UK: Swansea

Swansea (or Abertawe in Welsh) is a coastal city situated on the Gower Peninsula in Wales.

Location

A couple of dear friends (Peter and Marta) invited us to go with them away for the long weekend and it turned out to be a lovely choice! It's very pretty over there, the landscape is magical, so pretty, with the high mountains ending right on the beach, the fluffy sheep grazing around, the wind blowing and the cute little flowers everywhere... What a beautiful place.  

Their language is seen everywhere, you have really the feeling like you are in another country and not in the UK anymore! Every sign there's the English version and the Welsh one. Welsh is completely different from English, the words seem like polish; the locals are very very nice but they usually had a pretty heavy English accent that you need to get your ears used to understand it.

We were very "lucky" with the weather (considering we're on the UK), because it was sunny and it didn't rain, although it was bit fresh and windy (...nothing new there!)

On our way to Wales

Three Cliffs Bay

Rhossili Bay:

Swansea

Oystermouth Castle

We sat directly at the Swansea beach to have a lunch picnic and afterwards Peter and I decided to walk towards the water to check how cold it was and we turned up to walk for over 15 min to reach it. It was quite muddy and we got our feets quite dirty and the odd sensation of our feets sinking on it didn't bring the nicest feeling, but we did have very soft feet in the end of the day! The water was actually not cold at all, for my surprise, but were we stand out feet started to sink even deeper and we decided to return to "safe sand".

Now we're back in London with a loooot of rain, but for sure this weekend will stay in our memories forever!!! 

UK: Warwick Castle

Warwick Castle is a medieval castle situated on a bend of the River Avon, in small town called Warwick, in the Warwickshire County in England.

 Warwickshire, England

 This castle is massive and I read that William the Conqueror started its construction at around 1068, really old... Its quite nice and impressive for its size. We arrived there at around 18:00h so it was about to close. The ticket to go in costs a small fortune (around £22 per person) so we didn't feel so bad for missing it. There was a medieval event going on, so tents were set and some war apparatus were displayed. Here are some pictures so you guys can have an idea about it (maybe almost as much as we had)! 
   

                                         

                                      Source: Wikipedia



Entrance to the Castle

  

The City of "Warwick"

UK: Kenilworth Castle

Kenilworth Castle is located in the town of the same name in Warwickshire, England. It was Easter when we visited it and you can all have an impression by the pictures of how cold it actually was this day. Anyways, although very old and initially constructed by Normans and expanded with time, it is best known as the former home of Robert Dudley, the great love of Queen Elizabeth I. Dudley created an ornate palace here to impress his Queen when she visited it in 1575. The Tudor tower even hosts an interesting exhibition on the relationship between Queen Elizabeth and Dudley.

The castle was built over several centuries. Each part of it shows a different architecture style. It was founded in the 1120s around a powerful Norman great tower, but it grew bigger by King John’s reign (beginning of the 13th century), when he also designed a huge water defence around it (inexistent nowadays).  John of Gaunt also changed the castle, turning it into a palace fortress designed in the latest perpendicular style. After that, the Earl of Leicester (Robert Dudley) then expanded it once again, constructing new Tudor buildings and turning the castle into a Renaissance palace.

Kenilworth Castle was partly destroyed by Parliamentary forces in 1649 to prevent it being used as a military stronghold. Today it’s open to the public and it’s listed as an English Heritage. The once lost Elizabethan Garden has been recreated, together with an aviary and a beautiful marble fountain. It’s all a magnificent mixture of different style ruins, stories and mysteries.

Stables

Leicester's gatehouse

The Elizabethan Garden

The Norman Tower

different perspectives!

Ruins of the Great Hall

Ruins of the State Apartments

from the other side of the moat

Blick of the English country side

UK: Blenheim Palace

Blenheim Palace is a beautiful rural palace located in the little town of Woodstock, Oxfordshire. It was built between 1705 and 1722 and it was there also where the former Prime-Minister Winston Churchill was born, in 1874. Today it is a World Heritage Site (UNESCO) and also the residence of the duke and duchess of Marlborough.  It's one of the most visited attractions in the UK.

The palace is surrounded by over 2.000 acres of a wonderful park, a lake, bridges and beautiful gardens. The landscape becomes complete with the animals such as ducks, swans and pheasants. It was probably the place in the world where I felt more peacefull than ever. The tourists were mostly gone and we entered the park through a small metal gate that remains always opened. We walked around in between the sheeps and admiring the endless park until our sights could reach as well as the contrast between the green and the gray of the leafless trees, feeling an immense and inexplicable peace...

 

   

Woodstock:

Germany: Hamelin

Hamelin (or Hameln, in German) is a small medieval town situated on the north of Germany, in the state of Niedersachsen (Lower Saxony), very famous for the legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin (in German, Der Rattenfänger von Hameln).

According to the legend, the Hamelin Piper was called to catch the rats that were infesting the town around 1282. In exchange to the rats’ heads, it was promised a good payment and the Piper accept the offer.  He took is Pipe and – through his music – he hypnotized the rats and took them away, outside of the city walls, and drowned them in the Weser River. However, as he didn’t bring the rats’ heads as a proof of the service the payment was denied. The man left Hamelin but came back a few weeks later to play his songs again but this time – as a revenge – he hypnotized the children a took them very far away from there. The city was then sad, without rats but also without children.

As any other medieval legend, the Pied Piper of Hamelin is also supposed to tell stories or lessons to learn on that time, like the Children's Crusade, where a man would take hundreds of children to the south of Italy aiming to free the Holly Land (Jerusalem) and ended up in the death of several and the selling them to slavery (they would have been sold as slaves when they arrived at Alexandria.

Nowadays, Hamelin still keeps its beautiful medieval architecture and attracts many tourists, especially on Summer Sundays when the Pied Piper of Hamelin is staged with young actors playing the rats and the children, and a man as the piper. It’s a cute town, I haven’t seen any rats but sure have seen many kids!