Aberystwyth: Exploring a seaside resort in Wales

by Sean McLachlan on


When deciding where to go for a beach vacation, Aberystwyth in Wales probably isn’t the first place you think of. It wasn’t ours either. My wife and I picked it on the advice of an English friend who had never been there and about an hour’s research on the Internet. We like to travel by the seat of our pants because it usually leads to a great experience. Usually.

Since this will not be an entirely positive article let’s get the downsides out of the way. First, the beach is stony and smells of rotting seaweed. Second, in four days of eating out at restaurants recommended by locals the only decent meals we had were at our B&B and a Sunday roast at The Fountain Inn. Third, there’s no nightlife outside the pubs and we saw a bunch of football hooligans fighting on the street outside one of them. Blood flowing, police sirens wailing, the whole nine yards. I feel bad mentioning these things because the locals were generally very nice. Most of those football hooligans were actually Scottish. Let’s get on to the good things.

Aberystwyth has been a popular seaside resort for a century, although now it’s suffering from competition from easyJet and Ryanair. In the days before £100 round-trip fares, working class people could only afford to go to places like Aberystwyth or Blackpool. Now they can go to Cyprus or Spain. While this is bad for the local economy, it does bring prices down, making Aberystwyth a good spot for budget travelers. Our B&B, the Seabrin Guest House, was a ridiculously cheap £55 a night for me, my wife, and son. We got a delicious breakfast and a huge bay window overlooking the sea. Some of our best moments in Aberystwyth were lounging in front of the Seabrin drinking beer and watching the sunset with the owners.

%Gallery-129146%Aberystwyth has ancient roots. There’s an Iron Age hillfort just outside of town and the remains of a castle founded in the 12th century stand picturesquely on the seaside promenade. This promenade is good for some lazy strolls, especially in the late summer evening as the last rays of sunlight turn the sky a faint pink and the water a rippling cobalt. Many locals build fires on the beach and hang out enjoying the view.

Museum goers will want to see The National Library of Wales, which has exhibitions of rare books and manuscripts.The regional museum, called the Ceredigion Museum, makes the understated boast that it’s “sometimes described as probably the most beautiful museum interior in Britain.” Housed in an old converted music hall, it features displays of archaeological finds and historic artifacts from the area. While I was here I had the weird experience of showing my five-year-old a record player and having to explain what it was. A few minutes later I saw another parent doing the same thing!

My son loved the Aberystwyth Cliff Railway that rides up the steep slope of Constitution Hill and affords a sweeping view of the town and bay. At 778 feet it’s the longest cliff railway in Britain and is an electric cable train with tilted carriages. Once on top of the hill he got to unwind in a bouncy castle before we went to see the Camera Obscura. This is a clever device that uses a rotating rooftop mirror reflecting onto a white disc inside a dark room to give a view of the surrounding countryside. This gave me the chance to give the kid a quick lesson in optics that he then repeated to everyone who came in, especially a certain girl he’d met in the bouncy castle.

Despite my crack about the local pubs, I have nothing but good to say about The Ship and Castle. This is what all pubs should be: fun, friendly, and serving up great local real ales. It’s won awards for best regional pub in 2007 and 2011. If you go to Aberystwyth, don’t miss it.

Aberystwyth is also a good base from which to explore the rest of Wales. Tomorrow and the next day I’ll be talking more about what to see in the region.

Here’s the one sign you have a CHOCOLATE ADDICTION

by Tom Johansmeyer on

It’s 3 AM. You’re at the office, top button of your shirt released and tie loosened. You’re nowhere near finished for the night, and there’s a good chance you’ll see the rest of the company show up before you go home. So, you reach into the lower right drawer of your desk, take out your stash and do a quick, refreshing line off your desk. Exhilarating.

No, you don’t have to call Nancy Reagan on me to leave an acerbic comment below. I’m not talking about coke … I’m talking about cocoa. Chocolate.

We all know someone who loves chocolate, and there are always a few who take that tasty affair to a totally uncomfortable level. Well, when Christmas comes this year, you won’t have to try as hard. When I was in Bruges, Belgium a few weeks ago, I ran into the one gift that will appeal to the choco-holic in your life.
The Chocolate Shooter describes itself as “a blast of chocolate pleasure”. And it must be true … it says so on the box! This item, which is rather disturbing, provides chocolate in snort-able form, delivering a quick shot of dark Belgian magic when you need it most. Whether it’s brought out for parties or kept under a bottle of Johnnie Black at the office, this device really is essential for the most die-hard of chocolate fanatics.

But, you know that. Who else would this contraption appeal to?

If you aren’t disturbed yet, wait a minute. The designer of the Chocolate Shooter, Dominique Persoone, claims to have taught the Rolling Stones how to sniff the sweet stuff. Seriously. Maybe this is why Keith Richards is comatose – not the drugs (just kidding, mom).

If you need to pick up a Chocolate Shooter – because you’d rather contribute to someone’s problem than help resolve it – check out The Chocolate Line in Bruges. The store also has conventional chocolate treats, so you can reward yourself for feeding someone else’s beast.

War and Travel: the Dubrovnik Gallery You Can’t Afford to Miss

by David Farley on
A Muslim man, on his knees, his hands up, his face creased with fear, kneels on the street, as firearm-brandishing Serb militiamen approach from behind. He has no idea what’s in store for him. And for the viewer of this arresting photograph, we never know the outcome of the event, though we might be able to guess.

Most people don’t go to Dubrovnik for reminders of the conflict that took place in the Balkans in the 1990s, or to remember the 1991 shelling of this walled gem of a southern Dalmatian town (the town has been so spruced up since then, only a keen eye might be able to spot scars of the conflict). In fact, the last time I was in this seaside Croatian town, the streets were filled with happy tourists, many of whom had just stumbled off cruise ships (much to the annoyance of the business-owning locals who claim cruisers never spend any money there).


But Wade Goddard, former war correspondent, has been on a mission to get tourists to think about the nature of war and what makes, as he put it, a guy pick up a gun and go shoot his neighbor. Goddard is the director and co-founder of the riveting War Photo Limited, a photo gallery in the center of Dubrovnik dedicated to war photography. It was in this space where I saw the photo described above and it (along with the entire permanent exhibition) changed the way I thought of travel a little. This is war and travel, the gallery you can’t afford to miss.
The gallery, the only such of its kind, features revolving exhibitions focusing on world conflicts, and a permanent display of photos is dedicated to the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s (which the New Zealand-born Goddard covered). And while many people don’t want to be “disturbed” on their vacations, visiting War Photo Limited is enlightening; in fact, it revealed to me the core of why we travel: to challenge and refresh our beliefs and perceptions about other cultures, our own culture, and ourselves. For travelers in Dubrovnik, a visit to the gallery seems especially important now, a time when the United States is fighting two wars, and revolutions are springing up (and, in some cases, being violently put down) throughout the Middle East.

“Too often nowadays, we’re presented with only a 15-second clip of the worst part of the day’s conflict,” Goddard said who sat down with me for a coffee in the alley across from the gallery during my last visit to Dubrovnik. “Here you have a better chance to see the reality of war. Governments tell the public about ‘limited collateral damage’ and ‘surgical airstrikes,’ made up words so we don’t understand the reality of war.”

Goddard said he wants spread the truth about war and conflict, to bring these relatively taboo topics to the breakfast table; to get people talking and thinking about them. And to do that, he puts much of the curating in the hands of the photographers themselves.

“In magazines and newspapers, there may be only one or two photos per story and sometimes the photos get mixed up in other stories or are used in ways that the photographer thinks is inappropriate. At the gallery, we don’t edit anything. The idea is for the photographers to bring their work directly to the public.”

Goddard’s done his time in the field and now wants to spread the word via the gallery.

“I had a choice,” he said. “I could retire from war zones and spend time with my family or ship myself off to Afghanistan and Iraq.”

If you’re in Dubrovnik soon, stop in and say hi to Wade. You may never look at war photography the same way again.

Venice’s Island of the Dead, Isola San Michele

by Gadling Staff on

Half an hour away by vaporetto, Venice‘s waterbus, from the chaos of Saint Mark’s square, is the Isola San Michele, a stopping point between the city of Venice and the island of Murano. Circling the city of Venice by boat towards the north, the lagoon is paved with small islands, but Isola San Michele turns heads. It is a small island surrounded by terracotta brick wall punctuated by arched tips at regular intervals. Cypress trees peer over the wall giving the appearance of a floating garden in the lagoon, until you pass round the front of the island and notice a grand entrance with three arched gates with white steps disappearing into the water. Above the gates is a simple white cross, marking the entrance to Venice’s Island of the dead.

There is a sense of serenity when you step off the vaporetto onto the unstable platform at Isola San Michele. It is one of Venice’s best-kept secrets, as most tourists will continue on the boat to Murano. The cemetery is both tranquil and surreal. Venice as a city is silent after the cruise ships go home, there are no cars and the only sound you’ll hear are the occasional footsteps echoing through the alleys and sometimes a church bell. In the cemetery the silence is broken only by birdsong. Walking between the tall cypress trees, you are aware of crunching gravel beneath your feet and you feel something is out of place.Unlike Pére Lachaise in Paris, Venice’s cemetery is surprisingly “modern,” there are no tombs or mausoleums dating back for centuries, no hoards of tourists scouring the graves name-hunting. Here, the graves are tightly packed line by line, with the path lined with cypresses running down the middle towards the grand arched gates where the coffins are carried up from funerary gondolas. If you’ve seen the cult classic, “Don’t Look Now,” the front view of the gates, as approached by boat, look familiar. From the waters, the gates are an ominous “momento mori,” a reminder of our mortality; looking out from the inside through the wrought iron, you glimpse the city of Venice lingering in the distance across the waters, a peaceful reflection of life.

Walking away from the central division of the cemetery, you’ll find the neo-classical mausoleums and tombs dating back to the 19th century that belong to prestigious Venetian families. Memorial walls for the dead, circle the island’s perimeter, while rows of tall white columbarium walls, containing plaque-covered niches for cremated remains, close in on small pathways as you head back to the vaporetto jetty.

While Isola San Michele is not one of the great monumental cemeteries – like those found in Paris, Milan or London – Isola San Michele is a curiosity, it is after all the resting place of Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Diaghilev and Ezra Pound. A key player in Venice’s history, surrounded by the calm waters of the Venetian lagoon, almost forgotten behind its terracotta walls and under its cypress trees – welcome to Venice’s Island of the Dead.

Cheap, tasty Indian food in London

by Sean McLachlan on

Indian food in London is often mediocre and overpriced, and a good curry joint is as highly prized as a traditional neighborhood pub. I’ve been to a lot of Indian restaurants in London and a new discovery I made last week ranks as one of my favorites.

Simply Indian is one of those places you’ll only find if a local tells you. Located on 25 Tabard St., it’s away from the tourist center and easy to miss. It’s poorly advertised and its website doesn’t seem to work. The food and service, however, are fantastic, and that’s all that really matters.

The menu offers all the usual favorites like Chicken Jhalfrezi and Lamb Pasanda, along with less familiar fare such as Murgh Sagrana, a mild chicken dish that’s creamy and not too spicy.

“Not too spicy” is a key term here. For heat rating I ordered a medium, which in London still often means you need to call out the local fire brigade. For too many people in this town, eating curry is some sort of endurance contest, best done after fourteen pints of lager. Indian food in India is generally not like that. At Simply Indian the spices are well balanced and are there to be tasted, not simply tolerated.

The service was friendly too, with no surprises when the bill came (something to watch out for on Brick Lane) and only came to a reasonable 27 pounds for two people. They don’t have a liquor license but you can buy booze at the supermarket right around the corner and there’s no corkage fee.

If you’re going to London’s South Bank and are hankering for some good Indian food, check them out. Tucked out of the way as they are, and not catering to the after-pub crowd, I fear for their future. Competition between London’s restaurants is fierce and I hope they’re still there when I return. Their phone number is 020 7407 5006.

[Photo courtesy Fin Fahey]