Our Christmas Break Trip part 1: Travel, Hotel, Hay-on-Wye, & Hereford

After Boxing Day, Mummy, Daddy, and I rented a car and headed west. We visited parts of Wales and the towns along the border in England. It was a lot of fun!

In England, I'm already old enough to sit in a car seat that faces forward! I liked that a lot. I actually slept pretty well in it, though Mummy kept worrying that I would get a sore neck. She tried to help by snuggling the blanket up under my chin, which helped a little. At first, it was really weird that Daddy was driving on the other side of the car, but Mummy and I got used to it. He did such a good job!

 We got stuck in a lot of traffic on the way to Goodrich. So when we arrived, it was already dark. But that's ok--I was ready to be out of my car seat and play in our hotel! We stayed in "Ye Hostelrie" in Goodrich, just 400 meters from a really old castle! We had a really cool window in our room that Daddy really liked. They had a cot for me (we call it a crib in America) and housekeeping even made it for me every day! I thought that was really nice. There were a few ladies that are Mummy's age who ran the hotel. They made us breakfast every day, made our beds, and got us our dinner every night. I thought one of them, named Emily was really pretty...

We ate in the bar every day while we were there. We had English Breakfast in the morning. Eggs, toast, beans, bacon, tomatoes, and even a big mushroom! My favorite part was the eggs and the orange juice. For dinner every night, Mummy ordered chips to share. I LOVE chips! And I love ketchup, too.

Our first full day on holiday, we went and visited Hay-on-Wye, a town in Wales. Hay-on-Wye is a village on the border of England and Wales. They have the world's largest (and oldest) used bookstore! Of course when Mummy read about it she knew she had to visit. in 1961, a man named Richard Booth started buying books from all over the world an sending them home to his sister. Once they had a lot of books, they opened up their very first shop! Mummy bought a book at his shop--it's an hold book of English Carols.

Mummy and Daddy both really liked Hay-on-Wye. It had lots of windy streets, with a really cool clock tower, grocers, and antiques. Another fun thing, is that lots of the signs have both English and Welsh words!

There are 60 bookshops in Hay-on-Wye! Mummy and Daddy were in heaven! 

Mummy enjoyed taking pictures of me with her new camera. 

I really liked Hay-on-Wye, too! Mummy and Daddy said that maybe one day we should open up our own bookshop there. I could go for that!

After we went to Hay-on-Wye, we traveled to Hereford to see the cathedral. It was all decorated for Christmas still--which I really liked. It's a pretty old cathedral, and they still use the same heating system they used in the 1800s! Huge boilers on the either side of the nave (Daddy said that is the big open room in the cathedral) that get really hot. Mummy and I stood next to one and got warm.

The town of Hereford is really pretty, too. We wandered around the shops, looked at the river, and saw a REALLY old building--from the time of Shakespeare! By then, I was getting really tired and just wanted to go back to the hotel and get some chips for dinner, so we got packed up and headed to Goodrich.