Quist World Tour

Our morning began with a full English breakfast at the Latvian House, sitting next to a few German people. We are not entirely sure why the full English breakfast (everywhere, not just here) comes with a scoop of baked beans, but it does. They apparently do not understand that baked beans were created to go with burgers or dogs on the grill and potato salad, not eggs and toast and the occasional bowl of cereal. In other food news, unlike our experience in other areas of Europe, chocolate is not a staple of every meal (chunks of chocolate in your granola, Nutella in your crepes). Baked beans are probably a healthier breakfast component than Nutella, but chocolate goes down a lot easier. Today we had two things on our itinerary. First, we’d heard from friends that the British Library had a great exhibit of documents. This might not sound very exciting, but it really is. At least for 4 out of 5 of us. Especially when Andrew took a picture of a “Beowulf” manuscript and then reali...

As I write this, I’m sitting in the bar in the basement of the Latvian House of London. Latvian pop music is playing, and people of Latvian descent are drinking Latvian beer and sitting in clusters around tables in a small, dark room decorated with Latvian folk art.  Why am I here? Because we are staying in the Latvian House in the portion of the building used as a guesthouse. For a very reasonable price, the 5 of us are staying a family room with breakfast included (in one of the few that doesn’t share a bathroom, hostel-style), across the street from Kensington Gardens. The location is fantastic. The Latvian Welfare Fund bought this building in the 1950s for Latvians who had left the old country, so that they could have a meeting place that would feel like home. And they’re still meeting here! This morning, however, we woke up in Wales. We got everyone going good and early, because we were trying to squeeze a few things in before we had to have the rental car back to...

Started the morning off with a quick trip to see if we could find Batman’s cave from “The Dark Knight Rises,” and we did! My negative comments about Google maps yesterday? Forget them all. We Googled our way to the Batcave, and everywhere else today; never would’ve found most of it without that app. So we hiked a short but steep distance down to the Batcave waterfall, otherwise known as Sgwd Henrhyd. The flawed hero emerges from the cave behind the waterfall like the bats that precede him. It is truly lovely, but CGI has made it into more of a cave than it looks in real life. There are other falls in the area, and we weren’t entirely certain that we’d really seen it until we were reunited with the internet tonight! Also, with the dry weather they’ve been having, the river and the waterfalls have much less water than usual. Still gorgeous. Driving through the hills, the scenery is calm and subtle, but when you move down to the river level, you find veins of vital green waterway...

If there is one thing about this trip that has been a major shocker, it’s been the weather. We haven’t had rain since our first afternoon here. The last couple of days have been really sunny and fairly warm. That’s not what we expected at all! When we planned today as a hiking day, we expected it to be wet, muddy, foggy, and chilly. Instead the day was dry and so was the path, almost. After today's hike, though, I have an added admiration for the British hikers who take the rainy, cold weather in stride, because it would have been a much different experience for us. We didn’t exactly rush out the door this morning. We went to get groceries for lunch in an older part of the town we are near, Aberdare, and I felt for once that we were in a real place where people really lived. There were a number of resale shops, some discount stores, and a lot of very normal people going about their daily routines. Not at all the posh atmosphere of London or the quaintness of York, and it w...