The last couple of months have been extraordinarily busy. First, I changed to a Six Sigma project, on which I am an MBB coach. Some of the places I have had to travel to are Frankfurt, Milan, Como and Kosice, in Slovakia and Düsseldorf.
On one trip to Milan, I got the chance to see a bit of the city. I started at the Duomo (it is the 4th largest cathedral in the world, St Peter's in Rome is the largest), which has recently been cleaned and is nice and white now. It is famous for the sheer volume of marble statues in it. After wandering through it at a reasonably quick pace (all cathedrals and churches are starting to lose their individuality for me), I headed up to the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, the rather glamourous covered passage that houses big name shops like Prada but also has the poshest McDonald's I have ever seen. On the other side of the Galleria was supposed to be the greatest opera house in the world, Teatro alla Scala (where Bianca Castafiore sang Faust - there's a low brow reference for you!). When I got there, it was not immediately obvious where it was as it is a nondescript, grey building in a square full of buildings of equal size. Even a couple of Italian tourists had to ask a passer-by where La Scala was. I happened to go into the shop and a back door was ajar from which I could have a peek at the front hall. What a difference! The inside is all white and gold with red velvet curtains and chairs and crystal chandeliers hanging from ornate ceilings. Next stop was the Castello Sforzesco, a visit that was marred by African men tried to sell me hand-made string bracelets. One even got one onto my wrist while insisting that it was free and then tried to get money from me, which I duly ignored (I had the hardest time getting it off later). Next stop was the Santa Maria della Grazie church, whose convent houses The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci. Unfortunately, you have to book a month in advance to get in to see it. Last stop was the Basilica Sant'Ambrogio, the patron saint of Milan. His earthly remains, along with those of 2 other saints lie in the crypt in all their glory - brown, shiny bones with crowns perched on their brown, shiny skulls all in a big glass coffin.
On another trip to Italy, my client suggested I come to her in Como instead of the office in Milan. So, I got on the train in fog in Milan one morning and arrived 50 minutes later in a fog-bound Como. It cleared enough by lunchtime for my client to point out George Clooney's mansion on the other side of the lake (the rich side, as she put it) before the fog descended again and I was not able to see anything for the next 1 1/2 days. Como really isn't the ideal holiday spot in winter. The town is quite pretty but nothing spectacular, similar to the towns of the Tuscan region, with a cathedral, some other churches, old houses and little squares dotted all around.
In November, I visited Auntie Hannah twice in Leeds. The first time I went by myself and we drove up to the Brontë museum in Haworth. I know very little about the Brontë sisters and was surprised to learn that they all died before the age of 40. Their mother died shortly after Anne was born and 2 of their sisters did not make it to adulthood. Their brother Branwell was given all the opportunities but failed to live up to expectations. He allegedly had an affair with a Mrs Robinson, the mother of the children Anne was governess to and Branwell was supposed to tutor. This is supposedly why the character in The Graduate is called Mrs Robinson. He died in 1848 and months later Emily followed with Anne dying in mid 1949. Charlotte made it to her late 30s and died 6 years later. Their poor father outlived them all and died at the very respectable age of 84.
On my second visit 3 weeks later, I was accompanied by Taffy and also David and Alex, who was back during uni holidays. It was the first time I had met him. I also met Uncle Greg so I have now met all but one of the Yiu side of the family. They taught me to play mahjong, which is quite the most boring game in the world. No wonder people gamble to make it interesting! We also played trivial pursuit, with me, David and Alex pitted against Uncle Greg, Taffy and Auntie Hannah. I gave Uncle Greg a real run for his money, racing to 5 pieces of pie before we fell apart at the end.
In the 2 weeks in between, first Lang came (for the wedding of 2 of his friends in Jersey of all places(!) ) and then Kuhn & Jane. Kuhn will be in Bristol for 3 months while Jane will stay for at least a year. I think it is the first time I have seen Lang in 3 years or so and 1.5 years since the last time I saw Kuhn and Jane so it was good to catch up with them all.
I had been meaning to go see The Nutcracker at Covent Garden every year at Christmas and have never been organised enough to do it. This year, I looked online a couple of months ahead of time to find that it was completely booked out on weekends and Wednesdays and there was limited seating available on a Monday. I found a seat with a reasonable view (according to the pictures they supply on the website) in the nose-bleed section that wasn't £200 or more. The Royal Opera House is beautiful but also an incredible maze. I got lost getting to my seat and when I came out for intermission, I couldn't work out where I was in relation to where I had been. I must say that the Royal Ballet is infinitely better than the English National Ballet, whose Swan Lake I went to see a couple of years ago. There were a couple of inadvertently funny bits, one of which was when the soldiers were trying to fight off the mice. One of the soldiers died and his mate was trying to drag him off the stage. The poor kid couldn't get a good grip on his legs and meanwhile the rest of the cast was bearing down on him, coming closer and closer in formation. You could almost see him sweating while he tried to solve his problem. He eventually got hold of one leg and managed to get the other kid offstage. It is amazing how much Fantasia has coloured my life. Many of the dances from the second half were in the movie, including the mushrooms, my favourite in the film. I would recommend the Royal Ballet's The Nutcracker if you are in London at Christmas time but book early! Having seen 2 English ballet corps (and the crazy Trocadero boys), however, I am now extremely interested in seeing the Bolshoi, as the quality of the dancing I have experienced is still below my expectations. Perhaps ballet really is that hard to master that very few people can do it beautifully, with stamina and with charisma.
Last week, I was in Düsseldorf for a team meeting and had a bit of time to see the Aldstadt, the Old Town. There were Christmas markets galore there but the stall that drew my interest was one that only sold potatoes. It had many different varieties in big boxes all around the stall. That German consumers are that discerning really surprised me. I wouldn't know the first thing about what the special properties of different potatoes are. I also visited our office, which is situated in a tourist attraction. The set of 3 buildings on Neue Zollhof were designed by Frank Gehry and are quite interesting. One is white, one metallic and one brick, all with offset windows. Our office is in the metallic one, which, in my opinion, is the best one. From the little that I saw of Düsseldorf, it seems like a nice city to live in but I won't be in a hurry to visit again.
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Sunday, October 4, 2009
From Oslo to Bergen
Since Madrid, I have been to Bristol to see the Banksy exhibit (a great exhibit if only I hadn't had to wait 4 hours in a queue outside, luckily it was clear and not too hot, then having to race through the exhibit before closing time) and Luxembourg (the most beautiful, boring place on Earth - it didn't help that I was ill most of the time I was there).
3 weeks ago, Eppie arrived from Toronto. We went to high tea at The Connaught with Taffy and Lily, Linda, Eppie's friend's sister. It was divine. I had Japanese rice tea, sandwiches, scones, cakes and pastries. I got to a chocolate mousse macaroon and it stopped me completely. I have never had such an experience where I haven't been able to fit anything else in!
Eppie and I then flew off to Norway for a week. We started in Oslo, which was mostly sunny. It is quite small for a capital city and all the sights are within walking distance.
The royal palace is quite a plain building but beautifully situated in gardens with a long sweeping drive down to the main street of the city. The city itself has a 'European' look and feel to it with old buildings mixed with a few newer ones, pedestrian malls and a big train station. We visited the Akerhus Fortress, one of a handful scattered around Norway. The Opera House, which is a big white & glass modern structure is just near the fortress. I think that if they can keep it white, bright and clean, will stay current for a long time. I contrast it to the yellowing tiles on the Sydney Opera House, which looks good from a distance but is awful up close.
Frogner Park is the most bizarre garden. It is filled with sculptures of people at various stages of life. There are bronze and marble statues, small and large. Eppie really liked it but I was more interested in the school groups on excursion. They all had high-viz vests on and were paired up with buddies. So cute!
Oslo to Bergen
We took the train from Oslo to Bergen, which took all day. We likened it to going to work for the day. The scenery was green and sunny for 3/4 of the way and then within minutes, changed dramatically to dark, cloudy, bleak and cold. It started to rain and this continued on and off for the rest of our trip.
Bergen
Bergen is home to another of the fortresses, Bergenhus. In it, is Haakon Hall, named after a king, Haakon Haakonson, whose name had me in stitches for ages. Tradition is one thing but naming every generation the same as the last is just ridiculous. It is like the Dannish King Christian/Frederick/Christian alternating name tradition. A bit of variety never hurt anyone.
We were about to take the cable car up one of the mountains but the bus driver told us not to waste our money as the fog was so thick and low that we wouldn't be able to see anything. He said that if we could see the top of the funicular, we could try that. Well, we could see it when we were at the bottom but by the time we got to the top, the fog was rolling in and in seconds, the visibility was reduced to almost zero. What a waste of money.
Bergen has the feel of an old fishing village. The Fish Market is quite small but has lots of fresh (and live) seafood as well as smoked fish. We were lucky enough to try quite a few different things there, included hot and cold smoked salmon and smoked whale meat. Eppie had been quite reluctant to try it (I put it down to years of indoctrination in Australia), but eventually gave it a go. It is very dark, looks almost like beef, very little fat, quite chewy and has a fishy aftertaste. It is not something that I would hurry to eat again, not sure why it is considered a delicacy.
We had been warned about the cost of food in Norway and had decided beforehand that we would have to make the most out of the breakfasts, which were included in the hotel costs. We had dinner one night in a restaurant called the Unicorn, which specialises in seafood. One entree, two mains and one beer cost us 900NOK (£100, AUD200), which is just outrageous.
Norway in a Nutshell
We went on a trip called Norway in a Nutshell, which purports to showcase the best of Norway. It starts in Bergen with a train trip to Myrdal. This connects to the Flam Railway, which is a lovely, scenic and windy trip through the mountains down to Flam. Because the track is so steep, they developed a train that had 5 braking systems to handle the trip. In Flam, we had time to walk to a waterfall before boarding the ferry for a cruise down the Sognefjord. The arm of the fjord we were in was actually called Naeroyfjord and is UNESCO Heritage Listed. The cruise ended at Gudvangen, where we boarded a bus that took us down the oldest road in Norway, which is incredibly steep and narrow. It gives you such great views all the way down. At Voss, we then took a train back to Bergen.
Glacier trip
Because the nutshell trip was so good, we decided to go on a trip to a glacier on the Sunday. We had been told by the tour company that we could buy tickets on the day from the boat but when we got there, they said that we could only buy tickets for their part of the journey. The high speed ferry took us up the west coast and into the Sognefjord to Balestrand. It rained all the way and we could barely see the mountains on either side of the fjord. At Balestrand, we were to take another ferry to Fjaerland. We arrived at 11.50am and waited for the 12.00 ferry, which never came! At 12.00, a boat sailed past from another part of the harbour, where it had been docked amongst a whole bunch of other boats. We are almost 100% sure that this was the boat we should have taken but for some reason, the captain decided that he wasn't going to stop at the pier. As there was no boat till 5pm and, being Sunday, the whole of Balestrand was closed, we looked for another way to get back to Bergen. There was a bus at 1.10pm. When the bus driver heard that we wanted to go to Bergen, he raised his eyebrows and asked Bergen? He then said, 'but I'm going into the fjord, you want to go out of the fjord...' This was the only bus so we took the bus to Sogndal, changed bus to Haabakken and then changed again to Bergen. We got back at 7.15pm.
On our last day, I wanted to go see the Edvard Grieg museum. It is in his villa where he spent the last 22 summers of his life. He was actually born in Bergen but spent most of his life all over Europe. The most surprising thing about him was that he was actually really small, only 152cm tall. I felt quite tall! :) There is a Steinway grand in his house, a gift for his silver wedding anniversary (married to his cousin!) and a cabin where he did all his composing, away from the house and nosy tourists (he was already very famous during his lifetime and people heard that he lived in the region).
All in all, I think I like the fjords in New Zealand better. I thought for a long time why this was the case as the Norwegian fjords are much larger and grander but I think because we went in autumn, the yellow and orange leaves gave a lighter background, which is less appealing than the dark greens of the evergreens of Millford Sound.
3 weeks ago, Eppie arrived from Toronto. We went to high tea at The Connaught with Taffy and Lily, Linda, Eppie's friend's sister. It was divine. I had Japanese rice tea, sandwiches, scones, cakes and pastries. I got to a chocolate mousse macaroon and it stopped me completely. I have never had such an experience where I haven't been able to fit anything else in!
Eppie and I then flew off to Norway for a week. We started in Oslo, which was mostly sunny. It is quite small for a capital city and all the sights are within walking distance.
The royal palace is quite a plain building but beautifully situated in gardens with a long sweeping drive down to the main street of the city. The city itself has a 'European' look and feel to it with old buildings mixed with a few newer ones, pedestrian malls and a big train station. We visited the Akerhus Fortress, one of a handful scattered around Norway. The Opera House, which is a big white & glass modern structure is just near the fortress. I think that if they can keep it white, bright and clean, will stay current for a long time. I contrast it to the yellowing tiles on the Sydney Opera House, which looks good from a distance but is awful up close.
Frogner Park is the most bizarre garden. It is filled with sculptures of people at various stages of life. There are bronze and marble statues, small and large. Eppie really liked it but I was more interested in the school groups on excursion. They all had high-viz vests on and were paired up with buddies. So cute!
Oslo to Bergen
We took the train from Oslo to Bergen, which took all day. We likened it to going to work for the day. The scenery was green and sunny for 3/4 of the way and then within minutes, changed dramatically to dark, cloudy, bleak and cold. It started to rain and this continued on and off for the rest of our trip.
Bergen
Bergen is home to another of the fortresses, Bergenhus. In it, is Haakon Hall, named after a king, Haakon Haakonson, whose name had me in stitches for ages. Tradition is one thing but naming every generation the same as the last is just ridiculous. It is like the Dannish King Christian/Frederick/Christian alternating name tradition. A bit of variety never hurt anyone.
We were about to take the cable car up one of the mountains but the bus driver told us not to waste our money as the fog was so thick and low that we wouldn't be able to see anything. He said that if we could see the top of the funicular, we could try that. Well, we could see it when we were at the bottom but by the time we got to the top, the fog was rolling in and in seconds, the visibility was reduced to almost zero. What a waste of money.
Bergen has the feel of an old fishing village. The Fish Market is quite small but has lots of fresh (and live) seafood as well as smoked fish. We were lucky enough to try quite a few different things there, included hot and cold smoked salmon and smoked whale meat. Eppie had been quite reluctant to try it (I put it down to years of indoctrination in Australia), but eventually gave it a go. It is very dark, looks almost like beef, very little fat, quite chewy and has a fishy aftertaste. It is not something that I would hurry to eat again, not sure why it is considered a delicacy.
We had been warned about the cost of food in Norway and had decided beforehand that we would have to make the most out of the breakfasts, which were included in the hotel costs. We had dinner one night in a restaurant called the Unicorn, which specialises in seafood. One entree, two mains and one beer cost us 900NOK (£100, AUD200), which is just outrageous.
Norway in a Nutshell
We went on a trip called Norway in a Nutshell, which purports to showcase the best of Norway. It starts in Bergen with a train trip to Myrdal. This connects to the Flam Railway, which is a lovely, scenic and windy trip through the mountains down to Flam. Because the track is so steep, they developed a train that had 5 braking systems to handle the trip. In Flam, we had time to walk to a waterfall before boarding the ferry for a cruise down the Sognefjord. The arm of the fjord we were in was actually called Naeroyfjord and is UNESCO Heritage Listed. The cruise ended at Gudvangen, where we boarded a bus that took us down the oldest road in Norway, which is incredibly steep and narrow. It gives you such great views all the way down. At Voss, we then took a train back to Bergen.
Glacier trip
Because the nutshell trip was so good, we decided to go on a trip to a glacier on the Sunday. We had been told by the tour company that we could buy tickets on the day from the boat but when we got there, they said that we could only buy tickets for their part of the journey. The high speed ferry took us up the west coast and into the Sognefjord to Balestrand. It rained all the way and we could barely see the mountains on either side of the fjord. At Balestrand, we were to take another ferry to Fjaerland. We arrived at 11.50am and waited for the 12.00 ferry, which never came! At 12.00, a boat sailed past from another part of the harbour, where it had been docked amongst a whole bunch of other boats. We are almost 100% sure that this was the boat we should have taken but for some reason, the captain decided that he wasn't going to stop at the pier. As there was no boat till 5pm and, being Sunday, the whole of Balestrand was closed, we looked for another way to get back to Bergen. There was a bus at 1.10pm. When the bus driver heard that we wanted to go to Bergen, he raised his eyebrows and asked Bergen? He then said, 'but I'm going into the fjord, you want to go out of the fjord...' This was the only bus so we took the bus to Sogndal, changed bus to Haabakken and then changed again to Bergen. We got back at 7.15pm.
On our last day, I wanted to go see the Edvard Grieg museum. It is in his villa where he spent the last 22 summers of his life. He was actually born in Bergen but spent most of his life all over Europe. The most surprising thing about him was that he was actually really small, only 152cm tall. I felt quite tall! :) There is a Steinway grand in his house, a gift for his silver wedding anniversary (married to his cousin!) and a cabin where he did all his composing, away from the house and nosy tourists (he was already very famous during his lifetime and people heard that he lived in the region).
All in all, I think I like the fjords in New Zealand better. I thought for a long time why this was the case as the Norwegian fjords are much larger and grander but I think because we went in autumn, the yellow and orange leaves gave a lighter background, which is less appealing than the dark greens of the evergreens of Millford Sound.
Saturday, August 8, 2009
Bullfighting in Madrid Part II
Having not even made it through one bullfight on TV, I was not all that enthused when Harry and Jenny's friend Bryce proposed that we go to a set (6) of live bullfights in Madrid. However, I duly succumbed to peer pressure, the fact that it was only €5 and their reasoning that I could leave if I couldn't handle it. So, on Sunday evening, we made our way to the stadium, which looks quite Moorish in its design, with red brick and painted tiles.
They were still setting up when we got inside so we were able to watch them paint the 2 rings on the sand (we still don't know what the rings were for but suspect that the horses aren't allowed inside the outer ring).
There was a brass band stuffed in the rafters and another smaller one nearer the action. The royal box is apparently not used by the royal family very often as the Queen doesn't like bullfighting and the King and the Princess prefer to sit with the commoners closer to the ring.
One show is made up of 6 bullfights and 3 matadors, who, along with their teams (cuadrilla - entourage) take it in turns to fight. The length of each fight is not set and it was only at the 5th fight that we realised that there was some dignitary sitting high up in the stands signalling the start/end of each stage.
At 8.30, the matadors all came out and took a turn around the ring. The matadors have gold braids/embroidery/sequins while their teams have black or white. Jenny and I agreed that the white costume with gold and black braids was the best. The other two matadors had light blue and dark blue respectively.
A guy came out at the start of each fight with the stats on the bull - his weight, his birthday, his stable etc. A trumpet sounded after this and the bull got released.
The first bull came bounding out, had a look around and turned to go back inside again. They shut the gate on him so he had to come back out. He promptly made my heart stop when he mounted the fence just near us. The whole front half of his body got over the fence.
The entourage all have pink and yellow capes and they get the bull to charge after different people spaced around the ring to make him tire. When he gets near, they all go and hide in their little niches. Cowards. After a while, a trumpet sounds, which indicates the next round - the horses.
Apparently, horses didn't used to have padding so the horses would die when the bull tried to gore them. The guy on the horse's back has a spear that has a crossbar so that it can only penetrate about 5cm into the bull's back. When the bull attacks the horse, you can hear the thud of the impact. The horse is then bracing itself at almost a 45o angle as the guy pushes the spear into the bull. The more the bull is hurting the harder he tries to gore the horse. The horse is actually blindfolded, probably so that it doesn't freak out. In one of the fights, the horse almost lost its footing and was in danger of falling onto the bull. I'm sure if this had happened, the horse and the rider would have been in serious trouble. We found the horse part of the show particularly uncomfortable to watch.
After the horses comes a crazy bit. The banderilleros, the flag men, take 2 banderillas (sticks with sharp points) and charge at the bull, making him charge at them. They need to avoid his horns while reaching over and stabbing him with the banderillas as close to the existing wounds as possible. The object of all of these stabs is to hurt the bull and to weaken his shoulder muscles so that when he charges, his head is lower, thus reducing the risk to the matador. It's completely nuts.
After this comes the matador's one-man fight with the bull. He brings out his red cape along with a blunt sword. The sword is to hold open the cape to provide an inviting target to the bull. During this part of the first fight, the bull somehow got in contact with the matador and he was fully airborne for some time. Intellectually, I would have said that if I had seen this happen, I would have cheered for the bull but when it actually happened and I thought the matador was injured, my heart stopped (again!). It's quite shocking to see another human being in danger.
After a while, the matador goes back to the fence and gets a sharp sword. He goes back to duel with the bull for a bit longer before going in for the kill. When he does this, he puts the cape near the ground to get the bull to lower his head and tries to get the sword in through his back and into his heart without getting gored. This was the most disgusting part of the whole show. As the matadors were inexperienced ones (hence the cheap tickets), they were not very good at this part. Only one of them was reasonably good - both of his kills went down a few seconds after his thrust. The other two were a lot worse. The first one had to try twice to get the sword the whole way in. He didn't get it in the right place the second time either and it took a while for the bull to die. In the 4th fight, he screwed up again. He was also faced with a particularly feisty bull, who, even after repeated stabs to his neck (as well as the sword deep in his body), kept getting up. He bled profusely against the wall but after each stab was still able to get up. I felt quite nauseous. A similar thing happened in the last fight, which happened right near the fence near where we were sitting. The entire team surrounded the bull but were all very hesitant. I think it is because when a bull is seriously injured, it becomes unpredictable. The matador didn't get a clean thrust of his sword and the bull was still too well for them to be able get close to stab him with a dagger. So, they tried to stab him with a sword with a crossbar a few inches from the end. After many attempts, the matador stopped to take a deep breath and wipe sweat from his brow. Because of this last debacle, he ended up coming third when, with a good kill, he would probably have come first.
I am pretty sure I never want to see another bullfight in my life but I'm glad I experienced it once.
They were still setting up when we got inside so we were able to watch them paint the 2 rings on the sand (we still don't know what the rings were for but suspect that the horses aren't allowed inside the outer ring).
There was a brass band stuffed in the rafters and another smaller one nearer the action. The royal box is apparently not used by the royal family very often as the Queen doesn't like bullfighting and the King and the Princess prefer to sit with the commoners closer to the ring.
One show is made up of 6 bullfights and 3 matadors, who, along with their teams (cuadrilla - entourage) take it in turns to fight. The length of each fight is not set and it was only at the 5th fight that we realised that there was some dignitary sitting high up in the stands signalling the start/end of each stage.
At 8.30, the matadors all came out and took a turn around the ring. The matadors have gold braids/embroidery/sequins while their teams have black or white. Jenny and I agreed that the white costume with gold and black braids was the best. The other two matadors had light blue and dark blue respectively.
A guy came out at the start of each fight with the stats on the bull - his weight, his birthday, his stable etc. A trumpet sounded after this and the bull got released.
The first bull came bounding out, had a look around and turned to go back inside again. They shut the gate on him so he had to come back out. He promptly made my heart stop when he mounted the fence just near us. The whole front half of his body got over the fence.
The entourage all have pink and yellow capes and they get the bull to charge after different people spaced around the ring to make him tire. When he gets near, they all go and hide in their little niches. Cowards. After a while, a trumpet sounds, which indicates the next round - the horses.
Apparently, horses didn't used to have padding so the horses would die when the bull tried to gore them. The guy on the horse's back has a spear that has a crossbar so that it can only penetrate about 5cm into the bull's back. When the bull attacks the horse, you can hear the thud of the impact. The horse is then bracing itself at almost a 45o angle as the guy pushes the spear into the bull. The more the bull is hurting the harder he tries to gore the horse. The horse is actually blindfolded, probably so that it doesn't freak out. In one of the fights, the horse almost lost its footing and was in danger of falling onto the bull. I'm sure if this had happened, the horse and the rider would have been in serious trouble. We found the horse part of the show particularly uncomfortable to watch.
After the horses comes a crazy bit. The banderilleros, the flag men, take 2 banderillas (sticks with sharp points) and charge at the bull, making him charge at them. They need to avoid his horns while reaching over and stabbing him with the banderillas as close to the existing wounds as possible. The object of all of these stabs is to hurt the bull and to weaken his shoulder muscles so that when he charges, his head is lower, thus reducing the risk to the matador. It's completely nuts.
After this comes the matador's one-man fight with the bull. He brings out his red cape along with a blunt sword. The sword is to hold open the cape to provide an inviting target to the bull. During this part of the first fight, the bull somehow got in contact with the matador and he was fully airborne for some time. Intellectually, I would have said that if I had seen this happen, I would have cheered for the bull but when it actually happened and I thought the matador was injured, my heart stopped (again!). It's quite shocking to see another human being in danger.
After a while, the matador goes back to the fence and gets a sharp sword. He goes back to duel with the bull for a bit longer before going in for the kill. When he does this, he puts the cape near the ground to get the bull to lower his head and tries to get the sword in through his back and into his heart without getting gored. This was the most disgusting part of the whole show. As the matadors were inexperienced ones (hence the cheap tickets), they were not very good at this part. Only one of them was reasonably good - both of his kills went down a few seconds after his thrust. The other two were a lot worse. The first one had to try twice to get the sword the whole way in. He didn't get it in the right place the second time either and it took a while for the bull to die. In the 4th fight, he screwed up again. He was also faced with a particularly feisty bull, who, even after repeated stabs to his neck (as well as the sword deep in his body), kept getting up. He bled profusely against the wall but after each stab was still able to get up. I felt quite nauseous. A similar thing happened in the last fight, which happened right near the fence near where we were sitting. The entire team surrounded the bull but were all very hesitant. I think it is because when a bull is seriously injured, it becomes unpredictable. The matador didn't get a clean thrust of his sword and the bull was still too well for them to be able get close to stab him with a dagger. So, they tried to stab him with a sword with a crossbar a few inches from the end. After many attempts, the matador stopped to take a deep breath and wipe sweat from his brow. Because of this last debacle, he ended up coming third when, with a good kill, he would probably have come first.
I am pretty sure I never want to see another bullfight in my life but I'm glad I experienced it once.
Madrid, the museum city
First stop on the Madrid museum trail was Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. This museum houses the art collection of Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza, an avid art collector, who married a former Miss Spain and moved to Spain. The government renovated an old palace to house the collection. After he died in 2002, his widow continued collecting more art. There is virtually one piece of art from every major artist from the 1400s onwards. There are Renaissance paintings, a Titian, a Caravaggio, a Rubens, a Rembrandt, a couple of Monets, a couple of Sisselys, Pissaros, Rodin sculptures, several Picassos, a Dali...It's fascinating that a modern day rich guy can have acquired so many pieces.
Museo del Prado was my favourite museum in Madrid. Taffy already predicted it would be before I went as it concentrates on my favourite periods in art. It is also set up very well, with a Masterpieces list in the floor plan and where each of these paintings is housed. Some of the highlights were Raphael's The Cardinal, Caravaggio's David Victorius over Goliath, Velazquez's Las Meninas and the Titians. There was also a room full of Goya's Black Paintings, which are extremely disturbing.
The Centro de Arte Reina Sofia is almost entirely made up of paintings from the Realism, Cubism and Surrealism movements. Its most famous painting is Guernica by Picasso, which takes up an entire wall. The preparation paintings take up another room. My favourite paintings were Dali's Surrealist paintings, though there were also some of his Realist and Cubist paintings, which I didn't realise he had gone through before settling on Surrealism.
The Spanish Royal Family do not live in the rather grand Royal Palace. They live in a mansion in the country and come into the palace for official duties. The tour includes the Royal Pharmacy, with large porcelain and glass jars that used to be filled with medicines and herbs. There are also scales, mortars & pestles and trunks for when the royal family travelled and needed portable medicine cabinets. The Royal Arsenal contains armour worn by various kings and princes of Spain and their armies as well as gifts from other countries, including a samurai helmet and armour from the Japanese Emperor.
On the food side, we went to Botin on Friday night (the suckling pig and roast lamb place I ate at last time I was in Madrid). On Saturday night, we had paella. While we were waiting for the paella to arrive, a carnival procession came down the street. There were brass bands, people with enormous paper mache heads and people with costumes twice their height that were balanced on rings around their heads. On Sunday night, we had tapas. Each morning, Jenny and I went for breakfast in nearby cafes, having cafe con leche (milk coffee) with churros (Spanish donuts, parros (like yao jar guai) & churro relleno with chocolate cream (almost induced immediate heart attacks in us).
We also visited Parque Del Buen Retiro (the big park next to the Prado), Plaza Mayor (Madrid's most famous square), Plaza de la Puerta del Sol (with the statue of Madrid's strange emblem, a bear on his hind legs reaching up to the strawberry tree [which is not strawberry, it is a Madroño tree]) and the Cathedral.
This weekend, Taffy and I visited Buckingham Palace. It is open for a couple of months each year when the Queen goes to Balmoral for the summer. Buckingham Palace is THE most beautiful palace in all of Europe. It toes the fine line between being too ornate and elegant class. There is an exhibition on the Queen's visits to the Commonwealth with gifts from the countries and dresses she wore. The Australian gifts and dresses leave quite a lot to be desired. The wattle dress was almost fluorescent yellow, the opal necklace disgustingly large and the wattle brooch just a mess of yellow stones. The Canadian gifts, on the other hand, were totem poles in dark wood, a lovely Inuit jade statue of a polar bear, a maple leaf brooch and an evening gown of white and blue with beading stitched in the shape of maple leaves. Why can't we be classy like that?
Museo del Prado was my favourite museum in Madrid. Taffy already predicted it would be before I went as it concentrates on my favourite periods in art. It is also set up very well, with a Masterpieces list in the floor plan and where each of these paintings is housed. Some of the highlights were Raphael's The Cardinal, Caravaggio's David Victorius over Goliath, Velazquez's Las Meninas and the Titians. There was also a room full of Goya's Black Paintings, which are extremely disturbing.
The Centro de Arte Reina Sofia is almost entirely made up of paintings from the Realism, Cubism and Surrealism movements. Its most famous painting is Guernica by Picasso, which takes up an entire wall. The preparation paintings take up another room. My favourite paintings were Dali's Surrealist paintings, though there were also some of his Realist and Cubist paintings, which I didn't realise he had gone through before settling on Surrealism.
The Spanish Royal Family do not live in the rather grand Royal Palace. They live in a mansion in the country and come into the palace for official duties. The tour includes the Royal Pharmacy, with large porcelain and glass jars that used to be filled with medicines and herbs. There are also scales, mortars & pestles and trunks for when the royal family travelled and needed portable medicine cabinets. The Royal Arsenal contains armour worn by various kings and princes of Spain and their armies as well as gifts from other countries, including a samurai helmet and armour from the Japanese Emperor.
On the food side, we went to Botin on Friday night (the suckling pig and roast lamb place I ate at last time I was in Madrid). On Saturday night, we had paella. While we were waiting for the paella to arrive, a carnival procession came down the street. There were brass bands, people with enormous paper mache heads and people with costumes twice their height that were balanced on rings around their heads. On Sunday night, we had tapas. Each morning, Jenny and I went for breakfast in nearby cafes, having cafe con leche (milk coffee) with churros (Spanish donuts, parros (like yao jar guai) & churro relleno with chocolate cream (almost induced immediate heart attacks in us).
We also visited Parque Del Buen Retiro (the big park next to the Prado), Plaza Mayor (Madrid's most famous square), Plaza de la Puerta del Sol (with the statue of Madrid's strange emblem, a bear on his hind legs reaching up to the strawberry tree [which is not strawberry, it is a Madroño tree]) and the Cathedral.
This weekend, Taffy and I visited Buckingham Palace. It is open for a couple of months each year when the Queen goes to Balmoral for the summer. Buckingham Palace is THE most beautiful palace in all of Europe. It toes the fine line between being too ornate and elegant class. There is an exhibition on the Queen's visits to the Commonwealth with gifts from the countries and dresses she wore. The Australian gifts and dresses leave quite a lot to be desired. The wattle dress was almost fluorescent yellow, the opal necklace disgustingly large and the wattle brooch just a mess of yellow stones. The Canadian gifts, on the other hand, were totem poles in dark wood, a lovely Inuit jade statue of a polar bear, a maple leaf brooch and an evening gown of white and blue with beading stitched in the shape of maple leaves. Why can't we be classy like that?
Monday, July 13, 2009
Unexpected Trip to Cinque Terre
I had never intended to go to Cinque Terre as it seemed to be too far from our bases. However, one of the people at the conference told us that they were going to take a day trip on the Thursday. When I went to investigate, it looked like the trip would take 2 1/2 - 2 3/4 hours each way, which seemed reasonable.
So, on Thursday morning, we started out at 9.15. At Lucca, the train stopped and everyone got off. We didn't realise till about 10 minutes later. It turned out that even though the train said it was going to Viareggio, it was actually just going to Lucca. There was a replacement bus service to Viareggio. My theory (as we couldn't get a straight answer from anyone) is that the Lucca/Viareggio line was the one where the train carrying fuel left the tracks and slammed into a residential area, killing a whole bunch of people a week earlier. None of the other lines through Viareggio seemed to be affected.
Because of this change, we missed the next connection from Viareggio to La Spezia. We ended up taking a slow regional train instead. There was then another connection from La Spezia to the 5 villages of Cinque Terre. We finally arrived at Corniglia, the middle village at 1.15pm.
It is a spectacular coastline, with the villages perched on rocks. Corniglia is at the top of a 382 step flight of stairs.
After lunch (mmm, mixed seafood fry), we walked from Corniglia to Manarola, which is right at sea level.
From Manarola to Riomaggiore, there is a walkway called Via Dell'Amore (Lovers' Walk). It's a nice, easy walk, perfect for couples to walk together while fused at the hip.
We just missed the 16.52 train from Riomaggiore and had to wait an hour for the next one. On arriving at La Spezia, we found that the train we wanted to take was cancelled. On inquiry, we found a train going to Sarzana, from where we could catch another train to Viareggio, then the bus to Lucca and then the train to Prato. We finally got back at 9.35pm.
8 1/2 hours of waiting, travel and stress vs 3 1/2 hours of sightseeing...At least it was good sightseeing!
So, on Thursday morning, we started out at 9.15. At Lucca, the train stopped and everyone got off. We didn't realise till about 10 minutes later. It turned out that even though the train said it was going to Viareggio, it was actually just going to Lucca. There was a replacement bus service to Viareggio. My theory (as we couldn't get a straight answer from anyone) is that the Lucca/Viareggio line was the one where the train carrying fuel left the tracks and slammed into a residential area, killing a whole bunch of people a week earlier. None of the other lines through Viareggio seemed to be affected.
Because of this change, we missed the next connection from Viareggio to La Spezia. We ended up taking a slow regional train instead. There was then another connection from La Spezia to the 5 villages of Cinque Terre. We finally arrived at Corniglia, the middle village at 1.15pm.
It is a spectacular coastline, with the villages perched on rocks. Corniglia is at the top of a 382 step flight of stairs.
After lunch (mmm, mixed seafood fry), we walked from Corniglia to Manarola, which is right at sea level.
From Manarola to Riomaggiore, there is a walkway called Via Dell'Amore (Lovers' Walk). It's a nice, easy walk, perfect for couples to walk together while fused at the hip.
We just missed the 16.52 train from Riomaggiore and had to wait an hour for the next one. On arriving at La Spezia, we found that the train we wanted to take was cancelled. On inquiry, we found a train going to Sarzana, from where we could catch another train to Viareggio, then the bus to Lucca and then the train to Prato. We finally got back at 9.35pm.
8 1/2 hours of waiting, travel and stress vs 3 1/2 hours of sightseeing...At least it was good sightseeing!
Tuscany
Florence
My two main objectives in Florence were the Uffizi Gallery and the Accademia Gallery, though we also visited the Duomo (a bit dull inside...), Baptistry (which has beautiful doors) & Campanile, Ponte Vecchio (really messy, with buildings built on top of each other and the Medici Corridor over the top of all of them), Piazza Della Signoria (with a group of sculptures on display, including Perseus with Medusa, The Rape of the Sabine and Hercules & the Centaur) and Basilica di Santa Croce (which contains Galileo's, Michelangelo's and Dante's tombs).
The Uffizi has so many wonderful pieces. Many people go to see the famous Boticelli paintings the Birth of Venus and Primavera but I prefer La Calunnia (The Calumny), which hangs between them. It shows an innocent man being dragged by Calumny, Malice, Fraud & Envy to face Midas, who is being advised by Ignorance & Suspicion while Anger, Remorse and Truth look on. Another favourite of mine was the Niobe room. The room itself was awesome as were the set of sculptures in it - the murder of Niobe's 14 children by Apollo and Artemis. Each statue is either running away, pointing at the sky or falling down, having been shot by one of the gods. I also liked the Caravaggios, like Medusa's head on a shield.
Michelangelo carved David out of one piece of marble. Two other masters had tried to use that piece of marble and had deemed it unsuitable before Michelangelo, with the arrogance of youth and talent, decided to give it a go. David is almost the only thing the Accademia Gallery has. Other pieces of interest were the 4 prisoners, which Michelangelo started for a Pope's tomb but never finished.
I had a particularly upsetting experience with gelati in Florence. Having gotten a cone with 3 flavours, it proceeded to melt much faster than I could eat it, which resulted in some of it running down my hand and me having to gulp the rest down as fast as possible. Definitely not the way to savour gelati. Consequently, I got cups with 1-2 flavours from then on, once in Prato and twice in Pisa, which was much more satisfying.
Prato & Villa La Ferdinanda (a Medici Villa)
We stayed in Prato, a town that is 17km from Florence and is the home of Monash Uni's European campus. The green marble that is part of the distinctive banded design of Tuscan cathedrals comes from this area. The Duomo of Prato has a holy relic (snicker, snicker) - a girdle of Mary, which is paraded on an external pulpit carved by Donatello once a year.
For dinner one night, we went to the Medici villa 'La Ferdinanda', a country mansion near the village of Artimino built by the Medicis (Ferdinand I), who controlled Florence and Tuscany on and off for about 300 years from the 1400s to the late 1700s. It is called the villa of a hundred chimneys because of the many chimneys across its roof. We had Tuscan antipasti in the cellars and then dinner in the Hall of the Bear. The typical Tuscan views from the front door were beautiful.
Siena
We took an evening trip to Siena and got there just before the Duomo closed. The inside of this cathedral was our favourite out of all of the cathedrals we visited. It was designed by the father and son combo of Nicola and Giovanni Pisano. It has a fantastic set of marble mosaic floor panels. The gorgeous Piccolomini Library was commissioned by Pius III to commemorate the life of his uncle Pius II, Enea Silvio Piccolomini, and to house his book and manuscript collection. The outside is crammed with statues and sculptures.
We had dinner at a little restaurant just off the Piazza del Campo, where we had the most delicious tiramisu.
Pisa
The Campo dei Miracoli is a really pretty square, home to the Baptistry, Duomo & the Leaning Tower.
The insanity of the Leaning Tower is that it started to sink when they were building it but they decided to keep going anyway. To compensate, they curved it around, banana-like with shorter columns on the 'top side' and longer ones on the 'bottom'. You can see the curve quite clearly.
The Baptistry has the most amazing acoustics. One of the staff stood in the middle and sang notes one at a time. The echo of her notes combined to create a harmony so that it sounded like there were several people singing. A choir would be a real experience.
The Duomo and the Baptistry have pulpits sculpted by Giovanni & Nicola Pisano respectively. Giovanni's one in the cathedral is bigger and better than his father's. He spent 10 years working on it. The coffer ceiling is beautiful, decorated in gold on blue with the Medici coat of arms.
One last comment on Renaissance artists. Everytime Michelangelo, Raphael or Donatello's names came up, I kept thinking of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. So much for culture!
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
The Vatican
From Athens, we flew to Rome before heading up to Tuscany. In Rome, there was only one place on the itinerary, The Vatican.
The Vatican Museum
We missed going to the Vatican Museum last time we were in Rome. I actually found the Vatican Museum itself more interesting than the Sistine Chapel. There are a lot of rooms, which contain magnificent frescoes as well as artwork, including tapestries, maps, paintings and sculptures. There is a set of rooms with some of Raphael's best frescoes (the Raphael Rooms). He was invited to the Vatican at the age of 24 and died at 37. I am continually amazed at how early in their lives some of the Renaissance artists were recognised at the highest levels. He was asked to wipe out the frescoes done by previous notable artists and redo the set of rooms (done by the Pope as his predecessor who had commissioned the old frescoes was particularly hated). The subject matter of one of them is interesting. 'The School of Athens' has a decidedly unreligious theme for a room in the Vatican Palace. It is about Philosophy and has figures such as Plato/Leonardo Da Vinci, Aristotle, Socrates, Pythagoras, Euclid/Archimedes and Raphael himself.
Sistine Chapel
The Sistine Chapel is at the end of the Vatican Museum rooms. It is disappointingly noisy with lots of guides talking to their groups and people generally chatting about the artwork in very unhushed tones. It is interesting that even the untrained eye can see the differences between the various artists' work. Michelangelo's Last Judgement and Genesis are full of very muscular, semi-naked, well defined people. Boticelli's work also has quite a lot of depth but the people have flowing robes. Other works are more 2D. You get quite a crick in the neck looking up at the ceiling.
St Peter's Basilica & Michelangelo's Pieta
I loved Michelangelo's Pieta the last time I was in St Peter's Basilica 12 years ago and wanted to see it again. It is still my favourite piece of artwork. Even after seeing David in Accademia, I would say that though David is awesome to behold, with phenomenal detail in his anatomy (muscles, tendons, veins), furrowed brow and charisma, the Pieta is much more personal, with Mary's serene face, Jesus's limp body (how marble can appear limp I will never know) and details like Jesus's fingers caught in the folds of Mary's dress. It is unbelievable that Michelangelo created this piece when he was 21-23 years old.
The story of how Michelangelo was invited to Rome is very funny. He carved a statue of a sleeping Cupid and passed it off as a Roman antique. The cardinal who bought it discovered that it was a fake but was so impressed with it that he found out who the artist was and invited him to Rome to work for him.
The Vatican Museum
We missed going to the Vatican Museum last time we were in Rome. I actually found the Vatican Museum itself more interesting than the Sistine Chapel. There are a lot of rooms, which contain magnificent frescoes as well as artwork, including tapestries, maps, paintings and sculptures. There is a set of rooms with some of Raphael's best frescoes (the Raphael Rooms). He was invited to the Vatican at the age of 24 and died at 37. I am continually amazed at how early in their lives some of the Renaissance artists were recognised at the highest levels. He was asked to wipe out the frescoes done by previous notable artists and redo the set of rooms (done by the Pope as his predecessor who had commissioned the old frescoes was particularly hated). The subject matter of one of them is interesting. 'The School of Athens' has a decidedly unreligious theme for a room in the Vatican Palace. It is about Philosophy and has figures such as Plato/Leonardo Da Vinci, Aristotle, Socrates, Pythagoras, Euclid/Archimedes and Raphael himself.
Sistine Chapel
The Sistine Chapel is at the end of the Vatican Museum rooms. It is disappointingly noisy with lots of guides talking to their groups and people generally chatting about the artwork in very unhushed tones. It is interesting that even the untrained eye can see the differences between the various artists' work. Michelangelo's Last Judgement and Genesis are full of very muscular, semi-naked, well defined people. Boticelli's work also has quite a lot of depth but the people have flowing robes. Other works are more 2D. You get quite a crick in the neck looking up at the ceiling.
St Peter's Basilica & Michelangelo's Pieta
I loved Michelangelo's Pieta the last time I was in St Peter's Basilica 12 years ago and wanted to see it again. It is still my favourite piece of artwork. Even after seeing David in Accademia, I would say that though David is awesome to behold, with phenomenal detail in his anatomy (muscles, tendons, veins), furrowed brow and charisma, the Pieta is much more personal, with Mary's serene face, Jesus's limp body (how marble can appear limp I will never know) and details like Jesus's fingers caught in the folds of Mary's dress. It is unbelievable that Michelangelo created this piece when he was 21-23 years old.
The story of how Michelangelo was invited to Rome is very funny. He carved a statue of a sleeping Cupid and passed it off as a Roman antique. The cardinal who bought it discovered that it was a fake but was so impressed with it that he found out who the artist was and invited him to Rome to work for him.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Greece - the experience
Poor George...
At breakfast one morning, we overheard a Greek-Australian family having a discussion about what they were going to do that day. The son, George (of course he's called George!), was devastated to hear that they would be going to a museum in the morning, driving to another town and visiting yet another archeological site in the afternoon. Sigh...Poor kid. Slow death by archeological sites...
In fact, there were a lot of Greek-Australian/Greek-American families showing their children the birthplace of their parents and grandparents. It's great to see them do this despite the kids sighing and protesting all the way.
Greek Alphabet
Hey, learning all those greek symbols in maths actually came in handy! Well, that is, after I worked out what I was looking at! Having finally deciphered Λ (lambda) for L, Π (pi) for P, Σ (sigma) for S etc., I was able to make a good guess at many signs.
Modern Greece
The Buses
One surprisingly efficient thing was the bus system, KTEL (or KTEΛ as it is in Greek). Of all the various aspects of Modern Greece, this was the one thing that I was impressed with. The long distance buses left on time and arrived on time every time we took them (8 times) bar one (the Delphi-Athens bus arrived in Delphi late but got to Athens on time). They were, for the most part, clean and comfortable with the seat belts neatly folded underneath the seats, requiring tweezers to extracate them (!)
The Food
The food we had in Greece was fantastic and cheap. The Greek salads were fresh with juicy, plump tomatoes, the gyros were very tasty (even when they stuck chips in them - are they copying the famous British chip butties?) and the seafood delicious, particularly the stuffed squid.
The Heat
The heat radiating off the stone of the ruins was extremely uncomfortable. It was really hard going to tramp up and down the marble and stone pavements to see all of the sites. Away from the archeological sites, the temperatures were much more bearable as you could find shade from the buildings to walk in and duck into air-conditioned shops for a breather.
Everything Other Than The Buses And The Food
Everything in Modern Greece, other than buses, is disorganised and nuts. It must be said, however, that they are much better than the Egyptians. At least they have relatively clean cities and towns. They do have some of those same half finished buildings with reinforcement sticking out the top like Egypt, though. None of the countries that contain the great ancient civilisations has impressed me. Egypt, Greece, Italy, Turkey and China are all poor decendents dwelling upon the past achievements of their ancestors. I have no doubt that India and South America are the same. It is very disappointing that these countries have yet to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and stop reminiscing about past greatness. It is time to move on.
Greece - the sites
Athens
The Acropolis
When we arrived at our hotel, we were told to go up to the roof for views of the Acropolis. What spectacular views! The Acropolis is all lit up at night and sits high above the rest of the city.
The majority of the buildings on the Acropolis date back to Pericles in the Golden Age around 460-430 BC. The temple of Athena Nike is now completely enclosed in scaffolding. Much of the Propylaea is still intact and leads up to the Parthenon and the Erechtheion. Most of the statues, sculpture and friezes are plaster or concrete casts of the originals, which are housed in various museums around the world. The Parthenon is in particularly bad shape as it was used as a church in the Byzantine period, when the Christians defaced most of the 'non-Christian' carvings and then it was used as an arsenal in the 1600s and was blown up during the Venetian siege in 1687. It is always disappointing to see each culture take over and destroy previous ones with little regard for historical significance and beauty.
Ancient Agora
The Ancient Agora was the meeting/market place of Athens. Part of it has been rebuilt to house some of the statues. The Temple of Hephaestus is still in reasonable condition and gives a nice view of the rest of the site.Roman Agora/Tower of the Winds
We accidentally stumbled into the Roman Agora, which contains the Tower of the Winds, while we were trying to get to the Theatre of Dionyses.
Theatre of Dionyses
A disappointingly small theatre. I was expecting a much larger and grander theatre given that it was next to the Acropolis. My favourite theatre is still the one at Pergamon in Turkey.
Olympian Zeus
The temple of Olympian Zeus has a really cool fallen column. The temple columns were the tallest in Athens at 17m. One of them has fallen sideways and broken into its component pieces in a rather orderly fashion.
Hadrian's Library
Hadrian's Library is part of the Acropolis ticket but is not mentioned anywhere in the literature. I was determined to find it but to no avail. Then, when we were looking for the train station, we happened upon it! The Library used to contain tens of thousands of scrolls, reading rooms and 2 lecture halls. Not much remains now except for part of the front facade.
The Acropolis Museum
The new Acropolis Museum opened on the day we arrived in Athens but we didn't visit it until our last day there as it was impossible to get tickets. The museum is laid out very well, with pieces from previous periods and lesser known sites on the Acropolis in the lower floors, leading up to the Caryatids (I love these 6 women who hold up the porch of the Erechtheion) and then up to a full scale layout of the Parthenon frieze, metopes and eastern and western pediments on the top floor. There was a heavy emphasis on all the pieces that reside outside of Greece, primarily on the large group, known as the Elgin Marbles, that sit in the British Museum (a note of BM is on each plaster cast that was taken from that collection). Not to weigh into the argument but the Greeks should just get over the fact that Elgin took all the good bits of the Parthenon and one of the Caryatids 200 years ago. There is no way the British Museum is going to give any of it back as this would set a bad precedent for them as most of their exhibits were taken from other countries without the permission of the currently recognised ruling governments. The Brits for their part should stop pretending to justify themselves with arguments like 'it is much better for the pieces to be in London as they are showcased as part of world history, not just Greek history' and just say, 'nope, you aren't getting them back!'
We went on a day trip to Delphi, where I had a long discussion with the Oracle and asked her deep and meaningful questions (!) Seriously, the site is on a mountainside with the temple of Apollo, theatre and stadium on the upper side of the road and the gymnasium and temple of Athena on the lower side of the road. Nobody goes to the temple of Athena as it is very poorly signed and they are all exhausted from the visit to the upper side.
The Oracle apparently used to sit inside the temple of Apollo, in a crevice that you can't see now. There isn't much left of this temple. More impressive is the stadium, which is right up the top of the hill. Most of the seating is still intact and you can see how spectators would have watched the races inside.
The temple of Athena with its Tholos in the middle is in a similar state to the Apollo temple. Bemusingly, the UNESCO sign proclaiming it a world heritage site has been propped up against the railings with 2 pieces of rock to stop it toppling over. The lack of respect is just mindboggling.
Nafplio
Nafplio was our base for our trips around the Peloponnese peninsula. It is a nothing resort town that is slowly dying. We saw several abandoned hotels and houses that hark back to better times.
EpidavrosEpidavros was the site of the Temple of Asclepios, the god of medicine and healing, one of Apollo's sons. People went there to get help with curing various sicknesses from hearing loss to mental illness. They are still in the process of piecing together the ruins and rebuilding them into their original positions (with plaster casts where the bits are completely gone). Turkey did this years ago with their ruins and have done a particularly good job with the Library facade at Ephesus.
There is a precursor to Ronald McDonald House at Epidavros. A huge hotel-like place was constructed for friends and family of patients to stay while their loved ones were being treated.
The best find at Epidavros is a beautiful Corinthian column capital that is in almost perfect condition. It was found buried in the ground and is believed to be the template for the columns on the site.
Mycenae
Mycenae (Mikines for the Greeks) was the seat of the ancient Mycenaen culture, which flourished around 1600-1200 BC. The founder was said to be Perseus (of Medusa fame) and the wall of the city, which he got Cyclops to build for him is still standing. It is a phenomenal sight. Agamemnon, Menalaus's brother and leader of the Greeks at Troy, was king of Mycenae about 5 generations after Perseus. It is interesting that this site is more intact that the various sites that were built during the Golden Age (400-300 BC). They obviously don't make things like they used to!
Santorini
The ferry to Santorini was long and tiring. We had to get up before 5 to get down to the port at Piraeus and didn't arrive in Santorini until 3.30pm. Phew! Never again! I had heard about the Greek ferries being a popular form of transport but they compare unfavourably even to their attrocious airlines.
We stayed in Fira, the main town and took trips over to Kamari, one of the famous black volcanic beaches and Oia (pronounced ee-ah), which is home to the church with the blue top and white walls that everyone takes photos of. The problem with Fira and Oia is that there is absolutely nowhere to rest other than in exhorbitantly priced restaurants and cafes. There are no public squares or shady benches and few public toilets. The sun shines glaringly off the white paint and exhausts your eyes.
The sunset, which is proclaimed to be one of the best in the world, is, in my opinion, not as good as the one over Uluru. That one, I still believe, is the best one I have ever seen.
Friday, June 19, 2009
Spanish Food & Culture
I recently had the opportunity to work in the outskirts of Madrid for 4 weeks. Apart from the lovely hot, dry weather, I have a couple of strong memories from my time there: bullfighting and Spanish food.
Bullfights were being televised quite regularly in the evenings. I thought I would be able to handle watching a full fight but after a few twists and turns, including a toreador running up to the bull from behind and stabbing 2 spears into its back (and then watching this in slow-motion replay), blood running down the bull's back and the bull trying the gore one of the horses, I couldn't watch anymore. The fighting is just too cruel, bloody and one-sided. At one of the restaurants we went to, there were 2 bulls' heads on the wall. They were 2 bulls who had lost their fights. One had both ears missing and the other still had one ear (apparently, a toreador will take a bull's ears as trophies if the bull fought a good fight). It's extremely gruesome.
I don't normally like ham that much but I absolutely fell in love with Iberian Jamon. The most famous comes from the Extremadura region of Spain in the south west. The ham is from black pigs who have been exclusively fed acorns. The ham is aged 2-3 years, is cut very thinly, is dark red and very sweet.
One night, we went to an Asturian restaurant. The Asturian region is in the north west of Spain. They are famous for cidar, which is served by holding the bottle above one's head and poured from there down into a glass held in the other hand at thigh level. This is supposed to make the cidar fizzier. We had blue cheese croquettes (really strong), beans, octopus (extremely soft and tender) and lamb chops.
We also went to a Basque (north of Spain) restaurant. We had chorizos, black sausage, white asparagus, cod omlette (the size of the plate and an inch thick), monkfish (with garlic, parsley and olive oil sauce) and steak (so rare it was almost bleeding). The monkfish and steak were particularly fantastic. I disgraced myself by eating most of the dessert as well.
On my last night, we went into Madrid city centre for the first time. We ate at the oldest restaurant in the world (continuously operating since 1725), Botin, a restaurant serving food from the Castilla y Leon region. We had jamon, cheese, pork loin ham, cheese & pork croquettes, black pudding and the most delicious roast lamb and suckling pig, so tender that they melted in the mouth. After dinner, I got to see inside the kitchen. There was a big clay oven with long paddles to put the food deep inside. The wall was full of shelves and on these shelves sat little suckling pigs, cut down the middle and spread out on clay dishes with the skin facing upwards. These were real suckling pigs, not the enormous ones that they have in Australia. After dinner, we went to a club on the roof of a hotel. It had a lovely view of Madrid.
In other news, I went to see King & I in the round at the Royal Albert Hall. The Hall is beautiful and enormous, all red and gold. We were too high up to see the performers all that well. The 2 big disappointments were the King and the children. The children in particular were undisciplined and the March of the Royal Children ended up a messy, random affair. Taffy says that he was much better when he was in the Melbourne version with Hayley Mills (except, of course, the time when someone farted and all the children (except Taffy, so he says!) burst into fits of giggles while the king lay dying). Despite tv screens set all the way around the hall so that he could see the conductor regardless of which way he was looking, the King was out of time, alternatively rushing and slowing down. In comparison, Anna and Lady Thiang were fantastic. Tuptim was also very good. Lady Thiang and Tuptim were both classically trained and it certainly shows.
Bullfights were being televised quite regularly in the evenings. I thought I would be able to handle watching a full fight but after a few twists and turns, including a toreador running up to the bull from behind and stabbing 2 spears into its back (and then watching this in slow-motion replay), blood running down the bull's back and the bull trying the gore one of the horses, I couldn't watch anymore. The fighting is just too cruel, bloody and one-sided. At one of the restaurants we went to, there were 2 bulls' heads on the wall. They were 2 bulls who had lost their fights. One had both ears missing and the other still had one ear (apparently, a toreador will take a bull's ears as trophies if the bull fought a good fight). It's extremely gruesome.
I don't normally like ham that much but I absolutely fell in love with Iberian Jamon. The most famous comes from the Extremadura region of Spain in the south west. The ham is from black pigs who have been exclusively fed acorns. The ham is aged 2-3 years, is cut very thinly, is dark red and very sweet.
One night, we went to an Asturian restaurant. The Asturian region is in the north west of Spain. They are famous for cidar, which is served by holding the bottle above one's head and poured from there down into a glass held in the other hand at thigh level. This is supposed to make the cidar fizzier. We had blue cheese croquettes (really strong), beans, octopus (extremely soft and tender) and lamb chops.
We also went to a Basque (north of Spain) restaurant. We had chorizos, black sausage, white asparagus, cod omlette (the size of the plate and an inch thick), monkfish (with garlic, parsley and olive oil sauce) and steak (so rare it was almost bleeding). The monkfish and steak were particularly fantastic. I disgraced myself by eating most of the dessert as well.
On my last night, we went into Madrid city centre for the first time. We ate at the oldest restaurant in the world (continuously operating since 1725), Botin, a restaurant serving food from the Castilla y Leon region. We had jamon, cheese, pork loin ham, cheese & pork croquettes, black pudding and the most delicious roast lamb and suckling pig, so tender that they melted in the mouth. After dinner, I got to see inside the kitchen. There was a big clay oven with long paddles to put the food deep inside. The wall was full of shelves and on these shelves sat little suckling pigs, cut down the middle and spread out on clay dishes with the skin facing upwards. These were real suckling pigs, not the enormous ones that they have in Australia. After dinner, we went to a club on the roof of a hotel. It had a lovely view of Madrid.
In other news, I went to see King & I in the round at the Royal Albert Hall. The Hall is beautiful and enormous, all red and gold. We were too high up to see the performers all that well. The 2 big disappointments were the King and the children. The children in particular were undisciplined and the March of the Royal Children ended up a messy, random affair. Taffy says that he was much better when he was in the Melbourne version with Hayley Mills (except, of course, the time when someone farted and all the children (except Taffy, so he says!) burst into fits of giggles while the king lay dying). Despite tv screens set all the way around the hall so that he could see the conductor regardless of which way he was looking, the King was out of time, alternatively rushing and slowing down. In comparison, Anna and Lady Thiang were fantastic. Tuptim was also very good. Lady Thiang and Tuptim were both classically trained and it certainly shows.
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Copenhagen & Roskilde
In the last few of weeks, I have been working in Madrid and in the midst of the sunshine and warm weather, 2 colleagues from Denmark kept repeating that Copenhagen was '15oC and raining', '15oC and raining'... So, with a couple of days to the weekend, I checked the forecast - 23oC and sunny! 'You are soooo lucky!', says one of my colleagues. The weather held up all weekend and got up to 27oC on Monday.
We arrived on Saturday afternoon in the midst of bright sunshine. Koufu and Kum Mo arrived a couple of hours after we did. We went to a typical Danish restaurant for dinner and had herrings (pickled & marinated with egg yolk) for entrees and meat for mains ('the Danes eat a lot of meat', said the lady at reception). This simple meal cost ~DKK400/person (~A$85). Such exorbitant prices! Just incredible how much food costs in Denmark. I don't know how much they must have to earn to survive.
On Sunday, we took a canal cruise in the sun and saw palaces, the royal yacht, cruise ships and expensive houses and apartments converted from old navy barracks and torpedo factories. The Little Mermaid is off to Shanghai next year for the expo but for the timebeing, she is still in Copenhagen. She's very overrated but looking very well given that she has been attacked several times and had her head and limbs hacked off at various points. We stopped of in Nyhavn (New Harbour), home of the old docks and sailors' watering holes, for lunch. We had a smørrebrød, an open sandwich, which was very rich and very nice.
In the afternoon, we visited the Danish Design Centre, which had an exhibition on Light and talked about how LED lighting was going to be the way of the future because of its clarity and environmental benefits. We also visited the Glyptoteket, the art gallery, which has a large collection of Impressionist paintings, Rodin sculptures and Egyptian, Roman & Etruscan statues.
That evening, we went into Tivoli to have dinner. I was pleasantly surprised to see that it is not a tacky amusement park as most others are but is actually quite elegant.
On Monday, we met up with Yi and Jerry and went to Roskilde for the day. It used to be the seat of the Danish crown and its cathedral contains the remains of most of the Danish kings and queens. It is quite morbid to see so many tombs. A couple of them were especially morbid with a marble skull wearing a crown perched on the end of the tomb.
Roskilde is also home to the Viking Ship Museum. 5 Viking Ships were found in the fjord where they had been sunken to protect the harbour from enemy invasion. These 1000 year old ships were excavated and preserved. The museum had the replica ship that was used to sail to Dublin and back in 2007/08. It also had smaller replica viking ships that they took people out on. We ended up being the crew, rowing out of the harbour before the captain raised the square sail. It was amazingly easy to row despite Ma, Yi & Kum Mo declaring beforehand that they weren't going to row, there being 2 children as part of the 12 man crew and the guy in front of me being worse than completely useless and tangling his oar up alternatively with mine and the guy's in front of him. The captain managed to get the ship back to port without our having to row again, which was probably much better for her given her useless crew.
So, the forecast for this weekend in Copenhagen? 14oC and raining. :)
Have just watched Roger Federer win the French Open to win a career Grand Slam and equal Sampras's record of 14 Grand Slams. Yay! He's such a beautiful player to watch, I'm so happy for him.
We arrived on Saturday afternoon in the midst of bright sunshine. Koufu and Kum Mo arrived a couple of hours after we did. We went to a typical Danish restaurant for dinner and had herrings (pickled & marinated with egg yolk) for entrees and meat for mains ('the Danes eat a lot of meat', said the lady at reception). This simple meal cost ~DKK400/person (~A$85). Such exorbitant prices! Just incredible how much food costs in Denmark. I don't know how much they must have to earn to survive.
On Sunday, we took a canal cruise in the sun and saw palaces, the royal yacht, cruise ships and expensive houses and apartments converted from old navy barracks and torpedo factories. The Little Mermaid is off to Shanghai next year for the expo but for the timebeing, she is still in Copenhagen. She's very overrated but looking very well given that she has been attacked several times and had her head and limbs hacked off at various points. We stopped of in Nyhavn (New Harbour), home of the old docks and sailors' watering holes, for lunch. We had a smørrebrød, an open sandwich, which was very rich and very nice.
In the afternoon, we visited the Danish Design Centre, which had an exhibition on Light and talked about how LED lighting was going to be the way of the future because of its clarity and environmental benefits. We also visited the Glyptoteket, the art gallery, which has a large collection of Impressionist paintings, Rodin sculptures and Egyptian, Roman & Etruscan statues.
That evening, we went into Tivoli to have dinner. I was pleasantly surprised to see that it is not a tacky amusement park as most others are but is actually quite elegant.
On Monday, we met up with Yi and Jerry and went to Roskilde for the day. It used to be the seat of the Danish crown and its cathedral contains the remains of most of the Danish kings and queens. It is quite morbid to see so many tombs. A couple of them were especially morbid with a marble skull wearing a crown perched on the end of the tomb.
Roskilde is also home to the Viking Ship Museum. 5 Viking Ships were found in the fjord where they had been sunken to protect the harbour from enemy invasion. These 1000 year old ships were excavated and preserved. The museum had the replica ship that was used to sail to Dublin and back in 2007/08. It also had smaller replica viking ships that they took people out on. We ended up being the crew, rowing out of the harbour before the captain raised the square sail. It was amazingly easy to row despite Ma, Yi & Kum Mo declaring beforehand that they weren't going to row, there being 2 children as part of the 12 man crew and the guy in front of me being worse than completely useless and tangling his oar up alternatively with mine and the guy's in front of him. The captain managed to get the ship back to port without our having to row again, which was probably much better for her given her useless crew.
So, the forecast for this weekend in Copenhagen? 14oC and raining. :)
Have just watched Roger Federer win the French Open to win a career Grand Slam and equal Sampras's record of 14 Grand Slams. Yay! He's such a beautiful player to watch, I'm so happy for him.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Champagne & Chartres
For the May Day bank holiday weekend, I took the Eurostar with Taffy & Rox (Taffy & Vicki's friend) to the Champagne region of France. We stayed in a town called Reims (pronounced something like Rance, rhymes with dance & France, the way I pronounce them, not the snooty English way). I managed to get first class tickets on the TGV (the French fast train) for cheaper than standard fare. The French train system is a hell of a lot better than the Brits. The seats were large and comfortable (even the standard class ones that I took back to Paris).
We went on a tour of the Mumm cellars (3rd largest producer of champagne) on Saturday afternoon. I took the 1 glass tour/tasting, Taffy had the 2 glass and Rox had the 3 glass. The tour was quite standard, talking through the old way of producing in barrels, to ceramic tile lined concrete vats (when they used midgets to clean the vats(?) It was difficult to tell if she was joking or not) to the current stainless steel variety. They have a Wine Library, where they keep a few bottles of champagne from key vintages (1895, 1911, 1929, 1942 and so on). They are kept in their pre-sediment decanting stage so as to keep them from going off. Only the Mumm Cellarmaster has the key to the library (part of the cellars) and he can go in to sample some of them when he wants. The purpose is so that he can refer back to the taste of the Mumm champagne through the years. I ended up drinking about 1/2 a glass, probably one of the largest volumes of alcohol I have consumed in one sitting and the second largest I have had without food. Rox and Taffy finished off mine as well as theirs and were rather happy as we wandered back into the town centre for dinner. [Taffy was a deal happier than Rox was, which is surprising given that 1) he's a guy, 2) he's bigger than she is and 3) he had 1 glass less than she did. Useless. ;-) ]
Reims is a lot more than just the gateway to the Champagne region. It has a couple of other claims to fame. It is the home of the Cathedrale Notre Dame de Reims, the cathedral where the French kings were crowned. Joan of Arc brought Charles VII here for his coronation. The cathedral has large windows on the upper storey, which provide an amazing amount of light, making it one of the brightest cathedrals I have seen.
Reims is also the town in which the German surrender took place in 1945. Eisenhower had a headquarters set up in a school in Reims and the surrender document was signed there on 7 May 1945. Another signing took place in Berlin a day later that was 'more public'. The room where it happened has been preserved as it was 60 years ago, with maps of Europe showing supply routes, cities & locations of important resources.
While Taffy & Rox went to Epernay on Monday to visit Moet & Chandon for another wine tasting & tour, I went to see Chartres. The Cathedrale Notre Dame de Chartres is described by the Lonely Planet as 'one of the crowning architectural achievements of Western civilisation'. Big call! It marks a turning point in architectural styles to New Gothic and its flying buttresses were some of the first. I wouldn't go so far as to say that it is a 'crowning architectural achievement' but its collection of stained glass windows is one of the best I have ever seen. Almost all of them are original, dating back to the 12th and 13th centuries. The collection survived the French Revolution and was removed and put in storage to survive the 2 World Wars. The predominant colour is a beautiful, deep blue called Chartres blue. It was made using cobalt oxide, which was not used much after this period as it was too expensive. The most famous window is called the Blue Virgin, Notre Dame de la Belle Verriere. She's quite ugly! : )
The other famous item in the cathedral is a holy relic, the Virgin Mary's veil. It was apparently worn by Mary. Luckily the chapel in which the relic is exhibited was closed for refurbishment or I may not have been able to stop myself from rolling my eyes and giggling as in the Holy Relic Museum in Istanbul. I bet it's in pristine condition like Abraham's turban too.
Other than the cathedral, Chartres is just a nice little town with old churches and houses scattered through it.
At last count, I was on 13 colds in 12 months almost a year ago. Since then, I have only had a handful: a couple in the UK, one in Canada and then a 4 month stretch from Jan-Apr (winter months) without a cold. The health couldn't be sustained and this week I came down with another cold. I'm quite impressed with myself, though. My system must be getting used to the European germs. I did go to work and spread my 'swine flu' around but I'm sure everyone there has already been exposed to all the stuff I'm just getting now.
We went on a tour of the Mumm cellars (3rd largest producer of champagne) on Saturday afternoon. I took the 1 glass tour/tasting, Taffy had the 2 glass and Rox had the 3 glass. The tour was quite standard, talking through the old way of producing in barrels, to ceramic tile lined concrete vats (when they used midgets to clean the vats(?) It was difficult to tell if she was joking or not) to the current stainless steel variety. They have a Wine Library, where they keep a few bottles of champagne from key vintages (1895, 1911, 1929, 1942 and so on). They are kept in their pre-sediment decanting stage so as to keep them from going off. Only the Mumm Cellarmaster has the key to the library (part of the cellars) and he can go in to sample some of them when he wants. The purpose is so that he can refer back to the taste of the Mumm champagne through the years. I ended up drinking about 1/2 a glass, probably one of the largest volumes of alcohol I have consumed in one sitting and the second largest I have had without food. Rox and Taffy finished off mine as well as theirs and were rather happy as we wandered back into the town centre for dinner. [Taffy was a deal happier than Rox was, which is surprising given that 1) he's a guy, 2) he's bigger than she is and 3) he had 1 glass less than she did. Useless. ;-) ]
Reims is a lot more than just the gateway to the Champagne region. It has a couple of other claims to fame. It is the home of the Cathedrale Notre Dame de Reims, the cathedral where the French kings were crowned. Joan of Arc brought Charles VII here for his coronation. The cathedral has large windows on the upper storey, which provide an amazing amount of light, making it one of the brightest cathedrals I have seen.
Reims is also the town in which the German surrender took place in 1945. Eisenhower had a headquarters set up in a school in Reims and the surrender document was signed there on 7 May 1945. Another signing took place in Berlin a day later that was 'more public'. The room where it happened has been preserved as it was 60 years ago, with maps of Europe showing supply routes, cities & locations of important resources.
While Taffy & Rox went to Epernay on Monday to visit Moet & Chandon for another wine tasting & tour, I went to see Chartres. The Cathedrale Notre Dame de Chartres is described by the Lonely Planet as 'one of the crowning architectural achievements of Western civilisation'. Big call! It marks a turning point in architectural styles to New Gothic and its flying buttresses were some of the first. I wouldn't go so far as to say that it is a 'crowning architectural achievement' but its collection of stained glass windows is one of the best I have ever seen. Almost all of them are original, dating back to the 12th and 13th centuries. The collection survived the French Revolution and was removed and put in storage to survive the 2 World Wars. The predominant colour is a beautiful, deep blue called Chartres blue. It was made using cobalt oxide, which was not used much after this period as it was too expensive. The most famous window is called the Blue Virgin, Notre Dame de la Belle Verriere. She's quite ugly! : )
The other famous item in the cathedral is a holy relic, the Virgin Mary's veil. It was apparently worn by Mary. Luckily the chapel in which the relic is exhibited was closed for refurbishment or I may not have been able to stop myself from rolling my eyes and giggling as in the Holy Relic Museum in Istanbul. I bet it's in pristine condition like Abraham's turban too.
Other than the cathedral, Chartres is just a nice little town with old churches and houses scattered through it.
At last count, I was on 13 colds in 12 months almost a year ago. Since then, I have only had a handful: a couple in the UK, one in Canada and then a 4 month stretch from Jan-Apr (winter months) without a cold. The health couldn't be sustained and this week I came down with another cold. I'm quite impressed with myself, though. My system must be getting used to the European germs. I did go to work and spread my 'swine flu' around but I'm sure everyone there has already been exposed to all the stuff I'm just getting now.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Broken Strings & Devonshire Teas
I broke a string! My first string of any racquet, badminton or tennis. My last string issue was an undone knot on a tennis racquet. I didn't even notice my broken string until I picked up my racquet for the next game. Could have been playing with it for several points. Duh!
On the weekend, I went to visit Eppie & Taffy's Auntie Hannah in Leeds. She is a very nervous driver and said that if I was willing to drive, she could provide a car for us to visit some ruins nearby.
We went to Bolton Abbey, an old ruin in Yorkshire Dales, seat of the Duke of Devonshire. There are some nice walks as well as the ruins of the abbey. There is still a working chapel attached to the ruins, which hosted a wedding while we were there. After our visit, we stopped at a tea cottage and had Devonshire Teas, though this is not what they call it. Here it is simply known as Cream Tea.
Auntie Hannah took me to a lovely dinner at the Hilton in central Leeds. I had duck. Ha, ha! Of course, I did. : )
On Sunday, we were planning to visit the Bronte parsonage but when we dropped by the office to pick up some Hakubaku noodles for Taffy, we discovered a break-in. A side window had been smashed and the metal grill on the inside ripped out. The whole building had been ransacked and vandalised. We waited for the police to come and I must say, when he did come, he was the most pleasant policeman I have ever come across in any country. My previous experiences with the police have never been good, most of them having a distinct lack of empathy or treating me like a child, telling me off for not having done things correctly. Because there were issues with the alarm and security system not functioning as expected, Auntie Hannah had to stay there until 6pm that evening. At about 1pm, she asked an employee to give me a lift to Leeds city centre so that I could do some shopping before heading back to London and not waste the whole day sitting outside the office. Damn Taffy and his Hakubaku noodles!
On the weekend, I went to visit Eppie & Taffy's Auntie Hannah in Leeds. She is a very nervous driver and said that if I was willing to drive, she could provide a car for us to visit some ruins nearby.
We went to Bolton Abbey, an old ruin in Yorkshire Dales, seat of the Duke of Devonshire. There are some nice walks as well as the ruins of the abbey. There is still a working chapel attached to the ruins, which hosted a wedding while we were there. After our visit, we stopped at a tea cottage and had Devonshire Teas, though this is not what they call it. Here it is simply known as Cream Tea.
Auntie Hannah took me to a lovely dinner at the Hilton in central Leeds. I had duck. Ha, ha! Of course, I did. : )
On Sunday, we were planning to visit the Bronte parsonage but when we dropped by the office to pick up some Hakubaku noodles for Taffy, we discovered a break-in. A side window had been smashed and the metal grill on the inside ripped out. The whole building had been ransacked and vandalised. We waited for the police to come and I must say, when he did come, he was the most pleasant policeman I have ever come across in any country. My previous experiences with the police have never been good, most of them having a distinct lack of empathy or treating me like a child, telling me off for not having done things correctly. Because there were issues with the alarm and security system not functioning as expected, Auntie Hannah had to stay there until 6pm that evening. At about 1pm, she asked an employee to give me a lift to Leeds city centre so that I could do some shopping before heading back to London and not waste the whole day sitting outside the office. Damn Taffy and his Hakubaku noodles!
Friday, April 17, 2009
Barcelona
I spent Easter in sunny/rainy Barcelona. The forecasts predicted heavy rain for Saturday and Sunday, which greatly affected my enthusiasm for the trip. It ended up being heavy rain overnight on Friday night, showers on Saturday and heavier & heavier rain on Sunday.
All the warnings I had from people before and during my trip about pickpockets and purse-snatchers made me completely paranoid about my belongings. However, I did not see anything that would make me feel that Barcelona was more dangerous than any large city. The transport system was clean, relatively easy to use and efficient. The streets were also clean and not too overrun with beggars (most were hanging around the Cathedral trying to guilt the church-goers into some philanthropy).
I found Barcelona strangely disappointing. Many people have told me that they loved it but it was not as beautiful & interesting as they said. Gaudi's La Sagrada Familia, La Pedrera, Casa Batllo & Parc Guell are quirky in their design but as they are all very similar to each other, the unusual started to seem quite common-place & unremarkable.
Las Ramblas had a lot of street performers, most of whom were of the statue kind. The best one was a guy who looked like he was running quickly, his tie blown over his shoulder, his trenchcoat flying behind him and his hair all windblown. The Mercat de la Boqueria was alive with fresh produce stalls, food stalls and massive crowds. When I got down to the waterfront, the sun was out and shining brightly off all of the yachts.
I had been to the visiting Picasso exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria and seen some of his non-crazy cubism work, which is actually really good. The Museu Picasso concentrates on his early work from his teens to his thirties, which included his traditional artistic education and his Blue & Rose periods. His pencil & ink sketches are also really great. They had a collection of the pottery that he made late in his life, which were weird and not wonderful.
The one thing that exceeded my expectations was the Museu d'Historia de la Ciutat, which contained a massive excavated site of Roman ruins right below the heart of the city. There were streets, a wine maker, baths and a laundry, where clothes were washed using the urine of passers-by, who pee-ed into collection amphoras (I love this word, first learnt it in Asterix) that were put in the street (eew!).
On the food front, a colleague of mine who lives in Barcelona gave me a bunch of recommendations. I went to a couple of tapas bars and a restaurant where I had a Catalan sausage & white bean dish and profiteroles. I almost overdosed on a chocolate con churros, the chocolate being so thick & rich and the churros so oily and crunchy.
All the warnings I had from people before and during my trip about pickpockets and purse-snatchers made me completely paranoid about my belongings. However, I did not see anything that would make me feel that Barcelona was more dangerous than any large city. The transport system was clean, relatively easy to use and efficient. The streets were also clean and not too overrun with beggars (most were hanging around the Cathedral trying to guilt the church-goers into some philanthropy).
I found Barcelona strangely disappointing. Many people have told me that they loved it but it was not as beautiful & interesting as they said. Gaudi's La Sagrada Familia, La Pedrera, Casa Batllo & Parc Guell are quirky in their design but as they are all very similar to each other, the unusual started to seem quite common-place & unremarkable.
Las Ramblas had a lot of street performers, most of whom were of the statue kind. The best one was a guy who looked like he was running quickly, his tie blown over his shoulder, his trenchcoat flying behind him and his hair all windblown. The Mercat de la Boqueria was alive with fresh produce stalls, food stalls and massive crowds. When I got down to the waterfront, the sun was out and shining brightly off all of the yachts.
I had been to the visiting Picasso exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria and seen some of his non-crazy cubism work, which is actually really good. The Museu Picasso concentrates on his early work from his teens to his thirties, which included his traditional artistic education and his Blue & Rose periods. His pencil & ink sketches are also really great. They had a collection of the pottery that he made late in his life, which were weird and not wonderful.
The one thing that exceeded my expectations was the Museu d'Historia de la Ciutat, which contained a massive excavated site of Roman ruins right below the heart of the city. There were streets, a wine maker, baths and a laundry, where clothes were washed using the urine of passers-by, who pee-ed into collection amphoras (I love this word, first learnt it in Asterix) that were put in the street (eew!).
On the food front, a colleague of mine who lives in Barcelona gave me a bunch of recommendations. I went to a couple of tapas bars and a restaurant where I had a Catalan sausage & white bean dish and profiteroles. I almost overdosed on a chocolate con churros, the chocolate being so thick & rich and the churros so oily and crunchy.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Brussels & Bruges
After almost 3 months of nothing but work, I took a couple of days off and Taffy & I went to Brussels & Bruges via the Eurostar. We arrived at Brussels Midi station at 4.05pm y and by 6pm had seen all the main tourist attractions of Brussels old town. The most interesting thing was Mannekin Pis, who had been dressed up by a group in their colours. When we went to have a look at him on Sunday, he was wearing an outfit promoting Unicef. I'm not sure I like it when he has clothes on. That evening, I had frogs' legs and stoemp (Belgian staple of a potato, veggie & bacon mash).
On Sunday, we visited the Museum of Fine Arts, which has some Rubens & Brueghels but not much else. We then made our way to the Comic Museum. It turns out that Belgium has a great tradition of comics, the most famous being, of course, Tintin. I also found out that the smurfs came from Belgium too. In the afternoon, we visited the Atomium, a massive structure constructed for the 1958 Expo. We went to the top for views of Brussels and saw a very poor exhibition entitled Bipolar, about the Arctic and Antarctic. On returning to the old town, we ran the gauntlet and ended up in a restaurant where I had escargot, mussels, a creme caramel & a drink for €12.
Monday saw us getting up early (for us) and taking a train to Bruges. The 2 jaded travellers found it a pretty but boring town, especially since it was cold (wind chill factor of about -10oC) and then rained as we were walking back to the station. I was surprised to accidentally find a Michelangelo sculpture of the Madonna and Child in one of the churches. We also wandered into a Heritage listed compound (Beguinale) where widows and spinsters used to live if they did not belong to a religious order (i.e. if they didn't want to become nuns).
Having been banned from booking hotels, I was delighted (but also exhausted) to stay at the St Nicolas Hotel, as booked by Taffy, with its paper-thin walls, huge windows and the widest array of night noises ever: sirens, car horns, traffic, nightclub music, drunks etc. Methinks my booking techniques are not so bad after all...
An update on London activities: Feb 2 saw the heaviest snow falls in London on record, which is actually nothing much for the rest of Europe. Everything ground to a halt (you can imagine how bad it was when I tell you that entire train lines will stop in London when there are 'leaves on the track'). I also made my first siu yook (roast pork), which was a wonderful success, and my first whole steamed chicken (with ginger & spring onion), which, after an initial hiccup (it was raw on the inside after the first steaming), ended up being demolished by David & Taffy. Two shows I saw recently were Traces, a piece by 5 ex-Cirque du Soleil performers, which was slightly strange (French Canadian influence?) but showed off their versatility & stamina (on stage almost continuously for the entire show) and Stomp, which was tremendously energetic and even more impressive that Traces in the stamina department, with the 8 performers on stage for 1 hr 45 mins without an intermission.
On Sunday, we visited the Museum of Fine Arts, which has some Rubens & Brueghels but not much else. We then made our way to the Comic Museum. It turns out that Belgium has a great tradition of comics, the most famous being, of course, Tintin. I also found out that the smurfs came from Belgium too. In the afternoon, we visited the Atomium, a massive structure constructed for the 1958 Expo. We went to the top for views of Brussels and saw a very poor exhibition entitled Bipolar, about the Arctic and Antarctic. On returning to the old town, we ran the gauntlet and ended up in a restaurant where I had escargot, mussels, a creme caramel & a drink for €12.
Monday saw us getting up early (for us) and taking a train to Bruges. The 2 jaded travellers found it a pretty but boring town, especially since it was cold (wind chill factor of about -10oC) and then rained as we were walking back to the station. I was surprised to accidentally find a Michelangelo sculpture of the Madonna and Child in one of the churches. We also wandered into a Heritage listed compound (Beguinale) where widows and spinsters used to live if they did not belong to a religious order (i.e. if they didn't want to become nuns).
Having been banned from booking hotels, I was delighted (but also exhausted) to stay at the St Nicolas Hotel, as booked by Taffy, with its paper-thin walls, huge windows and the widest array of night noises ever: sirens, car horns, traffic, nightclub music, drunks etc. Methinks my booking techniques are not so bad after all...
An update on London activities: Feb 2 saw the heaviest snow falls in London on record, which is actually nothing much for the rest of Europe. Everything ground to a halt (you can imagine how bad it was when I tell you that entire train lines will stop in London when there are 'leaves on the track'). I also made my first siu yook (roast pork), which was a wonderful success, and my first whole steamed chicken (with ginger & spring onion), which, after an initial hiccup (it was raw on the inside after the first steaming), ended up being demolished by David & Taffy. Two shows I saw recently were Traces, a piece by 5 ex-Cirque du Soleil performers, which was slightly strange (French Canadian influence?) but showed off their versatility & stamina (on stage almost continuously for the entire show) and Stomp, which was tremendously energetic and even more impressive that Traces in the stamina department, with the 8 performers on stage for 1 hr 45 mins without an intermission.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Christmas & Canada
For a person who cannot stand the cold and almost got hypothermia the one time I went skiing, I crazily decided to go to Canada to visit Eppie for Christmas.
I arrived in Toronto on a Saturday, which, luckily, was the one day there were no snow storms in a string of 4 days of storms. Eppie offered to come to pick me up and regretted her decision the whole way as the power to the subway was shut down while she was on a train when a couple of idiots jumped onto the track.
On Sunday, we went shopping for all of our Christmas feast ingredients. Eppie deigned to take her shopping cart to the supermarket in the interests of practicality even though it was against her 'trendy image'. We got the smallest turkey and ham, which were still enormous. Quite simply, Canadians may think that they are different from Americans but they are exactly the same (except they don't carry guns).
That evening, we went to a consultant's house for dinner, along with a couple of other neurology fellows, one from Saudi Arabia (a 30 year old who is probably a little too independent to get a traditional Saudi husband) and one from India (a pediatric professor with an O&G wife who was visiting with 2 of their children). Sitting in a conversation with a bunch of doctors can sometimes be very boring...
I caught up with Gu Jie twice while I was in Toronto. I haven't seen her for several years so it was good to have a couple of long chats with her.
Eppie's friend, Michelle, from medical school, arrived on the 23rd. She is now in private practice in dermatology. She may also be coming to London for a year to work at one of the hospitals (she finds out in late January). The other weird connection is that it turns out that her mum is friends with Sei Sum. They met when they were all in Canberra. What a small world!
On Christmas Eve we went to Eppie's friend's place for dinner. Johanna is a doctor from Colombia and she invited another doctor from radiology as well as a doctor from Colombia. She is a sterotype of the South American girl - gorgeous, exotic & lively (and late). We took the ham over to her apartment so that she could heat it up in her oven (not enough room in Eppie's oven to do both the ham and the turkey). She urged Eppie & Michelle to go to church on Christmas morning.
Eppie & Michelle dragged themselves out of bed on Christmas morning and went to church. Johanna slept in and missed it. I roasted the turkey, the stuffing & the vegetables. Not to blow my own trumpet but the turkey was a tremendous success. Best turkey I have ever had, if I say so myself! Johanna & her Colombian friend, Oscar, came over an hour late and we had a wonderful lunch/dinner.
On Boxing Day, we sat around and lazed away the day.
At the crack of dawn on the 27th, we got up and went to the airport to fly to Quebec City. Luckily for us (for me in particular), we hit Quebec City during a lull in the weather and it was quite mild for the whole time we were there (-10oC, feels like -17oC due to wind chill).
Quebec City is a very interesting city. It is a strange combination of French, English, Canadian, Inuit & Native American history. The buildings in the Old Town are a mix of French & English architecture, sometimes in the same building.
The first thing we did after we arrived was to book ourselves on a walking tour. The guide thought that it was a good idea to tell us about the history of Quebec while standing in progressively windier and colder spots. The 'walking' tour was for 2 hours and after 75 minutes of mostly standing, I was ready to give up. At that point she took us into the cathedral to warm up. We warmed up for about 10 minutes and then it was out into the cold again. I was frozen again by the time we finished.
We visited 3 museums while in Quebec: the Museum of Fine Arts (the Inuit collection was the best bit by far), the Civilisation Museum (the Inuit/First Nations bit was the best by far) and the Museum of French America (nothing good about it). We also visited a 'museum' on maple syrup, which was just a little exhibit above a shop selling maple products. The thing that struck me the most about all the maple stuff we saw was how accurate Laura Ingalls Wilder was in her descriptions of all things maple in her Little House books. My visualisations of her writings were exactly how the pictures looked in the exhibit and in the streets.
We went to a restaurant called Aux Anciens Canadiens, which specialises in good old Canadian food like elk, bison & pheasant (or peasant as Eppie kept calling it). I had escargot for an entree, which was fantastic and pheasant for a main, which was a lot better than the partridge I had a couple of months ago. Eppie had a wild game pie.
When we were packing to go to Quebec, I put certain items (set of underwear, toiletries etc) in the hand luggage as a precaution against lost luggage. Eppie & Michelle mocked me. On our return to Toronto, we waited at the baggage carousel for 45 mins before the last luggage came out and our bag wasn't there. We lined up at the lost luggage counter only to find out that our luggage wasn't lost, they knew exactly where it was and they made a decision not to load it as they ran out of room in the hold (this would be because North Americans are allowed 2 enormous bags each regardless of how far they are going). I almost did not share my toiletries when we got back because they mocked me. ; )
New Year's Eve was quite boring. We decided not to go out into the bitter cold and watched it on tv and from the apartment window. Toronto is not the best city for fireworks...
On New Year's Day, Michelle and I went to Niagara Falls while Eppie went to work. Niagara is amazing, even in winter. It may be even better in winter as there are icicles forming everywhere. I got some fantastic photos of water, icicles & rainbows.
On the plane on the way back to London, I watched Empire of the Sun, which I haven't seen since I was about 12. It's still a great movie with a wonderful hymn, which is still stuck firmly in my head. Christian Bale was great as a child actor.
Photos in the usual place.
I arrived in Toronto on a Saturday, which, luckily, was the one day there were no snow storms in a string of 4 days of storms. Eppie offered to come to pick me up and regretted her decision the whole way as the power to the subway was shut down while she was on a train when a couple of idiots jumped onto the track.
On Sunday, we went shopping for all of our Christmas feast ingredients. Eppie deigned to take her shopping cart to the supermarket in the interests of practicality even though it was against her 'trendy image'. We got the smallest turkey and ham, which were still enormous. Quite simply, Canadians may think that they are different from Americans but they are exactly the same (except they don't carry guns).
That evening, we went to a consultant's house for dinner, along with a couple of other neurology fellows, one from Saudi Arabia (a 30 year old who is probably a little too independent to get a traditional Saudi husband) and one from India (a pediatric professor with an O&G wife who was visiting with 2 of their children). Sitting in a conversation with a bunch of doctors can sometimes be very boring...
I caught up with Gu Jie twice while I was in Toronto. I haven't seen her for several years so it was good to have a couple of long chats with her.
Eppie's friend, Michelle, from medical school, arrived on the 23rd. She is now in private practice in dermatology. She may also be coming to London for a year to work at one of the hospitals (she finds out in late January). The other weird connection is that it turns out that her mum is friends with Sei Sum. They met when they were all in Canberra. What a small world!
On Christmas Eve we went to Eppie's friend's place for dinner. Johanna is a doctor from Colombia and she invited another doctor from radiology as well as a doctor from Colombia. She is a sterotype of the South American girl - gorgeous, exotic & lively (and late). We took the ham over to her apartment so that she could heat it up in her oven (not enough room in Eppie's oven to do both the ham and the turkey). She urged Eppie & Michelle to go to church on Christmas morning.
Eppie & Michelle dragged themselves out of bed on Christmas morning and went to church. Johanna slept in and missed it. I roasted the turkey, the stuffing & the vegetables. Not to blow my own trumpet but the turkey was a tremendous success. Best turkey I have ever had, if I say so myself! Johanna & her Colombian friend, Oscar, came over an hour late and we had a wonderful lunch/dinner.
On Boxing Day, we sat around and lazed away the day.
At the crack of dawn on the 27th, we got up and went to the airport to fly to Quebec City. Luckily for us (for me in particular), we hit Quebec City during a lull in the weather and it was quite mild for the whole time we were there (-10oC, feels like -17oC due to wind chill).
Quebec City is a very interesting city. It is a strange combination of French, English, Canadian, Inuit & Native American history. The buildings in the Old Town are a mix of French & English architecture, sometimes in the same building.
The first thing we did after we arrived was to book ourselves on a walking tour. The guide thought that it was a good idea to tell us about the history of Quebec while standing in progressively windier and colder spots. The 'walking' tour was for 2 hours and after 75 minutes of mostly standing, I was ready to give up. At that point she took us into the cathedral to warm up. We warmed up for about 10 minutes and then it was out into the cold again. I was frozen again by the time we finished.
We visited 3 museums while in Quebec: the Museum of Fine Arts (the Inuit collection was the best bit by far), the Civilisation Museum (the Inuit/First Nations bit was the best by far) and the Museum of French America (nothing good about it). We also visited a 'museum' on maple syrup, which was just a little exhibit above a shop selling maple products. The thing that struck me the most about all the maple stuff we saw was how accurate Laura Ingalls Wilder was in her descriptions of all things maple in her Little House books. My visualisations of her writings were exactly how the pictures looked in the exhibit and in the streets.
We went to a restaurant called Aux Anciens Canadiens, which specialises in good old Canadian food like elk, bison & pheasant (or peasant as Eppie kept calling it). I had escargot for an entree, which was fantastic and pheasant for a main, which was a lot better than the partridge I had a couple of months ago. Eppie had a wild game pie.
When we were packing to go to Quebec, I put certain items (set of underwear, toiletries etc) in the hand luggage as a precaution against lost luggage. Eppie & Michelle mocked me. On our return to Toronto, we waited at the baggage carousel for 45 mins before the last luggage came out and our bag wasn't there. We lined up at the lost luggage counter only to find out that our luggage wasn't lost, they knew exactly where it was and they made a decision not to load it as they ran out of room in the hold (this would be because North Americans are allowed 2 enormous bags each regardless of how far they are going). I almost did not share my toiletries when we got back because they mocked me. ; )
New Year's Eve was quite boring. We decided not to go out into the bitter cold and watched it on tv and from the apartment window. Toronto is not the best city for fireworks...
On New Year's Day, Michelle and I went to Niagara Falls while Eppie went to work. Niagara is amazing, even in winter. It may be even better in winter as there are icicles forming everywhere. I got some fantastic photos of water, icicles & rainbows.
On the plane on the way back to London, I watched Empire of the Sun, which I haven't seen since I was about 12. It's still a great movie with a wonderful hymn, which is still stuck firmly in my head. Christian Bale was great as a child actor.
Photos in the usual place.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)