Earlier this week, I dropped the children and the responsible chaperones* at Heathrow airport and went to pick up some country points. I boarded a train for Paddington Station and then Cardiff, Wales.** The countryside quickly became lush rolling hills broken up with small villages. Cardiff has a super cute downtown area complete with a castle, a park, and museums, surrounded by a bigger city. I enjoyed the obligatory tourist attractions including the castle***, the national museum with an art floor and a natural history floor****, and a boat ride to Cardiff Bay.
From Cardiff I took the train to Birmingham. Birmingham was shockingly hip and with it! I stayed downtown along the canals that originally transported goods to factories and that has now has been redone into a whole live-work-play metropolis. The hotel clerk specifically told me to check out the library and she was right!
The area around the library and obligatorily-attended art museum is being entirely redone to be a pedestrian-only green space. My accidental trip to Birmingham***** made me want to return in a few years when everything is fully done!
From Birmingham I flew to Guernsey****** for the day. Guernsey is one of the Channel Islands and is everything you could ask for in a quaint British seaside. I toured a few places in St Peter's Port but the total highlight was Victor Hugo's house. He lived there for 15 years while politically exiled from France. He designed the house to have as much symbolism as his books.******* The house goes from dark to light as you go upstairs to represent the humanist ideal. An entire room was dedicated to the dead and was never actually used. Oh, and also, Hugo gave the house to France when he died and the house is still technically French property.********
The next day I flew to Zurich, Switzerland. The town is picture perfect and these Swiss do not mess around with their clocks. I don't know what is supposed to happen at 7pm on Fridays but the clocks chimed and rang for a solid fifteen minutes all through town. The National Museum had a giant working clock wheel and there was no thing to read about how cool it was.
A highlight for me was Frauminster Church with stained glass windows by Giacometti and Chagall. Aside from the windows, the church had a simple Reformationist style.
I also day-tripped to Liechtenstein. The train ride went along Lake Zurich and through the Alps and was gorgeous. The town of Valduz was a short bus ride into Liechtenstein and was cute and clean and sunny- everything a gal could want!
I ended Zurich times with a walk along the lake and an opera. The true European experience must be seeing an opera in Italian set in Sweden with German subtitles in Switzerland next to French people.*********
Tomorrow, Salzburg!
-KT
*I got you next trip, Dream Team!
**Expect a later post on the sheer ridiculous ease of train travel
***British for "fort"
****I skipped the dinosaur floor, natch.
*****Not truly accidental but planned only for its airport destinations
******A super solid country point counting experience. We flew with a stop in Jersey so it was a two-fer!
*******The next literature teacher that gets asked if all that symbolism is intentional deserves a class trip to Guernsey.
********Bonus point???
*********#EU #strongertogether
