So the bad news is that the hostel pool is empty. The good news is that there are all these sea-fed pools cut into the limestone right at the water’s edge. For the other bad news, see the post titled “Come On In, The Water’s Great.” Eels and jellyfish be darned, Fiona decided she was …
I promise I will have millions and bajillions of pictures and posts for you in the near future. At the moment, most of my pictures are on my camera-camera, which I haven’t uploaded yet, so all I’ve got is the photos I took on my phone.
Here’s the beach near us. Malta is built of and on limestone, which the salt air wears into fantastical patterns like moon rock:
From the airport in Luqa, Fiona and I took a bus to Sliema, the resort town and shopping district (and tourist hub) that houses Seafront Tower, the hotel-turned-hostel where we made reservations. When we arrived at the address, this is what we found: Fortunately, the problem was Google Maps, not our reservation. Here’s the real …
This is a very short post, because my journey from Cardiff to Malta went completely without a hitch. (Except for almost missing the bus from Bristol Temple Meads to the Bristol airport. But that’s a very mundane story of a broken sandal strap and much barefoot sprinting down a sidewalk while watching with horror as …
Fiona told me a tale from the Aberdare kitchen: “There was this pot of curry. You weren’t here yet. We were all pretty sure it was the same pot. And it was all they served for like three weeks straight. Then one night they hosted one of those banquets, and there was peas and carrots, …
Fourteen of us trooped to Coco Gelato to throw a going-away party for everybody’s favorite German exchange student. When I ordered a brownie milkshake, I expected a milkshake with a bit of brownie in it, or possibly with some brownie crumbs on top. Instead, what I got was a milkshake with a slab of brownie …
It was seventy-something degrees and gloriously sunny in Cardiff today. The entire population of South Wales seemed to be in the park. So needless to say, I dove for the nearest air-conditioned coffeeshop. I feel the need to post a few more pictures of Barker Coffee because, of all the glorious friends I’ve made here, …
For anyone who didn’t get the reference in the title, Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain are classic children’s books set in a fantasy land inspired by Welsh folklore. They’re very much on my mind because I just wrote a paper on them. Cardiff does not resemble Prydain. Not even in the slightest. But Bute Park is beginning …
Some of my readers expressed disbelief that rhubarb crumble could possibly resemble a zombie. I have photographic evidence. Does this, or does this not, look a little bit undead?
Tim Hortons is basically the Dunkin’ Donuts of Canada. It’s so quintessentially Canadian that the only things more Canadian are hockey and maple syrup. This mug is doing strange things to my head.
I was mostly joking when I texted Dad yesterday to tell him I was thinking of flying to Malta between exams. Ryanair has a page of flight deals listed by airport. If you’re not picky about dates or destinations, you can snag some unbelievable tickets. I was poking through it yesterday morning (my procrastination knows …
You’ve got to love the UK. Cardiff University’s Special Collections and Archives happens to own an anatomy book from the library of Sir Isaac Newton. Professor Wood took us down to Special Collections for our last class. She laid out a beautiful array of 18th-century maps of Wales, 19th-century hand-illustrated fairy books, and incredibly intricate …
I took a jog in Bute Park. And by jog, I mean floppy fast walk for the purposes of exercise and/or paper procrastination. In Bute Park, there’s a walled garden that looks like this: Not being particularly interested in plants, I’ve never wandered in before. I was, however, more interested when I saw this: So …
I just found this post in the deep dark bowels of my drafts folder. I never uploaded it. This post dates to my five unsupervised days in Amsterdam. So apparently raw herring is a classic Dutch food. Typically it’s served with pickles and raw onion. For anthropologic purposes, I felt the need to try it. …
I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to sitting in a coffeeshop that just happens to overlook a castle with bits of 2,000-year-old Roman wall embedded in the battlements. Look out the window:
My microfiction feedback group shouted at me for putting a Scottish river monster in their Welsh river in my piece “Under the Blackweir.” I’m an American. I don’t know anything. You’ve seen the Blackweir before. This is what it looks like when the River Taff is not frozen over: And speaking of monsters, I’m trying …
The truism goes: “Most Welshmen are fluent in street sign.” Only about 18% of the population speaks fluent Welsh, but all the museum plaques and street signs are bilingual. After four months here, the only Welsh words I know are: Araf, slow (probably pronounced AR-av, though I’ve never heard it aloud)—because whenever the word “SLOW” is painted on …
Ruthin (RITH-in) was an accidental footnote hanging off the end of my long weekend excursion. It was merely a stopover where Gillian kindly dropped me off at nine this morning so I could catch the bus to the Wrexham station. So how did I end up at Ruthin Castle, you may ask? Predictably, I got …