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.

Copenhagen: city of rollercoasters

As a kiwi, we have very few rollercoasters to choose from - unless they've added some I don't know about, the Rainbow's End rollercoaster is the only one I can think of. Copenhagen has not just one amusement park, but two: one directly beside the central station (Tivoli) and one out in the forest (Bakken, the oldest amusement park in the world, since 1589). They both have multiple excellent rollercoasters, including some of the oldest in the world: Tivoli's is from 1914.

I spent my first evening in Copenhagen at Tivoli, wandering the park and going on as many rides as I could. The Daemon rollercoaster was probably my favourite, though the Odin Express rollercoaster, aimed at people under twelve, was actually pretty good too - every time you rolled through the station, the attendants waved at you and there was no line. I spent the whole time looking for the old wooden rollercoaster, and realised afterwards that I'd actually been on it; they've covered it in a mountain since I was last there, which was the original design.Walt Disney apparently came here and it helped inspire Disneyland, which you can really see with the beautifully tended gardens, fountains, little lakes and plethora of restaurants of all different types dotted amongst the rides and gardens. The evening was a good time to go, especially since it was still light at 11 when the park closed: shorter lines, and the view from the top of the rollercoaster with the towers of Copenhagen and the slowly-setting sun was breathtaking.

The following day, one of my lovely hosts met me in town after my morning canal cruise. She'd brought a Christiania bike with a box thing in the front of it, and a young Labrador she was looking after who was extremely well-behaved as we cycled through the streets, over bridges and to Christiania, a free town in the middle of Copenhagen where the police turn a blind eye to the selling of various things, much like Amsterdam. It's an incredible contrast between the extremely expensive townhouses and buildings on one side of the 'border' and the free streets, graffiti and jerry-rigged and repaired old buildings on the other, and amazing that they've been able to keep it free for so long right in the centre of Copenhagen.

It was over thirty degrees, very rare for Copenhagen, and we decided to cycle back into the older parts of the city and split ways at the Round Tower, which has an observatory at the top with a great view of Copenhagen. The dog and my guide cycled home into the cool and I walked up the tower on the wide path that winds around and around the core pillar of the tower. They have cycle races to the top, apparently, and you could easily take a horse up.

My last visit for the day was the new Danish Architecture Centre, which had a great exhibition about Danish housing. My plan for the next morning was to get up early and visit a few places in North Zealand (which, coincidentally, looks quite like New Zealand), but in the end I didn't reach my first stop, Frederiksborg Castle, until midday. It's a pretty impressive castle with a moat and richly decorated halls, a beautiful cathedral and paintings everywhere. It also serves as a history museum, taking you through Danish history for the past few centuries.

My plan after Frederiksborg was to go to Henlsingør (Elsinore) and Kronborg Castle where Shakespeare set Hamlet. There was trackworkwith the trains, however I managed to figure out a train-bus route that wouldn't take too long, and ran for the station to catch the first train. Then, a few stops into the journey, for some reason I got off the train... (I think lots of other people were getting off, so I thought I would too). Unfortunately there was no replacement bus service to Helsingør from there, so I did a bit of a tiki tour around the countryside on different buses, deciding in the end to just go straight to Louisiana Art Museum (excellent) which was my final planned stop. I'll have to go back to Helsingør next time I'm in Denmark...

I met my hosts at Bakken for dinner (which included kangaroo), and convinced everyone to go on the 1930s wooden rollercoaster, which was really good too. So, all up, my Denmark rollercoaster tally is four. We walked back through the king's former hunting grounds and saw some deer in the dusk light.

On my way to the airport my last day in Copenhagen, I stopped at the 8 House to walk up and take photos from the top. It's an apartment building in the shape of a figure 8 where many of the apartments open right onto the path that winds its way all the way up to the top, which was pretty cool to see. And then I found my way to the airport, where I was onto Paris... it would have been nice to stay a little longer in Denmark I think. Next time!

Sweden! Uppsala

I'm sitting in a train on the way to Stockholm after spending the week in Uppsala, a small city north of Stockholm. It's just past midsummer, so it never really gets dark and - OH I JUST SAW A STEAM TRAIN, puffing its way across a bridge with olde carriages. Here is the steam train:

Now we are going really fast past a lot of fields, definitely faster than Sydney trains and much faster than NZ trains. Anyway, I’ve been in Uppsala at a conference (which was good), and in the meantime have been wandering around the older parts of the city, which has a canal, lots of cobblestones, many many bikes and very few cars. We had 30 degrees ones day, which I was not prepared for, but then it fell to 17 the next day so I suppose it balanced out.

Uppsala also has the largest cathedral in Scandinavia, with construction starting in the 13th century and several rebuilds since. The stone interior has been painted with beautiful repeating patterns of flowers and other motifs, different in every small chapel to the sides of the cathedral, which at first I thought was original, but then found out it was repainted in the twentieth century, so more in the spirit of the original. It made me think about buildings as living, and wonder why many of the buildings from the English reformation haven't been renewed - perhaps to do with continuity of use and political stability, as well as displaying the scars of the past.

Eating out in Sweden is quite expensive, apparently due to the high tax on luxuries. There are lots of restaurants beside the canal that runs through the city, looking out to the water and the small bridges that cross, some decked out with flowers. The route from my hotel to the conference venue took me along the canal, beneath the castle (pink), along cobbled streets around the cathedral, and past some grand old apartment houses (one painted sky blue). People in Sweden tend to live in apartment houses in cities in Sweden, with parks nearby and a very compact form with fields not far from the centre of town. There are trees everywhere and rough paths through the parks which gives everything a sort of half-wild quality. Linnæus of the botanical scientific naming system lived and worked in Uppsala, so there are lots of references to him - cafés, a tourist walk, and of course his house and garden. We went through the garden beds where he cultivated a whole host of different plants, for instance about ten types of thistle in one bed, laid out by genus and Latin name.

Dinner one night was in the state hall at the castle, which we found out later is not generally accessible to the public. It's a huge space, with a musicians gallery around one corner, and long tables with candelabra. The waiters were extremely well-rehearsed, at one point carrying in silver platters of icecream over one shoulder, turning to stand in a line with military precision and lighting the flares sticking out of the icecream. We were also treated to some musical comedy (spex) by a male choir with their mascot, Flora the cow skull. They'd chatted to one of my colleagues outside and now asked for her to come up to the stage so they could sing her a love song, but she hid so they asked for volunteers, and ended up singing their song to a guy, with much feeling.

As I write this last bit I'm in a train on the way to Copenhagen at 200km an hour, passing fields and forests, red farmhouses and little lakes. The weather's beautiful, with blue skies and a crisp morning. I'll get onto my Stockholm adventures in the next post :)

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...

Sydney to Shanghai: the plane, Xintiandi and the Bund

Every few years I do another post saying 'Wow! It's been X years since I last posted! I should do more on this blog!' So here's the latest one. :)

Wow! It's been 5 years since I last posted! I'm on my way to Europe via Shanghai for a conference in Sweden and roadtripping with my bro and his beau and friend, so I thought it'd be good opportunity to document some stuff :) I went to the US for the first time in the middle of last year, and Austria in November/December (coincidentally, about the same time I was there in 2012) but the travel diaries from there are on paper and scrivener... such as I did them.

In any case, I'm now sitting in my seat taxiiing down the runway in Sydney while the safety video plays and everyone ignores it. I was going to walk to the airport (I live half an hour walk from the Sydney International Terminal which is awesome!) but it was kind of raining and cold and my clothes are geared for summer so I took the 2 minute $18 train ride instead. I successfully checked in and notified the airline I'm doing a 144 hr TWOV in Shanghai (transit without visa), and have been reading the inflight magazine, which informs me that China Eastern now flys directly to Stockholm! Unfortunately I've booked with Air France, so will have to stopover at Charles de Gaulle... There's lots of interesting tourist information about Sweden though, with such gems as "A winter's day is long and cold in Sweden and life cannot be without cheese".

***

Almost there! I've watched Woman in Gold (excellent), Mermaid (a Chinese dramedy involving mermaids, also excellent in a very different way), done a reasonable amount of work and have been practising my Mandarin. So far I've got hello, thank you and good bye down, but still working on I'm sorry (duì bù qî) and 'how much is this?' (zhège duōshao qián?).

***

I successfully managed to get through the 144 hr visa queue and get my 'transit without visa' visa! Then, with the help of my friend Dr L on the other end of the phone, I managed to get a taxi to her place :) I found out from some small print on the back of my departure card that I needed to register myself as a temporary resident within the first 24 hrs, so our plan for Friday was to check out Xīntiandi and the police station, then the Bund and Oriental Pearl Tower.

After xiaolongbao and soy milk for breakfast, we took the subway to Xintiandi. This area is a former residential area of Shinkumen (stone gateway) houses which was redeveloped into a boutique-restaurant-cultural quarter, with the building that was the site of the first meeting of the Chinese communist party at one side. It's an incredibly successful development that with a mix of historic buildings and new additions, alleyways and hidden corners to explore. We had lunch at a nice Spanish place, then went to find a police station.

Registering as a temporary resident is something your hotel does for you if you stay in a hotel, but if you stay with a friend you need them to show proof they own the property you're staying in...! We think it's probably the same procedure as for long-term temporary residents, and they haven't caught up wth the new short transit visas. It was a bit of an adventure, because we had to go to the police station twice, once to find out all the documentation we needed and a second time to hand it all in, with photocopies. Then we retired to Dr L's and had hot chocolate before venturing out in the rain to the Bund.

The Bund is technically 33 buildings built in different European styles by invited architects, lining the west side of the Huangpu River. Reclamation in the last few decades created a wide promenade beside the water, from which you can look across the river to the newer Pudong district and see the Oriental Pearl Tower and Shanghai Tower (over 600m tall). It was just on dusk when we arrived, with light rain, and we wandered along the promenade admiring the brightly-lit older buildings on one side and the phantasmagorical light shows playing out on most of the modern buildings. Some of the buildings have advertisements, as if they're Times Square billboards at 100:1 scale, and some have beautiful patterns, like the building with a golden butterfly slowly moving its wings. We took the ferry across the river, which is a really good way to see the lights, especially given it's only 4 yuan, but halfway across the river, I realised I’d lost my camera somehow. Once we got to the other side, we asked the ticket office man to call back to the opposite bank ticket office, and waited while they checked to see if they could find it. Luckily, they did! I've now attached my camera to a lanyard, which makes me look more like a tourist, but at least I won't lose it. Though I probably shouldn't jinx it by saying that...

We met up with Mr Dr L on the Bund side of the river for Shanghai fried buns (really good) and dodged the rain (not very successfully) back to their place for the night. I got pretty excited in the metro, because they have flashy light displays on the tunnel walls that show ads as you're speeding past them. It must be something similar to a frisbee I had once where you could make it spell out your name as you threw it, but a lot more sophisticated... unfortunately it doesn't photograph or video well...

First ten days of Sydney: organising and wildlife

So I have a flat! I have a nice little almost-routine going with my university work and my looking-for-work work. I have a membership form for the library. I am waiting for my tax number. All those little things are slowly coming together.

I spent the first few days with my friend The Angel, and made great use of my unlimited travel card. I took the ferry out to Manly and sat in the sun to do readings, as well as check news sites to see exactly what had happened in Wellington with earthquakes (I'd heard some people on the ferry say 'earthquake' and 'Wellington', so thought I should check it out). On the way back the captain said to look out to the right of the boat, and there was a spout from an orca.

I found my flat over the weekend. It's not too far from the beach, and has lovely flatmates who make things like cauliflower-base pizza. On Monday I had a nice meetup with my friend the Pirate Pianist (complete with cutlass), last seen in Germany, and had dinner with Fifties Filmstar on Friday evening.

I've been on the lookout for wildlife - not because I want to see anything (you may remember my squirrel obsession in the UK), but because I don't want to see anything. Anywhere else, I'd pay the barest attention to ants. Here, I know that some ant species bite you really really badly, so I'm terrified when I see any. Ditto for spiders. And snakes? Urgh.

So far the worst I've seen is a dead cockroach (on the footpath) and a dead skink (also on the footpath).

Hopefully it'll stay that way. Not much wildlife in the big city, right?

 

Sydney Sydney Sydney

So I'm off again! This time, not so far away - Sydney, which is really just a quick hop from Auckland. Three hours rather than thirty, which I appreciate. I'm now sitting beside a large sculpture of an erupting volcano, listening to birds and tinkling water. Ooh, some chanting too. The lava changes colour from blue to purple to red and green. I have my suitcase-I-found-on-the-side-of-the-road-two-years-ago, which I predicted two years ago would not last much longer. Ha. It's been to Sydney, Tokyo, North London, Other North London, Greenwich, North London, Greenwich, North London, Greenwich, Auckland and back to Sydney (I used it to move house).

I should probably make my way to the gate, and see what China Air planes are like :)

Later...

It turns out that China Air isn't PRChina China, but Taiwan China. My plane was full of people going to Taipei via Sydney, and I'd checked in early enough to get a nice window seat (though of course by the time we lifted off it was dark and you couldn't really see much). After some trouble with my headphones (I was plugging them into the wrong armrest), I watched How to Train Your Dragon and Suits, and then we were landing through some pretty rough turbulence in Sydney.

My awesome friend The Angel picked me up and I found out just how terrible I am at passing along directions in a car. After a bit of circle-driving, we got back to her place and had a nice evening with movies and I tried to get used to Sydney time.

On Tuesday I took a few buses to university and enrolled, then wandered round the campus figuring out where things were. Enjoyed the weather, which was sunny and warm after the hail in Auckland. Later I ended up in town and we went to see a scary movie called The Conjuring, which did its job pretty well.

Hopefully sleep will come tonight....

Book #21: Brazil - The Summer Prince by Alaya Dawn Johnson

Round the World Wednesday! Is it still Wednesday anywhere in the world? No? Oh well. Today is Honorary Wednesday.

The Summer Prince is another of those books that evokes a place so viscerally that you think I want to go there, even if the 'there' is a few hundred years in the future, a parallel world or some undefined historical time. So, I'd like to go to Brazil now. I want to see Palmares Três, the jewel on the bay, the pyramid city of lights. Though possibly not with the bloodshed that goes with it.

The book is set in Brazil at least four hundred years in the future, where everything is life and death, love and hate, moving forward and holding back. The main character, June, is a young artist in a city ruled by grande women, where anyone below the age of thirty is not taken seriously. Every five years, the populace elects a king, and after a year of his rule, he chooses the next queen and is sacrificed. The system is quite logical, really - someone who is about to die is less likely to be swayed by politics.

It's an election year, but not just any election year. This year the king will be a waka, under thirty, and his sacrifice will serve only to continue the reign of the incumbent queen. He will have no true power to choose another queen, but for a year he will be the most priveleged of the youth of Palmares Três.

June votes for Enki, and is ecstatic when he wins. She's already half in love with him, but Enki falls in love with her best friend Gil and she's not quite sure where she stands. She throws herself into making Art, recognising that Enki is as much an artist as she with the way he moves and influences the crowds. They become collaborators on sensational projects, and Art is at its best when it creates a sensation. Or a revolution.

Enki is hurtling headlong towards death, but he is the most vital character in all senses of the word. He helps June understand what's important, and the reader along with her.

Palmares Três is most desperately, incredibly alive, with its dancing wakas and ritual sacrifice. I love the way Johnson communicates that, with the blocos and the graffiti and the secret ninja art projects. I also love the way she weaves Portuguese into the text, making it clear that English is a foreign language to her characters.


Any books you know and love that are set in Brazil?

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.

 

Lincoln and Burns Night

Why is it, whenever I try to catch a train, the buses and tubes unite against me and deliver me to the train station with breathless seconds to spare? I have not yet missed a train (touch wood), but pretty much all of them I've almost missed.

Today I am off to Lincoln. I've only got a few more weeks in the UK (I will return in September, if all goes well) and I've been squeezing as much as I can into them. This morning I was trying to make my room presentable for potential new flatmates, but I still left in good-ish time.

If only the bus had come when it said it was going to, not ten minutes later (they're supposed to come every five to eight minutes). If only I hadn't just missed the Jubilee train and had to wait four minutes for the next one (I've got used to tube trains every 1-2 minutes). If only the train hadn't been held at Canary Wharf to 'regulate the service'. If only I hadn't chosen the wrong door, adding precious seconds to my change at London Bridge. If only I hadn't missed the Northern Line train by five seconds, and had to wait five minutes for the next one. If only the driver of the Northern Line train hadn't decided to wait stupidly long at every station. By the time I got to Angel, I was convinced I was going to miss the train, so much so that I was a bit relieved I wouldn't have to run through the warren of King's Cross at high speed in my coat and backpack. There were four minutes until the train left, and I still had Euston to go before we got to King's Cross.

Or... not.

I'd mixed up King's Cross and Euston. King's Cross comes first. I sprinted off the train, trying not to collide with too many people, up the escalators, and the next escalators, and the next escalators. As I was reaching the top, the lady on the loudspeaker said that the next train to leave from platform 3 would be the 10.08 East Coast Service to Newark North Gate. My train! At least now I knew which platform, which is one of the things that takes up time to figure out.

I still only had about a minute left, and hadn't collected my tickets. I ran for a ticket machine, stabbed in my code and almost ran off with half my tickets before I remembered there were more to come. I followed the signs to platform 3, ran through the barriers (they were open, no need to figure out which ticket I had to stick in them! Hallelujah!) and skidded down the platform to the first open door (first class). I was on the train!

I was only 30s late, but the train was later. If it had been on time, I wouldn't have been able to catch it. Now we're speeding through snowy countryside with fields blanketed in white. In central London the snow has disappeared, but out here it's still a way from melting. Very pretty. And there are bunnies in the snowy white fields!

I stayed with my lovely hosts in a village a little outside Lincoln, beside a Roman archaeological dig. The smaller roads were very icy and we slid a bit at one point. Someone had tried to build an igloo using an umbrella as scaffolding, though it was only half-done.

Friday was Burns Night, when much of Scotland celebrates the life of Rabbie Burns and eats haggis. Though Lincoln is in England, my hosts have Scottish connections and were celebrating too. I had a great night, with Scottish smoked salmon, proper sheep's stomach haggis, neeps and tatties (turnips and potatoes). Though we didn't have a bagpiper, we had an iPod to pipe the haggis in, and the Ode to a Haggis (great chieftan o' the Puddin-race). To finish, there was cranachan and clootie pudding, and whisky, of course.

On Saturday we went for a turn around Lincoln. Lincoln Cathedral is one of the largest (if not the largest?) Norman cathedrals, and is set high on a hill looking over everything. It's fantastic coming across the low hills towards it in a car, and it must have been incredible to be a pilgrim in the medieval times, approaching this colossal building on foot. The inside of the cathedral has beautiful vaulted ceilings and high windows. Footsteps echo and you can hear the stillness.

Right outside the cathedral is the castle, which was once used as a prison, and is in fact where the court house still is. It's having renovations at the moment, but when it's not you can walk all the way around the tops of the walls. Instead we walked some of the way down Steep Hill, an old medieval street with original buildings stepping down the hill. The shops along here are wonderful little boutiquey things with crafty jewellery and clothes and knickknacks that you could spend hours and hours in. We peered in a few, then went down into the main town for coffee in a half-timbered café on a bridge that has been open for business for about five hundred years. The beamed ceilings were low, the casement windows glinting in the light, and if you squinted a bit and imagined folk in doublets and hose you could almost believe you were in the sixteenth century.

There was a lovely winter barbeque for dinner, and soon it was time to get the train back to London. The rain had come in the night, and the fields were a patchwork of greens and browns, very different from the white landscape of Friday.

 

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.

 

Into the New Year

Christmas and New Year and the holidays that go with them are over for another year. The best thing about Northern Hemisphere Christmas is the lights - when it gets dark at 4pm, you can really get the full impact of all the twinkling, sparkling things. I may have mentioned that, this year, the Oxford Street lights were sponsored by Marmite. Here's proof:

The sad thing about Christmas lights is when they turn off. The twelve days of Christmas are over, and now many of the lights around London are hanging over the streets, dark and lonely-looking. Some places are ignoring tradition/superstition and keeping them on, however, which I think I like. Jermyn Street seems to be covering all bases (they've turned half theirs off) and a few arcades along Piccadilly are still fully bedecked. Christmas lights should be turned on as long as they're up - I know they have to come down some time, but they look much too sad hanging there in darkness.

I have many New Year goals to complete this year. I feel a bit like Schroedinger's cat at the moment - I still don't know whether I'll be living in NZ or the UK this year, so it's difficult to sit down to any one thing and forge ahead. Apart from writing, that is - that can be done anywhere (I tell myself I can write anywhere, including on the tube, and then still don't finish that project from 2010 that I've been meaning to complete for months).

On a side note, tomorrow the London Underground will turn 150. That is a very long time for an underground railroad. They're doing a commemorative journey with a steam train and one of the oldest electric trains still in service. Sadly, I won't be on the train (I considered it when I saw the article this morning, then reflected that a train like that doesn't have spare seats available the day before its journey). Happy Birthday London Underground, anyway!

 

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...