Epic Train Journey across the States

I'm writing this on my last day of my long journey across the USA, currently in Nevada in the middle of a desert which is very green and full of small lakes. We're running about three hours behind schedule, which means we've caught up a little in the night from our almost-four-hour delay yesterday evening. Despite the delay, I'm really enjoying the trip, and I have managed to sleep pretty well (pretty surprised about that) through the jouncing of the train. I've heard in China they have trains that are so smooth you can stand a coin on its side. This train is diesel and huge and currently going along the original 1860s railway - the ride is not like those smooth trains in China.

On Monday I boarded a bus in Boston to take me to Albany in upstate New York, because they were doing trackwork on that stretch. We had some time to wait in Albany and then boarded the Lake Shore Limited, where I had my Very Own Cabin with a bed and everything (including a hidden toilet which was... a bit weird). The trip to Chicago was pretty uneventful, arriving before lunch on Tuesday, and I planned my four hours in Chicago, where I wanted to go and see Cloud Gate/the silver bean thing and go to the Federal Reserve museum which was close to the station. I thought about going up the Willis Tower (as one of my dinner mates told me, spelt 'W I L L I S, pronounced 'Sears') but it was a pretty cloudy day and I didn't know if I could squeeze it into my time.

My umbrella was somewhere deep in my suitcase (I think. I have not come across it yet...) and the rain prediction didn’t look too heavy, so I decided to take the risk with just my jacket and scarf. I walked the twenty-five minutes to Cloud Gate, dodging light and then heavier rain, taking pictures of famous plazas and buildings as I happened across them. I realised Chicago's bridges are the ones they use in one of the Dark Knight films, when they have to close all the bridges, so it was pretty cool to see those.

I took shelter from the rain in a bakery, enjoyed a cherry croissant thing and waited for it to clear. It did, a little, so I dashed across the road and into the park, admired the massive mirrored sculpture and took my pictures, then checked out two large pillars made of glass bricks with water cascading down them (sort of a reverse of the 9/11 memorial voids), a vividly-coloured projection of a moving, smiling, neutral, sorrowful face on each one, facing each other across a wide plaza.

I walked across the plaza to take some good photos, attempting to dodge the puddles (it was still raining), but realised the plaza was not a plaza but a shallow reflecting pool, and my shoes each acquired their own little squelchy internal swimming pool. The sculptures were pretty incredible, though.

On the way back to the Federal Reserve, it really started pouring. I had to take shelter in a few shop doorways as thunder rumbled overhead, but finally I made it, only to find the museum was closed until the next week. The guard gave me $364 for my trouble though, with was nice (it was shredded).

Back at Union Station (which has the most massive, beautiful waiting hall, by the way, like a European cathedral but brighter and more classical) I attempted to use the shower, but it was busy, so I sat and dried off some in the lounge and waited to board the next train, the California Zephyr.

A little before boarding time, we heard that they'd had to switch engines, so there would be a bit of a delay. We eventually boarded about an hour late, I settled in my cabin (no personal toilet this time), and we were on our way!

There was quite a bit of flooding along the way, and at times we were crawling along. When we crossed the Mississippi, the water was pouring around the bridge footings and we passed a rail yard where most of the tracks were under water. The track we were on looked like it could be under water as well, from my window on the upper floor, but I couldn't see any ripples in the water from the wheels so we must have been just a few inches above the surface.

We have a car attendant who stays with us all the way and puts our beds down and up, but the conductors change every so often. Some of them have a good sense of humour. Sometimes we'd pause for a little while at a station or in the middle of nowhere, and the conductor would come on and say something like 'No big deal everyone, just a little... mechanical thing'. At Denver on Wednesday (where we had time to wander around the station, which has a bookshop and a grocer and a hotel and bars and leather armchairs and is pretty cool), we were late leaving again because of traffic on the line, as well as a bit of maintenance - as the conductor said, ‘Our next mechanical isn't until Emeryville (a day and a half away), so we want to make sure we have as much fixed as possible before leaving'.

After Denver, we climbed up into the Rockies, taking long, sweeping curves back and forth up into the mountains. You can really see why they're called the Rockies - the soil is very rocky, the outcrops are huge and rocky, the peaks are enormous and rocky, bands of sedimentary rock tipped at steep angles. There was still snow on some of the mountains to the north, and we followed a river up past mountain towns and wilderness, steep cliffs and rushing rapids. Beautiful area.

Then we got to the Moffat Tunnel, which is the highest point Amtrak reaches anywhere in the US at 9249 feet above sea level, and a 6.2 mile long tunnel. The conductor told us there was 3000 feet of rock above us, probably the deepest on earth we'd ever be and the highest above sea level on land we'd ever be, and to watch out for cave trolls. We also crossed the continental divide here - the rivers, instead of running east, would now run west.

At the village just after the tunnel, the train stops in winter right near a ski lift, so according to the conductor you can "get right off the train and into your skis and get the chair lift about twenty feet away, and then you're free to ski or tumble down the mountain, whichever you prefer". Further commentary included some interesting rock formations, as well as "If you look out to the left and right of the car just now, you can see it's raining".

More incredible scenery, campers and people in boats along the smoother parts of the river. We crossed into Utah, which I knew because there was 'Utah Colorado' written on the rock face in white paint.Near 11 pm there was a medical emergency and they called for medical personnel onboard and we stopped a little while longer, but they managed to sort it out okay and we kept going. Today I got up earlyish (we're doing a sort of Martian day with 25 hours, where you put your watch back an hour every day) and went to sit in the lounge car with a coffee to watch Nevada go by through the huge windows. As I mentioned, it's quite green - my breakfast mate said he'd never seen it so green, and took a picture to prove it for posterity. It should be brown desert, but there's been a lot of rain across the whole continent it seems, and the desert has come to life. It reminds me a little of New Zealand's Central Volcanic Plateau, with the Desert Road, only far, far huger.

It got a little drier, and then we were right up in the mountains, with snow still settled in the dips, sometimes making icy bridges over little streams tumbling down the mountainside. There were a few more resort towns, then redwoods and pine trees along the sides of the ranges. I saw little monarch butterflies flitting about beside the tracks. Then out onto the flatter land, hills either side, and lots of water again. The last few stops, we ranged between 3.75 hours late and 3 hours late, crossed over a huge bridge just before Martinez and took the coast around into the Bay Area. The Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco were hazy in the evening light across the water. And, at last, Emeryville!

Boston - where even the ducks wear ice hockey jerseys

I think Boston may be in the ice hockey finals - judging by the statue in Boston Common with a hockey stick and jersey, the 'B' flags everywhere, man holes painted up with the B logo, and the 'make way for ducklings' statues in the Public Garden also dressed up for ice hockey. Hopefully they win/have won.

I got the ‘Silver Line' from the airport, which is a bus that is FREE (if you take it to the city from the airport) and switches to trolley-bus mode halfway through, and then goes UNDERGROUND in its own tunnel like it thinks it's a subway train. I got out at South Station, found my hostel and went out to find dinner for the evening (salad, after my poutine experience earlier in the day). On Saturday my plan was to find a transit card (they're called 'Charliecards' here after the song where Charlie has to go around the subway forever because he doesn't have the extra five cents needed to get off), do some writing in a nice cafe, then go on the free Harvard tour setting off from the hostel. I did find a nice cafe (with macarons and olde timey decor), but could not find anywhere to get a Charliecard, and then went the wrong way in Boston Common and had to run back to the hostel, only to find the tour had been cancelled... I decided to do my own tour, managing to get a Charliecard at South Station and get the subway to Harvard.

There I found the reason for the tour cancellation - Harvard was having a reunion, so only guests were allowed inside Harvard Yard, the most historic part of Harvard. I hugged the fence and listened to the audio guide on my phone, and did manage to get into the Science Centre where they have IBM Mark 1, one of the first programmable computers, as well as walked through the only Le Corbusier building in America. I had lunch in a former lunch room (now a cafe, but the original tiles are still visible with flags of dozens of different colleges around the walls) and then got the subway back to the city.

It had been a beautiful day, and I only had a t-shirt and a scarf. When I emerged from the station, fog had rolled in, chilling everything in a cold wet mist. I rearranged my scarf as best I could and went for the Boston Tea Party Museum, which is on a pier off a bridge over the river. There I signed up for the museum experience, which started in a meeting house where guides in costume gave us our roles then held a town meeting to discuss the tea ships that had been prevented from offloading (I had a speaking part, about the Stamp Tax). We boarded one of the ships, with feathers to 'disguise' us, and took turns throwing tea overboard before exploring the (quite small) ship that would have sailed across the Atlantic two centuries ago. Back inside, we heard more about the afterrmath of the Boston Tea Party, including the first battles of the revolutionary war, with pretty cool hologram special effects. Finally, I went upstairs to the tea rooms to sample the five different teas they'd thrown overboard that night, and got a hot tea to warm my hands on the walk back to the hostel.

On Sunday I set off to the North End to wander through the old streets and find the Boston Molasses Flood plaque near the waterfront. On the way, I saw a film crew in the Financial District, the Old South Meeting House where the actual town meeting to discuss the tea ships was held, and got somewhat lost. It was a little early in the day for much to be open, and I ended up at Boston Public Market where I got some of the best coffee I've had in North America and a 'Nana's Apple Pie' crepe, which was excellent.

I got the Green Line subway to the Boston Public Library for their free art and architecture tour, and found that the Green Line is actually an underground tram, which is quite hilarious when you're expecting a subway train like the one I'd got to Harvard. It turned out to be the oldest subway line, which makes some sense. The art and architecture tour was very good - the Boston Public Library has some pretty amazing mosaics and murals, as well as the barrel vaulted reading room. After that, I found the Boston Legal building and wandered around Back Bay, which is filled with rows of Very Nice Mansions. All the while, I'd been rereading Magnus Chase (which is partly set in Boston) and I figured out sort of where his uncle's house is supposed to be. Finally, I walked through the Public Garden, which is full of flowers and little meadows and park benches around a pond. I was watching a squirrel on a tree when a passersby pointed to one of the benches and told me it's the bench from Good Will Hunting - so of course I went back to the hostel and watched Good Will Hunting to round out my Boston experience.

Next: taking the train across the States!

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, New York

Sooo... this is not Italy. I should document Italy. But in the meantime... I'm in the USA!

The main thing I have decided in the past few days is that I should pay more attention to Time Between Beds when booking flights - in other words, leaving in the evening, having a 23 hour 2 leg journey and arriving in the early morning means an approximately 48 hour Time Between Beds (TBB), which leaves something to be desired.

But I made it! Through not one but two ‘random' explosives checks at Sydney airport, a few hours' stop at Honolulu where I took photos of myself in front of pictures of palm trees (as well as a few real palm trees) and successfully muddled my way through transitting (you have to leave the airport completely and then go back in... I think... or at least that's how I did it?). We landed at JFK in early morning haze, which meant you couldn’t see any of the Manhattan skyline, but it cleared later in the day.

After a ride on the air train and then the subway, I got to the YHA near Harlem and dropped my bags off before finding a coffee shop near the north end of Central Park to finish off my conference presentation before the jet lag really caught up. I'd planned to get a new mouse and some walking shoes the first day, but when I wandered down Fifth Avenue my targeted shops didn't have what I was looking for. Instead I looked through the MoMA store (many things I wanted but did not need) and found the New York Public Library, which is pretty impressive with its marble staircases and soaring columns and fresco'd ceilings. They had an exhibition about Stonewall in two long corridors, and histories of the library above the main entrance hall.

I spent the rest of that first evening at the hostel attempting to stay awake, though made friends with a roommate who planned to go to the Statue of Liberty the next day. I tagged along, successfully navigating past the 'express ferry for $35’ ticket sellers to the proper $18.50 ticket office, where you actually stop on the island.

It was a beautiful day (though breezy and cool, especially considering I'd dressed for the 31 degree day the day before), and we got great views of the Manhattan skyline as we crossed to Liberty Island. I got an audio guide to tour around the island with, but I think it was set to the kids' tour (or I was pressing the wrong buttons), which was a little like walking around accompanied by overly-cheery early Saturday morning television. We checked out the museum and saw how they modelled the copper surface (which is only the thickness of a coin), enlarging it from the original model with a rig involving plumb lines, and the original flame set with stained glass, which was replaced in the eighties by the current solid flame due to wear and tear.

After the ferry back to Manhattan, we walked to the 9/11 memorial, passing the bull of Wall Street (which doesn’t actually appear to be on Wall Street?) and a man with a latex Trump mask reclining in front of some rubbish bins, panhandling with a can that said 'Wall Fund’.

I visited the 9/11 memorial briefly when I was in New York for the first time two years ago, and it's the kind of place that sends shivers up your spine. Later in the week I was lucky to hear one of the architects for the 9/11 memorial speak about his original vision for the memorial, which he'd seen as two voids cut into the Hudson, water pouring in but never ever filling. The names around the edges are grouped by building, flight or service, and they asked families if they had any requests for who they wanted their loved ones' names beside. They received 1200 requests, and were able to fulfil every one.

The museum is far below the plaza, with the main exhibitions in the same spaces as the towers' basements once were. You can still see the foundational box columns preserved, and the slurry wall that keeps out the water from the Hudson (they were worried it would cave in, but it held). The North Tower exhibition takes you through the events of the day as they happened minute by minute, and the South memorialises those who died. My hostel friend and I got separated (it's a very large museum, and there were a lot of people) so we met back at the hostel later in the evening and got dinner.

Day three (Wednesday) and it was time to check out of the hostel (a beautifully-restored old building by the way) and head down to Brooklyn and my conference. I was staying in student housing two minutes walk from the venue, which was great, and my 'shared' room had no one else in it, which was even better. I presented early on, and then was free to enjoy the rest of the time, including the banquet on a yacht around the Hudson, under the Brooklyn Bridge and around the Statue of Liberty. It was a little difficult to sit down long enough to eat, given the views that kept passing by, and there was a lot of ducking in and out to take photos or just drink in the sights from the roof deck.

When we returned to the dock, someone suggested we go and find Jane Jacob's house, so a group of us went on a late night mission to find it. It's on quite a busy main street, which surprised me, and currently has a real estate shop front on the ground floor. We took some selfies, as you do, while passersby gave us strange looks, then wandered through Greenwich Village. It's an experience at night, with very upmarket shops lit up in beautiful old shop fronts, some with quite 'out there' design like the one with the mannequin covered in green shrubbery from the waist up. We got gelato and sat in a triangular square eating it and discussing gentrification and square design, which was quite satisfying.

On the last day of the conference I spent a few hours walking through the relatively-new Brooklyn Bridge Park, which is very green, has winding paths, wetland areas and little meadows and hills and amazing views of the Hudson and Manhattan, as well as the Statue of Liberty. They've used the old piers as more meadow/garden area, or basketball/bocce/volleyball courts or soccer fields, and on this Saturday the whole place was filled with people, walking (often with their dogs) and cycling (sometimes with their dogs) and lying on the grass just enjoying the spring weather. Later I met my hostel friend at Times Square to see the lights in the evening, along with possibly half the tourist population of New York. I'm not sure how Times Square worked before it was closed off to traffic...

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: La Defense, Centre Pompidou, Notre Dame, Galeries Lafayette and the Eiffel Tower (sort of)

Hello! I’m back in Sydney as I write this, looking back through photos on my phone to jog my memory. Versailles was a Saturday, and on Sunday I had a more leisurely day, taking the metro out to La Défense where they have a GIGANTIC Arch office building that’s set on the same line as the Arc de Triomphe (which you could see in the distance) and another arch further along. It was pretty hot, so I took a few photos and then retired to a café to do some work (Paris was supposed to be my Work city). Then I found a FNAC (a bit like a Borders) where they had a very, very large record section, and bought a few French YA books, one of which I later found out was translated from ‘l’americain’… ah well.
My next stop was the Pompidou Centre, a building near the Ile de la Cité (where Notre Dame is) that houses a museum and library. It has a massive sloping plaza out the front, where lots of people were enjoying the sun, and is (I think) the first building to have services visible and on the outside – when you see exposed piping in a new building as an artistic architectural sort of thing, it’s because of this building. Even the escalators are on the outside, in tube sort of things that step their way up the side of the building.
You have to pay to get into the museum, but I went around the back (where the line for security was much shorter) and went into the library. It’s huge, with many many large desks at which many, many people were sitting, as well as lines and lines of bookshelves. I found a spot all the way down the end and worked until it was time to walk to Notre Dame for Vespers.
I’ve visited Notre Dame before (I may even have recounted the visit on this blog), and I remembered waiting in line for a long time before being funnelled around with hordes of chattering tourists. It’s a beautiful building, but difficult to really take it in that way. This time I’d decided I’d attend a service, and found that there’s a separate, very short line to get in for ‘messe’ (mass) where they pretty much wave you straight through. Then you get to go into the main nave of the church and sit in the pews at the front and get more time to really appreciate the space and reflect. They have a service in Gregorian Chant on Sunday mornings, which I was not really ready for after my late night, so Vespers it was. The bishop (or at least, the most senior clergy person) came down the pews before the service, very smiley, welcoming people there, before returning to the chancel (front) for the readings and psalms.
We’d been given sheets with words and music in French and some Latin, and most of the service was based around singing from the congregation and the readers, though there was no choir. The organ rang out from behind us and it was quite an experience. After the service, I left the nave and joined the mass of tourists in the aisles (the tourists had continued walking through during the service, but because you were a bit away from them it didn’t detract from the atmosphere too much). I’d kept my camera in my bag for the service, but now I could take it out and take some photos.
There are a lot of creperies around here (as well as souvenir shops), so I got a banana Nutella crepe on my way back to the hostel, and ate it beside the Seine 😊
The next day I had to move to a hotel closer to the Gare de Lyon train station, so I spent a few hours working in a café there (with a really bad coffee…) before heading to the new hotel which had a CAT draped over one of the chairs in the reception room. I said hello to the cat, sorted my stuff and found a metro station that would take me to the Galeries Lafayette, which I’d seen a picture of and thought it would be a cool place to go.
The Galeries Lafayette is (are?) a MASSIVE department store, which had a sale on many many things including handbags. I like handbags. I managed to make my way through the 40% off handbag section (I do not need any more handbags, even if they are Gucci and 40% off) and found the main atrium, which is round with incredible gilt balconies going up about 8 floors, domed with a stained glass roof. I waited my turn to take a photo from one of the top balconies, and enjoyed some macarons with sparkly gold dust on them.
My next goal was the Eiffel Tower, where I have never been to the top floor. I braved roadworks, construction works (they’re making a really nice park with a little waterfall, a bit like Versailles, beside the tower), the security line and then the main ticket line (all the while reading my ‘traduit de l’americain’ book) to find that the top floor was closed… So I left the ticket line and walked along the Champs de Mars instead, had Vietnamese for dinner and went to bed early to get up for my 6.30am TGV (train à grand vitesse/high speed train) the next morning… which I caught!
The TGV took me through the Alps to Turin, where I had lunch and caught another train to Venice… which is for the next post 😊

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.