Lying in the bathtub shaving my legs with A's razor and suddenly the swirl of bagpipes fills the room. It's been like that in Prague. A surprise at every corner. look up angels, gilding, frescoes on apartment buildings. We spent five hours today at Prague castle (well us an about ten thousand tourists) We got up early to beat the crowds and it was just as well because they came in a never ending river of shorts, cameras all looking up and around. Each little troupe was led by a tour guide speaking their language French, Japanese, German, Italian - all the guides holding up some kind of identifying staff. It had the feel of a medieval parade.
I don't know why the people of Prauge aren't huge. Every restaurant serves meat with dumplings and gravy but they aren't. The women are slim and elegant and the men all look like Franz Kafka with sunken cheeks and long hair. There also seems to be a "Goth element." Heavily tattooed men and women with very black hair, black clothes and dark, brooding gazes.
Our Prague apartment is just as I had dreamed of. High ceilings, wooden floors , two huge rooms with large windows opening onto the liveliest street. We can see the castle from our window spires reaching high into the sky like so many highly decorated birthday cakes. I am sitting at one of the open windows "borrowing" someones wifi signal. It has been deliciously hot but tonight we are having an amazing thunder and lighting storm - all very theatrically lighting up the buildings and looking like a scene from Young Frankenstein.
While the people here aren't exactly delighted to see us they do put up a good front and at least they don't give you the impression you are in their way. Ireland was very much a mixed bag of interpersonal interactions. Sometimes people went out of their way to help ("follow me in your car and I'll take you to the physio) But more often it was a sigh and a look of what are you doing here.Ireland is booming. New sterile housing developments everywhere and people seem to have lots of disposable money. We on the other hand suffered with our poor Canadian exchange rate with the Euro. It was breathtakingly expensive and we were glad to get out with our bank account not completely emptied.
Still Ireland is a lovely place with more variety than I had imagined. Sometimes stark, sometimes peaceful always refreshing in the country side. AJ alluded to the driving but being a passenger was no piece of cake either. Hedges on one side, sharp drop offs on the other - one car width roads all made for lots of opportunities to shut my eyes and think calm thoughts.
No pics this time. Takes too long and I would rather reach out with words and bore you all with the pics when we get home.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
trying again
It is now my turn, AJ, to post comments. Mine will be more like Sgt. Joe Fiday for those of you who remember "Dragnet'. Just the facts "Mam", just the facts.
Apart from losing my wallet and just admitting that I lost less than would spend a day is the only way I got over it. Maybe this will be the complaining session. When we get back the cost of living will be appreciate much more than before. The numbers are the same but when you realize that the actual cost is double or more than back home it is hard to swallow. 2 Pounds for the hot dog we got screamed about at. Double the cost for Pounds and 1.5x's for Euros . Can you imagine an appetizer for 38 Pounds for lunch (did not purchase), how about 17.50 Pounds just to go the gym. Staying with relatives Richard & Roisin and John & Deb allowed us to reach our daily budget limit without being sent to the debters jail. Enough of the negativity and on to the enjoyment of the trip.
It has only been a week and the tension in moving my neck has almost disappeared. Wine and beer are inexpensive but you need to look at the alcohol content, as lower alcohol gets you lower prices but then you just drink more. Good French & Italian wines are cheap compared to back home if you get them on sale. Oh by the way did you feel the earth shift as I moved from the Eastern to Western Hemisphere. Talk about being in two places at one time.
A little tour around Cardiff over the past few days. John & Deb are are equal walking distance from downtown & the wharf area (kind of like a Granville Island atmosphere). Scott departed from Cardiff (pronounced Kardeeth) to the South Pole only to be trumped by Raul Amendson? (the guy who also discovered the North Pole). A fantastic Millenium hall covered in Welsh materials (slate and a steel that looked shiny bronze in one direction and completely tarnished in another direction).
The picture does not do it justice.We took a water taxi from the dock area to the Cardiff Castle area and then strolled back through town to J &D's. Next day we took a hop on hop off bus tour around town and got a different perspective of the area, The tickets were good for two days so off we went the second day to the art gallery to see a few French Impressoinist painters and some insights into Afghanastan. There was a showing of the Arte Medi tavelling showing of 9 artists chosen by a panel of judges from 40 countries. The winning artist receives a substantial monetary prize as well as world wide.
When you were rich back a bit you were really rich. Imagine having over 16 different homes that you occupied throughout the year. Or bedspreads that had real gold tassels not just gold thread. Cardiff castle was donated to the city because the cost of upkeep got just a bit much and the Marquis of Bute moved back to the ancestoral lands in Scotland. The dinning room makes some restaurants look small. We were not allowed to take any photos inside so we took the from the outside.
The castle was build on the ruins of a Roman fort from 2000 years ago. Note the difference in the stones.
Along with the castle there was a huge parcel of surrounding lands that are now a city park, much like Stanley Park or the likes of except they have gates that close before dusk and huge walls that you need to scale if you forget about time. Talk about being on the inside looking out. John tolds us the few times he rode in at one end with his bicycle only to find the gate locked at teh other end and t6oo late to get out going back. Over the wall goes the bike and luckily no ripped pants or other injuries. They go by sunset to lock up not by the clock, must be a Welsh thing or something.
Liverpool is the city of culture (?), well maybe if your English or something, but to be fair we just lapped up the hospitality of reliles enjoying late nights of story telling & improptu singing wth copius amounts of libation consumed. Each planned day the night before was always modified in the morning to accommodate errors made the previous night/morning.
We toured Port Sunlight, Lever Bros. company town, Lord Lever had a winning combination; a product that has not gone out of favour, that being soap, and returning the respect to his employees necessary to receive the respect of his workers. He had 30 different architects design and build homes for his factory workers. The town looks like a regular town not a cookie cutter version Even the socialist's I spoke to admiited it had worked very well. Not like the company towns on our side of the big pond. The town is now self owned homes managed by a trust.
We had great evenings with Pave's rellies and on the Sunday night we had a sit down dnner around the table ending in continuous songs to all hours of the night. Paddy kept us entertained with Irish tunes some if which, in his words, would had you shot or at least jailed in years not long ago. Paddy is the one in the back in black.
Have you ever gotten directions in GB or Ireland (drove in Ireland but that will be later). Let me give you an small example starting with some ground rules; 1st no street signs except when the street begins somewhere or changed name ( oh yes if there is a name look for it on a building, fence or some other obscure location at any height); 2nd house numbers in most cases are very difficult to see and find; the highways and byways are marked A, M, N, R, B and then there are the L's. Ok ready to getr out of town now, go to the first round about(oh ya very few traffic lights) take the second Left (always left off the round about), then veer slightly to your right, not a sharp right now,
follow the N3242 until you reach the third roundabout and get off on the A4 whch is also the M1, stay in the entrnce lane that will be the exit lane for the for the N5468 or B1254, sharp left after the second round about and then get on the L9827. If you get lost at this point stopp at the next pub and ask for directions, Word of warning haave a oint or two before trying to remember what they are saying as their English is a bit weird and in some(?) cases hard to understand.
i am stopping now as ouir system is on its last legs of battery power and we have had our challenges with staying connected and being able to use our system. Hope this transfers over to the blog ok before we drop power again.
Apart from losing my wallet and just admitting that I lost less than would spend a day is the only way I got over it. Maybe this will be the complaining session. When we get back the cost of living will be appreciate much more than before. The numbers are the same but when you realize that the actual cost is double or more than back home it is hard to swallow. 2 Pounds for the hot dog we got screamed about at. Double the cost for Pounds and 1.5x's for Euros . Can you imagine an appetizer for 38 Pounds for lunch (did not purchase), how about 17.50 Pounds just to go the gym. Staying with relatives Richard & Roisin and John & Deb allowed us to reach our daily budget limit without being sent to the debters jail. Enough of the negativity and on to the enjoyment of the trip.
It has only been a week and the tension in moving my neck has almost disappeared. Wine and beer are inexpensive but you need to look at the alcohol content, as lower alcohol gets you lower prices but then you just drink more. Good French & Italian wines are cheap compared to back home if you get them on sale. Oh by the way did you feel the earth shift as I moved from the Eastern to Western Hemisphere. Talk about being in two places at one time.A little tour around Cardiff over the past few days. John & Deb are are equal walking distance from downtown & the wharf area (kind of like a Granville Island atmosphere). Scott departed from Cardiff (pronounced Kardeeth) to the South Pole only to be trumped by Raul Amendson? (the guy who also discovered the North Pole). A fantastic Millenium hall covered in Welsh materials (slate and a steel that looked shiny bronze in one direction and completely tarnished in another direction).
The picture does not do it justice.We took a water taxi from the dock area to the Cardiff Castle area and then strolled back through town to J &D's. Next day we took a hop on hop off bus tour around town and got a different perspective of the area, The tickets were good for two days so off we went the second day to the art gallery to see a few French Impressoinist painters and some insights into Afghanastan. There was a showing of the Arte Medi tavelling showing of 9 artists chosen by a panel of judges from 40 countries. The winning artist receives a substantial monetary prize as well as world wide.
When you were rich back a bit you were really rich. Imagine having over 16 different homes that you occupied throughout the year. Or bedspreads that had real gold tassels not just gold thread. Cardiff castle was donated to the city because the cost of upkeep got just a bit much and the Marquis of Bute moved back to the ancestoral lands in Scotland. The dinning room makes some restaurants look small. We were not allowed to take any photos inside so we took the from the outside.
The castle was build on the ruins of a Roman fort from 2000 years ago. Note the difference in the stones.
Along with the castle there was a huge parcel of surrounding lands that are now a city park, much like Stanley Park or the likes of except they have gates that close before dusk and huge walls that you need to scale if you forget about time. Talk about being on the inside looking out. John tolds us the few times he rode in at one end with his bicycle only to find the gate locked at teh other end and t6oo late to get out going back. Over the wall goes the bike and luckily no ripped pants or other injuries. They go by sunset to lock up not by the clock, must be a Welsh thing or something.
Liverpool is the city of culture (?), well maybe if your English or something, but to be fair we just lapped up the hospitality of reliles enjoying late nights of story telling & improptu singing wth copius amounts of libation consumed. Each planned day the night before was always modified in the morning to accommodate errors made the previous night/morning.
We toured Port Sunlight, Lever Bros. company town, Lord Lever had a winning combination; a product that has not gone out of favour, that being soap, and returning the respect to his employees necessary to receive the respect of his workers. He had 30 different architects design and build homes for his factory workers. The town looks like a regular town not a cookie cutter version Even the socialist's I spoke to admiited it had worked very well. Not like the company towns on our side of the big pond. The town is now self owned homes managed by a trust.
We had great evenings with Pave's rellies and on the Sunday night we had a sit down dnner around the table ending in continuous songs to all hours of the night. Paddy kept us entertained with Irish tunes some if which, in his words, would had you shot or at least jailed in years not long ago. Paddy is the one in the back in black.Have you ever gotten directions in GB or Ireland (drove in Ireland but that will be later). Let me give you an small example starting with some ground rules; 1st no street signs except when the street begins somewhere or changed name ( oh yes if there is a name look for it on a building, fence or some other obscure location at any height); 2nd house numbers in most cases are very difficult to see and find; the highways and byways are marked A, M, N, R, B and then there are the L's. Ok ready to getr out of town now, go to the first round about(oh ya very few traffic lights) take the second Left (always left off the round about), then veer slightly to your right, not a sharp right now,
follow the N3242 until you reach the third roundabout and get off on the A4 whch is also the M1, stay in the entrnce lane that will be the exit lane for the for the N5468 or B1254, sharp left after the second round about and then get on the L9827. If you get lost at this point stopp at the next pub and ask for directions, Word of warning haave a oint or two before trying to remember what they are saying as their English is a bit weird and in some(?) cases hard to understand.
i am stopping now as ouir system is on its last legs of battery power and we have had our challenges with staying connected and being able to use our system. Hope this transfers over to the blog ok before we drop power again.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Yin and Yang
No light without dark, no hot without cold, no wet without dry. You get the picture. In the very short time we’ve been away it has been a study in contrasts. We had the quickest, smoothest most luxurious flight from Vancouver to London that you can imagine. We were pampered in the preflight lounge and it just got better from there. Who doesn’t love champagne and orange juice.
We felt like royalty when we arrived in London as we were whisked along and out through customs in a matter of minutes. Then began the real business. a bit of dark to make things interesting. How to get from Heathrow to Greenwich? Well, you need to take a train which you get to through a series of down and up many, many steep steps (no lifts here) then on to a tube then up again and on to another train and...you get the picture. As light as I packed (I really did) that bag felt like a dead body. I like to think of myself as a fairly emancipated twenty-first century female but when AJ said, “Here love let me take it and balance myself out,” I gave only the barest whimper of protest. “OH, OK are you sure....?”
WE LOVE LONDON. We can say that this time because we did it on such an intimate scale. No Tower Bridge tours for us. We stayed with cousin Rosin and her husband Richard and three of the sweetest, juiciest little girls - all big blue eyes, and cascades of curls.
Just so we can say we did it we went to a London show. Agatha Christie’s
Moustrap which came with a Spanish tapas dinner. It was hot in that theater and we were a little time lagged so we looked like two metronomes with our heads bobbing up and down in sleepy two two time.
Most of our time in London involved putting mileage on our comfy shoes. Up hill and down dale to see the London Observatory and stand on either side of Greenwich Mean time. Then off to the Maritime Museum to have a really good look at Nelson’s uniform. The man was tiny but much revered.
There were torrential rains on and off all day so we kept ducking into shops and arcades and restaurants with a final visit to a bottle shop for (more) wine. It wasn’t until the next morning that we (I mean AJ) noticed how light his pocket was without his wallet. Yes, it’s gone. But as I said to him, “Good now you have that out of the way early in the trip we don’t have to worry about losing anything else. He looked very pale for quite a while but he seems all sorted out now.
So a blip of lost wallet to keep us on our toes and to remind us, “You’re not in Kansas any more.” . Roisin had a birthday while we were there and celebrated near Covent Garden with her husband we meanwhile we met up with our cousin Brendan whom we haven’t seen for eleven years. You know catching up on all that time is thirsty work so we moved slowly between pubs and soothed our parched throats and lubricated our memory banks.
I am sending this first post from John and Deb’s sunny conservatory in Cardiff, Wales. It has been so wonderful spending time with them and Luka. So much to talk about long into the night. They are tour guides par excellence taking us out to see cousin Dreda her husband Colin and their daughter Catherine and new little baby Dominic in Swansea with a side trip to Gower where the changeable weather provided vast vitas off wild and windy cliffs and our first taste of Welsh customer service.
We all ducked into a small cafe to have a hot dog and get out of the driving rain when out of nowhere landed a shrieking woman who had spotted John’s hot dog bought around the corner at the stand which is connected to the cafe. “No, she yelled, no, no, no. You can’t eat that in here. Out, take it out. It’s not fair to all the other people to eat that in here.” John calmly tried to tell her we were all going to sit down and order food but it was too late. He already had his hot dog in hand and she wasn’t backing down. So back out into the rain, around the wall to the other side to order our hot dogs. They were huge sausage like things in an even bigger bun. There it lay, all hot and stinky and naked as the day it was made. And no you can’t have any mustard or anything else for that matter. We all ate our dry dogs as best we could and left that friendly lot behind us.
Customer service is learned. I know we complain a lot in Canada about the lack of it. But compared to Wales, Canada is the creme de la creme of “How can we serve you today?”
An example. Today I took myself off to a very chi chi spa for a much needed massage. Speaking of yin and yang. The very young masseuse alternated between applying stabbing pain-filled pressure and patting at me in a little-kid like distracted way. Sigh. When I left to drop off the key the two “gits” at the front counter barely made eye contact with me and whisked themselves around in a wind-producing sweep to resume their very important conversation. Double sigh.
But I digress. Back to the light. John and Deb took us on a only slightly let’s get lost drive to the village of Avebury home of an ancient stone henge. Not as famous as the other Henge but oh so beautiful. Huge monoliths standing in a circle all around the town. The whole village surrounded by those incredible green English hills and fields of yellow canola flowers. Impervious to all the tourists, untroubled by all the sheep which wandered around them pooping and chewing, the stones stand silent and unblinking.
Unlike its more famous brother you can come right up to these stones and stroke them. I wonder if it was the ploughman's lunch and two Strongbow that made those rocks seem to sing?
And so the happy travelers piled back in the car again and off to Bath. Yes that Bath. Home of
the ancient and sacred hot springs. And yes there is a spa there but our timing was bad. Unfortunate, because then I could have done a compare and contrast with Welsh customer service.
We have been away a week. I worry that I will go into sensory overload with still a very long time to go. Maybe I need to be more selective about what I let into my memory bank otherwise it’s going to get very crowded in there.
By PJ
post script
In the future we will choose photos that are correctly oriented as BlogSpot cannot rotate photos.
just to add a note that this has been a very relaxing time and I, AJ, am looking forward to our adventures
No light without dark, no hot without cold, no wet without dry. You get the picture. In the very short time we’ve been away it has been a study in contrasts. We had the quickest, smoothest most luxurious flight from Vancouver to London that you can imagine. We were pampered in the preflight lounge and it just got better from there. Who doesn’t love champagne and orange juice.
We felt like royalty when we arrived in London as we were whisked along and out through customs in a matter of minutes. Then began the real business. a bit of dark to make things interesting. How to get from Heathrow to Greenwich? Well, you need to take a train which you get to through a series of down and up many, many steep steps (no lifts here) then on to a tube then up again and on to another train and...you get the picture. As light as I packed (I really did) that bag felt like a dead body. I like to think of myself as a fairly emancipated twenty-first century female but when AJ said, “Here love let me take it and balance myself out,” I gave only the barest whimper of protest. “OH, OK are you sure....?”
WE LOVE LONDON. We can say that this time because we did it on such an intimate scale. No Tower Bridge tours for us. We stayed with cousin Rosin and her husband Richard and three of the sweetest, juiciest little girls - all big blue eyes, and cascades of curls.
Just so we can say we did it we went to a London show. Agatha Christie’s
Moustrap which came with a Spanish tapas dinner. It was hot in that theater and we were a little time lagged so we looked like two metronomes with our heads bobbing up and down in sleepy two two time.Most of our time in London involved putting mileage on our comfy shoes. Up hill and down dale to see the London Observatory and stand on either side of Greenwich Mean time. Then off to the Maritime Museum to have a really good look at Nelson’s uniform. The man was tiny but much revered.
There were torrential rains on and off all day so we kept ducking into shops and arcades and restaurants with a final visit to a bottle shop for (more) wine. It wasn’t until the next morning that we (I mean AJ) noticed how light his pocket was without his wallet. Yes, it’s gone. But as I said to him, “Good now you have that out of the way early in the trip we don’t have to worry about losing anything else. He looked very pale for quite a while but he seems all sorted out now.
So a blip of lost wallet to keep us on our toes and to remind us, “You’re not in Kansas any more.” . Roisin had a birthday while we were there and celebrated near Covent Garden with her husband we meanwhile we met up with our cousin Brendan whom we haven’t seen for eleven years. You know catching up on all that time is thirsty work so we moved slowly between pubs and soothed our parched throats and lubricated our memory banks.
I am sending this first post from John and Deb’s sunny conservatory in Cardiff, Wales. It has been so wonderful spending time with them and Luka. So much to talk about long into the night. They are tour guides par excellence taking us out to see cousin Dreda her husband Colin and their daughter Catherine and new little baby Dominic in Swansea with a side trip to Gower where the changeable weather provided vast vitas off wild and windy cliffs and our first taste of Welsh customer service.
We all ducked into a small cafe to have a hot dog and get out of the driving rain when out of nowhere landed a shrieking woman who had spotted John’s hot dog bought around the corner at the stand which is connected to the cafe. “No, she yelled, no, no, no. You can’t eat that in here. Out, take it out. It’s not fair to all the other people to eat that in here.” John calmly tried to tell her we were all going to sit down and order food but it was too late. He already had his hot dog in hand and she wasn’t backing down. So back out into the rain, around the wall to the other side to order our hot dogs. They were huge sausage like things in an even bigger bun. There it lay, all hot and stinky and naked as the day it was made. And no you can’t have any mustard or anything else for that matter. We all ate our dry dogs as best we could and left that friendly lot behind us.
Customer service is learned. I know we complain a lot in Canada about the lack of it. But compared to Wales, Canada is the creme de la creme of “How can we serve you today?”
An example. Today I took myself off to a very chi chi spa for a much needed massage. Speaking of yin and yang. The very young masseuse alternated between applying stabbing pain-filled pressure and patting at me in a little-kid like distracted way. Sigh. When I left to drop off the key the two “gits” at the front counter barely made eye contact with me and whisked themselves around in a wind-producing sweep to resume their very important conversation. Double sigh.
But I digress. Back to the light. John and Deb took us on a only slightly let’s get lost drive to the village of Avebury home of an ancient stone henge. Not as famous as the other Henge but oh so beautiful. Huge monoliths standing in a circle all around the town. The whole village surrounded by those incredible green English hills and fields of yellow canola flowers. Impervious to all the tourists, untroubled by all the sheep which wandered around them pooping and chewing, the stones stand silent and unblinking.
Unlike its more famous brother you can come right up to these stones and stroke them. I wonder if it was the ploughman's lunch and two Strongbow that made those rocks seem to sing?And so the happy travelers piled back in the car again and off to Bath. Yes that Bath. Home of
the ancient and sacred hot springs. And yes there is a spa there but our timing was bad. Unfortunate, because then I could have done a compare and contrast with Welsh customer service.We have been away a week. I worry that I will go into sensory overload with still a very long time to go. Maybe I need to be more selective about what I let into my memory bank otherwise it’s going to get very crowded in there.
By PJ
post script
In the future we will choose photos that are correctly oriented as BlogSpot cannot rotate photos.
just to add a note that this has been a very relaxing time and I, AJ, am looking forward to our adventures
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