Sign of the day: Twisted children's tales

The lake in Reykjavik is home to many ducks. They warn the tourists not to feed the ducklings though, because it makes them easy prey for the seagulls.

This sign makes me think it's the rejected storyboard for a much darker Make Way for Ducklings. (Perhaps submitted under the title Lay Waste to Ducklings?)

Sign of the day: Apocalyptic variety

Ryan unexpectedly bought a new pair of shoes in Kilkenny, and they might be his favorite thing ever.

He is so proud of them that he actually asked me to take his picture in them in front of the super swanky hotel where we are staying in Cork, the Hayfield Manor. (How swanky? There was a Jaguar in the parking lot, a practice putting green in the room itself and actual honeycomb to eat at breakfast. Swanky.)

You have to have swanky shoes to stay at such a swanky place.

If Ryan asking me to take a picture of his shoes isn't a sign of the end of times, I'm not sure what else would be. You've been warned.

Here's a close up of the Lloyd & Price shoes that started it all:

If the shoe fits ...

Blue skies (briefly) and trains

We ducked into the National Railway Museum in York on Wednesday while waiting to catch our own train back to Glasgow. It was a well-timed excursion just before a torrential downpour that ruined the finest morning we'd seen on the trip, weather wise.

Wow, look at that blue sky! The York Minster early on Wednesday morning.

We only had about 90 minutes to look around the railway museum, but it was enough for us. The main hall contains examples of all different types of trains used around the world over the years, though it focuses mostly on British rail travel. 

The main hall at the National Railway Museum.

Other exhibits include model railroads, the restoration and maintenance process for the cars on display, and a huge collection of paraphernalia associated with rail travel, such as signs, stained glass from the cars, station building models, china from dining cars, and training equipment. And of course, there was a ton of Thomas the Tank Engine stuff available to purchase in the museum store.

A few of the items on display in the museum's Warehouse.

The museum also has perhaps the greatest name ever for a museum library: Search Engine.


Yes, the weather really was that bad: A headline on one of the newspapers on Wednesday.

And we know newspapers never overstate weather stories.

Sign of the day: Just found this one from York amusing.

Photo of the day: Ryan got this photo from the train during our return trip to Edinburgh. I have no idea where we were at the time, but the green scenery was just beautiful.

Beer of the day: Last beers of the trip came at Camperdown Place in Glasgow. Tennent's for me, and Greene King Abbot Ale for Ryan. Can't believe those are the last ones!

Our girly day: Shopping, sugar and high tea

America has Goodwill shops, but in Britain just about every charity has its own shop where its sells second-hand items - mostly clothes, but lots of shoes, books and household goods, too. These appear to be the big fund-raiser for most of the charities (not all of them benefit from long-ago bets on Roger Federer to win seven Wimbledon championships). A few of the shops we've visited: Pets in Need of Vets, Age Scotland, the British Heart Foundation, Cancer U.K., Autism and a few aimed at women's and children's aid. In Edinburgh, Nicholason Street is home to several of these shops, and York has a handful, too.

Charity shop row: A shop for Oxfam, one for the British Heart Foundation, a children's aid group are all visible in the shot from York. Up the street were three others. 

Ryan in particular loves stoping in these places. I think he's bought a whole new wardrobe in them (OK, maybe it's only two shirts and a sweater, but that's a lot for him in a three-day period.) We also got this deliciously creepy book at a shop in York, which is supposed to be the most haunted place in the world. It includes stories from Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins and Bram Stoker among others.

Ryan's newest addition to our library. 

Sugar shacks: Yorkshire is apparently well known for its sweets, being the U.K. home of Nestle. There are several candy shops here and a few smaller chocolatiers. What I find funny is that the shops consistently advertise Lucky Charms cereal in their displays. I've been telling Ryan for years that they're nothing but breakfast candy, and I am claiming this as evidence that I have won this argument. No further appeals.

Other popular imports?

Tea! We did afternoon tea on Tuesday at Grays Court, which is one of the oldest continuously occupied houses in the United Kingdom, according to its website. Parts of the house date to 1080. It is now a boutique hotel that would make a fantastic spot for a wedding. We sat in the Sterne Dining Room overlooking the garden. In my excitement, I forgot to take a photo of the tea tray in my excitement, but it was a beautiful room with quite a view.

The courtyard  and entrance at Gray's Court.

Awaiting my tea. I chose English Breakfast (you can't ever go wrong with that).

The Sterne Dining Room at Gray's Court.

Ryan preparing his tea, an Assam blend. 

The garden behind Gray's Court. 

Sign of the day: York residents wanted this sign repainted because it's a bit of a landmark, although the parent company is trying to distance itself from the product, which is no longer for sale.

Ryan's comment: Sounds like something from Harry Potter.

Beer of the day: Ryan tried several new beers on Tuesday night while we were blogging. The first was a John Smith, which sounds like it is the PBR of this country. He also had an Abbot's that he rather liked.

Working on the blog at Cross Keys in York. 

Welcome to York: Join our parade!

We left Scotland on Monday and headed south into England for a trip to historic York. The city smells like lavender, fresh baked bread and a hint of river (but pleasantly so). It was at least 5 degrees warmer when we arrived around 4 p.m. Monday afternoon. Although it cooled off later in the evening, it was nice to be without our coats for just a little while (I am so thoroughly sick of seeing pictures of me in that green rain jacket).

In the beautiful York train station. The green jacket hadn't come off yet.

The city of York - which still shows remnants of its Roman and Norman histories - is celebrating the 800th anniversary of its charter this year. We wandered around for a few hours before coming across a small yet noisy parade. Turns out July 9 was the actual date the charter was signed, and fully costumed individuals representing city leaders paraded past the York Minster along with a marching band and a choir. The church bells pealed for a least a half hour as part of the festivities - once one set stopped, another church's seemed to start.

The start of the parade at the York Minster.

The crowd outside the cathedral. 

Everyone was searching for the best view of the parade props.

The parade participants stood at attention while waiting for the church bells to quiet down. The townspeople followed them to the town center.

Photo of the day: 

The River Ouse as twilight fell in York.

Sign of the day:  York has a lot of renamed streets. Some appear to have been changed for language or geographic purposes, but others might just have been for political correctness.

A narrow street in York.

Beer of the day: There are a ton of beers local to the area, and Ryan and I each tried one on Monday night at the Exhibition Hotel.

This photo is not as clear as I hoped. But I had the Copper Dragon on the left, while Ryan had the Black Sheep.

The tennis is all the rage

Wimbledon was the main talking point over here on Sunday. The newspapers had several full pages of coverage (even bigger than the Herald-Leader's UK-UofL basketball coverage). Just about every pub had a sign advertising the match, and we particularly liked these two as our signs of the day:

The pub where we watched it, the White Horse on the Royal Mile, was a little more low key.

We got there just as Andy Murray lost the second set and there were only four other people in the bar watching the match. By the end, the place was full, and several people just popped their heads in to check the score.

We were disappointed that Murray lost, but thought his speech after the match was rather brilliant. Ryan has stolen his "I'm getting closer" line at least three times since.

Then the pub lost its power, and we were forced to seek sustenance elsewhere. Bringing us to the beer of the day. We returned to the Turkish cafe where we warmed up on Saturday to try the food. I had a goat cheese and tomato salad, while Ryan had a spinach and cheese pastry dish called borek that was delicious. He paired that with a Turkish beer called Efes that he liked even though it was a pilsner.

Drinking Efes from "our table". We had the same waiter too, prompting an interesting conversation about the differences between Edinburgh, Turkey (where he spends half the year) and Virginia (where he had recently visited). 

Great Scot: The natives love the author and antiquarian Sir Walter Scott. He romanticized Scotland, and recovered the long-lost Honours of Scotland (the Crown Jewels that had been hidden in Edinburgh Castle to keep them from Oliver Cromwell). Scott's monument in his native Edinburgh is hugely impressive.

The Walter Scott monument. 

The devotion somewhat confounds both Ryan and myself. Each of us tried to read Ivanhoe in middle school and failed. It's actually the first book I remember not being able to finish - back then I was too young to realize the life is too short to struggle with boring books. Or ones with grammatical mistakes on page 1.

Ryan trying to determine if the monument's elaborate carved figures are characters from Scott's books. Hard to do when you didn't finish the book.

But I have vowed to give Scott another shot on the way home, having downloaded Waverly to the Kindle. As the New York Times noted this week, Scott's novels were also extremely popular in America, particularly before the Civil War. And thanks to the article, I finally know what happened Ivanhoe, too.


Photo of the day: Ryan and I really wish we could share a picture without a dull gray sky - but the weather has not cooperated a bit. Much of Scotland and part of England is dealing with significant rain and flooding at the moment. But this is a picture of Old Town, which Ryan swears is almost exactly as he pictured it after reading the Inspector Rebus novels.

Close quarters and embarrassing bodies

Mary King's Close: This alley in Old Town was buried under the Royal Exchange and preserved for hundreds of years. It is now reopened as a "tourist attraction", with tours led by costumed figures from the close's history. Our best description: Very touristy, so go early in the day. But it is enlightening to understand just how crowded the city was in the 1600s and the differences in how the classes lived (12 people living in a small windowless room with a bucket for sanitation that they could only empty into the alley twice a day). Pity the extremely poor people who had to live next to the cow shed and scrape up the blood from the floor after a slaughtering to make black pudding (something we will definitely not be eating while we're here). No photos were allowed in the close.

No bland network PSAs here: We took an opportunity Saturday night to watch some local television programming, particularly a show called (no joke) Embarrassing Bodies. It seems to be an educational reality show, and this particular episode featured morbidly obese individuals who:

• desired surgery to remove excess skin after a dramatic weight loss
• required gastric bypass as a life saving procedure
• need to have a stomach removed because it hung down past a man's knees

The doctors who host the show also staged screenings in cities throughout the country and work with families to address the nation's obesity problem (apparently Britain is the "fat man of Europe" -- their words, not ours). It was shocking to see, especially because they show everything - topless women, surgical procedures, and even an anatomically correct animation about why obese men frequently have problems with intimacy.

There is also a companion website where you could look up your own health issues, or try to find out more about one's spotlighted on the show, or even apply to be on the show yourself.

The site contains this well-deserved warning: "The Embarrassing Bodies website contains images of an explicit medical nature and nudity in a medical context."

Educational but truly frightening, and it made me feel really guilty about our post-dinner chocolate run at Sainsbury's.

Rainy weather: Someone needs to patent a pair of waterproof dress pants. It has rained nearly every day since we arrived in Scotland, though Saturday was by far the worst. We were soaked by the time we made it up the hill to our first stop of the day. Then we walked all the way down and back up the Royal Mile to do some souvenir shopping and get lunch. By the time we made it to the Scottish Parliament and had to remove our belts to go through the metal detectors, I had to hold up my jeans to keep them from falling down due to the heaviness of the water.

You probably can't see the water lines around Ryan's knees, but we both had them.

We stopped at a Turkish coffee shop to warm up in the afternoon. I had Turkish apple tea, while Ryan had Turkish coffee (and we both tried Turkish Delight). 

Photo of the day:

This is the outside of the Scottish Parliament, which Ryan looks at in depth in his post.  

Sign of the day:

The signs outside the Deacon Brodie Tavern, named after a disreputable Edinburgh resident who was supposedly the inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. 

Cheers, Beers and the End of the World

Friday's highlight wasn't the sight-seeing but the sports watching. We spent the late afternoon at a pub to watch the Wimbledon semi-finals featuring Scotsman Andy Murray against Frenchman Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.

And wouldn't you know it? Murray made history, dispatching Tsonga in four sets to become the first man from this island to reach the Wimbledon finals since good ol' Bunny Austin in 1938.

Elizabeth's reaction mirrors that of the Scots at the O2 Pub in Edinburgh as their countryman made history. 

While it was fun to watch the Scot win while at a pub in his home country, I was a little surprised at the understated reaction when Murray punched his ticket to the finals with a winner on the line. A quick cheer went up and then the pub collectively got back to drinking and playing pool. They actually cheered louder when Tsonga took a shot to the groin in the third set.


Speaking of pubs, that brings us to a new feature: beer of the day. Today's winner -- Brew Dog IPA brewed in Fraserburgh. It's rare that I go for an IPA but this had a lot of taste with a citrusy twist.

Sorry, no pictures of the Brew Dog. This is me with an inferior beer.  

Sign of the Day:
Elizabeth picked this one out. An alley leading to a courtyard or square is sometimes called a "close." And this particular close was next to the famous World's End Pub. The result: Something the Maya would agree with.

That's supposed to be my "Oh, crap" look. 

As for the rest of the day, we experienced Edinburgh Castle. It is beautiful, full of history and offers a spectacular view of the Scottish capital city from 120 meters above sea level. It's also tempting ... to push other tourists off the side of it. Fortunately, a nice Scottish gentleman redeemed our faith in humanity and took a good picture of us.

A battlement with a view. 

Independence Day notes: Ditching the queen to take in some golf

Comings and goings of the royal family:
Queen Elizabeth is following us. But we escaped Glasgow before she got there. This is Royal Week in Scotland, so we might have another chance in Edinburgh later this week.

Crowds in Glasgow gather  in St. George Square to bid us farewell ... or maybe it was to welcome a certain matriarch of the royal family.  

Meanwhile, we arrived at St. Andrews, home of the university where Prince Williams attended and met Kate Middleton. The woman at the table next to us at dinner said she was at St. Andrews getting her PhD while William was here and "wanted to see him desperately." Alas, she never did.  Kate and William, as it happens, were at Wimbledon today watching Scotsman Andy Murray make it to the semifinals. We're watching the highlights of the match on the BBC at the University of St. Andrews New Hall bar as we blog. And they're showing that Kate reacting to Murray's match will be on the cover of four major papers in the morning.

Sign of the day:
Old people crossing -- slower than deer, more amusing than children.

Seriously? They get their own sign?

Snapshot of the day: Magic buses

Antique buses lined up in a salute to Queen Elizabeth at Glasgow's St. George Square ahead of her visit. We passed by on the way to the train station. 

Shot of the day: 
We arrived in St. Andrews in time to see part of the 75th Annual World Open One Armed Golf Championship on the Old Course along the ocean.

It was rather impressive watching a foursome tackle the 18th hole. Elizabeth and I followed them all the way from the tee to the green.

This gentleman got within a few feet of the green on that shot with one arm. 

And in other news ...
On Independence Day, Brits get their revenge on an American - Boston-bred Bob Diamond got sacked from Barclays bank on Tuesday amid a rate-setting scandal and faced a government committee on Wednesday, July 4. While Diamond refused to admit any guilt, the news coverage has not been favorable.

Bob Diamond is in the rough. 

Note: This is the second year in a row we arrived in the UK in time to catch a scandal. Last year it was Rupert Murdoch's media empire, this year the banks. We're not sure if it's us or them.