By Neil Up until a couple of weeks ago, I had only visited the Isle of Man twice before. The last time was in the late 1980's and it was memorable only for how miserably cold and damp it was. The rain never stopped from the moment I landed until, well, I guess, sometime long …
Confessions of a railway geek, sort of…
By Neil Okay, I must confess two things here; firstly I am incredibly behind on my blog posts and I'm secretly a railway geek. In the first case, my excuse is that we have been traveling a lot in the past three weeks, meeting old friends and exploring a lot. There is no excuse in …
Reliving Lancaster
By Neil For those who don't know it, I can best describe Lancaster as a small University City in the North West of England, not far from the much heralded Lake District. It is an old city, with archeological evidence of human habitation dating back to the Iron Age and earlier. It was a port …
Lancaster Castle
So, Lancaster Castle, a formidable structure defying the advancement of time. Must have a magnificent history. Well, actually, not really. It all started when we went to Lancaster Castle for a tour of the castle. It was quite interesting. For one thing, if you count the roman fort that stood there before the castle, it …
A short stop in Caen
by Neil Caen was always on the agenda for our world trip, although we didn't plan to stay very long. Looking back, we should have scheduled a bit longer of a stay, because Caen is a town full of history and character. There is an interesting blend of old and new, with classic architecture rubbing …
Hadrian’s summer cottage
by Neil Last Friday, the S-J's decided to go on a little hike to check out some Roman ruins just outside of Tivoli. We decided to walk because Google Maps assured us there was no public transit from Tivoli to the site of Villa Adriana----Google was wrong. There is public transit because it passed us …
Getting to know Knossos
by Neil We have been back in Italy for nearly two weeks now and I am finally getting down to writing a post about Crete. I am not, as is often the case, suffering from procrastination, but still basking in the experience. I liked the idea of Crete, heck, it's been a lifelong ambition to …
A year of discovery 