Barbara Thompson

I’ve seen articles touting the bikiness of different cities in the United States. Portland is so bike-y. Madison is bike friendly. Ha! Ha, I say. They need to come to Amsterdam and find out they don’t know what they are talking about. We didn’t start with bikes, so I’ll go back to the beginning. And […]

I packed yesterday. We brought a lot of stuff. I don’t think I did too bad of a job packing. We used most of what we brought, although we did have lighter weight clothes for springier weather. Regardless, we still have an absolute ton of luggage (hyperbole, of course. Each of the FOUR suitcases weighed

I had a great idea! We could get up really early and train and bus to see another castle. It is the second largest castle in the UK (Windsor is the first) and it seemed a shame to miss it, since we are almost near it. (And we are so good at trains and buses

Didja know that there are 3.1 million people in Wales, and about 10 million sheep? In square miles, Minnesota is about ten times the size of Wales, and has just less than twice the population. I don’t know how many sheep we have; I don’t recall seeing any (but I wasn’t particularly looking) Didja know

This has just been a fantastic day. I had the great idea of going to Cardiff to see the graffiti art supporting Ukraine. It appeared last week and I think it is absolutely stunning. I saw it in my newsfeed and admired it, before realizing that it is in Cardiff. I thought we should go

I got up this morning and had a bit of a panic that we are leaving soon. I don’t know what I think I need or want to do before we go, but I felt like there must be something. I calmed myself down by doing laundry. We walked to get some groceries – mince

Steve and Sheila drove us home! We spent a delightful morning with more poached eggs ala Steve (using eggs laid by Henrietta and I-can’t-remember-but-it-seems-like-it-was-an-M-name in the back garden). Deon, Sheila’s son, came over for a marvelous visit. When we last saw him, he worked in a bank and part-time (independently) as a book editor. He

I slept all night – first time since I got to Wales. Yay! Steve cooked me a perfect poached egg for breakfast and it was delicious. Sheila and I headed out to do “Click and Collect” (picking up the online grocery order), then met Keith and Steve in a parking lot downtown Aberystwyth to wander

We took the train to Cardiff, then transferred to a different train to Carmarthen. The guy across the aisle wasn’t wearing a mask, even though it is “required”. Oh well. This train only had two cars and after a few stops, it was very much filling up. The only two seats left were next to

We decided to have fish and chips for lunch. I went along to pick it up, even though it was raining. I grabbed my shopping bag to bring it back. Bringing your own bag doesn’t seem to be a thing here. Everyone seems to just get plastic bags when they check out; I do often