granthams. Most of you will get the reference.  Being early, we decided to drive some of the back roads. We found ourselves on a single track road with the occasional lay-by. If you met another vehicle you reversed to the closest lay-by. Fortunately there were cars in front of us. This meant the lorry had to reverse a few hundred feet.    We walked ...