Country "Fences" (August Break 2014)

"Today is..." - our prompt.

Well, today is Thursday, and in my book that means fences and linking up with Theresa's 'Good Fences'. And exactly that I am doing today.

Only, that my fences are actually not real fences. They are...

 ... walls. Same function as a fence - to either keep someone in or out. All of these fences are in the Cotswolds whose landscape is criss-crossed by walls.

It's a beautiful landscape, really, and the walls just add some extra charm.

Sometimes they separate a cemetery from the nettles outside.

Sometimes the cemetery itself is covered in weeds and the sheep are right next door - that's a pretty common picture. It's a pastoral setting, after all.

The walls are rather rough and irregular - another charming detail about them.

Evening Reflection (August Break 2014)

Today's prompt - "reflection".

We found Stanway House in the Cotswolds after we had our lovely dinner in the pub. This is a Jacobean manor house located near our farmhouse bed and breakfast that we stayed in for the night. It was around 8:30pm, but still light - I love those long summer days. The sun wasn't too low to the horizon yet (that happened after 9:30pm), but its light was already warm and golden. Given that the Cotswold stone is golden as well, this makes for a gorgeous color in the evening.

The pond reflected all these beautiful hues. A photographer's paradise, pretty much. We loved to walk around the estate which was mainly this park-like side of the house.

Behind the house there is a huge fountain which rises to over 300 ft. - you can see it in the last photo, on the left half, behind the tree. It reminded me a little bit of Old Faithful in Yellowstone when it erupts.

Threesomes (August Break 2014)

The prompt for the fifth day is - not five, but three. Well, I first didn't quite know what to do with that and I was toying with the idea of skipping this one. But when I looked casually through my pictures from Europe I found quite some threesomes. Here we go!

Rainy Edinburgh - but the red still stands out

Three sunchairs in St. James's Park in London on a brilliant summer day - it doesn't happen too often, so everybody was hanging out in the park. These sunchairs are not for free though; you can rent them hourly. St. James's Park is my favorite park in busy London.

Three lovely sheep in the beautiful English countryside. Sheep belong to Britain like tea and fish and chips.

Three Union Jacks along the Mall in London. They were already preparing for Trooping the Colour, also known as "The Queen's Birthday Parade", which took place on June 14th this year.

Three scooters in Paris - another great way to explore the city.

Three gelato cones by Amorino in Paris - they serve the ice cream shaped in the form of roses. What a lovely idea. You can see a short video about it here. 

And finally, three Adirondack chairs on the island of Spiekeroog, Germany. It's time to relax now and enjoy the summer. Please, can I have some Amorino gelato?

The Orange Spirit (August Break 2014)

Our prompt today is "orange". Beside it being my favorite color, it's also the color of the Dutch Royal Family which hails from the House of Orange. Members of the House of Orange are extremely popular in the Netherlands, and thus the color orange has come to symbolize the country, and to signify national pride.

During the World Cup the Netherlands - or as in these photos Amsterdam - was pretty much covered in orange. It is such a happy, spirited color - we had to smile every time we saw some orange banners or these footballs.

The flag of the Netherlands, however, is a horizontal tricolor of red, white, and blue.

Signs in pub windows invited for special deals (Oranje, Dutch for orange, is the nickname of the Dutch national football team)

After all the games won by Oranje: Happy Hour pay one for two

and, of course, for watching the games. 

Many boats had orange decorations while gliding through the grachten - so pretty to watch.

I personally had hoped that the Oranje team would be in the final game - Netherlands : Germany. Unfortunately this didn't happen, and Netherlands "only" got third place. To honor the Dutch spirit (and since the Dutch team had just won a game the day before) Kaefer wore orange while exploring Amsterdam.

PS: I am happy, though, that the German team won the World Cup. And a little bit proud of my country's team.

Stained Windows at Notre Dame (August Break 2014)

Today's prompt for the August Break is "window".

So let's talk about the beautiful stained windows in the grand cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris. The magic of these windows is that they look like nothing from the outside. However, when you are in the cathedral it's like a different world, a world full of beautiful art work and amazing color. If the sun is shining it doubles the effect.

The choir windows to the East

The dominant color certainly is blue, in all of these windows.

Wherever you look, there are amazing windows with intriguing patterns and colors. You really need to take time to look at all of them.

But most amazing to me are the beautiful rosette windows to the North and South and the one over the entrance to the west. It feels like out of this world - so much beauty!

The Symbolic National Dress of Scotland (August Break 2014)

Today's prompt for the August Break is "pattern".

That leads me back to Scotland and their tartans. We all know about the kilts that are worn in the Scottish Highlands, we know that clans have their own tartans (and so do families etc.), we have seen pictures of the Highland Games where the participants wear tartan - so we are quite familiar with Scottish tartan.

Wikipedia defines tartan like this: Tartan is a pattern consisting of criss-crossed horizontal and vertical bands in multiple colours. Tartans originated in woven wool, but now they are made in many other materials. Tartan is particularly associated with Scotland. Scottish kilts almost always have tartan patterns. Tartan is often called plaid in North America, but in Scotland, a plaid is a tartan cloth slung over the shoulder as a kilt accessory, or a plain ordinary blanket such as one would have on a bed.Tartan is made with alternating bands of coloured (pre-dyed) threads woven as both warp and weft at right angles to each other. The weft is woven in a simple twill, two over – two under the warp, advancing one thread each pass. This forms visible diagonal lines where different colours cross, which give the appearance of new colours blended from the original ones. The resulting blocks of colour repeat vertically and horizontally in a distinctive pattern of squares and lines known as a sett.

At the Royal Mile in Edinburgh just below the entrance to the castle we could watch how tartan is traditionally made. First, we could see all the (pre-dyed) thread that is needed for making tartan.

Feeding the thread into the loom (these were all old machines), very noisy and smelly.

This is the actual loom - sorry, that this photo is so bad. The working loom was way back in the corner and you could only see it from above.

There were tons of scarfs and fabric, waiting to be made into something super beautiful.

Like this, for example - isn't it gorgeous? The dress is only £ 600...(or was it 900? I can't remember)

Better Than Its Reputation - British Food (August Break 2014)

I have decided to join in Susannah Conway's August Break again, but a little differently. She has offered an entire list of prompts that we can use or not. I will try to work along those prompts although this might not work for every day. And other than she supposed, I will not take a photo each day but use most of these prompts as an inspiration for telling you more about my trip to Europe.

Today's prompt is "lunch" - so let's talk about British food! We're not starting with lunch but with breakfast.
This is a Scottish breakfast that we had in Edinburgh - with haggis, black pudding, sausage, bacon and fried egg. It was pretty good, I liked both the haggis and the black pudding (blood sausage).

The breakfast in our farmhouse bed and breakfast in the Cotswolds looked like this - fried egg, sausage and bacon like in Scotland, but also baked beans and mushrooms, plus grilled tomatoes (the tomatoes in Scotland weren't grilled).

Both to go with tea, of course, served in a beautiful pot. Oh, that is tea with milk - the only way I can stomach tea (I am not a tea drinker - except on the British Isles).

While in England we often skipped lunch and had a real cream tea instead - sinfully rich! Scones with clotted cream and jam - heavenly!

If you don't like tea there's always the option to have a latte instead.

Which leaves us with dinner. Most of the time we had our dinner in a pub since we really like pub food. You can have traditional fish and chips,

served with beer of course (this is a pint of bitter).

In Scotland the Geek tried Haggis which is so much better than you would think. Haggis is a savory pudding containing sheep's pluck; minced with onion, oatmeal, suet, spices and salt, mixed with stock, and traditionally encased  in the animal's stomach and simmered for approx. three hours. As you can easily see, we had a different version, but it was still Haggis, and most people cringe when they hear of it - probably because they've never tried it. This was the first time that I tried Haggis as well, and I thought it was pretty tasty.

Kaefer had bangers and mash.

while I ordered the Shepherd's Pie.

In England we enjoyed food like steak pie

and seafood platter,

all accompanied by a pint of bitter.