AFA Edinburgh #1 Her Majesty's Yacht Britannia

The royal family used to travel internationally by yacht. The Britannia was the last in a long line of royal yachts. It was commissioned in 1950-something with the design closely overseen by the Queen. It was retired just a few years ago. It is permanently docked in Edinburgh. It is interesting to see, because it is not nearly as opulent as you would expect. It was designed to have the feel of a country home, and it does - sort of.
This is the Queen's bedroom. She and Prince Phillip do not share a bedroom, he has one done in his own style. They do have a connecting door. Notice the small bed? There is a guest bedroom that was used as the honeymoon suite for three weddings, Princess Anne's wedding, Prince Andrew, and Prince Charles and Diana. Charles had a large bed put in for his honeymoon so they could share. Obviously not a lucky honeymoon spot, Princess Anne divorced Mark, Prince Andrew divorced Fergie, and Prince Charles was going to divorce Diana but she died in the car wreck instead.

These shots are where the Queen entertained guests. There are pictures of many famous world leaders, including a couple of Presidents.

Here's a couple of miscellaneous pictures, the royal launch that would take the Queen to shore, a side view of the yacht to get an idea of the size (300+ feet long), and the family at the crew's bar.

Brittany Turns Nine! (August 19, 2008)

With a countdown that went on for a couple of months, Britty's birthday FINALLY (as far as she was concerned) arrived on the last day of our holiday. Before we left, we wrapped up her gifts and stacked them on the stairs so that when we came home, she'd walk in and see them. She was the last one in from the car, so we all stood by the door expectantly waiting to see the surprise on her face. She did not disappoint. As you can see from the pix, she wanted (and got) three kinds of dolls - it's nice to still have one little girl around the house.

AFA Scotland - Glasgow #2

We happened to hit Glasgow during the international bagpipe festival. (I know what you are thinking ... YIKES! BAD LUCK!!) I am not normally a fan of the pipes, but it was really cool. There were free performances in several venues and we happened to catch one group all the way from Australia. (yes, the one with the kangaroos) They were really good.
They have a museum of modern art there that was really great. These are some pictures from the main exhibition. Look at the floor - it is part of the exhibition. One of the artist's "things" is he does the floors where he displays his art. It is a white floor with a pattern of black tape.

AFA Scotland - Glasgow

We really liked Scotland, it was beautiful, the people were great (hard to understand at times), and it was fun.
Coming from America, you wonder about kilts. You wonder if they are just cultural costumes, or if they are really a part of life. You'll see from the pix, they are all over the place. We saw them in many, many shop windows. I get the impression they are more formal, dress wear. (get it? "dress wear???") We didn't see any casual wearers, but definitely saw them on people dressed up.
These are shop windows in Glasgow.

AFA - Cymru (Wales) #3 Portmeirion

The absolute surprise of Wales was this spectacular Italian-style city. It was designed and built by one guy, Sir Clough Williams-Ellis, between 1925 and 1975 to look like an Italian coastal city, some say Portofino. For those of you old enough to remember the classic British TV series "The Prisoner", it was filmed here. (Portmeirion was 'The Village' - although it was black & white, so hard to tell) As you can see from the pix, it is stylish, colorful, very small, and completely charming. As you can see by the sign below, at the time it was built they discouraged tourists in order to maintain their quaint charm. In the TV show, they never gave Portmeirion credit until the last show so that crowds wouldn't flock to see the town. For us, this was the highlight of Wales. I realized one thing you don't appreciate from the pictures is the flowers - they were everywhere and looked great.
It is near the coast but not actually on the ocean, and as you can see in the last picture ( a little) when the tide goes out there is no water, just sand.

AFA - Cymru (Wales) #2 Caernarfon

Pronounced 'kuh-NAR-von'.
Interesting story, Edward I got the people of Wales to agree to English rule if "he presented them a king born in Wales that spoke not a word of English." That king was born in this castle, and not surprisingly at birth spoke no English. (or any other language for that matter)
Notice the octagonal towers- a spectacular castle!

Allen Family Adventure (AFA) - Cymru (Wales) #1

Wales (Cymru in Welsh) is a tiny little country, about the size of Massachusetts. Based on what we saw, sheep farming and mining are the biggest industries. Supposedly Wales supplies most of the slate for the slate roofs in Europe. We saw a ton of sheep. We almost wore a couple as hood ornaments, but stopped just in time. You must be heavily into sheep if you make 'sheeppoopaper.' We didn't buy any, didn't want to touch it.

Fascinatingly to me, they have their own language which is required learning in schools. They are very proud of Welsh, and want to keep it alive. So pretty much every resident is bi-lingual. The signs are in both languages. After hearing it and seeing it, I'd steer away from Welsh, it looks like a difficult language to learn. We never encountered anyone that didn't understand English, but we found several we struggled to understand. You gotta love the fact that the Welsh word for 'out' is 'allan.'

Wales, like England, is covered with castles and we visited three of the best, Conwy, Canarvon, and Beaumaris. Pictures of Conwy are below.
When England's Edward I conquered Wales he built castles all over the place to help hold the country. The first castle we went to was in Conwy. (not missing a final vowel - the Welsh don't really use many vowels it seems - "th wlsh dnt rlly s mny vwls t sms" - Hey, I'm writing Welsh!!). I am convinced that the people that built these castles were SHORT!!!! Two things make me believe that, as noted in pictures below. First, the safety picture showing someone (me) bumping their head on the entrances into the castle - and the smallest house in Britain.

Conwy is a walled city as you can see from the pix. The castle walls were really in pretty good shape for being 800 years old. As you can see, it was a beautiful day in Conwy.