busy

Working lots. Tomorrow, going to the cottage for the weekend with Jeff, Craig, and Doug.

Next week, Jeff and I are going to the UK for a holiday. Spending a couple of days in London visiting our friend Brian (I'm also meeting Lissa and Annie for lunch!), a couple of days in Scotland, then the rest of the time in Ireland visiting with our friend Scott (a history professor at the University of Belfast). Taking a laptop with me so will hopefully be able to post a blathering or two.

london, england

Hey, I'm in London! Staying with our friends Helen and Brian. Had lunch with Lissa and Annie (very cool to meet Annie for the first time! loved Lissa's Sesame Street backpack!)...was fifteen minutes late after getting lost in the Underground (much more complicated than the Toronto subway system!). Realized a few minutes after saying good-bye to them that I HAD FORGOTTEN TO TAKE A PHOTO WAAAH. Sigh, will have to wait until February. The lunch seemed way too short. Spent the rest of the first day recovering from jet lag but still checked out Buckingham Palace (the Queen wouldn't let me in) and Westminster Abbey. Today, visited the National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, wandered about the streets visiting bookshops and eating mint icecream. Was a bit disappointed by London Bridge (it wasn't falling down). This evening's highlight: hearing the Primavera Chamber Orchestra perform Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons" by candlelight in St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Going to Edinburgh tomorrow.

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Monday, May 24, 1999

even more busy

Ack, am trying to get workstuff done before we leave on our UK trip tomorrow. I'll post blatherings or in blatherchat whenever I can.

So far, I have sent 971 email messages since May 1st (99% work-related). No wonder my head feels like exploding.

london report

Came home to 2900 emails, eek.

Left Portaferry, Ireland early yesterday morning, finally got back to Toronto
18 hours later. Trip photos online soon (Black's told me next Wednesday), but I'll
post bits of my report here meanwhile.

LONDON REPORT (two full days)

Left Toronto on May 25th in the evening. The flight to Heathrow was about six and a half hours,
and I actually managed to get some sleep (secret: I took a Gravol just before
getting on the plane, and also brought along ear plugs). The only other time I've been
to London was nearly ten years ago, and I've smartened up a bit since then in terms of
travelling. For one thing, I packed much lighter this time...I fit everything into one
knapsack and one small suitcase with wheels (the type that is small enough to be a carry-on,
though we opted to check our luggage anyway). No formal clothes, counted on layering rather than bulky stuff; don't think I'll be able to pack this light for our February UT/UK trip, unfortunately...unless I leave my guitar, flute, and music behind! :) Other carry-on essentials on long flights (for me, anyway): bottled water,
ear plugs, reading material, moisturizer, toothbrush & toothpaste. Dozed fitfully through
the two movies on the flight: Civil Action and Waking Ned Devine (if any of you haven't seen the second movie, go see it RIGHT NOW! Helen says it's called "Waking Ned" in the UK).

Took the tube (the Underground subway system) to Tower Hill station, where Helen met us and took us to Brian's place. By this time it was morning...felt a bit weird to having morning sun on my face while my body was telling me, "Go to bed, you fool! It's four in the morning!" We dumped out stuff off at Brian's, and then headed off so I could meet Lissa and Annie for lunch.

And then came our adventure Underground. The London subway system is much more complicated than
the Toronto system...many more subway lines, and different trains often used the same track. You also buy tickets instead of tokens (the further you travel on the system, the more your ticket costs...contrast to Toronto, where one token will take you anywhere on the TTC), and need to use your ticket to exit the Underground as well as enter it. And don't crumple it! Jeff crumpled his and was very nearly trapped in the Underground forever. Anyway, trains arrive/leave fairly frequently. As we got down to the Tower Hill platform, a train was just pulling in. Instead of checking to see
what train it was, we all leaped on board just before the doors closed.

Within a few minutes, of course, we discovered we had jumped on the wrong train. It took us about twenty minutes to get back to where we started, at which point it was announced that there was a technical problem in the line, and all trains were being delayed. I was already late for lunch with Lissa and Annie, so we opted to cab it instead. Fortunately Lissa and Annie were still waiting at our appointed meeting place, yay! Helen and Jeff left to do some sightseeing, and L & A & I headed off to a nearby pub (whose name I forget, sorry). VERY nice pub, not at all what I imagine when I hear the word "pub". I have to apologize to Lissa and Annie for any incoherence evident in my conversation
that lunch...I was still a bit zoned out from the flight. It was wonderful to see Lissa again, and Annie was just as nice as I had imagined her to be. :-) Can't wait until February, when we get to hang out with each other for longer!

In the afternoon and through the next day, we checked out Buckingham Palace (my insistence...I had to see it in real life), the National Gallery (very cool to see the originals of paintings I've only seen in prints or while playing Masterpiece as a child), the National Portrait Gallery (our main goal was to see the portrait of Mervyn Peake), Westminster Abbey (gorgeous! chapels and memorials of/to people like Queen Elizabeth I, Mary Queen of Scots, King Henry the Fifth, George Frederick Handel, William Shakespeare, Geoffrey Chaucer), bookshops, Leicester Square, Trafalgar Square, other landmarks. We went to a concert in St. Martin-in-the-Fields in the evening, and that was a real treat. The Primavera Chamber Orchestra performed Pachelbel's Canon and Gigue, J.S. Bach's Concerto For Two Violins in D-, Mozart's Divertimento in D+, and Vivaldi's The Four Seasons. And all this by candlelight in a 700-year-old church. Not a bad way to spend our last evening in London. :-)

Ate at a great Indian restaurant after. There was a young American couple sitting at the table next to us...and I have to say that these were the kind of people that give us North American types a bad name. We could hear them mumbling through the whole meal, complaining about the food, the service, the cost. Nothing was as good as it was in the U.S. (e.g. "Back in the U.S., rice ALWAYS comes with our meal in Indian restaurants, we don't have to ASK for it...") Sure have to wonder why they came over to visit in the first place, hmph.

My overview of London: lots of things to do and see, expensive (everything cost about 2.5 times as much as it did in Canada), very busy, could easily have spent more time exploring the city. I would have liked to check out the Tower of London, for instance, as well as take the Buckingham Palace tour.

Language learned: "toilet" ="restroom", "bap" = type of sandwich (is this right, UK types?)

Next installment: Edinburgh, Scotland.

edinburgh report

Spent yesterday morning working, then went to Reid and Luisa's for a Star Wars movieathon. The original plan was to watch the original Star Wars trilogy on DVD (the enhanced versions), but we ran out of time (plus got distracted by other fun stuff). It was interesting, though, watching these movies with the revelations in the Phantom Menace. So what do you all think about the enhanced versions, by the way? Should Lucas have left those alone? Although I can understand his motivation, I wish he had. Sure, some of the effects were cheesy, but they were state-of-the-art at the time. IMHO, it's sort of like going back and colourizing Casablanca, or updating episodes of The Brady Bunch.

Next trip report installment...

EDINBURGH REPORT (Day 3, and part of Day 4)

Took a British Midlands flight from Heathrow to Edinburgh (found out that Heathrow shut down shortly after our flight due to a power outage!), rented a Hertz car, set off for our B&B. I found
Newington Cottage on the Web,
by the way. Absolutely wonderful place, with beautifully appointed rooms and a garden,
about a 20-minute walk from downtown Edinburgh. I would have liked to stay here longer.
Jeff and I were both very tired the first evening, so decided to eat a nearby restaurant (Fenwicks)
instead of going downtown. I had a tomato salad (cherry tomato, baby spinach & red onion salad with basil vinaigrette) and roast leg of lamb (filled with pine nut farce (I have no idea what farce is, so don't ask) on braised red cabbage with roasted potatoes). Dessert: chocolate cup with mango mousse and caramel sauce.

In the morning (8 am), we went to the dining room for breakfast and met some of the other B&B occupants. Almost everyone had found the place online, interestingly enough. For breakfast, we had a choice of several types of omelettes and a full Scottish breakfast. Both Jeff and I opted for the latter, which included: fresh oj, fruit, coffee/tea, broiled tomatoes, fried bread (cut out in the shape of a heart), sausages, bacon, mushrooms, toast, croissants, cereal & milk, and a poached egg. After waddling out of the dining room, we took off for St. Andrew's. Purpose of this visit:
Jeff did postgraduate studies at St. Andrew's University about
ten years ago...we had kept in touch via email, snailmail, and phonecalls...and I wanted to see what it looked like. (And no, Jeff doesn't play golf. :-))

Absolutely beautiful town. The beach at St. Andrews, by the way, was the one where that famous
running scene in Chariots of Fire was filmed. We also checked out Jeff's old dorm room, other old haunts. Had fish and chips at a place called PM's where he and Scott used to hang out all the time.
The weather was a real contrast to that in London. With Parki and Helen, we were wandering about in t-shirts and shorts. In Scotland, I wore a t-shirt, two sweaters (I bought a bulky sweater at a shop in St. Andrew's), a coat, and gloves!
Before leaving St. Andrew's, we had tea by the fireplace in the Russell Hotel pub. I got quite used to the tea thing during the trip, by the way. I usually don't drink a lot of tea and coffee back home. In London, Helen would make tea for us every morning, and I got used to it. I'm still making tea every morning as soon as I get up. :-)

When we got back it was too late to do the tour of Edinburgh Castle, but we decided to take a walk up to the castle anyway. Good timing, too...as we got closer, we could hear strains of bagpipe music as well as drums. Turns out there was a bagpipe marching band (one of the drums read "Edinburgh Post Office Marching Band") going through their moves in the clearing in front of the castle. It was quite the dramatic setting, with the castle as a backdrop and the darkening clouds above (it was cloudy and/or raining the entire time we were in Scotland).

Had dinner at an Italian restaurant called Bella Pasta. Our waitress turned out to be from London, Ontario (!). We gave her a big tip. :-) We spent the rest of the evening walking all over
Edinburgh. Wonderful place, definitely MUST come back here for a longer stay sometime.

In the morning, we had a quick breakfast and then headed off for Ireland.

Next installment: Portaferry, Ireland.

star wars again

Jeff and I went to see Star Wars again last night with friends. I have to say I enjoyed it even more the second time around. :-) (found Jar Jar more irritating, though)