Generations Homestead: Trip - Day 1 and 2 Highlights

We landed in London at about 9 am; Corban and Annalisa landed about 6 hours later. Our original flight would have landed us all together at about 6am, however that was cancelled. We endured.

The first 3 photos were taken in the United Lounge at O'Hare ... a very narrow window of time when all three children were sleeping at the same time. :) :)

I enjoyed checking this screen out once in a while.

The second part of the photo above; it would switch.

Today we drove through Oxford; I'd love to spend more time there some day when I can actually walk around. From here we drove through various small villages of the Cotswolds, and had several near-death experiences on the single-car roads. A lot of shimmying when there's oncoming traffic, and God forbid if it's a bus. "Stressful" is a very light way of saying it. Even still, the Cotswolds are absolutely beautiful ... I just think they should include the roads of death on Escape to the Country.

Here are a few photos of the Cotswolds.

From here we headed to our final destination for this night: Ludlow. This is a smaller town on the south end of Shropshire. Again, absolutely beautiful.

I did not take photos of Ludlow.

The next morning we all headed to the ferry terminal in Holyhead, Wales. Driving through the Shropshire region was stunning. We stopped in a really neat town named Conwy for lunch. Side note - there were several very interesting city names in Wales, however the one that caught my attention was: Abergwyngregyn. That seems like a mouthful, however it might be really simple to say. Road signs in Wales are written in English and in Welsh. I had to look it up, and found this handy breakdown: Aber + gwin + greg + in. Now we know.
This town name also caught my attention: Llanfairpwllgwyngyll. WHAT?! That seems "worse" than the first one. I gave up trying to understand this one, and apparently the name used to be a LOT longer ... as if it wasn't long already.
Anyway ... back to Conwy. This is a really neat town that was built up around / within the Conwy Castle, so we had to drive next to the castle and through a few gates to get to what I'd call the downtown area. I think I could spend a few days here.
These photos were taken from my phone while recording a video, so they are not the best.

I had avocado and mushroom panini - DELICIOUS!

Everyone else had fish & chips with mushy peas.

I was really looking forward to riding the ferry, and was not disappointed! What a way to travel! When I hear "ferry", I think of something utilitarian because that's the only ferry I've ever been on (Seattle area). However this was more like a full blown cruise ship, though most of the decks were for parking and shipping. 11 decks in all, and several private cabins for quiet rest. A fancier restaurant, a café vibe restaurant, a place for children to play (it was a bit crowded and loud), and more. It was the Stena Adventurer. Almost 700' long, holds 500 "cars" (I saw a lot of semi truck trailers, so I'm not sure how they classify that?), and 1,500 passengers (not including crew members).

Getting on the ferry.

Private Cabin

Bathroom in Private Cabin

Coming in to Dublin

After we checked into our hotel rooms, we walked to a lovely pub for dinner. Here they had a few older gentlemen playing traditional Irish folk music, and sometimes the pub patrons would start singing along. Some of us had steak and Guinness pie, and some had Irish Stew. It was a very good.
I got to chatting with the man next to me. :) We chatted about all sorts of things, but the one thing I'll share is that he highly recommended Guinness (made right there in Dublin) over the stout that I tried. I tried Guinness at some point later (maybe the next day??) and agree with him whole-heartedly. But he said the Guinness in Ireland is much better than what we have here in bottles.