Adventures in Europe: Oxford, United Kingdom

After breakfast and a morning walk in Birmingham, I took the train about one hour southeast to Oxford. Whereas I saw very few tourists in Birmingham, Oxford was crowded with throngs. I sense there may often be many tourists in Oxford, but there were Pride festivities as well that evidently contributed to full streets, overflowing cafes, and jostling at the best photo opportunities. 

From the train station I took a short city bus ride out of the central area to my guesthouse.

Back in the centre, I found a lovely ramen shop for some lunch, and then walked over to the Ashmolean museum. 

One could spend a long time in the Ashmolean and really get one's money's worth (well, actually, it's free), but I moved quickly, just finding the highlights in several of the halls. Above a staircase they are displaying what I assume are some of the "surplus" busts in the collection!

Back in the streets, I continued to enjoy my afternoon, walking somewhat aimlessly, stopping for a coffee here, an ice cream cone there, book shopping over there. 

Tomorrow I will catch the bus to Heathrow and head home to Edmonton.

Adventures in Europe: Birmingham, United Kingdom

From Dublin yesterday I caught the MV Ulysses for a sailing across the Irish Sea to Wales.

 

I love being on ships (best way to travel, I think), and I made the most of the upper outdoor deck as we cast off.

Eventually I went below and tucked into an "Irish breakfast," which a) satisfied my hunger and b) felt like a good way to say goodbye to Ireland.

About two hours later, Wales came into view.

As pedestrian passengers we had just walked on in Dublin, but here in Holyhead we jumped on a bus and were driven to the terminal, where we were very quickly through border control. 

From Holyhead I was catching the train to Birmingham, and the train station is immediately adjacent to the ferry terminal. 

But, I had a couple of hours to spare, so I walked into the town for a coffee and some lunch. My train left at 13:27, and was very comfortable, and I enjoyed watching Wales go by from the window.

My hotel in Birmingham is very close to the train station, so I checked in, and was a bit taken aback at how ritzy it is! Not even particularly expensive, but UK standards (99 pounds, I believe).

I was desperately needing to do laundry, so I found a laundromat and got my laundry going. In between laundry cycles, I enjoyed walking around, especially next to the canals.

I also sat down for a drink in this great pub.

I am not in Birmingham for any particular reason, other than I need to get to London on Sunday for my flight home, and figured it would be an interesting place to stop on the way. In some ways it was not as interesting as I thought it might be, but certainly it is a nice city and the mixture of old and modern architecture is especially noteworthy, I thought. 

Adventures in Europe: Dublin, Ireland

Yesterday, with my bike trip behind me, I walked around Dublin city centre for awhile.

At some point I wandered into a souvenir shop to buy a postcard, and I saw posters of puffins. After visiting Newfoundland last year and seeing puffins, I am crazy about them, so I looked up if there are puffins around Dublin and, indeed, there are! So I quickly booked a puffin tour and headed out by bus to the Howth Peninsula. Here, there is a little harbour, and the setting was lovely.

Basically, for 25 euro I had chartered the boat for myself (this was just luck, the boat can hold more than twenty), and so it was just me and the boatmen heading out to the island known as Ireland's Eye.

There are about a dozen pairs of puffins that breed on the island, which is a very small number compared to what I saw in Newfoundland (I think there are almost 500,000 on that island!), and I only saw two puffins. So, what was actually more impressive were all the grey seals (which I don't think I have ever seen before) . . .

. . . and countless guillemots, razorbills, kittiwakes, cormorants, and the particularly beautiful and impressive gannets. My phone could not capture any of the birds, but they were beautiful and fascinating to watch on the cliffs, in the water, and in the sky.

The island is protected now, but was once the location of a monastery, as well as a Martello tower, which dates back two hundred years to Napoleonic times, when Britain built these towers all along the coastline of the British isles to protect against invasion. 

The loop around the island takes about an hour, and back onshore I enjoyed fish and chips on the wharf before heading back into the city.

This morning I left Ireland by ferry, heading over to Wales.