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In 2014 Swansea, Wales will be celebrating the centenary of the birth of one of the world's most distinguished voices, Dylan Thomas. I've always wanted to visit Swansea, where he was born and Laugharne where the poet lived and wrote from his famous Boathouse. (Under Milkwood, originally titled The Town That Was Mad was set in Laugharne).  Unfortunately I was unable to find a tour that would take me to all the Dylan Thomas sites and I didn't have enough time to make the side-trip to the Boathouse.  So I settled on an afternoon in Swansea and a visit to the Dylan Thomas Centre.



 I took the train from Cardiff and found it easy enough to make my way through Swansea to the Centre which is located in Swansea's Maritime Quarter. The Centre holds a permanent collection of memorabilia on the poet and his life and hosts the Dylan Thomas Festival during October and November each year. www.dylanthomas.com




In the square outside the Centre is a sculpture of Dylan and nearby the Dylan Thomas Theatre. Had I known, and had it not been so rainy and windy, I might have taken time to wander the Swansea City Centre Trail that takes you around the city of Dylan's youth and includes landmark buildings such as the pub he frequented on Wind Street when he was a cub reporter and the fabled "Salubrious Passage". 

The Uplands Trail takes you by the house where the poet was born on the 27 October 1914, at 5 Cwmdonkin Drive, and where he wrote some of his most important work. The Uplands Hotels was where he got his first taste of beer which became one of his passions. "...its live white lather, its brass-bright depths,the sudden world through the wet brown walls of the glass, the tilted rush to the lips..."

In future, I'll visit Swansea again and make sure to take in the Mumbles and the Gower Trail which were also places important in Dylan's life. But for that one day, despite the wind and rain, I enjoyed my stroll around the city and the few hours I spent immersed in the life of one of my favorite poets.

It's taken me a long time to make a point to visit the National Nikkei Museum and Heritage Centre. I used to post regular program notices for them when I wrote for Planet Eye Traveler (The Vancouver Guide) but as many times as I'd intended to take in some of their exhibits or just pass by to say hello, I didn't get around to it.


Last week, however, I needed to stop in to pick up a gift packet for the BC Travel Writer's gala in May. Once I got there, I was more than sorry I'd neglected to go sooner.

The multi-use facility houses the National Nikkei Heritage Centre and the Japanese Canadian National Museum. It's located at the corner of Sperling and Kingsway and easy to reach by public transit if you don't have a car.

The Centre promotes understanding and appreciation of   the Japanese Canadian culture and heritage and the contribution of Japanese Canadians to our Canadian society.   They offer many programs and special events including art exhibits, a speaker's series, bazaars and many other problems both for youth and elders included. There's art classes, folk dance workshops, exercise groups such as yoga, flower arranging and even a course in the traditional incense ceremony.


When I arrived at the Centre I was first impressed by the lovely gardens that surround the building. The cherry blossoms were all in bloom which seemed appropriate.  The building itself is impressive and much larger than  I'd expected.




I only stayed a short while and mainly visited the museum on the ground floor where there is an exhibit of Ryoshi: Nikkei fishing on the BC Coast. (It runs until May 19,2013). The admission is by donation.  It displays the fisherman's life from the bustling docks of Steveston to the remote inlets on the northern Coast. For many years Japanese Canadians have made a unique contribution to fishing in BC both before and after the war.






Upstairs in the museum there is an exhibit of Taiken: Japanese Canadians Since 1877. It's an ongoing exhibit so I'll have to go back and take a look. It deals with the first arrivals of Nissei in 1877 and the hardships of the early pioneers and struggles during the war years when the Japanese of the Coast were interned and their properties confiscated.



Don't pass up this interesting Museum and Cultural Centre. It's open every day but Monday.
Check their website for more information on programs and exhibits.
www.nikkeiplace.org

This is the last part of my Seattle Adventure with a few more photos and stories about what I saw and did on my two-day visit there.

Seattle Washington is a neighbour city of Vancouver but although I've often passed through, sometimes spent a few hours browsing or shopping, I've never actually stayed any length of time. I went down on a Friday evening on the Greyhound and returned on the Sunday evening so it gave me a fair amount of time to sight-see.  My main purpose had been to see the King Tut Exhibit at the Pacific Science Center and also to browse around the Pike's Market.  It turned out my lovely five star hotel was centrally located so I could walk to many of the places I'd come to see and a short cab ride to others.

Seattle is a major coastal seaport located on Puget Sound. The name, "Seattle" comes from an Indian chief whose people once occupied that territory.  The city has around 620,778 residents (as of 2011) and is the largest city on the West Coast north of San Francisco.  Metropolitan Seattle has over 3.5 million population.  Back in the early days it was a logging town but by the late 19th century it was a commercial and shipbuilding center and a gateway to Alaska during the Klondike Gold Rush.

By the early 1900's the city was booming and it was one of the largest cities in the country. In 1913 firearm and typewriter magnate Lyman Cornelius Smith built a 489 ft. tower, at the time the tallest building west of the Mississippi. The thirty-eight storey building remained the tallest building on the West Coast until the Space Needle was built in 1962.


I enjoyed a tour through the Seattle Underground and the historic area around Pioneer Square where there's many heritage buildings. You'll see the old along with the new in Seattle making it an interesting city-scape.


That night there was a Blues band, Gin Creek, playing � four guys and a woman vocalist.  I took in a couple of sets then meandered back to my hotel.  There'd be lots more adventures the next day.

It happened I was already at the wooden arch that marks Barkerville�s Chinatown so I continued on up the road, stopping to peek in windows and shops, visit the Lee Chong Co Store-Chinese Museum and watch a woman demonstrate how to play Chinese chess.





This year was the 150^th anniversary of that famous gold find that started a stampede of adventurers and prospectors to the area converging on the gold fields.  Soon a settlement had built up with log cabins and shanties perched along the narrow muddy street. Merchants came there too, opening businesses of every description to provide for the miners and profit from their earnings. Women came too, including dancers called Hurdy-gurdy girls who came from Germany and Holland to perform in the saloons.


Unfortunately six years later the town burned down. The story goes that a young miner was trying to steal a kiss from a Hurdy-gurdy girl in a bar and accidentally knocked over a lamp which set the place aflame. The town was quickly rebuilt but the glory days were waning and when another gold mine opened in nearby Wells in the 1930s some of the population moved there, although Barkerville was still occupied until 1958 when it became a heritage site.






Had I realized just what a rich experience this was going to be, I�d have booked into one of the B&Bs right on site and stayed an extra day giving me a chance to experience Barkerville by night.  That�s definitely on my �to-do� list next time I visit the Cariboo!