So

I'm back in Finland. Feels a bit weird.

My journey back wasn't entirely glitchless - a two-hour delay to the flight - but I got here in the end, tired and confused but also glad to be home.

One final picture. This is from the beach at Llandudno, with the tide rushing in:

Things what I done in London

Note: for some reason a couple of the pictures are wonky, and I dunno why, and I can't be bothered to fiddle around and fix them. Turn your heads! Live with it! Sorry! I'll try to fix them later...


(All non-Doctor Who fans can just ignore this first part.)

I saw the Tardis on Saturday! Or well, you know, the police public call box that's right next to the Earl's Court tube station. I may or may not have flailed and taken Far Too Many Pictures of it.




Other than that, I've just wandered around, gone to the V&A and the National Gallery (so many tourists, aaagh!), and hung around the area where I used to live. Which is right next to the Thames, such gorgeous views of riverside London. Tower Bridge! It is so pretty. The whole riverside silhouette is so pretty, especially at sunset:







Also, I was badass last night and planted a knit graffiti in Southwark Park. I've no idea about the London legality of knit graffiti. Probably I wasn't actually badass at all. *sigh* Anyway, here it is:




Soon off for a final walk around my old haunts, and then off to have lunch somewhere and catch my train to Gatwick. Oh how I hope my flight won't be disrupted anyhow. Last time I tried to get out of England there was a snowstorm, but that's somewhat unlikely now, I suppose. Fingers crossed it all goes well! I've had a glorious holiday, but I do think it's time to go home. (Although of course I'll miss England too. That goes without saying.)

See you on the other side!

Finally! The Epic Wales Post

Wales: one of my favourite countries in the world. The scenery (especially in the North and Mid-Wales, where we were) and the language are both amazing, amazing things. I may have gone a bit flaily the very moment we entered Wales, and started seeing bilingual Welsh/English road signs. I've heard so many people speaking Welsh! The language is totally alive and kicking and fantastic. Dw i'n lyfio Cymraeg! I will have to start re-learning the language again, since it seems to be coming back to me quite well from just a couple of days of sort-of immersion. I bought a Welsh-language newspaper and almost understood what some of the articles were about! :P And I bought a book on the Welsh mutations (what, grammar nerd, me?) - Y Treigladau - from a Welsh-language bookshop, and they mistook me for a Welsh speaker till they realised I didn't really understand what they were saying. But aaaahhh yay Welsh!

♥CYMRAEG♥


On Wednesday the 11th Chemical Sister and I visited Conwy Castle. The views were spectacular:










And Llandudno, the seaside town where we stayed the night, was pretty too (oh the beach, the beach! ChemSis went crazy! :D):




On Thursday the 12th we went south to Aberystwyth, another coastal town, and also very pretty. The beach by sunset:




by evening:




and this morning (elevenish):




I love the sea. The waves were amazingly high and wild last night in Aberystwyth, we were walking by the shore and they were splashing up to the pavement. Such crashing! Such foam! Such a wicked wind in our hair!

Aberystwyth was brilliant for other reasons too. For instance, this street art:




And this awesometastic knit graffiti. Have you ever seen a statue more pleased with himself?





I love the fact that someone knitted him a tie. I might have to steal that idea for use on statues back in Helsinki...

First, a Specialised Post

(Sidenote: gosh I've gone English. The first week, I was confused by the English keyboard system; now, on a Finnish keyboard at the Finnish Church in London, I am confused by the Finnish. Just when I'd learnt the English system, dangnabbit!)

Anyway. I've eaten now, so it's Blogging Time before I go and walk around my childhood haunts. Here goes! Soon for the Epic Post of Wales, but first of all: the tea and coffee making facilities.

The reason I'm interested in these is this silly Bill Bailey video. (For those of you unacquainted with Bill Bailey, I tell you: get acquainted! He is quite hilarious.) I haven't got witty comments to go with my pictures of the tea and coffee making facilities, alas, for I am nowhere near as hilarious as The Bill, but do remember to say tea and coffee making facilities in That Tone of Voice!

Here are the tea and coffee making facilities of the Manchester hostel I stayed at with Chemical Sister. They were perfectly good, nice fairtrade tea:




Next, the tea and coffee making facilities of our hostel in Llandudno. They were half-hidden, huddled in a tiny corner of our dorm room, next to a bunk bed, but oh my joy when I unearthed them!




And finally, the tea and coffee making facilities of our hostel in Aberystwyth. Our room was well nice! And the facilities were good too (the picture is bum though):




So. That was that. I hope you're pleased with my documentation, You Who Requested This. :D

At my ex-home

Am alive! Am well! Am in London! Am happy!

Am using too many exclamation marks.

So, the internet has been a bit of a scarce commodity since leaving Manchester (sure, the internet exists in Wales too, but I was never able to load any pictures onto Photobucket; hence, no updates). When I've eaten and rested a bit (or, alternatively, tomorrow), I'll be posting an EPIC POST here. For lo, Wales was Epic. I enjoyed myself immensely, and although I doubt I'll ever have my fill of the Welsh language/mountains and castles, I've had enough of both to keep me satisfied for a while.

While you're all hanging on the edges of your seats waiting for my pictures of tea and coffee making facilities, mountains, the sea, Conwy Castle, Llandudno, and Aberystwyth (...yeah, I doubt anyone's really that desperate), I will be off to search for some food. Looks like the sun's out, too! London, I love you!

An observation about Manchester

Am now in the North! I had a very interrail-tastic train trip here, since between Peterborough and York the train was so full that I had to sit by my backpack in the corridor. Well hardcore, man. Luckily I got an actual seat on the York to Manchester train, because the views were amazing as the train crossed the Pennines.

Today's been a lovely day here in Manchester. My local guide has taken me to all sorts of brilliant places.

Also, I have discovered that Manchester



is built



entirely



of



red brick

.

Cider post #1

Favourite cider tasted so far: Dunkertons Premium Organic. 6.8%. Earthy, appley, fantastic with strong cheddar. Yep. Am very fond of it. And I think one bottle is quite enough for tonight...

I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Things I have seen:

Of Real Ale, cider, cheese, chutney, and churches

I'm eating an apricot. Mmmm, apricots - ripe, delicious apricots from Bury Market!

Last night's culinary delights: mmm, amazingly strong cheddar (also from Bury Market), with some chutney that Ruth bought from the Greene King brewery which we visited yesterday. With the cheese: mmmmm CIDER. Gaymers Somerset, medium dry. Very pleasant cider. From the supermarket! Ahhh England. With the cider: watching the first episode of BBC's Sherlock. Very entertaining!

So yesterday: the Greene King brewery. A bit of steampunky machinery:



Ale tasting happened at the end of the tour. It wasn't my favourite part of the tour, since it was fascinating seeing the brewing process, I think! - but it was nice tasting proper English ale (yes, yes, it's really me writing this! English ale is about the only beer I can take though). And there's something delightful about being slightly tipsy around noon on a weekday. I'd sort of failed at eating breakfast, so the ale went straight to my head. :D Our guide got more merry and jovial the more ale he tasted, too. Fantastic.

Also: the guide compared part of the process of ale-brewing to making a pot of tea. Only in England...

Bury St Edmunds: delightful town.



No, really.

We pottered around all day, funtimes! It was quite awesomely English to have a delicious and cheap lunch in a volunteer-run cafeteria which was inside a church; and when I say church, I mean the actual church. You'd never get that in Finland. The English have a far more practical relationship to their churches. :) I had some delicious lentil soup, which was just the thing because we were quite damp and cold. The day had been rainy and chilly, although the weather cheered up as the day went on.



Had Aspalls (on tap) at a pub we went to in Bury. Yum.

We visited St Edmundsbury Cathedral, which was very pretty even though there was scaffolding everywhere. Both churches we've visited are having their organs redone. Still, pretty. Here's the refectory:




You know what else English churches have?

Puns:



Get it??

Shiny!

There was a troupe of jugglers on the flight to Gatwick, and they were mucking about with their juggling stuff in the airport lounge at Helsinki-Vantaa. Such a fun impromptu show!

Despite (or perhaps because of?) being extremely knackered, I survived my Night at the Airport with surprising ease: around four twitchy hours of sleep managed. Huzzah! Discovered that my interrail pass works for the trains from Gatwick to London as well: also huzzah! During the train trip to London I already found myself slipping into the current of England. It's so easy: everything just feels so familiar.

I had breakfast in the vicinity of King's Cross with dear friends who happened to be visiting London. Brilliant coincidence. :)

Now I'm at my first stop of the journey: Suffolk! We went biking through the fields today and it's pretty (City Girl is easily excited by all things countryside):



Also, a butcher's sign that screams "Deeply Disturbing" to me:





Maybe I just have an irreparably filthy mind...

Pre-departure post

Since I promised I'd blog about my Epic Travels in England (and Wales), well, here I am, blogging. I'm fairly sure this blogging-during-my-trip thing is going to be sporadic and possibly - shock! - terse. The latter is somewhat unlikely, of course, since my normal state is more along the lines of "overflowing with words", as Some of You may know.

Currently I'm still sitting at home, feeling a slight tingling in my fingertips and a swarm of butterflies in my stomach, but tonight I'll be off! A fortnight on the road, hanging out with various delightful people, getting a proper dose of my birth-country.

First stop: Night at the Airport. My flight arrives so late that there are really no other sensible and cheap options. Fun times... But after that I am off to Bury St Edmunds for a long-awaited reunion; so I think I'll be able to survive one night of Gatwick.

I should eat something despite my travel nerves. I'll be off to find my appetite now, it's wandered off somewhere!