St. Davids and the Mumbles Mile

The title may sound like some kind of Arthurian legend, but actually, this post will be about the rest of our third day in Wales.

I became so carried away on mini rants last times that I realized the prior post needed to be wrapped up.  Plus, we had a lot of photos of the Pembrokeshire Coast Path National Trail, and plenty of St. Davids Palace too.

After walking back to the town of St. Davids where Jay had parked, we joined a long list of pilgrims who have visited the site where St. David was buried and the Cathedral was built in his honor. 

St. David himself could have easily been considered the Patron Saint of Veganism and Sobriety.  He ate "only plants" and drank only water.

He lived from the year 500 to 589 C.E., so 89 years in an era before penicillin and other modern medical treatments.

I'd like to propose a toast to him for being such a good role model.

Keep in mind that David lived in barely literate times, and his birth has been placed between 462 and 512, and his death anywhere from 569 to 601.  As such, 89 years could be off quite a bit, but probably is about right.

In any case, David is not the patron saint of veganism and sobriety.  He IS the Patron Saint of Wales, the country where he was born.

David founded a monastic community at the site we visited that day.  A true ascetic, he preached the virtues of living a simple life by example as well as words.

The rules for his Monks included the requirement for them to pull their own ploughs rather than using draught animals.  

Monks could not own any personal possessions and were expected to spend all of their evenings either praying, reading or writing, after presumably working all day long at physical labor, except on Sunday, the day of worship and rest.  There was always water and bread with herbs to look forward to breakfast, lunch and dinner.  Yum!

"Do the Little Things" art by Bedwyr Williams

I think the Monks did get to eat honey sometimes, based on the story behind the art project of Welsh artist Bedwyr Williams, who built his structures that house bee colonies based on stories of St. David's bees following St. Aidan back to his home in Ireland. 

David founded several other monasteries and churches all over Wales, and he also ventured into nearby England.

David is connected to the legend of Jesus consecrating Glastonbury. with a legend of David seeing a vision of Jesus who told him that the church should not re-dedicated by man when Glastonbury had already been dedicated by Jesus Himself.  That might have been the genesis of the legend, or perhaps simply confirmation.  Or maybe someone made it up later to attract pilgrims.

David purportedly performed several miracles over the course of his life.  When he died, he was buried on the grounds of the church and palace we visited this day.  On that day, a legend says that the Cathedral was filled with angels, which as I understand it would have been impossible because there wasn't a Cathedral there until 1181.

Anyway, whatever small chapel suitable for an ascetic that was there must have had some really amazing vibes at the time of David's death.  The spiritual feeling apparently remained palpable for generations.

Everyone from King Alfred of Wessex,to the Vikings to William the Conqueror came to this hallowed site to pay their respects to St. David.

In 1123, Pope Calixtus II initiated a pilgrimage to visit the grave of St. David.  He proclaimed two pilgrimages to St. Davids was the equivalent of a pilgrimage to Rome.

That made St. Davids so popular that they expanded the church in 1131 and consecrated a new Cathedral there in 1181.

Learning that the tower collapsed in 1220 brought to mind Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth series of novels, an interesting fictionalization of building a Cathedral and the town that grew around it.

Like any great tourist site, St. Davids was becoming wealthy on tourist (pilgrim) dollars.  According to the St. Davids web site, "There was only one top job for an ambitious cleric in medieval Wales: Bishop of St Davids in Pembrokeshire."

And with business being extremely good, Bishops took advantage of this new money to live in luxury.  After all, these Bishops were basically royalty, usually the second son of a wealthy lord (the eldest son becoming lord of the manor upon their father's death), so they undoubtedly reasoned who better to live in a palace than a leader in the church?

St. Davids Bishop's Palace expanded to total grandeur under 14th Century Bishop Henry de Gower.

Let's just say Henry was not exactly the second coming of St. David, but even in ruins, it is a sight to behold.

Is it any wonder the Reformation sought to change the way things were done in the Catholic Church?

When Henry VIII decreed that he was head of a new Church of England that would supplant the Catholic Church in lands under his rule, St. Davids Cathedral and its grand Bishop's Palace were destined to be plundered.

Still, the ruins remain impressive to this day.

As mentioned in the first post about day three, our new home in Haverford Township echos the architecture and names of Wales, and that includes having a street in our neighborhood called St. Davids Lane (no apostrophe).

Zane Lamprey is not a saint.

He was the host of the TV show Three Sheets on the long-defunct Mojo Channel.  I'm not sure how many viewers knew about that cable channel, much less watched his show, but it was always entertaining for us.

Episode three of the first season took place in Wales.

If you watch it, you will hear about the Mumbles Mile, a stretch of bars in the seaside town of Mumbles where Zane tries to have drinks in ten bars while at the same time interviewing people to make an entertaining show.

The patron saint of productive boozers?  Nah.  Zane's just a guy who came up with a plan to make a living by having fun going around the world for as long as the ride lasts.

Jay knew how much his mom and I liked the show, so he made this a stop on our itinerary.

First, we had to drive from St. Davids, which took us on country roads lined with hedge rows taller than our standing height.

The roads were barely wide enough for Jay's Range Rover to traverse without clipping hedge rows, but these are two-way roads where fairly frequently we played chicken with approaching cars.  Fortunately, both would stop and one would back up to a slightly wider area to let the other pass.

Just to compound the stress, the speed limit is the standard in Wales: 60 kilometers per hour, which feels too fast in a narrow, winding tunnel.

Somehow, we made it through safely, stopping once to take in a coastal view.  There was talk about another four-mile hike along the coast, but fortunately we opted to head straight to Mumbles.

Jay found a good parking lot by the ocean, where Julie snapped a photo that includes the distant "mumbles," small islands from which the town got its name.

England would face the Netherlands that evening in the European Championship semi-final game.  

Watching one of these soccer matches in a pub in Mumbles was also on Jay's list.  It sure sounded like a great idea to me, too.

The White Rose would be our first stop on the Mumbles Mile, just as it had been for Zane Lamprey.

 Multiple TV screens around the pub displayed the game, so it seemed like the right place to be.

  

Standing room only, but the bartenders had no problem with baby Owen coming in, as long as he ordered a beer...I mean as long as he didn't drink alcohol.  So, we ordered our half-pints, this time "real ale" pumped with great effort by the bartender.  We stood where we didn't block others whose eyes were glued to the screens and joined in the watching experience.

When a table opened up, we snagged it.  In my exuberance at having a table, I went to the bar and added pints of the local "real ale" that Jay and I were drinking, not considering visiting additional pubs for half pints.

I wish I had re-watched Three Sheets:Wales before going to Mumbles, refreshing my memory about the Mumbles Mile challenge so I hadn't made this blunder.  Also I would have liked to have the names for specific pubs Zane visited, like Antelope, the "favorite watering hole of poet Dylan Thomas."

Baby Owen actually has an adorable face, but not for social media.

After viewing a good segment of the game, some were getting hungry, as was logical because it was later than our usual dinnertime.

We headed out to find a suitable restaurant, choosing Mumtaz, an Indian restaurant located up the street from The White Rose.

We each chose a dish, and they were all served family style.  While some stuck with dishes suitable for Saint David, a few of us ordered entrees with meat.

Every dish tasted great, though somewhat different than the same items served in the USA.

Let's call that number two on the Mumbles Mile.

This being summer, it was still light outside when we finished our late evening meal, so we headed out to finish walking the Mumbles Mile.  As a side note, England won, advancing to the finals against Spain. 

The revelers in costumes Zane found were nowhere to be seen.  A lot of the pubs apparently closed after the soccer game ended.  While it was not midnight, it was getting dark, and late for our crew with an hour, ten minutes' drive ahead of us.  And we had already reached our quota of drinks for the day, so we didn't have any more ale as we sauntered along.

A few pubs seemed permanently closed.  Jay surmised this was probably off-season for the Mumbles Mile, because students from the two nearby colleges would have returned home for summer.  In any case, Mumbles was a nice town to visit.

Maybe we'll return one day during Spring Break and see the wilder side of the Mumbles Mile, a side that Saint David would likely not approve.  Our family is definitely in the middle grounds between those extremes.

Historic Vienne, France

Being on the water will always be an important part any cruise experience, and not just because we seamlessly glide between ports.

Julie and I stretched out in lounge chairs on the Sun Deck to enjoy our sunny afternoon cruise from Tournon to Vienne.  If we had a French Balcony or Veranda, we might have enjoyed the views from our room, but we like getting up on top, where having to duck occasionally to stay beneath low bridges is part of the fun.

Upon arrival, we took the included afternoon tour of Vienne with a cheerful, knowledgeable guide.

Our first stop was the Cathédrale Saint-Maurice, which our guide pointed out was named after the martyr St. Maurice, as is Switzerland's world-renowned St. Mortiz (German spelling).  Maurice was an Egyptian who became a soldier in the Roman army, rising through the ranks to a position leading the Theban Legion.  It was in Gaul (the Roman name for France) that Maurice and his Christian soldiers first refused to sacrifice animals to worship pagan gods, and then refused to harass local Christians.  His commander, Maximian, punished Maurice's brigade by killing one in ten of his Christian soldiers.

When they still refused, another decimation (as this type of punishment was called) was executed.  It was at the Roman outpost of Agaunam that Maurice was among the martyred, and that city eventually became known as St. Moritz in his honor.  I'm sure you know, St. Moritz is a luxurious ski resort that you may have seen in the movie House of Gucci. 

Saint Maurice was also the patron saint of the Holy Roman Empire.

Back to the Cathedral itself, it was here that Pope Clement V held the Council of Vienne in 1311-2, from which he issued the papal bull abolishing the Knights Templar on behalf of King Philip IV of France.

The Gothic exterior of the Cathedral, which on our visit was obscured by scaffolding for refurbishment, contrasts with the Romanesque interior, a rather unique combination.

Because of our train ride in Tournon plus our afternoon cruise, the Viking-included tour of this historic city was limited to 1 1/2 hours, so there wasn't time to see everything assuming we wanted to be back on board in time for another gourmet dinner.  The ruins of a hilltop medieval castle, for example, were simply pointed out at the end of a street as we walked on to the next major stop in our tour, the Roman Temple d'Auguste et de Livie (Temple of Augustus and Livia).

When the Roman Empire fell in the fifth century, the Temple became a Christian church, with walls built inside the columns.  In the end, St. Maurice proved to be on the winning side of the cultural battle in which he sacrificed his life.  Of course, the French Revolution brought a new era, and it became the Temple of Reason in 1792.

One of our own founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson lived in France from 1784 to 1789, negotiating important treaties and trade agreements with European powers.  During those years, TJ visited Vienne and reportedly loved it. He replaced Benjamin Franklin, who served as ambassador during the war years of the American Revolution.

While it is obvious that the American Revolution inspired the French "Third Estate" to wrest power from their own monarchy, less obvious is the fact that France's backing of the fledgling United States at the urging of Franklin brought a heavy financial burden that exacerbated financial problems for the monarchy of France.  That led to higher taxes and the famous "Let theme eat cake" attribution to Queen Marie Antoinette, fomenting revolt against entrenched royal and papal power.

In any case, when Jefferson returned home to Virginia, he brought his love of Vienne in the form of a building design of this converted Temple to Augustus.  You will recognize it as the template for the Virginia State Capitol in Richmond as well as other municipal buildings in the United States.

Viking Daily reported that "the centerpiece of Vienne is the 13,000-seat Roman Theater on the slopes of Mt. Pipet, said to have been buried from the 4th century until its rediscovery in 1922." Interestingly, it was not included in our Viking-sponsored tour, presumably clipped by time constraints, or perhaps to diversify offerings in Vienne after having visited a different Roman Theater earlier on our cruise in Arles.

We made a stop at the lovely Hotel de Ville, which in French means city hall, where our guide told an amusing story about two backpackers who spent the night there, apparently believing it to be a hotel in the American sense of the word.

France is always proud of its artistic achievements.  We stopped to appreciate a large mural dedicated to the arts.  The backdrop is a clue to where we went next.

Vienne, a city of 30,000, remains most renowned for its Roman ruins, even as the setting for that painting, and we soon found ourselves at Jardin de Cybèle, an assortment of Gallic-Roman partial structures and streets about 2,000 years old.

It seems to have been an ancient neighborhood, with arcades of a portico leading to the forum, which is a public gathering place where I imagine debates about philosophy and politics among other activities. There also is seating for a theater of some sort, possibly honoring the goddess Cybèle, whose likeness was found on a fragment of a bas-relief sculpture of her, which is where the garden gets its name.

Cybèle was a Greek goddess who predated the Romans by at least a few hundred years.  Romans often allowed locals to keep gods and goddesses from their past, applying the traits of similar gods from their own pagan traditions, as they did in Bath.  The locals might have used the Roman name Magna Mater in that time.  She was an earth mother, not unlike Gaia or the Minoan goddess Rhea. Note that it was 20th Century archaeologists who attributed the name to the face on the sculpture fragment.

While we were there, two young teen-aged boys were video-taping themselves running through the ruins, jumping in a way that might look impressive on youtube, I presume.  They looked like they were having fun.

Being centrally located in a city along the Rhone, this old neighborhood was discovered beneath a hospital demolished to make way for a newer one built nearby.

We could have remained in Vienne like some others did rather than returning to the ship.

There are plenty of restaurants, including sidewalk bistros and Michelin-starred restaurants, though I believe that night when our chef aboard Delling served the best Beef Bourguignon that I've ever tasted.

As frequently happens for us and presumably most others, by the time we did the well-organized tour, we felt we had absorbed about as much beauty and information about the village as we needed for this trip, and the idea of returning to the ship to freshen up for happy hour followed by dinner lured us back to our home-away-from-home.

This may well have been the night when I joined a "Name That Tune" team with four strangers in the lounge after dinner.

Julie hyped my musical knowledge. so they called me a ringer, which we took as our team name, "The Ringers."

It was actually Julie, sitting right by me but at a different table, who came up with a song after I would say less than a second of violins that could have just as well been from Flight of the Bumblebee for all I knew.  I still don't know how she got that one, though she didn't know the actual name.  She sang a partial verse in my ear, and I recognized it as Livin' On a Prayer by Bon Jovi (extra points for knowing the artist).

Other than agreeing on some answers, I don't think I came up with any other answer the team did not know without me.

This being a rather sophisticated river cruise, after a few glasses of excellent local wine with dinner, contestants were asked to do the chicken dance in order to win extra points, so the room briefly looked like Old World Village during Oktoberfest.

After a Fats Domino song, extra points could be earned by a couple from the team getting up to do the twist.  Neither of the women officially on the team volunteered, so Julie did, dancing with a man from our team.  I'm not sure that she was officially on our team, but we were allowed to have up to six members, so she would have been legit under the rules.  From a room full of teams, we finished in second, but more importantly, for the next couple of days people knew Julie as the twist girl.

Atop the hill at the end of the street you can catch a glimpse of the Medieval castle ruins.