Three Weeks, Two Countries, One Exhausted Family
Summer 2019 — London, Wales, Norfolk Broads, Cambridge, Rome, Pompeii
Some holidays are a week on a beach. This was not one of those. In the summer of 2019, all five of us — Debra, Nathan (20), Sam (18), Lilly (11) and me — packed ourselves into a three-week adventure that somehow covered Wales, the Norfolk Broads, Cambridge and Italy in a single trip. I'm exhausted just thinking about it. It was also one of the best things we've ever done.
Underground History: London
We started, as we often do on UK trips, at Helen and Alan's in Banstead, Surrey. A chance to decompress after the flight and regroup before the chaos. The next day we headed into London for what turned out to be one of the best museums I've ever visited: the Churchill War Rooms.
[PHOTO: Churchill War Rooms entrance / the map room]
I've been to a lot of history museums. Most of them tell you about the past. This one puts you in it. The Cabinet War Rooms are the underground nerve centre of the British war effort — exactly as left when the lights went out in 1945. Churchill's desk. The map room with pins still in the board. The Enigma machine. You walk through it and feel the weight of the decisions made in those low-ceilinged corridors beneath Westminster while London burned above. If you haven't been, go.
[PHOTO: Enigma machine / underground corridor]
Coming Home: Penarth
From London we drove west to Penarth — my home town, perched above the Bristol Channel south of Cardiff. Six nights with Mum and Dad. These trips are never just a visit; they're a recharge. Debra's parents grew up in Kent, mine in south Wales, and the pull of both places never really leaves you however long you've lived abroad.
[PHOTO: Penarth seafront / the pier]
We took a day trip deeper into the Welsh valleys — Merthyr Tydfil direction, into the hills. There's something about the landscape there that doesn't translate in photos: the particular shade of green, the way the light sits on the hillsides.
[PHOTO: Welsh valleys / day trip]
On the Water: Norfolk Broads with Hazel and Neil
From Wales we pointed north to Norfolk. For several days we hired a boat on the Broads with two of our oldest friends, Hazel and Neil — a network of rivers, lakes and waterways threading through flat East Anglian countryside, all navigable by boat and all lined with riverside pubs. The combination is as good as it sounds.
[PHOTO: Our boat on the Broads]
It was hot. Oppressively, wonderfully, terribly hot. We struggled to sleep. Chocolates left on the boat melted into flat brown puddles. We didn't care.
Moored one afternoon next to a German family, Sam got chatting to their daughter. It turned out to be one of those chance meetings that outlasts the trip: they became pen pals, and a few years later she came to nanny in the US and came to stay with us. The Broads striking again.
[PHOTO: Broads scenery / moored up]
Nights were pub nights — mooring up at whatever riverside inn appeared around the next bend and settling in for dinner and a few drinks. Coming back late one evening to the most spectacular electrical storm: lightning illuminating the entire flat Norfolk sky, flash after flash over the water. We stood on deck and watched.
Another night someone had the idea of dancing on the roof of the boat. Strangers on the bank were invited. They came. We did begin to wonder, at some point, about the structural integrity of the roof. It held.
[PHOTO: Norfolk Broads sunset / evening on the boat]
Cambridge
A couple of nights in Cambridge after the Broads — punting on the Cam, wandering through the colleges, the Backs, that strange sensation of being in a place that feels simultaneously ancient and completely alive.
[PHOTO: Cambridge / punting on the Cam / college buildings]
Roma
Then, somehow, Italy.
We flew from London to Rome and based ourselves in the heart of the city — genuinely central, which made everything easier. Over four days we worked through the list.
Day one: the Colosseum and the Forum.
[PHOTO: Colosseum exterior]
The Colosseum is one of those places where you think you know what to expect — you've seen it in a hundred films — and then you're standing inside it and it's still bigger than you imagined. What surprised me most was the hypogeum: the underground tunnels beneath the arena floor, now exposed, where gladiators and animals were held in the dark before being winched up through trapdoors into the light. You can picture the mechanics of it. The theatre of it. The horror of it.
[PHOTO: Colosseum interior / hypogeum tunnels]
The Roman Forum nearby — the civic heart of the ancient world — needs a bit of imagination to fully grasp, but with a good guide (or a decent audio tour) it clicks into place. You're standing where the Senate met. Where Caesar walked.
That evening we ate in Rome's Jewish Quarter — one of the oldest Jewish communities in the world, and some of the best food in the city. And we swung by the Trevi Fountain, which was as crowded as expected and as beautiful as expected in equal measure.
[PHOTO: Trevi Fountain / Jewish Quarter evening]
Day two: the Vatican.
[PHOTO: St Peter's Square / Sistine Chapel or Vatican]
Day three: Pompeii.
We took the train from Rome — straightforward enough — and met our guide on arrival. What followed was one of the most extraordinary days I can remember.
[PHOTO: Pompeii streets / volcanic mountain backdrop]
Most people know Pompeii from the photographs: the ruined columns, the paved streets. What the photographs don't prepare you for is how complete it is. This was a functioning Roman city — sophisticated, layered, alive — frozen in 79 AD. There are brothels with carved signage above the doors. There are thermopolia, the Roman equivalent of street food counters, built into the pavements with their storage jars still in place. There is a full amphitheatre. There are bakeries and workshops and houses with their mosaics intact.
[PHOTO: Pompeii ruins / thermopolium / mosaic detail]
And then there are the plaster casts.
When Vesuvius buried the city, the bodies decomposed over centuries, leaving voids in the hardened ash. In the 19th century, archaeologists discovered that by pouring plaster into those voids and carefully excavating the surrounding rock, they could recover the exact shapes of people in their final moments. Huddled. Covering their faces. A dog on a chain. People caught mid-breath nearly 2,000 years ago.
You stand in front of them and the gap between then and now collapses. I found it genuinely moving.
[PHOTO: Plaster casts / Pompeii]
Day four: Piazza Navona, the Pantheon, and an hour alone with a camera.
The Pantheon is one of those buildings where the more you know, the more impressive it gets. The dome — nearly 2,000 years old — was the largest in the world for over 1,300 years. The trick, I learned, is that the concrete gets progressively lighter toward the top, using pumice instead of heavy aggregate near the oculus, the open hole at the peak. A hole nine metres across, open to the sky. Rain falls straight in and drains through the floor. The Romans had essentially no idea how it stayed up, and in some ways neither do we.
[PHOTO: Pantheon interior / the oculus]
Then it rained. Rome, mid-afternoon, a proper summer downpour.
I waited for it to stop, picked up my camera, and went out alone. Photography is my one genuine artistic outlet — I'm honestly not sure I have another — and wet baroque architecture on wet cobblestones is exactly my kind of subject. Reflections in puddles. Light refracting off wet stone. Buildings that have stood for centuries, reflected briefly in a puddle and then gone.
I wandered for an hour. It was one of my favourite hours of the trip.
[PHOTO: Reflections of Rome — puddle reflections, wet streets, baroque facades]
Three weeks. Two countries. Wales to Norfolk to Cambridge to Rome to Pompeii and back. A lightning storm over flat water, a dancing roof, a pen pal from Germany, plaster casts in an ancient city, and an hour alone in Rome after the rain.
Some holidays are a week on a beach. Not this one.
Next: [link to next post]
