Monthly Archives: August 2015

And Home

A very long day of travel yesterday. 22 hours from start to finish. Went to bed as soon as I got home, around 9PM, and slept until 1AM. On and off until 4AM, then rolled out of bed at 6. Feeling very tired still and now have a lot of stuff to do – laundry, photos, bike, foodshop, etc. I think I may take tomorrow off from work to allow me to 1. Recover from jet lag and 2. make a dent into all the stuff I now have to do and catch up on.

My last day in Chester saw me do the Cathedral Tour – up a 900 year old staircase to the highest view point in Chester. Great panoramic views from the top, but dizzying, shoulder width spiral staircase coming down. Of course I toured the Cathedral while waiting for the tour to take me up to the top and my camera battery ran out, 30 minutes before the Tower tour started! Just enough time to get back to my lodging and switch out the batteries and make it back!

I also went to the Cheshire Military Museum though it was not nearly as good as the Firing Line in Cardiff. Still an interesting walkthrough. I spent the rest of the day (still overcast) relaxing and then packing everything up. I was up at 6AM GMT to head to the airport.

The line at the airport was huge. Probably at least an hour from where I was, but luckily a man come over and said my bikebox was too big to get through the line, so let me go to the VIP check in area…where no one was in line! So it took 5 – 10 minutes for me to get checked in and then about 15 minutes to get through security. Had a croissant for breakfast and shot the breeze for two hours until it was time to board.

I had barely sat down in my seat and had just gotten my goodies out for the 8 hour flight, when a flight attendant approached, asked my name, and told me I was being moved to 4-F. It took me a moment to figure that out – FIRST CLASS! Woo woo. Too bad the in-flight entertainment system was broken. It kept freezing movies about 75% of the way through them and I got tired of FFWD to that spot, so I eventually gave up on them and took a snooze – on a chair that laid flat out into a bed, with a nice comfy pillow and blanket. Then there was the three course meal, including a pretty decent steak! So not a bad way to spend an 8 hour flight.

I was not a fan of the DC airport. For some reason I had to claim my bags, walk them 20 yards down the terminal, and drop them back off. What the point of this was I have no idea. Why couldn’t the airport workers do this? Its what they’re paid to do isn’t it? And then we had to go back through security – which meant having to get rid of the water bottle I had bought back in Manchester. It makes absolutely no sense to me – what could some one possibly have picked up in the middle of the air? We went through security etc in Manchester so why again in DC? Baffling.

The flight to Denver was not bad if not boring. Read a bit of my book and dozed a little. Two hours in Denver allowed me to eat something and get a new waterbottle. Had a heavy head on the flight to Aspen and had forgotten how dark it gets out here!

Cardiff by Foot

Tired legs today, so did not go far. Walked over to Cardiff Castle and walked around. Took a lot of pictures, read the history plaques, went into the apartment, etc. Quite an interesting little piece of land. Sadly, moderninzation means you can’t see the Sea from its walls anymore, but I could see the hills to the North that I arrived from.

The Firing Line was quite a cool place to visit, down in the basement of the main building. It has a lot of memorabilia of the Welsh Regiment, including all 7 VC’s from Rorkes drift, and even two American Colors that were captured in battle (though these are rare – the Americans didn’t surrender many 😛 ). Other Colors from the Regiment including Battle Flags though I did not take many pictures here. No one else was so I didn’t want to  be that Damned American.

Not sure what I am going to do tomorrow. Not too keen on taking a bus to St Fagans, so may keep it local and do the Dr Who thing instead.

I did go to see Ant Man and had an interesting movie experience. Comfortable chairs and all, but when purchasing my ticket I had to select a specific seat (D-9 in my case) – assigned seating in a movie theatre! Never encountered anything like that before!