An unabashed tourist and her family explore the world one holiday at a time.
We don’t normally pay for audio guides when we visit historical places, but it’s included in the entry fee into Christ Church in Oxford, and so the three of us put headphones on and walked towards the signpost labelled with a number one. To the little traveller’s great delight, the audio guide also had a children’s option (which I also...
After our visit to Cardiff Castle, we followed along the Animal Wall until we reached the entrance to Bute Park. I specifically wanted to visit this park, because I’d been staring at it on Google Maps for many months while writing a novel in which my protagonist was chased through the park and entered Cardiff Castle through a little-known side...
Cardiff Castle stands in the middle of a busy thoroughfare, incongruously medieval in the midst of a modern city. It’s home to a sumptuous Victorian palace and an iconic clock tower, but since we didn’t think our little 7-year-old would enjoy an hour-long guided tour, we opted to explore its other sights on our own instead. It was a drizzly...
“I want to see a stegosaurus!” Aidan shouted, excited, as we hurried up the steps to the Cardiff National Museum. Uh oh, I thought to myself. Having spent two years’ worth of lunch times inside the museum, I knew there were dinosaurs, but I didn’t recall ever seeing a stegosaurus. Nevertheless, we set out eagerly in search of the remains...
“Dragon!” I stagger as Aidan runs into me, clinging on for dear life. “Where?” I ask, smiling at the surprise in his eyes as he realises I’m excited instead of afraid. “In the pit, over there.” He leads me to it, just past the moat surrounding Caerphilly Castle and beside a ‘ye olde’ signpost proclaiming the trench to be a...
The last time I wrote about our UK 2023 trip, I was in the midst of sorting out all the admin that goes along with organising an overseas vacation, while also panicking about the inclement weather and wondering whether we’d encounter an unseasonal bout of snow in the middle of spring in Wales. I can now safely say that everyone’s...
One of my new year’s resolutions for 2017 is to read all of Shakespeare’s plays, something I’ve been meaning to do for ages. Although I’ve read quite a few of them over the years, mostly for university assignments, I think it’s about time I should fill in the blanks of the plays I haven’t read yet. So, on 1 January...
Many years ago, on our first visit to Scotland, Gareth and I, along with my parents, visited Hadrian’s Wall. For those of you who don’t know, this ancient structure was built in 122 AD by the Romans to protect the northern frontier of their Britannia province from the fierce barbarians of Scotland. It stretches 116 km and I’ve heard that it makes a popular hiking...
I remember the day we went to visit Stonehenge. Gareth and I were still living in Penarth in Wales at the time. We jumped onto the train one morning and arrived before the shops had opened in Salisbury. With hot take-away coffee and tea in hand, we caught the shuttle bus to that most famous of prehistoric monuments. Many people...
