Gareth On Tour

Norway for a week

2010-07-05T10:52:00.009Z

Norway is an expensive place. Let me state that right at the start.

To be fair, I had some idea of this fact before embarking upon our recent trip to Norway - it's one of those commonly accepted things like 'France has good food' and 'Italians are all crazy'. People know that Norway is expensive. But there's a difference between sort of knowing something is true and being faced with forking out £15 for a hamburger. That sort of thing brings the truth of just how expensive Norway is into sharp focus. For the first time in my life I realised what it must be like to be one of those tourists from Asia or Africa who comes to the west and who weeps every time they buy a sandwich because when converted to their own currency it's equivalent to buying a small car. I'm just glad that I don't drink - I dread to think how expensive alcohol would be in Norway.

Anyway, financial issues aside, Norway is a lovely place to visit. It's clean, civilised, and friendly. The infrastructure is good (particularly the trains) and there is fantastic food available - particularly seafood - if you can afford it. There are very nice towns and cities to visit and the country is famous for its sites of natural beauty, particularly the fjords. You just have to accept that every time you pay for something it's going to be like passing a kidney stone, and get on with it. Which is what we did.

May and I were in Norway for a week in early June. We got a cheap Ryanair flight from Edinburgh to Oslo (or, more specifically, to Torp Sandefjord, 1.5 hours by train from Oslo - curse you, you Ryanair bastards!) on a Friday evening and we flew back nine days later on the Sunday evening. The flight out was smooth and relaxed, with a half empty cabin and a flying time of just over an hour. We landed in Sandefjord, jumped on the shuttle bus to the train station, and then climbed straight onto the train. We had a relaxed train ride in an empty carriage all the way to Oslo, passing through scenic countryside of rolling hills, rivers and lakes, wooden farm houses and small villages.

In Oslo itself we'd booked a cheap hostel for the night, a few minutes walk from the train station. We checked in to our sparsely furnished but clean room, dumped our stuff, and then headed out to get some food. By this time it was after midnight on a Friday night in Oslo and the only people on the street were those that had been out drinking for the last few hours, all of them dressed up in fashionable clothes and a fair number of them rolling about drunk. It was much like being back in Edinburgh on a Friday night.

At that time of night we didn't have much of a choice when it came to food - the options basically being one sort of fast food or another. In the end we opted for a local fast food place called Jaffs which appeared to specialise in kebabs. I've never had a kebab but I thought it was a good a time as any to try. I opted for a kebab 'meny' (or 'menu' - basically a meal deal) which comprised a kebab, chips and a drink. May got a kebab on its own. For these relatively modest refreshments I forked over the best part of £20. And so the truth of the cost of things in Norway hit home. I needed the kebab to recover after the shock of the price. The food was smashing though, and eating kebabs was to become a recurring theme of our trip to Norway.

With the food consumed we returned to our hotel and slept. The next morning we enjoyed the fiscal luxury of our free buffet breakfast (and very nice it was too, breads and cold meats and fruit juice) before returning to the train station for our train to Bergen.

The train from Oslo to Bergen was a pleasure - other than the first four hours where nobody realised we could open the windows and the whole carriage slowly baked in the heat. It was an eight hour journey through fantastic countryside, climbing steadily up into the mountains where thick snow lined the tracks despite it being the middle of June, and where we passed the world famous Flam railway which travels along the edge of a wonderfully scenic Fjord (we would very much liked to have done the rail journey but it was too expensive, so we settled for the fleeting glance we got from our own train), before descending slowly to sea level again and arriving in Bergen.

Bergen is a wonderfully pretty town. Apparently it rains there 280 days of the year, so we were lucky that when we arrived (and indeed, for our whole stay) it was glorious sunshine. We walked to our hotel, enjoying the pretty wooden buildings and open squares. We checked into our hotel - one of the very first guests in the newly opened Sorbonne (worth a stay if you're ever in Bergen: http://www.sorbonne.no/Sorbonne.html), and then went for a walk around the compact town centre. We wandered down to the small harbour and the fish market, and then to Bryggen, the oldest part of the town with its rickety old wooden buildings on the far side of the harbour (see picture below, which shows Bryggen from the harbour). We ate a 7-11 dinner of calzone pizza because it was cheap (which is a relative term in Norway), before returning to our accommodation for the night.

The next three days we spent enjoying Bergen with as much energy as the baking sun would allow. We went for a cruise to the fjords, which was very pleasant but not very spectacular. When I hear 'fjord' I expect sheer walls of rock rising up from the water, but 'fjord' in Norway is essentially any sea loch. From Bergen the cruise took us to a fjord surrounded by gentle rolling hills that were dotted with farm houses and summer cottages, very pleasant but not impressive. We took the Floibanen funicular railway up Mount Floyen in Bergen and got fantastic views over the town, then walked down through the crooked, narrow streets of old wooden houses that twisted and turned their way down the hillside - the picture below shows a similar sort of street in another part of Bergen.

We visited the Lepramuset - the Leprosy museum - where we found out that Norway had a lot to do with discovering, treating and curing leprosy in the 18th and 19th centuries. We also found out that the Lepramuset has a lovely peaceful garden at the back, but I wasn't too keen to find out why it was the ground there was so fertile. We returned to the top of Floibanen at twilight to see the sun setting - this was at 11:30 at night and the sun never really set, but we did get a lovely view of the city in the twilight as you can see.

We ate one meal in a very expensive but very nice traditional Norwegian restaurant. We wandered around the narrow wooden alleyways of Bryggen and climbed rickety wooden steps to the upper floors of the old buildings (I felt like I was on the set of Pirates of the Caribbean). And on the evening of the last day in Bergen we ended our trip by eating a very fine kebab on the steps of Johanneskirken, a grand church looking down the main street to the town centre while in the distance a school brass band played the hits of Lionel Ritchie in the main square. A bizarre but enjoyable way to conclude our time in Bergen.

On the Wednesday morning we checked out early, about 6:30 in the morning, and then headed down to the harbour to board our water-ferry to Stavanger, a four hour cruise to the south. What I saw of the journey was lovely, but I slept for most of it so the rest might have been rubbish. I'm sure it wasn't though.

We arrived in Stavanger at about lunch-time and immediately set about finding our accommodation. We'd booked a guest house just south of the city centre, a fifteen minute walk away. We found it easily enough. We were greeted on arrival by the very friendly owner, and shown to our enjoyably large room. After a refreshing cup of tea we headed back out to explore the town.

The old part of Stavanger is absolutely lovely - on one side of the harbour the town centre is made of up of old wooden buildings converted into shops and restaurants. After a buffet lunch in a quiet pub we had an enjoyable walk around the quiet streets looking at the shops and restaurants - including a skateboard shop called Shit! - before heading back to the harbour front. On the other side of the harbour the same sort of old buildings make up the oldest, residential part of the town. Crooked, cobbled streets with a a mish-mash of white-washed wooden houses. It was very quiet too, very few other pedestrians about, and the whole place was very peaceful. The only thing that spoiled the serenity was the blaring fog-horn of the massive cruise liner that had been berthed in the harbour and which was noisily making its departure.

As lovely as the old town was it was not a big area. After a few hours in the baking sun having explored the key sites we were tired, so we headed back to the guest house for a rest for a few hours, before coming out again for some food in the evening. We bought a kebab and ate it on a bench at the harbour, watching the night life and listening to the sounds of A-ha from the pub across the bay. Lionel Ritchie and A-ha. Norway must surely be stuck in the eighties, and this is no bad thing.

The next day we took a cruise to Lysefjord. This was a nine hour excursion, four hours sailing up the Fjord, an hour break at Lysebotn, the town at the end of the Fjord, and then four hours back. It was a great trip. This was a proper fjord, with sheer walls of rock rising up from the water. We also passed some great countryside, before getting into the narrowest part of the fjord itself, passed beneath a couple of fantastic suspension bridges over the fjord, and enjoyed a walk around Lysebotn at the end of the trip. The ship wasn't busy either, so there was no difficulty getting a good view or taking pictures, and we had some very nice weather with big fluffy clouds rolling across the sky. Made for great pictures - as you can see.

Speaking of pictures, Lysefjord is also the location of two of Norway's greatest natural wonders - Preikastolen (or Pulpit Rock in English - a massive flat rock high above the Fjord that you can hike to - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preikestolen) and the Kjerag (a mountain where a boulder is wedged in a crack in the rocks high above the Fjord that again you can hike to and, if you are brave, stand upon - see:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kjerag). Unfortunately, from the deck of the ship, neither really looked that spectacular and both cases I think you have to actually be at them to appreciate how amazing they are. Our photos of both of these wonders do not really convey the natural beauty of either site.

On the Friday we had our first day of rain. It rained all day, grey clouds pouring down a near-constant drizzle. In the end this wasn't too bad because May was ill that day and so we decided to stay in, to keep out of the rain, and watch the first matches of the world cup. It was very relaxing for me, less so for May given she wasn't well, but a hell of a lot better for her than being out in the rain. So aside from a quick trip out to the nearest 7-11 by me to pick up some provisions we enjoyed the comfort of our room all day. Our guesthouse host was very kind and helpful as well and made sure we had everything we needed. And we watched some very dull World Cup matches, but that's another story.

On the Saturday we had our train trip back to Bergen. We arrived at the station and climbed on board, made ourselves comfy in our seats and settled in for the eight hour journey. An hour later the train stopped and we were all herded off onto coaches. Eventually we managed to work out that a train had failed on the line up ahead and the train company had laid on coaches for the remainder of the seven hour journey to Bergen because it was not sure how long it would take to clear the obstruction. For me the thought of seven hours in a coach was depressing. For May, who was still feeling a bit under the weather and who suffers from travel sickness, particularly on twisty-turny roads such as we were driving along, seven hours feeling nauseous was a disaster. Fortunately we were spared the worst of it. After about two hours we learned that the train company had managed to get a train to a nearby station further along the line from where we had been stopped. Our coach was redirected to the station and we found a very comfortable train waiting for us. We found two seats in the 'Comfort' class - equivalent to first class - and then enjoyed a very relaxing five hours back to Bergen, arriving an hour later than intended and half an hour before the first England match of the World Cup. We scampered into our hotel, which was adjacent to the train station, and made ourselves comfortable for the football after a very long day.

Sunday was our last day in Norway. Our flight was at nine in the evening so we had the whole day to explore Oslo. We dumped our bags in luggage lockers at the train station and then went walking. We took at tram to Vigeland sculpture park - a park set up by a sculptor called Vigeland and which is full of his sculptures. The park was lovely but most of the sculptures - all of which seemed to be naked humans in one form or another - were not to my taste. Have a look at the column of writhing bodies below and you can see what a mean. Very well done, but a bit unsettling. And I don't want to come over all Daily Mail but there were also some very odd statues of naked children.

We had a walk about for an hour or so and then headed back to the town centre. We took the tram to the harbour area of Oslo where there was a recent development of shops and restaurants along the front, and some sort of festival going on. We enjoyed a walk about, taking in the atmosphere. We got some Norwegian fish and chips (decent) and then walked back through Oslo city centre to the train station. It's a pretty and compact city, with some nice buildings. The Parliament building in particular, in nice yellow stone, is a very lovely building.-as you can see below.

We finished our stay in Oslo with a kebab, revisiting the restaurant that we had visited on our first night, and then we were on the train back to the airport. We had an easy passage through the airport and a short wait for the flight, and then we were once again in the air and relaxing (as much as anyone can relax on a Ryanair flight) for the hour or so it took us to get back to Scotland.

A good week. Norway is a very pleasant place and I would recommend it to anyone.

Did I mention it was expensive?

Two Weeks In Japan

2009-11-20T19:12:00.003Z

Afternoon.

It’s about two weeks since May and I got back from our fortnight trip to Japan and I’ve finally managed to get a bit of time to update this blog with some sort of record of what we did and saw (and ate). Most times, when updating this blog, I would attempt a vaguely chronological record of a trip, but given that we were away for two weeks and that we packed a great deal into that time, if I were to attempt a similar sort of blog entry I might well be here for hours. So instead I will just report on the highlights of the trip, the disappointments, as well as saying a few words about the impressions of Japan that we have come away with.

Before we get to that, however, for the official record our holiday comprised the following:

May and I flew to Tokyo (via Seoul) from Heathrow on the evening of Thursday 15 October. We arrived in Tokyo on the evening of Friday 16 October and then spent a week in Tokyo, including a day trip each to Hakone and Kamakura. After that we travelled south to Kyoto from where we also did a day trip to Hiroshima and Himeji (that’s one day trip for both those places). We then came back to Tokyo for a couple of nights before our return flight to London (again via Seoul) which left early on Saturday 31 October.

So, onto to the highlights from our fortnight:

Tokyo by night: Tokyo is a great city, but its even better at night. Our hotel for the first week in Tokyo was in Shinjuku, one of the real nightlife parts of the city. Every evening when we returned from our sightseeing we would emerge from the subway or surrounding streets into the neon valleys of Shinjuku, bustling with crowds of people making their wayto and from shops, clubs or restaurants. The whole area is reminiscent of Times Square in New York, except that its bigger, doesn't have the slightly grubby atmosphere of Times Square and has significantly fewer American fast food restaurants. It was a great place to base ourselves because you really could appreciate the extent to which Tokyo really never sleeps (at least, not in Shinjuku). Even more impressive than Shinjuku was seeing Tokyo at night from above. We paid a visit to the (free) Observation Deck at the top of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building one evening and we got a fantastic view of Tokyo at dusk, with the sun setting in the west and all the lights of the city coming on. You really get a great sense of the sheer scale of the city when you’re up high and you can see nothing but city lights to the horizon in all directions. May took many photos of all these things and I hope to get around to putting some of them on Flickr, or even in this blog, sooner or later.

Tsukiji and Odaiba: Probably my favourite full day in Tokyo was the day we got up at 5 in the morning to pay a visit to Tsukiji, the Tokyo fish market. Normally getting up early, particularly on holidays, is not something I would ever say I enjoy, but to fully appreciate Tsukiji you need to get there early because all the auctions are over by 7am. We emerged from the subway station one block away from the fish market and then walked to the main entrance with a throng of other tourists. As we entered, the fish market unfolded before us beneath a lovely pink early morning sky. We dodged refrigerated trucks and the mini motorised utility trucks the workers whizzed around on and made our way into the outer market, rows and rows of covered stalls and fish preparation areas that sit outside the fish auction hall. We picked our way through the narrow lanes between the stalls, watching as men and women cut up and gutted and prepared all manner of fresh fish. We saw an old guy casually picking thrashing fish from a bucket of water, slaughtering them with one expert application of a cleaver and then gutting them in seconds. We saw buckets of eels, balled up pink octopuses, and massive frozen tuna being cut up with power saws. We crowded into the middle of the auction hall, a narrow path roped off for tourists, and watched the frantic shouting and yelling at the end of the blue fin tuna auction, the massive frozen tuna lying in rows like missiles waiting to be loaded. It was a great experience, but I was always very conscious that I was intruding on people’s work, found myself conscious dodging out of the way of trucks going back and forth or people carrying crates of fish, and couldn’t help but feel I was getting in the way. Some of the other tourists didn’t seem to care so much, rudely pointing massive digital SLR cameras at people working, or at their produce. They weren’t really appreciative of the fact that they were being a nuisance. I also couldn’t believe the number of tourists who visited the place in completely inappropriate clothing – from open toe sandals to high heels – and even more so couldn’t believe the hip young couple who took their toddler with them, perched on the dad's shoulders and waiting to fall off into the path of an oncoming truck. Idiots. After Tsukiji we had a wander around the shops that filled the blocks just beyond the market, selling all manner of fresh fish, fresh food and related items. We had breakfast a small stall on the street that was run by a grumpy old Japanese couple who clearly didn’t like or weren’t comfortable with foreigners, and then we headed south for the second part of our day – a trip to Odaiba.

Odaiba is an area of reclaimed land in Tokyo bay, a man made island. Everything about it is fun. First of all you reach Odaiba by way of a monorail from the main land that crosses the Rainbow Bridge - and as I've said a number of years ago on this blog, monorails are just fun. Once on Odaiba there are all manner of interesting things to see and do. We visited the Panasonic centre that had an exhibition of current and future Panasonic technology, including the worlds biggest plasma screen. We visited Venus Fort, a massive mall that is designed to look like an Italian town, including a lovely blue sky for the roof. We visited the Toyota centre where we got to drive an electric car around a track that ran between and through the surrounding buildings. We visited, but did not ride upon, the massive Ferris wheel on the island that takes 16 minutes to do a full rotation. We saw the futuristic Fuji TV building, and we had an enjoyable walk across the island along a path that took us between all kinds of futuristic buildings. May and I both agreed that the island was great fun, a good mix of things to do, futuristic buildings and fantastic architecture, and enjoyable views across the Tokyo. Unfortunately, we later found out that much of Odaiba is to be flattened in 2010 because the island was only leased for ten years. Seems a bit strange as there are a lot of buildings there and it would appear to be completely unnecessary - but maybe the future is changing and they need to keep up.

Day Trips from Tokyo: We had two fantastically enjoyable day trips from Tokyo – firstly to Hakone, a popular tourist area in the countryside where you can enjoy a number of different forms of transport, including a pirate ship and cable cars, and where we got amazing views of Mount Fuji at sunset. Secondly, on the following day, we took a day trip to Kamakura, which is about an hour south of Tokyo. It is a fantastically historic place, once having been the capital of Japan, with many temples, a giant Buddha, and a very enjoyable walk through the hills where we got to see many spiders and lots of Japanese school children walking in polite lines. Actually, we did observe something very interesting on that walk, an amusing culutral difference. All of the Japanese children we saw were smartly dressed, walked in school parties or small groups, and happily made their way along the path saying hello to us, saying good morning to the other Japanese people they passed, and all in all just getting on with and bothering nobody. The only western children we saw were two German children that came along with their parents, carrying sticks, and beating chunks out of bushes and leaves and each other and making the noise of guns and violence. Wonder if that says something about the differences between Western and Japanese children? (Or maybe just between German and Japanese children?)

Kuishinbo in Kyoto: One of the real highlights for both of us was stumbling across Kuishinbo in Kyoto. On our first night in the city we went our for a walk and then went in search of food. Purely by chance we ended up in Kuishinbo, a small restaurant on the Pontocho area of the city. It is a simple place, with a long counter down one side and three or four Japanese style low tables on the other side where you can sit if you prefer not to sit at the counter. The place was run by a local called Kenzo who, unusually, spoke very good English. So, not only were we served fantastic freshly prepared food, but we also got a chance to talk to Kenzo (and, via his translation, to the old lady who was also working there, who we thought was his mother) about Japan, our trip, where we were from, and so on. It was really enjoyable. He gave us some tips on what to see and told us about the food he prepared. It was so enjoyable that we returned on our last night in Kyoto and were made as welcome as old friends. This time there were other locals in the place and we got a chance to speak to them as well about what we had done and where we were. It was the type of experience you hope for when you travel, really getting a chance to spend time with locals, to see how they live their life. And the food was fantastic too.

A walk along the philosopher’s path. Kyoto has a lot of temples. We spent a few days visiting a good number of them but for me there were only a couple that really stood out. Fortunately, we visited them both on the same day that we also did something else I really enjoyed. In the north east of the city there is a path about 2km long that runs along the side of a small canal and which connects a number of different temples. The path is called the Philosopher’s Path because a local famous philosopher used to walk it daily. It is a lovely little walk, along the tree lined canal and through residential (but very pretty) parts of Kyoto. My enjoyment of it was also enhanced by the fact that a small teahouse about half way along the walk served tea and toast, which, at that point in the holiday, was just what I needed. At the northern end of the path lies Ginkakuji, the temple of the silver pavilion. This temple was lovely mostly because it was set in beautiful gardens, and because it had its own little zen garden. We had a good hour or so there enjoying the grounds. From there we took a bus across town to the north west area of the city where we visited what was for me the most impressive of Kyoto’s temples – Kinkakuji – the temple of the Golden Pavilion. Unlike its sister temple on the other side of town Kinkakuji was actually covered in the precious metal it is named after. So, even though the place was heaving with tourists, the view of the gold leaf covered temple sitting in the middle of its still lake and surrounded by trees that were showing their first autumn colours, was a really fantastic sight.

Hiroshima and Himeji Probably my favourite day from the period we were based in Kyoto was the day we took a day trip to Hiroshima and Himeji. Hiroshima needs no introduction, it is the place of course where the first atomic bomb was dropped in World War 2. The city itself is unspectacular, being mostly modern and built following the war. However, there is an area of the city in the centre that is dedicated as a memorial to the bomb. The first sight we saw was the A-bomb dome – the only building (out of the few that survived the bomb) that has been left standing, as a memorial to the bomb attack. We then spent some time in the Memorial Park, which is littered with many monuments and memorials to people who died in the bomb attack. It has a lovely reflecting pool and cenotaph, both of which line up with the A-bomb dome, and, most interestingly, it has a memorial museum, which seeks to tell the whole story about the bomb and the attack and the aftermath. We didn’t have a great deal of time but managed to have a quick walk around the museum for about an hour. It was clearly a place that would justify a much longer visit, and, in my view, the type of place everyone should go. They had some amazing and terrible exhibits, from personal possessions that had survived the bomb blast, watches that had stopped at the time of the attack, glasses, cigarette cases, and the like. Many of these were put in a personal context – belongings of a father found by the daughter who had come looking for him after the attack; belongings of a child found by siblings. It all helped to personalise the tragedy. There were also no-holds-barred photographs and reports of those who had survived the blast, including those with severe burns, women with burns in the patterns of the dark parts on their kimonos (because the dark material absorbed the energy and burnt the pattern onto the wearer's skin), the story of Sadako, a girl who died from childhood leukaemia years after the bomb blast and who folded over a 1,000 paper cranes during her time in hospital because she believed that once she had folded a 1,000 she would get a wish granted. Her wish, of course, was to get well, but it was not granted and she died at a very young age. (The paper crane did become the symbol of peace and to this day paper cranes are brought to Hiroshima from around the world). Perhaps the most striking item in the museum was the part of a building – a bank I think it was – that had been standing at the time of the attack but which had been excavated and placed in one of the exhibit halls. It showed part of the steps outside the bank and there was a dark spot on the steps where somebody had been sitting when the bomb had gone off. I at first assumed that the dark spot was where the person had been vaporised or burnt into the stone but it was in fact dark because the rest of the stone had been blasted clean by the power of the blast, and the spot where the person had been sitting, the shadow on the wall and steps, had been covered by the person and so not blasted clean. The whole place was fascinating. I came out thinking that a lot of people know that nuclear bombs are bad, that every one accepts it, but until you go to a place like the Hiroshima Memorial museum, you never really understand how bad it is. Perhaps the most interesting and depressing thing I learnt at the museum was that the majority of the scientists who had been involved in the Manhattan project had sent a begging letter to the US Government begging them that if they were determined to use the bomb that they provide a warning to the target town. The US Government refused and dropped the bomb on Hiroshima without warning even though they knew the vast majority of people in the city were civilians. I couldn’t see why they felt they had to drop it without warning. They would have had the same devastating impact on infrastructure and Japanese morale if they had given a warning. The demonstration of nuclear power would have been sufficient without any associated deaths. It seemed utterly unnecessary to me, and it wasn’t something I had previously known about.

After our stimulating trip to Hiroshima, we headed back to Kyoto, but stopped off for a few hours at Himeji, where there is located one of the best preserved Edo period Japanese castles – Himeji castle. It has been used in a number of movies, including the Last Samurai and You Only Live Twice, and it is a really lovely castle. We whizzed around it in the few hours we had before it closed, and both were really glad that we took the opportunity to visit it.

Fushimi Inari: During our last day in Kyoto we took a trip a few minutes south of the city centre by train to the Fushimi Inari temple. This place is worth a visit because it has around 4km of paths in the hills that are lined with red torii gates. It is an amazing achievement of effort and a brilliantly atmospheric place to walk around for a few hours, paths of tightly packed bright red gates leading through the trees from shrine to shrine - so tightly packed in some places that they do not even let the light through. Great for photos and, when we were there, not as busy with tourists as I thought it might have been. The atmosphere was a little spoiled by the workman I saw taking a leak just off the path halfway up the hillside, but I suppose when you're up the path painting torii gates all day you are going to need go sooner or later.

Ryokan in Tokyo: After Kyoto we returned to Tokyo for another night before heading out to an airport hotel for our last night. We had wanted to have at least one night in a traditional Japanese inn – a Ryokan – on this trip, and so had booked ourselves into the Ryokan Kamogawa in the Asakusa part of Tokyo. These are the traditional inns that have mattresses to sleep on, low furniture, tatami mats on the floor. I have to say the Ryokan was fantastically comfortable. It was the most roomy place we stayed in the whole trip, with a separate living and sleeping space, and the mattress on the floor was the most comfortable place I slept for the whole trip. It wasn’t even spoiled by the massive spider lounging on the paper screen over one of the windows that I spotted not long after we arrived. He seemed quite an easy going chap and didn’t mind in the slightest when I coerced him into a metal box for the night.

Puppetry in Nippori: On our last full day in Tokyo we had arranged through Couch Surfing to meet up with a local, Mizue, who lived in the Nippori part of Tokyo. The whole day was fantastic. Mizue was really friendly and took us home to her place, where she made us lunch and introduced us to her husband. Her flat was on the 18^th floor of a recent development that afforded magnificent views south over Tokyo (apparently in the winter they had views of Mount Fuji from their balcony). She then took us for a walk through the Nippori district, including a walk through Yanaka cemetery (lovely and atmospheric, with gnarled old trees and autumn leaves scattered about), to a local shop selling hand made papers, and then, to our complete surprise, she took us down a backstreet to the shop of a local puppet maker and puppeteer. We paid a very small amount of money and got treated to a fantastic and amusing puppet show for half an hour. It was a real treat and the puppet maker's handy work was fantastic. He is so good in fact that locals commission him to do puppets of themselves – he has had to stop taking orders because so many people have already placed orders. It was a great thing to have done and was a place that was not in any of the guidebooks we had so we would not have known about it without having met up with Mizue. It really pays to get to know the locals – especially when they make you rice balls for your train ride to the airport!

Food: We didn’t have a bad meal in Japan. At worst we had a couple of unspectacular meals (in Himeji train station for one), but nothing bad. Of course it helps that we love Japanese food, but even those who have never really tried would have struggled I am sure to dislike the dishes of Tempura, of noodles, of rice and katsu (breaded cutlets). And it wasn’t just the taste and smells, it was the look as well. Japanese really are believers in food looking good, and it always does. I also loved the few times we visited sushi restaurants because you could watch the expert sushi chefs rattling out plate after plate of sushi with amazing speed. It was tremendously impressive.

So those are my highlights from the trip, in roughly chronological order. What about disappointments?

Well, there was only one, really. Autumn colours: We had hoped to be in Kyoto when the trees were in full autumn plumage. It didn’t happen. We did see the early signs of autumn, some deep reds, some splashes of gold here and there, but we probably arrived a couple of weeks too early for the full display.

I’m sure you’ll agree that if that is the biggest disappointment we had to endure over the course of two weeks, we had a pretty good holiday. We didn’t even have any real bad weather. We had one morning where it rained quite heavily for a few hours, and a few cloudy days, but otherwise it was warm and sunny pretty much all the time.

So two weeks with many highlights and no real disappointments. But what were the main impressions of Japan that we came away with?

Japan is a satisfyingly clean place. Between us May and I have travelled quite extensively and have visited a good number of the world’s major cities. Tokyo is by far the cleanest of these, and Japan as a whole is astonishingly clean. Even crowded, over populated and massively busy places like the Tokyo subway are nowhere near as dirty feeling as similar places in London or New York or Paris. The place is so clean that one of the main marketing strategies in Japan is to have people standing on street corners handing out tissues with adverts on them. They have liquid soap dispensers all over the place and public toilets in numbers I have never seen anywhere else - and even though most of the of public toilets are of the traditional Japanese ‘squat’ variety – which to a Westerner don’t appear the cleanest in the world - the logic is if you go to a public toilet you don’t to touch it, so squatting is more hygienic, see? Still hurts your thighs though...

Even though it’s a very clean place, they do have their priorities a little mixed up. Even though they have lots of public toilets most of them will only have a cold water tap, no soap and nothing to dry your hands with. So they’re so worried about hygiene they prefer to use squat toilets but not so worried that they want you to properly wash and dry your hands. But more ridiculous than that is the fact that in many of their public toilets they actually have gone so far as to install an electronic device that produces the sound of a toilet flushing that you can activate if you want to cover up the sounds you produce naturally. Apparently that is a source of much embarrassment for the Japanese so they install these gadgets… but don’t bother with a hot water tap or paper towels. Priorities… mixed up.
Kyoto has a lot of temples. Too many, in my view. We visited a lot of them and they were all interesting in their own way, but apart from two or three very impressive temples (the Golden Pavilion, the Silver Pavilion with its fantastic gardens, and Kiomizu-Dera, which is suspended over a valley) they all start to feel a bit samey after a while, for me at least.
The rail system in Japan is fantastically efficient and just as complex. You’ve probably heard about the bullet trains, and they are fantastic, but the whole rail system is wonderfully efficient. Trains spend no longer than a few minutes at platforms and passengers are brilliant at getting off and on with no nonsense before the train pulls out again. I saw four trains stop at the same platform over a 12 minute period. In Edinburgh trains sit at platforms for half an hour at a time. Of course all this efficiency is based on tip-top infrastructure, and that costs money, so you have to pay a lot for train travel in Japan. And the other thing is that it is all incredibly complicated. There are publicly owned rail lines and there are privately owned rail lines, and they all intersect with each other and use each others lines. There are also a number of different types of train – it’s not like over here where there are just trains and they’re all pretty much of a muchness, in Japan, on the publicly owned rail lines alone you have different types of train such as Nozomi, Hikari, Kodama (that are all Shinkansen ‘bullet trains’, but just different types/speeds), different types of accommodations on these different types of trains from Green Cars, to Ordinary Cars, to Ordinary Private compartments. You get reserved cars and unreserved cars. You get limited express trains and ordinary express trains – both of which will be bullet trains but which may or may not be the same type of train. Navigating the system and knowing what train to get, where to sit and what type of ticket to buy can be incredibly difficult. And that’s before you even get on to the private lines that are run by private companies (usually companies that own department stores for some reason) and have their own type of trains with such exotic names as ‘Romance-car’. You need a degree just to get anywhere.
Mount Fuji is cool. Really, it is. We saw it three and a half times during our stay – once from the cable car in Hakone at sunset; once from the observation deck in Tokyo at sunset; once glimpsed through the clouds on the train ride from Kyoto to Tokyo (the 'half' time); and once on the flight to Seoul on the way home when we flew right over it. Mount Fuji is massive – it’s difficult to appreciate just how massive until you see it from the train sitting behind the towns you can see out the window – and absolutely perfectly conical. It's really just everything a mountain should be.
Japanese chocolate is nice. Meiji brand chocolate. It’s nice. The wrapping looks a bit like Hershey’s, which put me off at first, but it’s actually very nice. And their strawberry chocolate is lovely. Try it if you go.
And speaking of sweet things, Haagan Dazs in Japan has a flavour we don’t get over here – Maple Cookie. It’s lovely and I ate far too much of it. It's a shame we can't get it over here, but probably not a bad thing otherwise I'd be eating it all the time.

So that was Japan. We both had a great time and both agreed we would be happy to go back again, but possibly with a view to seeing more of the countryside.

We have no holiday travel booked up as yet for the new year so I am not sure what trip if any this blog will next cover... I suppose we'll have to wait and see.

Road Trip to Germany

2009-10-01T15:38:00.003Z

Having just arrived back from the continent, where I drove from Rotterdam to Bonn and back again over a long weekend, I feel it is my civic duty to pass on to readers this important piece of advice: if you are driving on the continent, you should prepare yourself for the fact that any major road that you may choose to take will be completely closed with little notice, and you will be forced to endure a tortuous diversion across country through minor towns and narrow back-roads. All of that is bad enough, particularly if you are in a hurry to get to your destination to ensure you do not miss your ferry back to civilisation, but imagine also having to cope with the fact that you are driving a hired transit van with limited visibility and the steering wheel on the opposite side of the vehicle from every other car on the road.

I should say at this point that I did not undertake this journey for the sake of adventure. An old friend of mine who has been living in Germany for the last five years decided that she wanted to return to Scotland (obviously she had been missing Irn Bru and fish suppers). As she does not drive herself she asked me if I would be willing to drive a van from Edinburgh to help transport her things back to Scotland. Always up for a road-trip I agreed and May kindly offered to accompany me. So on the morning of Friday 25 September May and I picked up a short-wheelbase transit van from a hire company in Edinburgh and set off down the A1 for our evening ferry from Hull. The journey was uneventful and we got to Hull a few hours before we were required to, got straight onto the ship and made ourselves comfy in our cabin.

Travelling by ferry is a very civilised experience. Unlike the pain-in-the-arse that is modern air travel, taking a ferry is stress-free and pleasurable. You roll up in your car, you don't need to wait around for hours to check in or get through security, and you're not cramped into a seat for eight hours. May and I had a cabin to ourselves with its own toilet and shower. Our dinner and breakfast were included and for both we made use of the self-service buffet of freshly prepared and very nice food. The ship has a few shops and entertainment options, including two cinemas and a stage where they have dodgy cabaret acts and bingo. There's also a deck where you can go to see Hull slipping away and two massage chairs which are great after spending five hours driving down the motorway. You get to sleep in a very comfy bed in your own cabin with a view of the sea and when you wake up in the morning the sun is rising over the Netherlands. You can take your time at breakfast and then head down to your car to roll off the ship and into the port of Rotterdam. You are then on your way with no more hassle than a quick passport check. All in all it was an incredibly stress free way to get to Europe. It's more expensive and more time consuming than flying, but why should everything be cheap and quick? Let's start a revolt. Let's make travelling as much about the journey as about the destination.

After departing Rotterdam we had a route marked out that took us south and vaguely east through the Netherlands to the German border just beyond Venlo. From there we headed more directly east to Cologne and then Bonn, where my friend was saying. With directions, a European road-map and a GPS system all on board, we were fairly confident we'd be able to get to Bonn in good enough time to load up the van before leaving again the following day to make it back in time for our evening return-ferry crossing to Hull.

All went well until for the first hour or so. I managed to master driving on the opposite side of the road and in a transit van. As it was a Saturday the roads were relatively quiet and the three lane freeways meant the journey was quick and easy. And then, a little north of Eindhoven, we discovered the that motorway was completely shut a little way ahead. All the freeway traffic was siphoned off onto a smaller side road. We didn't fancy the massive tailback that had resulted and so our map-reading and GPS-listening skills sprung into action. Unfortunately what we didn't know was that the GPS had been accidentally set to always find the shortest route to any destination. Almost without fail motorways and main roads are never the shortest route. They are often the quickest route, but rarely the shortest route. So when we turned to the GPS to get us to our destination, instead of taking us on a brief detour to an adjacent freeway, we ended up on a very scenic but not very enjoyable diversion through a handful of minor back roads and small Dutch towns. Had I been driving my own car, and had I a detailed knowledge of the bizarre Dutch right-of-way rules, that might have been fine. But I was driving a transit van and had no idea who had right of way at any junction I came to.

These difficulties came to a head in the town of Oisterwijk - a lovely historic town with narrow cobbled streets and a picturesque town square. Somehow I ended up in a one-way system that directed me into the centre of this town square. That might have been fine had I been able to follow the one-way system to its natural conclusion and emerge on the other side of the town near a motorway. Unfortunately for me the town square was shortly to be the setting for some sort of festival and was crowded with big lorries and stalls and fairground rides, so much so that the exit from the square was blocked. I therefore ended up in the enjoyable position of having to reverse down a narrow, cobbled, one way street in a transit van with no rear-view mirror and limited visibility to the rear (fortunately May was there to jump out and guide me). I was not alone in being out-foxed by the festival arrangements however, for a large crowd of local traffic had gathered behind me and obligingly waited patiently as I reversed precariously close to them. Still, was not that enjoyable to be reversing painfully slowly because you are scared of driving into some ancient building while a stream of traffic sitting idling their engines behind you.

Once I was pointing in the right direction again I tried to escape the one-way system, but ended up going round in circles. I decided instead to follow a local who, seemingly as frustrated as I was, drove the wrong way down a couple of one way streets. We emerged onto a vaguely main-road and found ourselves, a few minutes later, faced with the delightful and incredibly satisfying sight of a big blue motorway sign.

Having escaped that we were back onto the motorway system around Eindhoven only to find ourselves, less than half an hour later, once again being directed off the road due to the motorway being entirely closed ahead. We were left with the impression that travel south of Eindhoven was entirely impossible.

Having to make snap decisions on which road to take based on temporary roadsigns in foreign languages, and with a lack of knowledge of the road network, we ended up on the motorway we wanted but travelling in the wrong direction. Fortunately for us the next exit was not too far away (and we made sure we took it, because the next exit after that was in France...) and we soon ended up pointing in the right direction.

Much to my relief the rest of the journey to Bonn was much less stressful. We arrived at our friend's place a little after 2pm. The GPS finally came into its one upon leaving the freeway at Bonn, directing us straight to her address in the Bad-Godesberg suburb where she lived and thereby redeeming itself after the earlier trouble it had caused.

We had a busy afternoon, helping my friend transport things that she couldn't take to friend's in Bonn and Cologne, getting rid of rubbish, and generally listening to Sigrid (my friend) complain about Germans and Germany. (Bit unfortunate really, given she has a PhD in German and a German name. She's not German though - she's Irish.) I drove into Cologne with Timo, one of Sigrid's friends, to take a sofa-couch that Sigrid couldn't take back to Scotland to Timo's place. It was an eventful journey, since Timo, who never drove in Cologne, seemed to only know the route to his place by pedestrian and tram ways. Still we got there eventually and managed to head back to Bonn before it got dark and I had to make use of my headlight converters (which frankly, i didn't understand in the slightest).

Then, late in the evening then May and I and Sigrid and Timo went out for dinner at a local German restaurant where we ate schnitzel and German pancake things and a salad which for some reason had watermelon in it.

The next morning May and I got up early and spent a good few hours loading the transit van with all of Sigrid's boxes and belongings, while she packed up the last of the stuff and tidied up the flat. May did all the packing and arranging in the van - an impressive real-life version of tetris at which she excelled in every respect - and I did most of the lugging stuff from the flat to the van. Then Sigrid just after 12 handed over the keys to the grumpy German landlord who spoke in a whisper because of his throat cancer and by 1pm we were on the way back to Rotterdam.

Having reset the default setting of the GPS to always take us the quickest route, its directions were this time much more sensible and after leaving Bad Godesberg we didn't once leave the motorway until we got to Rotterdam. Well, other than for that brief period when another of the roads we were on was completely closed. Not either of the same roads from the previous day, I should say, a completely different, major motorway that was completely closed. The GPS and May's map-reading skills combined redirected us quickly onto one of the many nearby motorways to continue our journey. They have a lot of motorways in Germany - go and have a look at a map of the area around Cologne and you'll see what I mean - but then if they are always closing them perhaps there's a need.

The last stretch of the journey through the Netherlands to the Rotterdam port seemed to stretch on awfully, and it was spectacularly dull. Actually, that is true of the entire journey through both the Netherlands and Germany. Neither country is interesting to drive through. Lots of flat, boring farmland, the occasional tree, a horse here and there. The first half-an-hour stretch of motorway from Hull to Edinburgh was more interesting than any part of the drive through Europe.

Once again we made it to the ferry in plenty of time. We had another relaxed evening that was spoiled for me by eating something by body didn't agree with, so much so that I spent most of the night awake with indigestion.

At about 1am I went out to get some tea to try to settle my stomach and as a result had an interesting long chat with the Filipino server at the on-board Costa coffee. He filled me on the fact that all the Filipino staff on the ship live on the ship for six months at a time, going back and forth from Hull to Rotterdam. They don't get a single day off and so are never off the ship, and they get paid less than the few European who work on the ship. Clearly P&O are feeling the pinch and having to cut corners, but I was quite shocked at this sort of treatment occuring in Europe. Interestingly, it is only on the P&O ship registered in the Netherlands. The sister ship (because there are two ships doing the Hull-Rotterdam route) is registered in the UK, and has no Filipino staff on board. The guy explained why this was but I couldn't really understand through his thick accent. I was even more shocked by the fact that one of the Filipino crew's family were lost in the recent typhoon and P&O wouldn't pay for a flight back home for him - he had to pay himself if he wanted to go back, or wait until the end of his six-month stint. Not having the money to pay for a flight he was forced to wait. I was quite outraged.

Then the guy I was speaking to started talking about not being able to see his young family for six months, but having no choice but to work for P&O to get money because there was little prospect of work at home. It really makes you realise how lucky you are to live in the west. I felt a bit ashamed when he mentioned how rude many of the ship's passengers were to him, treating him like crap just because he work at a coffee shop. Then he insisted it was the Dutch and the English only, and that the Scottish were always very nice, which was probably rubbish but very nice of him to say so. I should say that having sailed on both the P&O ships, the Dutch ship with the Filipino staff was by far the friendly ship with by far the better service. Isn't that sad when the Filipino staff get treated like shit?

The next morning, after probably nothing more than two hours sleep, I got up, got behind the wheel and did the five hour drive from Hull to Edinburgh. I have to say that apart from my stomach I wasn't actually feeling that bad, and the lack of sleep did not seem to affect me until after we dropped Sigrid and the van off at her parent's house in Edinburgh. Her parents had laid on a nice lunch of soup, bread and tea for us, which we enjoyed, and then we caught the bus to Waverley for the train back to Inverkeithing. Almost as soon as we got on the bus I was dozing, and then likewise on train. We had an early night but I must be getting old because even two days later I was still feeling the effects of sleep deprivation.

Still, all in all, it was an experience and a not unenjoyable trip. I could have done without the stress of the road hassles, but it's the type of thing that puts hair on your chest as a driver. And I can now say that I have driven on four continents (Europe, North America, Asia and Australia/New Zealand). I wouldn't choose to do that same drive again however, because it was so dull. It really put the prospect of driving across Europe to Mongolia into some perspective. That would have been a massive undertaking.

Next up, May and I are off to Japan in two weeks time. I am very much looking forward to it. If I don't get to do an update before we go I will certainly be doing one when we get back.

Spiderman

2009-04-09T21:03:00.004Z

We saw a superhero in Times Sq, New York

And clearly it's not that hard to post videos to Blogger.

A Tale of Two Cities

2009-04-07T20:07:00.009Z

It occurred to me earlier today that this time two years ago I was swanning about Australia without a care in the world. That seems like it was just yesterday, but its been two full years. It's funny how fast time is starting to pass.

Anyway, the point of this blog was not to get all nostalgic and maudlin, but to update you on recent travel related activity. When last we met I wasn't sure whether or not we were going to make it to Mongolia this summer and I was looking forward to a couple of trips in March to London and New York.

On the first point, I can now confirm that unfortunately we are not going to be undertaking the Mongol Rally this year. From being uncertain at the start of the year we switched back sometime in February to being determined and committed and we spent the best part of a month looking for a suitable vehicle. We searched Autotrader and classified ads and even took a trip to a car auction in Perth but came up with nothing. The deadline for pulling out of the rally and still keeping most of your entrance fee was end of March - after this point you don't get any of your £625 back. So, in the last week of March may and I admitted defeat, deciding that we didn't want to risk not being able to get a car at all and having to forfeit our fee entirely. So in summary the Mongol Rally is a no go for this year; we'll get two thirds of our entrance fee back; and we'll try to enter again for next year and start looking for a car a much earlier than we did this year.

The upside from this decision, other than the money being zapped back into our accounts, is that I now have all that annual leave I had put aside for the Mongol Rally to use. Five whole weeks to do with as I please. Not sure what I want to use it for yet. May's parents are coming over in September so I'll use some of it for when they're over, but I'll probably still have two weeks at least and no plans yet... need to start looking at those cheap flights.

But that's for the future, getting back to what we've been up to recently, we had a trip down to London for a long weekend at the end of February courtesy of a cheap rail deal offered by the Sun newspaper (not that we read that of course, but we buy it if it means cheap holidays). We had an easy journey down on the Thursday afternoon and spent two nights at a small hotel a few steps from King's Cross Station. Had a very good time as well, doing those things in London neither of us had ever done but which we had always wanted to do. We did the London Eye (good fun, but get there early); the Natural History Museum (lots of fossils and an amazing building); the British Museum (well... just the great court really... all those priceless artifacts and we go to look at the glass roof installed a few years ago); the Millennium Bridge and the Tate Modern; and a walk from the Tate along the Thames past Southwark Cathedral to the Borough Market (frenetic, fantastic, food-lovers heaven). We also twice ate at a Japanese restaurant around the corner from our hotel - because that's just part of any holiday we ever take now, eating in Japanese restaurants. If we ever make it to Japan we'll probably eat in western restaurants all the time.

On the Saturday we went to stay with May's friend Chris out in Beaconsfield. We had a good meal(my first ever meat loaf experience) and then enjoyed the atmosphere at a small gathering of friends for Shelly's birthday. Our presence was entirely coincidental to the part, but it didn't mean we couldn't enjoy the snacks and drinks. I also got into a strange conversation with one of the other guys at the party about the lack of Chinese restaurants in Arbroath, but there you go.

All in all, a very enjoyable and relaxing weekend. The last time I went to London as a tourist I was still a teenager, or not past it, and since then I've only ever been to London for work. So it was good to visit as a tourist and experience all it has to offer. It is a city with a great atmosphere but it does feel a bit rough around the edges. Not dirty exactly... but shabby. Nothing a good clean wouldn't solve.

A few weeks later we headed off to New York for my third visit and May's first. The journey was uneventful, although I don't understand why Schipol airport has nowhere open to eat before 9am when dozens of flights arrive earlier than that in the morning. When we arrived at Newark airport we had a bit of a moment when May was told by immigration that the US visa she had in her passport from her working trip a few years ago was the wrong type of visa. Turns out it was a VIP visa (because she had been invited as a travel journalist on her previous trip, to write about sunny California) and that just made them suspicious. I had visions of us sitting in Newark airport for a few hours before being shipped back to civilisation. Fortunately we were lucky enough to have ended being seen by an immigration officer who was surprisingly pragmatic. He asked a few questions, checked that May was travelling with someone with a British passport (because really that's the best character endorsement you can get, really, isn't it?) and then said he would let her through this time, but couldn't guarantee the visa would work next time. And that didn't bother us since May's visa runs out at the end of April. Surprisingly sensible really. Not something you expect from US immigration.

After that it was a pleasant train journey into Penn Station on Manhattan, affording us fantastic views of the Manhattan skyline as we approached the Hudson River. Then we were in the busy corridors of Penn Station, working our way out to the surface and May's first view of Manhattan. She certainly seemed impressed since we stopped at the first corner to take pictures of yellow cabs, tall buildings and Madison Square Garden. Meanwhile I found myself contemplating the New York smell - a smell unique to the city that, when you smell it, immediately places you in the centre of Manhattan.

From there we walked to our hotel, a great little place a few blocks from the Empire State Building that cost us no more than £30 each a night (http://www.hotel31.com/). It was dated, with heavy dark wood everywhere, and the view from the window was a brick wall, but it was spotlessly clean and quiet and had a shabby, Manhattan charm about it that I liked.

Our first evening in Manhattan we went for food in a local Jewish deli that is apparently a Manhattan institution (the walls were covered with pictures of the famous people that have dined there) and which serves sandwiches the like of which you've never seen - more meat than you would get on a pig farm. May and I worked out way through one between the two of us and then spent the next four hours walking around mid-town Manhattan just to burn it off. It was a great few hours, seeing the Chrysler Building, Grand Central Station, Times Square, the Empire State Building all lit up, and enjoying May discovering them for the first time. It's an awesome city and enjoying it with someone else for the first time is a great way to remind you just how awesome.

The rest of the week was just as much fun. We visited amazing museums; drank coffee in a diner with decades worth of coke bottles in the window; ate visited the Statue of Liberty on a bright and sunny St Patrick's day; ate at a fantastic self-service sushi restaurant and got into an argument with the waitress when we gave her only a 10% tip despite the fact we served ourselves throughout; walked through Central Park and listened to a man playing an autoharp by the Bethesda Fountain; ate traditional American food in diners; bought two bars of chocolate with maple cured bacon in them (it was horrible); visited the biggest Cathedral in North America that is still not finished despite over 100 years of building work; ate genuine New York hot dogs from a vendor outside the Metropolitan Museum; wandered around Greenwich village in the rain, seeing where Waverly Place crosses Waverly Place and stopping for tea and cookies and great little place called 'Milk and Cookies'; ate griddle cakes and bacon for breakfast in a diner around the corner from our hotel; went to the top of the Rockefeller Centre at dusk to see an amazing sunset and the lights of Manhattan come on; woke up to find snow falling on the last day of our stay; and walked so much over the seven days that when I came back to the UK my thighs ached for almost three days.

All in all it was a great trip, very relaxed but very fulfilling. Just about the only downside was the day it rained that prevented us from walking over the Brooklyn Bridge as we'd planned. But instead we went to the Bodies exhibition (interesting, but I did chuckle to myself when they admitted all the preserved bodies on display came from North China in totally non-suspicious circumstances) and the Museum of Sex (entirely May's idea I promise, but the exhibition about sex in the natural world, including homosexuality in nature, was interesting, and I can honestly say I never thought I'd see a museum exhibit about Panda Porn or about a gay raping necrophiliac duck). I came away looking forward to going back again and May came away happily admitting that she too would like to go back - indeed that she would quite happily see more of the north-east on the United States. Perhaps an Amtrak tour is on the cards at some point in the future - as long as May can get another visa.

I did have a digital camcorder with me on the trip (and for the London trip as well) and I took plenty of footage, some of it quite amusing (to us at least), but I haven't yet even tried to work out how to get it onto a blog so I probably won't bother posting anything. But maybe I will, since it's Easter weekend and I am work for a couple of weekends.

Nothing much else to report for now. Once I know what I am doing with my leave for this year - if anything - I'll probably be back to update this.

Brief Update

2009-01-13T21:20:00.003Z

Hello

Not a lot to say at the moment, but thought I'd update that us doing the Mongol Rally this year is currently in doubt. We've not officially withdrawn yet, but as it stands we need to wait until February to see if we can do it or not. And then, if we decide in February that we can do it, we'll need to see if we can still get a car and sponsorship in time for the start of the rally in July. I'll update this when I know more.

Meanwhile, however, May and I are off to London for long weekend in February, and then we're off to New York for 7 nights in March. Both May and I have been meaning to do a trip to London for a few years now, as we both feel we've never really given it enough attention. We'll only have two full days there (plus a day either side travelling by train), but it should be a nice break.

And as for New York, it will be my third time but May's first. I'm looking forward to going back, having enjoyed New York both times I've been, and I'm looking forward to seeing what May will make of it.

An interesting development for both London and New York is that I'll be taking a video camera with me so we'll be recording our antics. Not that we normally engage in anything you would actually call 'antics' (other than the occasional blocked toilet antics), but we might have some interest footage to post somewhere.

If we don't go to Mongolia I'm also keen to take a trip back to Japan for my birthday in September - flight prices are very good at the moment. It might just be a week in Tokyo, or possibly two weeks and the opportunity to explore a bit more widely, not sure yet.

And we're not yet sure what we're going to do for May's birthday in May yet - so far we've considered Jordan, Peru, India, Kenya, Morocco, France, and camping in Wales. We seem to fancy a different country as frequently as the weather changes - and where we live that's very frequently indeed. We'll just need to wait and see!

Bye

Facts About the Mongol Rally

2008-09-13T09:29:00.003Z

Doing some research about the Mongol Rally recently, I came across the following interesting set of fun facts about the 2005 Mongol Rally:

43 cars left London.
27 cars reached Mongolia.
14 cars reached the finish in Ulaanbaatar.
2 teams were robbed at knife point.
1 car snapped in half.
3 engines fell completely out of the cars.
1 team was held for 5 days in no-mans land.
1 team cycled 200km to get to the finish when their car gave in.
100's of tyres were blown.
1 team got engaged.
1 team found a 10ft deep pot hole.
1 team found a 25 tonne crane rolled by a pot hole.
3 teams attended weddings
1 team had to reverse up a mountain after losing all bar one forward gear
1 person spent 24 hours in a Kazakh jail charged with 5 crimes against the state.
1 person was stoned by a Mongolian nomad (who he then shot at with a gun).
1 team was rammed off the road after an argument over water melons.
1 person spent a day in a Turkish hospital.
3 people were banned from Turkmenistan for a year.
As a result of an incident with a cow 1 person was detained by police in Azerbaijan and threatened with a beating from a dwarf.
2 cars flipped over in Mongolia.
3 teams were chased by armed bandits.
0 team members died

I like the fact that they feel the need to state that no team members died - as if a death was only to be expected.

Mongolia...

2008-09-01T20:11:00.003Z

Yeah, you read that right, Mongolia. May and I have managed to sign up to the Mongol Rally, and that means that about this time next year we'll be driving to Mongolia in a car with an engine no bigger than 1200cc.

It's a bit crazy, but it's a great way to see the world between London and Ulaan Bataar.

But between now and then we need to find a car, raise £1,000 or more in sponsorship, source and buy all the equipment we need, find some sponsors, get lots of travel vaccinations, and find a road map of Mongolia.

As a first step we have managed to set up our team website - click your way over to http://mongolrally09.theadventurists.com/baataredandbruised to read all about us, to see a fantastic artist's impression of our car, and to see some flattering photographs of May and me.

Before all that however, May and I are off to Malaysia at the end of September for a much needed relaxing two weeks doing not much more than relaxing in hotels, eating lots of nice food and walking dogs.

Once we get back, the Mongolia madness will start in earnest. More to follow...

Egypt Part 7 - A Busy Day

2008-07-08T18:54:00.010Z

Our last day in Cairo was to be a busy one. Fortunately, our flight home was not until 4am the following morning so we literally had all day and all night to do what we needed to do. Our plan was to explore Coptic Cairo in the oldest part of the city and then to explore the Citadel and Islamic Cairo so that I could see it for the first time and so that May could see it without being hassled every few minutes by the locals.

We grabbed a taxi outside the hotel and then enjoyed a ride through the very quiet streets to Coptic Cairo – being Friday and the Islamic day of rest everything was much quieter than normal. Our taxi driver was a young guy with good English and he adopted the tour guide approach, pointing out and describing the things as we passed - most of which we had already seen, but we nodded and murmured agreeably. He dropped us off outside the main Coptic area, the roads within being closed to taxis, and then offered to wait for us and to be our taxi driver for the day. When we turned him down he took it gracefully and didn’t hassle or argue with us and that was a rare pleasure.

Once he had gone, we walked from the main road past the barriers and into the Coptic area. We walked along Sharia Mari Gergis, little souvenir shops down one side of the street and old Roman walls down the other. Coptic Cairo is not quite a ghetto but certainly a quite self contained part of the city - hemmed in by the Roman walls - that has quite a different feel to the rest of Cairo. It is a throw back to the brief period in Cairo's history between the Pharaonic and Islamic times when Christianity was the order of the day (excuse the pun). It's a small area that could be easily covered on foot, but historic and there was a lot to see.

Our first port of call was the Hanging Church, a very lovely Coptic Orthodox Christian Church so called because it is suspended over the gateway (the water gate) to an old Roman fortress, which you can see for yourself be looking through a glass block in the floor at the back of the church. The church is also one of the oldest in Egypt and there has been a church on the same site since the 3rd century AD.

The interior of the church was dark and gloomy with lots of heavy dark wood, shafts of light spilling in from the high windows. A service was in session and most of the seats in the church taken by locals of all ages. At the front the Ministers or priests (I am not sure what they are called in Coptic Christianity) were reciting the mass in an ancient language that is apparently the closest remaining thing to ancient Egyptian. To be frank, it sounded like the closest remaining thing to a wailing cat, but at least we could say that we’d heard it.

The congregation of priests and followers toured around the church as they recited the mass and the crowd all touched the images of Jesus they carried on a banner and then kissed their hands. It was a curious sight to see, but not unenjoyable. What was unenjoyable was the wailing of the priests so May and I didn’t linger long, deciding that we would come back to explore the church more fully once the service was over.

Outside in the lovely kept courtyard we enjoyed some spectacular mosaics depicting Bible stories and there were back on Shari Mari Girgis, the street retracing our steps south. We passed the remains of towers of the old Roman fortress and the entrance to the Coptic Museum which seemed to have fenced a large part of the old city for itself, but decided that we did not want to go in. Instead we continued down the street a bit further and entered the Greek Orthodox complex where we found the very impressive Orthodox Church of St George and the Monastery of St George. The monastery is apparently the seat of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria - which I think is something like their version of the pope. And the Orthodox Church of St George was interesting on account of its circular interior, which comes from the fact that it was built on top of one of the old Roman towers. Apparently it is the only circular church in Egypt (it's also the only round church I've ever seen).

We wandered south past the Monastery and into a very lovely Christian cemetery where was to be found a church of the Virgin and many an impressive gravestone and tomb. I have to say the Cemetery was very well cared for and very well looked after. Even the taxi driver on our trip from the hotel that morning had commented to us about how beautiful the Christian cemeteries were.

Unable to find another exit from the graveyard we retraced our steps back past the convent and re-emerged on Sharia Mari Gergis. A little way further down the street we turned and descended into a subterranean passageway that linked into the labyrinth of alleyways running through old Cairo. Much like in Edinburgh these narrow street ran under and around the main walled churches and buildings and were wonderful atmospheric and evocative.

The first alleyway was narrow and crooked and quickly turned into a booksellers shop with both walls covered in books. Beyond this was an entrance to the Convent of St Gergis, a nunnery closed to tourists other than for a subterranean chamber beneath the building that had once been a Fatimid mission (Fatimid being an Arab dynasty of around the 10th century) and which now contained a small chapel. May and I had a quick look but there were lots of poor people looking for money so we didn't linger long.

We continued along the alleyway passed a number of other tourists shops that were targeted at the rich bus-tour market. We headed into one to explore their touristy wares. I almost bought a very nice backgammon board for 90 Egyptian pounds (or 9 British pounds) until, at the cash register, the sales assistant told me it was actually 90 US dollars – and even if I had that kind of money to spare the Board was nowhere near worth it – so I made my excuses and left.

Thereafter May and I spent an enjoyable hour or so exploring the ancient alleyways and streets, the small churches so packed for services that people were spilling out onto the flagstones outside. The place had a real sense of age about it but it was pleasing to see that the tourist police were as ever present here as they were at the other sights. Egypt clearly values the Coptic Christian part of Cairo as much as the other parts of the city. In fact, we were pleased to visit a very lovingly restored and preserved Synagogue – the Ben Ezra Synagogue, reportedly built on the site where the baby Moses was found - not something you would expect to see in an Islamic country.

Once we were done exploring the labyrinth of Coptic Cairo we headed back to the Hanging Church, where we spent half an hour or so exploring the interior of the building more fully without feeling that we were interrupting people's worship. In the rear of the church I saw the view down to the water gate below and also had a chance to appreciate some very fine stained glass windows. I can also confirm that if you're even in Coptic Cairo and in need of a visit to the toilet the public toilets situated in the grounds of the Hanging Church are pleasantly clean and tidy - a rare treat in Cairo.

Once we had finished at the Hanging Church we wandered back along Sharia Mari Gergis, avoiding the huge coaches lumbering down the street (tourist coaches it appeared were allowed through the barriers, but not taxis). We made one local shop owner very excited when we declined his offers of water and coca cola in Arabic ("La Shukran!"). He seemed pleased that some westerner had bothered to learn the language, and started jumping about excitedly and talking to his friends, breaking off to tell us "Very good, very good, you speak Arabic!" I think it's a sad indictment on the coach party tourists that the locals hear very simple Arabic phrases so rarely. It's not as if they are hard to learn.

Out on the street we waited about five seconds and then someone approached us offering us their taxi services. We agreed a price to get to the Citadel in Islamic Cairo and then followed him to his taxi, only to discover that it was in fact a beaten up old Lada without any of the usual taxi markings. It was likely a private person just looking to make some money. Nevertheless we climbed in and then sat and watched as the man attempted in vain to start his car. A local sitting near by shouted words of encouragement and then the ‘taxi’ driver got out the car and he and the local lifted the bonnet and conferred over the engine for a few minutes. They seemed to come to some kind of conclusion as they closed the bonnet, the driver got back behind the wheel, and then the local and another guy gave us a push start. It was an interesting taxi experience, but it seemed to work as the engine spluttered to life and we were soon chugging through the streets towards the Citadel.

The Citadel is one of the main tourist draws in Cairo. Sitting high on a hill in the centre of Cairo is a former military fortress that was fortified by the ruler Salah al-Din (Saladin) in the 12th Century to protect it from the Christian Crusaders. The Citadel was also the seat of Egyptian Government until the middle of the 19th century. As well being a former military fortress with great views of Cairo, the Citadel also houses the Mosque of Mohamed Ali, a grand and impressive mosque situated at the highest point of the Citadel, that was built in the 19th century.

Our taxi driver dropped us off at the side of the Cairo bypass, a three lane highway that runs past the Citadel, and we walked up the steep slope (and through the blazing heat, I might add) to the gates where we paid and entered.We spent an hour or so exploring the Citadel, its nooks and crannies. It was a large area with a number of buildings spread out around open squares and wide pathways. The Mohamed Ali mosque was very imposing and impressive but we didn’t enter to see the interior – partly because it was Friday and there were things going on inside, but partly also because I wasn’t so desperate to see the interior that I would take off my shoes.

From beyond the mosque we took in the views of the city of Cairo. It was most enjoyable, even if most of the buildings in view were shabby and run down. I then got myself an ice cream and a can of Sprite (and paid a local fortune for it I might add) and sat down to enjoy them. May, standing over by the edge and taking pictures of the view was approached by a local hawker who started asking her questions about where her husband was and what she was up to. He really was being quite a pest and it was interesting that when I stood up and walked towards them, and as soon as he saw me, I heard him say ‘Ok’ and then he turned and, looking sheepishly at me, he wandered away. It was a prime example before my own eyes of what May must have had to put up with the previous day while on her own. Egypt is not a place to wander comfortably if you are a single woman.

From the view point looking west over the city we wandered east towards the Northern Enclosure of the Citadel, passing but not bothering with the police museum and the military museum on our way. We ended up a lovely garden in the corner of the eastern and northern walls of the Citadel. Here a guard approached us offering us the opportunity to climb the walls and see the views, but we declined. He seemed a bit confused by this and kept asking us, so we wandered away. Eventually, and to our delight, he gave up.

We retraced our steps to the entrance of the Citadel and found ourselves a taxi to take us over to the centre of Islamic Cairo. Really, we should have known better than to get a taxi outside one of the main tourist sites but what started as a 12 Egyptian Pounds trip ended up costing us 20 Egyptian pounds. It wasn’t a lot of money to us but it was the principle and the cheek of agreeing a price with a taxi driver only to spend the whole journey turning down advice to go to a better spot for a few extra pounds, or to do this and that.

The funny thing is we’re not stingy tippers and if he had done what we had asked for and driven us without constantly hassling us we probably would have given him close enough to 20 pounds anyway. Still, it was our last day in the city and to a certain extent we were past caring, so we gave him what he was asking for. 20 Egyptian pounds, I mean, not a good seeing to.

We were dropped off deep in the heart of Islamic Cairo on Sharia Al Azhar. On one side of the road were two large and impressive Mosques and on the other side the famous Khan El Khalili, Cairo's famous bazaar. We were on the side of the road of the mosques when we jumped out the taxi so we wandered around the back of them in search of the Wikala of al-Ghuri, a lovely old Egyptian coach house and inn that we wanted to see, and on the way took a wander through a local bazaar (or market). It was a very pleasant street (apart from the smell) with big bags of spices of different colours and lots of other fruits and vegetables on display. It was very much a locals bazaar rather than a tourist attraction, but that didn't stop two or three immediate friends popping up and trying to get us to try and buy their spices.

Beyond the market we spent a few minutes in the very lovely (and very quiet) Wikala - which was really just a very nice old building - and then used the underpass to cross over to the much bigger and much more tourist orientated Khan El Khalili bazaar. Our first business was to find some food so following the advice of our guidebook we stopped at the Egyptian Pancake House just on the edge of the Khan. We sat outside with a view of the mosques and the busy road and ordered some pancakes – banana and maple syrup for me and butter and something else for May. I say ‘butter and something else’ because to this day I cannot recall what else was on her pancake. When it arrived it was dotted generously with big lumps of butter similar to lumps of cheese on a pizza. It looked quite sickening. You can see it here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/garethontour/2523344959/My pancake was lovely, I must say, and May’s, aside from the butter was apparently nice as well. At the end of it though she had her own mini pyramid of left over butter on her plate.

As we ate a guy twice came up and tried to sell me a leather wallet, but he didn’t seem to hassle us too much when we politely said no thank you in Arabic a couple of times. We then watched him hassle a middle aged American guy sitting one table over who clearly did not know how to deal with hawkers – he tried just waving his finger at him like a naughty child and then speaking firmly in English and then shouting at him. It was most ineffectual and the guy just kept bugging him – mostly, I think, for the fun of it.

Once we had finished our pancakes and paid (including a nice little episode where the waiter thought I was giving him a 2o Egyptian pound tip just because I said thank you when took away the bill I had paid with) we headed into the literal maze of streets and alleyways that is the Khan El Kahlili.

The Khan covers a surprisingly large area and in densely packed with shops – the vast majority of which are targeted at tourists and all selling much the same sort of thing, fabrics, mother of pearly chess boards, little marble pyramids and the like. Despite all the tourist tat nowhere else in Cairo had felt to me as much like Cairo should feel as the Khan. The tight little alleyways of shops, the shouting, the views of mosques and minarets. It's pretty much what you sign up for when you want Cairo.

Fortunately due to the great number of western tourists and coach parties coming and going we were not particularly hassled by anyone and we could get ourselves enjoyably lost and take in the atmosphere. There were no major sites within the Khan, but we did mange to the find our way to Fishawi's, a coffee shop deep in the heart of the Khan that has been open day and night every day of the year for continually for over 200 years. Show me a Starbucks that can claim that. We also found a very lovely large and ornate stone gateway between different avenues within the Khan - which you can see here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/garethontour/2524168876/. And, when not deep in the shadowy gloom of the bazaar the views from the main avenues, to the nearby minarets were very lovely.

We wandered happily for an hour or so, and would have wandered for longer had a lower intestinal urgency not emerged in my stomach, necessitating a quick dash to the main road and a taxi ride back to the hotel. After a quick visit to the toilet and a short rest in the hotel we jumped back into a taxi to take us to Midan Talaat Harb in central Cairo, a very lovely and very European feeling part of the city that we had visited a few days before but without taking pictures. We availed ourselves of the lovely late afternoon light and happily clicked away at golden brown buildings and rushing traffic (you can see some of the results here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/garethontour/2524169078/) Then, deciding that the experience of Mohammad Ali’s juice bar earlier in the week had been too good not to repeat before our departure, we walked through the streets in the direction of the juice bar, getting slightly lost on the way, but ultimately arriving less than half an hour later.

May and I indulged in some coconut milkshakes and sobia and all the while I was very conscious that my gastro-intestinal difficulties of the previous two days might in fact have been down to my previous visit to the juice bar, but at that point, thinking that I would be back in my own flat in Inverkeithing within 24 hours, I decided it didn’t matter.

By the time we were done with our drinks the sun was getting low in the sky and we decided it was a good time to do something we had been meaning to do all week: to see the Nile at sunset. We caught a taxi for the short journey from the juice bar down to the Corniche el Nil. Standing at the edge of the Nile, amongst the other locals sitting drinking on the bank or milling around, we were afforded a fantastic view of the sunset behind the Cairo tower. The sky was mostly clear, but the view was made all the more impressive by a few large cloud trails stretched across the sky. As the sun dropped to the horizon and the sky turned golden the clouds themselves evolved through a range of shades of blue, pink and gold.

We stood there for a good half an hour enjoying the view, the sounds and the smells, until the sun was completely out of sight. It was a fantastic way to end our time in Cairo and a good way to remember the city. Some of the pictures I took are on the Flickr site - you can enjoy the view for yourself, for example at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/garethontour/2523345725/

Once we’d had our fill we grabbed another taxi back to the hotel. We had the hotel room booked for the night although, in truth, we need to be out about half past midnight to get to the airport for our 4am flight, but it was worth the extra cost to be able to have a shower before leaving, and to have had somewhere to leave our bags all day (the thought of carry our bags around all day had not appealed).

Back at the hotel May decided to head around the corner to the Italian for something to eat; in my delicate intestinal state I decided to forego the feed and instead took my time showering and packing while May was out. Once she returned we both finished up our departure preparations, while watching Dire Straits live which was on TV for some reason, before relaxing on the bed for a few hours before leaving.

At half past midnight we checked out and hailed a taxi on the main street around the corner. The driver was a lovely old man who didn’t speak a word of English, but somehow through May’s novice Arabic skills and my impressive impression of a plane taking off, he got the idea of where we wanted to go.

We jumped in the back of the taxi, rolled down the windows, and enjoyed our midnight drive through the city. To our surprise the main roads were absolutely packed with cars – with trucks of labourers presumably leaving the city after a day’s work; families heading north and south from the city; workers and the like. I assumed the weight of traffic at that hour was down to the Friday having been the Islamic day of rest and presumably people had not been able or willing to travel during the day and had instead all rushed to their cars first thing on the Saturday morning. Either that or it was just normal midnight-rush hour traffic for Cairo.

The sights of the city, illuminated at night, were an enjoyable means of passing the time as we travelled through the city, until we were out onto the main highway and travelling north. We reached the airport in plenty of time and proceeded through the shambolic organisation of security and check in before heading up to the departure lounge. The next two hours we spent relaxing in the McDonalds/Starbucks lounge of the airport, on very comfortable soft sofas (why can British airports not have sofas in their public lounges?) before boarding the flight.

To my annoyance the aircraft for the journey home was a much older one than had been the case on the journey out – no seatback entertainment system, one monitor for communal use and one mediocre film for the entire flight. Added onto that was the fact that the next four hours were not the most pleasant flight I’ve ever had, since my intestinal uncertainties returned almost as soon as we had taken off, and I spent a fair amount of time wandering back and forth to, or sitting in the toilet. (I didn’t want to blame Mohamed Ali, his juices were so good, but the timing was about right). And then, finally, we touched down at Schipol. After a short wait (and the purchase of some very fine Neuhaus Chocolates at the duty free shop) we were on the flight back to Edinburgh.

We got back to Inverkeithing at about 9 in the morning. Our breakfast of steak bridies were purchased from the bakers on the high street on the way back to the flat, and then we were back in the comfort of our flat with an enjoyable lazy weekend before us of reflecting on all that we had done.

Egypt Part 6 - Two Days Going Nowhere

2008-06-24T20:47:00.003Z

On Wednesday morning we rose from our bed to the realisation that neither of us were particularly well. Whether the result of koshary or juice bar drinks or something complete else unidentified we couldn’t be sure, but we both knew for certain that it was not a day for being overly adventurous nor overly far from a toilet.

Rather than enduring another Mayfair breakfast we decided instead to venture down the street a hundred metres or so to an Italian style café we had spotted the previous day. The place had been bustling both times we had seen it, and from the menus chalked outside it promised such civilised morning delights as toast and tea. In fact I had a croissant and jam – very nice it was too – and May had an omelette. I also indulged in a fantastic vanilla milkshake which was better that I could ever have imagined, even if it was served in a ridiculously tall and narrow glass.

We decided as we ate that we would adopt a conservative strategy for that day. We would catch a taxi over to the old Coptic area of Cairo – a compact area that we could cover relatively quickly. Unfortunately our plans amounted to nothing as towards the end of breakfast and following a couple of trips to the toilet it became all too clear that leaving the hotel and reliable access to a lavatory was not an option for either of us. But I will spare you the details...

After breakfast, we trudged our weary way back to the ‘comfort’ of the hotel. We spent the day relaxing on the terrace, reading books and doing crosswords and watching the Cairo streets below us. For lunch and dinner we returned to the Italian, making firm friends of the waiting staff and drinking many a milkshake. We slept for a couple of hours in the afternoon, which was very pleasant, but all in all it was hard to shift the feeling that it was a bit of a wasted day. In the evening (at sunset, to be exact) we headed back across the road to the laundrette to pick up our clothes. They were all returned to us in one piece and freshly laundered and with the complimentary aroma of cigarette smoke (inevitable really, given how much the guy in the store seemed to smoke). For the rest of the evening we sat out on the terrace drinking freshly squeezed lemon juice, contemplating our remaining two days in Egypt and planning what we wanted to do.

We went to bed early that night with high hopes of a good couple of days to come. Unfortunately for me, I got worse overnight rather than better. I spent much of the night sitting on or travelling back and forth from the toilet, wondering all the while if all those milkshakes I’d drank had been chilled with ice or made with unpasteurised milk. Or perhaps it had been the lovely pasta lunch I’d had with all the salad leaves. Or perhaps it had just been whatever had caused my illness the previous day getting worse. Whatever the reason, as the sun rose and I lay groaning pathetically to myself on the bed, it was quite clear to me that I wouldn’t be going anywhere that day. I found myself hoping quite uncharitably that May would likewise be still afflicted, largely so I didn’t have to spend the day by myself in the hotel, but when she awoke and bounced out of bed with all the energy of a child on Christmas morning, talking of whizzing around eight different districts of Cairo, I knew she was fully recovered and ready to go.

We quickly discussed the situation and concluded that I had to stay at the hotel. Over a Mayfair breakfast (we stuck to the tea mostly, but I forced down about a quarter of a dry baguette) May decided to head to Islamic Cairo on her own. I was disappointed to be missing it but honestly didn’t want to deprive May so, when I stood on the street waving her taxi off, I was genuinely hoping that she would enjoy herself.

For me, however, it was another day in the hotel. My first order of business, after a trip to the toilet, was a thorough investigation of the television channels on the little 19inch TV in the room. It wasn’t a fruitless search and I spent a good part of my day watching such cinematic classics as Under Siege (even worse than I remembered it – watching Tommy Lee Jones and Steven Seagal act in a scene together is like putting a Monet next to a child’s drawing) and Robocop. Unfortunately both films were badly edited to fit in with Egyptian decency rules – Under Siege to remove Erika Eleniak’s topless scene and Robocop to remove all the graphic violence. And really, in both cases those were the best things about those films, so what was the point? I also watched an episode of Knight Rider featuring KITT’s devilish twin-car KARR. It was not edited in the slightest, it was quite awful, but David Hasselhoff was good value as ever.

Around about lunchtime I was in need of liquid and also starting to feel quite peckish so I wandered along the street to the filling station and picked up some water. I also looked in vain for something vaguely healthy to eat but the only thing I could see was a packet of fig rolls (well, they have fruit in them, don't they?) but in the interests of comfort eating I also picked up a pack of Pringles.

I spent the afternoon reading on the terrace, doing crosswords, and making occasional trips to the toilet in my room. It wasn’t the most enjoyable day, despite the pleasures the TV had to offer, and to be honest I was glad to see May when she reappeared earlier than expected at about 4pm. She told me about her adventures, about the things she had seen in Islamic Cairo, but almost all of it was accompanied with stories about how much hassle she had got while out wandering. Despite being very modestly dressed, all limbs covered and head in a big floppy hat, she had been bothered continuously. She hadn’t even been able to stop to take a photo without getting approached by men of all shapes, sizes and ages, and her summary view was that it had completely spoiled the experience for her. Not exactly an advert for Egyptian tourism is it?

To cheer ourselves up we decided to eat local and we walked around the corner to a local felafel place. It was a basic shop with a counter and a till and no reassuring signs of hygiene control, but I was starving after my four fig rolls and quarter can of Pringles, and decided whatever I ate couldn’t make me any worse than I already was. We plumped for roasted aubergines and mashed potatoes in traditional Egyptian bread. We took the meal back to the hotel and ate on the terrace and it was quite delicious.

It was Thursday night and we had one full day left in Egypt before our early morning flight home on the Saturday morning. We decided that Friday had to be a very productive day. I decided that if need be I would plug myself up with Immodium to make sure I didn’t spend my last day in the hotel. May decided that she wanted to go back to see more of Islamic Cairo and I decided I wanted to see some of it before I left. Together we decided that we also wanted to see Coptic Cairo and to go back to the Mohammad Ali juice bar.

Then we decided that to achieve all those things we had just decided upon we had to get to bed and have an early night. So we did.

Egypt Part 5 - A Day At the Museum

2008-06-21T10:23:00.008Z

The next morning we got up early, excitedly anticipating the wonders that our complimentary Mayfair Hotel breakfast would offer us. We made our way to the terrace and found a seat amongst all the hip cool studenty types, somewhere in the curtain of buzzing insects, and then waited expectantly for our breakfast. A few minutes later one of the young guys working at the hotel arrived with a tray for each of us laden with the following tasty treats: two dry baguettes; a single hospitality portion of butter and a single hospitality portion of cheese; a boiled egg; a glass of diluted orange juice; and a cup of tea. Needless to say, after our Sofitel buffet breakfasts of the previous three days, May and I were not too enamoured with this offering. Still, the tea was good, and made even better when I asked for milk to go with it. I’d even go as far to say the tea in Egypt is as nice as it is at home, and that’s a big statement to make.

We picked at our breakfast unenthusiastically for a few minutes, making lifelong friends of a pair of middle-aged Kiwis (New Zealanders, not birds) when we gave them our boiled eggs after they found out that we had been given the last two of the day. If the gushing embraces were anything to go by, they were big egg fans.

Once we’d finished our tea and politely nibbled at our dry baguettes, the first order of business was to find somewhere to launder or smelly and dusty clothes from the last three days. Upon the advice of the man on the desk at the hotel we crossed July 26 and turned down one of the narrow alleys on Sharia Hassan Sabri. A little way down the alley we found the rather shabby looking laundrette and ventured into the gloom. We were met by an old man with a crooked back and a cigarette clamped between his lips. He cast his one remaining eye over our clothes and then, much to my delight, said to us 'Tomorrow, at sunset', which made me feel like I was in a scene from Indiana Jones. We left having enjoyed the experience of meeting a proper Egyptian character but also sure in the knowledge that our clothes would be returned clean and smelling strongly of cigarette smoke.

A quick return visit to our hotel for our bags and guidebooks and then we were back doing touristy things. Our plan for that day was to spend as much time as we wanted in the Egyptian Museum of Antiquities – one of the greatest museums in the world, if our guidebooks were anything to go by. We got a taxi from July 26 (the street, not the date) and enjoyed the ride over the Nile and along the bustling (which is Egyptian for 'crazy mental drivers') Corniche to the Nile Hilton, where we’d asked to be dropped off. After passing through the airport-style security to get into the hotel we asked at reception about the cost of a room for a couple of nights – just in case the delights of the Mayfair became too much to bear – and then headed out through the rear entrance of the hotel into Midan Tahrir, a massive Soviet style square in that defined downtown Cairo but which was also an absolute traffic nightmare. On the north side of Midan Tahrir is the very nice pink sandstone building that houses the Museum of Antiquities. We walked the short distance to the Museum, paid for our tickets, and then headed inside (stopping every now and then to allow May a few minutes to catch her breath after all that hyperventilating from the excitement of going to the museum that she’d wanted to see all her life).

The museum was absolutely packed – I’ve never seen a museum so busy, and I’ve been to some of the world’s most famous (Louvre; Metropolitan; British Museum; Kinneil House museum) – largely through tour party groups being ushered around like sheep. May and I negotiated our way between them and also had to twice deal with guys claiming to be expert archaeologists with US degrees who wanted to give us the benefit of their experience in a tour of the museum. It’s funny how many expert archaeologists there are in Egypt just lingering around historic sites and museums and looking for money from tourists. You’d think someone would put them to work digging up old things things and the like.

Once we were beyond the main entrance and the biggest throng of people we made our way in a clockwise direction around the ground floor of the museum. The museum was set up so that the collection was displayed chronologically in a loop, so that you saw the oldest things first and moved through history to the most recent Greco-Roman pieces back near the main entrance. In the centre of the museum is the monumental statuary. May and I took our time, spending a good three hours on the ground floor. I could detail at length the amazing things we saw but even if I hadn't forgotten the names of most of them already it would amount to little more than a list of names because I don't think I could do justice to anything be accurately describing its historical or archaeological context. Suffice to say there was a lot of very impressive stuff here, monuments, statues and stelae of immense age and value, but as with our experience visiting the pyramids over the previous few days, there was a real sense that the museum just took for granted what it had. There was a real shortage of information or descriptors on a lot of the items – some very interesting things were lying without any information to let you know what they were - and over all the museum felt run down and shabby and in need of some cash investment. And, although there was a strict no photography rule the museum guards were all to happy to let you take pictures for a few pounds in their pocket.

Actually, I know that there were plans to build a new complex at the Giza pyramids that would in future house the content of the museum in a modern, purpose built building. Not before time.

The other drawback of the museum was all the tour groups that periodically passed through. Not only did they spoil the mood quite a bit, whenever they came to the same exhibit you were looking at there seemed to be an expectation that you would move out of the way and give them right of passage, as if as private visitors you were a second class citizen compared to the tour groups.

After doing our circuit of the ground floor we ventured outside to the museum café for lunch. The freshly squeezed fruit juices were amazing, the burger and chips (the food was obviously aimed at the coach party market) very mediocre. With lunch done May ventured back inside to complete her exploration of the lower floor of the museum – the monumental statuary area – and I decided to sit outside in the shade of the trees for a while, just to enjoy the fresh air and to people-watch the locals. It was enjoyable for about five minutes until I realised the ground where I was sitting was swarming with ants. Not wanting to be eaten alive I decided it was time to return to the cool shady insect-free interior of the museum.

After completing our tour of the ground floor of the museum we headed up to the second floor where two of the museums main draws – the Tutankhamen exhibition and the Mummy room. We first ventured into the very modern and plush Tutankhamun Exhibition. Here were some real treasures – the famous death mask (or one of them); two coffins that he had been buried in, the anthropomorphic pure gold inner coffin and the wooden gold lined outer coffin. Both were exquisitely carved with hieroglyphics. Also on display in the room were other funerary artifacts found on the king’s body – jewellery and amulets and so on. It was a most impressive collection and the death mask in particular was quite captivating.

My enjoyment of the two coffins was spoiled a little by the sound of a couple from Hamilton wandering about and talking noisily in Glaswegian – the wife/woman seemingly having the job of reading everything out to her husband because he was too lazy/stupid to read himself. After considering the information provided the man would grunt or nod and the woman would say something like ‘It’s awfy braw isn’t it?’ or ‘Pure dead mummy magic’. Actually I made that last one up, but it’s not a million miles from the truth.

The main hall outside the Tutankhamun room held other artifacts found within the burial chamber – tables and a big box of shoes and jugs of various sizes – as well as the large gold-leaf covered boxes – some not much small that a room - that had been nested inside each other and inside which, at the very core, had been found Tutankhamun's coffins. It was a head scratcher how they got them all inside one and other.

The rest of the floor contained various odds and ends, lots of sarcophagi and stelae, lots of wooden furniture and a room full of ancient papyri. And, of course, the other big draw on this floor was famous mummy room, a corner of the museum holding 11 actual ancient royal mummies, including some of Ancient Egypt’s most important pharaohs such as Ramses II and Seti I. The mummies actually have a bit of a potted history - displaying dead bodies in the museum offended many and as a result the former mummy room was closed to the public in 1981. Since then the museum and the Getty institute have been working to restore the mummies and the results of this work are what are now presented in the mummy room. Cunningly, as it is obviously the main draw of the museum, there is a separate entrance fee to the mummy room over and above the cost of entry to the museum. Quite brazenly it costs twice as much to get into the mummy room as it does to get into the museum itself. As May and I both had more sense than money we decided it just wasn't worth it.

It was late afternoon by that point and having had our fill of museum cabinets May and I decided to leave the museum and get something to eat. Consulting the guidebook May found reference to a very well known koshary place called Abou Tarek not too far away along Sharia Champollion (http://www.aboutarek.com/new_site/get_news.asp). Koshary is a bizarre Egyptian speciality of rice, spaghetti, lentils, beans, garlic sauce and a spicy chili sauce that is a lot tastier than it sounds. We decided to walk to the café and after taking life in our hands crossing the racing traffic of Midan Tahrir we found ourselves walking east through downtown Cairo. We were stopped almost immediately by a very congenial older man who started talking to us about where we were going. Claiming to be a teacher and not looking for any money he advised us that the Koshary place would be closed for Muslim prayers but instead we could give visit a Government run papyrus shop just on the other side of the street. To be honest, it started to feel like a bit of a scam, but the chap was so much more friendly than most similar approaches that we went with it. We followed him across the street to the Government run papyrus shop and after exchanging a few words with the shop owner – presumably of the nature of ‘I brought these dumb westerners to you, give me 10% of what you sell’ the man bid us farewell. We then spent a very enjoyable hour in the papyrus shop, being fed tea and entertained by the manager (who swore he was actually a Doctor and just helping his friend out in the shop). They showed us many different papyrus and we ended up buying two very nice ones at a ridiculously knock down price (if price tags were anything to go buy, but I am sure they still made a profit). We also entertained the owner with a game of rock, paper, scissors, which May and I used to decide what to buy, and escaped just about without getting drawn into a lengthy sales pitch on the shop's other main trade of essential oils (but not before May got a couple of dashes of oil on her wrists).

An hour later we were continuing on our way east to the Koshary shop, our papyrus in my bag. We walked through very downtown areas, with shops and children playing, men sitting at coffee shops and chatting, smoking that African bubble-pipe thing. Abou Tarek was situated on a cross-roads of one of these streets and was unmissable both because of the sheer number of people in and around the place but also because it was done up with lights and decorations like it was Christmas. We took a seat upstairs, got served quickly and enjoyed a very nice meal sitting amongst locals that cost us about the same as a sandwich back home.

From the café with full stomachs we walked south again, heading towards Midan Talaat Harb – an intersection of five or six streets in the part of the city that had been modelled on 19th century France. The streets approaching the Midan were leafy and wide and elegant, if a little run down. Given that this was a main tourist attraction we were approached here by a young man who told us that his shop supplied the Body Shop and that he also sold brilliant papyrus. Fortunately the papyrus we had bought earlier in the day came to our aid and once waved in his face he lost interest even more quickly than the time it had taken him to become our best friend.

From Midan Talaat Harb we headed through the elegant streets to the Mohamed Ali Juice bar – a beverage establishment recommended by our guidebook. Juice bars are a popular Cairo institution where you can buy freshly squeezed fruit juices and shakes at a very cheap price - given the heat and dry air in Cairo you can see why they are so popular. Mohamed Ali's was supposed to be the best. Once we got there it turned out to be a small, dingy shop with nothing more than a counter of jugs and a man sitting on a rickety wooden chair by a till, but it served some of the most amazing drinks: lemonade milkshake; coconut milkshake; sobia; any fruit juice you could want; peanut butter milkshake and so on. May and I stood there at the side of the street drinking a good handful of juices for ten minutes or so as the traffic rushed by behind us, and in the end we spent only a couple of quid. It was quite fantastic – even if I was more than a little worried about the potential for food poisoning from the milk and ice being used in the drinks.

We caught a taxi right on the street outside the juice bar and headed back across the Nile to our hotel, enjoying a lengthy tour of the island of Zamalek on the way when it became clear that the taxi driver didn't have a clue where he was taking us. We eventually got dropped off on July 26 and after a quick stop in a bookshop there, where May bought a nice book of pictures of Cairo, we headed back to the hotel, happily tired after a long and rewarding day.

Our evening was once again spent on the terrace, planning the next day, writing our journals and avoiding the insects and annoying Italian men lingering about. And then it was back to our room for the dubious pleasures of the hotel shower and bed.

Egypt Part 4 - To Cairo

2008-06-17T13:58:00.007Z

The following morning May and I enjoyed the wonderful luxury of knowing both that we did not need to get up early to head off in search of any pyramids and that we did not need to check out of our room until almost lunch time. So we savoured an extra hour in bed before heading downstairs for our last and very lazy buffet breakfast at the Sofitel Le Sphinx. And very nice it was too. Once we had finished, packed and taken our last few photos, we checked out and then found a taxi to take us 12km or so into central Cairo and our hotel for the next for nights - the Mayfair.

The trip back into Cairo was an interesting if depressing one. The freeway was frenetic and noisy, the views on either side of the road being depressing run down or ruined housing blocks. At one point, just as we descended from the freeway onto the island of Zamalek, where our hotel was located, the smell was quite mindblowingly awful. I am not sure if we were passing a sewage plant or some waste dump but both May and I turned slightly green and it was only through sheer willpower that we avoided vomiting all over the taxi driver's ancient and filthy car.

Zamalek is supposedly a very upper class part of Egypt, with very western shops and boulevards and supposedly the best cappuccinos and pizzas in the whole of Cairo. We got a good opportunity to enjoy the atmosphere of the area when our taxi driver stopped to ask directions (always reassuring), and again once he'd let us off a few blocks from the hotel. The walk was enjoyable, the streets wide and leafy and vaguely European, the shops an interesting mix of the brand new and gleaming and the old and dingy. In fact, if anything, our hotel appeared all too soon. The Mayfair Hotel (http://www.mayfaircairo.com/) amounts to a number of rooms spread across a number of floors of a very nice Art-Deco style apartment block. We were met at reception by a slim young man and an obese older man with bulging eyes. The later of these two appeared to be the owner and he encouraged us to sit on the terrace to wait a few minutes for our room to be made up. There followed offers of tea, coffee, fruit juce and a narrative introduction to the various sights visible from the terrace - including the French embassy immediately across the street.

A few minutes later and one of the staff yanked my bag off my arm and hot footed it up the stairs, the implication being that we were to follow him to our room and then give him money for carrying my bag. Two floors above we were shown into a very small room with a double bed, a wardrobe, a large and grubby en suite and, for some reason, a TV on top of a fridge by the side of the bed. With some Egyptian pounds pressed into the hand of our 'porter' we were alone.

It certainly wasn't a luxurious hotel but neither was it as bad as one might have expected from what was really little more than a Cairo hostel. We didn't linger long examining finery and fittings, but headed straight out.

Outside we turned right at the end of our street heading along 26 July St (something I noticed about Cairo - a lot of the streets are named after dates for some reason). Shaded by the flyover of the freeway and drowned by the sound of engines from the ground level street, July 26 is supposedly the most exclusive street in Cairo. It was clearly very busy and it had a fascinating range of shops, from chemists, to cafes to antique shops to phone shops to juice bars, but it didn't feel especially upmarket or exclusive to me.

At the end of the street the fly over continued over the Nile in the shape of the July 26 Bridge. May and I climbed the pedestrian stairs to the bridge and walked from Zamalek to the downtown Cairo area, gazing down at the Nile all the while. The bridge afforded a great view down through the centre of Cairo so we stopped for a few pictures. On the east bank we walked south along the bank of the Nile, along a road known as the Corniche . This part of Cairo is where all the top class hotels are, where all the moneyed foreign tourists stay, but the river front was also clearly a very popular place for young locals to hang out and enjoy the view.

I have to be honest and say as nice as the view and the area was, I didn't enjoy this part of the walk. I was very conscious that we were very much the centre of attention, particularly with the groups of young guys loitering about. A lot of the attention seemed to be at May as a western woman and although there was nothing overtly aggressive and demeaning going on there was a lot of staring and sniggering and I found it difficult to ignore. Nevertheless we continued on our walk south along the Corniche, six lanes of noisy traffic on one side of us and the Nile on the other, stopping every now and then for a photo, until we reached the Tahrir bridge, which headed back across the Nile and through the southern end of Zamalek. We followed the bridge all the way over the Nile, on through Zamalek and then over the Nile again to the West Bank on the Gala'a bridge on other side of the island.

The sun was hot and the air dry so we stopped by the side of a large roundabout to rest, in the shade of some trees and next to a middle aged man who stared at May openly the whole time we sat there. We drank some water and checked our map then decided to wander around the West Bank for a bit. We found our way to the Mahmoud Khalil Museum, a lovely French style mansion that had been built by a Francophile Egyptian (the Mahmoud Khalil of its title) but which was now a modern art museum. The building was closed so we could enjoy the exterior before heading on our way.

From there we wound our way back through the streets of the East Bank and headed back across the Nile to Zamalek. At the southernmost point of the island lies the Opera complex, home to the Opera House, the Modern Art Museum and a few other interesting buildings. May and I decided to explore since we were in the vicinity and everything else we wanted to see was a taxi ride away.

We entered the park that housed the complex and then spent a good half an hour wandering around trying to find any of the buildings of note, thanks to Rough Guide's useless mapping. Eventually May had the presence of mind to stop and ask someone in a uniform and the helpful chap pointed us around the corner and towards a very large and elegant square around which sat the impressive Opera House, the Modern Art Museum and the Civic Centre. We had planned to spend some time enjoying the cool air conditioned surroundings of the Modern Art Museum but unfortunately it was closed, so instead we enjoyed the baking hot and dry surroundings of the grounds. Fortunately there were a number of art works exhibited there (including a very nice shoal of fish installation), that kept us entertained for a while. After that we wandered around the very nice Opera House (an interesting combination of European and Moorish styles) before venturing back out into the busy streets of Zamalek.

Thereafter, as the sun started to lower in the sky, we walked back north past the supposedly exclusive Gezira Sporting Club (the most exclusive sports club in Africa apparently, originally started by the British during colonial times, but for an exclusive sporting club they really needed to water the grass), and then through the shabby chic streets until we reached our hotel again. After dumping our stuff and consulting Rough Guide we decided to head across July 26 to the north side of the street and narrow streets and avenues beyond where was located a restaurant called Aubergine. The place was hidden behind a bland an unnoticeable exterior (so much so that we missed it when we wandered past and had to ask for directions) but inside was funky and modern with large cartoonish wall murals and nice leather seats. The menu was vegetarian and I ordered a four cheese lasagna (expecting lots of veg with four types of cheeses and pasta, but instead getting just four types of cheese and pasta) and aubergine moussaka for May. The best thing about the meal was the amazing freshly squeezed orange juice - we gulped down a glass each before even the food arrived. The worst thing was the chain smoking woman sitting a few tables down, polluting the whole room throughout our meal. It makes you realise how far Britain has come when you go into a restaurant and someone smoking can really upset your equilibrium.
With our meal finished and our stomachs full and the very cheap bill paid, we wandered back up onto the July 26 Bridge to get a view of Cairo as the sun went down. Unfortunately the western horizon was hidden by the buildings and although a lovely golden colour spread across the sky and buildings, we weren't in the position to enjoy the sunset at its fullest. We took a few obligatory photos and then headed back to the hotel.

Thereafter we spent an enjoyable couple of hours on the hotel terrace drinking freshly squeezed lemonade, writing journals and planning what we would do the next day. Throughout this period we also tried our best to not get annoyed by the noisy Italian student sitting three tables down. He quite clearly loved himself and spent most of his time trying to chat up two local girls.

Then it was back to our room and the opportunity to establish that those red flecks on the wall were not paint spots as I had initially thought, but squashed insects that the cleaners had never bothered to wipe away. Some of them were quite big - big enough in fact that you could still make out all the anatomical details of the now flattened insect. Needless to say we were encouraged that these flattened insects all appeared to be congregated around the headboard of the bed.

Then I took the opportunity of a shower where I found that the shower tray was so small and the shower curtain so useless that you were forced to wash the floor any time you wanted the shower. Still, I suppose that was a good thing since the cleaners were clearly not that fussed about keep the place neat.

Oh and the duvet on the bed didn't appear to have been changed ever. Instead they just appeared to change the sheets on the mattress and the pillow covers. This was not particularly comforting for me but given May is about two steps away from obsessive compulsive about cleaniness at the best of times, it was even worse for her.

All this led May and I to promise that in future wherever we went on holiday we would not book the cheapest hotels we could find just to save money. We were too old and earning too much to put ourselves into depressing and faintly terrifying rooms just to save a few pounds. Next time we went anywhere it would be Marriots and Hiltons all the way.

That said, the TV in the room was showing Knight Rider, so it wasn't all bad.

Egpyt Part 3 - More Pyramids

2008-06-03T21:20:00.004Z

The next morning we spent the first hour of the day in the car with Salah, driving south from Giza through the surprisingly lush countryside of the Nile valley – lots of palm trees and grasses – to Dashur, Memphis and Saqqara. Our first destination was Dashur, the furthest south, and site of the Bent, Red and Black Pyramids. In terms of orthodox Egyptology these were important pyramids, pre-empting the apex of pyramid building at Giza. We also knew that they were hardly visited by tourists and therefore we would have them largely to ourselves.

A good portion of the drive was through the built up suburbs of Cairo, the road following the path of a canal all the way south. After the built up areas we drove through the lush farmlands, passing occasional hamlets of run down buildings, bare footed children and women all in black, until we reached the town of Dashur. Following the direction of an old, rusty sign, we turned west on the main (single dirt track) road through the town towards the pyramids. Dashur was a run down gaggle of buildings, with dirty puddles of water and lots of rubbish strewn about. It looked like a slightly better kept version of the towns you see on news stories about Afghanistan, but nobody seemed to mind. The children in particular seemed quite happy running around the rubbish in bare feet shooting and screaming.

On the other side of the town we came to the tourist check point. For some reason Salah insisted we tell the ticket seller that we were Japanese and from a different hotel than we were. We did as we were told and noticed that Salah slipped the tourist policeman some Egyptian Pounds – apparently common practice amongst taxi drivers visiting the site with tourists. (It pays to be a tourist policeman in Cairo).

And then we were on a road through the empty desert, our first real taste of proper Egyptian desert. After a short drive we passed a petrol refinery on our right and then the Red Pyramid appeared immediately in front of us on our left, taller and much more impressive than I had expected it to be. Further off into the desert on the left were the remains of the Black Pyramid (now collapsed around its central core) and the Bent Pyramid (so called because the angle of its sides changed about half way up). As expected there were only a couple of other tourists at the Red Pyramid and May enjoyed wandering around and venturing inside (via a very long and steep descending corridor that was unlit for much of the time were in the pyramid – I was grateful for May’s head-torch and felt only slightly guilty for having made fun of her for bringing it before the trip). The only drawback, yet again, was the tourist police who again were looking for baksheesh for doing nothing more demanding than lifting a rope for us so we could touch the pyramid (not that we wanted to).

Once we had admired the Red Pyramid outside and in for an hour or so – and it was worth admiring I can tell you - Salah drove us tentatively along the rock strewn road to the Bent Pyramid. It was a track more suited to a four wheel drive and I could sense how nervous Salah was about his beautiful car with every pebble we drove over.

The Bent Pyramid was also larger than I expected it to be. It was worth visiting given the fact that much of its facing casing stones were still in place, giving a good idea of what all the pyramids must once have looked like.

While May busied herself taking pictures the tourist police gathered around me to give me a history lesson on the pyramids of Dashur (one benefit of being a woman in Egypt is that the tourist police never bother you if there is a man around). Needless to say they told me lots of interesting things that I didn’t already know like ‘Pyramid big’ or ‘this Bent Pyramid’ or ‘that Black Pyramid over there, that Red Pyramid’ and then seemed insulted when I didn’t have any baksheesh to offer. It can be quite awkward in that situation because you can’t just say to them ‘go away I am not interested’ because, well, they carry machine guns, but all the while you know that the friendly banter is leading up to a request for money. Still, unlike some of the other random hawkers, the tourist police never insist on baksheesh when you say no – clearly they know it is more than their job is worth to hassle tourists.

Still, it’s not pleasant saying 'no' to a man holding a Kalashnikov. It certainly puts hair on your chest.

From Dashur we headed back north, stopping briefly in the town of Dashur itself while Salah bought himself some snacks of falafel and bread. Helpfully he also bought some for us so May and I were left in the awkward situation of being offered food as a gift that had been purchased from a street stall in a very dirty town where rubbish was rotting in the street and stream water had an attractive foam floating on the surface. As a result we were not too keen to eat the proffered food (my digestive system was already walking the tightrope of healthy bowel movements after three days in the country). Eventually however our hunger and the fine smell of the food won out . I have to be honest, they were the best falafel we had all trip – crisp, fresh and tasty – and the bread they came with was just as nice. After some initial dubiety and hamster nibbles in case of immediate toxic shock syndrome we munched through it with much enjoyment as we made our way to our next stop – Memphis.

Although once a great ancient Egyptian city, Memphis is now a rather ramshackle open air museum of statues and other assorted stoneworks from around the area. The most impressive item was the remains of the Colossus of Ramses II that was now prone on its back in a purpose built museum. As you would imagine of a colossus it was some size. The other treasures were strewn around the grounds outside, tourist hawker stalls down one side of the museum grounds. Here was the second largest sphinx in Egypt (after the Giza one) and a couple of other large statues, some sarcophagi and many stela. The place wasn’t particularly busy, with a couple of coach parties coming and going in the hour or so we were there, and none of the hawkers bothered us in the slightest, seemingly more interested in lounging in the shade together, so I quite enjoyed the peace. I even found the courage to venture into the toilets, finding myself unsurprised at the lack of toilet tissue (unless you bought it by the sheet from the cackling women sitting outside), warm water, cold water or soap. You washed your hands – if you chose to – by dipping them in the big bucket of slightly murky water laid out for your convenience. Needless to say I felt my urge to go to the toilet diminish quite quickly.

From Memphis we drove north again to the last site of the day – the sights of the Saqqara pyramid field. Here for me were the first signs of what the Egypt tourist industry could be if it wanted to. There was a lovely new car park and sandstone visitor complex with toilets (clean! hot water!), café and very nice museum commemorating Imhotep, architect of the first pyramids. If such facilities were available at the other main sights – even if just at Giza – the experience of visiting as a tourist would be vastly improved. (In fact, I understand there is some plan to relocate the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities – currently in Cairo – to Giza by 2010 or 2011, and this may come with similar visitor facilities).

From the car park we drove around to the Step Pyramid of Djoser – the first true pyramid erected (if orthodox Egyptology is to be believed). Also in the same area was the Djoser funerary complex with tombs, temples, mastabas (single storey burial chambers that preceded pyramids). The whole complex was great to explore even though it was much busier than the other two sites, with regular coach parties coming and going, lots of friendly wild dogs (not a rabid one in sight) and more numerous local Bedouin hawkers always on the look out for baksheesh (as well as more sophisticated hawkers who claimed to be archaeologists at the Egyptian Museum of Antiquities and who could take you on an educative tour of the site, all for a small fee of course). Although the sun was scorching hot and the dust and surprisingly strong wind was constantly in our face, it was a great few hours we spent exploring the ruins and the pyramids. It was amazing seeing the things that were just strewn about – blocks of sandstone with hieroglyphics carved into them and the like. Fortunately the tourist police seemed to keep their distance here and we were not constantly turning them away. We were able to enjoy ourselves and be much more relaxed about the whole visit.

After the Djoser funerary complex we drove over to explore some mastabas a little distance away. These had some of the most amazing reliefs still visible inside, wall carvings incredible in their detail and still, in places, retaining much of their original colouring. It really enabled you to vision what the tombs would have looked like when first built.

From the mastabas we drove around to see a few other interesting sights, none of which in the end we had the energy to get to since they necessitated tramping over the sand from the main road for a good distance. In the end, in the middle of the afternoon, we told Salah to take us back to Giza and our hotel.

In the suburbs of Giza Salah stopped and got us each a cup of fresh sugar cane water which, much like the falafel earlier, didn’t appear to have come from the most hygienic of sources. However on the basis that I had probably likely already exposed myself to anything I might catch, I drunk both cups down gratefully. May declined.

Shortly thereafter Salah dropped us off outside our hotel and we bid him farewell, disingenuously telling him that we were off home the next day so as to preclude any prolonged discussions about him driving us around Cairo for the next three days.

That evening we were lazy and ate room service (western food that was the worst we ate during the whole trip – if you go to Egypt stick to the local food, it is much better) and slept early to enjoy our last night in our very comfortable Giza hotel.

We went to sleep knowing that the next day we would be checking out and heading into Cairo proper for the second half of our visit. It was a farewell to the ancient monuments and a hello to the smoggy metropolis of Cairo – the biggest urban sprawl on the whole continent of Africa.

Egypt Part 2 - Pestered Amongst The Pyramids

2008-06-01T20:18:00.005Z

Our second day in Egypt dawned sunny, hot and smoggy. After half an hour at the breakfast buffet fulling our stomachs our first order of the morning was to find a taxi driver for the day who would chauffeur us around the sights of the Giza plateau (because it's a big area you know). We decided to ignore the swarm of taxi drivers immediately outside the hotel, knowing that they would charge tourist rates, and instead crossed the round about and started walking towards the pyramids, hoping to meet someone on the way.

Just outside Felfella, the restaurant where we had eaten lunch the previous day, we were approached by a tall, snappily dressed man offering a taxi. As it turned out he represented three or four taxis parked at the side of the road and when we told him what we were looking for (a taxi driver to stay with us all day and drive us around Giza - no Dashur or Saqqara or Memphis or boat trips or anything - just Giza) he spoke one at a time with the taxis waiting until we got a driver - a nice older guy called Salah who had a new looking Kia 'limousine' taxi, complete with plastic still on the seats. We thanked the taxi pimp (for that was what he was - just like a real pimp he would make lots of money without taking any rides) and climbed into Salah's taxi.

A few minutes later we were sitting in a queue of tour buses waiting for the pyramid complex gates to open at 8am. Salah tossed back to us his taxi guest book - a rather dusty and sticky diary that all of his previous customers had added to, commenting favourably on Salah and his services.

A few minutes later and we were driving up the road we had walked the previous day. We jumped out to buy our tickets into the complex (50 Egyptian Pounds - about a fiver) and then walked through the ramshackle gate house (no signs showing you what to do or where to go) and then dashed across flat rock to the ticket booth for entry to the Great Pyramid (100 Egyptian pounds) - apparently only a fixed number of people are allowed in every day so we wanted to make sure we wouldn't miss out.

With tickets in hands we approached the Great Pyramid. Being even closer to it than we had the previous day - walking in its shadow in fact - you really had to marvel at the size of it, at the scale of each individual stone along its base. You also had to marvel at the number of tacky hawkers trying to sell us hats and postcards and head towels. They were really quite persistent but we developed quite a knack for saying 'no thank you' in Arabic in such a way that they knew not to mess with us.

We ascended the modern-cut stairs in the side of the pyramid to the entrance where, because cameras are not allowed inside the pyramid, and because we both had cameras on our person, May and I had to take it in turns to venture inside the Great Pyramid. I went first.

I was quite excited, I must admit. Beyond the entrance (which is not the original entrance to the Pyramid but rather an entrance made by robbers in the ninth century - the original entrance is a bit further up the Pyramid and when the Pyramid still had its facing stones on was all but invisible). Immediately inside the Pyramid the walls well like descending into a mine, rough and chiseled (if you want to see pictures of the interior of the Pyramid you can do here, and follow my journey: http://guardians.net/egypt/gp1.htm). The passage wasn't straight but curved slightly back and forth, and ran into the pyramid until it connected with the original entrance passageway. New modern cut steps take the passageway around huge granite blocks that acted as plugs blocking the ascending passage into the Pyramid core when it was completed.

Reaching the originally ascending passageway I was struck by how small it was - I had to bend double to get into it, and then my back was touching the top of the passage above me. In this way I had to scuttle up the passage way for a couple of minutes. About halfway up I had a very strange mental wobble where I was suddenly very aware of the amount of stone directly above me. My mind conjoured images of it all coming down on top of me at that moment, even though it had stayed perfectly still where it was for thousands of years. I steadied myself and pressed on, emerging a short while later into the magnificent Grand Gallery.

The Grand Gallery is a quite astonishing piece of engineering - a massive cathedral like vaulted passageway in the core of the Pyramid (that is built and engineered into it by the way, not carved into the stone), it boggles the mind how people who supposedly didn't even have iron tools could build something so sophisticated. I hung around for a few minutes, enjoying the view (but not enjoying the still, humid, stinking air), then I pressed on up, ascending the gallery with the aid of the banister and wooden planks in the floor. It was a steep climb but nowhere as bad as some of my readings had suggested it might be.

At the top I passed through an antechamber where grooves in the walls showed where once granite portcullis had been to blocked of the room beyond (now vacant) and then emerged into the so called 'King's Chamber'. Here there was a granite coffin that had once supposedly held the body of the Pharaoh Khafre (who had, according to orthodox Egyptology, built the pyramid) - but nothing had ever been found in the chamber, no body or treasure. Otherwise the room was a bare, granite lined box. The engineering was impressive - you couldn't slip a bit of paper between the blocks of granite - but due to the stale air and humidity (and the smell which was the product of centuries of sweaty people trooping in and out) I didn't feel the need to linger long.

I returned to the Grand Gallery and made my way down, stopping along the way frequently to let a bus load of Japanese tourists passed (that's one thing about the Pyramid - as clever as they were they didn't design it so people could pass in the corridors).

A few minutes later I was glad to emerge into the baking, dry but fresh air. I took the cameras and other belongings from May and made myself comfortable on a rock nearby while she took her trip inside, taking the opportunity to reflect on the experience and to watch the hawkers annoy and abuse the tour groups milling around the complex. The tourist police in their smart white uniforms seemed disinclined to do anything about these touts even when they got a bit aggressive (never physically, but sometimes verbally). I couldn't help but wonder what the tourist police were actually there for if they weren't fussed about actually protecting the tourists. (That said, I didn't witness any mass murder by Islamic Terrorists so maybe they serve a purpose).

Once May emerged we waited a few minutes for her to stop hyperventilating from excitement and then started our walk around the base of the pyramid. We were continuously approached by camel riders and horse riders with offers of rides of photographs, and to be honest having to constantly say got a bit tiring. What was worse and more depressing were the tourist police themselves. They were just as bad, if less pushy. If you even looked at the pyramid they were there with an offer of letting you touch the stones, take a picture with you climbing the pyramid, or some such. These were the men paid to protect these ancient monuments and for 50p they would let you clamber all over it. Depressing.

We continued our tour around the base of the Great Pyramid, enjoying the history and atmosphere of the Giza plateau. On the south side of the Great Pyramid we came across the ugly/beautiful (depending on who you ask) Solar Boat Museum, a 70s construction that vaguely echoes the shape of a boat. This building houses the reconstructed remains of what archaeologists have called a ‘solar boat’, that was discovered in 1954 in a pit at the side of the museum, thousands of years after it had been buried there. The museum is in fact built over the pit and on the ground floor they have the pit and its covering slabs exposed to see. The remains of the boat were in a good condition and for the next 14 years a local archaeologist dedicated his life to rebuilding the boat – perhaps the most precious and delicate Lego puzzle ever completed.

The finished boat is impressive and is easily the best thing in the museum. The other exhibits were briefly interesting but somewhat underwhelming: a couple of photos of the pit where the boat was recovered, photos of the reconstruction and a scale model of the boat. The only other good thing about the museum is the big shoe-socks they give you to walk around in, presumably so that you do not damage the very nice parquet flooring. They do make you look rather silly but are great for practicing your ice skating on the polished floor.

We didn’t linger in the museum for more than half an hour, and once back out in the sun we completed our circuit of the Great Pyramid, still turning down the kind offers of camel rides or Pyramid climbs from the hawkers and tourist police and after a few minutes enjoying the view over Giza and Cairo, we jumped back into the taxi with Salah.

Salah followed the nice new tarmac road as it snaked past the second two pyramids and out to the viewing point some 1km to the south the main complex, into the edge of the desert. Here too were gathered the hawkers – some with stalls – and the tourist police and the place was busy with tourists, but certainly not as busy as I might have expected. Leaving Salah we ventured out into the sands away from the cars and the stalls and the tourists to get some shots of the pyramids amongst the desert wilderness (except for the tarmac road and coaches driving past).
The spot did afford great photo opportunities, but it was spoiled somewhat by the amount of rubbish littering the sand around us – plastic bottles, coke cans, wrappings, all scattered across the sandy rise as if it had been washed up by the sea. I’m not convinced it was all the fault of tourists either – I witnessed a number of times the attitude of locals that you could do what ever you wanted in the desert (including the toilet) and nobody cared, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they thought the same way about dumping rubbish.

After a bit of a wander around the desert, filling our cameras with photographs and our shoes with sand, we climbed back up to the car park and the morass of tourists and jumped back into the car with Salah. Our next stop was the smallest of the three pyramids, Menkaure’s. The pyramid was not open to the public so we didn’t linger long, only long enough to enjoy the hieroglyphics carved into one of the facing stones of the pyramid, and to turn down three separate offers from the tourist police to climb the pyramid/photograph the pyramid/ride a camel.

The next stop was the second pyramid, the pyramid of Khafre, which was interesting for a number of reasons. Although slight shorter in height than the Great Pyramid it actually appears taller, partly because it is built on a slightly higher piece of ground, but also because a small section of its facing stones are still in place at the tip of the pyramid. These facing stones really give you a tantalising idea of how the three pyramids must have appeared when all fully encased in their facing stones. Instead of the rugged step-appearance they now have, they all would have been smooth and white (the facing stones were limestone) and in the sunlight they would have glimmered. Both May and I commented more than once about how amazing it must have been to be able to see the pyramids like that, how sad that we would never see that.

As with the Great Pyramid we were able to enter the pyramid of Khafre – only for 50 Egyptian Pounds each. Once again no cameras were allowed so we took it turns. May went first and I sat outside watching a young English couple get ensnared by a camel riding hawker simply because they couldn’t find the guts to give a firm ‘no’. A few minutes later the girl was wearing a towel on her head and posing with the camel and hawker for a photo while the guy took the picture looking none to pleased.

Once May had emerged I ventured in. The interior of Khafre’s pyramid was less interesting than the Great Pyramid, and less engineered given that the interior passageways were largely below the structure of the pyramid and actually dug out of the plateau, rather than being built into the building. After following a long and low corridor downwards at an angle, I walked along a long straight passage way and then upwards through a passage angled similarly to the descending corridor. At the end of the passageway at the top of the ascending corridor was a large chamber where the air was motionless and fetid and a bearded local grudgingly pointed bits of blank wall to tourists in exchange for baksheesh. I didn’t linger long, enough for a quick look around, and then I headed back out. If anything the passages here smelled worse than those in the Great Pyramid – perhaps because it was later in the day and a greater number of tourists had already trouped through. Whatever the reasons I was very pleased to emerge into the sunlight once again.

From the pyramid of Khafre we drove around to east of the complex and Salah dropped as off at another entrance to the Giza complex, this time leading us to the sphinx and the funerary complex of Khafre, which had once been at the end of a causeway from the second pyramid we had just visited (but too far for us to walk in the heat).

After showing our tickets once more we walked our way towards the tombs, passing the arena where every night the sound and light show audience sit and watch as the pyramids and sphinx are illuminated with coloured lights, accompanied by a very dramatic and equally cheesy narration. (I couldn’t help but be reminded of the scenes from The Spy Who Loved Me that took place there during the sound and light show, with Roger Moore and Jaws and some beautiful woman running about in the darkness while behind them the pyramids turned red, gold, green, silver and so on).

After exploring the remains of the funerary temples – imposing, monolithic, empty – we walked up the causeway towards the Sphinx enclosure. Much more so than the pyramids the sphinx was something of a disappointment. Perhaps because it wasn’t possible to get right up to it the scale of it wasn’t immediately obvious (apparently it’s the length of a city block – but it didn’t seem like it as I stood there), but it was an impressive sculpture. Much work had been done to restore the paws and these were neatly bricked, whereas the rest of it was obviously weathered sandstone, the result of centuries of desert living. It was interesting sitting there, reflecting on how long the sphinx had stared out to that horizon – anything from 4,000 to 10,000 years, depending on who you believe. When Napoleon discovered visited Giza, the sphinx was mostly covered by sand, only its head poking out of the desert. Must have been an enigmatic sight.
Finally, about 7 hours after arriving at the complex May and I were pyramided out. We made our way back out of the gates towards the KFC where Salah had said he would be waiting for us. After a short discussion about where to go to eat, we decided to head back to Felfella, given how nice it had been the previous day. Outside the restaurant we bade farewell to Salah, promising to make use of his services again the following day for our much longer excursion out to the pyramid fields of Dashur and Saqqara to the south of the city, and then we were into the restaurant for our lunch.

Over food we reflected on all we had seen. The Giza complex was an archaeologist’s wet dream. It was also a cash cow as far as the tourist industry was concerned. We talked about how poorly treated the whole thing seemed to be by the Egyptian authorities and we couldn’t help but compare the experience to our visit to the Angkor temple complex in Cambodia twelve months previously. There, in a much poorer country, investment had been made in a professional guide and guard service; there had been well built signs and an identifiable tourist infrastructure; proper ticket booths and toilets. In Egypt, in a richer country, all the pyramids apparently deserved were a rusty metal fence and some shoddy, unmarked ticket offices. And this was the last remaining of the seven wonders of the world.

Worse still, the tourist police, those paid to safeguard the monuments, were as much on the take as everyone else. For a bit of baksheesh you could climb on the pyramids, write your name on them or probably even take a chunk away for yourself.

Nobody bothered about all the local hawkers hassling – quite aggressively in some cases – all the tourists, and that just spoils the whole experience. I’m not saying these guys shouldn’t be allowed access to the tourists, but they should be told to be polite and to take no for an answer.
The over all impression we left with was that nobody much cares about the historic sites in Egypt, other than what cash they can generate. And nobody much cares for the tourists once they are in the country. The authorities seemed to take it for granted that the pyramids would always be there and that there would always be a tourist dollar attached to it. The authorities in Cambodia were much more professional, much more respectful and the whole experience as a tourist was a much more enjoyable one.

Thinking about it now, at Giza there was not even any information about the structures on the plateau, no leaflets or sign boards or information markers. Nothing. If you didn’t come with a guidebook you wouldn’t know what you were seeing. And there is a lot to say about the ancient engineering marvels, a very great deal.

I don’t expect our experience will stop anyone going to Giza, nor should it, because these sites deserve to be seen. They are magnificent. It’s just a shame that the Egyptians themselves don’t seem to think them as magnificent or worth respecting.

After our late lunch, May and I spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing at the hotel. We took our dinner again at the terrace restaurant in the early evening, and while sitting there we saw a street wedding taking place on the roundabout outside the hotel. There were a lot of people and a lot of noise and amongst it all a clearly identifiable bride and groom. (The circling cars and trucks and buses may have been beeping their horns in celebration of the wedding but to be honest it was hard to tell, given how much that roundabout was a source of beeps at all hours of the days.) I thought it was a curious place for a wedding, but apparently street weddings are common in Cairo, and what better back drop could you have then the Pyramids of Giza?
After dinner we took a walk out to the roundabout and enjoyed the frenetic traffic in the darkness, taking shots of the speeding cars and buses. The tourist police guy who crossed the road with us and then stood by us as we took photos only wanted 10 Egyptian Pounds for the benefit of his unrequested services, and argued with me when I offered him 2 Pounds. That didn’t leave a good taste in my mouth, but he didn’t get any more than I offered. Then it was back to the hotel where showered and both fell into the bed absolutely exhausted at the end of a day that had been both enjoyable and frustrating in equal measure

Egypt Part 1 - Gie's a Break

2008-05-28T21:26:00.005Z

Here's an interesting fact: the rate of traffic related road fatalities in Egypt is almost ten times the equivalent rate in the UK. (For the statisticians amongst you that's the rate per 10,000 of vehicles on the road).

I think you'll agree that this says a great deal about the road safety of these respective countries, but if you're like me you don't often peruse the national statistics of a country before visiting it on holiday. You'll therefore not be surprised to hear that for May and I the first real opportunity to appreciate this interesting cultural difference came shortly after landing at Cairo airport when we found ourselves in the back of a 'limousine taxi' (which in fact was a ten year old Kia), hurtling along the 'suicide highway' - or, as it is more properly known, the Cairo ring road.

The road in itself would have been pretty terrifying at any time, but it was made all the more exciting by the fact that our taxi driver Mohamed spent most of his time staring at us in the rear view mirror, persistently trying to sell us various tours, trips, trinkets and felucca boat cruises, while simultaneously driving 60 mph straight at the slow moving bus 50 metres ahead.

Although it was getting on for 3am the road was busy - not packed, but busy - and cars careered around us on both sides, swerving in front of us and cutting across lanes with complete disregard for any notion or rules, road lanes or reasonable stopping distances. After a handful of near misses our persistent refusal to take up Mohamed on his offers seemed to get through and he switched tactic to pointing out all the wonderful sights we were passing. Initially this was little more than elevated highways and hotels, but after about half an hour we turned off the ring road into the city, cutting through streets where people still wandered around and coffee shops were still open, despite the time.

Minutes later and we were crossing the Nile, Mohamed slowing to allow us our first view of the river and the lights of downtown Cairo, and then we continued on, turning south onto the Pyramids road, the stretch of tarmac running south in a perfectly straight line from Cairo to Giza, some 12km away. This stretch of road was even busier than the ring road, and faster, but Mohamed seemed unfazed by the terrifying traffic and turned his attention to pointing out to us the McDonald's and KFCs and Las Vegas style night clubs lining the street. And then, not soon enough for May and I, we arrived at a large roundabout and our hotel, the Sofitel Le Sphinx. We jumped out of the taxi before Mohamed could take off again to show us some other sight, and headed inside.

It was getting on for 4am but check in was not until 2pm. Nevertheless May and I approached the desk hopefully. After a long conversation (where for a while there was some doubt about the fact that we even had a room booking at all, never mind what time we could get into it), we managed to establish that we couldn't get into the room yet but that the hotel would endeavour to get us access as soon as possible - around 9 or 10am if at all possible. So only five hours to wait.

Fortunately the lobby of the Sofitel was large and furnished with plenty of sofas and chairs, so May and I slumped into the nearest one and then proceeded to move around the lobby and bars in a steady circuit to avoid the cigarette smoke from the guys lounging about with us - mostly taxi drivers I assumed. At about half five we decided to get something to eat and made ourselves at home with the breakfast buffet, only to get into a complicated conversation about whether or not we would have to pay for it or whether it was part of our bed and breakfast rate (even though we hadn't even checked in yet and weren't entitled to breakfast until the following morning). It wasn't complicated for us - we had the cash ready - but the restaurant manager seemed to want to make it more complicated than it was. In the end we ended up getting breakfast for free so it was worth the hassle.

After breakfast we ventured out into the grounds of the hotel and up onto the terrace of the hotel to get our first view of the Great Pyramid. I have to say, I was expecting it to be a bit of anticlimax but it absolutely wasn't. Bear in mind we were probably a good mile away from the pyramid itself, but the thing just absolutely towered over the area. It was like standing at the foothill of an Alpine mountain, but with lots of smog and traffic. As it was dawn, May and I were alone on the terrace getting our first view of the Great Pyramid and it was quite a moment to remember.

After enjoying the view we returned to the lobby where we attempted to keep awake by moving regularly around the lobby and window shopping in the hotel shop, until about half past eight when, much to my relief, the guy on reception came over to tell us a room was available. We faffed about for a bit, while he gushed to us how he had managed to get us one of the best pyramid view rooms and how early he had managed to get us access, and we concluded that he was looking for some 'baksheesh' (a tip - remember the word baksheesh, it will be a recurring them in this blog) but we were too tired to dig about in our wallets, so he was left disappointed when we took our key and all but sprinted to our room.

After what felt about three hours walking the corridors of the hotel, we discovered that we did indeed have a pyramid view room, in as much as you could just about make out the Great Pyramid in the distance if you opened the net curtains, peered through the trellis hanging outside the window, and looked beyond the trees and over the wall at the back of the grounds of the hotel. However it clearly wasn't 'one of the best' pyramid view rooms since every other room on our side of the building had a little balcony to sit out on to enjoy the view whereas all we had was a window.

Still, by that time May and I would have taken a manky Travelodge in Slough as long as it came with a bed. We showered and collapsed into our (admittedly fantastic) beds (yes, two singles, so much for a double), and were asleep in minutes.

We awoke around two pm and decided to take a walk to the pyramids. We headed outside and spent the next few minutes fighting our way through a swarm of taxi drivers ('Taxi sir!'; "Where you from sir?"; "Lovely wife sir! Taxi?") to reach what initially appeared to be the impassable barrier of the huge roundabout at the end of the road. Not only was this a roundabout of some size but this was Egyptian traffic moving fast and without any order. We stood on the pavement for a few minutes, scoping things out and trying not to look too conspicuous in our big floppy hats. We quickly surmised that the main strategy for getting across the six lanes of traffic approaching the roundabout was to simply step out with confidence and then cars, coaches and trucks would slow or stop for us. Not totally confident in our conclusion we chickened out and waited for someone else to cross, scurrying along with them, all the while keep them between us and the traffic.

We wandered on down the street towards the Giza plateau and pyramid complex, fending off the occasional taxi driver on the way. We stopped off for May to get a sandwich at an Egyptian takeaway place and while there met a bald Egyptian man with wrap-around sunglasses and an all in one purple jalabiyya (the all in one dress type thing Muslim men wear) who told us he owned the takeaway place, the next door restaurant and, even, our hotel. What puzzled me was why this property magnate, obviously a wealthy man, felt the need to earn baksheesh by showing May how to order and pay for a roast aubergine sandwich. Needless to say he didn't get a penny in baksheesh and he quickly lost interest.

The road ran straight for half a mile or so and then turned right at another roundabout before curving upwards and to the left onto the sandy Giza plateau. We ignored all the scammers telling us we needed tickets, tourist passes or to be on the back of camels to get up to complex gates and approached the rusty iron fence that marked boundary. Here we were only a hundred metres or less from the Great Pyramid of Egypt. It lost nothing from closer inspect and if anything it was even more impressive than seen from afar. A solid, man made mountain or enormous size. It was incredible to believe that the Great Pyramid had been built 4,000 years ago according to orthodox Egyptology (or 10,000 years ago by aliens, men from Atlantis or the freemasons according to any number of conspiracy theorists) and remained the tallest man made structure on earth until the completion of the Eiffel Tower.

We took some shots from beyond the fence and then walked backed down the hill again back towards the hotel. On the way we stopped off for a lunch at Felfella, a touristy but very nice restaurant serving good quality Egyptian food. We got some fallafel and babaganoush for me and some koshary for May and even the ever present flies (we were eating outside) could not spoil our enjoyment of the food and the very low cost.

After lunch we made our way back to the hotel where we relaxed for the rest of the day. We ate an evening meal at the hotel's terrace restaurant, fantastic lamb and chicken kebabs followed by rice pudding for me and sobia (a traditional coconut, rice and milk drink) for May. The food was more expensive than at lunch time (only to be expected in a hotel for westerners) but still not expensive by UK standards and eating as the sun went down with the Pyramids in view off in the distance was great fun. Even the muzak playing from the restaurant speakers and the constant blaring of horns from the roundabout just outside hotel was a great fun.

(Interesting side note here, Egyptian car horns are a real treat. Most of them are more than a single note and some are even perfect tonic triads, sounding like major chords when hit. Some even play little tunes. With all these horns blaring at 9 o'clock at night - because that roundabout was buy pretty much busy 24 hours a day - it was like listening to an orchestra tuning up).

And then it was back to our room where we relaxed in our beds watching Lord of the Rings: Return of the King with Arabic subtitles until we fell asleep.

All in all a good first day in Egypt.

Scorcher

2008-05-13T19:19:00.002Z

It's two days until May and I fly out to Egypt for our week long holiday. Speaking to some colleagues at work today and someone who had recently come back from Egypt reported temperatures of 45 degrees celsius. That's 113 degrees in the farenheit scale. That's really quite hot. I'm looking forward to spending lots of time in the shade...

Anticipating Egypt

2008-05-05T13:12:00.004Z

I'm off to Egypt in two weeks.

Actually, that's not true. In two weeks May and I will already be in Egypt. I'm off to Egypt in about a week and a half.

That's quite exciting, although I hadn't really appreciated just how close the trip was until this morning when I was wandering around Tesco thinking about what I would need to buy before the trip at some point in the distant future, when I realised that there was only one more weekend between me and the flight. I suddenly got a bit excitable and panic-bought a large floppy hat that looks rather stupid on me but which will keep my head in the shade while we're wandering around pyramids and the like.

Actually, because my head is so big, the hat is just a tiny bit too tight so I am sitting here wearing it as I type just to stretch it out a bit. I look rather stupid, wearing a hat in my living room, and I'm sure my neighbour across the street thinks I'm not quite right in the head. But I don't really care because I'm quite enjoying the hat. I don't think I wear hats often enough.

Anyway, I've started thinking about what we'll be doing in Cairo. For the first three nights May and I are staying out at the Giza complex on the edge of Cairo, where the famous pyramids and the sphinx are located (feel free to ooh and aah over the rooms at the following web page: http://www.sofitel.com/sofitel/fichehotel/gb/sof/1789/fiche_chambre.shtml). The hotel will be a nice bit of luxury for a few nights. After that we shall move back into the centre of Cairo for four nights while we explore the city. We're staying in a guest house called the Mayfair on Zamalek, an island in the Nile in the centre of Cairo. Apparently it's a nice quiet and leafy part of the city so that should be pleasant as well. (You can check out the guesthouse here: http://www.mayfaircairo.com/Location.htm - if you do turn on the speakers on your computer so you can enjoy the cheesy Eurovision style Egypt-pop that accompanies the website.)

I've got an idea of what the accommodation is going to be like from the websites of the hotel and the guesthouse, but I'm still wondering about what Cairo itself is going to be like. There's going to be a lot of firsts on this trip: first time in Egypt; first time in Africa; first time in the middle east (is Egypt considered to be in the middle east?); first time in an almost fully Muslim country. It does make me wonder what the experience wi ll be like.

In Waterstones the other day I picked up and read bits and pieces from Dark Star Safari, a Paul Theroux book recounting his trip from Cairo to Cape Town. Quite apart from getting the impression that Paul Theroux is a miserable and cynical old git (check the Amazon reviews if you think I am being unfair), what I read described Cairo as frustrating and frenetic. If my Rough Guide is to be believed Cairo is indeed both of these things, but also friendly and, ultimately, fantastic.

I've no doubt that when May and I get off the plane at Cairo airport (at 2am in the morning) we'll be surrounded by locals offering us less-than-good-value taxi rides to wherever we want to go.

I've no doubt that whatever taxi or bus we do eventually elect to go with for our journey out to Giza, the traffic will be a nightmare, despite it being 2am in the morning. (Rough Guide says that traffic is busy and noisy 24 hours a day in Cairo.)

I've no doubt that even in the middle of the night the air will be thick with pollution and uncomfortably warm and that it will only get worse during the day.

I also know that the Pyramids will be swamped with tourists and bus tours and that, much like the Coliseum in Rome, when seeing them in real life I'll discover how carefully framed those famous pictures are because the Pyramids are not out in the middle of nowhere but are in fact in the back garden of some block of flats in a suburb of Cairo.

I'm sure walking around the city will quickly become a tiring given the number of people, madness of the traffic and associated likelihood of death, and the constant pestering to buy things you don't need or want. Not to mention the constant requests for baksheesh.

Statistically I also think either May or I have a pretty good chance of going down with some form of food poisoning at some point during the week. ('Wash your hands after handling money - it carries disease' - advice from a friend who has visited Cairo before.)

But I wouldn't want to give you the impression that I am not looking forward to the trip. Because I am. I have just as many expectations on the positive side - that the Pyramids won't be an anticlimax; that the Egyptian museum (http://www.egyptianmuseum.gov.eg/) will be worth the entrance fee; that the smells of the city and the sound of the Muslim call to prayer will forever be locked in my memory; that walking through the spice markets in the old Islamic part of Cairo will be a treat for the senses; that our hotels will be fantastic; that I won't actually look that silly in my hat; that we will try great new food and meet some lovely people.

No holiday is without its downside. The negatives are as much part of the experience as the positives and very often they can help put the positives into sharper relief. I am actually looking forward to the annoyances and frustrations in a strange way as much as I am to the pleasures and thrills because they are part of the narrative of the trip and just as enjoyable in retrospect. Often it is the negatives that provide the best tales and most humorous anecdotes. I recall the tortuous night train from Nice to Rome in 1999, which was awful to endure but great to recall in the years that followed; I recall missing my flight from Singapore to Adelaide last year which led to an interesting experience in Singapore airport and actually led to me driving from Adelaide to Melbourne, a highlight of my holiday; and I recall a blocked toilet in Cambodia which was a complete pain for a couple of days but which in retrospect provided probably the most amusing incident of my 8 week tour of the world last year.

So the problems are fine. I fully expect them and know that they will not spoil what I am sure is going to be a fantastic holiday. I know on balance that the experience of Egypt will be a great one.

And, to be honest, even if everything goes horribly wrong and I end up spending the week on the toilet with amoebic dysentery, or if we end up losing our luggage and spend a week in the same smelly clothes, I know that at the very least I'll still have a big floppy hat to keep the sun off my face and that at least is worth smiling about.

Venice in Three Parts and an Introduction (Resurrected)

2008-04-16T20:00:00.002Z

I came across the blog entry below - originally posted on my other blog - a couple of days ago. It's a few years old, but it recounts a good trip I had to Venice. I read it and enjoyed and seeing as it fits in with what this blog is about - travel - I thought I'd re-post it here. It's a long one though!

Introduction: Facts and Guide Books

Here's an interesting fact: In 1508 the Venetian empire already controlled Byzantium and was advancing so powerfully that the Pope, the King of France, the King of Spain and the Holy Roman Emperor joined forces as the League of Cambrai to destroy it.

I had no idea the Venetian empire had been so huge. I don't think I could even have asserted with any conviction that there even was a Venetian empire. It's amazing what you can learn about a place if you buy a guide book.

In the past, my approach to travelling and tourism could best be described as haphazard. In essence this means turning up in and city and wandering about until you stumble across something interesting. This has its pluses and minuses. On the upside your holiday becomes a string of pleasant surprises - I distinctly remember stumbling across the Trevi Fountain in Rome and being quite taken aback by how superb it was and i'm sure the effect would not have been so strong if I had been looking for it. On the downside, if there's something particular you want to see it's so much harder to find - I distinctly remember wandering about Amsterdam on a Monday morning trying to find the Red Light District and failing to such an extent that we got so board we got on a train and went back to Brussels instead. I think you'll agree that's impressive.

So, for my three day trip to Venice I had decided to purchase a guide book well in advance and read it thoroughly before I got there. This of course didn't happen. Well, that's not wholly true. I certainly bought the guidebook well in advance. But I didn't get a chance to read it thoroughly before I got to Venice. Indeed, that little nugget about the Venetian empire above I read somewhere over Manchester on my flight down to Heathrow the day before flying out to Venice. It can be found on page 37 (out of 300) of the DK eyewitness guide to Venice. Take off the front leaf or two, the contents pages, a few pictures and a few pages of maps, and in real terms I had reached about page five. Indeed, the page in question is the first of a chapter entitled 'The History of Venice and the Veneto', so you'll appreciate I was not, by any stretch of the imagination, 'thoroughly' into the book here. But the book got a fair browse throughout the flight, and it certainly got me into the mood for the trip.

The plan was simple: I would fly down to Heathrow on the Thursday evening to be picked up by Gregor, an old friend from school with whom I have shared numerous previous travelling encounters (including the infamous night train from Nice to Rome). We would sojourn to his flat in Reading for the evening before arising with the dawn at about 4:30am to make the trek along the M3 and M25 to Gatwick airport for our 7am flight out to Venice. There we would check into our hostel housed in a 400 year old building and enjoy three days of sightseeing, culture, ice cream, pasta, canals, coffees, boats and ice cream. And yes I know I said ice cream twice there. And this was what I was looking forward to on the flight while reading my guide to Venice.

Day 1: Reading to Gatwick and back to Reading

All went well at first. Gregor picked me up on time and without any difficulty and we drove back to his place in Reading. He gave me the tour of his new flat and made me a cup of tea. We discussed politics, literature and world events in a witty and engaging way. Gregor showed me his new video-phone-cum-personal-organiser-cum-digital-camera and I feigned interest. Then we went to bed. We arose sharply and despite the ungodly hour hurried out of the flat and into the car, our tiredness unnoticed against the anticipation of the trip. We drove through Reading, onto the M3 and then onto the M25. All we had to do then was come off at the junction for Gatwick, park the car, check in and recline leisurely until it was time to board. Unfortunately it didn't quite work out like that. Because we missed the turning off the motorway.

I could tell you why, but it's really rather a boring story involving an accident on the motorway and slow-moving traffic so I won't. Suffice to say at 6:29 am, 1 minute before Check-in was due to close, Gregor and I were sprinting through Gatwick airport like fat kids after an ice-cream van, shoving old people and young children out of our way with nery a second thought, only to arrive at the check-in desk two short minutes after it closed.

The Easyjet customer service desk staff were apologetic and sympathetic. We replied with expletives. They replied with firm rebukes. We responded with tears and despair. They relented and offered a seat on the next flight out to Venice. We punched the air and yelped in success. They explained that the next flight out wasn't until the same time the following morning. We were fucked. We had lost a day of our holiday.

We did the only thing we could do, the thing every British person will do in a time of crisis: we had a sit down and a cup of tea and made light of the situation with jokes and banter. It was a pain, I have to admit. But not as much as the car journey home. Three hours stuck in traffic as a result of the accident on the M25. At one point we decided to come off the motorway and we ended up motionless in traffic further away from Gregor's flat than when we had first left Gatwick, which was quite an achievement. But we got through it with Magic FM and their hits of the 80s and our unflagging spirit and at about 12pm we arrived back in Gregor's flat exhausted and not in the best of moods.

The rest of the day, as it happens, didn't turn out too bad. I beat Gregor at pool and Scrabble. We ate a good slap up lunch. Gregor showed me his new video-phone-cum-personal-organiser-cum- digital-camera again. I feigned interest again. We got some food and had a pleasant evening meal before returning to bed with the somewhat annoying thought that we would again have to get up for a flight at the crack of dawn.

Day 2: Reading - Gatwick - Venice

And get up we did. Half an hour earlier than the day before and somewhat less enthusiastically. But we made sure we got to Gatwick on time. (And if I never have to drive the route to Gatwick again I will die a happy man). And we were checked in and ready to in good time. And then we were on the flight and flying over Europe and the Alps and the holiday was really, at last, about to begin...

Arriving in Venice is really a novel experience. From the Airport you get the water bus into the historic centre of the city. This might suggest that the Airport is on stilts or something but it's not. It's on the mainland. So Gregor and I started our time in Venice standing on the jetty waiting for the boat on a bright but cold November morning. We passed the time with an exchange of views on the decriminalisation of cannabis that really resulted in the two of us acknowledging we knew nothing about the subject. But then the boat arrived and we spent the trip reminiscing about the time someone was caught wanking at the back of the maths class at school. We don't just tackle the serious subjects, Gregor and I. (After we were done with that subject Gregor took some video footage of me with his new video-phone-cum-personal-organiser-cum-digital-camera in which i obligingly gave the v-sign and pulled a face).

When we arrived in Venice we headed straight to the hostel to ensure they still had beds for us. After missing our flight we had sent an email explaining our predicament and asking whether or not we would still have beds for the last two days of the trip. The response had not filled us with confidence being that it was short, somewhat enigmatic and not exactly framed in perfect English.

The hostel was close to the touristy centre of Venice and housed in a four-hundred year old building. The proprietor was friendly enough (although seemed to have a fondness for saying 'thank you goodbye' even when someone had just arrived in the room) and quickly reassured us that our beds for two nights were safe. So we dumped our stuff and breathed a sigh of relief. The hostel adopted the windows-wide-open method of central heating so it was a little chilly but very pleasant. Much to my amusement there were various signs plastered around the place that suggested no more than a passing acquaintance with an Italian/English translation dictionary - 'please keep the awning in the shower' or 'your john is small, please step from the toilet'. But all in all it seemed a pleasant place so we set out on our day of exploration suitably invigorated and pleased at last be there.

Venice revealed itself as a lovely place. We crossed small squares and canals and saw great architecture. We visited the Frari, a grand gothic church with Canova's tomb and a memorial to Titian within (not Casanova's tomb and a memorial to Tintin, as I had first mistakenly read). We enjoyed dodgy buskers and watched gondoliers. We explored St Marks Square and the Rialto bridge. We saw the Campanile and St Marks Basilica. I took photos with my digital camera and Gregor took pictures with his new video-phone- cum-personal-organiser- come-digital-camera, showing me it in the process. We ate pizza near the Rialto bridge for lunch.

It was a great few hours, but I must admit, Venice is an absolute maze. Even with a map it's not easy to find your way around. You wander about hoping to get somewhere and find yourself coming up against dead ends and canals with no bridges and getting unwittingly turned around so you double back on yourself. Occasionally we would see other people wandering about with a map held out in front and an expression on their faces like they'd put their house keys somewhere safe but couldn't remember where. We'd exchange friendly embarrassed smiles and head off in opposite directions only to meet up again a few minutes later in the same square we'd just left. But in all it was part of the fun - it was good to know it wasn't just you that was stupid, but that everyone else was having the same trouble. It was like solidarity.

After a good three hours we made it back to the hostel in one piece and relaxed on the bed for an hour for a game of travel scrabble. It was at this point we met our dorm mate - a 33 year old Australian who I shall call 'Dingo' because he never told us his name. Dingo seemed like a nice guy, if a bit restricted in his vocabulary - every sentence seemed to contain either 'fuck', 'brothel' or 'mate'. For example - 'Venice is a fucking busy at weekends mate.' 'This hostel would be a brothel in the summer.' Sometimes he would even go all out and use all three at once: 'I went to Rome but it was a fucking brothel mate,' which was always very exciting. He then made some cutting remark about us coming to Venice just to play scrabble (obviously because it demonstrated our superior vocabularies) before disappearing off somewhere.

After I destroyed Gregor at Scrabble we headed out for the evening. Gregor had been feeling the cold all day so we spent a few hours wandering about trying to find a jumper for him to wear to keep him warm. Me on the other hand, having brought both a jumper and a warm jacket, spent this time making disgruntled remarks about Gregor's decision to pack for a balmy August weekend in the south of France instead of for a end-of-November weekend in Venice. Gregor responded by showing me his new video-phone.

Once we were both dressed for the weather, we made our way to a restaurant near the Rialto bridge and enjoyed a meal of pasta and ice cream (not at the same time). Afterwards we wandered some more before stopping off for a drink at a cosy, local connoisseurs wine bar. Gregor ordered a whiskey and coke and the locals laughed at him. He then ordered a coke straight for me and the locals erupted into fits of hilarity. But it all seemed very good natured.

We sat in the corner sipping our drinks and talking about music before before returning to the hostel for bed. After getting up at four am two days in a row it was a pleasure to fall into that creaky, wooden bed, even though everyone else in the hostel seemed to be getting stoned and listening to dance music just outside our dorm. I was asleep in minutes.

Day 3: Venice

The next morning we got up late, recovering from our exertions and early rises over the previous few days. Having discovered the somewhat labyrinthine nature of the Venetian streets the first thing we did was take a walk to the bus station where we would get the bus to the airport the following morning. On the way back we stopped at a small cafeteria for a drink and a bit of breakfast.

Here's an interesting fact: it's impossible to get a normal cup of tea in Venice. By normal I mean something like Tetley. Or even anything other than ice tea or chamomile tie. I am not a fan of coffee but I found myself trying a cappucino this morning just because there was no alternative. We sat outside enjoying coffee and toasties while the sun rose overhead and small dogs peed nearby, planning our day. We would go back to St Marks square to explore the interior of Basillica St Mark and the Campanile, get some lunch, then go to the Salvador Dali exhibition in one of the Venetian art galleries.

The Campanile turned out to be a joy, affording uninterrupted views across the whole, beautiful (if a bit misty) city. After that we spent about an hour in Basillica St Mark which was enjoyably large and covered in impressive mosaics that glinted in the midday light. For me however it was missing that extra special something due to its lack of stained glass windows. I just don't think you can have a good church without stained glass windows.

On the way to the Dali exhibition we got hopelessly lost again and had to stop off for lunch before we died of hunger. We found a cafe in a lovely large square and settled in for lunch. It was a nice place, the waitresses were young and attractive and would occasionally take a break from chasing pigeons off the tables to take orders and serve food. They served Whittingtons tea (thereby completely undermining my claim that it is impossible to get tea in Venice) and ice cream and we found ourselves sitting there for a few hours as the sun slowly crawled across a cold distant sky and a lone busker played easy listening music hits in the style of a classical guitarist. It was incredibly peaceful and most enjoyable.

By the time we moved again, heading to the Dali exhibition, it was nearly four o'clock. The queue for the exhibition was much longer than expected so we decided against going in. Instead we wandered aimlessly back towards the hostel, doing a bit of window shopping and actual shopping (at one point Gregor spotted a phone shop selling his new video-phone-cum- personal-organiser-cum-digital-camera and he took a bit of video footage of it to send to himself later which I thought was very post modern).

At the hostel we had a couple of games of scrabble (Gregor won one, I won the other) before heading out for a meal at the Restaurant Marco Polo where they must hold the record for speed serving - from the time we ordered to the time they served our meal it was no more than three minutes and seventeen seconds. But the food itself was in no way diminished as a result of the speed with which it arrived. I had a tremendous serving of steak and chips and vegetables while Gregor sampled the far more exotic spaghetti bolognaise. After that we headed back to the hostel for an early night, having to rise at six the next morning to get the bus to airport.

Our evening was somewhat enlivened by our Australian friend returning to the room drunk to tell us a tale of when he found a porn star's wallet and threw away the contents apart from the business cards, which he had kept (showing them to us as proof). He then somehow got round to demonstrating his methods for chatting up girls which included pelvic thrusting motions and the phrase 'stuff it in them' before admitting to us that he was going back to Australia to be a teacher. I went to sleep a little worried for my own safety and a lot worried for the future of the young of Australia.

Day 4: Venice to London to Edinburgh

The next morning we rose early, dashed out for the bus station, got a bit lost (which we now took in good humour as it had become something of a tradition) and finally got the bus to the airport. As it turned out, our Australian friend was on the same flight back to London and when we finally landed in Gatwick he bid us farewell with a friendly 'fucking brothel mate' and a wave of his hand before disappearing into the crowd.

And then Gregor and I parted - he to go back to his flat and Reading and me to wait for my flight back to Edinburgh. A very enjoyable holiday - despite the initial trials and tribulations.

Egyptian Efficiency

2008-04-14T18:06:00.005Z

My Egyptian visa has arrived. Quite apart from the pleasure that comes from having a new visa to a new country - I like how shiny and important they look, like high value paper money - I couldn't help but marvel at the speed with which the whole process was completed.

I sent off my form, my passport and my cheque for £15 to the Egyptian Consulate in London at lunchtime on Wednesday and the passport arrived in the morning post on Friday. They must have processed the visa application as soon as they received it on the Thursday and stuck it back in the post again.

Efficiency is not a word you commonly associate with any African nation but I have to say I was very impressed. Maybe this is an sign of things to come. Maybe we'll arrive in Egypt and find everything is as efficient and effective as the Japanese Railway network.

On the other hand, I do vaguely recall something from the Egypt Rough Guide about how traffic lights were only introduced to Cairo for the first time in the eighties and even now drivers tend to pay little attention to them. In fact, I think it stated that the only instructions any Egyptian driver tends to pay attention to are those from a policeman. So maybe everything won't be so super efficient after all. Maybe it's just the consulates...

Still, not a bad way to keep people smiling - give them a visa with as little hassle as possible (some other countries could learn a lot from that approach.)

And the visa itself is very cool, with a crest along the top that May informs me combines the symbols for Upper and Lower Egypt. I like the shiny silvery bit... but I'm easily amused like that.

Now that she's seen it, May wants one too - unfortunately Malaysians don't need a visa for short trips to Egypt so she has no basis for getting one. I've told her she can play with mine whenever she wants... because I'm nice like that.

Images of South America

2008-04-12T09:01:00.005Z

A former couchsurfing guest of ours has not long ago returned from a trip to South America, where he spent a good few week travelling through Chile and and Argentina on the local buses. It's the type of thing I'd like to do and is actually part of our intended tour of the world itinerary.

I've just been looking at the small selection of photos he's posted on line. He's got a good eye and his photos are of a professional quality, reminiscent of the type of thing you'd see in guidebooks - lots of close up shots of colourful wall murals; corners of buses with the road stretching off to the horizon; off-horizontal shots of food stalls with people rushing past in a blur. All that sort of thing. The images have left strong impressions - vibrant colours and lots of activity, noisy streets and the exciting smells of new food. The few landscape shots show intimidating but impressive stretches of wilderness, jagged mountains and clear blue water. All good stuff.

Definitely want to go.

On the other hand, Brazil is dealing with a serious outbreak of Dengue Fever at the moment - I know it's hundreds if not thousands of miles away from Chile and Argentina, but it is the haemorraghic version of Dengue Fever, the kind where you bleed so badly from all orifices for a week or so that when you do finally expire, it is with a gasp of relief that at least the bleeding is over.

As inviting as the photos are I think I'll keep my distance until the outbreak is under control. Not that I am a big jessie or anything... I just like my blood to be inside my skin not leaking from it.

Yeah, maybe I can wait a while yet before heading to South America. But still want to go. Definitely.

Must go and check the Yellow Fever status... that's quite bad as well there apparently...

Four Nights in Dublin: Day 4

2008-04-04T20:06:00.004Z

Our fourth and final day in Dublin dawned bright and clear.

At breakfast we were joined by a couple of coach loads of Trafalgar Tour customers – I know who they were because the company had their itinerary up on the wall, setting out the times guests needed to have their breakfast; the time they needed to have their baggage down in reception; the hours they would be touring the city; when they needed to check out by; and their alloted ten minute toilet time. It was like a holiday with the Nazis. Still some people obviously seem to like that type of herd-of-sheep experience.

While we were eating I actually heard one of the group, an overweight American woman (or perhaps Candian - I've never been that good at telling the accents apart) say to her friend, after finishing her breakfast: "I’m going to go have a shower and a nap now and we’ll head out for the bus tour at 2 o’clock." Given that this was 9 in the morning, the woman was going to sleep off her breakfast for the best part of the day while squeezing her exploration of the city into the last three daylight hours of the afternoon. Quality tourism.

Anyway, as we had booked a hotel by the airport for our last night, we had to take our bags with us on all our travels that day. First thing we did was head to Merrion Square to explore the lovely park there. We had passed through it on the way back to the hotel the day before, stopping at the rather cheesy Oscar Wilde statue (he is lounging on a rock and has a look on his face as if he is admiring a young gentlemans bum), but we both wanted to see it and the various monuments in the glorious sunlight.

The park was smaller than it had seemed the previous afternoon and after a quick survey of the monuments and trees (and a quick play on the swings for me) we were finished quicker than we'd expected. That meant we were a bit early for our next planned stop, the National Gallery, which although literally around the corner, didn’t open until noon (since it was Sunday). Rather than sitting in the park we decided to walk to Temple Bar to visit the famous book market held in the square there every Sunday.

Both being book lovers May and I's expectations were high for the book fair, but when we arrived at the main square in Temple Bar we were somewhat disappointed to find that it appeared to amount to a single, rather forlorn looking man, with a single rather beaten up cart of books. Being the only people in sight we felt obliged to give his collection of 1970 sci-fi novels due attention, but ten minutes later we were walking away a little disappointed with the whole affair. Maybe we'd just visited on a bad Sunday, but it wasn't much of a book fair.

By the time we’d made this journey from Merrion Square to Temple Bar and back again to the National Gallery it was almost exactly noon, so we headed inside, gratefully availing ourselves of the services of the cloak room to get rid of our bags for a few hours. Having been on our feet for a few hours we were well overdue for a sit down and a cup of tea so we headed to the lovely cafe in the Millennium wing of the Gallery - a recently built addition to the Gallery's original, classical building.

With stomach rumbling I ordered a cup of tea and a muffin and May got some mushroom soup that smelled suspiciously of sick (to me, at least). We sat and chatted and ate and drank and then set about exploring the Gallery for a couple of hours. Or May did. Not being a big fine art man myself I stayed with my tea for a while to write my travel journal (lots of deep thoughts and ruminations like: ‘I had a muffin, it was nice’ and ‘May’s soup smelled like boak’) before venturing out in search of her.

I didn’t find her, but I did find a very nice Caravaggio that is apparently a big deal in the art world. I then got myself lost for a bit, and then followed the sound of music to a grand hall where a pianist, violinist and cellist were rehearsing classical ieces. They were very good- particularly the pianist, who could do runs of notes that sounded as smooth as a glissando on a string instrument - so I sat there for an hour enjoying their performance before being ushered out by one of the gallery staff. Apparently I was gate crashing the rehearsal for a regular Sunday afternoon performance by staff from the local school of music. Nothing like a freebie!

I met up with May again at the cloak room at around 3pm. We collected our bags and walked around the corner to the National Museum of Ireland Archaeology building. This was a very nice, classical style building with a huge domed foyer. The museum itself was dedicated to pre-historic Ireland with a couple of smaller exhibitions about Ancient Egypt (cos you’ve got to have a bit of Egypt in a museum don’t you? It brings in the punters) and, for some reason, Crete.

The prehistoric stuff was informative and well done, detailing how people settled in Ireland tens of thousands of years ago, how they started hunting and gathering before agriculture developed and they went on to farming and cultivation. However the best part of the museum was the separate area dedicated to the bog men that had been dug up in Ireland. It wasn’t called ‘bog men’ – it was something more refined like ‘worship and kinship’, but basically it was an opportunity to look at bodies dug up from peat bogs. Very interesting it was too. It was amazing to see how well preserved these bodies, or bits of bodies (just a torso in one case, no head or lower body) were. The skin was like leather and in one case the body was like dry wood, brittle and splintered. But the faces, when there were faces, were still very recognisably human, and often even had very recognisable expressions. Really made you think about what had been going through these people's minds minutes before they were killed. It really was living history.

We left the museum at 5pm when it closed for the day and made our back towards the Liffy in search of something to eat. After that it would be a bus out to our hotel by the airport. For dinner we eventually plumped for the Malaysian restaurant on O’Connell street we’d seen on our first day. The place was actually run by Malaysians and this gave May the opportunity to lapse back into her local inflections when she spoke with the waiter. They had a great time of it lamenting all the fantastic Malaysian food not available in Ireland or Scotland. Then he served us our dinner and May got a bit of a far away look in her eyes as she actually managed to taste some of these things for the first time in months.

I tried the chicken rendang – my first proper Malaysian rendang – and extremely nice it was too, and then we dashed back across the road to get our bus out to the hotel just as the rain started sprinkling down. The bus journey took us through what looked to me to be some of the rougher parts of Dublin, the kind of places they filmed the Commitments with lots of grey run down houses, but it was interesting seeing how similar some of these places were to parts of Scotland. All part of the experience of travelling.

The hotel itself – the Days Inn Dublin Airport – was a bit in no-mans land between the city and the airport, with just a dual carriage way to be seen outside the window, but it was very nice, nicer even than the Mespil where we’d stayed in town. Given we had a 6am flight and had to get up at a ridiculous time to get to the airport and check in, we had an early night, enjoying the luxury of the deep, soft mattress and the heavy duvet.

The next morning everything went smoothly to the airport and onto the flight. We amused ourselves for five minutes during the flight making faces at the people in the row in front of us when they gave us a dirty look because we were laughing loudly, but otherwise it was a pleasingly uneventful affair. From Edinburgh airport at 8am I dropped May off straight at work and then had an enjoyable lazy day at home recovering from my early morning, spending much of my time uploading photos from the trip to Flickr.

All in all a great trip. Dublin is a lovely place to visit, very boisterous and lively, but it doesn’t feel incredibly different to the UK to me. It is a bit pricey, particularly in terms of accommodation, but you can do a lot for free. And it doesn't cost anything to wander the streets, watch the people and listen to the buskers.

If you ever go there I can recommend the Chester Beatty Library for its fantastic collection of Biblical papyri and its lovely coffee shop; Christ Church Cathedral as the most tourist friendly place of worship I've every been; Gallaghers Boxty House in Temple Bar for the amazing sticky toffee pudding.

And that's Dublin. Next stop should be Egypt in May, all going well!

Four Nights in Dublin: Day 3

2008-04-04T20:00:00.005Z

Saturday morning was just as overcast and drizzly as had been the day before, so we decided our first order of business that day (after breakfast, of course) would be to visit Kilmainham Gaol (http://www.heritageireland.ie/en/Dublin/KilmainhamGaol/) – an infamous former jail (or Gaol if you follow their archaic spelling) that is now run as a tourist attraction.

Because of the rain and our aching limbs we caught a bus from around the corner of the hotel rather than walking to the city centre, then took another bus out to the jail, which lies a few miles west. On the way we passed the Guinness Store House and also a bathroom shop that had an over sized comical tap stuck to the side of the building which I enjoyed immensely.

Inside the jail we were greeted by a very friendly man with a beard and after some enjoyable banter May only paying concession ticket price due to her student card and me paying the 'growed up' price, we entered.

Access to the jail is by guided tour only so we browsed in the interesting jail museum for ten minutes until enough people had arrived to start the tour. There were a fair number of us – around fifty I think – and the whole tour became a bit of a slow procession.

First stop for the tour was into the gaol (oops sorry, slipped into archaic there - jail) chapel where we were given a brief power point presentation on the history of the building. Although the jail dates back to the 1790s much of the guide's talk was about the prison's role in the respect of the republican movement in the early part of the 20th century - the jail is particularly famous for having housed and been the execution site of some of the leaders of the Easter uprising in 1916.

From the chapel we were shepherded through to the oldest part of the jail, through long narrow corridors with barrel vaulted ceilings and rough, stone walls. As you can imagine this part of the prison was not really conducive to 50 people trying to listen what the guide was telling us (nor, for that matter, to 50 people all trying to get a picture of an empty, depressing jail corridor).

It was atmospheric, I'll give you that, and not particularly welcoming. We couldn't get into any cells as all the doors were closed, but all had peepholes to allow us a view of small, cold rooms with dirty floors and bare walls. Not the comfiest, but I've stayed in Youth Hostels that give you less personal space.

After a wander around this part of the prison, all the while trying to hear the guide over the mutterings of the people behind me that they couldn't hear the guide, we were lead into the more recent Victorian hall. This a large open vaulted hall with all the cells around the edge. This, we were told, reflected the Victorian innovations in prison design – rather than everyone in a row of cells, having a large open space would allow just two or three guards to watch the whole area. Interestingly, it was also the location where they filmed all the prison scenes from The Italian Job (the Michael Caine one, not the Mark Wahlberg one) and I enjoyed the recognition that fact brought when the guide mentioned it.

From the hall we were taken out into the stone breaking yard, where prisoners used to break rocks as part of their punishment. This was done in total silence, apparently. While standing there the guide informed us that most of the stones on railway lines in Ireland originally came from that yard, which was quite a nice fact. As the Irish flag was flying from the yard the guide also told us that originally the flag was a gift from France, hence the resemblance to the French tri-colour. Clearly this man was a fountain of knowledge as he also added that most tri-colour flags in the world came from France originally. It’s one of those facts that can’t possibly be true but probably is.

The yard itself was quite a desolate place - high stone walls and lots of stones on the ground. It was where the leaders of the Easter uprising had been executed by the British army – the stony ground now marked with two black crosses where the executions had taken place. It was these executions that eventually led to a sweeping change in public opinion in Ireland about the British rule and which, in turn, lead to the independence now enjoyed by the country. I sensed the guide was very proud of this and of the men who died for their beliefs. Often in his tour and has talk he was stop for a moment or two after recounting some story or other and shake his head silently, as if in admiration. And to be honest, there's nothing wrong with that.

The stone yard was the last stop on the tour. After that the guide led back to where we'd entered the prison, said his goodbyes, and we were back into the museum. It was a fine way to spend an hour but nothing special. To be honest, I was much more engaged and interested when I’d visited Barlinnie in Glasgow with my work – an operating prison just seemed to be more interesting than an empty one, no matter how much history had passed through its gates.

From leaving our guide May and I headed back jail museum to see the rest of the items on display. Some of these were very interesting, particularly the letters from prisoners to their family the night before their execution. The couple of these I read were very powerful. Haunting, even. One sticks in my mind. It was a young man who had been caught for supplying arms to Republicans and had received the death penalty as a result. He was writing the night before his execution, the letter to his mother. Most of the letter he spent trying to tell her not to be unhappy, he was fine, everything was good, that he was going to heaven as a good Catholic boy, but right at the very end this pretence seemed to break down and the last few lines all he wrote about was how he wished he could see his mother again. The very last two lines were nothing but the word ‘Mother’ written over and over again. You could almost see him sitting alone his cell crying over his letter, over the thought of his mother and over the awareness of his own imminent execution. Strong stuff - and much more evocative for me than the bare walls of the prison itself ever could be.

We left the jail about lunchtime and found the world outside bright and sunny, if a bit windy. We jumped back on the bus into town and got off at Dublinia. From there we walked into Temple Bar to visit the weekend food market. I got some Japanese fried noodles from a young Asian woman who was somehow managing to cook in three separate woks while simultaneously holding on to all four corners of her stall to stop it blowing away in the wind. May had some Indian curry thing from another stall, and together we ate sheltered from the wind and now pouring rain under the overhanging wall at the side of the National Photographic Archive. Weather in Dublin is nothing if not variable.

By the time we'd finished eating the sun was out again and the sky clear and blue (May and I don't take very long to eat - that should tell how quickly the weather was changing), so we walked back towards the Castle so that May could take advantage of the light to get some nice shots of the place. Sufficient photos taken, examined and retaken, we headed into the Chester Beatty library (http://www.cbl.ie/) for a drink and some culture. We intended only to spend an hour or so there but in the end spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying the exhibits. The library’s galleries are on two floors. The lower floor was the temporary exhibition and at the time of our visit displayed collections of ancient Chinese and Japanese art works and writings – mostly narrative scrolls containing tales and legends with accompanying artwork. Have to say they were fantastic and some of the detail in the drawings was simply captivating. The colours had remained so bright and vivid despite the great age of most of them.

The permanent exhibition on the top floor however was even more amazing (and it was this we had visited for fifteen minutes on the day of our first visit). The collection was called ‘Sacred Traditions’ and covered the main religions in the world, exhibiting ancient religious texts, art and other items related to these beliefs systems of their adherents. Most amazingly the library holds a quite unbelievable collection of Biblical papyri, including the earliest known copies of the four gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, the Letters of St Paul, the Book of Revelation, and other very early Old Testament fragments. The earliest pieces dated from the 1st century AD.

May and I were both blown away by this. We couldn’t believe this small, free museum in Dublin had these fantastically ancient, important and valuable texts. Incredibly they weren’t making a big song and dance about them. You’d think things like that would be in the Vatican or the British Museum or some other world leading institution. Even as an entirely non-religious person you couldn’t help but think about the impact these tiny bits of paper had had on the world and how it was they had come to end up in a small, free, library in Dublin.

Around five we emerged from the library feeling all cultured up and suitably appreciative of why the library had been named European Museum of the Year in 2002. Since the weather was still good and the sky still clear (and who knew how long that would last) we wandered back over to Customs House and to take another look at the famine memorial in the good light. I was bit annoyed by the Japanese and other tourists who were taking photos of themselves cuddled up to the statues, smiling and grinning and making those V-signs with their fingers. I didn’t really think it was appropriate for what the memorial was about – millions of people dying. And I'm not the slightest bit prudish, but you know, I don’t image you’d get away with that kind of behaviour at a holocaust memorial or a 9/11 memorial. It was just a bit crass.

So we took tasteful, respectful, moody shots, and then returned across the Liffy on a pedestrian bridge a bit further east. We walked back to the hotel as the sun went down and the day got cold, and after dumping my bag in the hotel room, we treated ourselves to another meal at Beshoff's for dinner – this time I had the cod and chips and May had the smoked fish dinner. We were joined in the restaurant by a group of very preppy Americans – I assume they were graduate students studying in Dublin – who spent the whole meal talking about Hilary Clinton vs Barrack Obama in loud voices. I was amused by the way the man who fried the fish was scowling at them for most of the time they were there and the fact they were completely oblivious to it.

Feeling fuller, fatter and well fed, we ambled back to the hotel at about eight for the now established evening ritual of hobbling about on our aching feet and opening the window to let the smelly-shoe smell out.

All in all another good day – the third in a row. The only way it might have been better would have been the ingestion of some sticky toffee pudding… but you can’t have everything!

Four Nights in Dublin: Day 2

2008-04-04T19:57:00.005Z

On Friday morning we rose at an enjoyably civilised time (rather than the god-awful hour I have to get up to go to work most days) and went downstairs for breakfast - the food was plentiful, unhealthy and hot but nothing special; the service Eastern European and begrudging; and our fellow diners predominantly middle aged and American. All in all a perfectly acceptable start to the day.

Suitably stuffed with bacon, toast and tea we headed out. The day was overcast but dry – at least to begin with – and we headed into town by a different route to the previous day, along the enjoyably named Baggot Road.

Baggot Road turned out to be a busy, commercial street with lots of shops and traffic, and we enjoyed the window-shopping opportunities the street afforded until we turned down Merrion Square about fifteen minutes later. The square was the location from some lovely buildings – the Department of the Taoiseach building (the leader of the Irish Government) chief among them, closely followed by the National Gallery. From the square we turned west again, our destination being Trinity College and the Book of Kells.

The Book of Kells, for those of you who don't know, is an illustrated book of biblical texts written by monks that dates back to around 800AD. I had vague memories of learning a bit about it between lecture-naps when studying Celtic civilisation at university, and knew it was famous for the intricacy of its designs and artwork, so I was looking forward to seeing it.

We entered Trinity College through its side entrance and crossed a grassy quad to the Book of Kells exhibition. Inside we spent a good hour or so wandering around the exhibition space that detailed the history of the Book and other similar works; explained how they were created; interpreted the artwork and symbolism contained within (for example, in this type of artwork the pheasant often represents Jesus because the meat of the bird was thought not to spoil, so it was thought to be pure). It was all very well done and informative and I particularly enjoyed the short videos of craftspeople showing how books were bound and written. I was also pleased to see that the exhibition acknowledged the fact that the book was actually started in Iona in Scotland and as such Ireland’s most precious treasure is actually Scottish. (Although to be fair the origin of the book is disputed. But the majority academic opinion seems to be that it was started in Iona and Viking raids on the island led to it being transported to Kells in Ireland for safety.)

Anyway, after a good hour or so of whetting our appetite (and squeezing between the ridiculous number of other tourists in the room - it's a money spinner for the University I can tell you) we headed up a small set of stairs into a gloomy, cool room at the back of the exhibition hall. In the centre of the room was a large metal box with a glass top and inside were two sections of the Book of Kells open for view, with two other similarly ancient books beside them.

The Book of Kells was fantastic, and it was good to see it, though I have to say it did suffer a bit from the Mona Lisa effect – too much build up and then lots of tourists pressing their noses against a thick bit of glass to see something that can’t possibly live up to expectations. It was a bit of an anticlimax and after a few minutes I felt liked I'd seen it all. And to be honest, I was more impressed when the guard told me that the box the book was kept in was bomb proof and when the fire alarm went off the whole thing dropped into the floor for protection. That was very cool. I was half tempted to hit the alarm just to see it happen.

The exit from the Book of Kells room was through the Long Room – a very lovely library within Trinity College. As the name would suggest it was very long, but was also high with a barrel vaulted roof, and full of ancient precious books. We walked down the length of the room, squeezing past tour parties a-plenty, and then descended into the quite frighteningly busy shop below. The shop was so busy we quickly made our exit into the increasingly drizzly day.

We spent half an hour or so wandering around the buildings of Trinity College (very lovely – reminded me a lot of St Andrews University) and I spent most of the time trying to calculate how much money the Book of Kells exhibition would make in a year given how busy it was (8 Euros per visitor… 200-300 visitors a day… 360 days a year… = lots of dosh.)

Upon leaving the College we decided to cross the Liffy and walk east towards Custom House to get a look at the Famine Memorial – a monument commemorating (if that is the right word) the Irish Potato famine. Unfortunately by the time we got there we were being battered by gale force winds and drowned by ridiculous amount of rain. We took shelter in against an office building for a wee while, hoping the rain would go off, and all the while I congratulated myself on my non-waterproof choice of jacket for the trip . When the rain showed no signs of abating we decided to spend the rest of the day in doors, and started making our way back across the river west to the Dublinia exhibition and Christ Church Cathedral.

Dublinia is a museum that sets out to show what the city was like in Viking times (http://www.dublinia.ie/). For some reason I was under the impression it was a brand new thing with lots of high tech gizmos and whizz-bangs, just the sort of thing that appeals to me and makes learning !FUN! However once inside, it quickly became apparent that the place had been around for some time.

After buying our tickets and listening to a man with the strongest Irish accent you have ever heard (he might as well have said 'ah to be sure') give us instructions on how to read a map of the museum, we entered into the ground floor, where there were lots of Jorvik style recreations of Dublin in the Viking times. It wasn’t particularly badly done or anything but it all just felt a bit tired to me. It was very 80s. They didn’t even have a cool little ghost-train style thing sit in and be driven around in like at Jorvik.

The highpoint of the ground floor – and this should give you an idea of just how tired it all was – was the brass rubbing stand, where you could rub some Viking designs onto paper with crayons. Oh yes, good stuff. But it kept May and I occupied for ten minutes - more than any of the other exhibits.

Anyway, up the stairs we went and found ourselves in a lovely room hall with a series of smaller exhibitions around the edges in small side rooms. These were again primarily of the ‘recreation of a Viking period Dublin house’ type, but felt a bit better than the floor below. My favourite was the recreation of a rich merchants house, which had two floors and a sleeping servant. However the best thing on this floor was the scale model of Viking Dublin in the centre of the main hall. It was very cool, the type of thing I'd like to do in my attic when I'm old and retired and have lots of time to pain trees and the like. Though personally I would probably add a scalectrix to it or something to make it more fun.

The top floor was much more traditional museum fare, with exhibitions all about the Vikings. At this point, to me, we seemed to have departed entirely from any links to Dublin and here the learning was just about the Vikings themselves, their boats, their clothes (they didn’t wear horned hats you know), their beliefs, and so on. They even had a trailer for Lord of the Rings showing on a loop because clearly JRR Tolkien had been influenced by the Norse myths when writing his fantasy masterwork. It was the most entertaining thing on the top floor for me – maybe I’m just a product of the modern age – anything on a TV is better than really old important stuff in cases.

From the Dublinia shop (lots of kitsch Viking crap) we were allowed to pass through a nice big wooden door into the bridge over the road, connecting Dublinia to the Christ Church Cathedral, the biggest Cathedral in Dublin (http://www.cccdub.ie/). Have to say, it was a very nice Cathedral, and from the point of view of being a tourist it was a much better place to visit than York Minster or St Paul’s in Rome. For a start they gave you a free little booklet as soon as you enter that tells you all about the Cathedral and which provides a nice little guided tour of the sites. They also let tourists go anywhere and touch anything – not like some of these Cathedrals where you can only go to certain parts and where you feel watched constantly in case you do something impolite like fart or curse. They also had a very cool crypt beneath the main Cathedral that had on display a mummified cat and rat that had run into the organ pipes in the 1800s, got stuck, and died. You don’t see that every day.

After an hour and a bit in the Cathedral we were gently ushered out at 5pm when the place closed. It was raining again, though not as heavily as before, so we wandered into Temple Bar to get something to eat and, lo and behold, found ourselves back at Gallagher’s Boxty house. The fire was still roaring and the two men with guitars still playing. May got a beef boxty (which suddenly sounds rude) and I got a vegetarian boxty followed by a sticky toffee pudding all to myself (did I tell you how good it was?) and then we were on our way.

It was too cold to stay out for much longer so we gradually started making our way back to the welcoming warmth of the Mespil Hotel. When we got back we dropped into the chairs in our room with a sigh and removed our shoes to feel that pleasant walked-lots-of-miles-for-the-first-time-in-ages ache in our feet for the second time in two days.

There was also a not so pleasant accompanying aroma, but lets not go into that

Four Nights in Dublin: Day 1

2008-03-31T17:14:00.005Z

I think I got my first real taste of how friendly Dublin is when May and I were queueing up for the bus from the airport into the city.

Deciding to opt for the local bus rather than the normal airport bus - because it was a third of the price and also because we thought we'd enjoy a tour of the suburban parts of the city - we joined a queue of locals to pay our fare and get on board. In front of us in the queue was another tourist who didn't speak English particularly fluently. When this girl got to the front of the queue and handed over their 10 Euro note the bus driver, the driver kindly advised her that the bus could only accept coins. Clearly the only Euros the girl had was the 10 Euro note she had just withdrawn from the ATM in the terminal building so she looked a bit crestfallen.

Recognising her situation the bus driver lent around the tourist and asked in his enjoyably broad accent if anyone else had change of a 10 Euro note. I then watched with some pleasure as the queue of locals behind May and I arranged a whip round of loose change to help this poor tourist. The collection was dutifully passed to the front of the queue and to the bus driver and the tourist had her ticket.

As May and I sat on the bus, watching the outskirts of Dublin roll past, I reflected on the fact that in Scotland (or, I would venture, anywhere else in the UK) I'm pretty sure the bus driver in similar circumstances would more often than not have advised the tourist to go to a nearby shop and break the note by perhaps buying a bar of chocolate or something. It really was a great way to arrive in the city and that bus driver and the other locals in the queue were brilliant advertisements for Irish hospitality.

The trip around the suburbs of Dublin was most enjoyable. May and I agreed that Ireland felt very much like the rest of Great Britain (perhaps not surprising) and that the architecture in the outskirts was most reminiscent of Manchester - lots of red brick terraces and the like.

We stayed on the bus down the length of O'Connell Street - the main thoroughfare in the city - and then across the River Liffy, which runs east-west through the city, dividing the north from the south, and jumped off just around the corner from Trinity College. The architecture in the city centre was surprisingly like central London - large, grand buildings often in shades of white or elegant Georgian brick buildings like Whitehall and Kensington. I suppose when you know the history of the country - that Ireland was ruled by England until the early 20th century - that's perhaps not surprising.

We wandered to the main tourist information centre - in a lovely converted church - where May picked up leaflets of local attractions and I bought a fridge magnet (for my mum) and a bar of Dublin chocolate (for me) and then we walked south towards our hotel, the Mespil, which lay on the banks of the Grand Canal, a couple of miles south of the main city. It was a lovely walk through streets of very elegant Georgian architecture and across the lovely St Stephen's Square. We got to the hotel at about lunchtime and dumped our bags. I had a cup of tea and then we went for our first meal of the day in Beshoffs - a famous local fish and chip chain - a few doors down.

The day was bright and sunny so we decided the best way to spend out afternoon was to explore the city and get a feel for the geography and sights. We walked back to the city along the way we came, stopping to take photos along the way as and when the mood took us, and explored the pedestrianised Grafton Street which, for a Thursday afternoon, was strangely busy. I enjoyed the talents of a guitar playing busker and May enjoyed the photo opportunities afforded by the afternoon sunlight. We continued north returning to the River Liffy where we enjoyed the views across to the north bank, and then headed up the wide avenue of O'Connell Street to see the famous General Post Office and to get a cup of tea and hot chocolate in Burger King.

We recrossed the Liffy and walked west along the Liffy to the famous Half Penny Bridge - which was nice but nothing remarkable - and continued on to see the grand Four Courts (High Court) building, before turning back south away from the river to pass the Christ Church Cathedral - the main place of worship in Dublin - and the connected Dublinia Viking tourist attraction (a kind of Jorvik type of affair). It was too late in the afternoon to have time to visit these places so we decided to return later in the weekend and instead we headed back east towards Dublin Castle.

To be honest, I hadn't expected much from the Castle but I was very impressed. It wasn't a single walled fortress of the Edinburgh Castle type - it was more like a range of buildings from different periods all within the same grounds. There were Georgian palace type buildings around a square which were attached to a much older circular tower and then a number of other mismatched buildings painted in yellow, blue and red. By that time the sky had clouded over so the light wasn't great, but we took a few shots anyway.

Behind the castle was the old coach house - now a large circular park with inlaid brick tracing the line of a Celtic knot - and the Chester Beatty Library - a small but fantastic library/museum that May and I ducked into for the last 15 minutes of the day. It's probably the most impressive collection relative to size of institution that I've ever seen - but I'll write more about that later since we went back a few days later and spent a good few hours there.

By this time we were famished so we made our way into Temple Bar, the area between the Castle and the River that is famous for its tight, warren of streets and its artistic, bohemian nature. To me it was reminiscent of Soho but without the sex industry and porn shops.

We ended up in Gallagher's Boxty House, a well known Irish restaurant and pub. When we entered a couple of guitarists were playing traditional Irish music in the restaurant and the fire was roaring. It was fantastic, and the food just as good. May had a Coddle - a traditional Irish stew of bacon, sausages and potatoes - and I had sausage and mash. They both were quite triumphant but were nothing compare to the Sticky Toffee Pudding we shared for a desert. It was without a doubt the best pudding of its kind I've ever had. It was the type of dessert you grieve for when it is done.

Feeling fuller and happier we ventured back out into the now darkening evening and spent an hour or so wandering the local area in the darkness to catch some pictures of the city at night before taking the long walk back to the hotel.

By the time we got back we were cold, exhausted, footsore, but very contented. The evening was spent lying on the bed watching TV and drinking hotel tea and thinking about the full Irish Breakfast buffet awaiting for us the next morning that was included in the price of the hotel.

But that's the start of the next entry!

Quote

2008-03-23T21:20:00.003Z

I came across this great quote a few days ago and wanted to share it and save it here so I don't lose it. If I ever write a travel book this would be my frontpiece quote:

"So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun. If you want to get more out of life, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life that will at first appear to you to be crazy. But once you become accustomed to such a life you will see its full meaning and its incredible beauty."

It's by Christopher McCandless. If you don't know who he is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_McCandless

Lessons from Sweden

2007-10-09T11:09:00.001Z

Okay, so I had hoped to produce a chronological narrative of May and I's time in Sweden much akin to the blog entries I did for my round the world trip earlier this year. Unfortunately circumstances of everyday life have intervened and since returning I haven't been able to find the time to sit down and write (new job, Lost Series 2 on DVD etc), so I no longer have the energy or recall to produce a day by day account of what we got up. Instead I decided to provide you with a summary of all the things we learned during our week there. Not only will that be less work for me but it should cover all the main things that happened to us and will also be set out in a visually pleasing bullpoint fashion.

So here we go.

Flying Ryanair is a pain in the arse, but we all know that already. What's starting to grate on me even more is driving to Prestwick from Inverkeithing. With a 1 and a half hour drive to Prestwick then an 1 hour 20 minute bus ride from the airport at the other side to Stockholm (because of course Ryanair never fly into a city, they fly into a field some 80miles north of a city) the total journey time door to door is something like 6 hours. And for some reason this time I noticed even more than normal just how depressingly cheap Ryanair are - no seat back pockets, no sick bags, no leg room. Is it really worth enduring this misery just to save a few pounds? Sadly, yes it is at the moment.
Couch surfing is the way to go. After realising how expensive Stockholm accommodation is May talked me into trying couchsurfing, whereby we stay with locals who are willing to offer up a free bed our couch to strangers for a few nights. I'll confess I was dubious, I had visions of arriving at someone's house to discover they were rampant naturists or that we'd be sleeping in their living room without any privacy. Fortunately I heeded May's good advice (encouraged on by a couple of good experiences hosting travellers in our own place) and we made contact with Hakan and Ulrika who were offering up a free bedroom in their place some 20km out of Stockholm. It was an indication of how nice this couple were when Hakan drove into Stockholm to pick us up from our airport bus as 1am in the morning. Over the next two nights and the three nights at the end of the week when returned from Gothenburg to Stockholm it was clear that Hakan and Ulrika were really nice people, great company, blessed with great senses of humour (sense of humours?) and very generous hosts. Not only did they provide us with breakfasts and dinners and advice on what to see in Stockholm and getting in and out, but they went really out of their way on a number of occasions (including the lift on that first night) when they could just as easily not bothered. It probably helped that they were real believers in the couch surfing initiative, meeting people, sharing experiences and travelling, but either way it was a great introduction to surfing. So good in fact we cooked them dinner and offered them up our own spare bedroom for an early (and first) visit to Scotland. And I am seriously looking at couch surfing as the way to travel around the world without spending a fortune on accommodation while meeting a hell of a lot of people.
The Old Town of Stockholm is a lot like the old town of Lyon. The nicest part of Stockholm is Gamla Stan, the oldest part of the city. It is an island in the centre of the city that full of narrow, cobbled alleyways, small squares and lovely old buildings. It's a great place to wander around (even in miserable weather like we had) but I couldn't help but feel that it was very like the old town of Lyon, which I'd visited a few years ago. Not that that is necessarily a bad thing, but just maybe that I was starting to similarities in different parts of Europe, that after having been around the world and laying eyes on a much wider array of cultures, countries and architecture, the similarities between different parts of Europe were more similar. Compare for yourself: one of these links is to a picture of Lyon, the other to Stockholm.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/alemsk/453932471/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimg944/336817677/

Stockholm is not a place that really grabbed me. This is aligned to the point above. I'm not sure if it was the feeling of having seen it before, or if it was the dreary weather, or the fact that there just didn't seem to be any particular atmosphere, but the city as whole did not seem to be anything special. That's not to say there were not things in Stockholm itself that I enjoyed (see below) but the city as a whole, as a destination itself, did nothing for me.
Stockholm has around 100 museums (and almost none of them are free, as far as I can tell, but used to be until a recent change of Government, according to Hakan) and two of them are two of the best museums I've ever been to. The Vasamuseet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_Museum) which tells the story of a 17th century Swedish ship that sunk a few days after being completed, was quite fantastic. Not only does it have the salvaged ship as the centre-piece of the building but there is fantastic and fascinating detail on how the ship was salvaged (involving men tunneling underneath the ship under the water to pass cables beneath it - not for the claustrophobic) and on life on board the ship and how it was built. We only had a couple of hours there but I could have quite happily stayed for twice as long. The other museum in Stockholm I would like to rave about is Skansen (http://www.skansen.se/pages/?ID=221) the world's first open air museum. This huge sight contains lots of period and historic buildings from around Sweden with staff dressed up in period costume to show you how life used to be. For some reason Skansen also contains a great zoo which includes bears, elk, wolves, seals and lots of farm animals. There are also authentic period bakeries and cafes at which we dined well. May and I spent a full day there and thoroughly enjoyed it - not least because in addition to all of the above the hilltop location of the museum afforded good views over Stockholm.
It's not that easy to get Swedish meatballs in Stockholm. We know because May tried. It is however very easy to find Sushi.
I have no idea what the scenery is like between Stockholm and Gothenburg. Apparently it's very nice, but I don't know because I slept on the train both directions because I was knackered. I can tell you that the trains are lovely though.
Gothenburg is a lovely city, but there's not much to see there. In someways I came away from Sweden with the feeling that I enjoyed Gothenburg more than I did Stockholm, but I don't think that means Stockholm is inferior or less enjoyable. I think much of it has to do with the fact we had predominantly good weather in Gothenburg (other than one day), we ate good food, walked about easily, and really got to know the city. I don't think we achieved that with Stockholm, probably because it is much bigger and more spread out. It was a lovely university city with lots of cafes and leafy streets, echoing Parisian Boulevards (but not Lyon, funnily enough). It perhaps also helped that Gothenburg had retained its excellent tram network, because trams always make things better, don't they?
Gothenburg does not have 100 museums, but it does have some fantastic ones. On the one day of really bad rain in Gothenburg May and I spent the morning at the Natural History Museum which was great just by virtue of the fact it was so purposefully old fashioned - it was all glass cases and stuff animals and there was even commentary on how this was the old way to do things and this type of approach provided some sort of commentary on the progress and changes in museums themselves. (Subtext: it would be too expensive to change it all). After that we took the tram across the city to possibly the finest museum in Sweden, the Universeum (http://www.universeum.se/). The museum is split into six sections including a fantastic indoor tropical rain forest (May felt at home), an aquarium and lots of fun experiments and activities the purpose of which are to introduce children to the fun!!! of science. It was great fun, and the building itself was very impressive, particularly the funicular lift up the outside of the building and the suspended staircases running down the outside of the rain forest greenhouse. If you are even in Gothenburg I insist you go - where else can you have a go at an HGV simulator, stroke some Manta Rays, wander through a rain forest and watch the wildlife and then play a virtual reality green-screen computer game?
I'm pretty sick of sleeping in hostels. This is much like my changing feelings on Ryanair, after having spent three nights in a hostel in Gothenburg I am increasingly coming to believe that I don't want to spend another night in one, unless it's in a private room (which makes the Couchsurfing discovery very timely). There were a couple of reasons for this, but I should preface this by saying that the hostel in Gothenburg (Slottskogen) was far from the worst I've every stayed in. There was a fantastic buffet breakfast every day and the location was good. There was free Internet access and plenty of eating places in the immediate vicinity. What really put me off the whole hostel experience was more general things that you have to put up with in a hostel no matter how good it is. The toilets/showers in Slottskogen were not the cleanest and the fact that people could go in to the toilet in their outdoor shoes, stepping on the same floor where you had your shower, didn't make your feet feel particularly clean. Our 6-bed dorm was right next to the common room so you did get to enjoy the sound of MTV up to 11 coming through the walls late at night. But worst of all was the freak we shared with. You do occasionally come across a freak in hostels - always harmless but freaky none the less. This guy was French and snored like a chainsaw. He was the worst snorer I have ever heard. I had earplugs in and a pillow over my head and I could still hear him. His snoring would actually wake me up. You could probably forgive this if the guy was nice and friendly and had some trace of social skills, but this troglodyte had none of the above. As far as we could discern he spent all day sitting in the dorm room watching the TV. One evening he came in from the shower as May and I were tidying up our bags and he just stood by his bed and watched us without saying anything. In fact, just about the only thing he said the whole time we were there was 'Are you leaving tomorrow?' And this was on the first night, so not really the best way to win people over. All that combined meant hostel living just left a bad taste in my mouth. In the future it's couchsurfing, hotels or at the very least private rooms in hostels for me. Honest.
Vegetarian food isn't that bad. Staying with Hakan and Ulrika we got try quite a few different vegetarian type foods - and I don't mean 'apples' and 'lettuce' - I'm talking about Quorn or Soya Milk Ice Cream. Quorn itself is a beef substitute made from mushrooms and we first had it in a lasagna and then in our very own spaghetti. I have to say it was very nice, in as much as you couldn't tell it apart from beef once there was sauce on it. I wouldn't turn it down if it was served to me. The Soy Milk Ice Cream was perfectly decent as well - not a patch on Haagan Dazs you understand - but perfectly decent. And of course it's all a bit healthier as well.
Sweden is not as expensive as you might think. Okay so I've already said we couldn't afford hostels, but that's only because a lot of them were already booked up so we were looking at the more expensive rooms. But other than that nothing was any more expensive than you would find it in the UK. I suspect that probably says more about the economy of the UK than Sweden but there you go.
A lot of Scottish words come from similar roots as Swedish words - probably down to the Vikings bringing their language to Scotland. Gatan is Swedish for road and is similar to 'Gate' in Edinburgh streets like Cowgate and Canongate. Kyrk is Swedish for church (and pronounced more like church) but is very similar to Kirk in Scottish. And there are countless other examples - including the Scottish word 'braw' which is very similar to the Swedish word for good - that May uncovered during our trip. She's very clever that way.

I think that just about sums up my experience of Sweden. In summary enjoyable, somewhat spoiled by the weather, and not a place I would rush back to, but worth the visit. The real highlight was meeting Hakan and Ulrika and the museums mentioned above.

If you're interested I've uploaded a selection of photos from the trip to the Flickr account. Click on the badge on the right.

Until next time...

Off Again

2007-08-19T20:51:00.001Z

Hello

No I'm not off around the world again, but May and I are off to Sweden in a few weeks. We'll be spending four nights in Stockholm and three in Gothenburg and thanks to couch surfing (www.couchsurfing.com) we won't be spending a single penny on accommodation. And thanks to Ryanair (urgh... as much as it pains me to thank those cattle rustling gits for anything) we'll be paying no more than £35 for our flights. So it shall all be very cheap, which appeals to the Scottish in me (and the Chinese in May). But the reason for this post is to say that of course I'll update this blog with all the hilarious events and incidents that happen to us while in Sweden once we get back. And if nothing hilarious happens I'll make stuff up because, well, you won't know any different will you? But either way it will be an enjoyable read.

Homeward Bound

2007-04-30T18:25:00.000Z

I didn't do much during my last two days in San Francisco. A combination of bad weather, continuing jet lag (i was still operating on New Zealand time) and sight-seeing fatigue left me ill disposed to wandering the lengthy streets of San Francisco. So, other than a quick trip to the Golden Gate Park and then Alamo Square to see the Painted Ladies (a row of houses and not a transvestite cabaret group) followed by an hour in the cartoon art museum, I spent my two days lounging about in diners and coffee shops, reading books, watching films and shopping for fridge magnets.

San Francisco is undeniably a good looking city - it's very cinematic and you can see why it has featured in so many films - but I found it difficult to enjoy it. I've mentioned some of the reasons why before - the number of homeless people everywhere, the obvious social problems everywhere - but also I think it was something to do with having already seen so many other US cities (New York, Boston, Washington, Philadelphia) that it had a lot to live up to. For some reason it didn't live up to those other cities; perhaps it is something to do with there being less things to do for a tourist or there being fewer iconic sights.

I also have to admit going back to my gloomy, run down hostel every night didn't really make for a good end to each day, so that may have affected my view of the place. Perhaps I would have enjoyed San Francisco more had i been sleeping a Regency Hyatt or something. But then I suppose most places would seem good if you were sleeping in a Regency Hyatt every night.

Anyway, at 4am on the last Monday morning of my trip my time in San Francisco was over. I dragged myself out of bed (no mean feat, giving I was still on New Zealand time and had just fallen asleep about half an hour earlier) and walked my way through the dark streets of San Francisco to catch the train to the airport, where i would fly to Las Vegas before picking up a hire car to drive to the Grand Canyon. On my was I couldn't help but reflect that the streets seemed much emptier of homeless people in the middle of night than they had during the day. There were a few of them here and there, sleeping in doorways, but you'd think if they really all were homeless there'd be as many of them at night as during the day. Maybe most of them aren't homeless after all. Maybe a majority of them are just lazy and beg instead of working... but lets not dwell on that in case I start to sound like a Tory MP.

After an enjoyable short flight to Las Vegas (I got upgraded to first class and found myself in seat 1A - at least it happened once on my trip, even if it was on the shortest flight) I picked up my hire car and spent half an hour terrifying local motorists by consistently driving on the wrong side of the road every time I had to turn a corner. An hour later and by some miracle I'd managed to both find my way out of Las Vegas and to master the whole driving on the other side of the road thing. It's not easy - it plays with your head that whole looking in mirrors that reflect the other side of the car. But I managed it.

Less than an hour out of the city I passed through the town of Boulder and then found myself driving across the Hoover Dam. The place was swamped with cars and the traffic wasn't helped by the construction work underway (they are building what looks like it will be an impressive bridge bypass over the valley so that the many trucks that cross the state don't have to get caught up in all the tourist traffic going over the dam). I pulled into the car park at the dam but then found out I didn't have enough money on me to pay the parking. So I pulled out again and continued on my way, deciding I could stop off on the way back.

After the dam the road to the Grand Canyon from is enjoyably straight forward. You basically drive in a straight line for about an hour. You then turn left and drive in a straight line for two and a half hours before you turn left again and drive for another hour. Being in a car that has both automatic gears and cruise control you could pretty much sit back, fold your arms, and cross your legs and let the car do all the work for a couple of hours. Not that I did that of course, because that would be irresponsible driving. The views along the route were quite spectacular at first, stretching plains, an expanse of open sky and mountains in the distance, but after the first hour without the view changing I did find myself starting to wish for a river or a bridge or a house or something.

A bit of relief came at the town of Kingman, the first town of any size in the state of Arizona. It sits at the junction of two highways (where you turn left the first time) and also sits on part of the old Route 66. As such it gets a bit of tourist traffic and is a good place to break the journey. At least that's what my guidebook said. There was a tourist information place/gift shop there in a big converted building called the 'Power House' so I pulled in, took a shot of myself in front of the Route 66 sign, and then wandered into the building. There wasn't much to see - a cafe, some toilets, some tourist information and some old ladies in the gift shop selling flowery shirts and cowboy hats and the like. The most interesting thing was a large notice board just inside the door which served as a tribute to the US armed forces. It provided the opportunity for locals and visitors to pay tribute to serving and dead American servicemen. It was a nice testament to the community spirit you get in American towns and cities - something not so obvious in the UK anymore I don't think- but at the same time it was served as a testament to the worrying lack of global political awareness of some of the people leaving comments. People had written things like: 'Go kick some Iraqi butt! U!S!A!' And 'USA and Britain allies for ever! France and Germany cowards!' The best comments came with photos of servicemen, family members wishing their own children/brothers/cousins well and asking that they come back alive.

After leaving the Power House I picked up a sandwich and some crisps in the Circle K convenience store - a place that clearly had never heard of fruit or vegetables - and then headed on nothing but me and the road and the type of awful country music that could make you understand why lots of Americans go round shooting people. After two hours of it I would have killed someone had there been a small firearm handy. Possibly myself.

When I reached Tusayan, the last town before the Grand Canyon National Park and the location of my hotel for the night, I was somewhat surprised to note that it was snowing. We don't even get snow in Scotland anymore but in America they get it in the Arizona desert. But apparently this happens quite a lot at the Grand Canyon, given the elevation (7,oooft give or take). As interesting as this revelation was it didn't much cheer me up when I got to the edge of the canyon and found I couldn't see anything due to the heavy cloud cover. After a 4am start, a flight and a 5 hour drive I wasn't best pleased.

Determined that my drive would be worth something I lingered for a while and was rewarded when the cloud would lift intermittently. To be honest this was worse because all it did was give me a better idea of what I was missing before the cloud dropped again. After an hour of this I'd had enough. I drove the short distance back to Tusayan and checked into my hotel. My mood lifted a little when I found that for some reason the hotel had upgraded me into a suite rather than a room, and I spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying my three rooms and two televisions before going out for a pizza and to check my email in an internet cafe where a group of locals where watching Richard Pryor swear himself to death on YouTube.

When I went to bed that night I had it at the back of my mind that the whole trip would be wasted if the weather didn't change. When I woke up at 6 to blue skies and blazing sunlight I all but vaulted out of bed and kicked my heels together in joy. After a very nice buffet breakfast of cereal and toast and tea (and not a pile of bacon, pancakes, hash browns and donuts as seemed to be the norm in most hotels in America) I drove back into the park and spent the next few hours moving from viewing point to viewing point enjoying the fantastic views and trying to work out how to take of something so huge that wouldn't all end up looking the same.

The Grand Canyon is quite marvellously impressive, but it's very difficult to describe why. It's really just a big hole in the ground. The best thing about it is the way the colours of the Canyon change at different times of the day. Even thought I was only there for a few hours I saw it - from the misty colours of dawn to the reds and oranges growing more fiery as the sun climbed the sky. The good thing about being up so early was I largely had it to myself as well. There were a few others: photo geeks with their wide angle lenses and their tripods (and who, from the bluish tint to their skin, had clearly been there long before dawn); hikers setting off early for a long trek; park wardens patrolling; but otherwise it was very peaceful.

That was until a big truck pulled up and two huge, twenty-something guys got out, yelling at each other.

"You best check yourself boy, you're an ass!" The first one shouted, walking away from their massive truck to the left.
"No you're an ass! You check yourself!" Said the other, walking off to the right.

At this point they were far enough away from each other that they had to shout even to make sure they were heard. Perhaps they couldn't see how far apart they were on account of the massive shadows cast by their ridiculous Stetsons.

"You check yourself!"
"No you check yourself!"
"Asshole!"

I'm not sure what they were expecting each other to check for, but clearly it had them both angry. They disappeared towards the canyon about half a mile apart from each other, and I found myself hoping one or both of them would fall into the canyon for good.

I left the canyon shortly before lunch, pleased that I'd made the trip but all too aware I'd seen only a tiny portion of what there was on offer. Even at the southern rim, where I was, there were hikes and buses to take you to other viewing points and the Grand Canyon village, and that's without even going down into the canyon itself. It was a place that would benefit from a longer visit.

I headed back to Las Vegas along the same route, and the drive (feet up, arms folded, occasional nap) was as easy as the drive out the day before. This time I took the opportunity to stop at the Hoover Dam, parking on the south side of the dam (where it was free) and walking across. It's quite a fantastic piece of engineering. I did find it a bit annoying that I couldn't get the whole thing in one picture, but that didn't spoil my stop. I didn't linger though because the sun was high in the sky, the temperature was silly and I only have so much skin to burn. So I was quickly back in the car and making my way back through Boulder to Vegas, where I drove on the wrong side of the road once again but this time just for sport and to annoy the locals rather than through my own error.

After dropping off my car I took a taxi to my hotel - the lovely Gold Coast Casino and Hotel - and checked in. The room was very nice, with a plasma TV on the wall and a luxurious king size bed on the floor. The only downside was the horrible dark brown mid-70s bathroom suite but in someways even that had a strange gangster charm about it. It felt like being in Scarface or Goodfellas or something.

The hotel isn't on the strip itself but they have shuttle bus that takes guests the half mile to the strip so you didn't have to walk it - nobody walks half a mile in Vegas. At first I came over all superior about this - stupid locals, so reliant on cars, in Europe we walk places you know, it's called culture - until I took a step out of the shade and felt all the moisture on my body turn to steam. It really was remarkably hot out of the shade, worse even than at the Hoover dam. I suppose that has something to do with the fact that Las Vegas is in the middle of the desert.

Anyway, once I'd made it to the strip (by shuttle bus) I spent the rest of the afternoon walking up and down and gaping at the casinos and the hotels until it got dark. It really is quite a crazy place. They have a casino called the Venetian, which is made up replicas of buildings from Venice. Inside the hotel itself is a replica of the Grand Canal with gondolas and and water and shops and everything. There is a hotel/casino called Paris outside of which is a replica of the Eiffel Tower. And there's New York New York which has a replica Statue of Liberty and New York street. Oh, and a rollercoaster. It really makes you wonder how much money these places spend just to get people through the door. Inside it's not much better. Inside the MGM Grand they have a lion atrium thing where real life lions laze about amongst fake trees and leaves and stuff. Paying casino guests can have their photographs taken with lion cubs as well.

The other interesting thing about Vegas is of course all the people. It quickly became apparent that the majority of Vegas visitors fall into two or three distinct groups - old retired people coming in couples or groups; middle aged overweight couples from Nowheresville America; and groups of young, hip and trendy guys on trips from the big cities of North America. The ones I found most depressing where the people who came to Vegas not just to gamble but to see the sights i.e. the fake Venice and the fake Paris and the fake New York. I don't know if these people will ever get to the real Venice or Paris but something tells me it's unlikely. The worst of it is I suspect that's mostly to do with attitude rather than expense - they'd rather go to Vegas and look at the imitations than go abroad and see the real thing.

As it grew dark the strip really came alive, with all the lights and the fountains at the Bellagio - basically the imagery you see at the start of every episode of CSI (if you watch it). I spent an hour or so playing some slots in one of the casinos and then headed back to the Gold Coast for some dinner, after which I enjoyed some of the entertainment the Casino put on every night - a wonderful five piece jazz band, old men the lot of them and each and every one of them an amazing musician. And then there was a three piece group of girls performing songs like 'Car Wash' and 'I will survive'. It was like a school disco or something. When the girls stopped singing and started trying to flog their CDs I left them to it and spent an hour or so wandering around the tables in the casino, trying to work out how to play the more exotic looking games like 'Dragon' and 'Baccarat' before heading to bed.

The next day it quickly became apparent that there is very little to do in Las Vegas, unless you want to gamble or watch cheesy magicians and Celine Dion. I spent most of the day on the strip again, wandering around those casinos I hadn't seen the day before and watching people gambling. It was hard to stay interested though. At one point I decided to stop and sit down and just watch the world go by, but I couldn't even do that for long as the outside temperature and the blazing sun meant I could feel the heat of the wall burning through my jeans after about five minutes.

After killing some time by getting something to eat I took myself over to the Bellagio to get a good close up view of the Fountains - they were very impressive, I must say, so much so that I even stayed half an hour to watch a second performance - and then I made my way back to my own hotel. I spent the rest of the afternoon wasting some money on the slot machines (I doubled my stake at one point on the virtual blackjack, but then just kept playing until it was all gone). Then I got some dinner in the slightly cheesy Monterrey Room restaurant (open 24 hours you know) - a BLT sandwich which was about as tall as me and came with more bacon than I think I'd ever seen before in my life - and then enjoyed some more of the cheesy entertainment before heading to my room to watch some TV for a few hours. I took another trip down to the casino towards midnight, just to see how many people were still gaming (a lot) and to loiter around some more. I saw one guy making silly bets on the roulette wheel but it wasn't nearly as exciting as it is in the movies (what is) so by 1am I was back in my room and heading to bed for my last night in Vegas and for the last night of my holiday.

The following day I hung around in the hotel until noon, when I had to check out, and then made my way to the airport. By 4pm I was in the air and a little dismayed to find that we were travelling in an older aircraft and it did not have the Video on Demand entertainment system that I had come to expect. Instead I could choose between eight channels showing five moves and three channels showing television programmes. It really wasn't good enough. How can you be expected to tolerate a 10 hour flight with nothing but Night at the Museum and two episodes of the Catherine Tate show?

Thankfully I managed to get some sleep and the flight passed quickly enough. I passed a few hours at Gatwick with a Boots meal deal lunch (oh how I'd missed these small luxuries of life) and a copy of the Sun - catching up on all gossip about Posh and Becks and Girls Aloud that I'd missed over the last two months, and then I was on my Easyjet flight up to Edinburgh and at last I was back in civilisation. By 4pm I was back in my flat and enjoying such long forgotten comforts as Tetley Tea, my own bed, and BBC television, and all that was left for me to do was to get over my jet lag and reflect upon my trip:

Best bits: Cambodia was special because it was both exotic and relatively unspoilt as well as being very impressive. The drive from Adelaide to Melbourne was a real highlight - great driving through great scenery. Everything on the south island of New Zealand was great, especially Milford Sound. Waitomo Caves, Wellington and Rotorua on the north island were great too. The Grand Canyon was very nice too, as well as the trip to Hakone in Japan. Some of the food in Malaysia was fantastic (filo pastry pizza anyone?) as was meeting May's family and dogs.

Worst bits: Missing the flight to Adelaide and being routed via Sydney, resulting in arrival nine hours later than anticipated. San Francisco didn't do it for me as I've already explained, and Las Vegas got boring pretty quickly. The two horrible hostels in New Zealand - in Rotorua and Waitomo (although Rotorua and Waitomo themselves were fine) - really were a blemish on the whole New Zealand experience.

Best food: The Japanese meals in Dunedin and Auckland (but not Tokyo funnily enough); most of the food in Malaysia; Fish and chips most places we had them in New Zealand.

Worst food: Wasabi sandwiches in Tokyo; the horrible dumplings in Cambodia; BLTs in America that come with so much mayonnaise and salty bacon that you get a free cardiovascular surgeon with every third purchase.

Funniest incident: Probably the jobby aquarium. If you don't know what that means look back to Cambodia.

Best accommodation: The Villa in Siem Reap, Cambodia; The Urban Central Hostel in Melbourne; the Regency Hyatt in Adelaide. The Traders Hotel in Kuala Lumpur on my last night in Malaysia (big bed, luxurious bathroom and a view of the Petronas Towers).

Worst accommodation: The Hostel in San Francisco (USA Hostels) - nice old building but run down, gloomy and depressing. The two Kiwi Paka Hostels in NZ mentioned above. The hostel in Adelaide that I ended up not staying in because it was so manky.

Best purchase during the 8 weeks: The Japanese puzzle box in Hakone. The hand made Cambodian silks for a very cheap price in Siem Reap.

Best flight: the 12 hours to Tokyo on the first day. Completely empty flight meaning i could stretch out; excellent on demand entertainment service; no turbulence at all; good food; and very good flight attendants. (read into that last one whatever you want).

Worst flight: The SIA from KL to Singapore because it was late and meant I missed my flight to Adelaide. Closely followed by the Virgin flight from Las Vegas to London - an older plane no free seats and not enough leg room and a crappy entertainment system.

If I was to do it all again what would I do differently: Make sure I had more than two weeks in New Zealand because we just didn't have enough time there. I'd sacrifice Las Vegas and some of the time in San Francisco for it. Eat more Japanese food in Tokyo rather than waiting until I got to Malaysia. Get an earlier flight from KL to Singapore to make sure I caught the connecting flight to Adelaide.

So in all it was a fantastic experience. There were lows but they really only were lows relative to the highs and nothing particularly bad happened at all. The worst thing was missing the flight to Adelaide but even that worked itself out in the end. And given the number of flights I took over the eight weeks it's remarkable I only caught a cold once - a very minor one that lasted only a day in Las Vegas at the end of the holiday.

And now I'm back at home, which is always good after a long holiday, and back at work, which is not so good.

So if you'll excuse me I'm off to check the Ryanair website. I really need a holiday.

San Francisco Part 1

2007-04-21T03:13:00.000Z

So, after 12 hours of bouncing like a kangaroo on the turbulence over the Pacific Ocean (the first hour of which was spent talking to the woman sitting next to me who happened to be from just down the road in Fife) I landed in San Francisco. The transfer from the airport was painless, a lovely railway right into the heart of the city. By the time I stepped onto the street it was just after 1pm and by two I'd found my way to my hostel and gratefully dropped my backpack to the floor to check in. With key in hand I made my way up the very narrow rickety stairs and along the lengthy, gloomy corridor to my room. It reminded me worryingly of the Shinning. The carpet was straight out of the seventies and the corridor was far too long with a suggestive corner at the end. Clearly the hostel had at one time been a Hotel (European style they call it in the US - where the bathrooms and toilets are all shared and are not en suite) and the hostel had bought it over. On the basis that it would only ever be filled with backpackers they have clearly decided not to bother updating any of the interior decor.

The room itself turned out to be fine, large and spacious with a big double bed in the middle but not much else. I was pleased to see a little sink in the room but not so pleased to note the brown stains around the plug hole - heaven knows what previous occupants have used the sink for. For some reason the room also came furnished with a fridge and a microwave. I'm not sure what they think guests will do with such items - especially when there isn't even a table in the room, just a floor and a bed - but you'd think they'd have the sense to fore go the white goods for a television.

Anyway, after a brief shower I was out of the room. On hitting the street I foolishly turned left instead of right and found myself in a part of the city called the Tenderloin, on a street which I later discovered my guide book describes as 'one of the roughest parts of the city, where prostitution and drug deals go down in daylight'. I didn't actually see any prostitution or drug deals but I did find my pace quickening as I spotted the gangs of young black men lounging about street corners (who were eyeing me as if trying to decide whether I was very brave or very stupid) and the homeless winos who seemed to gather in groups at interesections. I was relieved when I made it to Market Street and the visitor information center in one piece. Already I'd found it amazing how such contrasts can occur in the space of one block - from Regency Hyatt hotels to homelessness and drug deals.

Actually the homeless are everywhere in San Francisco. This became apparent very early on. On every street corner, even in the swankiest areas, there are men and women digging in rubbish bins or asking for/begging for/demanding money. It can be quite unpleasant - not because of the homeless people themselves, but because because there can be homeless people in such a rich city and nobody seems the least bit bothered.

Anyway, lets not get onto politics or we'll be here all day. I spent that afternoon wandering quite happily, partly to wear myself out so I'd get some sleep that night and partly just to get an idea of the size of the city. I wandered east first, through the financial district and lots of nice grand buildings, down to the Ferry Building on the shore, recently renovated and now quite a draw where once it was ignored and run down. I then headed back a couple of blocks north, heading to Jackson Square, which my guidebook described as showing San Francisco as it might have been had the great fire in the early 20th century not destroyed many of the old buildings, but I didn't see anything spectacular. I then ducked through Chinatown and searched the skyline for views of the Trans-America Pyramid, SF's tallest building that seemed curiously hidden until I got quite near to it.

One thing that i loved about that first afternoon was the views. It was a great clear sky and San Francisco has so many hills that you're never far from a view of the bay. Sometimes it takes you completely by surprise and it's a city that reminds me of Rome in that way - you never quite know what view you're going to get around the next corner and you are frequently surprised.

I ended the day with a meal in an all American Dinner and then went back to the hostel to crash and sleep off my jet lag (or so I thought).

Yesterday I made my way to the cable car station at the foot of Powell Street, intending to take the cable car to Fisherman's Wharf, but when I got there all I saw was a huge queue of people waiting to get on, so I walked a few blocks north instead and got on the cable car from an empty stop a wee bit up the hill. The ride was great fun, up steep hills and then down the other side. Unfortunately it was a grey and cloudy day, not great weather for photographs.

Fisherman's Wharf is quite the tourist hell hole. For some reason it was quite quiet - possibly because of the weather or the time of day - but even so it just reeked or touristy tat. I wandered along Pier 39 (which might as well have been built by Disney given how tacky and fake it looks) and all the tourist shops and I couldn't help but be aware that the air smelt strongly of candyfloss and doughnuts, which made me feel sick. The best things here were the view over to Alcatraz and the view of the Sea Lions in the bay. Both were worth the accompanying nausea.

I spent a few hours exploring the other parts of the Wharf, none of which seemed particularly exciting (and the few photo opportunities I saw were spoiled by the dull grey sky anway), then got some lunch before walking towards Russian Hill, south of the wharf area. This walk was up a hill steep enough to require crampons and an ice axe but at the top there was a fantastic view back down over the bay and - more importantly - down Lombard Street, supposedly San Francisco's most crooked street. It was enjoyable crooked I must say, and a middle aged American woman standing next to me at the top looked upon it with horror and said 'That is too scary. You wouldn't catch me driving that!' Coming as she did from a country with grid system streets and perpendicular intersections I could understand her concern, but I had learnt to drive in the tight corners and street steeps of Bo'ness so I couldn't help but be unimpressed. Nevertheless I took some shots of the procession of cars making their way down the tight S-bends and then walked down the street.

At the bottom I headed south along Columbus, a nice wide street with lots of interesting shops and restaurants (including a 'garlic' restaurant that claimed to 'provide sides of food with our garlic'). The area turned a bit seedy back towards the downtown area though, with strip clubs and porn shops, including Larry Flynt's Hustler Bar right across from the lovely green Columbus Tower. Looking like something from a fairytale (it's an ornate building, not an actual tower) it is now apparently owned by Francis Ford Coppola and the ground floor shop or restaurant was called Zoetrope - I assume after his film company (or vice versa). From Columbus I headed straight onto past the base of the Trans America Pyramid (it's best seen from a distance) and back through the Financial District. By this time it had started to rain and was showing no sign of letting up. Rather than plugging on through the miserable weather I made my way to the San Francisco Mall on Market Street, a huge shopping centre, where I browsed books in Borders and then caught a film in the cinema - such are the luxuries of knowing I have plenty of time in the city. By the time i re-emerged it was growing dark but the rain hadn't stopped. I headed back to the hostel and read for a bit before venturing out for a sushi dinner (because I'd gone all of two days without Japanese food). Then I made the mistake of staying up till 2am to finish the book I was reading and as a result just screwed my body clock which I think was still trying to recover from the twelve hour trans-pacific flight. I don't think I got to sleep until four am

This morning I woke up at eight and despite feeling awful I dragged myself out of bed for a healthy breakfast of cereal and toast at a nearby dinner. Shortly after I gave up the ghost and went back to bed, rising again shortly before lunch even though I still felt awful but knowing there was no point staying in bed all day. Instead I stood on the street corner for twenty minutes waiting on the first of two buses that would take me to the Golden Gate bridge. The journey took the best part of an hour since the buses stop pretty much every block but it was an enjoyable journey, past interesting and unspectacular parts of the city. I also had the joy of listening as a guy in the seat opposite me bored the poor girl who had made the mistake of sitting next to him with his views on the music she was trying to listen to before moving on to a lengthy diatribe about the political state of the nation. She was clearly not interested in the slightest but from the way she nodded politely and 'mmm-hmmd' and the low volume of her voice I think she was English. Had she been American - or indeed anything other than English -I'm sure she would have shot him after the first ten blocks.

Eventually I made it to the Golden Gate bridge. My guidebook had described it as the most beautiful bridge in the world, and initially I had felt this to be a bold claim (the authors have clearly never visited the Kincardine Bridge) but when I saw the bridge I could understand why someone could get carried away enough to make such a statement. It really is rather lovely, the sweep of the roadway, the design of the towers, the surrounding scenery, the red paint against the blue sky. I took plenty of photos then walked about half way along the bridge to get a close look. Then I walked back and took some more photos before heading westwards along the shore back towards Fisherman's Wharf. Every now and then I would stop to take some more photos the bridge as the perspectives changed - I really couldn't stop myself looking at it.

Eventually the path led me away from the shore and to the Palace of Fine Arts, a lovely building that I rather sadly recognised as having featured in the Michael Bay classic The Rock (the bit when Sean Connery meets his daughter if you must know). But I took plenty of photographs of it, enjoying the light afforded by the lovely blue sky and the bright sunlight. Then, realising how foolish it would be of me to walk all the way to Fisherman's Wharf I jumped on a bus (after another 20 minute wait).

I hadn't opted to head back to Fisherman's Wharf because I'd enjoyed it so much the first time - I just wanted to get some shots of Alcatraz and the sea lions in good light. I was surprised to find the place buzzing, much busier than the previous morning. I stopped to listen to a school brass band at the end of Pier 39, then wandered along the pier again, pushing my way through crowds this time. After some new shots of Alcatraz and the sea lions I decided on a whim to jump on the bay cruise just leaving. It was well worth the ten pounds it cost, taking us up close to Alcatraz and beneath the Golden Gate bridge. It also afforded quite spectacular views back towards the city (it's interesting how pale all the buildings are, like a Greek village in large scale or something). It was bloody cold though, so I was quite glad I'd taken plenty of shots of the bridge that morning so I didn't have to stand outside for too long.

The tour around Alcatraz was interesting briefly - it's not a place I'm that interested in and I have no plan to hand over a wad of cash to take a guided tour of it, so this cruise around it was sufficient for me.

Back on dry land I treated myself to a 'regular' Ben and Jerry's cone and then had to ask three burly men to help me carry it until it was eaten. How can they eat such huge portions in this country? I dread to think what a large would have been like. Anyway the two flavours of ice cream - Strawberry Cheesecake and Triple Caramel Chunk - were fantastic, even if I did suffer a mild coronary afterwards.

I had intended to ride the cable car back to the hostel area but when I got to the cable car station I found a massive queue similar to the previous morning. This time my trick of walking further on a few blocks didn't seem to work as every time a cable car passed it was still stuffed full of tourists. In the end I ended up walking pretty much most of the way back to the hostel before I could get on a car. Still it wasn't a bad walk - good for the thigh muscles.

After browsing Borders (for a suitable road map for my trip to the Grand Canyon on Monday, as well as new book to keep me occupied) I got myself a chicken stir fry dinner and then headed back. Tonight I am not going to stay up till 2am reading my book and I am going to get some sleep so I can get over this jet lag. Honest.

Two more full days in San Francisco and then it's a flight to Las Vegas and my drive to the Grand Canyon.

New Zealand Part 3

2007-04-17T22:20:00.000Z

Or the North Island.

Our hostel in Rotorua felt like something out of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Psycho. It was from the sixties or seventies and had clearly been a motel at some point in the past before someone realised that no self-respecting person in their right mind would pay to stay there. So they obviously decided backpackers were a less discerning bunch and converted it. May and I had a double room that amounted to four very brown walls, a wooden ceiling and a door that led straight out to the car park. No security at all. Oh and there was about enough space in the room for one person to stand up at any one time. And the pillow cases they gave us had been washed so many times the once bright blue was now a dirty white. Lovely. Still it did for the night.

The next morning it wasn't raining, which was good, as we had a full day planned around the Rotorua area. For those of you not in the know Rotorua is a geo-thermal wonderland, a volcanic plate with geysers and fissures and boiling water everywhere. Canny locals have taken advantage of this and have opened up countless parks and tourist sites, either around the theme of bubbling lava or Maori heritage combined with bubbling lava. Our first stop was some 20km back south towards Taupo at a very popular place called Wai-O-Tapu (or Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Wonderland, to give it its full title - http://www.geyserland.co.nz/index.htm). We were up so early (to escape the horrible hostel) that we were the first in the car park and the first at the door when it opened. This meant we had the place to ourselves, which was a real bonus. The park has three interconnected walks around such wonderfully named sights as 'the Devil's Inkpots' or 'the Champagne Pools' or, my personal favourite 'the Frying Pan Flats'. The park also contains the Lady Knox Geyser, a famous Geyser that our book advised erupts at 10:45 every day, so May and I had a couple of hours to wander around the park before heading for the Geyser. It was a great place for a walk, full of bubbling green pools and orange stones in yellow water. I could help but feel that I'd wandered onto a Dr Who set from the 1970s - some old quarry in Berkshire painted to look alien or something - but when I confided that observation to May she rolled her eyes and walked off in the other direction.

With all the wonders of the walks explored May and I jumped back in the car (in the now much busier car park) and drove the 2km around the park to the Lady Knox Geyser. It was a bit disappointing to see the car park for the Geyser filling up with tour buses and the like but when we got to the viewing platform there was loads of room so it wasn't quite so bad. In front of us was what could be best described as a big grey nipple of the earth. We all sat waiting for it to explode majestically at 10:45 and then at 10:44 a little ginger, bespectacled teenager - a geek in a uniform if ever there was one - came up and explained that the Geyser explodes at 10:45 every day because they dump some soap into it to break the surface tension of the cold water below ground that holds back the hot water. I was a little disappointed - I had come to see a Geyser that could tell the time and knew when to erupt (I had been bugging May with questions about how it knew to erupt at 10:45 every day even when the clocks went back once a year). It also made me wonder why the park chose 10:45 for eruption time instead of say, 10:00 or 11:00. But anyway the geek tossed in some soap and we then watched as the nipple started to froth and spit and then erupted upwards in a quite impressive burst. A few minutes later and I had decided geysers were a bit like fireworks - impressive initially, but after a few minutes the novelty wears off and you really just get a bit tired of looking upwards all the time.

After the geyser we drove back into Rotorua, debating what to do. There were a number of options. Firstly there were a couple more thermal parks that had Maori cultural activities included (dances, tours and that type of thing) which all sounded very interesting but which were both a bit pricey and, to be honest, I wasn't sure I wanted to see more bubbling pools or geysers. The other option was to take the Skyride gondola up the nearby mountain and enjoy the views fromt here before playing on the go-kart style luge track they had up there. After some brutal arm twisting May decided she didn't need to see Maori culture and that go-karting down luge tracks was what she had come to New Zealand for. So we paid our fare and enjoyed a very nice ride up the mountain on the Gondolas. At the top the sky was clear and blue and we got some great views over the Rotorua area. We then spent the next hour enjoying our three rides down the luge tracks - the beginner, intermediate and advanced tracks - and it was great fun. (http://www.skylineskyrides.co.nz/rotorua/ssr_luge/) You jumped on a small go kart thing where the only controls were breaks and steering and then you trundled down the hill at quite enjoyable speeds. At the bottom you jumped on a ski-lift back to the top and did it all over again. It wasn't just for kids - although there were lots of infant speed freaks zooming past me three abreast around hair pin bends - there were middle aged men and women and pensioners doing it as well.

After returning to ground level May and I jumped back in the car and headed for our third exciting activity of the day - the Agrodome. This batty place - (http://www.agrodome.co.nz/Agrodome/Sheep_Show_IDL=1_IDT=1055_ID=7860_.html) is essentially a farm that has been converted into a farm-show for tourists. Three times a day they have a man on stage telling you about the different breeds of sheep in New Zealand, complete with live rams wandering about. They have a guy shearing a sheep, have members of the audience up on stage to milk a cow and then have sheep dogs herding geese and jumping on the back of the rams. It was most enjoyable if a bit silly, and the largely Korean crowd in the theatre seemed to love it. (I knew they were Korean because at the start our host asked where people where from - when someone said 'Wales' the man nodded approvingly and said 'Good sheep country that' and a little bit of me wished I had said Wales as well instead of Scotland). Afterwards you can go outside to watch a demonstration of sheep dog trialling which was good fun too. And to top it off there were lots of over sized fibreglass animals around the farm - a sheep dog, a sheep and a ram - which May and I dutifully took photos beside. All in all an enjoyable few hours.

After the Agrodome we drove for a couple of hours west across the country to Waitomo, where we had booked in for the night. Unfortunately the hostel we had booked into - the only hostel in the area - was run by the same people as the hostel in Rotorua, so we weren't looking forward to it. Thankfully when we got there it seemed a bit more up to date and a bit less frightening. That said I did stand at reception for ten minutes while a guy dealt with a girl before he told me he didn't work there and I had to go find someone else to check me in. And when we ordered pizzas from the in house restaurant that night it took them 50 minutes to arrive. But other than that it was very pleasant.

The following morning we headed around to the Waitomo Glow Worm Caves, the big attraction in the area. We were there at 9am for the first tour - before the tour buses all arrived - and shared the trip with only a few other people. We descended into the huge spacious caves and the guide led us around for half an hour or so, showing us the vaulting cathedral (the highest point of the cave) the holes and the underground lakes. It was all quite magnificent. Unfortunately there was an old Australian man in the group who felt the need to argue with the guide about stupid things that he couldn't know anything about, such as when exactly the female gloworms fertilise their eggs, but the guide was so chilled out (dare I say stoned?) that he would just shrug and say 'sure' to placate the man. After exploring the cave on foot we all jumped on a boat and floated down the river beneath a galaxy of glow worms in the dark caves above us. David Attenborough did the same thing recently on Planet Earth I think. It was quite fantastic and well worth the entry fee.

Emerging from the cave we headed down the road to the Aranui Cave, a much less popular cave but only because the tour buses do not visit. We had bought our ticket in a double deal with the Glow Worm cave ticket and it was well worth it because when we got there we were the only two there and in essence ended up with a private tour. The Aranui Cave is famous for its stalagmites and stalactites - it is also more grand than the glow worm caves. It was quite fantastic - huge SMs and STs in large vaulted caves. Unlike the Glow Worm Caves we were also allowed to take photos and someday I'll even get them up on Flickr. You can get an idea of what they are like here: http://www.waitomo.com/aranui-cave.aspx - the Glow Worm Cave is on the same site as well.

We left the caves and ventured into nearby Te Kuiti - sheep shearing capital of the world apparently - where we treated ourselves to a large fry up breakfast before taking pictures of ourselves standing next to the giant sheep shearer and then next to the giant insect. (They love their giant things in New Zealand just like in Australia). We then drove north towards Tauranga, stopping on the way at the Tirau, the corrugated town, where they had a giant corrugated sheep dog (within which was the tourist information centre, so you see how big it was) and a giant corrugated sheep (within which was a wool shop). We arrived at Taurange early evening and after two nights in horrible hostels it was a delight to find our acommodation was up to the usual YHA standard - if not even better because they had a guitar and a frisbees. The receptionist was originally from Indonesia so she and May enjoyed talking Malay to each other (most of which seemed to be about me being a 'boodoo' - whatever that is) and then we went out for some dinner before getting an early night.

The next morning we started our day with a tip to Mount Manganui across the water from Tauranga - it was very nice but unfortunately we didn't have time for a walk up. After taking a few photos of the bay and the mountain we headed north, stopping first at the town of Katikati, the mural town, where the buildings through the main street are covered in murals and pictures. It was quite enjoyable - especially the toy mural down a narrow alley that showed all types of kids toys. We then drove north along the coast into the Coromandel Peninsula, a lovely drive through lots of interesting little towns, including one called Waihi where the was a large open mine that we stopped to have a look at. Eventually, mid-afternoon we ended up at Hot Water Beach, a famous tourist sight where you can dig in the sand at certain times of the day and enjoy water heated by nearby volcanic activity. Unfortunately May and I did not bring our spades so we didn't bother, but we did enjoy an hour on the beach watching the surfers and playing in the very enjoyable large waves that crashed on the beach. Or i did anyway, May was too scared of getting wet, so she just took lots of pictures of me pulling faces of dismay as I realised the proximity of the ice cold water to my reproductive organs. She also took a great picture of me standing on the beach with a surfer zooming past.

After a change of clothes and a towelling down (for me at least) we headed north towards our home for the night - the tiny town of Whitianga. The next morning we were up early and drove back south, heading for Cathedral Cove. The Cove was accessed by a path from the car park necessitating an 40 minute walk through some lovely scenery. The Cove itself was fantastic - justifying it's Cathedral moniker - and once again May had it pretty much to ourselves, so we enjoyed taking photos and exploring the bay before writing our names in the sand and taking photos of that too. We take a lot of photos, May and I. Then we headed back to the car in the burning sun and headed back north to Whitianga again and then west across the peninsula (up some enjoyable mountain roads) and then back south along the coast. We stopped off in the town of Coromandel for lunch and were disappointed to find we couldn't take a ride on the Driving Creek Potteries Railway - New Zealands only narrow gauge mountain railway (http://www.drivingcreekrailway.co.nz/Introduction.cfm) built by one man and quite a feat of personal engineering - because the next ride wasn't until 2:00pm and we had to get the hire car back to Auckland by five. Nevertheless Coromandel was a lovely little town - a real gold rush feel to it - so it wasn't a waste of a stop.

The drive back to Auckland was lovely, along the coast for most of it until we were out of the peninsula and then on the three lane highway into Auckland. With May's map reading skills we navigated the city streets with ease and by 6pm we had dropped off the car and checked into our city centre hostel. I was absolutely knackered after five days of driving so I slept for a few hours while May went out and about photographing and then we went for dinner a small nearby Japanese.

The next day we had a very relaxing wander around Auckland. It's not a big place so it's easy to cover on foot - we visited the Sky Tower, of course, where mad people throw themselves off the viewing platform to descend at speed on a wire. It was great to watch from below and to be honest it looked like great fun - but I wasn't willing to pay $200 dollars for the privilege when it lasted for all of 10 seconds. We then headed over for a view to the Auckland Harbour Bridge and walked around the fringes of the city to the Viaduct Quay. After that we spent the afternoon wandering through the downtown area with brief detours to Albert Park and the Auckland Gallery. Auckland is a perfectly pleasant place but it doesn't have the charm and atmosphere of either Wellington or Christchurch. I've also seen more homeless people in Auckland than i have in the rest of New Zealand. And May also said when she was wandering about herself that first evening there were a few moments when she felt a bit intimidated by homeless people asking her for money - so it has a bit of a rough edge. But I'm glad I've been here.

This morning I bid farewell to May as she climbed on the airport bus for here lunchtime flight back to Malaysia. I now have the afternoon to relax before my evening flight to San Francisco. This is the big one - 13 hours across the Pacific so I am not looking forward to it, but I'll head to the airport early so hopefully I can get a leg room seat. The only fun thing about the flight is that I will be crossing the international date line which means I arrive in San Francisco before I leave Auckland. In fact as I type this right now I am also wandering about San Francisco looking for my hostel - it's fun being in two places at the one time. It's like something from Dr Who. But that's twice I've mentioned Dr Who in the one blog entry so I really should stop that.

So to sum up the New Zealand experience:

What I like about New Zealand: The scenery, especially in the South Island; the fact that the Maori culture and people are much more recognised and accepted and part of New Zealand than the Aboriginals in Australia; Whittaker's Chocolate - Wellington made chocolate that is very nice indeed; that everyone is so welcoming to tourists and the towns and cities all provided tourist services;

What I don't like about New Zealand: The tourism market really is over exploited, especially by backpackers (and I am aware of the irony of saying this as a backpacker) - but everywhere you go there are large tour parties of backpackers. It's difficult to get away from them, especially at popular sights, so you really have to plan your visits to make sure you are there early or late so you don't have to suffer them. And bear in mind we were visiting off peak - I dread to think what it is like in the summer. I also didn't like the Kiwi Paka hostels in Rotorua and Waitomo - stay away from them if you can they are horrible (check out the reviews on tripadvisor.com for them, they are quite amusing).

Highlights of our time here: Milford Sound was just fantastic, the drive there, the cruise, the drive back. It was all excellent. The Caves at Waitomo and the Rotorua area (thermal activity and luge driving) were both great as well. The scenery in the south island - especially the drive from Queenstown to Wanaka - was fantastic. The Wizard of New Zealand in Christchurch was great fun. Wellington was my favourite town, closely followed by Chirstchurch and Dunedin (I think May would say the same). And the Tranz-scenic train ride and the ferry crossing to Wellington were both very enjoyable too. And I really enjoyed Baldwin Street (world's steepest) and Signal hill in Dunedin. Oh and the drive over Arthur's pass was great too.

Biggest Disappointment: Driving around the north island - perhaps it was just after such wonderful scenery in the south island but the north island is quite unspectacular driving, just lots of rolling hills. Luckily there were lots of sights in between drives to make up for it. Can't think of any other real disappointments.

Biggest Regret: We didn't allow enough time in New Zealand. Two weeks really isn't enough, especially when trying to cover the whole country - often we would get into a town in the evening and only have a few hours to explore it before leaving the next morning. As a result we didn't get to do a few things I had hoped to do - Sky Diving over the glaciers; Puzzling World in Wanaka; Bungee Jumping in Queenstown; Black Water Rafting in Waitomo and so on. You really need at least three weeks I think, especially if you want to enjoy the places you stop.

Most impressive sight: Milford Sound; the Remarkables on the drive to Queenstown; any open water in New Zealand - it's all so clear; Arthur's Pass.

So there you go, that's New Zealand. Some of the photos we have taken are quite spectacular but unfortunately i can't be bothered playing about with them and choosing from the 500 odd on my camera alone. So I think there'll be no more photos up loaded until I get back to the UK in 10 days or so. But I may change my mind if i find a decent Internet Cafe in San Francisco.

Other than that I am off to work out how to make the remainder of my budget last for the next ten days. And then it's thirteen hours in a pressurised tube. Woo-hoo.

Next: San Francisco.

New Zealand Part 2

2007-04-12T09:44:00.000Z

Or from Christchurch to Wellington and onwards.

After our last night in Christchurch we were up early - at 5:15 to be exact - to catch the bus shuttle to the train station. For some reason the Christchurch town planners cunningly decided to put their train station outside their city, which seems a bit silly to me, especially when I have to stand zlone on a chilly Christchurch street and 6am in the morning, talking to a drunk old man about Scotland's chances in the cricket world cup and the Tri-Nations Rugby tournament because May has fled back into the building to escape him. However my mood did lighten somewhat when I saw a prostitute and a very geeky looking middle aged man head casually down the alley by the side of the hostel. I'm not sure what they were up to but I'm sure it was perfectly platonic - and you have to have respect to those Christchurch prostitutes - still working at 6 in the morning.

Anyway, once we got to the train station we climbed aboard our transport for the next five hours - the Trans Alpine train to Picton on the north island. I was a bit disappointed initially I'll admit - I'd been expecting something like an Amtrak train, with comfy armchair style seats and the like, and what I got was something like a Scotrail train. But the journey more than made up for it - we travelled north almost exclusively along the coast. Often we could spy the mountain ranges in the west while the Pacific Ocean sat off to our right. And if the views alone weren't enough two things in particular made the journey even more enjoyable. The first was the viewing car - basically an open platform with rails along the side to stop you falling out. It was great to stand out there at 8am in the morning watching my hands turn slowly blue, but even better later in the day when we passed the rockiest parts of the coast and the breeding grounds for seals. I also enjoyed the large signs warning passengers to keep hands and heads and cameras inside the rails due to the high number of tunnels on the route and the likelihood of instant decapitation. Secretly I was hoping for some non-English speaking tourist to lean out just as we approached a brick wall or something. Didn't happen though.

The best thing about the journey was the train manager, an affable chap called Charlie who would frequently provide commentary about what we were seeing as we trundled north. This man was a walking encyclopedia and could tell us all about the different types of trees on the slopes of New Zealand and when they were introduced to the country; the whole salt farming industry (we passed a salt farm, which was very interesting); the history of trains in New Zealand and of the line we travelled and the bridges we crossed; and off the MDF production industry, which apparently is a big thing in New Zealand. But better than his detailed and informative commentary he seemed unable to to stop himself wandering off into personal anecdote. So his discussion of the MDF industry led on to a discussion of just how many of these dreadful home improvement shows there were on the TV and how they filled him with dread because his wife was always watching them and it would give her ideas of what she wanted done to their house which meant he had to spend his weekends cutting MDF instead of riding his motorbike which was all he wanted to do really. And then he would sigh and, as if these troubles were too much for him, he'd sign off with a weary 'I need a cup of tea.' He was great.

We reached Picton about 12, and I have to say it was a good feeling having travelled so far without having to drive. We checked straight in for our ferry and then went and got some lunch on board the ship, finishing up before we even left port. The voyage was enjoyable - the sea was calm and the views were good. We didn't see any whales or dolphins but the coastlines around us were lovely, especially given the clear skies. One thing that amazed both May and I was the clarity of the water - everywhere in New Zealand the water is so clear it's quite remarkable. So we wandered about the deck for an hour or so, taking photos and enjoying the breeze. We also bumped into Joyous, the man from Hong Kong who'd shared our dorm in Christchurch the first two nights there, and he kindly took our photo for us. And then it got a bit cold so we decamped to the reclining chairs inside and then both promptly fell asleep - the rigours of the last five days of long drives and sight seeing clearly getting to us. It's a hard business all this holiday making I can tell you.

Arrival in Wellington was straightforward - we caught a bus from the ferry terminal to the train station (this time in the centre of the city) and then walked our way along the waterfront to our lovely hostel. From that walk alone I knew I liked Wellington. After we'd checked in we took a wander around the darkening streets and got something to eat and I found my initial impression of the city didn't change - it seemed like a nice, relaxed but vibrant place, albeit not short of a bit of wind. I've walked up Lothian Road in Edinburgh in the midst of winter and I know what wind is - but Wellington is the windiest place I've ever been. You need good heavy boots to get around without flying off like a kite.

The next morning the sky was a bit clearer than it had been the night before so we were up early - we only had a day in the city so we had to make the most of it. To start with walked up to the nice civic square, a recently developed part of the city with the new library building and some of the civic buildings. It was a lovely space, incorporating sculptures and modern buildings beside older architecture. Very sympathetically done. I visited the tourist information place in the square and bought a ridiculous fridge magnet and then we continued north up to the lovely Lambton Quay, a central shopping area with lots of nice old buildings. Then we jumped on the bright red cable car and took a ride up to the hill to the Botanic Gardens to enjoy some great views over the bay while gripping onto anything nailed down to ensure we didn't get blown to Hawaii. The best thing at the top of the cable car ride was the Sundial of Human Involvement. It sounds like something from Dungeon and Dragons but it's basically a sundial that you stand in and your shadow tells the time. May and I spent about half an hour there taking lots of photos of it - none of which will show how cool it was, but there you go - and then we headed back down on the cable car.

Our next stop was the Government buildings - including the infamous 70s Beehive - a circular building that apparently is 'a nightmare to furnish and clean and a pig to work in'. By then it was time for lunch so we found a nice Japanese - I've eaten more Japanese food since I left Tokyo than I did all the time I was there - and then we made our way back along the waterfront to Te Papa, New Zealand's national museum. It was very nice but I think my museum visiting enthusiasm has waned a bit on this trip so we only stayed for a couple of hours - long enough to recover from the wind burns to our cheeks. Did I mention it was windy in Wellington?

We finished the night taking photos of the bay as it got dark and then got some dinner and did some CD shopping, knowing we were picking up another hire car for the next few days the following morning and could do with some music. Then it was back to the hostel for some games of pool and to pack our bags.

This morning we were to pick up our hire car and drive north to Rotorua, a task made infinitely more difficult by the fact that the car hire company had moved their offices from the city out to the airport and hadn't bothered to change their information on their website. And then made more difficult again by the fact that when we got to the airport (I made them pay for my taxi, the bastards) they discovered our car was actually at the ferry terminal back in the city. Thankfully they felt guilty enough about the mix up to drive us out to the ferry terminal (but not guilty enough to apologise about the mix up) and we were finally away. The weather was miserable all day, cloudy and raining, but the drive along State Highway 1 was easy. Although it was the longest drive we'd done in New Zealand it flew past. We stopped at a few towns for some food but nowhere for long and the scenery along the route was unspectacular, so much so that I am beginning to think all the best scenery is in the south island. The one place that promised any interest was the desert road - where the State Highway 1 passes over New Zealand's only desert. It's the only time I've driven over a desert but the pouring rain and grey skies kind of spoiled the sense of desert-ness somehow. When we arrived in Rotorua about 6pm it was good to be out of the car and I'm glad most of the driving is behind us now.

Tomorrow we have a full day planned around the thermal and volcanic springs of Rotorua - here's hoping the weather is a bit better - before spending the next few days working our way to Auckland.

Oh and I've only got two weeks left - how scary is that?

New Zealand Part 1

2007-04-09T05:56:00.000Z

Or to Christchurch and away and back again.

Unfortunately the lack of reasonably priced Internet access combined with long days driving over the last five days has meant I haven't got around to updating this blog so this entry is probably going to be a wee bit long. You may want to prepare a fortifying drink and some comfy shoes before commencing this entry.

My flight to New Zealand from Sydney was a good one - not only did they serve me a pie but we flew right over the southern alps and I got a great view of dwarves and elves running about the ridges below us. As a result of our military style precision planning May and I met at the airport without any great problem and made our way into Christchurch to check into our hostel for the next two nights. Then we were straight out again and heading to Cathedral Square, the centre of Christchurch, a space dominated by the grey stone and very lovely cathedral. As it happened there was a choir recital just as we happened to be there so May and I sat in and enjoyed the choir of men and boys singing their hymns. I'm about as religious as a bit of wood (agnostick?) but my musical bones certainly enjoyed the impressive a cappella singing. May, being both more religious than I and more musically qualified, seemed to enjoy it as well and she seemed impress when I lent over halfway through and said to her 'It sounds like Enya'.

Once the service was over we enjoyed a walk around the town (it's a city but it feels like a town) as it got dark. Christchurch is a nice place, small enough to walk around and very spacious, with the river Avon never far away. The architecture - lots of red brick buildings and stone buildings - make it feel very British. The next day we retraced our footsteps to some extent, enjoying Cathedral Square in the daylight, then the Art Gallery (more for the building than for its collections), the river with the punters in their straw boaters - and that's probably the first time I've ever used the word 'punters' in its true dictionary sense. We also wandered around the botanical gardens, where they have some impressive fountains, and stumbled across a collection of old buildings that used to be a university but which were now an arts complex. All very nice. However the highlight of the day had to be the Wizard of New Zealand in Cathedral Square. This is an old eccentric guy who goes to the square every day during summer to speak to the crowds about his views on life, the universe and everything. He's an old guy dressed like a wizard who drives up in a small red car that is the fronts of two VW Beetles welded together. He then pulls out a step ladder and erects it in the square, climbs it and starts his lecture. It was quite a work of stream-of-consciousness genius. His main themes seemed to be that all men are stupid and all women are evil but he didn't limit himself to these subjects, and wandered on to such matters are the evils of education (amusing given he used to be a University lecturer himself); the ruination of the environment and the pointlessness of working. At one point he even stopped mid-rant, narrowed his eyes, and came out with the complete nonsequitor: "I have no objection to garage sales," which amused me. He's also produced a new version of the world map, with New Zealand at the top - I thought this was amusing at first until I realised there is some logic in his madness given there is no reason why it shouldn't be at the top since there is no north or south in space and our current map is only the way it is because the first map makers were in Europe. So I bought one of his maps. Anyway, he was great, and not as mad as he makes out - it's all about entertainment. I even got a picture of him giving May a blessing. You can learn more about him here: http://www.wizard.gen.nz/

The following day May and I picked up our hire car and started our grand tour of the South Island by driving south from Christchurch to Dunedin. It took us the best part of seven hours, the first couple of which was rather boring, driving across the farmland and plains south of Christchurch. After that things got a bit more interesting and we stopped frequently - especially every time we saw a large fibre glass fish in the centre of some small town, which was more often than you would expect. The highlights were the towns of Timaru, where we stopped for lunch in a converted train station (a lovely town with an enjoyable main street and lots of nice old buildings); Oamaru where we saw lots of fine old stone built buildings along the main street, reminiscent of buildings in Scotland; and the Moeraki boulder, huge boulder shaped chunks of rock sitting on the beach. Actually the Moeraki Boulders were a bit of a disappointment, but that was perhaps because the tide had come in and it was getting dark. But after that we ended up in Dunedin, driving down the hill in the city was great, with all the lights of the town spread out before us. Dunedin of course is named after Edinburgh and was settled initially by Scottish people - all the streets are named after streets in Edinburgh as well, so I was interested to see it. We found our hostel (a lovely old house that supposedly had a ghost) and then drove into the Octagon - the centre of the town - where we found a Japanese restaurant for dinner. Then we had a walk around in the dark and I found myself liking the city - more so than Christchurch - but I was very aware I was seeing it in the dark and quiet so perhaps this wasn't a good time to judge it. We did find a Scottish Shop and enjoyed the window display of Irn Bru and Walkers Shortbread. Then it was back to the hostel for bed!

The next morning we were up early to see the sights of Dunedin before the drive East. Our first stop was Baldwin street - officially the steepest street in the world. I wasn't expecting much to be honest, but when we got there I was quite impressed. It was quite ridiculously steep. We parked at the bottom and walked up - enjoying the permanent smell of burning clutch that hangs in the air - especially when tourists drive up it for the experience (we saw one guy speeding up the street holding his camcorder as he did so to record the event for posterity - he was laughing hysterically as he did so). At the top we got a nice view of the surrounding hills and reflected on how good it would be too sledge down the street in the snow. You could practice your ski jumping with a good frost on the tarmac. Then we took some amusing optical illusion photos with houses built at ridiculous angles and then it was back in the car to head up a steep road to Signal Hill, a look out point over the city. We got a great view over the Otago Peninsula and Dunedin and even thought it was cloudy it was worth the drive. I took out a can of Irn Bru that I'd purchased in a UK food shop in Christchurch the day before and made a toast to the most southernmost city on my trip and then we were off. We stopped off to take some photos of the very lovely train station and the Octagon (including the Robert Burns statue) on the way before heading south and east out of the city for our next destination. But the daylight didn't change my view - I liked Dunedin. I would have liked to have spent more time there.

Our drive that day took us across the south of the South Island, through rolling hills and fields and increasingly mountainous country. It was a very green landscape, reminiscent of the Scottish Borders, (the rainy, cloudy weather certainly helping that impression) and it was a more enjoyable drive than the previous day. We were headed for Milford Sound - a pain in the arse of a place to get to but apparently the eighth wonder of the world (if you believe Rudyard Kipling anyway). Milford Sound is a glacial fjord (or fiord) with sheer cliffs and mountains rising up from the water level. To get there we had to drive to Te Anau on the west coast and then north on the 100km dead end road to Milford Sound. Up until the early part of the 20th century the only way to get to Milford Sound was by boat but in the 1950s a tunnel was finally opened through the mountains (after ten years of work) opening up a road access. But the whole area around Milford Sound is a national park area so there is hardly any habitation and even at Milford Sound itself only two places to stay - one of which is exclusively for walkers - and one pub/restaurant. But it is beautiful. Even at Te Anau the scenery was fantastic: high mountains and beautiful lakes. We stopped to fill up petrol (given there was no petrol station any where further north) and then headed on. The clouds lifted a little and the rain stopped, affording us enough of a view to make the drive enjoyable. The first 30 km were unspectacular but then we were driving through forests and epic valleys of long grass with mountains all around and finally up into the mountains themselves, up fantastic if slightly terrifying roads, until we reached the Homer Tunnel, the route through the mountains only opened in the 1950s. The tunnel operates on a traffic lights basis and there is a 15 minutes wait between each change so we took the opportunity of the red light to take some photographs of the huge valleys around us shrouded in mist and rain, of the massive waterfalls by the side of the road, and of the cute little Kea parrots wandered about. Then we were driving through the tunnel, the walls and the road still rough as if it had only just been worked. The road on the other side was even more impressive, even with the clouds shrouding the surrounding mountains, with tight switchbacks down the side of the mountain until we reached the valley floor. Then it was a short drive through the trees to our accommodation at the Milford Sound lodge. It was dark by this point so we went for dinner in Milford Sound - unable to see any of the surrounding landscape in the dark - and then it was back for bed. Funnily enough we shared our dorm with a couple from Ayrshire who were living in New Zealand for a year - you go all the way to other side of the world and then you spend the night with a couple of locals.

The next morning we awoke with delight to find bright blue skies - by some stroke of luck (because Milford Sound is apparently the second wettest place on earth) - the clouds had cleared. Even coming out of our lodgings was an amazing experience - the tops of the mountains around us were higher than anything I'd ever seen before - all made all the more lovely with the white moon hanging above them. We quickly packed and drove the couple of km down to Milford Sound itself where we parked up and then spent half an hour with our jaws on the floor enjoying the view to the sound. As good as that was it was nothing compared with the view from the boat trip. We'd booked with Mitre Cruises, who take a small boat out with a maximum of 75 on board at any one time (compared with some of the double decker boats operating in Milford Sound) but on our cruise there were only 17 people, so we had the run of the ship. The cruise took two hours, sailing down the southern side of the Sound and out into the Tasman Sea before coming back along the North Side of the Sound, and at various points the skipper would take us right up to the cliff faces, under waterfalls, or to point out geological features or the baby seals lounging on the rocks. The commentary on the boat also taught me that Milford Sound was discovered by a Welshman after Captain Cook sailed past it three times, missing it every time, and is named after Milford Haven in Wales. I'm sure it's a bit nicer than Milford Haven though.
The mountains are bigger for a start - one was over a mile high, rising straight up from the water by the boat. It was quite mind blowing. In fact the whole cruise was so good I couldn't do it justice in words - all I can suggest is that you should do it if you are in the area. Here's a photo to get you in the mood: http://www.uvm.edu/~kklepeis/fieldforum/photogallery/photogallery-Images/4.jpg

After that great start to the day we jumped back in the car at 11 for a drive back to Te Anau - this time much more enjoyable since the mountains on all sides were now visible and the drive up to the Homer Tunnel was even more terrifying since the sheer drops on all sides were visible. About half way back to Te Anau we stopped off for a toilet break and were approached by a Chinese man who in broken English explained that his minibus had broken done - here he indicated a rental vehicle across the car park where a small army of Chinese people were gathered - and he needed a lift back to Te Anau to call the AA. He didn't understand English enough for us to explain to him that we would be taking time on the drive back to take photographs but then it emerged that he was from Taiwan and note China and happened to speak May's dialect of Chinese (which is much like someone from Stornoway driving to Moscow, breaking down in St Petersburg and stumbling across someone who speaks Gaelic) so we managed to establish he didn't mind us stopping of for some photos and we were on the road with a passenger. We left him at a backpackers a few miles north of Te Anau after speaking to the AA for him (he had a two hour wait ahead of him before the AA even arrived, poor man) and then we were on our way.

The drive that day - north to Queenstown (where bungee jumping was invented) and Wanaka, our destination for the night - was enjoyable though as I sit here right now I couldn't tell you what it was like - all the driving seems to have melded together in my head. But I do remember a long stretch by the side of a lake with a mountain range called the Remarkables on the other side - and they were well named because they were lovely and tall and jaggedy and apparently some of Lord of the Rings had been filmed there (my road map tells me such things, but it's not why I bought it). We got some great photos of the remarkables lit up by the setting sun and then we were in Queenstown - a bustling little town that had the feel of an Alpine Ski village to me (not that I've ever been to one - but it looked like the Alpine Ski Villages you see in James Bond films). After reflecting upon the fact that it had taken us a day of driving to end up about 30 miles further north from where we had started at Milford Sound that morning we stopped off at a medical clinic so I could get a rash on my arm looked at and then we found a public phone to make a call to our hostel in Wanaka - it was already half eight and we had another 56km to do over a mountain pass until we got there, so wanted to alert them to a potential late arrival. And that's when we realised our folly - the Wananka Hostel reception closing at 8pm. So we were stuck in Queenstown on the Saturday evening of the Easter Weekend, going on for 9pm and we had to find accommodation. I am sure you will appreciate this is much like trying to find a sober person in Glasgow on Hogmanay.

We had a frustrating half an hour where we phoned every hostel and motel in the area only to find they were full and had already turned away half a dozen people. So we decided to drive around the town, stopping off at any motel or hotel we could find to check on availability. We were getting to the point of seriously contemplating a night in the car when we found a hotel with a vacant room - the last in the town it seemed, since it was a disabled smoking room in the far corner of the hotel. But we took it without hesitation, slapped down the credit card, wrapped ourselves up in the soft white towels and ordered room service. It was better than the hostel would have been and perhaps made the slightly panicked hour that preceded it worthwhile. Perhaps.

To be honest the drive the next morning made up for it. Driving over the mountain pass to Wanaka was a fantastic experience and it would have been a shame to have done it in the dark without seeing the sights. It's the type of road - more so even than the roads at Milford - that make you question whether gravity actually exists. You come around a bend and up a head you see a camper van crawling at 45 degrees up some ridiculous incline. There are plenty of view points and we got some great views back over the valley and Queenstown.

On the other side of the mountain we had a lovely drive through the valley floor into Wanaka, which itself is a lovely town - even more so than Queenstown I would say. I remember our first sight of the town, with the mirror like lake and the snow topped mountains around it, just as we happened to be listening to Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol on the radio and it was a like moment in a film, when music and imagery just perfectly collide. So we stopped at the beach and took a picture of our teddy bears on the car roof and then got some pies. Unfortunately the extra driving that morning meant we didn't have time to stop off at the Puzzling World in Wanaka - home of a massive wooden maze and rooms like in that old Charlie and the Chocolate Factory film - but we pressed on instead, heading through the mountains to the Haast Pass, the lowest of the passes through the southern alps. It was another lovely drive but I won't bore you with further use of words like 'fantastic' and 'wonderful' and 'lovely'. We arrived at Haast in the mid afternoon and stopped off for a meal of battered fish and Pringles (we are classy types May and I) and then pressed on. The road from Haast curved around the coast, the mountains now covered in temperate rain forest. It was a good drive, stretches of long flowing straights followed by a series of tight little curves and single lane bridges through the mountain folds. We stopped off at Fox Glacier just as it was getting dark, long enough to see the impressive cliffs and the glacier, and then took a walk to Lake Matheson where apparently one could get a view of Mount Cook but unfortunately it was clear the cloud coverage was not going to allow that. But we did get to see a very friendly possum bumbling about the foliage. He stopped long enough to allow us to get a photo and then waddled off and we wandered back to the car as the sky turned pink and made our way to Franz Josef Glacier.

First thing this morning we took a trip to Franz Josef Glacier - it was just a few km from the town and the best thing about the road to the Glacier (as with Fox Glacier) were the little signs by the side of the road that told you where the Glacier had been at certain times in the past - it was quite amazing to see how far it had receded. We took the walk from the car park to the viewing platform - well worth it - took some shots and then headed back. Ahead of us we had another six hours of driving and a deadline - we had to have the hire car back to the hire car company by 5pm - so we knew we couldn't linger anywhere for long.

As it turned out it didn't really matter - there was hardly any town of any size between Franz Josef and Christchurch - but the scenery along the drive was all fantastic, especially when we turned in land from the coast and made our way over the mountains via the Arthur's Pass - the highest and most impressive of the passes over the mountain. It was fantastic. We stopped briefly for some photo opportunities - particularly at the Otira Viaduct, and wonderful piece of engineering (http://www.apoec.org.nz/viaduct.htm - the picture doesn't do justice to the scale of the thing) but mostly just drove. It was very enjoyable - rarely did half an hour pass when we weren't enjoying the landscape. Even after five days of driving almost non-stop it was enjoyable - New Zealand is a great country for a road trip.

Fortunately we made it back to the hire car company at about four pm and after dropping off the car we headed back into town for the night. Tomorrow we're up early again (all these early starts - and I'm supposed to be on holiday) for the Tranz-Coastal train north to Picton. From Picton we take the three hour ferry crossing to Wellington, which is supposed to be fantastic.

I haven't uploaded any of the ridiculous number of NZ photographs yet largely because I haven't found anywhere with photo editing software where I can re-size photos yet. But I will do so as soon as I can.

Wow. That was a long one.

Sydney Part 2

2007-04-02T09:16:00.000Z

Yesterday, knowing I had a demanding physical day ahead of me, I treated myself to a lie in until 9am. Then I was up and dashing around the corner to the Central Train Station where I caught one of the very nice double decker trains out to Bondi Junction. From there it was a short bus ride to Bondi Beach, 'arguably one of the world's most famous beaches' according to my guidebook. And it was very nice - a huge arc of golden sand constantly being bombarded by white frothy waves. The sea was a mixture of deep blue and aquamarine and all over the place people were surfing - or trying to - while on the beach less energetic types lazed and sunbathed and watched everyone else. Further back from the bay pretty houses curved around the beach forming a backdrop of a mixture of architectural styles and colours. I sat on a bench and enjoyed the view for a while.

My plan for the morning was to do the 6km coastal walk from Bondi to Coogee Beach. Leaving from Bondi beach itself I headed up the well kept path to the rocks the enclosed the beach. This path, very popular with locals and tourists alike then wound its way around three or four coves and beaches, up and over hills and rocky outcrops and, at one point, through the lovely, crowded Waverley Cemetery that clung to the rocks high above the sea below (apparently the cemetery is so prominent that it's used by passing ships as a navigational aid). The walk was quite fantastic. There were no absolutely stunning sights but the constant companion of the roaring sea - they get some excitingly large waves there, even on a relatively calm day as yesterday - was most enjoyable.

At one point, shortly before I entered the Waverley Cemetery, I came across a gaggle of middle-aged English women standing on a shaded path peering out between the trees to the sea below. They were making noises of wonderment and awe and I couldn't help but be a bit curious as to what they were looking at. So I sidled up and lent on the fence by the side of the path and stared into the middle distance as if I knew exactly what they were staring at, all the while scanning the rocks and the sea far below trying to work out what had so captured their attention.

"It's huge, look at it!" one of them said. So I trained my eyes in the direction she was staring and saw only rocks. They were certainly big but I wasn't really sure they were worthy of such rapt attention.

"Look, there's a whole family of them over here," another one exclaimed, sounding slightly horrified.

I frowned, wondering if they had spotted kangaroos or ocean going koalas or something.

"Urgh, it's horrible!" a third woman said, moving away down the path.

At that moment my eyes focused directly in front of me instead of to the middle distance and suddenly I understood what the women had been looking at. Stretched across the gap between the branches of the trees was a series of large spider webs. Sitting smack bang in the middle of each of them was a spider of a size you just don't get in the UK. This wasn't a tarantula or anything, but it was still bloody big and covered in yellowy orange stripes, suggesting to me it was either poisonous, bad tempered or all of the above. Needless to say I suddenly appreciated my proximity to these fellas, leaning so casually on the fence as I was, and I jumped back out of their range with a girly yelp. Then, fascinated I moved slowly forward again.

None of them seemed to be moving thankfully, but I couldn't help but notice that there was something caught in the nearest web, wound up in silk and probably half devoured by the lazy eight-legged chap lounging beside it. It was quite large, perhaps a bumblebee or possibly even a small passenger aircraft, so I was somewhat hopeful that the spider was full after a hearty meal and didn't feel like pouncing on slightly pale Scottish people. I whipped out my camera to take a few photographs, debating for a moment whether I could get my hand close enough to one of the beasts to give a sense of perspective. The spider just sat there as I got ever closer, not moving in the slightest. It seemed to have the lazy indifference of a nightclub bouncer, the type of attitude that comes from knowing it can take your head off if it can only be bothered to find the energy. Fortunately sense prevailed and before I stuck my fingers to the web good and proper I decided it wasn't worth chancing it. I did take a shot of one of the spiders that was further down the hill, the slope of the cliffs making it seem as if it was floating out in space above the ocean. In the photograph the spider is quite far away, the ocean behind it, but you can still make out very clearly just what it is. That should tell you how big it was.

Anyway, after lingering over the spiders longer than was probably proper I commenced on my journey. By the time I reached Coogee it was about 1pm and I'd been walking for about two hours. It had been a great walk but I was knackered and hungry so i sat down at a cafe on the main street and ordered myself a steak sandwich and a strawberry smoothie. Half an hour later, with lunch finished and my energy replenished I jumped back on the bus for a half hour tour of the coastal towns between Coogee and Bondi before disembarking at Bondi Junction where I caught the train back into the city.

After such an energetic and demanding morning I decided to do nothing for the remainder of the afternoon and treated myself to a ticket to 'Ghost Rider' in one of the cinemas in the centre of the city - a masterpiece of a film that really is nothing short of a philosophical discourse on the nature of good and evil and how they are represented in religious iconography through history of the mid-west of America. Oh and it's got a guy with a flaming skull for a head driving his flaming bike up the side of buildings. So you know it's good quality.

This morning started well. On my train ride up to Circular Quay, where I planned to catch the ferry to Manly, I sat opposite an old man in a long coat, shorts and a t-shirt who didn't look as if he had been anywhere near soap and water for the best part of a decade. He was sipping continually from a can of coke in one and I couldn't help but notice that someone - I assume the gentleman himself - had written 'General of Australia' on his t-shirt in black biro. When he got off the train at the stop before mine I was half tempted to follow him - he was clearly crazy and bound to be good entertainment. But I didn't.

The ferry to Manly is supposed to be something of a Sydney tradition - Manly being on the north of Sydney harbour and something like an English sea-side town. Everyone who's been to Sydney has told me I had to do the Manly ferry. So I rolled up to the ticket counter before ten only to be told that all ferries to Manly were cancelled until further notice due to the beach at Manly being temporarily closed. Buses were available to ferry passengers north. I declined - the point of going to Manly was to get the ferry and if I couldn't get the ferry I didn't want to go. I asked if there was any likelihood of ferries going again any time soon but the chap at the counter didn't know. He wouldn't even tell me why the beach at Manly was closed - I like to think it was some typically Australian thing like a shark attack or a plague of box jellyfish.

I decided to take another wander around Circular Quay for an hour or so, hoping ferries would be moving again soon. I found a seat and ostensibly read my book for a bit, all the while hoping to hear the approaching sound of an ambulance boat carrying mangled and chewed limbs from the Manly Massacre. About half an hour later it was clear nothing so dramatic was happening so I went back to the ticket counter to see if there had been any change, but the boats were still not sailing. Knowing I couldn't waste my last day standing around the ferry quay I decided to abandon Manly.

For the next ten minutes I stood by the Quay somewhat at a loss what to do, my plans for the day all shot to hell (see how I am picking up the Aussie lingo?) I consulted my map and my guidebook and then my map again and eventually decided that the best thing I could do was to go explore the shops in the Central Business District for a few hours. I'd wandered through the area a couple of times but had never really taken the time to visit the Arcades or the shops in any detail.

So I wandered down Pitt Street, on the shady side of the street because the sun was hot enough to brand cattle, and then crossed over to George Street to spend some time in a Virgin Megastore (resisting the urge to buy the complete boxset of Monthy Python's Flying Circus - you can't get it in the UK you know). I then spent some time exploring The Strand Arcade, another one of the Victorian Arcades so common in Australia. I have to wonder why we don't have them in the UK anymore as they are quite fantastic - no doubt they've been ripped up and replaced with megamalls and Tescos and the like.

Somewhere between noon and 1pm I found myself at a nice restaurant eating some lunch and once that was done I turned east and wandered across to the lovely and leafy Hyde Park where I enjoyed the Anzac (Australia and New Zealand something something) war memorial which I thought was very understated and dignified. I then walked north through the park to the impressive Archibald Fountain where I stopped to cool down and take some photos of impressively large birds with long beaks that were wandering about - I think they were Ibis. Or should that be Ibises?

On the east side of the park lies the Australian Museum, my next port of call. I was in two minds about visiting another museum but walking past I saw they had an exhibition on about predators of the natural world, which tickled my fancy, so I entered and asked for a ticket only to be told that the exhibition was really for young children but I could still enjoy the rest of the museum. So I did. The museum seemed to be undergoing a lot of reconstruction and development and as such there seemed to be only three real elements - one of bones and skeletons (I saw a giraffe's skeleton and a skeletal man on a skeletal horse - the bone ranger, as they called it); one on rocks and minerals; and one on insects and birds. It was all very interesting but didn't hold my attention for long.

Leaving the museum I head east along William Street to King's Cross, a part of the city where, according to my guidebook, the streets are overrun with 'hardcore transvestite prostitutes, drug addicts, violent drunks and runaway teenagers'. To me that just raises the question of what a softcore transvestite prostitute would be, but that aside it sounded like a place worthy of a visit. However when I got to Darlinghurst Street, the supposed epicentre of this hell on earth, it looked to me like just another leafy street, albeit with rather more adult book shops than in any other part of Sydney. I wandered about for a while, hoping I might catch sight of a violent drunk beating up a drug addict or something, but no such luck.

Feeling a little disappointed I caught the train back to the CBD and walked my way back to the hostel through the city streets. I have an early start for my flight to New Zealand tomorrow so I've spent the last few hours doing laundry and sorting out my bag. Oh and uploading my Sydney photos to Flickr if you care to have a look. After I've finished here I'll be heading out for some dinner and then I plan to catch the train back up to Circular Quay to have a look at the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House at night, to see if they are worthy of photo when lit up.

But before I go, some reflections on my time in Australia:

What I like about Australia: everyone here is really nice and strangers talk to you like old friends (alright mate? How ya doin'?); their coins - they still have nice big chunky coins like we used to have in the UK, you could eat your dinner off their 50cent piece; everything is so relaxed and hassle free, even in the centre of busy cities; the weather - hot and sunny without being humid; good transport infrastructure everywhere I've been and their overnight trains are better than any I've taken in Europe. Really liked Melbourne too, more so than Sydney and Adelaide, even though I couldn't really tell you why.
What I don't like about Australia: can't really think of anything. There's a few too many 7-11s going about... but that's hardly the end of the world. And it's difficult finding somewhere cheap to eat that doesn't just sell chips and meat dishes. But that may just be the places I go looking.
Highlight of my time here: The drive from Adelaide to Melbourne. Loved it, even the first day that was supposed to be unspectacular was very enjoyable.
Biggest disappointment: I haven't seen a single kangaroo or koala.
Biggest regret: I didn't get to do the Manly ferry. And more generally speaking I wish I'd had time to travel north into the red centre and to see Uluru. And some kangaroos.
Most impressive sight: the sight of Australia stretching out below on the flight from Sydney - Adelaide; some of the views along the Great Ocean Road.
Best museum(I feel I've been to so many here I can justifiably add this as a category): The Powerhouse in Sydney. Great fun.

So that's Australia. Tomorrow it's a three hour flight from Sydney to Christchurch where all going well I should meet up with May at the airport. We have a day in Christchurch and then we're off on our great New Zealand road trip. But that is for next time.

Sydney Part 1

2007-03-31T11:18:00.000Z

My journey to Sydney yesterday was by overnight train from Melbourne, in a first class two berth cabin. Very civilised I'm sure you'll agree. The only problem with these things is you never know who you are going to end up sharing with, but I was lucky in that my travelling companion was a very ordinary and down to earth Australian who was returning home after 9 years living in London.

After introductions and exploring the cabin to see what little gadgets and gizmos there were (the en suite bathroom - shared with the cabin next door - was particularly inventive, in a space not big enough to turn around in they had a shower, sink and toilet, the later two of which could fold away into the wall) we spent the first couple of hours talking about everything that was wrong with the UK. Our broad consensus was that the problems of the UK were half the Government's fault and half down to the tabloid media. My companion, with his Australian eyes, said he was horrified at how badly children eat in the UK, and he recounted tales of watching ten year olds walking to school while eating crisps and drinking fizzy juice. I nodded and agreed it was horrible, all the while remembering my breakfast that morning of crisps and fizzy juice. We then spent an hour or so talking about our various travels - he'd been everywhere it seemed, including Syria of all places, and spent a lot of spare time scuba diving, so he had lot of stories of swimming in the Red Sea and driving through Europe and the like. It was all very interesting but I couldn't help but wonder if it was all true - still if he was lying he was certainly good natured about it so i didn't worry to much.

At about eleven we dropped down our beds and turned in for the night. I didn't sleep much because of the motion of the train but I was still very comfortable and enjoyed a great view of the clear, starry sky outside as empty Australia rolled past. I saw the milky way clearly for only the second time in my life (the first time having been on Perhentian, an island in the South China Sea some five years previously) and then, while we enjoyed our complimentary free breakfasts at 5:30 am I got to enjoy a lovely dawn with the sunlight illuminating the few clouds in the sky from below. I even took some pictures.

And then we were in Sydney Central train station and I bid farewell to my travelling companion - who had eight hours to kill in Sydney before undertaking a similar overnight journey to Brisbane - and made my way to my hostel. It was only 7:30am and I couldn't check in until 1pm, but I dropped off my bag in a locker and then made my way out to pass the morning.

My first bit of business was at the Virgin Atlantic office, where I had to change the last flight of my trip. With that done I walked across to the Rocks, the historic quarter of Sydney crowded beneath the Harbour Bridge. It was very nice, lots of interesting shops and cafes and pubs, but nothing particularly stunning (I think the historical element was somewhat underwhelming for me, being that what is old in Australia is 'last week' to Europe). I took a wander around beneath the Harbour Bridge, taking the obligatory photographs and then walked east around the Quay again to get the other obligatory photographs of the Opera House. That done I wasn't really sure what else there was to do in Sydney so I consulted my map.

It was half ten by that point so I walked my way back to the hostel, through the Sydney CBD, passing the impressive Queen Victoria Building (taking up a whole city block) and the not quite so impressive Town Hall on the way. I stopped off for lunch at a small cafe and when I got back to the hostel it was almost 1pm. The nice people on reception let me check in. I promptly had a shower, laundered a bag full of clothes and collapsed onto my bed to catch up on the sleep I'd missed out on the previous night. I slept for the entire afternoon and when I awoke it was getting dark. I took a wander around the nearby Chinatown (that also seemed to double as the porn-district, given the number of adult book and DVD stores there seemed to be), and then got myself some dinner before heading back to the hostel to enjoy the spectacle of hyperactive 20-something kids from all around the world shouting and screaming at each other over the pool table while I tried to read a book.

This morning I felt much more human and was out of my bed before nine and on the streets. My plan for the morning was to explore the Darling Harbour area of the city - a major tourist quarter served by a nifty little monorail circling around the main sights. And as we all know I love a monorail, so I bought myself a day ticket. My intended first port of call - the Powerhouse Museum - didn't open until 10am, so I jumped on the monorail and rode to the central harbour area. It was a lovely day, not a cloud in the sky, and the water sparkled with the sunlight. Tower blocks crowded around the harbour, boats and yachts bobbing away. To kill the time until the Powerhouse Museum opened I headed for the Maritime Museum - not really my type of thing but it was free and open at 9. I wandered around the museum for all of about six minutes - it was all very yo ho ho and lots of boats but nothing really grabbed my attention - and when I emerged again I realised my skin was starting to go crispy so i needed to get out of the sun. I made my way into the nearby mall, which I explored for half an hour or so. The biggest treat was another one of those shops selling UK food - i bought bar of proper UK Cadbury's (without all those anti-melt chemicals) and a pack of Walkers and then i was back on the monorail to the Powerhouse Museum.

I'm not really sure what the theme of the Powerhouse Museum is but I'll tell you this, it's a very entertaining museum. It seems to cover technology, science, design, sociology, industry, fashion and pretty much anything else you can think of. The first exhibition I explored was on some national design awards and they had details on all the main winners, including a large thing on the building of some huge motorway interchange on the outskirts of Sydney. Not the most gripping subject but the stop-motion footage they had of the whole build was quite captivating. I also got to play a little computer game about designing and selling a product - the story being about a housewife who decided to invent something that would deter dogs after one of her kids stood in a pile of dog shit. It was quite entertaining but clearly I am not cut out for business because at the end of it my little housewife character went bankrupt and her family were out on the streets.

On the bottom floor of the museum they had a whole section dedicated to experiments and how to show different scientific principles - magnetism, refraction of light, gravity etc - worked and what they could be applied to. It was great with lots of actual experiments you could do, though it was a bit spoiled by all the under 10s running about and shouting and screaming. I got a bit worried by one kid - he must have been ten or eleven - who was mesmerised when he saw me playing with an experiment that kept a beachball afloat in a constant stream of air (the purpose being to show how air pressure can keep aeroplanes afloat - spin the ball one way and it rises, spin it the other and it drops) - this boy watched me for a few minutes in wide eyed disbelief, standing right next to a six foot board that had in big letters 'beachball held afloat by airstream' written on it, and then he asked me 'Wow, how does that work?' Clearly he wasn't cut out for science. I just left him to puzzle over the 'magic' ball - as I'm sure he thought of it.

Perhaps the thing I enjoyed most in the Powerhouse was the sound lab - a room set up with rows of computers and synthesisers where you could play with composition software. It was fun for a few minutes but limited because you couldn't compose, you could only juggle about elements of existing compositions. The best thing was they had a full and working electronic drum kit. I spent about an hour there dazzling the staff with my Radio-Ga-Ga drum beat and left a happy man.

After lunch at the museum I jumped back on the monorail and made my way back to Darling Harbour. The place was busier now, being a Saturday afternoon, and the whole area had a nice bustling happy energy about it. I pottered about for a while taking some photos and debating over whether or not to pay the $25 dollars entrance fee to the Sydney Aquarium (con: I'd just visited the Melbourne Aquarium; pro: the Melbourne aquarium didn't have penguins, seals and a pretend barrier reef). Eventually sense prevailed and instead of spending another three hours staring at sea creatures I walked around the harbour to the jetty and caught ferry to Circular Quay, a lovely journey that took me right under the Harbour Bridge and past the Opera House.

After disembarking I treated myself to some Strawberry and Coconut Ice Cream (and a bottle of lemonade because I was feeling reckless) and walked my way along the Circular Quay, stopping every now and then to look at the little bronze plaque things they have set into the ground, each one of them providing a shot bio of some literary hero of Australia. I think they call it Writers Walk. It was very interesting but I might have enjoyed it more so if I'd had a clue who half of them were.

And then I was at the Opera House. It is a very nice building though I couldn't help feeling somewhat underwhelmed - I'm not sure why, perhaps because I'd seen it so many times in pictures and on TV and somehow it just didn't live up to those images. And also possibly because it's one of those things that looks better from a distance, when you can take it all in. But it certainly wasn't a bad bit of work, so I took some arty close up shots and then turned 180 degrees to make my way through the Botanic Gardens, heading back south.

After about half an hour of seeing nothing but grass and trees and none of the 'exotic birds' my guidebook had promised, I turned west, out of the gardens and back into the depths of the city. The streets were still busy with Saturday afternoon shoppers, even thought it was getting late, the sun starting to drop in the sky, and I enjoyed a bit of window shopping. I even found a musical instrument shop - something they apparently don't have in Melbourne: despite my best efforts over the three days I was there I couldn't find a single one - so i took a wander in and played with some basses for a while, until it was clear people were sick to death of hearing Level 42 riffs.

And then it was back to the hostel for a bit of a rest. About 7pm I went out for a wander, partly to get some dinner but also because there was supposed to be a big power cut at 7:30 - some voluntary thing to make some environmental point - and I'd been promised by various people I would be amazed when at 7:30 the city would plunge into some prehistoric darkness. So there I was at 7:29, standing in the middle of a busy intersection, chewing on my chicken salad sandwich as cars whizzed around me, waiting with interest to see what would happen when all the lights went out. 7:30 came and a handful of lights in the surrounding buildings went off, but all the street lights stayed on, the traffic kept flowing and nothing much happened at all. I looked around, wondering if my watch was fast, and gave it a few more minutes. Still nothing happened. Much like after the promised Millennium Bug, I felt a little cheated. I'd been looking forward to anarchy and chaos and all I'd got was the taste of traffic fumes with my dinner.

I was a bit disappointed so I went back to the hostel and to make myself feel better I beat some English guy at pool for half an hour.

Tomorrow I'm off to Bondi beach (assuming the weather holds, but that's much like saying 'assuming it's still icy in the Arctic') for a walk along the coast. Apparently its great, so I'll let you know how it goes.

Melbourne

2007-03-28T23:21:00.000Z

Melbourne is a great place, but I'm really not sure why.

That's not to say there's anything wrong with Melbourne, it's just when I think about what I've done while I've been here it doesn't really amount to much, but all the same I've had a really good time. Melbourne is not a London or a New York or even a Sydney - there's no Opera House or Empire State Building or any other world famous sight that you have to see. It's just a really nice city that's really easy to get around, that has lots of shops and cafes and smoothie shops, and that has enough interesting (if not world famous) sights to keep you happy and entertained. I've decided Melbourne is to Sydney what Glasgow is to Edinburgh - it doesn't have any of the famous attractions or the nearly as much history but the people are all very nice and it's a nice place to be.

That said Melbourne is like Edinburgh in as much as it has a major comedy festival. And it doesn't have a big thing about deep fried food like Glasgow does. So maybe that simile doesn't really stand up... hmm.

Anyway, here's what I've done over the last three days in Melbourne:

Visited the Victoria Market - a large covered market selling everything from sheep skin rugs to caviar. It was a great place to walk around for a few hours and the delicatessen section was particularly good, with specialist stores selling nothing but Greek food or cheeses or cakes. Unfortunately when I was in the part of the market selling clothes and souvenirs and the like, I couldn't shift the feeling that I was at the Ingliston Market in Edinburgh, which is not something you want when you're on holiday in Australia.
Walked extensively around the CBD - the CBD for the uninitiated out there means 'Central Business District', Australian-eese for 'city centre'. It's a very nice city with wide roads, trams, nice old buildings, lots of interesting shops, some nice Victorian arcades, and lots of good places to stop for a coffee and a muffin when your feet are sore.
Rode on a tram - it was the free City Circle line because the means of paying for tram rides faintly intimidates me, but it was very nice nonetheless, even when it was stuffed the brim with people much like the number 22 bus in Edinburgh on a Monday morning.
Went to the National Gallery of Victoria in the Ian Potter centre, a lovely new building on one side of Federation Square. It was very nice, lots of Aboriginal and European Australian art, but I confess after about ten minutes looking at dot paintings and lots of swirly colours I got a bit bored. So I left and:
Went to the Australian Centre for the Moving Image instead- this place, also on Federation Square, is a shrine to all things moving image-y: film, television, games. As well as having booths where you can watch short films of your choice from all around the world - which was great fun for half an hour or so - they also have a computer game centre charting Australia's influence on the world of computer games over the years. I had no idea classic 80s computer games such as the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings and Way of the Exploding Fist were programmed in Australia. Best of all they had commodore and spectrum emulators so you could play all these classic games. I was quite happily playing away at Way of the Exploding Fist when a bunch of school kids on a tour came in and started moaning about how crap the game was simply because it didn't have 3D graphics and lots of music. Clearly they had no appreciation for a karate fight in teletext-style graphics. The only mis-step in the whole centre was the basement exhibition of moving-image related art from the Pompidou Centre in Paris. This was just overly pretentious nonsense like nine videoscreens showing random images that was supposed to be a commentary on 'memory and identity' and the like. In fact I even kept the guide to the exhibition because some of the descriptions of art work are so unbelievably pretentious you can't help but wonder if it's a joke. Here are a couple of examples:

"Paik's kaleidoscopic abstract experience predicts the saturated media landscape of
the future."

"Marker's reflections on places and events are presented as 'immemory' of non-linear, nteractive souvenirs."

"...the geometrical precision of the choreography is simultaneously logical and absurd."

Moving on...

I enjoyed an hour or so relaxing in the Federation Square (where both the NGV and the Moving Image centre are) - it's a nice modern open space with Flinders Station on one side and St Paul's Cathedral across the road. It's a good place to sit and read a book or people watch for a while. I would even say the geometrical precision of the modern architecture is simultaneously logical and absurd.
I spent a very enjoyable few hours in the Melbourne Aquarium. I do enjoy an aquarium and of all 3 aquaria (?) that I've been to in the world this one was the best largely because they currently have a 'creepy crawlies' exhibition. So on display are Funnel Web Spiders and Giant Millipedes and scorpions and the like. Not overly aquatic to be fair but very enjoyable. They also have live spider crabs - the biggest crabs in the world - which was a treat since I've seen dead ones in museums the world over (including in Adelaide, if you care to refer to my photos) so seeing live ones lumbering about was great. And of course their aquarium is excellent - a large doughnut shaped thing where visitors stand in the middle as the fish and sharks and turtles swim around you. In effect you are inside the fish bowl which has a nice subtle irony to it. The only drawback to my visit was the young Glaswegian family that seemed to be everywhere. As a result I heard the phrase 'so it is' far more frequently than I would have liked. ("That's a massive spider so it is.")
I spent some time at the biggest casino in the southern hemisphere - which was located one block away from my hostel, meaning I had to pass it every day on the way to and from the city centre. It was a great place to hang out for an hour or so at the end of every day, where you could watch people playing blackjack or poker or a game called 'casino war' which basically amounted to betting on who would get the dealt the highest card - clearly a game for those unable to grasp the complexities of poker. It was a huge place though, much like the casinos in Las Vegas I imagine, and I even got lost inside it for a brief while on the first evening.
Visited the Immigration Museum, something I hadn't been that excited about but it was in the area and cheap so i went in and I was pleasantly surprised to find it was very interesting. A lot of it was personal stories of people who had emigrated to Australia from the UK and other countries, including slides from people making the journey in the sixties and journals from travellers from the 1800s. They even had mock ups of what the liners were like through the different years and there was a lot of discussion about Australia's immigration policy through the years, from the 'White Australia' policy to modern day. All very interesting.
Visited Chinatown, which had more Japanese restaurants than Chinese and which was not really very impressive after having been to Malaysia and Japan.
Visited the Melbourne Observation Deck on the 56th floor of the highest tower block in the city. It was very nice (but a bit steep price wise, to be honest) but I couldn't help but compare it with the observation deck in Tokyo where there was a more interesting view. Still it gave me a chance to look at those things a bit further out of the city that I couldn't be bothered walking to.

And that was about it I think. There were a few things I didn't do, either out of choice or because I couldn't. The most annoying was I was unable to visit the supposedly very good Melbourne museum and the Royal Exhibition Building (a UNESCO world heritage site), both in Carlton Gardens, because there was some international flower show on and I didn't fancy stumping up $20 just to get into the gardens if I wasn't going to get into the buildings. I also didn't bother with the Melbourne Old Gaol, which is apparently a big thing because Ned Kelly was there for some time. But I have no interest in Ned Kelly and I've seen plenty of jails in my time so didn't feel the need to spend a few bucks to see an old one. You will be pleased to hear I also did not take advantage of the any of the many opportunities to do a 'Neighbours tour' or to 'meet ex-Neighbours stars' or to 'listen to Dr Karl's Band'. I know you'll all be disappointed in me.

So now, after I have finished typing this, I am off to get some dinner and then I shall be boarding my overnight train to Sydney. Travelling by train is so much more civilised than flying so I am looking forward to it - especially as I have a first class cabin. I may have to share it with a stranger but all things considered that's better than being shot through the air in a pressurised metal tube.

I've uploaded a few Melbourne photos, but I didn't take a lot so there's only a handful.

Photo update

2007-03-27T06:42:00.000Z

I've finally added the last photos from Malaysia (prepare for lots of dogginess) and have also now uploaded the photos from Adelaide and the Great Ocean Road.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/garethontour/sets/