Paris

Sunday in Paris is quiet.....so they say. But it is all relative in world cities like New York, London, Hong Kong and Paris....they seem to be on the go all the time.

The EuroStar was a bit "down at heel" but it was fast and got us here from London in a couple of hours and in time to settle in to our apartment before dinner.

The building itself seems to be really quite old with exposed rock walls and exposed rustic beam ceilings, but it is nice and comfortable and has room for us to spread out ...... and it is located in a really nice neighbourhood very close to the metro and the sights. We have a patisserie across the way, restaurants and cafes all around and can see the Eiffel Tower from the end of the street.

We visited the Louvre......together with the "world and his wife" and saw the Mona Lisa......not as striking as you would think, and the Venus de Milo and countless other works of art from all around the world..... and from antiquity.
From its beginnings as a fort, to a palace and then to a museum in the 18thC, the Louvre certainly is a huge museum, the largest in the world......and with a huge patronage, but still very impressive. It would be great to spend a week in there....without the crowds.

The picture below is of the line up to get in.....just at the front entrance.

We visited the Musee D'Orsay which is not far from our apartment and is famous for its collection of works of the impressionists and post impressionists. Some of the paintings ( Lautrec, Renoir, Cezanne, Monet and Van Gough) we had seen at the exhibitions in Canberra over the last few years but many, like Rodin's sculptures, we have never seen. They are quite impressive in 3D and in real life.
The building itself is quite "arty" and the picture below is a view out one of the feature windows.

We also visited Notre Dame cathedral, a few Metro stops from the Louvre......

(It was raining and the gargoyles were being a bit ........"Linda Blair"!)

..........and the girls went shopping in the St Michel district and crossed the Pont de L'Archeveche where lovers attach a padlock to the bridge and throw the key in the River Seine as a symbol of their unbreakable love.

Both sides of the rail and both sides of the bridge looked like this.........no wonder they call Paris the "city of love!"

We strolled along the Champs Elysees, window shopping. All the big brand names are there....YSL, Hugo Boss, Hermes,Tommy Hilfiger,....MacDonalds!

The view from the top of the Arc de Triomphe was pretty impressive, but the climb up the narrow, spiral staircase was a bit claustrophobic.

From the top you get a panoramic view of the city with the streets radiating out from the centre like spokes in a wheel. Apparently Napoleon wanted to be able to fire cannons down the avenues to give any pesky crowds a "whiff of grapeshot".
Sacre Coeur is the pointy basillica on the horizon.

We saw the Tour Eiffel from a number of different angles including this from the Pont de Bir-Hakiem (named after a famous WW2 battle involving the French and asssociatated with Rommel and our Tobruk) before heading home to escape the storms, one of which struck while we were in a cafe having lunch....flying awnings, umbrellas and crashing glass all over the place.

On Tuesday evening we went to a show at the famous Moulin Rouge......yes, the one with the topless dancers, and what a spectacular show it was. It was a real caberet with different acts (Erin's favourite was the talking dog) including gymnasts, a ventriloquist, jugglers, ponies, pythons in a huge glass tank ( swimming with a topless dancer) and of course the Can Can. It was a feast for all the senses....especially the eyes!

On advice from Nick, and our host Sebastian, who was very insistent, we saw the icons but to get a sense of Paris, Montmartre is the place to see. So we visited the district famous for its bohemian artists of days gone by and its famous basillica, Sacre Coeur. We wandered around the streets of Montmartre with all its cafes and cobbled streets, its art shops and trinket shops until we found we had our fill and couldn't absorb any more.

We have enjoyed our fleeting stay in Paris, and experienced enough of a taste to want to come back again at some time.
But for now, after almost six weeks, seven countries, umpteen dozen beds, too many packups /unpacks to mention, and goodness knows how many kilometres, it's time to start heading home.

We fly out tomorrow via Hong Kong, to break the very long flight and we are all looking forward to being home soon....as Dorothy said.....etc.

....and on to London

After spending a couple of days in Boxworth, a tiny village just out of Cambridge, we arrived in London to do some sighseeing.

Cambridge was to follow up my grandmother's side, the Harts/
Fowlers who were farm labourers from the Fen country. After a quick trip into Cambridge proper to see the uni and the punts on the river, we drove out to Chatteris and visited the musem and library. They had some really interesting old maps, photos and documents that gave us an insight into the area and the place that she was born.

The Fen country is very rich agriculturally, and was quite low and swampy. The road winds its way through the fields on a narrow raised embankment about two or three metres high so it is a bit of a ride with no barriers and a steep drop off into fields and canals! In prehistoric times people had to live in settlements on gravel islands which became the villages and Chatteris became quite a large and prosperous one with lots of farms and therfore labourers......but not any more.

This is a house we came across in Chatteris when we got lost ....again .......in the back streets of the town.









The countryside was flat and rural and, because we were off the "beaten track, we found some interesting old houses that seem to have been left in a time warp......except for the T.V. aerials!

In fact, the pub we stayed at is an old thatched building hundreds of years old. The village itself would have about 200 people max and these houses are just normal village houses that people live in across and down the street.

Cambridge to London is not far and doesn't take long......except when you get into London proper. What a nightmare....but we finally found our apartment (shoebox) and Erin who has been here a couple of weeks and is quite adept at getting around on the "tube".

On our first day sightseeing we ended up at Buckingham Palace just as the "Changing of the Guards" ceremony was happening. What pomp and circumstance.....and what a crowd! Streets closed off, police and barricades everywhere, it certainly was a spectacle.

London is a big city with so many attractions that tourists are everywhere and there is a thriving souvenir shop business with shops lining the streets in many places like Leicester Square.

We did many of the icons, Big Ben, Nelson's Column, the Tower Bridge and the Palace etc but also went to more out of the way places like the Florence Nightingale Museum (unfortunately closed to a sewarage issue....nice!), the Globe Theatre, Beatles Shop and Baker St.


On the way we got a really good look around London and an appreciation of the history and culture of the place. It's little wonder London is such a popular destinstion.

We spent a couple of hours in the Natural History Museum .....together with a thousand school excursion groups from France and Germany.....but really could only manage a superficial look at the exhibits.......

...........and we criss crossed the Thames any number of times on Westminster Bridge, Waterloo Bridge, Southwark Bridge, London Bridge (didn't fall down) and the Millenium Bridge. We certainly wore out some shoe leather!

The weather has been kind ( relatively....but somewhat greyish) and we have been able to see a great deal in the time of our stay here but after a show at the West End (Miss Saigon) on Saturday with Erin and her friend Katherine, we will be catching the train to Paris for the last leg of our journey.....no genealogy there.

Yorkshire & the North

Our hosts in Keswick commented that Australians travel distances easily. Keswick to Whitby ( about 2.45 hours) in one go....amazing!.... but we seemed to manage just fine. Whitby was on the list of places to visit because of history, Cook, Banks and co. Whitby is the place that produced the ships and seafarers that made our European history of Australia what it is.

On the way from Keswick we crossed the Yorkshire Moors (scenes of Wuthering Heights) which were quite sparse and desolate. You could imagine it would be bleak in winter.....misty and snowy....but it was quite attractive, in an empty kind of way, and certainly a very different landscape to the ones we are used to.

We were impressed with the rugged cliffs and little villages nestled in the river esturies as we made our way along the coast to Whitby.......courtesy of an earlier wrong turn....but very scenic!

View from our breakfast table at the Whitehouse Hotel in Whitby. The view and the food were good....the room...not so!











Whitby is a very old seafairing town with a great seafairing history and culture as we found out in the Captain James Cook Museum. Just wonderful. We saw his charts and where he did his apprenticeship and actually walked the streets that he would have walked in the 1760s.

As a very old port, they have preserved their heritage really well with the tiny, windy cobbled streets and the wobbly, out of square old bulidings providing a historic atmosphere that we certainly don't have at home, but can appreciate.

We also have found they love their dogs in England, and they take them everwhere.
Big dogs ( I mean wolfhound style) little dogs, pampered and preened dogs, dogs in jackets, dogs with booties and quite often dogs in the cafes or pubs.....and very well behaved. There are almost as many dogs as people getting around the town and Wendy is up to 21 in her Jack Russel count.

We also visited the Whitby Abbey which dates from the 13 century, and what an impressive ruin it is.

It sits high over the town and is flanked by the rugged cliffs of The Yorkshire coast. With the storm clouds as a backdrop, it was an impressive sight.

Kingston Upon Hull sounds much better than it is! We went there because of the Megson branch of Wendy's family tree ........but it was just a run down port city without much charm so we headed off to York..... and my, what a contrast.

View from the bridge we cross going in to town.

The Romans were here in about 40AD and I was here about 40 years ago.....and for me not much has changed.....except it's become a bit more swank.......and I couldn't find the "Tavern in the Town" where I used to enjoy a few beers all those years ago.

We organised our flat ( really nice and really close to the centre of the city) and then strolled into town to check it out. Spent a number of hours at the Minster and shopping but there is so much to see that we have agreed that on Saturday we will go our own ways ( me to the museums and Wendy to the shops) so we can get our fill of the things we want to do and see.

The crowds have been huge in York, many shoppers but also many tourists......bus loads at times mostly to see the Minster but also the other museums and attractions.

The Minster is the second largest in Britain but has the largest windows dating from the 16C. It was slumping in the 1960s and when the engineers investigated they found it was built on a Roman fort which you can go down into and see the structures And where people lived their lives two thousand years ago.

Very impressive and quite an experience.

The lanes are all cobblestoned....and in places Roman stoned, and many of the buildings would have great difficulty meeting building codes these days....especially in the "Shambles" which is a street of old butcher shops dating from 1400s and mentioned in William the Conqueror's Doomsday book.

In keeping with our genealogocal theme, we headed out to Leeds and Armly to see where Tommy Palframan came from.

The shipping manifest had his address as 17 Whingate Ave, Armly. We were warned that it has changed, and our observations and my conversation with the current owner confirmed it. It's a bit like Newtown in the 70s. The houses were built for the textile mill workers very early last century. They are a typical terrace type houses which we are sure would have seen some interesting history.
No. 17 is on the far right, (and our Golf on the left...with the engine still going) the only free standing house and with a big basement, which is why the current owner, a muso, bought it five years ago....sound proof for band practice!

Well, after a really nice stay in York, it is off to Cambridge and then London for the next leg of our journey.

Wales and the Lakes District.

Only just made the ferry in time......Dublin Port is difficult to navigate....a maze of lanes and dead ends and we were the last on. In the rough seas after the storm it was a bit of voyage but nothing compared to five months on a leaky boat!
Landed in Holyhead, a real port town, and headed into Wales (our fifth country) and pretty much straight down to Snowdonia.

We caught the track railway up to Mt Snowden but could only go half way because of the severe winds at the summit. But what a ride it was and what a view.








The town, Llanberis, is an old slate mining town dating from Roman times and the scenery again is mesmerising. Lots of people on the train but a few trekkers toiling away were spotted on the way up..... and a few mountain goats!

It was really steep but the track railway ( it is driven with a toothed, geared system to allow the train to grab the track) got us up to a lookout area that was stunning.

Our hotel for the night was very old....I mean very old.....small,low, creaky and cramped but the owner was friendly and the food and drink excellent.

Luckily for us, our travelling day from Snowdonia to The Lakes District was was quite wet, pouring actually, so we didn't feel we missed out on much.
Had lunch and a look around Kendall, which is very old (saw one building dated 1519) and then headed up to Keswick through Windemere ( Beatrix Potter country), Ambleside and Grasmere past lakes and tree-lined, windy roads with stone walls and stone bridges around every corner.....or so it seemed. I think we are getting "quaintness overload"

Our digs at Keswick are very nice..and another Victorian terrace with our room on the very top floor so we are getting used to manhandling our suitcases up many flights of very steep stairs wherever we go.
All the people we have met have been so friendly and helpful and our hosts in Keswick, Trevor and Geraldine are no exception.
This is the view from our room and as you can see, not exactly sunny.

We found the Lakes District to be beautiful but commercialised and on our cricuit around the little towns and lakes there were lots of tourists and walkers. Parking in such tight, narrow little places is at a premium.

.....and we thought that this would be low season!

Our drive around took us out past Derwent Water (the pencil museum was very interesting) and through little towns Penruddock, Ambleside, Troutbeck and Windemere through fields and down lanes, over streams, past lakes and sometimes up dead ends!

We browsed and had coffee and cakes in little bakeries and shopped but mostly soaked up the special place that is the qintessential English countryside.










Now on to Whitby and then York to follow up the Palframan and Megson family lines....but not before we toddle down to the local English style pub for a pint before dinner!

The Ring of Kerry to Dublin

The Irish weather settled in for our drive around the Ring of Kerry.....which made it so much more "atmospheric" but not such good conditions for photos. The wild, rugged Atlantic Coast didn't disappoint. It was a bit hairy in places and some big tour buses coming the other way made it quite hair raising! But the countryside is lush and beautiful with hedges so close, narrow and high they seem to form a tunnel.

We ended up at Portmagee, the furthest point in South West Ireland where they landed the first Trans-Atlantic cable in 1858. This is the area also where Charles Lindburgh crossed the coast in 1927. They say he was so low they could read the numbers on his wing!

We decided it wasn't the day for touring so came back to town and followed up with Wendy's ancestry, the Hicksons, Blennerhassetts and Godfreys who seemed to own all the land. Landsdowne, the name of their huge estate, is a big name around here and even a major road in Dublin is named after the estate.

Found another ruined monastry and graveyard just out of town and up on a hill overlooking the river. They certainly owned all that they could see ....and more.
We've come to the obvious conclusion that the Irish are very well off for ruins!





After a short but very pleasant stay in County Kerry we headed up the East Coast to Cork to see the last view of his homeland that John Best saw before sailing to Van Dieman's Land in 1817. The rest of his family followed from there three years later and the Sullivans (my great grandfather's mother's family) came out in 1827......but of their own volition!

The island you can see in the background is called Spike Island.
It was originally a monastry, but from Cromwell's times, a prison. It was where the convicts were housed before sailing out of the heads behind the island.

Cork harbour is one of the best natural harbours in the world and is also the place where the Titanic sailed from in 1912. The recovered bodies are in a cemetary there and there is a museum and quite a few Americans in the area following the Titanic trail.
It is also where the survivors of the Lusitania came ashore when it was sunk bringing the Americans into the First World War.

The little township In the actual harbour is called Cobh (pronounced Cove) and is a very quaint little place...albeit with some very interesting history.
It was quite surreal reflecting on the very place my ancestors last saw before sailing off to the antipodes in tiny, leaky wooden sailing vessels.

Our accommodation in Waterford is an old converted coachhouse.....with its own castle ruins. The owner has done an outstanding restoration job. Twenty years of devotion.

The castle ruins in the garden date from 1248!

We are now in Dublin, in the heart of the city, and our last night in Ireland.
They certainly value their arts and are proud to show off their culture. We were impressed with the number of sculptures and statues...all over the place really.

I couldn't finish his book (too difficult) but the sculpture in the street was interesting.













Had a quick look around the centre of the city and after dinner before "high tailing" it off back to the hotel before the storm hit.

We weren't as fast as the huge rat that ran past us up the street though........what's that about "rats and sinking ships"?

Ferry crossing to Holyhead in Wales tomorrow.