Even though I managed to resurrect the blog back in March, I don’t seem to have managed to post anything since then. This will be a quick post to link to some of the galleries I have posted since then. The next post will (hopefully) be a blog on our trip to Croatia.

In April (6th-9th), we rented a car and drove to the Pembrokeshire Coast of Wales. During the trip we visited Llawhaden Castle, Milford Haven, St. Davids, Strumble Head, Skomer Island, Pembroke Castle and Carew Castle. Highlights from the trip include the cathedral in St. Davids, puffins (see left) and razorbills at Skomer Island and Pembroke Castle. It was nice to get out and do some hiking on Skomer and at Strumble Head. We even saw the sun a few times during the trip. We also made a Google Map of some of the sites.

In May (5th-7th), we spent a long weekend in York. We took a train from London direct to York, which took about 2 hours and 15 minutes. We stayed 2 nights at a bed and breakfast just outside the city walls. Highlights for the trip included the York Minster, walking the city walls and the National Railway Museum. When we visited the railway museum, they happened to have the engine used on the Hogwarts Express in the Harry Potter movies. The engine is now called “Hogwarts Castle”, but started out in 1937 as the “Olton Hall” in the service of the Great Western Railway.

A week or two ago, the server where my blog was hosted was hacked. No damage was done, but the hacker was using the server to launch spam attacks, so we decided to shut it down. I was able to recover all my blog and gallery data. As it turns out, I was able to get free hosting from GoDaddy since my domain is registered there. The free hosting doesn’t come with any site packages like WordPress, but it does come with PHP and MySql. I was able to copy over all my WordPress and Gallery files and import the relevant databases. BlueValhalla is alive again.

Now that the site is working again, I guess I’ll have to start posting some blogs!

This post covers the second half of the trip we took to Spain over the holidays. Once again, the pictures link to my Picasaweb albums.

Granada (December 30, 2011 - January 2, 2012) - The Alhambra

Cordoba (January 2-4, 2012) - The Mezquita-Cathedral, Flamenco and Alcazar

Castillo de Almodovar (January 4, 2012) - Castle in Almodovar del Rio, about 26 km from Cordoba

Mary and I went to Spain over the winter holidays (December 25 - January 4). This was the first visit to Spain for either of us. Since we were going in winter, we decided to stick to southern Spain; more specifically Andalucia. We started off in Seville the hired a car and drove to Ronda, Granada and finally Cordoba stopping at various places along the journey. We had planned a similar trip over the holidays the previous year, but our trip was cancelled due to snow at Heathrow. Fortunately this year the weather cooperated.

This post covers the first half of the trip. The pictures link to my Picasaweb albums. I will follow up with the rest of the trip in a later post.

Seville (Dec. 25 - 28, 2011) - Highlights include the cathedral, Alcazar Real and the Plaza de Espana.

Jerez de la Frontera (Dec. 28, 2011) - Visited the Bodega Tio Pepe to sample sherry.

Ronda (Dec. 28-30, 2011) - Classic white hill town straddling a gorge.

Olvera (Dec. 30, 2011) - Another white hill town with a castle (which was closed)

Paraje Natural El Torcal de Antequera (December 30, 2011) - Cool rock formations.

To be continued…

Mary took me to Scotland for my birthday back in September. I posted some pictures, but never got around to blogging. The pictures are on the Scotland page of the gallery. Here are a few samples: