We went to Bristol this weekend to see Ollie and his pink kitchen and then we drove into Wales Saturday and Bath Sunday.

I know this is going to sound stupid, but I was charmed by how the signs in Wales are in English as well as a Cymraeg translation. Through the help of Ollie’s trusty GPS, we stumbled into the lovely little village Caerleon and walked around the Roman remains of a amphitheatre. Then we took pictures of cows. (The cows were near the amphitheatre.) We tried to pet the cows, but they weren’t terribly interested. I think they knew that we wanted to eat them.

Then we wandered into The Hanbury - a 16th Century pub with views over the river Usk. On the way out I saw a poster talking about the pub and I learned that Tennyson had written the poem Idylls of the King there in 1856. (According to legend, Caerleon is one of the places said to have been home to Camelot.) I told Ollie and Stuart about Tennyson writing a poem there and they said, “Who is Tennyson?”

Sigh.

I’ve decided that listening to the English try to do a Welsh accent, is probably even more annoying than listening to an American trying to do an English accent, isn’t it.

I do have a confession. I drank this weekend- a total of four pints the entire weekend. 1 ale in The Hanbury Saturday afternoon. 1 beer at Ollie’s Saturday night. 1 ale in a fantastic pub we found in Bath called The Raven. 1 Guinness Sunday night. While I did drink, I am still not giving myself permission to go on the piss. The ales I justified with, I can’t get them down here. The other two beers I could have and should have passed on.

I really loved Bath and I need to go back. If you imagine away the cars and the modern stores, it is really easy to see how things were 200 years ago in this lovely Georgian city.

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