Without Lifting A Finger

 Versailles 2019. Fountain. #rlswihart13 #rlswihart @rl_swihart #versailles #france #poetry #readmorepoetry #travel #art #beauty #history 

Dorothy Mae Ann Wordsworth (25 December 1771 – 25 January 1855) was an English author, poet and diarist. She was the sister of the Romantic poet William Wordsworth , and the two were close all their lives. Wordsworth had no ambitions to be an author, and her writings consist only of series of letters, diary entries, poems and short stories. Life She was born on Christmas Day in Cockermouth , Cumberland in 1771. Despite the early death of her mother, Dorothy, William and their three step-brothers had a happy childhood. When in 1783, their father died and the children were sent to live with various relatives, Wordsworth was sent alone to live with her aunt, Elizabeth Threlkeld, in Halifax, West Yorkshire. [1] After she was able to be reunited with William, firstly at Racedown Lodge in Dorset in 1795 and afterwards (1797/98) at Alfoxden House in Somerset, they became inseparable companions. The pair lived in poverty at first, and would often beg for cast-off clothes from their fr...

Pausanias ( / p ɔː ˈ s eɪ n i ə s / ; Greek : Παυσανίας Pausanías ; c. AD 110 – c. 180) [1] was a Greek traveler and geographer of the 2nd century AD, who lived in the times of Hadrian , Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius . He is famous for his Description of Greece ( Ἑλλάδος περιήγησις Hellados Periegesis ) [2] a lengthy work that describes ancient Greece from firsthand observations, and is a crucial link between classical literature and modern archaeology . This is how Andrew Stewart assesses him: [3] A careful, pedestrian writer, he is interested not only in the grandiose or the exquisite but in unusual sights and obscure ritual. He is occasionally careless, or makes unwarranted inferences, and his guides or even his own notes sometimes mislead him; yet his honesty is unquestionable, and his value without par. [From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pausanias_(geographer )]

Motor-car in Munich. Rain, fast ride (twenty minutes), a view as if from a basement apartment, the driver called out the names of the invisible sights, the tyres hummed on the wet asphalt like a film projector. *      Bought a map of Zurich.      Back and forth on a bridge in indecision as to the order in which to have a cold bath, a warm bath, and breakfast.     

The itinerary strayed far from our original intent (it's called flying standby in summer), but we saw and did a lot of what we wanted to and now we're home again (jiggity jig). The barebones trip went: London -- Chester -- Holyhead -- Dublin -- Holyhead -- Conwy and Llandudno -- London -- Brussels -- Amsterdam.  We're thinking about making our own little film: Planes, Trains, Automobiles, and Ferries. The trains would include London undergrounds (tubes) and overgrounds, the Eurostar from London to Brussels, and an IC from Brussels to Amsterdam. The title's already too long but I suppose we could throw in taxis, shuttles, and a lone bike (the last night I biked from our hotel near Schiphol to a small village to use the only ATM). The Eurostar and IC only because we couldn't get out of Heathrow so we trained down to Amsterdam to have a better shot: it worked. Among the gold there was some dross: driving in England (we finally got used to driving on...