Toronto and Niagara Falls

Apparently Toronto has its own Spider-man, in the form of a guy who dresses in a Spider-man suit, constructs webs around buildings and hitches rides from passing buses on his skateboard. Sadly, we did not run into him on our wanderings through the Distillery District the next day, though we did see some cool artists' shops, sculptures decorated with flowers, a gigantic design store with most things one might want around the house, good coffee at a cafe with an old map of Sydney on the wall, a key lime pie truffle from a chocolate factory shop and delicious cocktails at a distillery in a beautifully restored brick building decorated with the botanicals they use in their spirits. I got some star earrings, after deciding against the ones with a saber tooth kitten paired with a bloody amputated finger, and B-Ball Bro and I had some amazing gourmet cheese toasties in one of the grocer stores.

Back at the apartment, we had Taco Tuesdays with some friends of B-Ball Bro and Fab Fabric Gal (including a very small friend who was very cute and well-behaved and slept most of the time), plus donuts, which were pretty good.

On Wednesday I got up early and took a car downtown to catch my Niagara Falls bus at 8.10am. I arrived a bit early, and joined a girl from Brisbane in search of coffee, both finding that 'black coffee' apparently meant 'coffee with milk please’ (maybe it was our accents). The tour group wasn't too large, so we had a smallish bus a bit like a yellow school bus. The tour wasn't just to Niagara Falls - we stopped at Niagara-on-the-Lake, a pretty old town where I got a hot apple cider and wandered the streets looking in the shop windows, and at the smallest chapel in the world, which seats about nine people. We also did a wine tasting at a vineyard where they make ice wine, which comes from frozen grapes harvested in the middle of the night, needs four thousand grapes to make a single bottle and is very sweet and flavourful.

After a stop at the flower clock and the hydropower plant (they divert water from the river into holding pools and use those to run the turbines, so the falls aren’t affected too much) we reached Niagara Falls. As expected, they are very large.

You could spend a few days at Niagara - there's a lot to do, including what looked like an indoor water park. We took the funicular down to the Hornblower boat first, getting a good view of all the people climbing down the cliff face on the American side of the river beside the American falls, which are wide and roaring and rocky at the bottom. The spray began to hit us, and the red ponchos they give you came in useful (the people on the American side appear to get blue ponchos, I guess in case anyone tries to make a break for it across the river). I had my usual trouble trying to figure out what I should be taking photos with (phone or camera or 360?) plus how I would keep them dry, but managed not to get anything water-damaged.

We sailed past the American falls and approached the Horseshoe falls, the ones you always think of when you think of Niagara Falls. The amount of water pouring over is staggering, and the spray is so dense at the centre that you can't see anything but a pale swirling column of mist. At times, when the wind swept over us, it felt like we were in the middle of a tropical rain storm (though... it was a little cold for that...). The boat heaved some in the whirling water, so you had to be steady on your feet as the Falls surrounded us.

Back on dry land, we walked along the cliff edge towards the Falls, stopping to take pictures of people zip lining past, and admiring the beautiful tulips on the right side of the path (no one was looking much at them, considering the awesome-in-the-original-sense sight on the left side). We weren't sure if we'd have enough time to go down into the tunnels behind the waterfall, but we made it with time to spare, bought our tickets and descended in the elevator, armed with fresh yellow ponchos.

You can walk right out beside the falls, about halfway down, with the water pouring only a few metres from the rust-pitted railing, and you can also take some bunker-like tunnels through the rock, with the sound of the water pounding all around you and the rock reverberating beneath your feet.i had to remind myself a few times that these tunnels had been here Quite A While, and they were not likely to fall in anytime soon or be inundated but the water, which was too busy falling into the mist pool below. At the end of the tunnels are two openings out into the water, which rushes past in a twisting, roaring white sheet. Incredible how much water is going past.

We attempted to dry our shoes off with the hand dryer in the bathroom, then took a few more photos just at the cusp of the falls, where you can see greeny-blue daylight through the water just as it tips over the edge. Then we had to hotfoot it back to the bus, which was actually quite good because it warmed us up.

The next day I walked with B-Ball Bro into Kensington Market, which is a few blocks of protected houses and shops where all the businesses have to be independent, not chains. There's incredible street art everywhere, monsters made of car parts in overgrown gardens, houses painted like the night sky with stars, and lots of little quirky shops. We met Fab Fabric Gal for coffee and wandered a little, got some pastry from the bakery before B-Ball Bro had to go for work, and checked out some of the quirky shops. We had some huge First Nations tacos for lunch (along with some really good so-new-it-didn't-have-labels soda) and then I went to take pictures of the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Royal Museum of Ontario, before getting the subway up to Casa Loma, which was my main destination for the afternoon.

Casa Loma is basically a castle that a businessman built in the early twentieth century because he wanted a castle, and you have probably seen it in films such as Xmen or TV. The businessman played a large role in developing hydro power and connecting up Toronto's street lights (endeavours he was knighted for), but things went south in the twenties when a few investments went bad and the City decided to increase the taxes on his property from about $6000 per year to about $120,000 per year. In the end, the City took possession of the castle. In the forties, it was used as a secret facility for assembling sonar for WWII while also playing host to parties and dinners for unkonowing guests.

There are a LOT of rooms, including a huge conservatory with a stained glass dome, secret passageways down to a vault, about fifty telephones, and two towers. There's also a long tunnel under the road, because the businessman had properties on either side of the road and the City wouldn't let him buy the road. Unfortunately I only got halfway through the tunnel before I had to turn back, because I’d spent too long looking around the rest of the amazing place and it was time to close.

In the evening, Fab Fabric Gal amd I went to the Harry Potter bar, and after much deliberation (some of their drinks involve fire) settled on the butterbeer, which came with toasted marshmallows and whipped cream, and was pretty good. There was a family beside us dressed entirely in robes and wigs and witches' hat, which was very impressive. The Toronto basketball team was playing an NBA final that night, so after our butterbeer we joined B-Ball Bro and flatmate the Irish Timetraveller in the secret back courtyard of a bar, open to the stars, and cheered them on to win against Oakland in a very close game.

And then it was my last morning in Toronto, and I was saying goodbye to everyone, getting a car into the city and then taking the world,s shortest ferry ride to the airport, trying poutine (I think... I will not try it again?) and getting on the plane for my next adventure.

New York to Toronto

And now it's Sunday! I'm sitting in a cafe bookshop somewhere near Broadway (which is, of course, a very long road), having had breakfast and coffee with my student housing roommate in DUMBO (‘Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass'), then venturing back into Manhattan. I can report the restrooms at Bryant Park are Really Nice, Much Recommended, and now my plan is to visit the Natural History Museum and check out Hudson Yards.

***

After a successful subway expedition, I came out into the dazzling sunlight, heat beating down so much I regretted bringing my jacket. There was a long line to get through security and into the museum, and I almost decided I'd walk around Central Park instead, but decided that the museum's air conditioning (and exhibits) would be worth the wait.

The Natural History Museum is the one in the movie Night at the Museum, and there are definitely a lot of animal exhibits that look like they could come to life. I passed these and headed for the Human Origins area, which has displays of homo ergaster and homo erectus, homo neanderthalensis and homo floresiensis (aka hobbits). They also have a room next door with displays of meteors (with one massive one in the centre of the room) that would have to fulfil the 'space' part of my visit, because there is far too much to see and (unfortunately) they won't let you stay the night (the space section did look amazing, though, inside a massive sort-of floating white sphere inside a storeys-high hall). I checked out the Native American halls and the Margaret Mead Pacific Peoples exhibit, then made for the dinosaurs in my remaining forty-five minutes.

The dinosaurs did not disappoint. The head of an enormous not-a-brontosaurus-but-you-know-what-I-mean stares down at you as you enter the galleries, and you pass under it and around, coming across pterosaurs, T-rexes, triceratops and dinosaur eggs (amongst a lot of other things). Then you come to the early mammals, the mammoths (huge) and then the museum was closing.

Outside, it was pouring with rain. I figured out the secret way to the subway in the bowels of the building, and managed to make my way to Hudson Yards without getting wet - though then I had to dash through the now-half-hearted spitting to get to the huge Vessel sculpture, which is a ten-ish-storey high bronze lattice of staircases. They'd closed it during the rain, so I stared up at it for a bit before taking shelter in the mall beside it. This area is quite near the Hudson River, with views over it, and has only just opened to the public so some parts of the mall were still to open. One wall on the first floor was covered in two-way flipping sequins (which seems to be everywhere - cushions, diaries, handbags, clothes) that people were drawing and writing in.

The rain cleared, but you had to get a ticket to climb the Vessel and it was getting late, so I took some photos of it and headed back to my room in Brooklyn.

I was flying out of Newark Airport in the morning, so after saying goodbye to my room and roommate I took the subway to Penn Station, got myself a ticket by New Jersey transit and sat next to a woman who wasn't sure she had enough time to get to her flight. When we reached the airtrain (a futuristic sixties monorail) she dashed off to try to make it with forty minutes to spare - hopefully she did.

The airtrain gives you some great views of Manhattan as it takes you (no driver) around the futuristic sixties terminals. My plane to Toronto was a small four-seats-across turboprop aeroplane, which apparently have much better fuel efficiency than jets. There were even free snacks and drinks onboard, which I was impressed with, given the norm of air travel in the States as well as the norm of budget airlines. We landed on the Toronto Islands about an hour and a half later, and I walked through the tunnel to the mainland (I had been worried there would be an expensive ferry ride, but no, the ferry is free and is apparently the shortest ferry ride in the world at two minutes, and if you don't want to take the ferry you can walk).

B-Ball-Bro was waiting for me at the other end of the tunnel, and we walked into the city a little (this is an airport you can WALK TO THE CITY from), had a nice coffee and some lunch at a new shipping-container boutique development and caught a car back to B-Ball-Bro's apartment in Little Italy. Toronto (at least, the parts I saw) is a mix of very new condominium apartment buildings, all mirrored glass and chain stores at street level, and fine-grained old semi-detached houses, walkable streets with trams, parks (one had an outdoor ice hockey rink) and interesting little shops and restaurants. When Fab Fabric Gal got home from fabricking school, we took a walk around the neighbourhood and checked out the local wine and cheese scene, which is pretty good, saw SQUIRRELS and browsed some cool little shops. I decided I quite like Toronto.

Raccoons visited in the night, I think, though I did not see them :(

Paris de l’Europe: Versailles

As I write this I’m sitting in a restaurant beside the Grand Canal at Versailles, waiting for the gardens to open for the evening fireworks. I've managed to do a little bit of work today (my plan for Paris was to do half a day of work, and sightsee the rest of the time), which so far has kind of worked.

Day one, I wore my new sandals and did a few hours work by the Louvre. Then I went to buy sticking plasters for my sore feet and went back to my hostel (where they seem to have given me a two person room with ensuite, which is nice, especially as there was no one else there the last two nights I spent there). I decided to call off my Eiffel Tower trip to give my feet a chance to heal, and did some more work at one of the tables in my room (there are two tables).

Day two was Versailles. I'd managed to figure out how to get the normal travel card to add to my collection (‘Navigo', cheaper than the tourist one, but it only runs Monday- Sunday), and caught the métro and then the RER train out to Versailles, where a lot of people were also going. It was a warm day, and I was extremely glad I had bought timed tickets for the palace, which meant I could just show up at the door at a time of my choosing rather than spend an hour or more waiting in the sun to get in. I got a coffee, madeleine and salad, did some work at a café with many separate named rooms to eat in (I chose one with sparkly gold panels) and then presented myself at the palace at 1pm. Apparently you sometimes wait up to thirty minutes even with timed tickets, but I got straight in, went through security and picked up my audio guide (I'm a big fan of audio guides - otherwise you get sore eyes reading all the labels on things, and it also means I don't feel I need to read ALL THE LABELS which can get a bit over-the-top).

The palace, is, of course, amazing. I was a bit disappointed with the plain decor in the first few rooms detailing the history of the palace, but then we got to the main rooms and the effect (and amount) of gold and muralling and sculpted ceilings was just incredible. I've visited a few castles this trip where they said the king/queen etc had wanted to imitate Versailles, and it was completely clear why. The Hall of Mirrors is enormous and beautifully filled with mirrors (of course) and chandeliers and rich paintings and marble (marble is everywhere). There are more rooms, smaller but similarly richly decorated, and then you get to the vast Hall of Battles, with its skylight running the length of the room and expansive paintings detailing more than thirty great French military victories in chronological order from about 700.

I wandered through the gardens a little and enjoyed a musical fountain, then visited Marie Antoinette's Petit Trianon (her small house which, while quite small compared to the palace, is a lot bigger than my house). She ordered an English garden alongside the house, which meant excavations to make little hills and valleys and planting of trees to make it look 'wild', and also a working farm and accompanying tiny village. It reminded me a bit of Hobbiton, especially with its lake and rolling hills, and the idea of a constructed pastoral scene. I also saw two otters, which are quite different from the Malaysian otters I've seen in zoos in NZ.

After dinner (aforementioned) I went back into the gardens for the night fountains and fireworks, which you have to pay extra for but which I think was worth it. It runs on Saturday nights in summer, and you wander through the gardens in the dusk light enjoying baroque music (I think) and enjoying the fountains, some of which are decorated in smoking dry ice and coloured lights. I think my favourite fountains were the colonnade fountain (dry ice and lasers in a ring of pillars), the Mirror Fountain (the fountain spouts move! I want to know if they moved in Louis XIV's days) and the Ball grove, which had fire a waterfalls with lights in them, as well as dry ice. Apparently there is no water source at Versailles, so the amount of engineering needed to make all the fountains work is quite incredible, especially done centuries ago. Much, if not all, of the piping is original.

The finale was a fireworks and flame show by Groupe F, with a line of flaming torches going off in patterns up the main 'perspective' as well as fireworks, all to music. Louis XIV probably would have enjoyed it.

Then it took two hours to get back to the hostel, half an hour of which was spent packed on a train waiting to leave Versailles (people clapped when the train finally started to move). But it was worth it.

Shanghai Museum, Tianzifang, Yuyuan Gardens, French Concession and the Maglev :)

There are many, many milk tea shops in Shanghai, some with long queues outside. It's a little more difficult to find coffee shops (especially ones that aren't Starbucks or Costa) but we managed to find a good one near People's Square and had coffee and a muffin for breakfast on Saturday, then wandered through the park at People's Square, admiring the extremely impressive giant floral sculpture before checking out Shanghai Museum. We saw ancient bronze artefacts and jade ornaments, beautiful pottery from ancient times up until the late nineteenth century, calligraphy and lovely paintings. There was also a visiting exhibition of landscapes from the Tate Britain, so a whole range of things to see.

We found a nice restaurant and had dumplings, shallot pancakes, rice cakes and Chinese broccoli for lunch (so much food) then wandered through Tianzifang, which is an old area of former workshops, now with many small shops ranging from boutiques and art studios to souvenir shops and little craft businesses. There are winding alleys like Xintiandi, but many more of them and not so perfectly manicured, which gives it more of a charm I think.

Mr Dr L was on shopping duty at the Baby Sale to End All Baby Sales, so we had running updates through the day on the 70% off deals for baby Dr L, arriving in September. We met up with him in the evening to go to Yuyuan Gardens, where the ancient temple of the city god is, but the main attraction here was the newer streets of old-style buildings with lights on all the roofs and shops and food everywhere. The place (like most places in Shanghai) was buzzing, and we spent a while trying to find the best place to get a stone seal carved with my name in Chinese. In the end, the best price and the nicest stones were from a man at a little store, who power-drilled the characters into the stone and demonstrated the seal on gold-leaf-sprinkled rice paper.

People were wandering around with large dumplings with straws sticking out of them, which I had heard of before and wanted to try. They were sold out at one busy food court place, but we found a small restaurant that did them for 20 yuan (about $4 Australian), which Mr Dr L thought was expensive, even for a large dumpling. It was good though - crab soup inside that you suck up the straw, and then pull apart the rest with chopsticks. I also tried Nanjing rice balls with sweet sesame filling which were pretty good, served in a clear soup.

On the way back to the metro station, we passed several large groups of older people line dancing to multiple sets of loud, duelling music. Apparently this is outlawed near many residential buildings because of the noise it makes, but it's extremely popular with older generations, and the younger generations complain about the noise and people dancing late into the night...

My final day in Shanghai, we went to find the French Concession, which is actually a very large district that contains Xintiandi and Tianzifang (so we'd actually already been there multiple times). After a good brunch in Xintiandi, we walked down streets lined with plane trees and tiny shops to find a neighbourhood of some old French Concession buildings, Si Nan Mansions. There was a market on with stalls of jewellery and tea, as well as a man who was making candy floss flowers. Most of the buildings here have been converted into shops, restaurants, breweries or Starbucks/Costa, though some still seem to be lived in. We came upon Zhou En-Lai's house, which is now a museum describing the shaky times in the 1940s when the Kuomintang and Chinese Communist Party were vying over rule - the Kuomintang posted secret spies across the road, which the CPC guards had to keep an eye on.

After some more wandering we found Bridge 8, which is an old car factory now turned into a creative district with a huge art and design bookshop with books all up the three-storey walls, but which was invitiation only (a bit frustrating). Across the road there was an art gallery with an exhibition that Dr L said was from Korea - I didn't realise until later that she meant North Korea. The many, many paintings were beautiful, but a huge range of styles all mixed up together, with impressionist cherry blossom scenes, idyllic farmland, happy workers in a factory, stylish young women in traditional or modern dress, horses, mountains, romantically crashing waves upon cliffs... I was particularly struck by a wall-sized seemingly-dystopian painting of Blade Runner-like modern towers at the edge of a harbour with traditional fishing boats moored below, wreathed in mist, juxtaposed with a natural landscape on its adjacent wall. Definitely an experience, and one I quite enjoyed.

Next up was Fuxing Park, which is one of the oldest public parks in the city and beautifully manicured. There were lots of families running around on the main grass area and people flying kites, people sitting under wrought iron arches with ivy running over them, around fountains and the swirling rose garden beds. By this time we were getting quite tired, so we looked for a cafe that wasn't Starbucks or Costa and managed to find a beautiful one in an old house near the park, filled with interesting antiques, a verdant bricked courtyard and an upstairs with a bar, Tiffany lamps and 30s music.

Soon it was time to get my bags and make for the airport for the next leg of my trip. Dr L and Mr Dr L kindly took me to an easy transfer point for the maglev train to the airport, which takes 8 minutes to go the 30km to the airport. Some of them are express trains and go over 400km/hr, but unfortunately I didn't get one of those and we only got up to 301km/h. Amazing to see everything speeding past like you're in a plane about to lift off.

And then I was onto my 18 hour trip to Stockholm...

Zombies, Silent Disco and the Science Museum

I'm getting rather late with my posts. But there's so much to do! Packing, seeing everyone, eating very strange meals to use up all the food I have in my cupboard... On Wednesday a group of us went to the Late Night at the Science Museum, which was zombie themed. I was held up and late, so from South Kensington tube station I ran through the subway and up the stairs to the Science Museum. There were lots of people milling around and a sort of queue, but it was a very haphazard queue and I wasn't sure if it was really a queue or just people coming down the road. I wandered through the doors and got a pamphlet from a lady, then texted people to see where they were.

It turned out the queue really was a queue. Tricky Ricky had waited for half an hour and Twitterboy and his friend were still in line outside. And I, oblivious antipodean that I am, walked straight in.

They had actors shuffling around dressed as zombies, and lots of zombie-themed activities including zombie-rights picket lines. Unfortunately, we couldn't find any that didn't involve waiting for an hour, so we retreated to the silent disco and claimed headphones.

Silent discos are awesome. Everyone has wireless headphones with three channels, and they have at least two djs working at a time. This means that whenever you get bored of a song you can switch channels and hear something else. You can see what channel other people are listening to because the headphones have lights that glow different colours according to the channel. We had two channels going, and it's amazing how fast the crowd can shift between mostly listening to one song and then mostly to another. At one point YMCA came on, and almost immediately everyone was doing the actions.

And if you don't like either of the songs, it's a surreal experience to take off your headphones and hear people singing along to two different songs at once, with no backing music.

One of the things I will be leaving behind in the UK is my unlimited movie card. It seems like there are so many movies coming out on February 8 that I want to see, and now I'll have to pay for them individually! One, Warm Bodies (a zombie movie from the zombie's point of view) doesn't come out in NZ until April, and I was bemoaning the necessity of waiting for it. But then I noticed the advanced viewing at the Science Museum IMAX - this is zombie month after all.

So on Sunday I went back across London to see the movie. The cinema was completely full, with a few extra zombies who moaned and groaned at the screen through the credits and looked generally worrying to sit next to. I enjoyed the movie, though I think I would have liked it better if they'd had an extra line near the end explaining where the main characters were running to (or maybe it was there and I missed it). It's a good movie otherwise, with lots of jokes and ironic musings on life.

At this moment I am on a train to Stafford - my last UK trip for a while. The sun is out and shining into the carriage and all the fields are spring green.

 

Snow and the Tower of London

It's cold here, though not quite cold enough for proper snow blankets. We were promised snow falling ALL WEEKEND, but I looked out the window this morning and the snow in the back garden is sinking sadly into the grass in patches.

Yesterday I walked along the Thames in the snow (retracing Bond's London car chase in Skyfall), past MI6 and along to Westminster. There was a team playing football on the green outside Westminster, snow floating around them. I was very glad of my thermal top, my knitted tunic, my half-mohair jersey, my blue coat, my sheepskin ugg boots, and my hat, scarf and gloves. Not sure how they were doing in their shorts and t-shirts.

From Westminster I got a Circle line train to Tower Hill, and wrapped up In preparation for the Tower. You enter via a drawbridge over the snow-white expanse of the grass moat, and walk along Water Lane, which is built on wooden pilings over the Thames. We had a short talk from one of the Yeomen Warders (aka Beefeaters) in the Chapel rather than around the grounds, because it was pretty cold outside. He told stories about the history of the Tower, and the executions that had taken place through the centuries, before informing us that the bodies had originally been buried exactly where we were sitting, with so many thrown in under the stones that the floor was higgledy-piggledy uneven. Most of them were exhumed and reburied in Queen Victoria's time, but some, including Anne Boleyn, were still under the altar.

I've become a great fan of audio-guides in my time in Europe - you can listen and look at the same time. Much of the audio-guide at the Tower takes place outside, so I was determined to stick it out through the snow with frozen fingers. I would get the full experience! I would hear and see all the Tower had to offer!

I went through the Medieval Palace above the Traitor's Gate, and saw a recreation of a King's chambers. Through a staircase and over a bridge was a beautiful octagonal room with vaulted ceilings, and up another spiral staircase I found the battlements of the inner wall. About this time, I realised I only had forty minutes left until the Tower closed, so I stopped looking at everything and made a shortlist (They tell you three hours is a 'long' time to see the Tower. In future, I think I should take all the maximum times for things and double them. I like to take my time...). So... around the battlements, and on to the Crown Jewels!

There are lots of very expensive things in the Crown Jewels, as you may think. The number of gold plates and sceptres and goblets was truly incredible, and then we came to the crowns. I hadn't quite realised that they don't generally reuse crowns - there's a new one (or two or three) for each monarch. And they all have lots of very sparkly jewels in them that glint in the light as you move slowly past on the tourist conveyor belt. There weren't that many people - I guess it's a good time to go to the Tower when it's snowing - so I was out quite quickly and heading for the White Tower, which is the big square one that you probably think of when you think of the Tower of London. It was built by William the Conqueror, and at the time was the tallest building in Europe.

The entrance to the White Tower is on the first floor and has wooden steps leading up to it - this meant that, in a siege, you could destroy the wooden steps and no one could get in. An opening in the stone wall halfway up the stairs shows where the bodies of the two Princes in the Tower were apparently found, which was quite creepy. It's strange to come across places where famous things you've learned about actually happened.

Inside is an exhibition of armoury, including a few sets of Henry VIII's. He was tall and pretty imposing, judging from his armour. There are also swords and horse armour and guns and the 'Line of Kings', which is a set of life-size models of kings and horses made in the seventeenth century. One of the sets of armour holds the world record for tallest armour, and another displayed right beside it is one of the smallest and looks like it was made for a three-year-old.

The warders began to usher us out, so I took a last few listens of my audio-guide and reluctantly gave it back. I hadn't had time for the Bloody Tower or the Queen's residence, but I didn't think the Yeomen Warders would appreciate me hiding in a tower room and exploring the rest in darkness.

It had stopped snowing, and everything was glowing in the dusk and lights. I took the DLR to Canary Wharf and admired the fairy lights and glowing paper boats floating in the water, and then was off home.

 

Amsterdam Days 5 & 6: Van Gogh, Flea Markets and Flying Back

I'm back in the UK now, and on a train to Ipswich. I like how fast the trains go, it really makes you feel as if you're getting somewhere. I got back to London on Thursday morning, and have had barely enough time to watch four movies at the cinema before going off again for a nice visit with the rellies in Ipswich.

Okay, now that I've written that, the train is going slowly. Hmm. Where's the 'faster than fairies, fast than witches/Bridges and houses and hedges and ditches'?

Anyway, I have been a bit slack (I always seem to do this with the last few days of a holiday - I think 'I will write it all up as soon as I get home!' and then I go to four movies instead). I got up to my last full day in Amsterdam, which started earlier than any other because I had an exhibition to get to. So, I left the hostel at 10am, after a nice almost-pat of the cat, who was sitting with its back to me on the table.

The sun was out, and it was almost warm. Apparently the canals freeze over later in the winter and people skate everywhere, which was hard to believe with the sun shining slants of light past the tall houses and irregular rooftops and the water sliding dreamily by. I had to keep stopping to take photos, and by the time I got to the Van Gogh exhibition (held in the world's first Stock Exchange. I think.) I thought I'd have to queue. But no! I paid my money, collected my 3D glasses and descended, at the security guard's indication, down some stairs, past the ladies loos and into the exhibition.

This seemed somewhat strange, but after the first few paintings I forgot about everything else. The idea of the exhibition is to bring together 200 works by Van Gogh and present them digitally retouched so you see the original colours, rather than the faded versions of today. This means there aren't any actual Van Gogh paintings in the exhibition, but it's still amazing to see these paintings you know so well in their full vibrancy. Van Gogh used early synthetic paints which have faded pretty badly over time, so blues and reds sometimes don't come through. As well as the remastered paintings, some of the most famous works have been interpreted through 3D animation, which was pretty cool.

The final section of the exhibition was held in the vaults of the building, which explained the location in the basement. It showcased paintings now lost, whether through fire, Nazi repossession or burglary, presented in actual safes.

After some wandering around the streets and across the bridges (sometimes rather frenzied wandering, as I got later and more lost), I met TOWSR in the main square. There was a lion dance happening, complete with extremely loud ground-level fireworks and copious clouds of smoke, so we watched that for a while before going to find the flea markets.

I had very little money on me (I was determined not to change any more pounds to euros) but we had a good time admiring the wares and checking out the lego buildings of the old Jewish quarter. Last stop on our itinerary was the supermarket, then dinner and sleep. I had to leave at 7.15 the next morning.

It was still dark, and I realised as I walked to the bus stop that I didn't actually know what a bus stop looked like. Were they in the same place as the tram stops? I didn't think they shared stops. I ended up walking well past the invisible bus stop and on through Museumplein, which I hadn't seen properly and was actually quite nice. Finally I found a bus stop (just past the tram stop, and on top of the tram lines rather than on the road) and got on the next bus to the airport.

Schipol airport is a lot like a gigantic mall, with added check-in desks and holes in the floor through which you descend to the train station. On the plane, our pilot came out of the cockpit and told us he'd be flying the plane, and if anyone wanted to get off now they could. The flight was quick, into London's sixth airport Southend, customs even quicker and then I and my new plane-buddy got a train to Stratford. Of London airports, I think it's probably the quickest and easiest, bar City. And finally, home!

Well, actually, Stratford Westfield mall, Pitch Perfect (awesome) and then home.

Amsterdam Day 3: Anne Frank Huis

On the first day of 2013, we slept in a bit, but not too much because we wanted to beat the crowds at the Anne Frank Huis which opened at midday. Unfortunately many other people had the same idea, and so we spent an hour and a half waiting in the cold to get in, comparing the purpling of our fingers and staring up at the clearing sky. Why could it be dry today, and not last night?

The wait was worth it, though. We thought they were only letting in groups of twenty or so at a time (hence the long line) but really the line moved slowly because the house was absolutely full of people. Despite this, the atmosphere of the place was amazing - very quiet, with everyone looking at the stories and relics of the secret annexe's inhabitants and being respectful.

The house was Anne's father's office and warehouse, and Anne and seven other people shared a few rooms at the back of the building for two years until they were betrayed by an anonymous tip and sent to concentration camps. Of the eight, only Anne's father survived the war, and went on to publish Anne's diary.

You start out in the front rooms, where the warehouse and offices were in Anne's time. Only the office workers knew about the annexe's inhabitants, and Anne, her family and the others had to be careful the warehouse workers didn't hear them. There are photos of the office staff and Anne standing in these same rooms, and it's surreal to think of them there. You climb some very steep stairs and after a few more rooms, you climb behind the bookcase and enter the annexe.

First is the room in which Anne's parents and sister slept, with curtains shut and light dim. The rooms are actually larger than what I'd thought, but if you consider eight people living here for two years in very little light without going out, and without being able to make noise for fear of discovery, it was probably incredibly claustrophobic. Next is Anne's narrow room that she shared with one of the other inhabitants, still with her pictures of film stars and art pasted on the walls, and then the washroom with its basin and not much else. The stairs to the upper floor are even steeper - they take about as much floor space across their rise as they do across their width - but above is the main living room where two more people slept at night, and then Peter's small room with its ladder up to the attic and the window where Anne and Peter used to look out at the world.

It's so strange to think of everything that went on in these rooms, both the day-to-day living and the final day when the people were taken away. The rest of the museum shows pictures of Anne at all ages until 13, when the last photograph of her was taken. It seems incredibly sad that we can read her words but not know what she looked like in those last years, and that there is a 'last photo' of her that shows her at such a young age. Another section talks about discrimination, and trying to figure out the right thing in a world that has so many different ways to define 'right' and 'wrong'. The Nazis thought what they were doing was right. Many people today who do terrible things think the same.

By the time we left the museum it was 3.30 and we needed food. TOWSR wanted more chips (a dependable gluten-free lunch) so we went to Febo and I tried out the hamburger vending machines. The burger was actually pretty good - I guess they replace them lots and they spend less time in there than they might do in McDonalds warmers. Next we tried to find chocolate, and despaired of ever finding a proper supermarket (where do Amsterdammers buy their food from? Do they eat out every night? We are unsure). And lastly, back to the hostel to warm up...

 

Back to London, More Trains and Staffordshire

I'm doing a lot of travelling.

I took the train down the East Coast from Edinburgh to London, and finished my Scottish trip by taking pictures of Platform Nine and Three-Quarters and seeing Brave at the movies. A day back at work, and then back on the train to Staffordshire!

I had another adventure getting the train, after my Oyster card ran out of pay as you go money and I made a few bad decisions about timing and catching trains, and ended up running at full tilt through stations to catch my Staffordshire train on time. And I'd left early! Next time I think I will be picking up my tickets the day before I leave.

I had a lovely time on my Staffordshire weekend, cycling through forests and 'moorland' with purple heather (I don't think it was a moor, but that's what I'm calling it), walking beside canals, visiting an ancient half-timbered house with a MOAT, and walking through Lichfield Cathedral with its beautiful ornate carvings, stained glass and hoard of ancient gold. So many ancient things, and such skill involved in making them.

And now I'm just about to get back into Euston Station, hopefully to a nice week ahead.

 

Edinburgh Day 6: The Scottish National Museum, Greek Gods and Japanese Imperial Dance Music

I'll try to keep this short.

(ha.)

I started the day with a nice breakfast and a bit of writing at the Elephant House, then went to get a ticket to a Fringe show I'd been eyeing up. Unfortunately it was sold out (for future reference: gotta be in quick) but that meant I could get a ticket to another show it had clashed with: Unmythable.

I still had some time to spare, so I went in search of the Scottish National Museum. I started with the ancient peoples section, thinking that the museum really wasn't that big for a national museum, though very well-designed and modern. It had artwork interspersed with the exhibits, and everything was beautifully presented with enough space and interest so that it didn't all blur together. I finished with the ancient peoples section and went to look for other exhibits, and realised the building I had thought was the entire museum was actually just the smallest wing. The main parts of the museum were still to come, housed around an incredible Victorian atrium. I didn't have enough time left, so I decided to make a return visit.

Unmythable was very good, with three guys playing a multitude of parts and encouraging the audience to join in as Argonauts. I especially liked the scene where two of the actors were staging an argument between Zeus, Demeter, Hades and Persephone, with part-changing almost every sentence. There were songs and free olives.

After another stint at the museum, where I saw Dolly the cloned sheep and some incredible silver ships used to hold cutlery, I went to a book festival talk about writing YA and saw my last Edinburgh International Festival concert: imperial Japanese music and dance.

It was very interesting, with all the musicians still and poised as they played their instruments. Men in beautiful costumes stepped in slow patterns that reminded me of tai chi, and later wore masks and added swords, spears and shields to their costumes. At one point an instrument played a few notes that sounded almost exactly like the beginning of the theme tune to Star Trek: The Next Generation, and I wondered if the Star Trek composers had borrowed the notes.

I went back to the book festival for a bit to hear some audio compositions, and finished my evening just as the fireworks were going off over the castle.

 

Edinburgh Day 5: Famous Cafés, the Castle, Ancient Civilisations, Translation Duel and the Edinburgh Military Tattoo

Wow I stuffed a lot into yesterday.

I started with breakfast (coffee and build-your-own banana and syrup pancakes) at the Elephant House, where JK Rowling did a lot of her writing for Harry Potter. I did some writing too. It's a nice place, with soft jazzy music and huge windows and wooden chairs and tables with a history. I'm actually there again now as I write the next day. What? I enjoyed my pancakes.

Next I met some people at the Castle, and we wandered through looking at the cannon and the dog cemetery (it has headstones for the dogs) and hearing about the different layers of the castle and the sieges over the ages. The castle isn't the kind of singular building that's implied by the name - it's many, many buildings, with barracks and military buildings and chapels and restaurants (former cart buildings) and war memorials and shops and museums and the main royal buildings including the Great Hall and the room in which Mary Queen of Scots gave birth to James I/VI of England/Scotland. We filed past the Scottish crown jewels, which were hidden in St David's Tower during the War, and saw a musketeering display in the Great Hall, where two costumed musketeers demonstrated how long it might take to prepare a musket (a lot longer than you might think, watching musketeer movies).

At one o'clock they let off a cannon from the castle ramparts, so we joined the crowd to watch. A female soldier marched out and stood incredibly still as everyone jostled for position with their tartan souvenir hats. We waited. And waited. I was watching the soldier to be prepared for the noise when she triggered the cannon, but she never moved! There was a huge bang and about half the crowd screamed. I don't think I was among them.

After inspecting the whisky boutique, I wandered through a few creepy rooms in St. David's tower and realised I had twenty minutes to get down to Charlotte Square for my Book Festival lecture about the anthropology of the New World and the Old World by Peter Watson. It was very interesting, looking at how the natural resources and atmospheric tendencies of each group of continents could have affected the development of civilisations. It made me think a lot about how you could set up the environment of a fictional world to affect the culture - for example, the New World only had three species of domesticable animal, none of which could be ridden for any length of time. Not every world has to have horses.

(One of the things I find difficult when writing about my own imaginary world is remembering that most forests in the world have animals other than birds and insects in them. I'm too used to the New Zealand bush. The lecture made me think: maybe I don't have to have large animals in my world. But then I guess I want horses, and if you have horses it's likely that you have a few related animals as well. Sigh.)

I had to charge my dead camera and find some internet, so I gave in and went back to the hostel. You would not believe how difficult it is to find wifi Internet in Edinburgh. Lots of places say they have it, but don't. In other places I'd get on and nothing would load (that may have been due to my iPad playing up, I'm not sure) and in other places, including my hostel, you had to pay. The book festival did have free wifi in its garden, but that was mostly a refuse-to-load situation.

So back to the story! I had another talk at the book festival that evening, a translation duel between two English translators from the French. They'd translated the same passage from the French and spent the hour discussing why they'd chosen which word, and all the things you have to take into consideration when translating: tone, voice, meaning, jokes which may or may not be translatable... The chair warned us that they'd spent ten minutes discussing the placement of a single comma in the Spanish duel the night before, and we should get out while we could. Translating is really a lot more complicated than it seems.

And then, the last event of the day: the Edinburgh Military Tattoo!

I joined the queue on the Royal Mile to have my bag searched (didn't have a bag, so straight through :D) and climbed the cobbles up to the Esplanade. Every year they construct huge temporary stands around the Esplanade that cantilever out into space (didn't really think about it too much...) just for the Tattoo. I walked in under the end stand and saw the castle lit with dancing flames in braziers around the walls. It wasn't yet dark, but the effect was still magical and got even more so as the dusk came on.

I found my seat and sat watching some of the performers get their photos taken in front of the castle. The announcer welcomed everybody from everywhere and got everyone to sing happy birthday to everyone whose birthday it was. At nine o'clock an airforce jet flew over and the Tattoo began.

Kilted men (and probably women) marched out of the castle, across the drawbridge and onto the Esplanade. They kept coming, and coming, blowing their bagpipes and drumming and marching all in step. I counted seventeen rows of thirteen and tried to remember my times-tables as they marched up and down, moving in and out of one another and making impressive patterns. I really like bagpipes, and there's nothing like a full 221 people with bagpipes and drums. And this group was only the kilted population of the Tattoo - there were many more unkilted performers to come later.

My favourite parts of the Tattoo were the first bit with all the bagpipes, the Swiss Top Secret band and the Swedish contingent. The Top Secret band only had drums, but they were absolutely mesmerising. Their specialty was mexican-wave style manoeuvres, where they would all stop drumming or turn or start drumming very quickly one after another.

The Swedish contingent, all of whom were doing their military service and had only been in the military for a year, were very good at marching around in patterns and hoisting their rifles in time to music. At one point one of the soldiers dropped his rifle and I felt quite sorry for him - it was just lying there on the ground and he was doing all the manoeuvres with an air rifle (like an air guitar. Not an actual air rifle). Then the rest of the soldiers all fired their guns, and I realised the gun on the ground was loaded! Not with an actual bullet, of course, but a blank might still do some damage if you stepped on the gun. After that I was extremely impressed with how the soldiers managed to march back and forth over the top of the gun without touching it.

The night ended with fireworks and Auld Lang Syne, and then it took twenty minutes to get out of the stands. It was past eleven p.m. by now, but the streets were as full of people as if it were daylight. This happens every night, pretty much, in August - the jet flyover, the fireworks, and the huge crowds. I wonder what the locals think...

 

Northern Ireland: The Giant's Causeway, Titanic Exhibition and Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge

So I'm actually back in London now... But I had a great few days in Ireland! Despite forgetting to take my camera with me...

On my first afternoon my lovely hostess took me out to the Giant's Causeway on the north coast. The cliffs are amazing here, with moss and grass clutching onto the rock in a way it just doesn't seem to in New Zealand. But more amazing on this coast are the hexagonal, octagonal and pentagonal volcanic stones leading away into the sea towards Scotland.

This is the Giant's Causeway, built by the giant Finn McCoul to create a path from Ireland to Scotland. Or it's leftovers from a volcanic eruption, whichever you choose to believe. The day was absolutely beautiful: very still with wisps of cloud the sun was painting gold and peach and, later in the night, scarlet. We went to the new visitor's centre, a very modern building set into the hill with black pillars as a facade on one side that I quite liked, and then walked down the gravel path to the stones.

I'd been there before aged 12, and it was strange to be walking these same rocks again, reminded of what it felt like to be 12. I walked all the way to the end of the causeway, and all the way to the top, just because I wasn't allowed to last time. A bit further on we saw Finn McCoul's duck and his boot, and his organ up in the cliff. It's incredible that these stones were formed naturally - they look so strange jutting up side by side and marching down towards the sea.

We walked back along the cliffs, which was quite a climb, and saw the sun going down in its bed of clouds.

On Friday we went to the Titanic Exhibition in Belfast. The exhibition is in a purpose-built building set approximately where the Titanic was built in dry-dock, a silvery four-prowed square with reflecting pools at its base. Inside, some of the walls and ceilings are clad in rough iron panels and an atrium soars up five floors. The exhibition takes you through the early days of Belfast, and then the making of the Titanic.

I never really understood just how much work went into building such a ship. A five man team could do 200 rivets a day, and there were many hundreds of thousands of rivets in the Titanic. A little ride takes you through a mock-up of the shipyard with all its hammering and ringing metal, and then you watch the actual floating of the Titanic out of its dry dock on video. At the end of the video, the frosted glass of the window behind goes unfrosted, and you can see out to the dry dock where the Titanic was actually put to sea more than a century ago. I'd love to know how they can frost and unfrost glass like that.

Next was the furnishing of the ship - when it was put out of dry-dock it was really just a floating shell. The exhibition had mock-ups of first class cabins, which were very much smaller than the one Kate Winslet has in Titanic, as well as those in second and third class. There was also a very good fly-through of the ship where you stand in a room and screens on three walls show what it would have been like to be there.

The next space had the original morse code SOS (or CQD) messages on the walls and the voices of survivors describing the sinking. After seeing all the work that had gone into the building of the ship, and getting to know a few of the people who'd been on board through information panels, the loss of the ship was all the more real and heart-breaking. So many lives lost, so much work swallowed by the waves.

We drove about Belfast for a bit after the exhibition, seeing the City Hall and Victoria Square as well as the beautiful university.

On Saturday I braved the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge, which is strung across a chasm over the sea and is not good to cross in a high wind. It was originally made by fishermen hundreds of years ago (though the current bridge is quite modern) to get across to an island to catch the salmon migration.

It was quite windy the day I crossed, windy enough that I could stand holding my jacket out like wings and lean into the wind. This made crossing interesting, with whitecaps rippling happily twenty metres below and the rope handrails swinging to the extreme left. I did wonder how many people have fallen to their deaths here. Hopefully none. It was worth it, though, for the thrill alone and for the reward of wandering around the island with its cliffs and little cottage. Then I just had to make it back across... The wind was still as strong, and this time I thought a lot more about my jewellery and how many pieces might spin off into the waves below. None did, thankfully.

We spent the evening at a country barbecue where I won a bar of chocolate for my unparalleled ring-throwing skills (well, almost unparalleled. I was joint first) and eyed the bouncy castle, which was unfortunately full of small children. We drove into Belfast after church on Sunday for a beautiful Sunday dinner, and then I had another more in-depth tour around Belfast, including going up to the viewing platform in the Victoria Square glass dome. You can see out across most of Belfast from here, though the rain was coming in fits and starts and it was a bit misty. The viewing platform is on a pillar and shudders as you move around, but didn't fall over as I'd feared.

And that was my Northern Ireland adventure! My last day was filled with getting the plane, which was quite tiny and attracted turbulence. Arrived safe in London, though. I think I shall have to go back some time soon...

Turkey Day 6: Ephesus, Selçuk and a Turkish Bath

I think my body is now about thirty percent sunscreen.

We got into Selçuk around noon and had lunch on the terrace roof of our hotel, looking out over the town and up to the medieval castle on a hill in the middle of the city. Again, lots of beautiful mezze and then a choice of fish, beef or chicken. The beef came on kebabs stuck artistically into half a tomato. We spent the afternoon wandering around Selçuk looking at the Basilica of St John, taking pictures of the one remaining column of the Temple of Artemis and visiting the museum, which has artefacts from Ephesus including lots of statues of Eros, most of which I found very creepy (little wise winged baby staring at you? Creepy). I especially found a gigantic emperor's head creepy, because it was carved to look like a baby's face. Lots of beautiful ancient jewellery and glass bottles and weapons, as well as marble upon marble upon marble.

At four o'clock it was cool enough to go to the ancient city of Ephesus, it being only about 32 degrees Celsius. We entered from the top and wound down through the valley, passing fields of columns and huge stones laid out for cataloguing as well as the smaller amphitheatre built into the hill. When you stand in the centre of the amphitheatre you hear your voice echo around.

We walked along ancient marble-paved streets, saw a bath house and a public toilet and lots and lots of cats who were very happy to pose for us.

At the bottom of the valley stands Ephesus's great library, which was the third biggest of the ancient world with 125,000 scrolls. They have done a lot of restoration work on it, and you've probably seen a picture of it with its tall pillared facade.

Inside there are two shafts that you can take flash pictures down and get back glimpses of the tomb inside. From the great library you walk through to the wide expanse of the agora market place with its double columns on all four sides, and then up to the grand amphitheatre where Bono's sung a concert. They're still restoring the amphitheatre, so I'd love to see what it looks like when it's all finished. Today you're allowed access to the bottom set of tiers and the stage with its incredible acoustic. The wind would have blown off the sea and carried voices even farther two thousand years ago, but the sea's now around eight kilometres away because of silt build-up.

Dinner was to be at a hotel up on the hill. Our transport arrived: a van and an open jeep. Glamgirl, the Aqueduchess, Pistachio Girl and I claimed the jeep and clutched the roll bars as we hurtled up the hill between houses and rugged fields. The hotel had a terrace with a view over the whole city, and a swimming pool. Within five minutes we were floating in the pool with drinks and taking in the scents of the barbecue.

The setting sun lured us out to take pictures, and then we had a beautiful dinner in the gathering dusk while three tiny pet dogs scampered around our feet. Our guide taught us some Turkish dances, one of which was a Turkish take on musical chairs where I came second. We all agreed that it was the most incredible place to have a meal, on the terrace looking over the city with its basilica and castle as the sun set behind the hills and the stars came out.

But the day was not yet over! We still had a Turkish Bath to go, an experience that many of the group viewed with trepidation. The atmosphere in the waiting room was thick with nerves, and many jokes were made about tea towels (the attire we were to wear into the bath house, though we were allowed togs/swimsuits as well).

The bath house itself is a domed room with shower stalls along two walls and a circular marble platform in the middle. The air is hot and humid, so much so that you need to take a cold shower at regular intervals. After about ten minutes of lying on the hot marble, the production line was put into motion: first the right-hand side marble bench, where the man scrubbed you down with scrubbers and exfoliated half your skin off in rolls, and then the left hand bench where another man soaped you up, slung you around the slippery marble and poured cold water over you. We had an extra oil massage after that in another room, with olive oil, and then got back to the hotel around 1am. A long night, but it was worth it.

Troy and Çanakkale

So I'm still on the bus I was on when I wrote yesterday's post. You'll be pleased to know we haven't fallen down any cliff faces into the sea (I was a bit worried there for a while, but we're back on solid sea-level ground now). The island of Lesbos can be seen just off the coast, and lots of the buildings we pass have solar cells on the roof. (At least I think it's Lesbos. That's what someone said.) The towns we've been past seem quite efficient: lots of houses in a small close-knit area, sometimes apartment buildings, surrounded by semi-wilderness. You do see quite a few skeletal buildings, some of which haven't ever been finished and some of which are ruins.

The reason I got up at 6.45 this morning was to catch a bus for Troy with the Aqueduchess. We crossed the Dardanelles by car ferry and set tyre on Asia for the first time, and it wasn't long before we were alighting outside the ancient city of Troy. I'd heard there wasn't much left, and was pleasantly surprised to find lots and lots of obviously-ruinous stones and some very well-preserved city walls. There were nine different cities on this site in nine different layers, which makes it difficult for archaeologists because to get to the first layer you have to dig down and destroy the other eight layers.

They have a large replica Trojan horse you can get inside and have your picture taken, so we did that while our guide explained that a likely theory for the horse is that it was actually a tribute statue to Poseidon. The layer that's generally accepted as the layer of Homer's Illiad was destroyed in an earthquake, so the theory goes that, rather than soldiers hiding inside a large wooden horse, the end of the war was aided by an earthquake. Poseidon is the Greek god of earthquakes and horses as well as the sea, so the Greeks may have built a horse statue to thank him for his aid in defeating the Trojans.

The foundations of the Homeric watch tower are still there hulking in front of the five-metre thick cementless wall of the citadel. You walk into the passage leading to one of the gates and turn a corner (the corner is to prevent battering rams being used), climb some steps and come across more ruins, and more and more beyond them. Roman numerals are everywhere, showing what layer a particular set of ruins belongs to, and our guide was good at explaining what each one was. The oldest town on this site existed five thousand years ago and held a thousand people, while the newest two were Greek and Roman cities. At one point there are three wells that were used for sacrifices - the wells would fill with blood rather than water.

I was impressed by the Homeric main ramp from the lower town to the citadel, which is still pretty flat after three thousand years. You wouldn't want to try to drag a battering ram up it.

I would have liked to stay longer at Troy, but we were back on the bus and arriving in Çanakkale by eleven. We had the most beautiful lamb kebab for lunch, sat in a cafe on the waterfront and then boarded the bus for Ayvalik, which is where I am now. I currently have Internet but may not for some time, so I'll post this now and give you all the details on Ayvalik later.

Hosca kalin!

Turkey Day 3: Gallipoli, Eceabat and Buses

I'm on a bus again! Buses in Turkey are nice. They have free refreshments and personal TV screens, though all the movies and television shows are in Turkish... They also come down the bus with some kind of perfumed liquid, which may be hand sanitiser or may be cooling liquid or may just be an attempt to make everyone smell nice (not that we don't smell nice. I hope). The bus trip from Istanbul was over five hours and we went past lots of Turkish flags, drove over some nice new roads and some old potholed roads and saw slabs of marble stacked up in heaps at the side of the road.

We got into Eceabat at about one o'clock and had lunch at the hotel: yoghurt soup, chicken stew and salad. The yoghurt soup was interesting. Once that was done we took a smaller bus out to Gallipoli, where Australian, New Zealand, Indian, French African, Irish and British troops held land for eight months in 1915.

We started at North Beach, where they now hold the Anzac Day memorial service. The beach slopes up to steep ridges and an outcrop of rock they called the Sphinx. Some landings were made here, but most were made at Anzac Cove, the next beach over. The area is full of memorials and cemeteries - over a hundred thousand soldiers died in the area over the eight months. It's so incredibly peaceful now - absolutely beautiful beaches and views out over the Aegean, birds singing and waves lapping the shore. The cemeteries are very well kept, with flowers between the stones and trees shading the graves.

Our guide was impressive. He used to be a university lecturer, but had been guiding Gallipoli tours for twenty-five years and knew all the battles date by date, blow by blow. Usually you hear about the landings and how they came before dawn and had to fight up the steep hills/cliff faces against heavy enemy fire. In fact, there were only eighty-six Turkish soldiers at the top of the hill, and the charge to the first ridge was over quite quickly with little loss of life on the Allied side. The battalions landed in a place that was thought to be unsuitable for landings, so it wasn't as heavily guarded as another beach where the British landed and sustained heavy casualties.

The point of the Gallipoli landings was to eventually control the Dardanelles and so the shipping route from the Black Sea into the Mediterranean, opening a supply route to the Eastern Front. The entrance to the Dardanelles was heavily fortified, so the plan was to attack at Gallipoli and cross the twenty kilometres of peninsular to the Dardanelles inlet, bypassing the fortifications.

The remainder of the campaign, when the Turkish army was more prepared, was a long and bloody battle involving almost a million soldiers. The area is very hilly, and while the Anzacs and Allies held more land than I'd thought, it would have been very crowded with so many soldiers living in dugouts in the hills. At times the trenches of the front lines were less than two metres apart, and there are stories of people singing to each other across the lines, and one where a Turkish soldier carried a wounded Australian soldier back to the Allied line. You can still see the winding trenches (winding to minimise the effects of blasts blowing through), and the barbed wire poking out of the earth. They also had a system of tunnels that looked extremely claustrophobic.

The landscape reminded me a lot of the hills around Wellington: scrub presses close to the clay hillside and the stones show through where the hill falls away. It's quite a bit drier, but I could have been walking the tracks around Makara in late summer. Pretty affecting to compare the two, while the guide talked about the forays and defence of the two armies, and how many people had died fighting over this little piece of land. In the end, the Allies decided to retreat, and moved their hundred thousand troops out into the Aegean in one night. Allied commentators say that's the only part of the campaign that went well: not one casualty.

Back in Eceabat (by the way, c in Turkish is pronounced as if it's a j) we had dinner in a restaurant with a patio and grape vines for a roof. There were lots of mezze to try, and I had a good chicken kebab for a main. At one point a trio of cats had a disagreement beside our tables. We sampled some local Syrah at the hotel which was very good, and I stayed up much later than I should have considering I'd had five hours sleep the night before and had to get up at 6.45 the next morning.

I possibly may not have Internet for a bit. We shall see.

Istanbul Day 2: Mosques, Spice Markets and the Aya Sofya

I've had about five hours sleep and I don't do very well on five hours sleep so I'm not sure how coherent this post will be. I apologise in advance.

So. After a nice Turkish breakfast we set out on a walking tour of old Istanbul. Our first visit was to the Blue Mosque, which was just as crowded as the day before, and quite noisy. We recovered in a cafe in the square near the sixteenth-century university, where I tried Turkish coffee for the first time. It is thick, though possibly not quite thick enough to stand your spoon up in (I'd heard you could do this) and comes in a small cup. The coffee is ground up very fine and stirred in so you drink quite a lot of grounds, but it's not as unpleasant as when you drink normal coffee grounds - in fact it's quite nice. At the end you're left with about a centimetre of coffee grounds in the bottom, which you can use to tell fortunes.

The next stop was the Sulaimayne Mosque, which I enjoyed a lot more than the Blue Mosque - far fewer people and richer, more vibrant decorations. The architect considered this mosque his master work and spent a lot of time getting the acoustics right, so when you speak the sound softly echoes around the building. Even with people talking it's very peaceful and you just have to sit and gaze and take it all in. The windows high up around the dome throw light on the gold, red and blue paintwork and white walls, and electric lights glow gold on high ledges and low chandeliers. The garden of the mosque looks out over the city and harbour, and I was amazed at how high we'd climbed.

Back out on the streets we wound through lots of little alleyways and streets with steps. We saw one building covered completely in colourful randomly-applied mosaic tiles, which gave an interesting inside-out bathroom feel, and many ancient-looking walls with ivy holding higgledy-piggledy stones together. Our third mosque of the day was quite small (compared to the previous ones) and reached through a winding medieval staircase. It's called the Rustem Pasa Mosque and is, I think, more deserving of the name Blue Mosque than the Blue Mosque is. The blue tiles in this one are a deep royal blue and come right down to the ground, whereas the ones in the other mosques began above eye-level, I guess to lead your thoughts towards the heavens.

A few more turns through the cobblestones streets and we were at sea level again. Our guide suggested fish-in-bread for lunch, so we picked a brightly painted and gilded boat at the dock and got our fish-in-bread for five lira (a little less than three pounds). The boat was wildly rocking on the wakes of ships going past, to the point it almost looked like it might tip over, and service had to stop until the water calmed again. You'd have to have very good balance to work in that fast-food place. The fish was pretty good, though I seemed to have received the entire group's share of bones and spent a lot of time picking them out from between my teeth.

We had an afternoon full of free time, so we split up. My roommate Kiwi Glamgirl and I took a wander through the spice market and spent a lot of time in one shop where the man poured spices into our hands to sample and let us smell all the beautiful teas. We came out with quite a bit of tea, some spices, Turkish delight and a pepper grinder apiece, and could have bought a lot more (the man told us we were shopping like students when we kept saying 'no! That's enough! Enough!').

We dropped our purchases at the hotel and followed the tram line up to the Aya Sofya, which is the former church-mosque-now-museum straight across from the Blue Mosque. It was built in the fifth century, if my memory's giving me the right info, and is absolutely huge. It's still in the top five biggest religious buildings in the world. The interior was originally covered in mosaics but then plastered over when it became a mosque, but they've uncovered some of them so you can see. The entire building seems to be made of marble and the domed ceiling soars above you - it's so high they had to build it three times before it would stay up. There are lots of Roman arched everywhere, and it was incredible to think that the reason you only see round Roman arches is that they hadn't yet invented pointed arches when they built the Aya Sofya.

We climbed up stone ramps, round and round and round, to get to the gallery where most of the mosaics were and to look down on the vast floor below. As in the other mosques, low-hanging wrought iron frames held sparkling lights and the walls were decorated with flowers and Arabic calligraphy. I tried to get some pictures of the vibrant stained glass windows, but they never seem to show up properly on my camera.

We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the surrounding parks and shops (we were given some apple tea by one of the shopkeepers) and sitting on the grass outside Topkapi Palace. We met up with the rest of the group for dinner at a fill-a-plate style cafe, where I had a very rich moussaka, and then walked across the bridge and took pictures of the sunset and peach-lit mosques.

Our guide was very enthusiastic about taking the second-oldest metro on the world up to Taksim. The metro, unlike the oldest metro in London, actually looks like it was built in the nineteenth century, with brick walls and only one carriage. It reminded me very much of the Wellington cable car, because it runs on the same principle: two cars on cables that start at either end of the track and cross in the middle.

This side of the river is more where everyday Istanbulites spend their time, away from the tourists. The are seventeen million people in Istanbul, and while the streets weren't that crowded (I.e. you could walk in a straight line without banging into anyone for most of the time) there were still so many more people than you might expect at nine o'clock on a Sunday night. Most of the people at the cafes and restaurants and bars were men, so I guess the women mostly stay at home.

We climbed many flights of a spiral staircase to get to a roof terrace open to the night sky and had a good time chatting and getting to know our group better. I ordered a mojito in a bottle, expecting it to be mixed with rum or vodka, but it turned out to be a mojito-flavoured beer. I do not like beer. I managed to get through about half of it, concentrating on the mojito taste and not the beer.

By the time we got back to the hostel it was nearing midnight and we had to catch a bus at six-thirty a.m., hence my five hours sleep. I'm now writing this on the bus to Gallipoli (probably should be using this time to sleep... Meh...) and looking out the window at the very New Zealand-esque landscape. Sunnier and drier, though.

(Are we nearly there yet?)

London Dungeon

Yesterday was a day for shopping and being tried for murder. Shopping was at Westfield Shepherds Bush, which I've decided I rather like. Unfortunately, the Central Line was closed at the station where i wanted to change to it, so I had to get out and brave the human obstacle course that is Oxford St to get to a station where the Central Line was running.

A girl handing out calico bags informed me that her shop had a half-price sale that I should check out. I went to find it. It had a grand piano at the entrance with someone playing Chopin, and I decided that, even if it was 50% off, it probably wasn't my kind of shop.

Later, I met a few friends at the London Dungeon, which is under London Bridge. It has a slight historic element to it, in that there's a section on the fire of London and on the Plague and on Jack the Ripper, but mostly it's just about people dressing up in costumes and scaring you. The actors were really good, jumping out and terrifying people by yelling at inopportune moments and ganging up on involuntary volunteers. One of my friends had his arm cut off by a seventeenth century surgeon, while another was burnt at the stake for heresy. The experience ended with being hanged, and then we were allowed to exit through the gift shop.

All in all, an interesting day.

Please do not climb on the Roman remains (Bath day 2)

These posts are growing rather long, probably because I'm using Blogsy on my iPad and haven't yet found a word count. Normally I would try to limit myself to 1000 words, but when I don't know when I'm growing closer to 1000 words, I don't know when to stop. I hope you're enjoying them anyway... Despite me complaining about the woes of walking. Ow. :-)

Today I go the bus down the hill into town and tried to find somewhere to drop my bags. No luck. Instead I joined the queue at the Roman Baths, which was much shorter today, and began swapping my shoulder bag from shoulder to shoulder and using all the hiking straps on my backpack. This would continue throughout the day...

If you're ever going to Bath, I seriously recommend the Roman Baths. They're the reason Bath is there, after all, and I think it's one of the best museums I've been to. You enter at modern street level, four metres above the Roman level, and look out across the Great Bath first of all. You get an audio guide that you can punch numbers into and hear all about the things you are looking at. I've always been a bit sceptical of audio guides, but this weekend I have been converted. Cardiff Castle also had them, but the Roman Baths have so many and the numbers are all mixed up so you can't cheat and sit in a corner and listen to them all in order (I may have, ahem, done this at Cardiff Castle because it was raining and my feet were sore). Audio guides mean you can look at the thing you're learning about, and your eyes don't get sore from constant reading. The trade-off is that listening is slower than reading, but I've decided I don't care.

The other awesome thing about the museum are the reconstructions, with projections of actors on the walls, and ruins cast in different lights so you can see what they look like now and what they would have looked like two thousand years ago. The original excavation here was done by the Georgians and Victorians, who you may remember weren't much for conservation of historical artefacts and instead preferred to build over them. There's some merit in this I suppose, since you get to see what things might have looked like rather than straining your imagination, but now we have better and much more evocative ways of doing this, with projections and augmented reality.

The Romans built the baths here because of four natural hot water springs, the only ones in Britain (me: they only have FOUR? In the ENTIRETY of Britain? Hmm. Think I've been a bit spoiled in NZ? Oh. Wikipedia has advised me that they have a few more, but not many and mostly luke-warm) and some of the largest in Europe. The Great Bath is huge for a natural hot spring-fed pool (according to European standards, anyway), and had a great roof over it that would have been the biggest building in Britain at the time. Beside the Great Bath are smaller baths and steam rooms for men and women, and a temple to the goddess of the spring, Sulis Minerva. Throughout the museum you see the ruins of these places, and then light projections of the places as they would have been, complete with people. Bath is a world heritage site, which means you can't do any more excavation to find more Roman ruins beneath the Georgian houses, and what's there at the moment is probably all we'll ever be able to see. They do a pretty good job of showing you what it might have been like in it's entirety, though.

When I emerged my feet were very sore, as were my shoulders. I was determined to go on the free two hour walking tour though, so I got some lunch and reported to the square in front of the baths and abbey at two o'clock. The guide was very good and told us a lot of the history of Bath. I found out that the Abbey dates from the sixteenth century, and that the Norman cathedral that was there before it was twice as big. We walked up to the Royal Crescent, so-called because so much royalty lived there, and along to the Circus where Johnny Depp and Nicholas Cage currently own houses. To get to the Royal Crescent we walked along the Gravel Walk, which is mentioned by Jane Austen a few times in her books.

By the time we got back into town, my feet weren't feeling too bad, I but I was suspicious that this might be because they were numb. I made straight for the modern-day spa, which uses some of the same waters that the Romans used and is situated about on top of the ancient Temple, as far as I could tell. It was raining, but it was quite nice to float in the warm pool with old Georgian walls surrounding you and feel the rain coming down.

And we've reached the end of my trip! I'm now on the train back to London, enjoying sitting down. Hope you had a good Easter!

 

Caerdydd, Saturday (The Castle)

I'm getting a vague suspicion that people in Cardiff might secretly be zombies: there is a beer named Brains that seems to be everywhere.

Wales has both English and Welsh as official languages, and lots and lots of signs are in both languages (I guess this would increase signage costs?). I'm enjoying trying to figure out which words mean what, but I think I need a few lessons in Welsh pronunciation. All I know is that 'si' can sometimes be 'sh', and 'll' makes a cool tongue-flicky sound. My spell check seems to know Welsh too, since it doesn't object to words like Caerdydd.

This morning I dined on my breakfast of Welshcakes, which are little griddle cakes a cross between a biscuit/cookie and a cake with sultanas in it. Maybe it's close to an American biscuit? I don't know, having never had one. I got them yesterday in a little shop in Mermaid Quay (and had to go back for more today...) when I ate them still warm from the griddle. Mmm. I might have to find a recipe and make some myself.

The bus dropped me right outside Cardiff Castle, which I walked all the way round the edge of: through a park beside the moat, around a Victorian attempt at excavation and restoration of a thirteenth century friary, past a circle of standing stones and out of the park and along beside the animal wall.

The Victorian 'restoration' of the friary basically involved laying bricks over the remains of the walls in a 'here it is!' kind of way, so all you really see is low brick walls, the remains of a tiled floor (possibly a hundred ten-centimetre square tiles remain in one corner, though I'm not sure if those are original because someone was buried beneath them in the nineteenth century) and a Victorian fountain. They're currently doing a modern-day excavation on a larger scale, which might yield some more of the actual buildings.

From the friary, a circle of standing stones caught my eye. I went to take a closer look (admiring the antics of a trio of squirrels on the way) but there was no sign. In the centre of the circle was a stone table which I half-expected to have a lion on it. I took a few pictures and stared perplexed a bit longer, and finally found a sign right at the edge of the park. It appears the standing stones were put in place in the seventies to commemorate something (exactly what eludes me), and the stone table in the centre is the only actually ancient part - it used to be in the centre of another stone circle somewhere else.

The animal wall is a wall with animal statues on it that stare at you. Some of them I quite liked, some not as much, though I did feel a bit sorry for them. The less interesting animals probably don't get their picture taken as much.

And then I came to the castle! Cardiff Castle is quite interesting in that it has three layers to it - it was originally a walled Roman Fort, and then it became a motte and bailey castle in the eleventh century. This kind of castle has a castle building/keep on a man-made hill or motte, with a moat around it. Then there is the bailey, which is the outer part of the castle that is enclosed by a long wall. Through various wars, invasions and uprisings, the castle fell into disrepair until Victorian times, when a Marquess of Bute decided to rebuild it in medieval/ancient Roman fashion. So today, you see a huge mock-Roman wall all the way around the lawn of the bailey, the motte with ruined castle on top, and a rather hodgepodge great house to one side, adjoining the outer wall.

I decided to go for the full castle experience, which included a guided tour around the house as well as access to the rest of the grounds. The Marquess was obviously very interested in medieval things, because virtually very single room of the great house is done up as if by a fourteenth century lord, albeit a very, very rich fourteenth century lord. The Marquess at this time was one of the richest men in the world, thanks to the coal mines he opened up.

Everywhere you go there is wood panelling and statues and gold paint and emeralds and rubies (actually) and hand-painted tapestries and wall painting. The great banqueting hall looks like you'd imagine a kings's court to look in medieval times, but in actual fact the room has gone through many incarnations since actual medieval times. The current room used to be two rooms double the height, but the Marquess lifted the roof and dropped the floor and created another floor in the middle so now it's a library downstairs and a banqueting hall upstairs, complete with minstrel gallery.

The master bedroom is filled with mirrors, especially on the ceiling, which are meant to encourage self-reflection. Upstairs from there is a roof garden modelled on Pompeii, with the story of Elijah told in pictures and gold Hebrew lettering around the walls. The bronze fountain in the centre of the garden is apparently worth more than most normal houses.

The drawing room is the only room that isn't medieval-ised or romanised. It's decorated in light, airy eighteenth century fashion (the Marquess's wife put her foot down here) with French windows looking out to the motte and grounds. After the tour, I went to find the famed Arab room, but went round twice and saw no sign of it. On my third time around (after asking for directions) I happened to be there when a man pushed open some doors and called to his wife to come look. A guide came over very quickly and closed the doors, saying the room was closed at the moment. I looked sad and said I'd been looking for it for ages, and the guide let me in surreptitiously.

The room is quite small, with a very small space near the door roped off to stand in. It was closed off because people had moved the rope and were going around touching things (!). The ceiling steps up to a point and is covered in gold and sculpted to look like Arabian buildings. Beautiful stained-glass windows are set high and the walls are covered in colour. I didn't have long in the room - only enough time to stare in amazement - but it was definitely worth the hunt.

The outside walls of the castle were used as air-raid shelters during WWII, and I walked all through these tunnels and then around the top of the bank just inside the walls too. It was raining by this time, but I braved the extremely steep stairs up to the Norman castle and was treated to more stairs up the tower, the living quarters where the lord's family would have retreated to in times of war, and the remains of a longdrop that opened directly onto the battlements. Apparently, one extremely displeased tenant once managed to break into the castle keep, get past about a hundred heavily armed men and abduct the lord and his family, then ransom them in the forest. I'd kinda like to know how he did it.

I had vague plans of going to an Easter vigil, but couldn't get bus times to work properly and was too tired anyway. Instead I spent the rest of the night talking to my roommates. I do like hostels - so many interesting people.