Another marginal night sleep. Patti may have picked up some kind of a cold or other bug. Lots of coughing and postnasal drip. No fun. Got up and worked on pictures from our day yesterday. Well Patti slept a little later. Then, we negotiated a tiny bit later check out of our Airbnb to the train. Again less than a five minute walk. Our location where we stayed in Bath was perfect.
We sat and watch the people and their dogs at the train station for about an hour. Today is one of our complicated travel days: changing trains two times and finally at 5 PM being met at the train station by David, our Servas host for the next couple of days. (For those of you who are not familiar with it, Servas is an international organization, dedicated to peace with travelers and short term hosts having intense opportunities to get to know one another meeting in peoples homes. Dick is the current president of the US Servas organization .)
Our first train was a 10 minute ride and a 38 minute wait to catch the next one for an hour ride. Always nice if it goes easy peasey straight through, but we are also grateful to be able to more or less understand how trains work here. And everything is in English, which makes it much easier for us to gain information.
Dick was very interested in being able to watch some of the countryside of Wales from the train. Meanwhile, Patti caught a little bit more rest and reading on the train. This is clearly a beautiful country with lots of lush green and rolling hills. And there also are a lot of sheep, with low stone walls throughout the countryside.
When we got on a train heading into Wales, we suddenly noticed it was filled with young women in sparkles and glitter with friendship bracelets.They were all headed to the Taylor Swift Eras concert tonight in Cardiff, Wales. And they were excited….this was at 12:30, doors open at 4:00, the concert would start at 6:30. Just thinking of how much money this all represents…many of the concert tickets are $500, $1000, or much more. And some people flew in from other. countries. They look like they are all ready for fun! We found out it was a sell out crowd of over 70,000 fans.
David, our Servas host, was waiting for us at the train station in Colwyn Bay, Wales. This is a small city right on the seashore that has been on and off again a tourist destination. Before going back to David’s house, he gave us a little tour of the town. It’s been around for a while and it’s a combination of very old looking houses and newer ones. He took us down to the beach where we walked down on the fishing pier and could feel the cold wind blowing from the north. Soon Patti got too cold and had to go back to the car. This is a nice community, but it is never going to be hot here.
Having finished driving around and hearing some more about the town, we went back to the house where David has lived for the last 12 years or so. His parents lived there before him and he inherited the house after they died. It is a splendid old house with a huge back garden. Dick and David spent some time walking around and talking about all the different plants that particularly David’s dad had planted there throughout the years. Later on Patti came out and helped to pick a very nice crop of raspberries for dinner. One of her favorites.
Patti needed to lay down trying to fight back this cold, while Dick and David had some interesting discussions. Then we had a wonderful dinner with lots of fabulous vegetables and chicken and, of course, raspberries with ice cream. Very nice.
We spent some time talking about options for tomorrow. With Servas, the expectation is generally you’re there for two nights and generally one whole day with parts of another day. So there’s no way you can do every cool thing that is in an area. We settled on a list of some great things that will fall in the “taste of northern Wales” portion of this trip.Time to head off to bed and get some sleep for a Welsh adventure the next day.
No comments:
Post a Comment