A Nurse and A Nerd

Fall in Wales

Our housemate Francois was so nice as to join us on one of our weekend adventures and to drive us too!

We started out early on a typically gray Saturday morning and left Oxford for Cardiff, the capitol and largest city of Wales. We had no real agenda for the weekend, other than a hotel in Swansea, so when we showed up in Cardiff it was up to us to figure out what to do. After parking at their new gigantic stadium we wandered our way over to the Cardiff Castle which is a huge complex with parts built from the Roman times all the way up to the 1800s.  A very neat stop and a must see if you drop by Cardiff. Afterward we ate lunch at a lovely cheese shop and stopped by a Halloween shop.

For the afternoon we went down to the coastal area of Cardiff, which we had seen on television many times before courtesy of Doctor Who and Torchwood. There we caught an air show and car show (thanks to Francois for this video). With an added scent of burnt rubber we stopped in to a pub and met up with Ancilla and Erica, the Canadians we met in Bournemouth and joined us for windsurfing and Stonehenge. We traded travel stories over a pint of Brains (a Welsh beer).

Once done socializing we made our way to Swansea, the second largest city in Wales.  We found our hotel (amidst many adventures), and went into town to find some dinner. Although we were not overly impressed by Swansea, the next morning we went to a nearby coastal village The Mumbles and saw some beautiful coastline.

That afternoon we adventured our way to the Welsh national show caves and dinosaur park. We hung out with the giant replica dinosaurs and had us some fun underground with a bit of easy-going spelunking. Finally after that we made our way back to England with some stops for photography in the beautiful sheep filled countryside.

Amsterdam:

Dag Een–Drie (That’s days 1-3 in Dutch):

Oxford does not have an airport.  This is the city’s least desirable characteristic.  The nearest airports are those servicing London (Heathrow and Gatwick) There are ample bus services available to both airports but you have to factor in about 2-3 hours extra to any flight plans. Dave and I wanted to maximize our vacation time, so we opted to take the earliest flight to Amsterdam that we could find. The flight was from Gatwick airport  and departed at 6:00 AM. To catch our flight we had to take to 2:00 AM bus out of Oxford arriving at Gatwick around 4:45. So, at 1:15 we arose from our beds and began our adventure.

We arrived at Shippol airport and headed for the train into Amsterdam.  After some trial and error with the ticketing machine (in Dutch) we grabbed our freshly printed tickets and boarded a train.  I say “a” train and not “the” train because about 20 minutes in, we started to notice more cows and sheep then is appropriate for a city center and realized that we were headed in the wrong direction. A nice conductor man set us straight and we were Amsterdam bound once more.

The city was striking on first impression (even with all the recent construction) There are canals everywhere and the old architecture butts right up against the new creating a very eclectic look. It was green, and very bicycle friendly. Bike lanes were built into every major road and many of the smaller ones.

Our first order of business was to check into the hostel, The Meeting Point, lock up our bags and find the third member of our party. The infamous “pirate” Ben Butler had arrived the day before and we were not quite sure where we would find him.  Luckily we didn’t have to go very far. After dropping off our things in our 12 bed mixed dorm we walked down the stairs to find Ben sitting at one of the tables fiddling with his phone. We had just walked though the room and I could have sworn that he hadn’t been there before.  That Ben is a mysterious fellow.

By your powers combined...

Here’s what we did during our three days in Amsterdam:

The Heineken factory: It was nearly 1100 when we went to the Heineken brewery…beer is the brunch of champions after all! The tour included an opportunity to taste the Heineken wort (what beer is before the fermentation), be in your own dutch music video, and sit in a clubesque room with a beer bottle ceiling and watch Heineken ads…but by far, the best part of the factory was the tasting room and not just for the free beer. Here, we were given a tutorial on how to take the perfect sip of Heineken.  We were told to inhale the rich scent of the beer and examine the foam head of the beer. Then we were told to take a drink and “hold it in your mouth for 5 seconds”…this was promptly followed by the exclamation of “it’s a Heine explosion in your mouth!” Beer nearly shot out our nose, we laughed so hard! I was given and extra beer for being the foam leveling helper.

The Van Gogh Museum: The museum had a fairly large collection of works by Van Gogh but lacked some of the more famous pieces like “Sunflowers” and “Starry Night.”  The museum also had a few works by Van Gogh’s contemporaries and those who influenced him. The most interesting thing that we learned was that Van Gogh only painted for about 7-8 years before his death in 1890.

The Red Light District:  This is of course the part of town that most people think of when they hear Amsterdam, but nestled among the sex shops, tawdry shows and prostitutes is something that you wouldn’t expect….Fashion boutiques.  In an effort to reduce crime in the area, several brothels in the red light district were purchased by the city and rezoned for other uses.  These buildings became a trendy new spot for the city’s young fashion designers.  This makes for some interesting sights as you stroll the streets. What you see are rows of rooms with glass doors and above each door is a little red light. In the doorway you will see A) nothing, 2) a scantily clad woman, D) a gorgeous high fashion outfit or window arrangement.  Every now and again you may come across a blue light in a doorway…no, they didn’t just run out of red lights. What you will see is a scantily clad woman, but if you were expecting a female you will be sorely disappointed.  So, if you want to avoid an unpleasant surprise (unless you enjoy that sort of thing), steer clear of the blue lights.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you!  And no, we didn’t learn this from personal experience. Unfortunately photos are frowned upon (apparently frowned upon quite harshly by big burly men) so if you want to see what it looked like there is always Google.

Canal Tour: One of the most interesting ways to see the sites of Amsterdam is by taking a canal cruise. The canals are positively everywhere, so you can see a little bit of everything.We snapped some neat photos and enjoyed ourselves in spite of the rain.

Sex Museum: Small museum full of sex and fertility artifacts from around the word, vintage photos, silly statues, and funny animatronics. Not very educational , but pretty good for a laugh. Not suitable for kids, but probably more tame than what you might stumble upon if you did not have safe-search on when searching Google Images.

Reijksmuseum: A slight change of pace from the Sex Museum. This is the Dutch national museum. Tons of art type stuff with Rembrandt’s Night Watch as the crown jewel of the collection. When you see reprints of this painting it does not impress upon you just how huge this painting is. It is a wall unto itself and apparently had to be painted outside under an awning as it was too large to be painted inside. There were plenty of other greats to see as well, although the coolest Vermeer paintings were all on loan in NY and Toronto.

The Amsterdam Dungeon: A guided tour though the horrors of Amsterdam’s past. Stuff like the plague and being sold into slavery by salt merchants. It was very interactive with lots of gore and creepy sets.  Looked like a fun summer gig for the areas theater nerds. It was pretty entertaining and the whole thing ended with a bad roller coaster ride.

We closed out the trip with a night train to our next destination, Munich. It was like sleeping on an airplane, but less comfortable. Dave managed to sleep like a wee baby but Ben and I only got an hour or two.  It was cold and cramped and Courtney departed the train with swollen feet.  Not a pleasant experience, but there was no time to moan and groan (though Courtney certainly tried) for we were off on phase two of the adventure.

This is the Sail Bridge in Swansea Wales

Courtney is now done working over here in England, that means we have a free weekend for the first time since Germany to go out and travel some. Our housemate Francois has been so kind as to join us, and because of that we will be able to make use of his car. We will be going to Wales this weekend. Kind of a flying by the seat of one’s pants type of weekend (this phrase is even better when using the British definition of pants.) We know at least that we will be going to Cardiff, where we will be meeting the Canadians that we got to know in Bournemouth. We will be going to Swansea, where we have a hotel. Aside from that, Courtney has made mention of caves, castles, coastline, and who knows where we will end up?

You can kinda see the crop circle we visited

Last weekend I got to explore ancient and mystical England with our friends Vrinda, George and Percy. Unfortunately Courtney was working, as she always seems to be doing. We went out to the countryside to find us some crop circles. Unfortunately the wheat had already been harvested taking the coolest of the crop circles with it. The corn had not yet been harvested though and we set out. First off know one there knew about it and driving right up next to the crop (and actually walking through it a bit) we could not find it.

Fortunately George is a great source of information both about rural and historical England. What was also in the area was the the Uffington Whitehorse a giant chalk drawing of a horse on a hillside, Uffington Castle which at this point is mostly dirt mounds on top of the hill, the wooden structures themselves long gone, and Wayland’s smithy which I talk about later. I will leave most of the details about what those are to the wikipedia links I made for you.

In the horse's head with a dog.

Since the horse and the castle are both up on a large hill we supposed that we would go to those first and see what we could see of the crop circle.  Turns out that we were indeed in the field with the crop circle before, but we missed it. After an ice cream, we ran around the countryside looking for a farmhouse to get permission to go into the crop circle. Turns out the farmhouse is not exactly close to the field, but the first farmhouse we went to directed us to the proper place where we received permission and found out according to George, that farmers here talk like pirates.

Success we found it!

We made our way back to the field and found our way in. For the record, I did not feel any mystic energy, nor did we capture my psychic powers in a picture as happened at Stonehenge.  Just for the record too, I would never ever hide in the corn field and run out screaming to scare people.

The entrance to Wayland's Smithy

After the crop circle we walked maybe a half a mile to Wayland’s Smithy, a 5000 year old burial site thingy. There we met the Pagans who were involved in a young girls ceremonial right of passage, which contrary to popular belief did not involve sex acts or human sacrifice.  After that and some good deal of getting lost we made it back safe and sound to Oxford. Unfortunately we are once again having gallery photos, maybe we will have it fixed again once we return from Germany.

Oktoberfest: The worlds largest fair.

It is time for the Nurse and the Nerd to do some traveling, and this time we will have the world famous Ben Butler at our sides. We are leaving at 2:00 a.m. tonight/tomorrow morning on our flight.

In my size it would take a forrest.

Stop 1: Amsterdam. We will arrive early in the morning and hopefully meet up with good sir Ben. Now, Amsterdam has a reputation for mary juwana and the red light district, but I promise you my dear blog readers that I will keep Courtney and Ben on their best behavior. If you want some wooden clogs or tulip bulbs put your orders in now. My personal goal is to go Rijksmusem and the Van Gogh Museum, which had just closed when I got there the last time I was in the Netherlands. On Wednesday night we board our night train to….

You order beer a liter at a time in a "maß"

Stop 2:Munich. I hold that the Hofbrauhaus is the happiest place on earth after my last 2 stops in Munich. Munich in itself is a wonderful city that I loved. This time we will be there during Oktoberfest, which is the worlds largest fair, with 6 million visitors. Who would have thought that 6 million people would make finding a hotel so difficult and expensive? We did end up getting a room though at not too extortionate rates.

With luck we will be back next Sunday to blog all about it for you.