Italian summer

Last weekend was our girls' trip to Italy. The location was arbitary as the main purpose was to catch up with Julia van Luijk and Jo Drummond (soon to be Jo Nix). We all flew into Pisa, but unfortunately the cheap flights weren't as good to me as they were to the other two so I had an extra day at each end by myself.

I booked myself into a caravan at a campsite with a pool and as it was well over 30 degrees each day passing the time wasn't too miserable...

Julia had booked us into a great hotel in Florence and we had an amazing 4 days, especially since Julia and Jo hasn't seen each other for over a year.


We also attracted the attention of some romantically-minded Italian men (although not the one in the picture above, unfortunately), with whistles etc. Although I'm sure they do it to everyone female and under 40, it was still quite flattering and/or amusing, such as the one who clasped his chest theatrically and pretended to faint while saying oh my heart as we walked past.

One more sustained attempt was a man trying to convince me to go swimming with him. He didn't speak any English and I don't speak Italian so it was all charades and guesswork, although he said mare, mare so much I worked it out and said the sea, you mean the sea! which comically meant he thought I was agreeing (i.e. si si!). Luckily, eventually he gave up.

This is a photo of the Arno River, which runs through the centre of Florence. All the bridges but one were bombed by the Germans during the war.

On our last night we took Jo out to dinner for her birthday at a nicely authentic Italian restaurant and then as we were strolling through the sultry evening air we stumbled across this guy busking. He was doing excellent covers of Simon & Garfunkel. He had a girl singing with him too but they had an argument and she stomped off, much to the amusement of the crowd.

This is some tower I saw in Pisa. The only way to get a photo like this is to be walking to the airport at 7am in the morning before any of the lazy tourists are around. I couldn't believe I had it to myself!

Wales

Sylv and I recently spent a week down in Wales. We were camping, so we were particularly happy to have a week of pretty good weather! We started iwith a couple of nights in Conwy, North Wales, then headed down to Snowdonia for a couple of nights. We then spent two nights at Newport on the North Pembrokeshire coast before heading across South Wales to Ele and Steve's wedding in Gloucestershire (subject of a later post).

I'll let the photos do most of the talking.

The mighty Welsh dragon!

Caernarvon Castle

Beaumaris Castle (on the Isle of Anglesay)

I would pour boiling oil on this guy - the gate had a mechanism for doing just that!

Conwy Castle in the distance, from the (largely intact) town walls. It was great how the castle and walls were integrated with the modern town.

Allegedly the smallest house in Britain ,build up against the outside of the town wall.

A 4000-year old copper mine that you can go inside! It's amazing what was achieved digging with bones and antlers. We really enjoyed this. Sylvia enjoyed wearing the hard hats most of all.

A beautiful setting, our camp site in a field at the foot of Snowdon.

We didn't get snowed on on Snowdon, but didn't get much of a view either.

Sylvia's works' parent company is Carillion. Here they are making a mess on the summit of Snowdon. I think it's disgraceful - if you think so too, you should email Sylvia to complain.

At a hide in a nature reserve. We saw very few birds apart from swallows, ducks and a couple of tits but the walk around the salt marsh and forest was pleasant. Good way to break a long car journey.

The North Pembrokeshire coast is spectacular. We walked a day of the 10 or 12 day Pembrokeshire Coastal Path.

Sylvia just loves hard hats! Continuing our Hard Hat Tour of Wales, we went to Big Pit, a former colliery in Blaenavon. It closed in the 80's and is now the National Mining Museum of Wales. We went down the pit on a tour guided by a former miner who was a real laugh. It's not so deep (only 100 m or so underground I think) but is called Big Pit because the main shaft is so big. There are kilometres of underground workings. There are also good exhibitions and an excellent audio-visual display. It really gave a good impression of the society based on the mines, and the culture of the miners that still exists today.