Wrap it up, I’ll take it.
July 12th, 2011 Comments Off
We got out of the apartment quick this morning, as we wanted to use up the last of our 24 hour bus tour. The closest stop was at the Hyde park corner, near Marble Arch, so we took a nice park walk on the way out. We were lucky to have the bus arrive after just a short wait, and it was mostly empty, so we got our choice of seats on the top. The weather was perfect, and this was the bus tour that we were hoping for.
The loop around London was beautiful, and really made up for the hot, slow bus ride the day before. We stuck with the tour up past Baker Street, down through the theater district, past several famous residences, all marked by the blue plate explaining who lived there and when. We stuck on the bus until we made it to the London Eye. This was now the third time we have come to the Eye, but the first time we have actually had tickets. The loop around the Eye is only about 30 minutes, which seems rather short for the cost, but the wait in line helps round it our to about 90 minutes, which makes it a better value for your time.
It was hot in line. We hung close to trees, seeking shade, and caught a few fortunate clouds overhead to keep us from cooking. In front of us, one older woman collapsed in the heat, which was sad to see, except for the fact that it helped move the line forward. Once up to the base, we could see that there was a wedding going on in one of the capsules, which was slowing the whole thing down. Once they were off, and the flower petals were cleaned out, the line started moving a lot faster. The skies cleared up in time for us to get in our pod, and we had an excellent view all the way around the city.
You couldn’t see the Tower or Tower Bridge, but everything else in town had a commanding view. I was glad to get a glimpse at the Battersea Power Station, from Pink Floyd Animals fame, as well as a hundred other movies and shows. It is one of my favorite bits of London architecture, very imposing yet unused. Apparently it is being converted to a shopping center, which is better than getting torn down, which has been threatened. We made snapshots all around and then just sat to enjoy the view as we slowly crept up and down around the ring. It was pretty amazing and worth the line, and three days of figuring out the tickets.
We walked down river a bit, and crossed over on the pedestrian way of the Golden Jubilee Bridge, which led us right back to Trafalgar Square. We had lunch in the cafe in the National Gallery, which was another great museum cafe, sat for a bit, and to cool off, Yulia accidentally knocked a glass of water over my leg. Fortunately I was wearing shorts, and it was on one leg only, as if it was in the center of my lap it would have looked much more conspicuous. We headed up to look at the exhibits, and just had enough energy to walk through about a quarter of the place before we were galleried out. We saw some amazing Monet, Manet, Van Gogh, and one Davinci, along with a lot of smaller works.
We had two items remaining on our checklist before we we done with our trip, The first was to swing by the Sherlock Holmes museum. We took the tubes up to Baker street, and looked around until we found it. The line was huge, and with our tight schedule we didn’t want to take the rest of the evening waiting there, so we looked around a bit and headed over to Oxford Street for our second task: shopping.
We really hadn’t had a chance to look into stores the same way we did on our trip to France, but I think this is partially because you have a boutique culture in France that you just don’t have the same way here. The shops on Oxford Street were pretty cool, starting with some really huge discount shops that weed so busy that we couldn’t even walk around, and getting more and more swank as we went further down the street. Yulia managed to find a few nice things in one shop, and we checked a few more out then headed off to dinner. We found a French pub near our apartment, and had some good food for our last night.
Back at the apartment we got checked into our flight online, and I was able to buy upgrades to World Traveller Plus, for pretty cheap. This got us much better seats, and better service to boot. We were packed and ready to go home.
We have been on the move for 20 days total. That’s a long time to travel in such close quarters, but when so much of the year is spent apart, it is good for a family to compress mentally, even while we compress physically with each other. We’ve had surprisingly few problems with the trip, and even more surprisingly few problems with each other. (But a few) It will be some time before we take a trip this large again, but it worked out well this time, and was worth the risk and cost.
I have said before, I have two very good traveling partners, and they make this time worthwhile.
Raising Flags of All Nations…
July 12th, 2011 Comments Off
We were exhausted from our long walk the day before, and we slept in pretty late. I eventually got up and checked out the tour bus website to see what the costs would be. It was not bad, and I was able to book a 24 hour tour pass, including Cruise on the Theames, and add a trip on the Eye for under 100 Pounds. With this setup, we could pickup our tickets from the main office back at Trafalgar Square anytime.
We hit the Tubes, and made it out to Trafalgar by 11:30. There was some kind of marathon going on, and traffic was rerouted all over the place. I had Yulia and Sasha hang out at Cafe Nero (our punch card is almost full!) while I headed to the office to get our tickets. The line wasn’t too bad at the office, and I was able to get in and out fairly quickly, but they did explain that the marathon traffic diversions would change the routes for the day.
We were primarily headed out to the Tower of London, so the exact route didn’t matter to us, so I wasn’t worried about that yet. I got Yulia and Sasha from the Cafe, and we walked over to the bus stop. It was pretty crowded. We hung about for a while, and when the bus arrived, it was pretty full. This meant that we had to sit on the lower level instead of on top, with the better view.
Then we hit the traffic.
I hadn’t realized the side effect of the rerouting would be the huge impact of every car and bus being routed in the same path at once, and we crawled along at a snail’s pace. The tour itself was good, but we had too much time between items, and the heat was on so we were baking on the way. Eventually we made out way around to the Tower, and hopped off the bus.
We were pretty hungry at this point, and found a nice place to eat with a view of the tower, river and even a peek at Tower Bridge. Unfortunately the food in the area was limited, and we ended up with a “Sacrifice Meal” of KFC. We have tried to balance our meals while n the road between good meals, and cheap. The lowest scale of cheap meals I like to think of as sacrifice meals that we eat just to keep the trip going. This was one of those. The quality of the food was bad, but they made up for it in volume.
No longer hungry, as our insides were shutting down in self-defense, we got tickets and headed into the tower. Once inside I realized that we had now visited each of the man castles in each of the Capitals, Cardiff Castle, Edinburgh Castle, and now the Tower of London. All in one trip. What made this interesting is that you hear the same history three times, each from a different point of view. Heroes in one are the villains in another. And in a sense, they are all correct, from their point of view.
Political history aside, the tower is amazing. We walked through Charles I’s quarters, the White Tower exhibits, and the Crown Jewels. This took several hours, and there was much more to see, but we just ran out of time. We spent 4 hours there, and it was beautiful and amazing. everywhere you looked there were examples of the development of the place from Roman times to today. It has never stopped changing. Eventually we were just out of time. We headed out and fond that the cruise boats were still running, and would take us to Westminster, where we could get our tickets from the London Eye. I wasn’t sure that they had spaces that evening, but at least we could get them for tomorrow.
The crowd was big waiting for the boat, and we had to wait through to boats to get on, being literally the last folks let onto the second boat. It was a nice cruise around the bend, narrated by one of the cruise members who gave us bits of river history as we went. a memorable part was a rhyme he told us about the Cast Lions heads that line the river wall, and their relation to high tides.
If the Lions are Drinking, London is sinking…
If the lions are Ducked, London is — flooded.
Strangely it didn’t rhyme.
We left the tour boat, and walked back across the bridge to the ticket offices from the Eye. The day was sold out until too late, so we got tickets for the next day. We figured on getting dinner at the Swan Pub again, and headed for the Tube. There is a lot of construction and repair going on, and they have closed some tube entrances, so I got a bit confusing to figure out how to get into the Waterloo station, and we got completely looped around an underground sidewalk. We found an elevator down to the station on one sidewalk, but when it opened it appeared that someone had been using it as public restroom, so we headed into the train station to find the connecting tunnel there.
It was easy after that point, and we came out our station, and halfway to the pub, found a guy selling miniature pub signs. This looked like a pretty cool bit of artwork for the house, so we go two, including one for the Swan pub itself. Dinner at the Swan was great again, and the tourists who were the customers were fun to mock as usual.
Notting Off
July 11th, 2011 Comments Off
A beautiful morning, which was perfect as we were headed to the Notting Hill market. I was pleased that the Lancaster Gate tube station was’t as crowded as the day before, which made sense since it was Saturday. But everyone was getting out at Notting Hill Gate. Once we were out in the street we found even more crowds, and printed signs pointing the way to Portobello Road, the main street for the market.
The market was Huuuuge. Both sides of Portobello Road were covered in stalls, and it stretched as far as the eye could see. If we were big antiques collectors, it would have been incredible, at least a third of the stands were some kind of antique, lots of tourist junk stands, and as we got further in, each type seemed to be grouped loosely together. We found clothing in one section (Sasha got the jacket she was looking for), There was great farmers Market stands, artwork, and quite a few stands with homemade music mixes, mostly funk.
We stopped at a cafe in the middle of the place, and had some excellent food, all freshly made and baked. The place was crazy busy, which was our clue that it was good. After a rest we kept walking. And Walking. And Walking. It was nuts. We finally made it our to the Tube on the opposite side of Notting Hill. We had walked for around 4 hours, and the time flew past.
We caught the train back into town, and were going to check out the London Eye. It was a fairly big ride back into the center, but it was good to sit for a bit. We got out at Waterloo station, and had to dodge a few rain showers as we made our way to the Eye. Once we got there the lines were huge. I went in and figured the ticketing system, and from what I could tell it was much faster to order online and come back on a later day. Cheaper too.
I checked the guide book, and it recommended a cafe in the park, facing Buckingham Palace as a good, quiet place to rest, so we took a walk across the bridge, past Parliament (not the band), listened to Big Ben chime the 45 minute mark (would have preferred to Listen to Parliament, the band, but take what you can get…), and kept following the crowds out. We got a few photos outside Westminster Abbey, and eventually made our way to the park. It was much less busy, and had beautiful views of London in all directions.
The Cafe in the park (called In The Park – clever) was pretty reasonable, for a park cafe, and we had some food, cheese, and wine. It was a great place to watch people, ducks, and the view. This was a very diferent London from the one on our first trip. Being able to find affordable food, and some quiet laces really transforms a city. We loved it.
As it started to get late, we waked across the park, over to Trafalgar Square, and up to Picadilly Circus. We peeked int the Ripley Believe it or Not Museum and got a discount on entry by chatting up one of the workers out front. It was five floors of Ripley stuff, including a mirror maze. Not a bad show, although a bit overpriced, but we liked it.
On he way out grabbed one of the flyers for the Red tour buses, and saw that they had discounts on the eye in one of their packages. I could check that online – back at the apartment. We headed back, grabbed some takeout food from the Lebanese street behind out apartment and crashed.
Timey Wimey
July 10th, 2011 Comments Off
We slept in just a bit, our Apartment was odd and slightly crapy, but felt reminiscent of my old apartment in Moscow, so we actually were sleeping better. It was kind of like a 20 year old homecoming.
Once up, we gathered our laundry together, and while Sasha rested in the apartment, Yulia and I walked around the corner to the laundromat. It turned out this was the filming site fro one on Scarlett Johaansen’s films, so folks popped in to take photos, while we were really just interested in getting a bit cleaner. I grabbed some food around the corner and dropped it off for Sasha at the apartment. then I headed out for the Olympia Kensington Station where the Doctor Who experience was setup. From what we read online, tickets were a bit of a pain, and according to the Tube map, the Station was a easy ride through the Metro, so I figured I would square tickets away, get back, then we would see the exhibits and do the city.
Unfortunately, the final leg of his particular tube ride was some kind of local shuttle oddball, and didn’t seem to run in the mornings. So I was stuck with no clear way of getting to the station, and decided to walk. metro stations are usually spaced out for a reason, that being that is just a bit to far to walk between, and in this case that was pretty true. I was winded by the time I got there, and found that tickets weren’t all that hard to get, and unlike purchasing them online, no specific time was needed to show up. At least that was a win.
I found a slightly closer metro to Olympia Kensington Station, walked briskly over there, then caught the metro back to the apartment. This took a lot longer than expected and Yulia and Sasha were pretty worried by the time I got back. All was good and we hit the road, taking the tubes back to the exhibit.
It was still a walk out there, but well worth it once we got in. I really appreciate Yulia being so patient while Sasha and I geeked out, but this included a massive exhibit that had a interactive experience with rolling Daleks, Cybermen, weeping angels, the Pandorica, and others, followed but a prop exhibit that had items dating back to the 4th Doctor, and costumes reproduced back from the first on. It was really amazing. They had lots of behind the scenes displays, and even Yulia was interesting in a few bits, but just a few. Most of it was too geeky, and I thank her again for tolerating us.
Once we were done, we decided to see if the shuttle train was running from the station at this time, and by luck we were just in time to catch the shuttle to the main line, saving us a ton of walking. We headed over a few stops toward the Victoria and Albert gallery. We had a few crepes just outside the gallery in a little French shop, then went into the gallery. Apparently this started as Richard’s private collection of art, and it is amazing. We walked throughout the first floor, and amongst the collection were surprised to se a plaster copy of the Apprentice Pillar from the Rosslyn Chapel, which we saw only a few days before.
After a lot of walking we went for a rest at the cafe, having some wine and coffee. THe restaurant there is apparently the oldest Museum cafe that is actually built for the purpose. It is pretty swank. We rested until our feet only hurt a bit, then walked up the shopping street towards the Metro. this took us past several funky shops, then, to Harrods.
If you read in the guidebook, Harrods is simply described as an overpriced institution. But that really doesn’t do it justice. you can see that about half of he people in Harrods are just there to see the spectacle. Imagine if Wily Wonka had a retail outlet and you are very close. Every department is a spectacle of architecture, with uniformed servants to run the place. Prices are set at least 6-10 times the highest retail. The selection of items is expansive and exquisite. I really can’t do it justice. It is everything that you might imagine shopping to be, if you read only Vogue and Bon Appetit your whole life.
But the customers…
Fat old men with bigger breasts than their diminutive enhanced wives, entire arabic sports teams with poorly disguised security details and hordes of burka-dress wives, children in tow. Everyone looking at the best way to conspicuously spend money. Once woman waiting in a massive line to order 20 pound per slice pizza that looked like Domino’s. 12 pound per kilo apricots. A sweets and coffee shop that was right out of chitty-chitty-bang-bang. Everyone looking to impress the person next to them or shock the onlookers. Yulia couldn’t get enough. She desperately wanted to watch and make fun of the spectacle. I had to take her out of there before the told them that Soylent Green is People.
We escaped and continued along the street, until we had had enough then caught the Tube to the station where we stayed on our last trip to London, only one block off from this trip. The neighborhood looked better than I remembered, and we check a few shops and grabbed some food at Tesco, before finding the local shopping mall. The mall was pretty cool. We waked around a bit, not finding anything great, then we came acrsoss the fish.
I had seen a local salon on once of our walks, and joked to Sasha that these tanks were for your feet, and the fish nibble at your skin to clean it. Then we found this in the middle of the mall, Tanks of fish with people sitting above them, feet in the water with little fish nibbling at them. I had made up the whole thing, and it turned out to be true. I couldn’t resist and paid for Yulia and Sasha to do 1 minutes of fish pedicure. It was hilarious to watch, as they didn’t stop giggling the whole time.
But once they were done, they said their feet felt great – can’t argue with that.
We left and walked over the the Swan Pub right near our Apartment. The place is about 200 years old, and while we were put off originally by the huge volume of people smoking out front, found a fantastic place inside, all clean and non-smoking, with a dining porch upstairs. We had a great dinner with beer and wine, declared this to be our home pub for our stay.
We were even treated to a show when some American woman began berating the waiter for not coming to her table to take her order, not realizing that at a pub that you walk up to order at the bar. She was livid that this wasn’t explained to her, despite the fact that it is not her country, meaning that it is her responsibility to figure things out, and also despite the fact that they have a big blackboard at the front titled “How to Order Food at The Swan” with these instructions spelled out in detail.
I just smiled and had another Fuller’s London’s Pride. (aptly named)
Bingo Fuel
July 8th, 2011 Comments Off
We got another early start. We had to get checked in in London, and return the rental car. When in Paris, I waited a bit too long and almost missed my return window, and I wasn’t about to do that this time. I was still timing my gas consumption at this point, as we pre-bought the tank, and there was no way I was giving these bastards one drop more than I had too.
We flew back to London, the freeways were clear and fast, great weather, the works. Even the Red Bull had just the right amount of fizz. You really couldn’t ask for a better drive.
Then we hit Heathrow.
The rain and traffic hit at the same time. The traffic stopped dead and the freeway was covered in standing water in parts. Apparently, the English have never heard of these new inventions called “Storm Drains”. Pipe the shit right out of your house…
We slowly ground our way into the center of the city, and lucky for us once we were off the freeway things let up and we could get to our apartment without too much trouble. We were just a block or so North of the Lancaster Gate Tube station, in a nice street. Yulia went in to check in, and I started to get the bags. The room wasn’t ready, so we had them store our bags while Yulia and Sasha walked around Hyde Park, and I took the car back.
I set the GPS for Hertz Heathrow Return and started heading back. My gas light came on the dash, and I could see that it said I had 25 miles left. The GPS said I had to go 12. Easy. Halfway there, the gas light started *blinking*, but it still told me 25 miles range. Hmmm. I pulled into Heathrow, and then I started having trouble with the return ramps. Recent construction didn’t match the GPS, and there were no signs of any kind for rental return, like I see at most airports. On my second lap of the terminal, the central dash changed from 25 miles to: !!!REFUEL!!!
Not good.
I checked my paperwork quickly and it gave the perimeter road as a dropoff point. I checked the GPS and found another Hetrz point on the Perimeter Road. Activating that I got out of the Terminal Loop, Gas light blinking madly, and drove along the perimeter road a bit. I was real gentle with the brakes, not wanting to need to accelerate, or to slosh the tank for that matter. I rolled into the lot, lights blinking, and fuel gauge pegged on empty. The Fine gentleman checked my car, found no dents and signed me out. I figured he could push it from there and I got on the shuttle back to the terminal.
I wasn’t going to pay a taxi back into ton, and our hotel was just two blocks from Paddington Station (note: I loved Paddington Bear as a child. Bugger off.) So I caught the train from the airport back into town. It was too easy. Te terminal has a tunnel to the airport station, and there is an express train that only takes 15 minutes to get to downtown. Once back I met Yulia and Sasha in the room, and Yulia told me that she spent that time fighting the front desk over which room we were going to get.
Apparently the first room was a nasty shoebox, with everything but a chalk outline of the last tenant. She went back and forth with them, and naturally, since Russian beats Englishman (even Indian-Englishman in this case) we got a new room. Still old and funky, but a much better place than the first two. We celebrated being done with the car and being at our final destination by walking along the park and finding a great little Italian place near Notting Hill. After that we went to the Tube station and got our passes for the week setup, then tooled around town for a bit before walking back through the park to the hotel.
It was still hot and muggy.
Thespian? But I thought she liked men…
July 8th, 2011 Comments Off
First thing in the morning I ran over to Starbucks in the center of town for free internet and bad espresso to upload a bunch of photos and blog posts. I did a quick run around to the Royal Shakespeare Company to see what tickets were available, if any. THere were none that were any good at this point. I had thought about getting tickets a few months before, but no one was sure that they were going to have the energy to sit through a full production of Macbeth, so we let it to the fates. and the Fates farted in our general direction.
I went back to the hotel, got Yulia and Sasha, and we went over to the Birthplace and Shakespeare center instead. It began pouring rain once we got there, so this worked out well. The presentation inside the center is great, Taking us between exhibits and history, we honestly wished it was longer (the only time I have ever said that about anything involving Shakespeare), and we ran through the garden to the house. It was in remarkably god shape for it’s age, and re reconstructed bits all hid themselves well. Guides explained bits of history in various sections, which was all quite fun, then we made a mad dash through the gift shop, in a vain attempt to escape, but Sasha got caught and purchased a quill pen.
The rain had left us alone for a bit, so we went about the shops in the street, slowly making our way to the other two main Shakespeare houses in the center of town. We had a good afternoon tea at the Hathaway Tea Room, which is in a building from 1610, but the Tea Room itself is quite new, being from 1931.
That led us over to “New House” the house that Shakespeare retired to and died in, which stands out as it isn’t there anymore. It is quite literally, a hole in the ground, with archeologists and all. The presentations are in the neighboring house, which is from the same period and is done up with the exhibits and history on the missing building, along with a very large sculpture garden out back. A very beautiful setting to say the least.
Next we went over to Halls Croft, the house of his Daughter. The preserved home at this point was far less interesting than the exhibits, this hall had a great series of costumes from productions of his plays, including those from Patrick Stewart and David Tennant. I really have to see those productions now.
This was close to the church where Shakespeare and his family are buried, so we went there to complete the day’s tour. We were just in time to get swamped in a massive group of students coming in for their visit. But despite the loud crowd, it is an amazing cathedral, with an amazing memorial. We spent quite a while just looking at all the elements and reading the historical plaques. We took our time while the student groups ran in and out pretty quickly.
Four big historical stops in one day was a lot of Shakespeare, but if we weren’t so physically tired, we could have done more. But we were tired, and couldn’t keep moving, so we went back to the Hotel for a rest. Yulia and I left Sasha in the room by herself to watch TV and nap, and we headed to the Lobby to have a drink and read. Originally, we were going to sit on the patio by the river, but the rain had started again, and was windy to boot.
Later that evening, we all walked over to Royal Shakespeare Company on the odd chance that some tickets came up, and two did, but we were looking for three, so we just toured the building instead. The remodel is apparent when you see the older walls inside the building, and they even have three chairs bolted inside the upper wall to show where the last rows used to be. The newer design is a much smaller venue, with a thrust stage, and a second theater for small performances. We saw a bit of the opening of Macbeth on the video screen, and you could see how personal the new venue was. The tour was enough for us, and we were done with Stratford.
On to London.
Start spreadin’ the news…
July 6th, 2011 Comments Off
Must. Kill. All. Owls.
It was a bummer leaving York in so short a time, we were trying to decide between spending an extra half day in York, or getting an extra half day in Stratford upon Avon. We only had a 2 hour drive or so, and that was going to leave us with extra time somewhere. We figured that traffic would be best in the morning, and eft right after breakfast, opting to take our half day in Stratford.
We were right about the traffic, and got to stratford just after noon. Our room wasn’t even ready yet. We left our things at the hotel, and walked into the town. The town is small, and though full of tourists, very rustic. The timber framed buildings are beautiful, and it looks like there has been a good local effort to preserve them as best possible.
We have been on vacation for two weeks now, and have found that across the UK, every place that we have stopped has been really beautiful, but each in a very different way. I think we have been pretty lucky in our choices of destinations, but you also just have to credit the area for being generally scenic.
The weather, however, is finally starting to turn on us. Sasha is pleased. The heat was getting to her right away, and she is happy to have some rain showers and cooler air. Can you tell she is a Seattle girl? We found a nice tea shoppe to duck into while the rain came down to get lunch. We had a view right across the street of the Shakespeare birthplace. The place is remarkably preserved. We waited for the rain to clear a bit, and checked out the tourist shops.
Despite the huge volume of tourists, it was still really charming. The Tudor architecture is really hard to beat, even with all the development. We went back towards the hotel once our room was ready, and while nothing special, it was nice to be in a full hotel for some part of our trip. We got all set up, then headed back down to the lobby, as we saw a boat tour just next to the hotel.
Apparently, when built originally, it was a Hilton Hotel, (now a Holiday Inn) and the Hiltons wanted to advertise a “Riverfront” hotel. Unfortunately, there was no way in the area to build right on the riverbank, so the hotel was built a ways back, then they dug their own canal to bring the river to the hotel. This made little sense in the long run, but now a small tour company runs out of here, and we could take a 45 minute tour of the Avon for about 5 pounds.
it was a small operation, but they had a good sense of humor, and wine. I was amazed right of by the ability of the captain to maneuver such a narrow, long boat through the narrow channel. There was little room for error, and he made it look pretty easy. You could tell that it was a small, amateur operation as they were not completely organized, but they work working pretty hard to make everything interesting. We got river views of the Marina, Local church where Shakespeare is buried, city center, local homes, and a bit of explanation of life on the Avon river. It was pretty fun.
Then the Americans spoke up.
Some days I think, “Gosh, why do Americans have such a bad rap across the world?” Then I see Arseholes like this. About halfway through the tour, some woman started giving a hard time to the guide, giving him crap about his lame jokes and interrupting to show how much better she was. Apparently trying to impress her children in front of her new boyfriend, who seemed to be pretty horrified at how she acted. Judging by her Tiffany watch and rings, she was the one with the money, and didn’t give a crap about anything else. She was loud and trying to put the crew in their place, whatever place that was supposed to be. Our guide payed it cool and she gave up after a while.
Once we left the cruise, I ran into her again in our hotel, yelling at one of the staff in the lobby. Classy. Yulia commented that it was too bad that I hadn’t had a few more drinks, as then I would started comments back at her, which would have been entertaining. Although some people actually do take offense from being called an obnoxious fat tart, but I can’t imagine why.
We got dinner at The Garrick Inn, which is the oldest continuos Pub in Stratford, operating from the 1500′s It had been gutted by fire at least once, and rebuilt, so it had a mix of original exterior, and original and updated interior. The food was excellent, and reasonable prices, surprising for a tourist town.
“Drink sir, is a great provoker of three things….nose painting, sleep and urine. Lechery, sir, it provokes, and unprovokes; it provokes the desire but takes away the performance.”
Well said sir, Well said.
Coooool for Caaaaats…
July 6th, 2011 Comments Off
Things might cool down at night near the riverfront, but apparently our solid brick and stone hotel retained it’s heat pretty well. We might not have been able to sleep well, but the owl that lived next to our window gave us something to listen to while awake.
We still got up early, as a free breakfast was a free breakfast. There was a full selection of continental breakfast items, and a Full English Breakfast as well if you wanted it. I did, and ate some of Yulia’s as well. It too me two cups of coffee to realize that I had forgotten to wear shoes downstairs, while everyone else seemed to dress sharp for breakfast. They were giving my some funy looks.
Screw ‘em – They’re lucky I even had pants.
After dressing we headed out for our next York cat. This was working out to be a great city tour, we would find a cat, shop around, grab some espresso, and go for the next cat. We hit the whole center of town this way. On our way around, Yulia found some nice sunglasses shopping, and Sasha had some baby geese run up to feed from her hand and jump up on her. Too cute.
We walked around the bank and cut over to York Castle. We walked up the mott to the castle and enjoyed the view. We really weren’t up to pay to go into yet another castle at this point, but we saw ice cream across the street and made a beeline over. It was really rich, fantastic ice cream, and reminded me that England hadn’t fallen into the trap that the S had of replacing all food with tasteless, fat-free replacements that doubled up the sugar so you wouldn’t notice the extra salt and sawdust used to puff it up. Bastards.
We wend back across the center of town, past the birthplace of Guy Faulkes, and went to York Minster to see the tour. As it turned out, there was a funeral at the Mister that day, so we had to wait for that to finish to go inside, and most of the tours were closed. We were able to walk about the interior, which was massive. I would have to compare it to Notre Dame in scale, with a series of smaller prayer areas inside the size of most normal chapels. The artwork was beautiful, and we wished we could have taken a full tour, but that just wasn’t going to happen.
We left the Minster, and were seriously overheating. We went back to the center alley streets for more shade, and found courtyard cafe to hide in for a bit. Here, we were served the best Pimm’s cocktail yet. This had so much fruit in it, it was almost a drinking salad. I decided that that made it healthy, and ordered a whole pitcher. The short rest did good, and we went back up past Minster to find out last cat. After finding it, the heat was getting to us again, and we went straight back to the Hotel.
An afternoon nap was welcome. Despite being hard to sleep, it was nice to have the heat after some dodgy weather up North. the reports also showed that we were going to get clouds later in the week, so we decided just to enjoy this while we had it.
Once we woke, we went back to the center for dinner, and to find the last architectural oddity on our list, which was a red devil carving on one of the walls, there are interesting carvings al over the city, and this is one of the more famous. We found it, then found a French Cafe chain to have dinner at.
York was a great city. We easily could have spent more time here. We were very glad to have changed our plans.
What’s New Pussycat?
July 6th, 2011 Comments Off
We had a long drive ahead of us today. We were going from Glasgow down to York, and that was a 5+ hour drive. We had packed up most of the way the night before, But the Fast and the Furious the night before kept us up for too much of the night. We were pretty slow moving in the morning. We made what food we had left for breakfast, dropped our keys off at the interior office, and headed out of town.
We made amazing time heading to The South. the roads weren’t as scenic as they were driving through Wales, but even when they dropped to a single lane in each direction, they remained good and fast. We Folowed the GPS into York, and were winding among small streets and city walls in no time. Our hotel was just two blocks off from the pedestrian city center, which meant we were *inside* the old city walls. In most European cities, this is just a metaphorical comment, usually with some street, named something creative like “Wall Street” marking where the walls once stood.
In York however, this isn’t a theoretical discussion. The walls are all still standing, as are the main three gates. There are a few large gaps on main roads in, but otherwise you can actually still walk the top of the defensive wall all the way around the city. Bring a couple of loads of bricks from Home Depot and you would have the whole thing back in full operation. The tower gates even still have their portcullis’s, though they may need some WD-40.
The hotel was not too small, and very clean. Once we were settled in, we went to the lobby, and checked out the flyers for things to do locally. We found one that talked about the York history of architectural cat statues. Apparently York has had buildings put up statues of cats for luck since the time of the plague, apparently to scare off rats. the ones up currently are modern, and most from a single architect who loved the practice. The flyer gave us clues on where to look, and we decided to make this a project for the city. As the cats were scattered around the whole city, it would make for an effective tour.
The city center is just as beautiful as Bath, though completely different architecture. We walked in the evening through the skinny old streets, where the upper floors of the houses on either side extend wider with each added floor, almost touching on top. Yulia was going crazy here, she loved the place. We definitely made the right choice to come here instead of the Castle in Darlington.
We found a couple cats right off, wandered a bit, then settled in an alley cafe for some drinks and food. Prices were very good, which surprised us as we have been expecting things to get more expensive as we get closer to London, and even though this was a tourist center, it was really reasonable. We chased away a few smokers from the tables through pure shame, then continued our cat hunt. Part of our walk led s across the top of one of the sections of city wall. It was in near perfect condition, and the view was amazing. After finding a few more cats, we headed back towards the hotel to clean up a bit.
We headed back out after a short while and made our way to another section of city wall. We walked along the outside of the wall, and ended up along the river walk, heading back to the center. We passed by the river locks used for boats heading in and out of the canals, and kept in towards the center, finding an outdoor pub on the riverfront. We sat for a quick meal of wings and a couple of Pimms. It was cheap and good. and as the sun was going down and starting to cool off, thankfully quick. We headed back to the hotel, and were glad to get in an extra half day in York before out tour day in the morning. We were up for getting some rest.
The night had it’s own plans…
Good On You…
July 4th, 2011 Comments Off
Our last day in Scotland was a country trip. Our first destination was to the Rosslyn Chapel, of DaVinci Code fame. Rosslyn is located just south of Edinburgh. This illustrated the fact that we originally had our apartment in Edinburgh, and got cancelled at the last minute. Glasgow has been very cool, but seems better suited to a younger party crowd, and less of the family tourist crowd. That and the fact that our apartment seems to be on the street racing loop didn’t help much.
We knew the route out to Edinburgh pretty well at this point. It was a quick drive. The Chapel was out in the middle of the country, and we could se that it had a lot of construction going on to support the foundation that runs the chapel. Interestingly, they have a foundation to support the chapel, but it is still the active church for the area, and interesting mix for a historical building.
We were lucky, as for the past 14 years they had a steel roof over the building to dry it out. They only removed it last year. So we got a view of the entire building that we wouldn’t have had the year before. We were just in time for the talk/tour. The chapel was much smaller than I had expected. But it was amazing! Every surface of the chapel was covered in carvings, top to bottom. We got an amazing history of the building, and the mix of Christian and Masonic architecture throughout the building is like nothing I have ever seen. Our guide gave us a full history, and closed up with a talk about the ups and downs of the movie, The DaVinci Code. The notoriety of the film brought loads of tourists, which have helped pay for restoration and construction, but it also brought out the crazies. People who think the place is full of treasure, people who think it has the Holy Grail, People with AXES who think the place has the Holy Grail. And at least one woman how KNEW Elvis was buried there (which is completely insane, as everyone knows that Elvis is alive).
The building is literally like the Bible carved in stone mixed with a few thousand years of Masonic history carved in stone. The only thing missing is everything from the DaVinci Code, which was all made up. No Rose Line, no Six-Pointed star, but there was some glue left on the wall where they stuck the prop.
We left the chapel, and walked into town to find some coffee. There was a small place in the town of Rosslyn where they had espresso and some food. The place made a fantastic cup of espresso. Sasha had some great soup and food, while Yulia and I had a bit of carrot cake and coffee. I saw that the menu had a thing called “Flat White” on their espresso list, which I had never heard of. I went up the the owner and asked, and once he found out we were from Seattle, Home of Starbucks, he had to make us a Flat White. It was apparently a full microfoam doubleshot cup, between a Latte and Cappuccino. It was excellent. I will have to start making these at home myself.
We left after a bit and headed out to our second stop, the Glenkinchie Distillery. The distillery was just a few minutes away from Rosslyn. On the drive out we saw lots of wild grouse darting in and out of the Barley fields. We tried to stop to get pictures, but the would zip away too fast. It was a beautiful area.
We pulled into the drive for the distillery, and walked up to the tour office. We got our tour tickets, and went to the display area to wait for our tour time. It was really impressive. They put up a miniature model of the entire distillery to walk through before the tour, with a series of historical documents showing the history of the distillery. Pretty slick. We got a full tour with a small group. The tour was fun, and once we hit the tasting room, we got to try the Scotch. Yulia liked it. I was really pleased to find a scotch that Yulia liked, and we tried sips of a few more, and none of them fit her tastes. I picked up a Quaich and a small bottle of Glenkinchie before we left, then we headed out.
Back in Glasgow, we had our final dinner for the city back in Princes Square at a cool Fusion restaurant. To wrap up our stay, I ordered Haggis, Neaps and Tatties. The waiter looked over at me and said, “Good on you mate!”
I liked it. And Scotland. It was a fun stay.
