As Lisa told you in our last post, we were recently(-ish) in Edinburgh. This was, in fact, no less than our fourth time in Edinburgh, but we had never before really seen the place. Dating all the way back to our honeymoon trip to the UK, we’ve passed through Edinburgh without ever really getting a chance to stop and see it. On our honeymoon the weather was so filthy we went to the movies; another time we just landed at the airport late at night, stayed in a hotel for a quick rest, then met friends, rented a car and made for the countryside. It was like that – we wanted to see Edinburgh, we’d get our noses up against the window, and that’d be it. So, heck with that, we carved out a few days to finally see the city.

Two other motivations called us towards Edinburgh. One was the previously-mentioned Andy Goldsworthy exhibition, which was as magnificent as last week’s post showcased. The second was a serendipitous chance to catch up with a new friend from America who was stretching her wings with some solo travel in the UK. She was going to be in the city while the exhibition was going on, and that was the final straw; we had to go. (Oh, darn.) We had a predictably annoying flight over on Ryanair -maybe someday we will shrug off the potential savings in favor of a more civilized flying experience, but that day has not yet arrived. We did arrange to stay at Eden Locke again, a place we discovered back in 2023 that suits as to a “t”. We were in the UK in late October, so the weather was garbage but we knew that going in and packed mostly appropriately.

On our one full day with our friend that wasn’t dedicated to the gallery exhibition, we made like tourists and went up into “Old Town.” Edinburgh spreads out and around from an oblong hill which, being a high point in the terrain, somebody put a castle on way back in the day. Thus the hilltop became the earliest kernel of the city and to this day has a certain cachet; an address in Old Town signaled prestige back in the day, although now it has a healthy dose of “also tourists out the ying-yang.” We wandered the “Royal Mile” for a bit, which is a stretch of road that terminates at the castle on one end and runs the whole length of the hill. Eventually we made it to an actual bit of classic tourism, a guided visit into “Mary King’s Close.”

Ok, so that name needs some unpacking. First, a “close” was what they called these streets that basically exist as alleys but between two rows of buildings rather than along the back of ’em. Closes were essentially the streets that poor folk lived on, in tenements going up into the sky. They provided a bit of shelter and stability, but all manner of industry took place in and round the closes so they were often smelly, dirty places. “Mary King” was a woman of some reputation and stature in her time, and since the closes formed naturally and without any central planning, they didn’t have official names to them. So, people settled on them by acclimation so to speak. Mrs. Close was a notable enough figure that her Close referred to her even long after her death. A company has taken over the close and several adjacent buildings and put on a tour with period costumes and a bit of narrative flair; they don’t take it too seriously but your guide does assume the role of a citizen of the time. It’s a good time, and you do learn a lot about life in the closes, including how they dealt with plague (badly), close quarters (as politely as you could stand), and their general lot in life (more acceptance than rebellion from what we could figure).

We had dinner that evening at The Witchery, which seemed particularly appropriate since we were visiting around Samhain. Alas, while it certainly lived up to its advertised ambiance, it seemed about 20% too much theme park vibe rather than genuine gothic decor and design. Nor was the food up to promised. It was a cozy enough experience, but certainly for the price we don’t feel compelled to make a repeat visit when we’re next in Edinburgh. Still and all, it was a lovely time that day in which we finally, finally got a taste of life in this city.

As we have said from time to time, one reason we retired and moved to Europe was to be able to take advantage of last minute events and exhibitions.

Back in June a little notice floated across our ‘feed’ and we immediately took notice. Andy Goldsworthy: Fifty Years, July 26 through November 2 at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh. As a bonus, it coincided with a week when a new friend from the States was going to visit Edinburgh. After 30 seconds of making sure we had time on our calendar, we bought tickets (we didn’t even ask her if she wanted to come, we just got her a ticket). After seeing one of the best exhibits of our lives, we are so glad.

Hailed as a genius, Goldsworthy’s art is ephemeral, site-specific, and transient. He works with leaves, reeds, trees, stones, flowers, and water both flowing and frozen. He is internationally renowned for building, weaving, floating and folding natural materials from leaf to fern, snow to sand and then walking away, letting the installations dissolve back into the land they were built from. He documents his creations in vivid photographs, mapping, inspecting, and recording the everyday wonders of nature.

The Royal Scottish Academy building is an unusual venue for an artist like Goldsworthy. Built in 1826 it has Greek columns and is thoroughly neo-classical in its design. yet, when talking about setting up the exhibition, Goldsworthy simply noted that nature exists everywhere, not just in rural spaces, it doesn’t stop at the city boundary.

For him, the land is raw and he enjoys the hard manual labor of his creations. “The land may look pastoral and picturesque, but it’s a brutal place, the farm a tough place. Sheep make the Scottish landscape.” Thus, the carpet of raw fleece going up the long stairs from the entry and ending at a pair of marble columns wrapped in barbed wire. The fleece is softly inviting, yet closer inspection reveals the dirt and vegetation trapped within the fleece, dotted by the paint used by farmers to note age and final disposition of the sheep. “That wire fence is about the difficulties and obstructions which every artist has to face, especially one that works in the land. But it is also about finding a way through.”

Atop the polished fine oak of the flooring, Goldsworthy piled fallen oak branches, windfall salvaged from Dumfriesshire fields (where he lives), arranged in a dramatic passage you must walk through. “We are bound up in the land. Look at your dining room table. There is a disconnect nowadays between us and the land.”

His most spectacular room installation is of 10,000 reeds or bullrushes suspended from its skylights. Pictures do not convey the sheer grandeur of this installation, provoking a cathedral-like sense of sacred. Using only natural light, reed mace (bullrushes) from Scottish lochs was used to create this curtained chamber that you can step into and feel the light change.

A simple room of stones speaks eloquently of our deepest connection to the earth. The stones are dug out, not under a hedge or around a cow barn, but from grave sites, including that of his wife. “My former wife Judith died in 2008 and when I was visiting her grave, I noticed there was a pile of stones by the cemetery wall. And I discovered they’re found in every cemetery, displaced from digging graves,” he says. “So when a body goes into the earth, there are always some stones left over. There’s an exchange between the body and the land and I thought that was very powerful.” He collected the stones from hundreds of gravesites across the region over nearly three years.

Judith Gregson, a ceramicist from the Potteries, and her father also inspired the wall of cracked red mud in the exhibition, which took 20 people to make and ten days to dry. Like much of his work, it looks effortless, but it is far from it. The catalogues notes that red earth is used by local farmers to mark the sheep and its distinctive color comes from the high iron content of the earth, which we share in our blood. On the wall next to Red Wall are three monitors playing a video of the artist cleaning a rock with the red clay literally bleeding into the stream. A visceral connection of blood, iron, water, and earth. Stunning.

In another room, a video of him “washing” his hands with blackberries links to this imagery.

Nearby, a video of his “Hedge walk” plays. In an interview for The Guardian, he talks about how his performance pieces are uncomfortable because he is not a performer. “They are very personal acts done in an often public place.” Hedge walking is “pretty brutal”, he admits. “I came out of one or two of those feeling pretty beaten up. But what a beautiful thing to do. Swimming through a hedge.” He’s probably retired from hedge walking, however. “You only do them while they are giving you something. The intention of my work has always been to understand my relationship with the land. I don’t go out to improve what is there. But I do feel this need to be a participant, working with it, learning about it. Art has an amazing ability to open your eyes to what’s around you – such as the hedge. Maybe that’s what art is. It just takes you somewhere you’ve never thought of going, whether it’s in the mind or the world.”

I particularly enjoyed the lower gallery area which had many images from his early works, going back to the late 1970s.

All images copyright Lisa McSherry, 2025, except where noted.

A .pdf of the Exhibition Guide is here.

More photos are here, including many taken during the installation, which offer a fascinating glimpse into the process of creation.

Believe it or not, as meandering as the stories can get here on the Ramble, we actually do try to keep an eye on the word count and also try to at least have a loose shape to the story of any given day or trip. Having been on the other end of plenty of disorganized or just plain boring vacation stories over the years, we try not to inflict those horrors on our friends. Sometimes we end up leaving things on the cutting room floor, so to speak, that in retrospect are stories that we think will stick with us. Here, then, are a couple of things we left out.

(Fun fact: since we don’t advertise or broadcast ourselves to the four corners, we probably know 80-90% of y’all personally. So, Hi!)

Back in 2012 we started off our honeymoon in Dublin. While we didn’t mention our hotel by name, it was The Westbury and it was just lovely. We loved its central location and being nestled into a kind-of-pedestrian area, plus the hotel itself was grand and they took care of a couple of American newlyweds splendidly. They took our bags off of us when we arrived early, and when we came back later to properly check in our luggage was already in our room, along with a bottle of champagne and serving of strawberries, by way of congratulating us on our nuptials.

Fast forward 13(!) years, and we’re back in Dublin on the tail end of our jaunt through the British Isles. Lisa has earmarked exactly one destination in the city for this trip: Cloth, a fabric store. Although honestly, calling Cloth a fabric store is kinda like calling the Vatican a church. I mean, yeah, but that’s a massive undersell. Cloth is small but exquisitely stocked, with knowledgeable staff willing to chat with you about any old thing, confident that eventually the talk will turn to textiles. (Another fun fact: they are the only supplier of Irish linen actually in Ireland. Although maybe that’s not so much a fun fact as a weird one.) So, on one of our free mornings we grab directions from Ye Olde Google and head out on a pleasant 15ish minute walk. Imagine our surprise when we saw where we had arrived.

That’s right, Cloth was literally attached to the Westbury in a shopping venue. Suddenly we are both full-on tripping down memory lane, going back and forth with “remember whens….?” and generally having a grand ole time. It was an unexpected delight that morning.

When we went to Trinity College to see the Book of Kells, we also, almost as a matter of course, visited The Long Room. When we visited it back in 2012 it was full to bursting with books, being the college’s original library. While they had certainly expanded into a larger and more modern building, the Long Room continued to house older books of interest. Now, however, it was undergoing a massive renovation to catch up with current standards for preservation (humidity and temperature control for example.) The room no longer held any books at all and was mostly a historical curiosity as far as visitors were concerned. However, they had decided to make good use of the space by displaying the planet, in its entirety. Entitled “Gaia” by artist Luke Jerram, with the magic of modern tech it manages to project an accurate scale image of planet Earth onto a giant sphere; the image moves to give the illusion of the sphere rotating albeit faster than 1 revolution per 24 hours. It is a truly spectacular object to spend time with, and the frission of such a modern piece of art to be hanging in a 300+ year old library that smells of old wood and leather. Honestly we’d have bought a ticket if “Gaia” was the only thing we’d get to see.

The end of this trip is logistically the beginning. As I think has been discussed, the reason we hit the road in the first place was to end up in Dublin around this time; everything else we did was backtracked from here. So, we’ve seen the Giant’s Causeway (which neither under- nor over-whelmed us) and we’ve toodled all over the Isle of Man (which was pretty good at whelming, all things considered). On a crisp morning, eaaaaarly for a vacation, we returned our car and boarded the packet steamer for a 3-ish hour sail to Dublin, Ireland.

Arriving in new cities in the morning can be tricky. If you’re carting luggage, you’re rolling the dice that your lodging will hold it for you even though your room probably isn’t available yet – although, true, most decent hotels don’t have a problem with this, gods know short-term rentals are a crapshoot. Even if you drop your bags, the time gap between then and check-in can feel daunting to utilize, especially if you’re at the end of a long journey. Fortunately for us it was a quickie this time; unfortunately there was a huge football match going on in Dublin and you couldn’t hire a cab or a rideshare for love nor money. So, the two of us and about sixty Manx schoolkids on a field trip piled into one bus and trundled into the heart of Dublin. (And here’s a pro-tip: Dublin is the first city in Europe we’ve been in for quite some time that was cash only on its public transit. The harried driver waved us through, but we were moments away from being completely screwed.) Once we reset ourselves, we made straight for a place held dear in our hearts: Trinity College of Dublin.

Trinity College is one of the first places we visited on our honeymoon back in 2012, and it has lost none of its charm. We didn’t go on a tour of the whole campus this time, though; we were there to see the revamped presentation of the Book of Kells. Since we were last there, they’ve erected an elaborate entrance with numerous displays about the history and significance of the Book, which is nice since, when you actually get to see the book, it can be underwhelming. After all, for the sake of preservation they only display one open page, it’s under serious glass, and no pictures are allowed. Completely understandable precautions, but that still doesn’t make for the most enthralling exhibition. Fortunately, before and after the actual display space are just chock-a-block with less precious but still interesting artifacts as well as a detailed lineage explaining why we even care about this particular book. After the Book of Kells display you actually navigate across the campus to an entirely new structure that has been erected, with further displays including an “immersive experience” that plays out much like the currently popular “living Monet/Van Gogh/etc etc…” exhibitions across the world. And, of course, there’s a gift shop.

Popping out from Trinity College we made our way back to our hotel for a pit stop, then it was a quick jaunt to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. This was on the recommendation of family, and it was a fairly up-and-down experience. On the one hand, it’s a beautiful building owing to a steady influx of tourist income. On the other hand, the steady influx of tourist income stems from the fact that the place is like Disney Catholicland. Seriously, there’s a pop-up gift shop inside the sanctuary. I’m not Catholic and I still had my nose fairly bent out of shape. Still, if you want to tick the box on iconic locations in the city, it’s worth a quick visit. After a low-key dinner we tucked ourselves in for the night, ready for our flight home the next day.

Ok ok, so we made it on to the Isle of Man, it’s a quirky little trip we took, great – what exactly does one do when you’re visiting? The most / only famous thing that goes on is the “T.T.”, which they locally say means “Tourist Trophy” but apparently is a general abbreviation for “time trial” in motorcycle racing. Thanks to the beautiful scenery, the legal gray area that envelops the country, and a culture of no speed limits whatsoever, it has become a very popular stop on the motorcycle racing circuit. Popular, and deadly. The Wikipedia page for fatalities on the Isle of Man Mountain Course has 270 entries, for a race that’s been running for a little more than a hundred years. It’s not just entries from antiquity, either; there were 3 deaths in 2023 while 2024 had a single fatality. My brief perusal didn’t see many years that had none. Even when the race isn’t going on, you still see signs of the race. We know this, because we were nowhere near the time of the T.T. and we still saw plenty of barriers and signage.

Hang on, John; you weren’t there for the race so what did you do? It was a trip that didn’t look that much different from our other trips to the U.K., which I mean in a good way. We saw ancient sites and natural beauty and, occassionally, poked around town to see what was what. On the north end of the island we visited Maughold Church, which is a nice enough old chapel but, more interestingly, it houses a collection of tombstones within its graveyard that date back a thousand years and more, illuminating early “viking” influences on the island. (We’re not doing the “who is or isn’t a viking” debate on the Ramble; they’ve got Christian-looking gravestones with stories about Loki on them, that’s good enough for us.) Almost two dozen headstones were gathered under an awning, not-exactly preserved but at least kept out of the worst of the elements. Signs explained with brief summaries of what you might be able to pick out of the carvings if you looked closely enough.

We also toodled to one of our classic out-of-the-way spots where the road ends up barely one lane with no visibility around hairpin turns, tucked in amongst the rolling hills. In this case it was a double-dip of ancient and (relatively) modern attractions. First, the Ballafayle Cairn which was a nice specimen of its type. Granted like almost all of them it had long since been de-nuded, but the sense of scale was still lovely to see, and seeing it set high on the hillside, with views (on a clear day at least) of land in four different directions helps explain why it was probably a chosen site in the first place. That scenery also explains why there were two different viewpoints, named after residents of the island who would come and take stock of the world down through the years. The more prominent was “Charlie’s View”. Charlie being a landowner and a “Sir” of some sort or another, his memorial viewpoint sees regular upkeep, plus there’s statuary and a lovely little weather-break for hanging out there on a windy day (of which there are probably plenty).

And then there were the Bee Gees. (Sorry, the what now?) You heard me, the Bee Gees. Apparently the famously-Australian musical brothers were in fact not-so-famously Manx-born before the family crossed the equator at some point. We had no idea of this bit of trivia before we arrived, but as we walked along the promenade in Douglas one afternoon Lisa squints into the distance for a moment before asking “is that the Bee Gees??” The statue she was looking at was probably a hundred feet away, and facing away from us to boot, but it was hard to imagine who else it could possibly be. If you are familiar with the Bee Gees tune “Ellan Vannin” (for which you’d admittedly have to be a pretty big fan), you might like to know that it is based off a poem of “traditional” origin on the Isle of Man. Still, if you aren’t expecting the Bee Gees, and are suddenly faced with a life-sized, life-like bronze representation of them, it’s startling.

Hopefully the chill vibe of this post is coming across, because our time on the Isle of Man was indeed a chill time. Not in a boring way, but a truly relaxing one. We ate well, if not spectacularly. We touristed well, if not breathtakingly. We relaxed, enjoyed the cool weather, and generally idled in a pleasant state. On our final morning we rose early, dropped our car at the ferry terminal, and prepared to make our way to Dublin.

Lisa often plans our trips. (This is all me this time, my bride is “on assignment”…) She’s great at it, and she likes doing it. There are specific moments in the planning process that I play a key role in, but she has said for years that in another life she would have been a travel agent, so mostly I stay out of her way. That said, who doesn’t like taking a break once in a while. So, this whole trip was my baby, soup to nuts. Flights, lodging, restaurants, I took all of it off her plate. (I am not trying to play the hero here; if you know me well this should sound more ominous than heroic.) I learned everything from her so really there isn’t a lot of difference in me doing. Excceeeepppt, I am unhealthily attracted to the corners of maps. There are a couple of spots I’ve had my eye on for years, and this trip was an ideal opportunity to check out the Isle of Man.

Granted, the “ideal opportunity” still involved some careful timing of multiple ferries and three different cities; when you’re dealing with micro-nations you have to grade on a curve, ok? Still, the pieces of the trip were dovetailing nicely. We landed in Dublin like we said last time, and took a bus to Belfast. Next we’d be taking the “Isle of Man Steam Packet” to Douglas on the Isle of Man and then ending up on another… er… steam packet?… to Dublin. What is a steam packet, you ask? Well, it goes back to the 16th century and… whatever, it’s an antiquated term for the ships that brought mail and stuff to the island, and now it’s your typical ferry for cars and people. The trip takes 2-3 hours depending on which leg you’re talking about; there are also flights but at least one member of my family doesn’t care for really small airplanes. So, what’s the deal with the Isle of Man? What’s the attraction?

My dirty secret is that I knew very little about the place before we made our plans to go. I first poked around it years ago along with places like Inishmore and Islay (both small islands although not nations). What I knew back then was that it had a scattering of the old megalithic sites we enjoy visiting, aaaaannd they speak English. However, by the time I was actually setting this trip up I knew that the weather was that same crisp, cool weather as the rest of the British Isles, the terrain looked absolutely beautiful, and there were just enough historical curiosities to keep us interested if we end up feeling tourist-y. Plus, there’s the curiosity of the “nation” of the Isle of Man. Even more than Ireland or Scotland, Isle of Man exists in a liminal state, with its own governing body and kinda-sorta self rule, but they use the pound as their currency and still kind of “collective bargain” with Great Britain, e.g. they also are not part of the European Union. They have leveraged their strange legal existance to become a tax haven, not that this pays off for the average tourist.

We arrived in the capital town of Douglas, picked up our rental car, and headed for Port St. Mary on the southern end of the island. We were booked into a charming bed & breakfast, Carrick Rooms, which was honestly one of the nicer places we’ve stayed in quite awhile. Charming hosts, a comfortable room, and centrally located in walking distance to dining and transport. We didn’t use the car at all on at least one of our days. Instead, we checked off an extra bucket list item thanks to a famous literary inspiration – a genuine steam engine. Tell you all about it…. shortly.

We’d no sooner got ourselves unpacked from our brief jaunt to Vila do Conde then it was time to pack ourselves right back up for another journey. The last getaway was a near-spontaneous escape from the heat, but we’d been planning this one for quite some time. We’ve told family and friends back in the States that if they make it across the Atlantic we’d do our best to close the gap if they were up for a visit. We were happily being taken up on our offer by Lisa’s sister and her family, who were taking a rare vacation overseas to visit Ireland. Us being us, we plotted a trip that ended with our rendezvous in Dublin and then worked back to include not one, but TWO bucket list items that we could finally check off.

So off we popped on a short flight to Dublin, although for now this was just a waypoint. Directly from the airport we hopped onto a commuter bus that would drop us in downtown Belfast. (Unlike the last time we pulled this maneuver, we did not start at 1AM nor did we arrive in Belfast at 4AM. Go us.) Arriving while the sun was still up, we had no difficulty navigating to the lovely Fitzwilliam Hotel; three cheers for flash sales on booking.com.

It was a wee bit surreal as it turns out that the Open was happening. (Us Americans would call it the British Open, the oldest golf tournament in the world, held over four days.) The City was festooned with golf-related events and experiences, and waiting for us in our hotel room were little party favor / welcome gifts – golf balls made out of white chocolate. Sure! After checking out the room and unpacking a bit, we headed out to dinner at Mourne Seafood Bar. Total yum! It’s a great place for oysters in particular and the mussels were excellently garlic-y and tender. (We did think the dough on the lobster gyoza was a bit too thick.) We slept very well.

You may remember that we enjoyed our visit here in 2022, we ran into . . . difficulty . . . seeing the Giant’s Causeway. If you’re an OG Sasha’s Doghouse fan you may even recall similar difficulties on our honeymoon in 2012. This time we were by gosh and by gum going to succeed! Making it completely easy (and not our usual style) we booked with PaddyWagon Tours for a day trip that would leave all of the planning in the hands of locals. We scored quick breakfast and then let them drive us all around for a day.

We started with the Dark Hedges, which have been made famous by the Game of Thrones TV show, and which we found underwhelming. No matter how atmospheric and cinematic the location may have been on the show, when its swarmed with people and vehicles it’s … just a bunch of trees. Instead, we took this picture about 100 meters away from the overrun hedges. It may not be fancy or featured on the television, but a) it’s prettier in our opinion, and b) we had it all to ourselves.

Much more interesting was the dragon door at a nearby Inn carved from the wood of fallen trees in the Hedges, which has apparently suffered significant losses from immense tourist traffic. There are a few of these doors scattered around the world and you can even get stamps in a little passport thingy to show when you’ve completed your collection. Sorry, there’s probably more lore here to unwind but as you’ve probably gathered by now neither of us are particular fans of the show.

From there we went on to Dunluce Castle, a glorious ruin set on the edge of a basalt outcropping. The views are lovely and it was wonderfully scenic. John had a moment of cognitive dissonance as we grappled with the fact that the vibe was of an incredibly ancient site but the castle actually only dated back to like the 1700s. That’s what being on the Irish coast will do to a place; eek. He got over it and enjoyed the visit immensely.

And, finally, we arrived at Giant’s Causeway! The natural element is interesting and worth seeing, but not during the summer when the rocks are covered with people. Frustratingly, the Visitor’s Center is an expensive 15 pounds and is the easy way to get to a cafe and souvenir shop. However, there is no need to pay the fee, you can just walk through a tunnel (that looks like the way to a car park) and then down about a mile to the rocks themselves. However, there is also a tram for a small fee that takes you one, or both ways. (Good idea, especially on the return trip uphill.) By the by, this was our main gripe with the Paddywagon tour. While an incredibly close reading of the text probably reveals that they never said boo about the visitor center, they go to great lengths to sell you on the idea you were being ushered along to all of the spots. (We didn’t pay an entrance fee at Dunluce, for example.) At the Causeway, however, we pulled up along the curb just outside the place and were dropped off with instructions to meet back there in am hour and a half or so. “Nah, don’t worry about the Visitor Center, who needs to be bothered with that nonsense?” Us. We need to be bothered with the nonsense. Sigh.

It wasn’t actually the end of the tour, as we stopped for lunch at the “Fullerton Arms” which was a huge disappointment. We didn’t get there until after 2pm — so bring snacks to tide you through the many hours between pickup and lunch. The food was bland and very “industrial”. When they drop you off at the Causeway you peruse a terse menu and then you choose fish and chips, shepherd’s pie, ceasar salad, and option four whatever the heck that was, which would then be waiting for you at the inn. The food was “meh” and also not at all cheap, which is particularly irritating when it was not discussed ahead of time and there were no other options presented. It wasn’t terrible, just managed and presented badly which just got us off on the wrong foot. All that being said, the tour accomplished what we wanted it to. It was back to Belfast for us, for a quiet night before catching the Steam Packet the next day? What the heck is a Steam Packet? Tune in next time!

Our “reason” for going to London was primarily to see the “Poets and Lovers” exhibit at The National Gallery — the first major exhibition of Van Gogh’s work there since 2010 and part of the NG’s 200th Anniversary celebration. Labeled a blockbuster and once in a lifetime, the show features 61 works, including some of the most revered and rarely, if ever, loaned. The curators aimed to show the artist rather than the tortured soul we probably all know about. There was no self-portrait with ear bandage, for example, and a great deal of text placing him in the context of his connections to many other painters of the time. We see the painter as part of a creatively expressive time who was far more deliberate and thoughtful about his work than audience might have realized. (Fair warning, this is an image-heavy post.)

But it’s like that every day, sometimes in passing I find such beautiful things that in the end you have to try to do them anyway. ~Letter to his brother, Theo

Most of the six rooms feature works from his time in Arles (February 1888-May 1889) and at the asylum outside Saint-Rémy-de- Provence (May 1889-May 1890). This was a period of astonishing production for the artist, he completed around 200 paintings in Arles and 150 in Saint-Rémy, which works out at one every two days.

The curators often displayed works according to Van Gogh’s writing about how he envisioned they might be seen by visitors to his Yellow House, or in a gallery. One such is the triptych of two of the Sunflowers (one from the National Gallery and the other from the Philadelphia Museum of Art.) on either side of Madame Roulin Rocking the Cradle (La Berceuse) from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. All the three paintings are displayed in imposing frames, hung some distance apart, although Van Gogh wanted them to almost touch, like an altar triptych. He envisaged them presented in simple, slender wooden frames. The two Sunflowers would have been in natural pine and the frame for La Berceuse painted red.

His works display motion; writhing trees, fields like waves, skies filled with air in colors but rarely just blue. A highlight for me was the inclusion of 19 reed and ink drawings, some displayed next to his impasto oils with their thick, dizzying swirls of paint of the same subject. In seeing them displayed thusly, you can get a sense of what he saw.

It was, however, deeply disappointing that the curators chose to overlook the vital part his sister in law, Jo van Gogh-Bonger, played in managing his legacy after Van Gogh’s death. It was she who carefully managed the placement of his works in exhibitions, galleries, and museums all over the world.

While “once in a lifetime” feels a bit over the top, this was a magnificent exhibition that captured an unusual part of Van Gogh’s artistic legacy.

All images in this post are from Wikipedia and licensed under CC 2.0. Cover photo: The National Gallery Photographic Department/Photo: The National Gallery, London

The last excursion of note on this trip was into Cardiff, the capital of Wales. To this day I don’t think I (hi, it’s John this time) I could accurately explain the exact political status of Wales; what I can tell you is that it has a capital but nobody checked my passport. We’d heard a lot of good things about the city, and thanks to the BBC’s fine selection of programming over the years we’d had a decent look at bits and pieces of it. The time had come for us to see for ourselves. First thing’s first, though – Welsh Mountain Ponies!

The drive to Cardiff to Dursley is simple enough – take the highway to the outskirts of Bristol and then hang a right. Cross the river on a fancy bridge and Robert is your father’s brother. Like most of our drives, it’s not a series of towns and suburbs like a lot of drives in the US. You’re either at your destination or you’re in the countryside. Case in point, we were within sight of the Cardiff waterfront with its repurposed ships piers and new-built event center when we saw Welsh mountain ponies… like, in the roadway. They were grazing, totally at ease, clearly not new to the experience, but they were a mere few feet from the highway, with no sort of barrier or fence to separate them. It was bizarre and lovely all at the same time.

Cardiff, for these visitors at least, is a city in two parts. One part is the aforementioned waterfront. Clearly the subject of intense redevelopment, it must have been a purely industrial area at one point. With a lot of work there are now shopping and tourist venues there, as well as at least two spaces for concerts and sporting events. It is a sort of oasis on its own, with an expanse of barely-developed terrain between the waterfront and the proper city center. Also in the waterfront oasis is the Wales Millennium Centre, or “that building in Torchwood” to a certain segment of the TV-viewing population. Lisa very much wanted to get a picture of “the spot” where the TARDIS once parked and which, in show lore, still maintains an invisibility effect. Alas, there was a family fun carnival… thingy going on, and the exact spot was actually occupied by a cotton candy vendor. Which, really, is its own kind of wonderful but not what we were hoping to find.

If these comments are leading you to believe that we were drawn to Cardiff because of Doctor Who / Torchwood lore more than any ancient history… I mmmeeeeeeaaaaannn…. that could be disputed in court to the point of reasonable doubt, but you’re certainly not entirely wrong. In fact, Lisa had gone on a binge of rewatching Torchwood just before, and during, this trip. I don’t know that she was consciously prepping but it was definitely on our minds to varying degrees. We don’t tend to fly our nerdy freak flags in public much, but indulging in Who-related tourism is not out of our wheelhouse in the slightest. Speaking of which, there is a lovely bit of emergent fandom down on the pier. A character in the show Torchwood, “Ianto Jones” was killed off in a dramatic way; it was a small cast and everyone in it was a crucial part. Fans of the show spontaneously erected a shrine to the character, and it has persisted to this day. In fact, the municipality eventually made it a formal part of the pier and provide basic maintenance to keep it up. Keep in mind, the episode aired in 2009 and the shrine is still a going concern. Nerds, gotta love ’em. Us. Whatever.

As I said, Cardiff’s attractions are in two hubs; away from the waterfront and probably a 10-minute drive is the historic center, where you can find municipal buildings, museums, gardens and so on. We concentrated our time at the National Museum – Cardiff and in particular a really amazing exhibition entitled “Reframing Picton.”

So, first some background for non-Welshies like us. (I’m sure they just love the term “Welshie”, you should use it a lot if you’re ever there.) Thomas Picton has been a favored son in the lore of Wales for a couple of centuries now. His crowning achievement, such as it is, was being the highest-ranking officer killed at Waterloo in the armies opposing Napoleon, having achieved the rank of Lieutenant General; he was noted in his era for his service under Wellington in the Iberian Peninsula War of the early 1800s, but that is hardly recalled today and if you think I didn’t have to look up the details then you’re… well, you’re very charitable.

What he was also notable for, however, was for being a Governor of Trinidad. Or more precisely, a tyrannical despot of Trinidad, so violent and cruel that even in the era of enslavement and genocide he still managed to be called to stand trial for his treatment of the Trinidadians. He used a particular form of military punishment on the people there so frequently and forcefully that it was re-named after him – “picketing.” (I’m not going to subject anyone to surprise torture porn, the wikipedia link included can get you up to speed.) Once he became elevated as a pseudo-martyr of the Napoleonic campaigns, however, it quickly became ‘distasteful’ to even mention his behavior as governor.

In response to the Black Lives Matter movement, however, the curators of the National Museum felt called to action (or maybe they always wanted to do something and this provided political capital – I can’t claim to know the intricacies of Welsh politics). A truly awesome (as in inspiring awe) exhibition was put together that provides both direct historical evidence of the full measure of Picton’s life, but also employs the artist’s eye to explore and provide comprehension to audiences who, after all, are now centuries removed from the truth and only know the name (if they know it at all) for the monuments and portraits that exist of the man. In one truly you-can’t-unsee-this moment, video plays of three different young Trinidadian girls in beautiful dresses – communion dresses in appearance if not in fact – that are shown smiling or simply standing; meanwhile, the transcripts from Picton’s trial, in which girls these same ages testified as to exactly what he did to them, are superimposed upon the girls. Not that the man doesn’t deserve the treatment, but it was almost impressive in how unsparing the whole installation was in its take-down of a purported hero of the nation. As we left, we both couldn’t help but wonder at how much more effective BLM seems to have been in inspiring action in other countries apart from the United States.

This was our day in Cardiff, and in fact this was our trip to England. Our other days were often lovely but they were quiet; cool, often wet, frequently lovely, but not given to long stories (and if I’m saying I can’t be long-winded about something, you know it had to be quiet). We left a nice review of the people we house-sat for, and they did the same for us, and for all we know this might happen again some day. But for now, we’ve had our shot at southern England and we’re glad to be home. Which, actually, is a funny thing to say as I wrap up this post while sitting in an airport lounge, waiting to begin our next adventure. See you soon from North America!

Vignette Um: Cover me!

Like many people, we rely on the insurance provided by our credit card when we rent cars; rental agencies typically have downright brutal rates for coverage, while it’s included in your card. (Always check first, don’t assume you have it!) As we prepared for our honeymoon back in 2012, however, there was a consistent piece of advice we were seeing in various travel forums – get the comprehensive coverage. We were nonplussed, but there was a consistent narrative that the rental agencies in Ireland (Northern or the Republic, it’s not a regional thing) will terrorize you with charges and fees, defining the mildest dings as full replacements and the like. It seemed… well, borderline racist, but even the Irish commenters would say “yes, get the coverage.” And so, we paid a few hundred extra euros for comprehensive accident/collision/meteor strike coverage of our car.

Well. Our honeymoon consisted of a deosil circuit around the edge of the country, scooting south from Dublin and poking around in numerous villages; a new one every day (not something we’d do again, but hey, live and learn). We drove a lot. And when we did it was almost exclusively on the charming back roads. In case you aren’t familiar, “charming back roads” means that two-way traffic proceeds on 1.9 lanes worth of pavement, often with thick stone walls abutting the lane under the deceptive cover of a thick carpet of greenery. Not only that, but some of the most interesting things we wanted to see were on even lesser roads, sometimes of the dirt variety. In short, we were provided ample opportunity to bang up the car and to be frank we took advantage more than once. Most notably were the scratches in the paint from all the vines and such we brushed up against; We never hit a wall but we skimmed along them plenty. Then there was the very deep pot hole that was disguised as a puddle; there’s no way that didn’t bang up something on the underneath. When we pulled into the rental return lot at the Dublin airport you could practically hear the Scrooge McDuck coin-clinking sound going off in the attendant’s mind. We produced our insurance documentation and he noticeably deflated before wishing us a bon voyage.

Get the coverage in Ireland.

Vignette Dois: Google Day-drinks

Let’s get the obligatory disclaimer out of the way: of course the internet has transformed the travel experience, usually for the better. The general reliability of services like Google Maps means, however, that its shortcomings our more noticeable. Less-populated locations, or regions with poor data connectivity, are ripe for difficulties. These troubles happen often enough on our travels that we’ve taken a “ya gotta laugh or you’ll cry” attitude, and so we simply decided that Google often drinks during the work day, perhaps on its lunch break. We have been told to walk down a canal in Venice (blub blub!). We were once sent down an increasingly narrow lane on Naxos (the Greek island) late at night, which eventually ended as the driveway to a home. This necessitated backing up, in the dark with no street lights, for about a kilometer before we could get the car turned around.

Most infamously for us, in the Italian hill town of Orvietto we were sent on a circuitous route to get to what ought to have been a straight-forward destination. We long ago gave up second-guessing the google directions because the times we’ve done it have invariably gone wrong; we were being directed away from a route we knew well because of a traffic snarl we couldn’t see. “Ha, this isn’t the way!” we would say, and then stew in traffic for an hour. No, our faith in these directions is just that – faith. We have no empirical proof that the directions are good, but it often turns out ok. Anyway, we listened to google as the little cobblestone lane got narrower … and narrower.. until finally we reached the last, left, turn that would put us on a proper avenue. However, the aperture for the turn was between two buildings that were, it turns out, 10 or so centimeters tighter than the width of our car. It was only with the jiggling of a 40-point turn and the guidance of some very friendly and helpful locals that we extricated ourselves with only modest damage to the paint of that car. Ouzo, grappa, moonshine… when google drinks, google goes hard.

Vignette Tres: I knew I should’ve taken that left turn in Albuquerque.

Once again, we’re in Italy. This is 2017, and the whole digital apparatus of our lives is far loosey-goosier. (good luck, spell check!) And so we find ourselves navigating through the city of Siena with a cached map that is meant to guide us to some of the veeeeery limited parking in the city. Ah, Siena! A beautiful, ancient city, most famous for the horse race that goes on annually, a contest between the various neighborhoods within the city. Each district has its own livery and symbols, and it is an intense point of pride to claim the prize each year. The race takes place on the piazza del campo, an expansive brick plaza for pedestrians to enjoy; it is a tradition to gather each day in fair weather to watch the light change against the buildings as the sun goes down. People sit in cafes as well as upon the campo itself.

So, we proceeded into beautiful Siena. If you’ve never been into one of these old cities, they are often warrens of twisty-turny avenues; the European aesthetic is often to prefer the retention of old buildings rather than knocking them down to allow for modern roadways. And so we are twisting and turning our way, trying to follow some tricky directions (remember, google drinks!). Fortunately the name of our parking destination begins to appear on directional signs, so we are close! Another couple of turns and it feels like we are almost there. There is an emphatic sign about the left turn we are about to take but… welp, it’s in Italian. So left we go, down a tight little lane but we can see it widens just ahead. Yep, it does.

Onto the campo.

“Oh poop” we both say (more or less). Panicked, we look around. There is absolutely no way we are going to drive across the campo, regardless of the exits that beckon from the far side. It is unlikely that la polizia will accommodate us in any case. Lisa looks to our hard-left and sees a small lane; we make a break for it. Windows down, we are waving people out of the way so we can scoot off this UNESCO World Heritage Site pronto. Y’all… this lane was so narrow and so in use it was crazy. There were cafes that had outdoor seating, and hand-to-gods with our windows down we could pick olives off of the tables. A waiter saw us, shrugged in classic Italian fashion and scooted a chair a few inches out of the way.We were like a whale swimming with dolphins, where the dolphins were the pedestrians who were supposed to be there. We honestly should have turned the engine off and kicked ourselves along like a scooter. We look back and laugh, but we were naturally mortified in the moment.

Believe it or not, despite all of this (and this really is just a sample) we still enjoy the freedom of driving through the back roads of Europe. We did it earlier this year in Scotland with pleasure, and will continue on in the future.