I’m just back from a whirlwind trip to London, Wales, and Copenhagen—as we found ourselves needing to use or lose COVID travel vouchers. The original plan back before the world fell into the surreal was for our youngest son, wife and I to visit our daughter on foreign study in Vienna, then all head to Budapest and Prague and environs. COVID descended just as we were finalizing plans that March.
Instead we took this less fully planned/executed trip where one goal—given my “crazy” decision to quit my job and jump full-on into my writing—was to spend as little as possible.…
I also used the trip as an opportunity to work with my camera and photo editing software to try to see if I could even come close to capturing some small portion of the emotional experience of the trip—my first major foray since COVID struck, and my first time seeing some old, and very very old friends for the first time in too many years.
I’ll surely use the trip—and my journal entries and many snapshots and more carefully constructed photos—in future posts, but for now, here is a brief “photo essay” of the trip with a handful of the hundreds of photographs I took.
London: We stayed with the daughter of an old friend of ours from Mexico. Many years ago, she lived with us for a time and helped tend our three children. She now has a lovely, mischievous 3-year old daughter of her own, and a charming Uruguayan husband—and I so enjoyed being surrounded by the storybook streets near Hampstead Heath, strolling many miles around downtown London, then returning to her home each day to hear Spanish being spoken:
Wales: For this part of the journey, we struck out on our own, my wife, youngest son and I, renting a car in Llandudno, Wales and heading west for Anglesey. My wife, whose first name is Dwynwen, was determined to visit LLandwyn, the ancient site of the church of Saint Dwynwen, Welsh patron saint of lovers (Saint Dwynwen’s day the Welsh version of Valentine’s Day). I clutched the wheel of our tiny Toyota trying to judge widths of hedgerow-bordered roads, lorries bearing down, driving on the wrong side of the road while sitting on the wrong side of the car…” (these two wrongs not quite making a right). The landscapes here were as stunning as I’ve ever seen, and I understand why the second season of the Game of Thrones sequel, House of Dragons, was being filmed on a nearby beach.
Copenhagen: As a 20 year old, I lived with a family just north of Copenhagen while on foreign study, and I have remained in touch with them lo these many (40!) years. My “Danish brother” twice visited us in the states, well before we had children of our own, and he is now a mid-50s father of his own. We visited my Danish family, two “sisters,” and my Danish mom now in her 80s, still active and living a good life in her a large, lovely apartment in town. My Danish father, who played a significant role in my creative/intellectual awakening, sadly passed away some time ago. I can’t fully express the emotion of again seeing people and the city I hadn’t seen in so many years.
*All photos by the author.
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