Paris, Day Four

After Saturday's highlights, we took our last day in Paris slowly to decompress. With an early afternoon train back to London, we spent an easy morning walking the neighbourhood. First, breakfast outdoors at a café (under an awning, as it was raining).



Afterwards, we indulged our foodie sensibilities as Margo went shopping for items to bring back for dinner. I don't know how typical this is of Parisian neighbourhoods, but we found all sorts of shops within a few blocks. And I don't remember seeing any chain stores (for food, anyway).









We were quite tired on our return to Ipswich at around 7.30 pm. After a bit of unpacking, we assembled our treats for one last Parisian meal.



The wine was a Merlot but didn't taste as full-bodied as what I'd come to expect from West Coast and Australian wineries. But it was nice to have a bottle of French wine whose label didn't have "imported by" text. There are two varieties of sausages; the thicker one had walnut inside, and Margo and I slightly preferred the smaller one. Of the four cheeses, two were goat cheeses, one of the two very aged. We enjoyed them all. And Sarah ... she liked her bread. (Kids!)

Paris, Day Three

After breakfast in our hotel, it was off to the Orsay. We decided to go there first to avoid crowds.



The museum is a former rail station; galleries line its sides. We spent a few hours wandering and even Sarah was paying attention. Margo drew on her art studies classes to provide great commentary. I found lots that I recognized. The farmer husband-and-wife of Jean'Francois Millet's The Angelus was integrated by Salvador Dali in several of his works. Manet's Luncheon on the Grass, reworked by Bow Wow Wow in the early 80s. (How sad is it that my primary identification of classical art is via pop album covers ...) Van Gogh's self-portrait. Seurat's bathers. The can-can girls of Toulouse-Lautrec. Degas' dancers. And the impressionist works of Monet and Renoir - I found myself wondering, when they're painting the micro, how they keep track of the macro in their heads - the overall impression?

Our heads once again full of art, we found a café for lunch. It would be hard to stick to a low-carb diet here. Bread is everywhere.

Then we got back on the Metro and off one stop later to walk a bridge across the Seine to the Île de la Cité, the larger of the two islands and site of the Notre Dame Cathedral.



We walked through the interior ...



... and though Sarah and I wanted to climb the tower, the line was long and slow so we passed. We did look at the gargoyles, though, and found the famous one on his elbows, watching the tourists.

Then we walked along the river to the tip of the island to take in a boat cruise. We'd barely left the dock when a "probleme mechanique" forced us to turn back and get onto another boat. We'd managed to curse transport in Dublin, London, and now Paris. The cruise went up to the Eiffel Tower, then back and around the island before redocking, with lots of informational commentary along the way. There's a lot of history to take in in that stretch of river alone.

Afterwards we walked through the Latin Quarter and settled in the Luxembourg Garden. Parts of Paris are laid out along straight lines - sweeping plazas are built along the lines, and line of sight connects two features at either end. We walked across one such line of sight in the garden, and not expecting it, it's very impressive to see. You're just going, dum de dum, then at some point you look to one side, then the other, and realize you're in the middle of something huge.

We paid a few Euros to access a large playground. Sarah got to be a monkey again and work at climbing a smaller Eiffel tower.



The sun was starting to set as we made our way through the Metro to the Eiffel Tower. First we found a café for dinner. This time we were clearly in a touristy area, yet the food was still very good. More Bordeaux, this time Saint-Emilion ... tangy. While we waited for our check ("l'addicion, sîl vous plait") we noticed that we were in that first-ten-minutes of the hour, so Sarah and I stole away to the street corner to take it in.



Then we were off to the tower itself.



But first, we treated Sarah to a carousel ride across the street. She was already giddy with excitement, and we wanted to give her a night to remember.



Then back to the tower. There are three levels. One contains the Jules Verne restaurant and observation space, and two is observation space and toilets and gift shops. One and two can be reached by elevator or stair. Three is closer to the top and only reached by elevator. You enter at the base of one of the four feet. By the time we'd arrived, one foot was closed, one foot was stair-only (cheaper and a shorter line), and the other two elevator-only. We split up so that I could take the stairs and agreed to meet on the west corner of the second level.

The climb wasn't bad, but the openness of it creeped me out. Most observation decks are enclosed in glass, so you get a sense of protection, but this was all steel, and even with mesh around you, you realize that if, say, something were to slip out of your pocket, it would be gone forever. This scrotum-tightening vertigo kept me in the creeps the whole time up there. But I controlled my shakes enough to get a picture or two, tightly clutching something at all times. Here's a view toward La Defense:



Margo and Sarah joined me half an hour later. Margo immediately felt like she'd hurl and didn't dare approach the edges. But Sarah, being a dumb kid, had no fears at all, so we wandered while Margo made the obligatory "Guess where I'm calling from?" calls.



Back downstairs on terra firma, we didn't exactly kiss the ground, but felt close to it. We made the Metro journey back to Montmarte, and this time I got a shot of the Moulin Rouge at night.



Then it was dessert and Couintreau at another café, then off to bed.

Paris, Day Two

We started our first Parisian day with breakfast in the hotel. Coffee, croissants, baguettes, and orange juice, plus hard-boiled eggs if you like.

Then we walked downhill past the Moulin Rouge (which means "red windmill") to the Paris Metro station at Blanche. (Abbesses was closer, but closed for maintenance.) The system was not hard to learn, especially after getting to know similar systems for New York and London.



The trains were clean and usually not as crowded as the Underground trains can be. I also noticed some trains have tyres underneath. We'd sometimes see busking musicians in the hallways; they were quite accomplished. Less pleasant were the musicians who would board a train, play, and panhandle.

After a few train changes we went aboveground again at the Arc de Triomfe. I later learned that the traffic roundabout there is a quarter of a mile long, the largest in Europe.



We pointed ourselves down the Champs-Élysées toward the Louvre and began walking.



We strolled past large shops and fashion houses: Hugo Boss, Louis Vuitton, Yves Saint Laurent, Lacoste.



Then we got baguette sandwiches and espressos at a sidewalk cafe. We started to see that the food is pretty much exceptional everywhere. The dullest café food would be gourmet food most elsewhere.

After a while of walking I started noticing my nose feeling dried. We also noticed that not-too-distant buildings were noticeably hazy. I think it was the 8 lanes of auto traffic to our side because I stopped noticing it once we left the street. Perhaps there were more diesel motors.

We passed the Egyptian obelisk at the Place de la Concorde, then sat for a while in the Jardin des Tuileries. It's immense. I'd guess it took up hundreds of city blocks; I could easily imagine a dozen blocks to a side; and it was perfectly flat and highly symmetrical. Grids of trees filled some side areas.

Sarah was in full monkey mode by this point. Margo had come up with a song to the tune of "Climb Every Mountain" from The Sound of Music:

Climb every flagpole
Hang off every rail
Drive your parents crazy
Walk as fast as a snail (or, my line, Whinge to no avail)



And then we reached the Louvre.



How do I begin to describe it? As a tour later informed us, there are eight miles of galleries inside. If you were to spend a few seconds in front of each piece in the collection, it would take two months to see them all.

We split up so that Margo and Sarah could do some touring but mostly stay in the Italian masters wing. I went off to do some drive-by viewing, taking in some of Art's Greatest Hits.



First, to the Mesopotamian wing to see the Code of Hammurabi. I couldn't forget the B-52's: "Six or eight thousand years ago ... they laid down the law."



I saw a garden of ancient sculpture. I started to see that the Louvre isn't just a collection of artifacts; it's a house for them, a temple. The presentation is just as beautiful as the art itself. It's overwhelming. Room after room after room, you are dazzled anew.

I saw an Egyptian mummy. And several sarcophagi, some in wood.

I saw Le Louvre Medeival, the stone foundations of the former castle on the same site. It's what you imagine as a kid when you hear stories of lost cities: a short ceiling, but lots of well-lit space to look at the old masonry.



I saw the Venus de Milo, and it wasn't a refrigerator magnet.

I saw a portrait of Louis XIV in a hallway with painted ceilings and gold filigree.

I saw the Mona Lisa (no cameras were allowed). She looks tiny in the massive marble slab she is set into; the slab nearly reaches the ceiling and divides the huge gallery she lives in.

I saw more of Da Vinci's chiarouscos. Sculptures by Rodin. Paintings by Rubens. Drawings by Rembrandt. I started feeling guilty and small, spending just moments in each room, knowing that many lifetimes of human achievement were there to be appreciated in each.

I also got this money shot in the centre, as close to the top as I could get, looking back toward the Arc from where we'd started, and to La Defense beyond (the cluster of office towers that includes that famous Cube-with-its-Insides-Removed building).



After a few hours, we met up in one of the cafés, exhausted. After another baguette sandwich and glass of Bordeaux, we split up again. Margo and Sarah went off to find a park and I went to the Centre Pompidou (the last of the chronological triology of great Parisian museums: Louvre, Orsay, Pompidou) for my Modern Art fix. To get there, I decided to walk a while along the Seine.







The building itself is a work, famously exposing its plumbing and ducting.



The entrance is on this side. The diagonal tubing is for navigating the six stories.

For me, most of the artwork fell hard into the category of I Don't Get It. But I did enjoy some bits.

A piece called Light Sentence was four walls of chicken cages; inside the centre, a single lightbulb slowly oscillated up and down, creating interesting 3-D cube patterns on the walls, reminiscent of early wireframe computer graphics.

Another artist made Escher-like pencil drawings of complex natural patterns, like ocean surfaces and leaves, some drawn as though a piece of glass or wire were laid atop the source photo.

There was Robert Longo's Men In Cities, which I'd bet was the inspiration for the music video of falling Yuppies he directed for New Order's Bizarre Love Triangle.

I met Margo and Sarah back at our room, and then we went out for dinner at another nearby café. Sarah let us know she'd much prefer if we spent the rest of our time eating hamburgers (boeuf) and fries (pommes frites) and watching the German cartoon channel we'd found in our room, and stop all this walking around.

Later I hiked back up to the Sacré-Cœur to take in the view again. On the way back I spied the Eiffel Tower between the trees, and it was sparkling. I later found out that, for the first ten minutes of every hour at night, thousands of lights are turned on to flicker in a pattern. The effect is magical.

Paris, Day One

This weekend we completed our trilogy of visits to Really Big, Important Cities: New York, London, and now Paris.

We left Ipswich late Thursday morning, taking a train to London and a Tube to Waterloo Station where we queued for and boarded the Eurostar to Paris.



Five minutes from departure, we were told we'd be delayed because of a technical difficulty. Later, we were informed we'd need to leave the train altogether. Fortunately, we were able to just cross the platform to another train; we all retained our seats and were delayed only half an hour.

We left London fairly slowly. Going under the Channel only took 20 minutes. And we sped up quite a bit through the French countryside (I mostly remember fields and power lines) - it's the fastest I've ever gone on a train, easily twice the speed of auto traffic we saw, and perhaps the speed of some small aircraft.

Then came the Paris suburbs, where I noticed a lot of graffiti and concrete tower blocks, and remembered the rioting. We arrived at Gare du Nord and looked for a cash machine, but could only find one in the whole station, which was fairly mobbed. Then a very long taxi queue - long enough that some had made reservations; probably a 20 minute wait. The neighbourhood looked a bit dodgy too with some sex shops and guys asking for money, so all in all it wasn't exactly a warm welcome. This was our second trip to a non-English-speaking country, but we felt more like outsiders here than in the Netherlands.

We arrived at our hotel in the Montmarte neighbourhood, which is the Mount Tabor of Paris: you can do a nice uphill hike to see a grand view of the city. First we had dinner in a café around the corner. The concierge told us the name of a café nearby that had been in the film Amelie but we forgot the name later and didn't find it.



There were plenty to choose from; we ate at the one in the centre right, outside on the street. We did okay ordering (as well as checking in) so far: we knew enough French to say please, thank you, sorry, hello, goodbye, yes, no, and count to three, and even so most of the people we talked to spoke English also. It's amazing how much French you don't realize you know - lots of English words come from the French, and the Latin roots are often familiar. Margo's encyclopedic knowledge of gastronomy was also invaluable. Dinners were in three courses: an entrée (more a starter than what we consider an entree to be), a plat (the main dish) and a dessert. I had a quiche, antouille sausage, and créme caramel. Margo had boeuf (beef) and the tarte du jour. Sarah had a ham sandwich in a baguette and chocolate mousse. We drank glasses of Bordeaux, which seemed the most common red wine available.

After dinner, we made the walk uphill to the front of Sacré-Cœur Basilica.



This is the highest natural point in Paris. And from the front, here is the view, our first overlook of the City of Light:



We walked back through a touristy collection of cafés and bars. Everything was open late, unlike what we'd become accustomed to in the UK. And perhaps we were early, but there was easy seating everywhere. Hawkers prowled the streets selling flowers and offering to do quick portraits, and accordion players would wander from table to table playing and expecting payment, but still it was undeniably romantic: the cafés, wine, lights, and music in the air.

This was the view from our room. Lots of Paris looks like this: white buildings with no spaces between, all a uniform 4-5 stories, with windows that swing in and flowers on the windowsills.

School Break

Sarah's school is on break all week. Margo will take off Friday and Thursday afternoon, when we'll leave town for a trip to Paris on the Eurostar (the "Chunnel" train).

I've got to keep Sarah busy somehow for the other three days. I'm challenged enough keeping her busy for the two and a half hours every weekday after school before Margo comes home. This is a reversal for us. I want to be working, and Margo wants to be more involved in Sarah's schooling and playtime.

But I've come up with some activities to fill that time with Sarah. We often play football in the backyard. We used to just take turns playing goalie and forward, but now we do warmups, warmdowns, and some drills like passing and dribbling.

I'm also ashamed to say that we've been spending lots of time with our TV. It's weird, not having owned one before.

We bought a PlayStation 2. We own an auto racing game (Gran Turismo 4) that lets us race against each other. For a while we'd do ridiculous matchups, like I'd be driving a 1948 Volkswagen Beetle or a 1981 Volvo wagon and she'd be driving a BMW M3 or an Aston Martin DB5. But I'd still sometimes win because she'd lose control on corners. But now that she's getting better, so have my cars. Nowadays I usually drive a Mini Cooper S. We can also rent PS2 games from the library for a week at a time (that's one of the reasons I went with the PS2 over other consoles). We're currently borrowing Spider-man 2. I like it because there's a fully rendered New York skyline to swing around, and now that I've been there, I recognize lots more. Sarah just likes fighting bad guys.

I've also been catching up on Doctor Who episodes on DVD. Back in the States, I'd been reading in my British music mags about how the new series was so much improved, with smarter stories and special effects that don't make you laugh, but could never find them in video stores. I'm almost through watching the first series with Christopher Eccleston. Even Margo likes it now. And tonight on BBC 3 is the debut of Torchwood, a more adult spinoff.

And we sometimes watch children's television. I don't feel too guilty about that because it's quite educational and well written and produced. One of our favourites is Stupid, the adventures of King Stupid and his assistant Goober who look down on us mortals and make us do stupid things. But it's really sketch comedy for kids, and written smartly enough that adults will enjoy it too. (I also really like the way the English pronounce "stupid": it's not "stoo-pid", but "styoo-pid".)

Sarah and I also go swimming at the pool once a week (in addition to her Saturday swim class). We also occasionally go to Christchurch Park. We often visit the library; Sarah got her own library card this week.

Fortunately, for the week of school break starting tomorrow, the Suffolk Council has coordinated lots of activities for kids around town. I'm planning on taking Sarah to play football and do arts and crafts at community sports centres, plus there are kid's matinees at the Ipswich Film Society and some Halloween activities at Christchurch Mansion.

As for me ... well, the week after next, I'm planning to break out of this town. Really, in the month we've been here, there's only been two real work opportunities for a Java developer in Ipswich. One required experience with SMS messaging; the other is ongoing and I haven't heard back, but it's been weeks so I'm assuming the worst. Instead, I'll give London a try.

London is doable if I can negotiate earlier hours. If I leave by 4 or perhaps even 4.30 pm, I can make it back to Ipswich in time to pick up Sarah at 6, though I may have to use cabs daily instead of buses to get me to and from the train station. This would be a win-win-win: I'd be growing my skills; I'd earn more in London than Ipswich; I'd enjoy the train rides and the free time on them; it would be great to get to know London well; Sarah will prefer playing with other kids after school than with me; and the extra income will let us build up our savings and finance some nice trips.

I'm also really looking forward to working again. I don't take well to having too much idle time - I don't know what to do with myself. And I haven't had much opportunity to meet other people here - mostly other school mums in our neighbourhood - so it would be great to meet some mates at work.

Further Proof that the 80s are Dead

Bryan Ferry is selling polyester suits for Marks & Spencer.

Martin Kemp from Spandau Ballet is selling furniture for ScS Sofas.

Sting has released an album of lute music.

And some other music trivia I've learned lately: the legendary Brian Eno grew up in Suffolk and went to art college here in Ipswich. And Rick Wakeman lives nearby on the Suffolk-Norfolk border (he plays an Ipswich concert with Jon Anderson soon).

Ipswich Tour

You know how you live in a city for years, but you never take pictures of the landmarks, and then someone visits and they know three times as much of your city's history than you do? Well, today I went undercover as a tourist to get you these pictures of our new, albeit temporary, home.

I'd also recommend reading this Wikipedia article on Ipswich, which tells lots about the town's history and importance. Among other things, I learned that this is the home of the metal band Cradle of Filth, which I reluctantly admit to having heard of before residing here.

After dropping off Sarah at school, I hiked down to my first destination, the Ipswich waterfront.



This is where lots of redevelopment is happening: new condo towers and restaurants have been and are being built, and it's generating the gentrification vs. historic preservation opposition one would expect. I hate taking pictures like these because they only capture a small part of the total scene - some panoramic camera would be more ideal. And there's also all those stinkin sailboat masts blocking the view of some of the newer buildings.



These are some of the taller buildings in downtown. On the right is the Willis building, clad entirely in black glass, which has historical architectural signifigance for its modernist design.



This is the Buttermarket shopping street, the smaller of two main shopping streets in town. It's closed off to all auto traffic except delivery trucks, which are more abundant in the morning hours, when I took this. On a mid-day or Saturday, shopping streets like these are filled wall-to-wall (or, sidewalk-to-sidewalk?) with pedestrians.



And here's part of Tavern Street, part of the larger shopping street.



Adjacent to Tavern Street is this square. Open markets like this are held here Tuesdays, Thursdays (I think) and Saturdays.



Also on Tavern Street is the Great White Horse Hotel (and bar and cafe). I had a pint there today and learned more about its history. It's been in operation since the 1300s. Charles Dickens stayed there and made mention of it in Chapter 22 of The Pickwick Papers, entitled "Mr. Pickwick journeys to Ipswich, and meets with a romantic Adventure with a middle-aged Lady in Yellow Curl Papers". I've borrowed this from the library today and have begun reading it (Cheers, Jason!).



This is the view from inside the non-smoking lounge, one of two that face the street. It's a fine place to people-watch, though the beer selection is only moderately varied.

And on the subject of suds, though I didn't get a picture today, I've made a few visits to The Dove Street Inn, which has arguably the area's finest selection of real ales, and where I endeavour to become a regular some day.

Margo's Observations

I have to agree with much of what Mike said in the previous post. It has been very difficult to get used to driving here, and every new town is a new headache until I figure out what the main routes and roundabouts are.

The biggest problems for a US driver are 1)The lack of a grid system 2)The lack of street names on major routes and 3)The difficulty presented in trying to get back on track once you have made a wrong turn. (This of course, is AFTER one gets used to driving on the left side of the road and the right side of the car.)

Without a grid, and with much of my driving passing through hard-to-differentiate countryside, and with the sky being grey much of the time, when lost I usually can not even figure out what direction I am traveling.

This is complicated by the lack of signage and/or street names on major routes, especially in the countryside. One might be on, for example, the Harwich Rd (That is, the road leading to Harwich), but once you have navigated the roundabout and entered the road, there will be no signs telling you where you are. The road might be named something entirely unrelated to Harwich, or might might not be named at all. Until you hit another crossroads or roundabout you have no way at all of figuring out where you are. Consequently, it is possible to drive miles out of your way before being able to get turned around. (Needless to say, given that I am directionally challenged at the best of times, I do this frequently.) At least it is usually a lovely drive...

As for how long it can take to rectify an error ... if, just as an example, someone were to miss the correct exit from a dual carraigeway (i.e. freeway), it will not only be quite a while before one can exit the highway to attempt and turn around, but there might not be any access to the carriageway in the opposite direction, and that is assuming that one can figure out how to navigate to the other side of the carriageway to begin with. It is all very frustrating!

As my job requires multiple daily trips to client homes, probation offices, schools etc., every day seems like a big adventure and I am most relieved when I finally arrive at my destination. I am getting much more familiar with Colchester, so I usually can correct my route quickly if I find myself off course, but everywhere else, including Ipswich, is a challenge. Last week I set out from Tiptree to Kelvedon and drove 13 miles before finding myself back in Tiptree, with no idea how I had managed to drive in a circle completely unawares ... and little idea where I had been for those 13 miles. At least I am usually alone in the car when this happens, so my embarrasment is usually a private affair.

Other observations

England is quite beautiful in a quiet and unassuming way. There are no stunning visitas like the southwestern desert, the Rocky Mountains etc. but the countryside is uniformly lovely. We've had nice weather this fall, so my drive to work in the morning is often a georgeous palette of greens and golds across the countryside, with dark shadows rippling across the plowed fields. The distant vista is often wreathed in mist rising from the woods and the sillhouettes of church towers are visible in the distance. Altogether a pleasing start to my day. Of course then I get to the office and find myself in the world of child protection and the peaceful beginning to my day sort of slips away.

England is a funny sort of place. It is part of Europe, but not really European, and that is just fine with the British, thank-you-very-much. I am reading a book about food in Great Britain that is titled "The Land that Thyme Forgot". Enough said.

I have enjoyed creating a Sunday roast dinner every weekend. Today I made duck, with an olive and fennel stuffing and a wine gravy ... which was a lot of work and not a whole lot of meat, and nobody liked it all that much, so there was 3 hours gone and not much to show for it. We'll have dessert in a bit and with the luck the apple/hazelnut cake will be more successful.

Essex where I work, has a shoddy reputation in England. Known as the haunting grounds of the "Essex Girl" (Think Tanya Harding with a lower-class British accent (i.e avoiding the pronunciation of any consonants whatsoever) and you'll have an idea ...) It is, I have observed, the land of unfortunate hair colouring experiments. The fashion, it seems, is to have lots of brassy blond hair with either dark roots, or with the lower layers of hair left dark and the surface blond. It is a bit strange...

That is all for today. If I get back on the computer this evening, I will post some photos I took of the house.

Miss all of you.

Love,Margo

Using UK Streets

To Americans who are used to navigating streets as a grid, getting around in the UK can be very bewildering and frustrating. It's very different and one needs to re-learn quite a bit.

A grid has some built-in shortcuts to navigation. You know the direction you're travelling in (assuming the grid is aligned to the north). If you miss a turn, you can probably turn at the next block and double back. And once you find a street, you can just follow it either direction until you find the address you're looking for.

But in Europe, most cities were planned long after the advent of automobiles, so these navigational advantages aren't present. In my experience, you have to map your route entirely. Only when you have built up your mental map of an area can you get around it confidently.

As an example, here's a snapshot of central Ipswich from Google Earth:


Instead of a grid, the layout is more like nodes and branches in a network.

One difference is that street names change often. You can travel a street for a few blocks, but often once it intersects with another major street, it changes names on the other side, even though it's still going in the same direction. One side effect of this is that street addresses are often in the single or double digits.

Another difference is the use of roundabouts. These circles are at major intersections. They don't have traffic signals, and in comparison, they do provide a constant flow of traffic, but they can also back up quickly when traffic is heavy. Unlike a grid intersection, a roundabout can allow the intersection of more than four streets, and streets can be at arbitrary angles. Also, once you're in the circle, if you miss a turn, you can just stay in the circle until you come around again.

Margo and I were quite confused and frustrated by roundabouts at first (I'd navigate while she drove). As you approach a roundabout, you see a sign with a circle that has nubs for each of the streets in the intersection. The nubs are labeled, but not as we expected: often, instead of using the street name itself, it will use a destination as a label. So you might approach a roundabout with labels like "Colchester (A12)" and "Felixstowe (A14)" with no mention of the actual street names.

There are also a lot of one-way streets in city centres, so if you make a wrong turn, it can take incredibly long to get back.

Since we first started walking around Edinburgh I noticed that I felt a lot more exposed to traffic while walking, and I didn't realize the reason until earlier this week: there's no parking along arterial roads. So, as a pedestrial, you don't have that buffer between you and traffic. This is especially the case in town centres, where the street widths are narrow, and traffic is right next to the sidewalks; further out there's more landscaping between the sidewalks and traffic.

I've noticed that traffic backs up quite a bit during peak commute hours. I see this in Ipswich all week, but we also saw lots of congestion in London (it's often faster to get around by Tube than taxi). On an arterial in our neighbourhood, afternoon traffic can back up a quarter of a mile.

I don't know how common this is in the UK, but in Ipswich, the bus routes go one way. I take a number 5 to get home from downtown, but to go downtown, I cross the street of my bus stop and take a number 15. I think the routes may vary a bit also: for the leg that I ride, the routes are mostly identical, but they may vary further out.

Day Trip to Norwich

Margo gave me the day off and suggested I go to London. But I've done plenty of London and decided to go the other direction of the main line to Norwich. It's a much cheaper fare, and it's 30 minutes quicker to get to. As always, I really enjoyed the train ride.

Ipswich is the biggest city in Suffolk, but Norwich is the biggest city in Norfolk, which, as you might guess, is mostly to the north. There's a bit of a rivalry between the cities, especially with football. (We also have a football rivalry with Colchester, which is smaller, so it really hurt when they clocked us 2-0 last week.)

I went into the city pretty cold. I'd looked at a few visitor's sites online last night but didn't have much of a plan. So when I got off the train, I crossed the river and walked uphill. The town centre is built around a castle at the top of the hill. It's nearly ringed by shopping streets so there's a lot of interesting things to see in a fairly small area.



There was an outdoor market taking place in one of the shopping areas. I think the clock tower behind is the tallest in the city.



This building is The Forum, which houses BBC offices, the Tourist Information centre, the city library, and has space for hosting events.



For example, today a Food Festival was going on inside and out. So there were tables in front and inside, plus a live cooking demonstration, with lots of activity and noise from eventgoers and the audio amplification of the cooking show. But to turn to the other side ...



... is the relative quiet of the library, and it works together well. And, with a nearly all-glass ceiling, it's a great place to read.



This is one of many buildings, downtown and elsewhere, that house Norwich Union, perhaps the largest insurer in the UK. The company is ubiquitous in town, probably like Microsoft is to Redmond, Washington. According to a sign across the street, they've been in business since 1797.



Here's the castle. The glass structure is the top of a lift. And here are two of the nicer city views from around the base of the castle: