Hoping to Settle Soon

There hasn't been much news lately. It's more a calm-before-the-storm as we're waiting for some things to happen.

We put earnest money to let (rent) on a 3 bedroom semi-detached house in the California/Heath neighbourhood of Ipswich. References are in the process of being checked. We're also working to get Sarah enrolled in a neighbourhood school. We've already enrolled her in a swimming class. She'll be a Duckling starting this Saturday.

School starts next Tuesday for Sarah. It's unlikely we'll be in a house by then, so I'll probably be taking her. Our commute will look like this: bus to Colchester train station, 10-15 minutes, about £5 round trip; train from Colchester to Ipswich, about 15 minutes, about £10 round trip; and bus from the train station to her school, perhaps 20 minutes, £5 RT. In the meantime ... I'd probably hang out at coffee shops, the library, do research, whatever.

[I can write the pound symbol now ... ££££! The keyboard is a bit rearranged here; it took some getting used to. The shift key on the left is half-width because there's an extra key in that row, with the ~ and # on it. The Return key is also a bit further away so I kept mis-typing for a while. The £ is where the @ used to be; the @ is now above the ' on the adsf row. The " is above the 2; I can't remember what used to be there.]

Margo is mostly in training these days. Sarah and I stopped by her office and got a look-see and met some of her workmates (the city park is almost across the street, so it was easy to stop by). Today was training for driving; her driving test is Friday.

Sarah and I spend our days hanging out, watching TV, going to the library, going to the park, and getting lunches and snacks.

Yesterday about ten boxes from Portland arrived. Mostly clothes for Margo, though I was reunited with a rugby shirt, so now when you see me in pictures you'll recognize me better.

We're looking forward to getting settled, so that we can cook for ourselves and wash our own clothes and all that.

Ipswich

It's been a few stressful days as we've begun to look for housing. We started with almost no context, so we've had a steep learning curve. We didn't even know what we needed at first. And there's a lot of local information to be learned - where the good and bad neighbourhoods are; how well-served a community is by bus and train. But every person we talk to is giving us a better picture of what to expect and how things are.

That said, I'm pretty sure we're going to live in Ipswich, for a number of reasons:

- Availability. Looking for furnished housing in the Colchester area got us just a few matches; in Ipswich there are dozens of furnished houses and flats, and landlords are almost always willing to furnish an unfurnished property, adding just 50-100 pounds per month to the rent.

- Affordability. Ipswich rents are maybe 20% lower than in the Colchester area. Rents go down in distance away from London, and this is east of both Colchester and London.

- Distance from Colchester. This puts us not only in a different city, so we don't have to worry about Sarah being classmates with some of Margo's clients; we're even in a different council (Suffolk instead of Essex). Yet we're still a half-hour drive away along a major road (not a freeway - a "dual carriageway"), about the same distance as most other communities around Colchester (Sudbury, Coggleshall/Braintree, Harwich, Clacton, Chelmsford/Witham).

- Rail proximity. Where Colchester is 50 minutes from London, Ipswich is only 10 minutes further. It's on the main line, and it's one of the express stops, which makes it far faster than any of the other communities nearby, barring the ones earlier up the line (Chelmsford, Marks Tey). I probably won't be able to walk to the station, but there is excellent bus service.

- City size. Ipswich is larger than Colchester, which gives us more opportunities for dining, culture, shopping, and entertainment. Sarah will have more opportunities to make friends. I'll have more coffee shops, record stores, newsstands, and pubs to explore. Ipswich also has a large port and marina on the river cutting through town, yet is not far from the coast; most of the other nearby communities don't have this.

- Contracting opportunities. I've found several contracts in Ipswich that I'd qualify for; none of the nearby communities do. If I'm fortunate, I may never have to commute to London.

The only downside we can think of is that, with a larger city and more available schools, there will be more variety in school performance across schools, and it's unlikely that Sarah can be placed in one of the better ones on such short notice.

We're scheduled to look at several properties this Saturday, and with all the available choices, we're feeling pretty good that we'll have a new address soon.

Nintendo

Just like our iPod, our Nintendo DS handheld gaming console is proving indispensable. Sometimes when we're travelling with Sarah ... well, usually all the time ... I dream of being able to just inject her with something, knock her out, put her into a big bag, and tote her along with the rest of the luggage. She'd stay still and not kick the seats or climb every climbable object. She wouldn't have to go potty at the worst imaginable times. She wouldn't pester us with superhero trivia or ask us to perform every conceivable task for her, from opening a packet of marmalade to tying her shoes for the 12th time that day.

But barring the induction of a coma, the Nintendo comes a close second. Open the case, and our daughter becomes a zombie. Catatonia is immediate.

However, I am impressed at how quickly Sarah learns, and how much effort she puts into her progress. Her favourite game is Super Mario Brothers, and I am coming to greatly admire the game's designers. There's a lot of psychology behind a fun game. You have to carefully place rewards so that they're not too frequent or too seldom. I also look at the level design, how new tools are introduced, and the challenges gently increase in difficulty, first demonstrating the use of the new tool, then forcing your increasingly able use of it.

Granted, this may not make her a better student, but I'm sure it is helping her brain development, and certainly her eye-hand coordination. I'm also considering getting the newer Brain Age game that involves fun exercises in mathematics, logic, and other pursuits.

The Nintendo also gives us lots of leverage over Sarah's behaviour. It's a great reward, and we've only had to take it away once so far.

Who would think you could get so much use from a lightweight little white box?

Dining

You might think it's an unusual thing to complain about, but we're getting tired of dining out all the time. We look forward to having a kitchen of our own. For one, we're still paying with dollars, so whatever the listed price is, we know we're paying almost double in dollars, and the prices here aren't much lower. Dinners are generally 7 to 15 pounds per person.

But the bigger difficulty is finding a place for dinner. Breakfasts are taken care of, of course: staying at bed & breakfasts as we've been, we've come to expect the standard English breakfast across the UK. It's a great start to the day. Lunches are easy because the High Streets of cities everywhere are full of great options.

But come dinnertime, the available choices dwindle rapidly. At 5pm the High Streets empty as shops, and all the family-friendly restaurants, close up. Most places that do serve dinner don't start serving until 5.30 or 6, so you briefly enter a no-man's-land of hunger.

And when dinner is served, we've found our options are very limited. Things seem to fall into these categories:

- Pubs. This is by far the largest category. Entering a pub, the atmosphere will be universally smoky. There may be a nonsmoking section. If we pass this hurdle, we see if children are allowed. Then we see if dinner is being served; often there's no dinner on certain nights of the week. When we do get dinner, it will be hasty: fish and chips that were frozen and dropped in a deep frier; peas that may have been microwaved; and perhaps a few shreds of iceberg lettuce and a few veggies. But there's cider on tap, and if we're lucky, a non-lager beer with some substance to it.

- Chippies. Fish and chips for take-home only. We haven't tried this yet; it's difficult to eat take-out in a B & B as you have no table, chairs, dishes, nor silverware.

- Proper restaurants. So far these are almost always Indian, Chinese, or perhaps Italian. There's no smoking and the food is great, but this is an expensive option so we do it sparingly. They're usually a decent walk also.

- American restaurants like McDonalds, Pizza Hut, Burger King. There's usually no smoking, the food is inexpensive, and we can occasionally get a drink (for example, cheap wine at Pizza Hut), but the food is crap and we try to avoid it. We went to a Pizza Hut last night, and Margo and I both lost sleep due to indigestion.

- Another option we're looking at is getting deli food before closing time (5-6 pm). This is moderately inexpensive, fresh, and healthy, and we can buy our own bottles/cans of drink. We'll try this tonight, I think.

House Hunting

Now we're on our next step - finding a flat of our own. We've been sharing the same room for over a month now, so it will be great to have luxuries like: a quiet place to read ... a room we can send Sarah for a time-out when she's crabby ... a real desk ... and all the broadband we can eat.

Yesterday Margo was strongly advised by her coworkers that we not live in Colchester. It's not such a small town and her face will be known soon enough. Clients can be verbally abusive; even staff translators have had bad incidents. So we're looking into some of the smaller communities nearby, or perhaps even Ipswich which is further northeast and a larger city. We're looking for something that's a close car commute for Margo but also near a train station so that I can commute to London or Ipswich. We also want a furnished flat - it would be silly for us to buy roomfuls of furniture because we'd get killed spending dollars, and then we'd have the pain of liquidating it when we leave, and we're still sore from just doing it in Portland.

So Sarah and I will be pounding the pavement visiting lettings agents to find good matches. Fortunately we're a short walk from a dozen or more offices so it's easy work.

I like Colchester a lot, though. I swear there must be a hundred pubs and restaurants here in the town centre, and lots and lots of shopping. There's also a great 23-acre park that includes a castle and cricket ground. Sarah and I are next off to a swimming centre that includes a kids' play area.

Colchester

We take the train to Colchester today. Our vacation is over; Margo starts working tomorrow. Hopefully we'll have good Internet access; we'll try to write soon.

Why My Day was Rubbish

Today Margo decided she and Sarah would sleep in and do some cocooning in the rain, so I had a day to myself, in London, with virtually unlimited resources. And I utterly wasted it because I didn't know what to do.

Well, I had some ideas, but they turned out to be rubbish. I started going ... hmm, where to next? I ended up going to Piccadilly Circus and a Starbucks, where I had a drink I like, the white chocolate mocha. And you know what? It was exactly the same as it was in Portland and Seattle and everywhere else. Why should I expect it to be any different?

Then I decided to head to the Thames south bank near the Millennium Dome to see The Dali Experience. A museum of the works of Salvador Dali. Containing 500 originals.

Rubbish.

I kind of suspected as much since it charges admission (and a hefty one too: 12 pounds for an adult, probably $22). And it was part of this ring of attractions you could get discounts to if you had this certain tourist map which our bed & breakfast gave us. So it was fishy to begin with. But the items in this "museum" were mostly line drawings, as opposed to fully-fledged paintings ... and most, perhaps all, were reproductions, albeit many were signed. There were sculptures too ... but guess what? Once a mold is made, you can make as many copies as you want, so I'm guessing these were copies too. And there were none of the trippy, photorealistic paintings that I'd bought posters for decades ago whilst still a lad at University in Madison. So at this point I was feeling rather a chump. If you were to look closely at my forehead, you might have seen some light bruising, deep in the epidermis, starting to form the shape of the letter "L".

Desperately seeking a better activity, I remembered that I had a slight interest in seeing the Notting Hill neighbourhood, so I popped into the Tube and made my way to a station intersecting the Central line, where I'd hoped to make it to the Notting Hill Gate station. No such luck - being a Saturday, there was scheduled work on that line, so stations were closed after Marble Arch. And I'd already passed my earlier opportunity to take the Circle or District lines, and I thought I'd heard the Circle also had some closures. So. Where next?

I ended up going to Oxford Circus, then walking down Regent Street toward Piccadilly Circus. I passed the Apple Store and stopped in. I'll be buying an iMac soon. I had a few questions, like is it better to buy here and schlep the box to Colchester, or have it delivered instead, or order online? and is there any way I can reasonably avoid paying the value-added tax even though I'll be living here and my daughter will be going to school, or will you at least listen to my whining about my having to pay about $2000 for a computer that would only cost $1200 in the States, but I couldn't use it anyway because it would have a Region 1 DVD player and no UK power adapter, because the Dollar is so stinking weak against the Pound? But none of the black-T-shirted hipper-than-me salespeople were available to listen to my pointless rants anyway, so I walked onward.

At Piccadilly Circus, I passed the same Starbucks where I'd been in the morning (and no doubt the sales staff noticed the increasingly darkening "L" on my forehead) and changed direction to Leicester Square with the intent of getting a bite to eat and perhaps seeing a film at the cinema. So that's where I headed.

Once reaching Leicester Square, I surveyed the three cineplexes and settled on seeing an afternoon matinee of Miami Vice. I found it at one, but it wasn't showing until 14:00, and it was only 12:30, and I thought "3:30 in the afternoon? Maybe I'll come back later."

So I ended up going to another in a chain of restaurants I'd eaten at earlier. The name escapes me, but I went there because I wanted a pint plus a decent meal in a non-smoking, family-friendly environment. Unlike in Scotland (and probably Wales, at least in our experience), smoking is still allowed in public places in England, which means most pubs are smoky, so it's a challenge to find a breathable place to get a pint. I think this will be short-lived, but it's a pain in the meantime. At any rate, this time I noticed the restaurant aims to bring the diner the best of American and British Cuisine, and I realized I was in a slightly different TGIFridays. The "L" on my forehead darkened. It actually started throbbing when I ordered a full fish-and-chips entree instead of the bite I'd intended, as I wasn't even that hungry.

Then I made the "L"-darkening realisation that 14:00 is actually 2 in the afternoon, giving me less than an hour until the movie. So at least I could hang out. After paying much more than I'd intended for lunch, I went to the cinema and bought a ticket.

At this point, I still had half an hour to kill, so I wandered the square, considering getting another pint but ending up in an ice cream shop. And did I buy my single scoop? No, I settled on a Large dish, which ends up being two scoops. Plenty more dairy than I was expecting. The "L" began to throb and turn red.

Then I strolled to the Cinema. Oh, did I mention the price? I think it was 9 pounds 50 pence. Which is like $19. For a matinee.

It was a relief that the cinema was not showing those annoying advert slides before the start. I was sure that there would be no commercials. But I was wrong. There were probably five. But at least they were clever. And then the onslaught of trailers.

The sound was loud, but I figured they'd turn it down once the movie started. I was wrong.

Why Miami Vice? I thought it would be kind of cool, a pleasant diversion. I enjoyed Michael Mann's previous films, especially Heat, and Collateral wasn't too bad.

But since I was having a rubbish day, I'll tell you why this film was rubbish too. How rubbish? Let me count the ways.

• When Sonny and Ricardo go undercover, is it me, or do they not change their names? Hmm, if I were a bad guy and wanted to punish them (and they do), where would I go? Um, perhaps the phone book?


• I'm sure it's been noted before, but how does a police officer afford enough to own a Ferrari? And the way he drives it, how does he keep it in such great shape?
  


• Sonny decides to pursue the woman he's working for undercover. So he takes her for a ride in a speedboat. To another country. Overnight. They dance and make out. But poor Tubbs? Isn't he rather left hanging, having to smuggle drugs by himself and all? And what about their undercover operation? You mean, nobody misses both the undercover drug smuggler, and his boss?


• And why is she attracted to him anyway, with that long hair, mustache and stubble? He could be a roadie for Lynrd Skynrd. Putting him in a suit doesn't help much.
  


• Later, the woman states to Sonny that she wouldn't want to give up what they have. Which is a dance and a sleepover. Okay? That's a good weekend for a teenager. Maybe they should be aiming a bit higher?


• Everyone uses cell phones. No land lines. While they're "undercover", working with bad guys who can trigger bombs via cell phones, who have CCTV cameras in other countries, don't these guys realise that by using a mobile, they're practically advertising their coordinates?


• All of the police on the team are expert marksmen. And expert drivers. And expert speedboaters. And they must all have pilot's licenses. And I realized when Sonny is dancing with his woman ... he must have, at some point in his life, taken on the incredibly uncool act (which is surprisingly not in the film) of taking dancing lessons. Yep, just imagine it. Sonny driving his Ferrari to some little walk-up studio after work, and going one-two-three-kick, or some such.
  


• Why do they meet on rooftops? Where not only satellites, but even the guys in the offices next door, can see exactly what they're doing?


• So there's a big shootout, and Sonny decides to take his lover, who happens to be an international criminal, away. So she can be free. Despite his being a detective and all. So anyway if you can get past his willingness to jeaopardize his career for a woman he had a nice night with ... he thinks, hmm, maybe I can get her out of this. So he just takes the ride of one of his partners. Some Euro sports car I couldn't even place, which even the Chief couldn't afford. Didn't even leave a note. And how did his partners go home? They came to the drop site in two cars. One (the one Sonny and Ricardo came in, a fine white BMW) was shot to pieces. So ... doesn't he kind of leave them in a bad place? In a shootout? What, are they taking cabs home?


• So he takes this woman to a hideout. An old Art Deco mansion, by the looks of it. On the waterfront of course. And it seems he doesn't even have a key for it. What, no one's sleeping there already? No graffiti on the walls? Nah. His fridge is probably perfectly stocked.

So in the shootout the sound was loud enough that I could feel the ricochets in the floor. I'm practically in a fight-or-flight response. So when the movie ends, and I stumble out into the sunshine on Leicester Square, it's a relief that I'm not in America, and that it's unlikely that any of these people will be shooting at me.

And by now I'm trying not to think of how much money and time I've wasted on this crap, rubbish day. The "L" is pulsing, a vibrant purple. I cut my losses and head back to our room.

Tower Bridge and Monument

Today we split up again. After breakfast, Margo went out to Colchester to get the lay of the land, while Sarah and I went out.

We got off the Tube at the Tower Hill station and crossed the Tower Bridge.



Across the Thames we made our way to the London Design Museum to see an exhibit on 50 years of Formula One racecar design. There were half a dozen F1 cars from the 1950s onward to a 2004 Ferrari and included a partially exploded Renault. We also saw the other exhibit, a historical retrospective of British design. A highlight for me were excerpts from Factory Records and the Hacienda nightclub of 80s Manchester; included were the album covers for New Order's Blue Monday single and the albums Power, Corruption and Lies and Technique, plus an early poster by Peter Saville for Tony Wilson promoting concerts by the Durutti Column and Joy Division, possibly their first collaboration. If this isn't absolute geekery to you, you might enjoy watching the Factory story in the film 24 Hour Party People.

Next, we returned to the Tower Bridge. There's a tourist exhibit in the upper levels; currently they're featuring Victorian children's games like marbles and tiddlywinks and hopscotch. Here's Sarah.



Can you see this coming? Top of the Tower. Nyuk nyuk.

Here's a westward view of the Thames from the top, and if you've a keen eye, you'll discern our next destination: the gold-topped Monument, to the right of St. Paul's dome.



But first we worked our way along the south bank of the Thames, stopping for lunch in a French cafe. Then we crossed the London Bridge, which despite what the song says, was not falling down, and we reached the Monument. We paid the fare and started climbing the 311 steps of the spiral inside the column. It was a bit freaky because the centre of the spiral was open space. We were no less scared when we reached the top because, despite the bars, you're still in the open air atop a really tall column.



We made our way around, staying close to the inside, then back down. We decided what to do next and I planned an Underground route to Hyde Park. We got off at Hyde Park Corner station, but unfortunately this corner also abuts a corner of Green Park, so once we went under Wellington's Arch I saw we were in the wrong area, but we strolled on anyway for a while, coming close to one of the Buckingham Palace entrances, before turning back as it started to rain heavily. Then we regained the Tube and rode it back to Kings Cross, ending one more outing for us.

Newspapers

We're really enjoying the newspapers here. We seem to get a lot more mileage from reading a paper - it takes longer to get through and we enjoy the stories more. It seems one's never far from a shop selling papers. And since we'll often grab one lying around when we eat or ride the train, it's interesting to read the same stories several times.

We're getting to know and enjoy several of the national papers, including The Guardian, The Independent, and The Times (for which the Times New Roman typeface was created). On the other hand, we're also getting to know tabloids like The Sun and its page three girls. We've also found the local papers to be very enjoyable and well-written.

Tower of London and Trafalgar Square

Our morning was spent at the Tower of London at one side of the Tower Bridge. It's 18.5 acres ... it houses the Crown Jewels ... and has seen historical battles and housed kings.

We got there not long after opening, following published advice to avoid big crowds. We wanted to see the guided tour but had about an hour to kill beforehand so we spent some time wandering the grounds and taking pictures. Like this one with Sarah and a Beefeater.



And with a bear. (Aw, isn't she cute?)



Then we saw the Crown Jewels. First we saw a bunch of things made out of gold, some from as long ago as the 1600s: mace, horns, swords. Then we passed through the door of a vault and saw heavily-jewelled crowns, sceptres, orbs, coronation spoons, robes, stoles and spurs, plus more gold: dishes, flagons, chalices, and a massive punch bowl. No pictures were allowed, of course.

Then we started our tour, but the group was so large that once we moved, we could barely hear the speaker, so we split off. So we went through an exhibit on the castle. Here's me. It's good to be King.



Sarah and I climbed the inner wall and saw another exhibit on the process of making diamonds. One of the crowns had its diamonds removed; its count was 12,314! It was like two sugarbowls upturned. There were also reproductions of the Cullinan diamonds. The first cut yielded a diamond of 530 carats.

That rounded our morning out. We got a snack at a cafe, then decided to take a cab to our next destination, the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, as the Underground would have taken multiple lines and it had begun raining. We were treated to a lively monologue from our Cockney cabbie. It was nonstop. Margo loved it.

So first we toured the National Gallery. Now, I'll be the first to admit that my tastes in art are rather plebian, and that this gallery has the good stuff. Margo was into it: she got an audio guide right away. However, when touring the first two rooms took ten minutes apiece, and there are about 40 rooms, I thought Sarah and I might skip out a bit, except Sarah wanted to stay, so I got a bite to eat, then popped up to Haymarket and Leicester Square to do some exploring. I mean, you can only see so many angels and cherubs and Madonnas at a time, you know?

An hour or so later, I thought I'd regain the gallery and start working backward from the 1900s hoping to run into them. I didn't since they were in the cafe. But I got to see lots more naked chubby Europeans so it wasn't so bad.

Then when Margo had had her share of ancient, obsolete art, we went out to Trafalgar Square to hang out and get some pictures. Now here's the caption you've been waiting for. It's Nelson's Column! Plus some other guy on a pole.



Then Sarah got to climb and hang with one of the lions.



Here's a shot that shows a bit more of Trafalgar Square, with the National Gallery in the background.



And that's about all that was noteworthy today. Our vacation days are running out (only three left!) so we're getting anxious to get back to the mundane world of work and school and such.

More Random Bits

Yesterday's tour guide claimed that the Thames is the cleanest river in Europe. But as you've probably noted, it's nearly chocolate-milk brown. Why? Sediment, he claimed.

There were some concrete barges on the Thames. Concrete all the way to the bottom. They were put there as decoys during the Second World War.

Today I saw something else interesting on the Thames: a big box with a grate, with a sign on the side saying "I Eat Rubbish!" and noticing how many tonnes of trash it removes from the river annually.

Yesterday both Margo and I noticed black bits in our noses. Guess the air's not so clean then.

Both Margo and I have taken to cider. It's pretty common here. There will usually be at least one tap in a pub, usually Strongbow, though there are some artisan ciders too. It goes with anything, in a way. I mean, you wouldn't get a lager with, say, a salad; nor would you order a Merlot with fish and chips. But cider can do with almost any dish, or with no dish at all. Such a happy drink.

From TV and movies, I was expecting the sirens here to go "nee-noo, nee-noo", but they don't. They go a faster "wah-oo wah-oo wah-oo" instead, like in the States. Police wear yellow vests. Bright, fluorescent yellow.

I saw a building under construction today. It was wrapped in basically a large illustration of what the building will eventually become (in this case, a condo tower). If you're sharp-eyed, you may have noticed the same in the front of the picture of St. Paul's Cathedral earlier: everything below the dome is actually a big wrap illustration. I think that's clever.

Tate Modern and St. Paul's

Today's focus for me was further down the Thames. We split up for the morning, with Margo and Sarah tubing off to Buckingham Palace to visit the Royal Mews, where the ... uh ... horses and carriages are. For the Royals. Perhaps Margo will grace us with a detailed description in the near future.

I, on the other hand, had a different agenda. My first Tube stop was the London Bridge station. I immediately found its namesake and began crossing it. Here is a view looking east toward the Tower Bridge (which we plan to visit tomorrow):



[I have to jump to the present for a moment. I'm writing this on Margo's laptop on bed ... and what are Margo and Sarah doing? Watching the telly. What's on? Or, what did they choose? It's Pimp My Ride UK. Really. Margo keeps laughing. It's distracting. I'm trying to write while some bloke is complaining about the difficulty in finding an appropriate hearse to pimp out.]

So. I hiked around the north bank of the Thames for a while until I found the Millennium Bridge. And nearby I was able to take this picture, of the Tate Modern museum and the Millennium Bridge, together. That's two more items off my to-do list then.



So. The Tate Modern. Well, again, it's a modern art museum, so there are those head-scratching exhibits that make you wonder, why are they committing valuable gallery space to this? Here are my favourites in this category:

- An actual gallery (albeit very tiny) named "The Wrong Gallery" which consists of a CD player, amplifier, and speaker. Playing a recording. Of a guy blowing raspberries.

- "Fountain" by Marcel Duchamp. It's just a urinal bowl. Really. That's it.

- "Grey" by Gerhard Richter. It's a large canvas, painted ... one single shade ... of grey. No colours, you see. But reading the note, it turns out he made three in the series, and found he liked one more than the others, so that's its importance. Do you get it now? Do you?

Okay, that easy target being thoroughly splintered, I did immensely enjoy the wing containing Surrealism. It's what I look for first in modern art museums, and this has a great collection. Why Surrealism? I love the imagination. And as I visit more and read and learn more, I see it's an attempt to channel the "uncensored creative impulses of the subconscious". It's no coincidence Freud's analysis of dreams immediately presaged the movement. I also like the grounding in reality, in that many of the images can be photo-realistic, showcasing genuine talent, yet completely unreal.

So there were many examples you'd expect by the likes of Dali, Miro, Magritte, Picasso and others. (I was also chuffed to see Dali's 'Metamorphosis of Narcissus', which graced the cover of a coffee-table book on Dali I got years ago.) But I was also introduced to several artists I enjoyed: Yves Tanguy, Ithell Colquhoum, Max Ernst, Pierre Roy, and David Gascone.

Then I had a cider in the top-floor lounge, enjoying a great view of the Thames and St. Paul's Cathedral across the way, while phoning Margo and planning our next adventure: St. Paul's.



We met on the steps and entered. It's amazing inside. Incredible heights. But we couldn't take pictures, so follow that link I added earlier. Margo wanted to look at the monuments in the tombs, and Sarah and I went to climb to the upper galleries.

We started in the Whispering Gallery (30m), which is so acoustically perfectly round that you can supposedly hear a whispered conversation on the opposite side of the dome. Sarah and I couldn't. Which is just as well because she was just calling me a spanking head anyway.

Then we climbed up to the Stone Gallery (53m) on the outside of the dome. But Sarah didn't want to stop to enjoy the view: we went onward toward the Golden Gallery (85m). Now, seeing this small rictus near the top of the dome from below, I knew I'd be freaked out to actually be there, and have this huge gaping void underneath me. But Sarah wanted to go on, so up we went ... until Sarah got freaked out, because at this point, the stairs were not inside a tight stone column, but instead on steel spirals in a fairly large space, so that once you got up five or six stories and saw so much beneath you, it was pretty chilly. So we went back down to the Stone Gallery, where I got this photo:



And Sarah played hide-and-seek with me from column to column. Here's where I found her:



So we made our way down and met Margo in the crypts. I have to say, the name Nelson carries a bit of weight around here. One wing of the crypt was named as we are, and in the centre were the remains (supposedly underneath an exquisite sculpture) of Nelson himself. Nearby were Churchill, Florence Nightingale, and the Duke of Wellington.

So we went to the nearby cafe for a spot of lunch, then back to the B & B for a nap, then dinner at a nearby pub. And that, Dear Reader, was our Wednesday.

Waterloo and Westminster

After breakfast and dropping off laundry, our first task was to get comfortable using the London Underground. At our nearby Kings Cross station, we purchased Oyster cards, which let us pay as we go, and charges stop when we meet our daily maximum. After a false start, we made the journey across two lines to the Waterloo station, close to the Thames, the London Eye, and across the river from Parliament.



But first we took a bus tour. And not just any bus - these were water ducks, refurbished military vehicles that drive on land with six wheels plus go amphibious into the water.



The gentleman in front with the frizzy hair gave a cheeky narrative to the tour. I tried to take decent pictures but they're all rubbish because of the motion. Because I was so distracted with the camera, I wasn't following our route at all, though we did see lots of things, like some of the entrances to Buckingham Palace, Westminster, the buildings housing MI5 and MI6, Downing Street, Trafalgar Square, and lots of other things I wish I could remember.

Then we took our turn in the London Eye, that big Ferris wheel that's the number two tourist attraction in Europe. (What's the first? Margo guesses The Louvre.) The Eye takes exactly 30 minutes to make a full rotation. Here are some pictures.





Then we took the Tube to Piccadilly Circus to visit a tourist information centre.



Margo got some tickets for other attractions, which will save us time waiting in queues.

By this time it was late afternoon. We split up so that Margo could take in an evenmass choir performance at Westminster Abbey.

First Night in London

I know I mentioned we're excited to be here ... but we're in LONDON! There's so much we want to see and do, and so much history here that it's got us all worked up. Well, Margo and I anyway.

First, of course, we checked into our bed & breakfast. Our room is on the top floor. Here's a look:



Then we went out to dinner, an Italian place (a local chain, I think) named Pizza Express, just down the main road from us on Euston Street. If you look closely, you can see across the street some of the lettering on the building: the British Library, which (Margo says) contains works like Shakespeare's folio and a copy of the Magna Carta.



And walking back, next to the British Library? Check out this magnificent edifice. Know what it is? A train station. There's probably more to it, of course, but if you look at the main entry, the only sign of its purpose is its name: the St. Pancras Station.



Isn't it gorgeous? We're stupid in love so far. Oh, and guess what's next door to that? Right across the main street from the street we're staying on? It's our closest London Underground station ... Kings Cross.



And now ... Sarah's watching the telly, Margo is going through guidebooks to help plan our days, and I'm eating treats from the Cadbury factory and sipping Scotch. Try not to hate us too much. After all, a week from today, Margo will have finished her first day of work, and this is the last leg of our vacation, so we're enjoying it as much as we can.

We've got a pretty full day planned tomorrow. We'll take lots of pictures.

Birmingham Pictures

We're in London! And we're really excited to be here. But first, here are some Birmingham pictures like I promised ...

This is the Bullring shopping centre, which claims 160 shops. But including other large shopping centres within a few blocks, plus the nearby shopping streets, I'd guess there's easily a thousand.



Here's one of the shopping streets, and some newer architecture behind it.



This is the city's main museum. I briefly toured it. It includes great collections of ceramic and glass art and Pre-Raphaelite paintings.



This is a walkway over a busy road. It heads towards some performance art centres and a large Ferris wheel.



And here's a picture of the canal that runs behind the Mailbox shopping centre.

Birmingham

It's been a few days so I'll start by catching up on them.

Saturday Sarah and Margo took a train out of Betws-y-Coed to tour a shale mine. Margo may write about it later. Apparently the shale roofing used across the UK since the Industrial Revolution came from these mines. I took time to do a bit more hiking and exploring and reading the extra-thick Saturday newspapers. There's especially been lots of analysis of the recent airline terrorism attempt.

Sunday was mostly a travel day as we took three separate train journeys to get to Birmingham. I have to say I've really been enjoying having an iPod on a train. It's a great balance of visual and audio stimulation. (Earlier, I really enjoyed steaming through the Scottish Highlands listening to some mid-period Depeche Mode, though I didn't think to play the Highland Mix of Stripped at the time. Sunday I started with selections from Alan Parsons' I Robot then moved on to some early Radiohead, then moving into some chillout with Recoil and Massive Attack.) When I first got the iPod, I thought it was a bit of an indulgence, sort of a mobile backup of our music collection, but I've really been enjoying its use.

Last night we stayed in the city centre in a very interesting hotel named nitenite. These were wee rooms! We got two, Sarah staying with me. The rooms and lounge were highly designed. The bathroom combines a shower stall with a sink and toilet, with a wall-length drain and brilliant fixtures. The rest of the room is a single bed/sofa and a tiny desk. There's no closet, nor even space to put luggage. There's no window either, but the 42" flat panel TV at the foot of the bed comes on by default to display a closed-circuit TV camera on the roof, which robotically pans to optimal positions every minute. I imagine it's ideal for business travellers, but it was a bit rough for us - both Margo and I had trouble sleeping; for me not having a window was disorienting, like being in a space station.

Last night we walked to an achingly hip nearby market called the Mailbox for dinner. Like Portland's Pearl district, there's a lot of industrial renovation where old buildings are terraformed into upscale condos and shopping. The area also had a canal running through it. I don't know about these canals yet. They appear to be manmade since the water level appears higher than the level of nearby streets. We saw some narrow houseboats and Venetian-style gondolas, plus some people fishing with identical long, black poles.

This morning Margo and Sarah took the train a bit out of town to see a Cadbury chocolate factory. I'm exploring the city. I'm writing from the public library; nitenite offered excellent wifi but at a fee, and its router apparently didn't even offer me an IP address when I attempted to use it. I'm taking some pictures as I go; I'll have to upload them later.

Birmingham is a growing city. There's a lot of new construction, and it is impressively modern. I started my walk through the Bullring shopping area, and it is overwhelming. More than just a mall, it's a collection of shopping arcades the likes of which I haven't seen anywhere. I'd think it might take days to get a good sense of it all. Many stores appear in multiple locations, within a block of each other, and it's all done in a very visually stimulating style with lots of atriums and glass.

I'm planning to go through a museum or two next (it's so great to have free admission). Later this afternoon we will regroup and go on to London.

Mountains and Valleys

Stuart and Emma, the proprietors of our bed and breakfast, have a 6 year old daughter, Katy, who has become fast friends with Sarah. Yesterday morning after breakfast, Sarah went with Katy to an arts and crafts class. I got an opportunity to explore town and do some hiking.



I thought this was an elegant solution to an interesting problem. Margo tells me that UK law allows anyone to (respectfully) roam through the countryside, so how does one cross fences without requiring gates? The upper ends work as handles as you climb over. I'm guessing the whole thing could be made in minutes with one or two pieces of wood.

Around lunchtime, we went into town and ate some patsys I'd picked up at a bakery earlier. Then we boarded a "Sherpa" bus to Llanberis, travelling through increasingly mountainous territory. Llanberis is the starting point for a touristy train going to the summit of a mountain, but the visibility was poor, and the price would have been substantially more than what we paid to see the top of the Empire State Building, so we passed on that. This is what our buses looked like.



Sarah and I sat on top in the front. It was kind of scary yet fun in a roller-coaster kind of way - all the swaying and bumping of the bus was amplified up top. The mountains are much smaller than we're used to in the Pacific Northwest, but there are no trees, so you can see everything, such as tiny sheep way overhead, or sometimes a human hiker.




When we returned to Betwys-Y-Coed, we split up with Margo hanging out in town and Sarah and I going back to our B & B.



Sarah and Katy reconnected and I took them back into town to have rides at a park.



Then we reconvened for dinner in town, where I finally found an English strong ale. This one was named "Old Speckled Hen" and I enjoyed it but not as much as the Llefe I'd had earlier.

Into Wales

We started today with an easy morning in Liverpool. After breakfast, we had time to lounge a bit before packing and taxiing to the train station. Today's ride was the most complex yet: three separate train rides.

Once we crossed into Wales we noticed a change in the signage at train stations: Welsh was above English. It's the first language here; many people speak nothing else. As a language, Welsh is related to Gaelic, and Margo says it predates many modern languages including German and French. And we're not even 100 miles from Liverpool.

We saw several castles on the ride over. We also saw several trailer parks. It was odd seeing trailer parks below a castle.

Tonight and the next two nights we're at a B & B in Betws-Y-Coed. I can't even pronounce it yet. It's probably the smallest town we've stayed in yet. Our B & B is a short walk outside town - to get here, we cross the train station, walk past a cemetery, cross a pedestrian-only suspension bridge over a river, then use a walkway between two pastures, cross a road, then walk up a short drive. The town is in a valley so we have lovely hills to look at. We're also close to the Snowdonia mountains (mountains being a relative term here), where we plan to travel tomorrow. There's also hiking trails a short distance from our B & B. Margo is looking forward to exploring some of the history and heritage of Wales nearby.

As much as I enjoy exploring the arts and culture of cities, I'm glad to be here in the country and look forward to seeing some natural beauty. This will also be our last stay in the country for a while; Birmingham and London are next.

Glasgow to Liverpool

This morning we checked out of our hotel and took a cab to Glasgow's Central Station today. The larger train stations so far have been gorgeous - I think they've all had glass ceilings. Here's a picture of Central. I love the information displays showing trains, destinations, and track numbers - they're huge!



So far we've been riding ScotRail but today we rode our first Virgin train, and it was pretty sweet. It was much quieter inside. Electrical outlets were provided. We'd reserved seats in advance, and above each seat row is an LED display showing the reservation, if there is one - a neat application. And it was fast! I knew it was an express train, but I was getting a bit freaked when it would rock back and forth on corners, wondering with my engineer's brain just how much of a push it would take to derail us.

When we crossed the border into England I started noticing subtle changes but about the only solid change I could mention is that there seems to be a lot more brick construction - much more brick colouring than stone.

We got off the main line and transferred to a train to Liverpool. In comparison, the train was a school bus: no amenities, no comfy seats, not even room for baggage.

Then we hailed a taxi for our next accommodations. Now about the taxis. So far they've all been alike. They look something like the Chrysler PT Cruiser, but are older. And where you'd have two rows of back seats, you have a real backseat plus two rear-facing chairs. The doors auto-lock when the cab moves.

We're staying right on the waterfront in a family-friendly hotel in the Albert Dock. This used to be a dock facility (warehouses and such) owned by Prince Albert. Now the insides are all modern mixed-use development.



And here's me on the Mersey. I was tired. Guess you could say I was Mersey beat. Nyuk nyuk.



And that's a strong wind, not bed head, mind you.

Since I was out for a walk, I also took in the Tate Liverpool since it had been, what, a day since seeing modern art. And it was right there on the waterfront.

Here's a picture showing a bit of the skyline. The construction cranes are for lots of new projects - Liverpool will be the City of Culture in 2008 and will be hosting many Europeans.



Later, Sarah and I went to see The Beatles Story museum. (Funny, I didn't notice museums for other Liverpudlians like Echo & The Bunnymen or Frankie Goes To Hollywood ... maybe they were further downstream?) There were some neat artifacts, like early guitars George used, some drum sticks from Ringo, and perhaps most famously, John's "Imagine" glasses, valued at a million pounds. There were also lots of recreations, like a room in the Abbey Road studios, the Mersey Beat newspaper office, and the Cavern Club.

We just had dinner in the restaurant below. We know it's a bit overpriced and generic, but nobody wanted to walk too far, except me of course, so I'm soon to go off and have a bit of a pub crawl since we haven't seen much of the city besides the docks and we leave tomorrow morning. Cheerio!

Aaagh!

OK I couldn't resist and looked up black pudding. See the full scoop here.

At least I was correct -- it does taste like kishka -- although I am certain that Jewish delicatesson kishka is not made with pig's blood ... maybe it's the seasonings.

So, it seems that the nastiest example of british cuisine that I could think of prior to our trip turns out to be something that I actually like. So much for preconceptions and snotty foody attitudes!

More from Margo

As Mike has been the most prolific blogger in the clan, I thought that I would weigh in with some of my observations ...

Today is our last morning in Scotland. I have really enjoyed our visit here. The people that I have met have more than lived up to the Scottish reputation of warmth and friendliness. I've enjoyed some rather diverse conversations, from chatting with an older couple at the Orkney mainland farm show about their alpacas, to a brief discourse regarding social services in Scotland with a tour guide in Edinburgh.

My favorite city was Edinburgh. It was lovely to be surrounded by such beautiful, ancient buildings. It is novel to an american to hear buildings being described as only two or three hundred years old. I also really like the gothic architecture and the beautiful, ornate, extravagant monuments at every turn.

While in Edinburgh, Sarah and I took a tour of Mary King's Close, a very old part of the original city that was topped of at about the 3rd floor and capped with the city government building. Below, tours are offered of the original dwellings of 16th and 17th century folk. The town was set up so that narrow alleys, called closes, ran from the high street down to an artificial lake (or loch) in the valley below. Of course, along with the streets leading down to the loch, everything that was dumped in the streets ran down also. Consequently, the loch was a vile stew of all that one would expect in an era that predated modern sewage disposal systems. This is why Edinburgh was once known as the "Auld Reekie". I read that it was really horrible.

The train ride to Inverness afforded a beautiful view of a pastoral Scottish countryside. Lots of lovely little black faced sheep and a multitude of cows, including the rather imposing-looking shaggy highland cattle. We arrived in a driving rain and were drenched by the time we finally stepped into the front door of our B&B.

In Inverness I enjoyed our cruise through the Caledonian Canal, build in the mid 1800's to privide a shipping channel between the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. I read that soon thereafter, trains became the main method of moving goods across country, so the canal was almost immediately obsolete and has sincebeen used mostly for pleasure craft.

Later that afternoon, I headed out by myself to Culloden battlefield, the site of Bonnie Prince Charlie's defeat at the hands of the English. It was a stark and lonely sort of place, and even with the touristr center and the buses and cars in the parking lot, it was easy to imagine the brief and devastating battle.

I have really enjoyed learning more of the history of Scotland during this trip. I got Sarah a “Horrible History” book with some of the more lurid / bloody / bizarre stories from the history of this small nation. She loves it, and takes a morbid delight in the more disgusting of the tales.

Thoughts on the Orkney Islands: First, they are so very beautiful. Beautiful green rolling hills in every direction, some of them a green and yellow and brown patchwork of crops and hay. The islands enjoy a very moderate climate, due to being surrounded by the sea. I read that Orkney can be best described as a community of farmers who have boats, while the Shetland Islanders to the north are fishermen with small crofts (farms). And beyond the green, from almost every vantage point, the blues and greys of the ocean and the lochs.

The towns are small and very old. Our hotel was situated on the main street in Stromness, a town of about 2000 people. This main street consisted of one very narrow cobblestone lane, which was used by cars (though not many) in both directions, pedestrians, as there were no sidewalks, and the occasional bicyclist. I didn’t drive much, but this was the most stressful part of it for me. Driving has been difficult mostly because the side and center of the road are not where I expect them to be, so I always feel a bit as if I am madly careening down the centre of the road. It's a little unsettling, and THEN I have to remember to shift.

You’ve seen the pictures of the prehistoric site that we visited. It was pretty interesting, and all things considered, the homes looked reasonably comfortable – actually much nicer than the homes we saw from 17th century Edinburgh. It is not known what happened to the inhabitants. According to the guide I spoke to, the archeological evidence suggests that they just picked up and left, leaving even their tools behind. Although the remains of two humans were found on the site, there isn’t any evidence of the inhabitants all dying in some catastrophe. So, a mystery. Perhaps they settled elsewhere on the islands. Since some of my family come from the Orkney Islands, they could even be ancestors.

Along with the tour of the whisky distillery that Mike described in a previous posting, I at least, enjoyed the annual agricultural show. We only stayed for a short time but I enjoyed watching the local farmers as they showed off the best of their herds and flocks. I actually had never been very close to a bull before and they are imposing animals: huge, muscular, and a bit surly. The horses were all turned out in glossy coats with their manes and tails beautifully braided and brushed and trimmed. I enjoyed a conversation with a couple who keep alpacas amongst their sheep and cattle and sell the fine, soft spun wool. Mike found the whole thing tedious, and other than the cotton candy, Sarah found little to interest her.

FOOD: I think that Mike mentioned the scarcity of fine dining on Orkney, and I must concur; however, the restaurant in the hotel served better cooking than I grew up with, if not as good as I have become accustomed to enjoying at restaurants in larger cities. The fish (battered haddock usually) and chips seem to be reliably delicious just about everywhere, and Mike and Sarah usually have that. We did have a very delicious meal at a bistro near the waterfront on our last evening in town. My favorite meals have been the Sunday roasts (Pork one week, lamb the next) served with gravy and veggies and potato. I’ve not yet had a traditional roast beef with Yorkshire pudding but will at the earliest opportunity.

I have enjoyed the opportunity to sip on a mildly alcoholic cider or ginger beer at just about every place that food is served. I’m not surprised at the high rate of alcoholism here, as drinking seems an ingrained part of the culture. We haven’t observed much drunkenness, but we also have not been out at the pubs in the late evening.

Breakfast is a bit of a mixed bag. I have enjoyed Scottish smoked salmon and eggs most of all and had smoked kippers one morning: an acquired taste, but I had come to enjoy it by the end of the meal. The sausages are fine, but I’m not that fond of sausage anyway so I usually don’t have any. I am not enamored of the bacon … it is closest to a saltier and fattier Canadian-type bacon and I do miss the crackly, rich, smoked bacon that I was accustomed to in the states. I found to my surprise that I quite enjoy black pudding and I must confess that I am terrified to learn of the ingredients from which it is made. It tastes a bit like kishka -- for those of you familiar with traditional Jewish foods. My fear is that it is actually blood pudding, which I swore I wouldn’t eat – but I can’t think what else would give food that dark dark color. If you know, I beg you to refrain from educating me, as I am enjoying the stuff whenever it is available at breakfast. I actually enjoy the beans and mushrooms and tomatoes with my breakfast. Sarah likes porridge best of all and won’t even try the eggs, sausage or bacon.

We’ve all developed quite a tea habit, although as far as I can tell Sarah considers her cup of tea as merely a parentally endorsed method of conveying sugar to her mouth. (Never mind that she can usually wheedle a biscuit from me if it’s afternoon or evening tea!) I love the electric teakettles found in every room. They seem to come to the boil instantly, shut off automatically, and stay cool to the touch – a wonderful appliance.

I love best of all the rich and creamy European butter. If Sarah is guilty of using tea as a sugar delivery device, you might say the same of me and my toast and butter. It is positively voluptuous and the cold English toast shows its deliciousness off splendidly, since the butter doesn’t melt into the bread.

Well, I will sign off now, as we are traveling through southern Scotland and into England and I don’t want to miss all the scenery.

Cheers,
Margo

Brain Droppings

(With all apologies to George Carlin)

Today I got wise and picked up a little notepad so that I can start recording all the thoughts that I want to share. So, like the angels Cassiel and Damiel in Wings of Desire, I can now spend my days walking the cities and noting what I see on a little paper pad to be shared at the end of the day. Except I'm using a laptop and wifi. I'm overdue, so I've got lots of silly little observations to share, in no particular order.

When I first saw a lad wearing a T-shirt saying "fcuk" I thought he was being cheeky. Turns out that's the actual name of a clothing store. I think it stands for "French Connection UK".

American food is represented by the occasional Pizza Hut, McDonald's, Burger King, and Subway, but for some reason seeing TGIFridays restaurants really cheeses me off.

My next suit will probably have stripes. They're pretty common here. And men's collars are almost universally spread. Jeans here are darker and have that burned/stained look in certain areas, as if you'd been wearing them for years. Even stores like Gap and Levi's sell them. Are they the norm in the States yet? Have I not been paying attention? Forgive me; I'm an old man.

As far as our B & B's have gone, if there's a bath, it will only have half a shower enclosure. And the shower head will be detatchable, and the plumbing will be exposed. And the presence and duration of hot water will be completely unpredictable. And whatever I learn will be useless for the next one I encounter. And so far, all taps - I mean, each and every single one - has a separate hot and cold spout. Never combined.

And all of our B & B's have given us a skeleton key for our room. Have you ever actually used one? They're so solid. And big.

This isn't funny in the least, but it cracks me up a bit to hear people of Asian heritage talking in a Scottish accent. It just seems such an odd juxtaposition to me.

Remember Willy Wonka and his Everlasting Gobstopper? I guess "gob" is a Scottish term for mouth. As in "shut yer gob".

I'd first noticed this in my UK music magazines, but newspapers do it too: captions never end in a period. Even if there are multiple sentences

Although people drive on the left, they walk on the right.

With traffic signals, the lights overlap. It's green, then yellow and red, then red. Likewise, from red, you get a brief red and yellow before the green; that's when you start revving.

I've been mostly too scared to jaywalk. At a crossing, I'm the only one waiting for the walk signal because I don't want to get picked off when I'm looking for traffic in the wrong direction.

Travel tip: If you're walking any serious amount, don't wear boxer shorts. Loose clothing, pendulous objects. Do the physics.

Travel tip: Pee and poo where you can. If you're having food or drink, use the loo before you leave.

Downtown Glasgow

Today we decided to split up. Margo thought it would be a good idea for her and Sarah to chill out since we've been travelling so much the last few days. I got to go off and explore downtown. This is my report.

Glasgow. Scotland's largest city. I saw graffiti for the first time since New York. There's also more litter on the streets than I've seen in a while. Streets have more lanes, and there are more one-way streets. Downtown is almost a grid pattern - you could tell a taxi to take you to the corner of N and N, which seems rare in the UK. Buildings are taller - churches are not necessarily the tallest here - and there is more variety in building heights. Many of the towers look like apartment buildings.

I started the day dropping off a bagful of our laundry, but the laundromat didn't open until 9.30, so I killed some time in a nearby coffee shop watching BBC News and reading one of the daily papers. It seems there's a lot of disappointment with Britons towards Tony Blair for his lack of attention to the Middle East crisis. What with going to California and all.

I took the subway downtown. The Glasgow subway is two rings. Trains go in separate directions in the Outer and Inner Circles. The rings go around the west of the city and two of the stops are downtown. The trains are pretty wee! A taller person like me has to mind his head. There are also no announcements. I'm not even sure there's a driver.

My first stop was the Lighthouse museum of architecture and design, but it wasn't yet open when I arrived, so I spent some time on Hudson Street, one of the shopping streets. Here's a view looking down from one end to the other.



Then I went back to the Lighthouse. A focus of the museum is the work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Tall-backed chairs. Grid patterns. Stained glass.

A highlight of the museum is the tower and its staircase, which winds around the inside of what looks like a lighthouse. Here's a view looking up from the bottom. It's a better view looking down from the top, but to be brutally honest I was too scared to put the camera over that space - maybe the vertigo creeped me out, but I was also afraid of dropping the camera onto the head of some poor chap below.



At the top there's an external balcony going all the way around, so I took a panorama of pictures. Here's one, giving you an idea what the Glasgow skyline looks like.



There was also an exhibit on the architecture of Marcel Breuer. It focused on his use of "crystalline forms" - patterns in concrete exteriors that break up the monotony and allow for interesting light play as the day progresses. A half dozen of his works were displayed; I was impressed by the Central Public Library in Atlanta, plus two churches he designed in places I wouldn't expect them: buildings you'd expect to see in a sci-fi film for Bismarck, North Dakota and Muskegon, Michigan.

Afterward, I had tea and carrot cake in the Willow Tearooms, for which Mackintosh did the interior design.



Over tea, I planned my next stop, and decided on the Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art, otherwise known as GoMA. This, like most museums in Scotland, was government-funded and thereby completely free.

Now, most modern art leaves me scratching my head and wondering why, for example, serious gallery real estate is devoted to a trampoline where the canvas is replaced by a sheet of glass, and given a pompous title. But I did enjoy a few nuggets.

For instance, a piece by Sarah Lucas (inspired by Damien Hirst) where she made a sculpture the size and shape of a garden gnome, entirely out of unlit cigarettes, from an installation called The Fag Show. (She's subsequently quit). But at least it took lots of painstaking effort to bend and glue all those together.

In another gallery ... you've seen architectural models of buildings? Usually made of foam core? I saw one of some housing blocks but one was in the midst of a controlled demolition, so there were these foam bubbles representing puffs of smoke and the building was just starting to crumble. Clever, I thought.

I also enjoyed an exhibit by Chad McCail, who makes drawings that look like they're from childrens' books but include decidedly adult content (weapons, other tokens of the complexity of modern life).

After that, I did lots more walking, taking in a second shopping street. I snapped this picture of the Prime Minister because ... well ... when's the last time you saw a statue of a guy in a suit?



Then I took the subway back to the West End. There I had another pint at the same place as yesterday and read a few more of the daily papers. The name of the beer is Brune-Dark, and the brewery is Leffe. I also got a picture of Ashton Lane this time:



And I was wrong, wrong, wrong about pints. I grilled the bartender about this. The glasses are actually Imperial pints; they're just shaped differently, and the beer is immensely strong so I thought I'd been drinking more. I guess there's a lot of regulation; when you say you're serving a pint, it's got to be exactly a pint. So perhaps I have yet to encounter this elusive Scottish pint, if indeed it exists outside that historical description I read in Stirling Castle, which claimed that serfs were daily given a Scottish pint of beer (claiming it was 2.5x a standard pint), a loaf of bread, and any table scraps the royals and guests left behind.

Tomorrow ... Liverpool!

Glasgow Arrival

We're in Glasgow, scotland's largest city. We haven't spent much time downtown yet - from the train station, we took a taxi to our hotel and had a quick drive through. We're staying in the West End.

I didn't know it when we took a train to Stirling earlier, but we were nearly in Glasgow's back yard at the time. It's only about 45 minutes by train from Edinburgh to Glasgow. On the train in yesterday, once we passed Stirling, I'd see a cluster of houses, sometimes even some apartment towers, and think, we must be getting close to Glasgow, and then there'd be fields again, then housing, then fields. It was like trying to guess when the ending is near in a Terry Gilliam movie.

At our hotel, we were given keys to our room, on the third floor. We climbed the three flights and found a wide landing, but didn't find our room ... then I remembered that over here the ground floor isn't counted - the first floor is what we'd consider the second floor. So I found the narrow stairway leading up to our floor.

Once we were settled, I went out for an excursion to explore the nearest shopping street - Byres Road - and scout out opportunities for dinner. There's a neat cluster of pubs in an alley off of Byres called Ashton Lane - I think it's entirely pubs except for a cinema. I stopped in one - just for research purposes, you see - and asked for something dark and strong. No, not baked beans. I was handed the tastiest beer I've had yet, and unfortunately it wasn't even Scottish, but rather Belgium. I'd also asked for a pint, and normally this yields an Imperial pint, but this time I received a Scottish pint, which is substantially more. I think I'd read at one point a Scottish pint is two and a half times as large as an Imperial pint, and I'm not sure it's that big, but it is quite imposing. The glass is very tall, and it curves inward in the middle, presumably so one can get one's hand around it.

Later, we all made the trek back to Byres but ended up in an Italian restaurant on the main road that reminded me greatly of La Terrazza in downtown Portland because its layout was nearly identical and the food was very similar.

Today we plan to explore downtown.

Orkneys to Glasgow

(First, if you haven't noticed yet, pictures have been added for the last several posts. Go on and re-read them.)

Monday, late morning. I'm writing on the train, currently stationed in Inverness and about to depart to Perth, where we'll change for a train to Glasgow.



Yesterday we woke early in Stromness, packed our bags, and rolled them to the ferry terminal. Our bag wheels are getting some serious mileage on these paving stones. We had breakfast on the ferry in a restaurant nicer (meaning, cleaner and more appealing) than most we'd seen on the island. Then we bused to Thuro, waiting about an hour for the train to Inverness. The waiting crowd gave a wide berth to a group of guys who looked kinda like thugs, talking loudly, drinking cheap lagers and having smokes. They were about my age, too. It seems kind of a unique subculture - I saw some similar packs in Inverness. They tend to wear soccer (football) shirts, and like wearing the wrong color in gang territory, you take a risk wearing the wrong football club's shirt in the wrong place. I guess each culture has its own unique way of acting out.

With the rare sunny weather, the train ride was especially enjoyable. It's such a gorgeous countryside. Open fields, lots of gazing livestock, stone fences (just stacked stone, no mortar apparent ... must have been lots of work, but they do last, don't they?), and occasional bunches of trees, which suggests that perhaps this was all forested at one time. Much of the track is single - just one track, without another one for trains in the opposite direction. On some rides, we've once or twice had to stop before a junction so that a slower train can pass us, before moving on to single track.

We got to Inverness around 4pm, and by the time we returned to our B & B and I'd gone out for a walk, the shops were closing. That's another big difference - after 5, maybe 5.30, nearly all the shops are closed, leaving only pubs and restaurants open.

So after dinner we watched some TV. So far we've only been seeing four available stations - BBC 1 through 4. I've heard of ITV and some Virgin channels (or are they radio stations?) but haven't come across them yet. With only a few channels, water-cooler conversations must have lots more in common, I'm guessing. Shows (programmes) seem to fall into categories: teen and adult soap operas like Eastenders and Coronation Street; documentaries (which is mostly what we watch); sketch comedy and other comedy (I particularly enjoyed an episode of Extras, another Ricky Gervais series); Big Brother, with reality TV participants in a house loaded with cameras; and movies. Almost all movies here are American, and released later (Cars just opened last week, I think) but then we do get some nice European movies, probably earlier than in the states. For instance, there's a new Sin-City style animation with Daniel Craig that I'm looking forward to seeing.

We're about at the midpoint of our traveling, and nearing the end of our time in Scotland. We've been immersed enough that I can pull off a decent Scot accent, and Margo's had a good go at it also, so it'll be interesting to switch gears and start subvocalizing in a new accent. We've really enjoyed Scotland. We actually were hoping we could get Margo placed in Scotland over England - it seems to have better beers, and what other country's whisky can be known only by the label of the country? You can't go into a bar and order a Canadian.

Glasgow is next!

Orkneys Day 2

(Written Saturday)

Today ... not so exciting. After brekkies we drove out of town and past Kirkwall to see ... a farm show. You know, get out in the country, see the locals. Margo described it as a way to sample local cheeses and whiskies, hinting at a gourmand's cornucopia of locally-made delights, a grand farmer's market. In reality, it was some animals and sweets, with nary a curd to be found. I'm sure Margo could (and perhaps shall) wax rhapsodic on the beauty of an Angus steer, but ... well, I grew up in the sticks of Wisconsin, working summers on a nearby farm, so I've seen the odd bit of cattle, more than enough to last a lifetime actually.





Then we drove south across some gorgeous stone causeways to another town, St Margaret's Hope. We had lunch, then drove back ... there wasn't so much to explore.

We split up for the afternoon, Margo lounging in the room, and Sarah and I going for a swim in the local pool. Tonight we have reservations for what looks like Stronmness' finest dining, then we finish packing for a 9am ferry back to the mainland tomorrow.