StevoTrip2006

Photo Round-Up

2007-03-18T00:50:00.000-07:00

I'm coming back to this months later just to post a round-up of the photos, because I still find myself occasionally referring people to this address so that they can read about my trip, and because now my photos are largely sorted. So the following is a collection of my favourite shots. Some of these were published as I went, and some weren't; some you'll see are things I've published before but which have been tweaked once I got home and got some time alone with my photos on the computer.

An even more thorough "best-of" can be found on Flickr here. And remember, you can click on any of the photos below to enlarge.

Stupidly Beautiful

2006-10-27T22:30:00.000-07:00

On the last Monday of my trip I got myself a hire car and braved the nightmare of driving the L.A. Freeways in the frightening mirror-world of right-hand-side-driving, heading up to Yosemite National Park.

The contrast between Yosemite and L.A. is, to understate astoundingly, quite something. The whole drive up to Yosemite, in fact, is exceedingly ugly: the intrusive billboards; the blighted, hazy plain outside Bakersfield; the treeless desert hills; and the crumbling, pock-marked freeways themselves. Even the farmland lacks the default prettiness that even the drabbest rural countryside usually has. Even up to the gate of the national park, where it gets hillier, is nothing special. It's as if Yosemite acts as some kind of scenic black hole, sucking all the natural grandeur out of central California and into the park.

The centre of the park is Yosemite Valley. To give you an idea of what the valley is like, imagine that you took a crystal clear mountain stream:

Let it meander through a through a pine forest...

...dotted with peaceful meadows...

Punctuate the valley by adding a 3500 foot high granite monolith at one end...

... and a giant half-sphere of rock at the other.

Fold the mountains up around the valley so that wherever you are you feel almost embraced by the rock:

Then pepper each side of the valley with waterfalls.

It's quite something.

On the first day I went for a long (20km) hike along the valley floor. Yosemite has a reputation for crowds, but it wasn't very hard to get away from other people: despite its length, the trail I did was pretty accessible, yet I still only came across maybe a dozen other people walking it, and didn't see anyone else for as much as an hour at a time. That took me pretty much all day, but the views (such as that directly above) were well worth it.

On the second day, I drove up to Glacier Point. This is a spot where you basically get a panoramic view of the whole valley, and in particular Half Dome. There are a few photos from there on Flickr, but for a slightly different perspective, here's a video give you an idea of what's before you as you stand at the point.

On the way back I went to the Mariposa Grove, which is a grove of giant sequoia trees. They were doing a controlled burn at the time, which was a mixed blessing - parts of the grove were closed, but it also lent the grave an eery atmosphere that had a certain appeal. Amongst the trees in the grove is the Grizzly Giant, which is reputed to be up to 2700 years old. According the Wikipedia it is "only" the 27th largest tree (by volume) in the world. Who keeps track of these things?

After my drive I returned to the valley and did the walk up to Vernal falls, which is at the top end of the valley (those are the falls in the photo earlier in the post). Most of the falls aren't at their best in October, and a lot have dried up completely - there are 9 major falls along the 20 miles or so of Yosemite Valley at the end of winter, but I only saw three (two from close, one from a distance). As you can see, they're still pretty spectacular; I can only boggle at the thought of how it must be earlier in the year.

I would have liked to keep going up to the next falls (Nevada Falls) but time was against me: I continued up a bit further up and then cut back onto a different trail and descended as darkness approached. I definitely have to go back to Yosemite: I didn't have nearly long enough, and it's a place so beautiful even the squirrels stop to enjoy the view.

Exploring the LA Cultural Scene

2006-10-25T03:56:00.000-07:00

After arriving in the US, I stayed from Wednesday evening to Monday morning with Margaret (a friend from my UCI days) and her boyfriend Chris in L.A.. Despite my longstanding disdain for L.A. as a city generally, it was a great few days thanks largely to the hospitality of Chris and Margaret.

After I spent Thursday largely just recuperating after the flight in (Margaret had to work so I didn't have a car and couldn't really get anywhere anyway), we went to Venice Beach on Friday. Because it was a weekday there wasn't that much going on: but afterwards we went and visited Chris at his work, which was much more interesting. He's an assistant director on American Dad, so it was very cool for an animation nerd like myself to get a look around the studios where they make both American Dad and Family Guy (although I was slightly embarassed that I had seen basically nothing of either show). Seeing an actual working animation studio was an exciting first for me. On the Saturday afternoon we went to a barbecue with a lot of Chris' colleagues; this time there were ex-Disney people and at least one person who'll be working on the revived Futurama. It was a tough task not to overnerd.

On Saturday night we really digged into LA culture when we went to roller derby. This was something I had assumed had died out many years ago, but no, it turns out there is a grassroots roller derby revivial going on. For those who have the image of roller derby as basically just organised brutality, the flyer they gave out at the track noted - somewhat defensively I thought - that:

This is a REAL SPORT and there ARE rules.

Fancy that. Wikipedia explains roughly how it works:

While traditionally a sport for both women and men, roller derby has developed a predominantly female circuit during its current revival...

Two teams of five skaters, wearing protective gear such as helmets, mouth guards, and pads, take up positions alongside each other in a pack formation. Each team consists of either four blockers and one jammer, or, rarely, three blockers, and two jammers...

A signal is given and the jam commences... Initially leading the pack are special blockers known as pivots, who set the pace and give the other blockers direction in order to strategize and keep the pack relatively tight. Blockers who stray too far from the pack may not be allowed to engage opposing players.

Blockers (including pivots) start skating at the referee's first signal. A second signal is given to launch the jammers, who must catch up to the rear of the pack. Jammers navigate through or around the pack, then lap around the track until reaching back of the pack again. The first jammer to get through the pack legally (for example, without cutting the track, going out of bounds, or acquiring any penalties) is dubbed lead jammer and may call off the jam at any time.

Scoring commences when the jammers lap around the back of the pack and go through for a second time. One point is scored for each member of the opposing team passed by an inbound jammer (passing is determined by the skaters' hips). Blockers try to stop the opposing jammer from passing them, while defending their own jammer, whom they can assist by pushing or pulling (whipping) in an attempt to advance them through the pack. The jam concludes after a fixed period of time, usually 2 minutes, or when the lead jammer calls off the jam. Until then, both jammers are free to lap the pack again and again....

Physical contact between players is frequent and sometimes violent. Body blocking is allowed, and elbowing is allowed in some leagues, but participants are not allowed to trip or intentionally punch other players. Violence may leave the track and may include striking opponents with available objects...

Well, it didn't leave the track in the derby we saw, but it constantly threatened to. The track had padded barriers around the edge, but there was a gap underneath it, and the crowd stood right behind that, so there seemed to me a fair possibility that players could get knocked off from the track and into the crowd. Certainly it's the only sport I've ever been to where every member of the crowd had to sign a (dubious) legal disclaimer in order to enter the track.

Here, for the record, is one fairly typical "jam." This might appear very dark on some monitors - if you turn up the brightness enough you will be able to see something.

I can't shake this image in my head of people in ancient Rome at the Colosseum reading little flyers saying "Gladiatorial Combat is a REAL SPORT and there ARE rules."

Along the Seine

2006-10-23T22:36:00.000-07:00

A couple of river views along the Seine to wrap up Paris:

This is near the Ile de la Cite, with the square du Vert-Galant visible in the background.

Just a little further up the river. The bridge in the background is the Pont Neuf, which means the "new bridge," although it is now the oldest remaining of the bridges in Paris.

That is looking east from the bridge between the Ile de la Cite and the Ile St Louis.

This is looking east along the Seine from near the Louvre. (The bridges are, in order from nearest to furthest, the Pont Royal, Pont du Carrousel, Pont des Arts, and the Pont Neuf, for anyone keeping track of such things).

No, I Didn't Go There Because of the Cartoon

2006-10-23T21:19:00.000-07:00

I went To Notre Dame twice. Once was as part of my extended walking tour on the Sunday. At this point they were performing mass, which made for a most uncomfortable experience. They don't close the church to tourists when the ceremony is being performed, and the tourists were wandering around, talking, taking flash pictures (which you're not supposed to), climbing on the pillars to see areas that were out of view, and so on. I felt so uncomfortable being there that I rushed through and didn't really appreciate it properly, so I came back on the morning I left had another look. The second time was a little better, and I got to appreciate the place a bit more. It certainly is as beautiful as its reputation suggests: not overwhelmingly grand like some other cathedrals I've been too, but intricate, very well designed (the inside has very dramatic proportions that give it a really strongly vertical feel) with particularly impressive stained glass. I also very much liked its very extravagant flying buttresses at the back.

Le Arche de Ridiculousle Grande

2006-10-23T19:34:00.000-07:00

On the Monday in Paris, after going to the Disney exhibition, I headed out to La Defense. This is basically the corporate bit of of Paris, and is the most un-Parislike bit of the city I went to. Instead of the four and five storey buildings orderly arranged along interconnecting boulevards that define the centre of Paris, La Defense is the best of the twentieth century: various randomly placed, diversely sized and haphazardly designed builings scattered along each side of the axis that extends all the way down to the Louvre (via the Arc De Triomphe).

That is the reason I was out there: the Grand Arch De La Defense (roughly translated: "The Grand Arch of Defense.") It's a crazily huge arch that terminates the other end of the Louvre / Champs Elysees / Arc De Triomphe vista. The Arch itself houses offcie buildings (can't have a grand civic gesture that doesn't pay the rent) and they say that Notre Dame would fit under the arch - which is the kind of thing that's always good to know, in case you ever need to put it there.

Louvre At First Sight

2006-10-23T16:34:00.000-07:00

As mentioned, on the Sunday afternoon in Paris I went for a quick tour to the Louvre. I didn't quite dash in and out in the way you might have gathered from my hectic itinerary that day: I spent a few hours there. But in a place as vast as the Louvre, that is a pretty quick visit. Basically, I did a fairly speedy survey of the rooms that chronoligically covered the history of French art, and then ducked over to the Italian area to see this old thing (or rather, see the crowds seeing this old thing):

What I discovered at the Louvre is that basically I'm a philistine. You may have already worked this out, but exposing myself to the world's finest art collection really rammed it home. It's not that I didn't enjoy it: it's all good stuff. But I just can't get as excited about great art and sculpture as I know I should. I mean, with the Mona Lisa, I agree that Leonardo managed a great enigmatic smile on that thing. An exceptionally good enigmatic smile even. But given the Mona Lisa is apparently valued for insurance prupsoes in the order of $650 million dollars - well, it's not that good a smile.

I'll freely admit this is my own ignorance showing. Basically, I just don't know enoguh about these things to really appreciate the importance, the significance, and the context of what I'm seeing. That's why I get much more excited about the architecture of the Louvre itself: I know a little more about that side of things. Having seen I.M. Pei's famous (and formerly controversial) pyramid, I can confirm I like it. (Much to the relief of the French I'm sure). Call me dense though - I'd never realised that it isn't actually attached to the original Louvre buildings. This makes the "But they added a pyramid to the Louvre" argument that has been the catch-all rationalisation for ghastly additions to heritage buildings since 1989 therefore seem even more tenuous.

If I can dwell a little more on the way knowledge and ignorance has shaped my artistic priorities, the next day I went to the Grand Palais to see an exhibition of artwork from the Disney studios that happened to be in town. As far as I can establish, this has been the largest public display of material from the Disney arhcives ever. They had a lot of the concept and desing drawings by people like Mary Blair, Eyvind Earle, Albert Hurter, and Joe Grant, as well as background drawings and - best of all - original animation drawings, including some of Ub Iwerks stuff for the earliest Mickey Mouse shorts and some of Bill Tytla's original drawings of Chernobog for the Night on Bald Mountain sequence in Fantasia. They even had some stuff that might have impressed people interested in proper art, most notably Salvador Dali's drawings for Destino, the short that Disney and Dali started work on in 1945, and which wasn't completed until 2003.

Because I actually know about this stuff, it meant a lot more to me, and I got a real buzz out of seeing the Tytla drawings in particular. Tytla was the best animator at the Disney studio at the time when it was producing the finest animation that has ever been produced, and if the art of animation has had a Leonardo da Vinci it's Tytla. And if he has a Mona Lisa, it's the Chernobog sequence, which is often cited as the best bit of animation ever done. So this is why I got such a thrill out of seeing it, and why for me at least it meant more than seeing the really important stuff the before at the Louvre.

As I said, I'm such a philistine.

Eiffel Tour

2006-10-20T10:34:00.000-07:00

I went past and around the Eiffel Tower a few times before I went up it. As I mentioned before, it was near my hotel, and it was an easy detour on the way to various things, notably the Arc De Triomphe and the Champs Elysees. So on both the Saturday I arrived, and on Sunday, I had a good walk around the base of it. But the queues were crazy, and so I saved my proper visit until the Monday, and spent most of a morning there.

It gets more and more spectacular as you get closer: not so much just because its size becomes more apparent - though there is that - but because it looks less and less like the picture-postcard image. From near to underneath you can start to make out the incredible detail of the structure, and once you're under it the shape becomes really interesting, with lots of unusual angles and interesting new perspectives on its symmetries. And of course it's unusual in that it's such a tall structure that you can get under and within, and still see: like a transparent Empire State Building.

I went up via the lift and came down via the stairs (which take you up and down from the second of its three levels - only the lift goes to the top). This might sound silly, but once you start going up it, it really surprises you how big it is. When it was built it was the tallest building in the world, and it's very hard to believe that it was originally constructed as a temporary structure. The best way to convey what I'm talking about is to show you the lift ride up.

Here's ground to level 1:

I missed level 1 to 2 (I was expecting to have to change lift, so it caught me by suprise) but here's level 2 to the top. This really gives you a sense of how unexpectedly high it is:

Once up there, the views of Paris is everything you'd expect - the central / historic area of Paris is otherwise free of high buildings (the nearest are at La Defense, at the far end of the Champs Elysees axis) so it really towers over everything. However, I still found myself most taken with the structure itself.

I'd like to thank the nice man who took the photo above for not stealing my camera.

A Day in the Life of Paris

2006-10-14T18:27:00.000-07:00

After very briefly returning to London, my next stop was Paris, where I was from Saturday to Tuesday last week. It's hard to know where to start with Paris, because the whole place was so amazing and because I did so much in the few days I was there. So to warm up for a more detailed account of the highlights, I thought I might just post a few slice-of-life videos, once again hosted by the good people at the dubiously named DailyMotion. I realise some of you probably can't open these, but they do give a good feel for the place. That said, don't expect anything mind blowing in these. They're just example of what it's like to walk around on the streets. All are from the Sunday, my first full day in Paris.

Place Dauphine

This is mid-morning, when I went on a walk from my hotel near the Eiffel Tower, across to Notre Dame and the two Islands (Ile-de-la-Cite and Ile St-Louis) that are at the heart of old Paris. Place Dauphine is a small square at the western end of the former island, but despite its centrality is probably the most peaceful place I found in Paris.

I did the classic Parisian thing and had a coffee on the table out the front of a cafe facing the square.

Mmmm... pretentious...

Pont St-Louis
This is maybe a bit after noon, after I had been to Notre Dame. This view is of the rear of Notre-Dame, and then pans across to the Pont St-Louis, the small bridge that links the two islands.

View from the Arc De Triomphe
A brief view of the insane traffic around the Arc de Triomphe, late-ish on Sunday afternoon. If I had been more persistent I could have gotten a much better example of how bad it is than this, but this should serve as a reasonable demonstration. Tim later explained to me the road rule at play here: traffic already on the roundabout has to give way to traffic entering it. Madness.

Parc Du Champ de Mars
This is the park in which the Eiffel Tower stands. This was in the afternoon afternoon, maybe about five o'clock, as I came back to my hotel.

Given I also went to the Louvre this day, I'm a little surprised that I managed this all in one day. No wonder I slept so well in Paris.

Chobham

2006-10-13T18:05:00.000-07:00

This one's probably not really of interest to anyone outside my family - but then, that's possibly applicable to this whole exercise.

The other thing I did while I was at Brighton was take a day trip over to Chobham, which was where my family lived when in England. I spent a fascinating afternoon looking around places I only vaguely remember, but have seen in many photos and home movies.

Here's the ford:

By way of comparison, the same spot in the late 1970s:

And I thought my family would get a kick out of this, given the role my brothers played in dragging the canon through the streets.

I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside

2006-10-12T17:16:00.000-07:00

The last two nights of my southern sojourn were spent in Brighton. I had come to Brighton because Tim, Rebecca and I were seeing The Goodies' live show, which was on at the Brighton Dome. It was actually very enjoyable: I think we had all feared the worst, what with the age of the participants, the fact that Bill Oddie wasn't even turning up (although he did feature in prerecorded video segments) and, let's face it, the unevenness of the Goodies even in their heyday. It was quite sparsely attended though, with people only speckled through what was quite a large venue. They did make one slightly bitter crack suggesting that the show hadn't been properly advertised, although there is always the fact that they seem to have been largely forgotten in the UK (in contrast to the ABC, the BBC never repeated their TV show).

Brighton itself is a very nice town, with lots of restaurants and pubs. The chief actual sight is the Royal Pavilion, which was decked out in the early 19th century by the Prince Regent / King George IV. If I can reduce actual real world history to the level of television comedy for a moment, this is the George from the third series of Blackadder, and I can imagine that the characterisation from that show would have been largely inspired by this building. Basically, it's quite obscenely extravagant and over-embellished. It's a massive demonstration that if you spend enough money, you can turn even the worst taste into an architectural marvel.

The other major landmark is the Brighton Pier. I almost didn't make it down the pier because the weather on the morning I was planning to go down was so feral. Fortunately, however, the rain stopped for just long enough for me to experience the true British seaside resort experience.

I suppose it's my own silly fault if I will insist on going in October.

Worrying Signs

2006-10-12T17:08:00.000-07:00

A couple of signs that worried me.

The first is a roadsign that's everywhere in Britain:

It sort of makes sense in little villages with single track roads (which is where I took this). In Scotland, however, they'd post this apparently at random along the side of what were quite major (by Scottish standards) double-track roads, apparently just to freak you out. It certainly kept me on my toes.

And then there was this:

And please could you stop doing your laundry in the septic tank?

Stonehenge With a Farm In It

2006-10-12T16:24:00.000-07:00

I'll try to just very quickly cover the week I spent down in the south of England, commenting on a couple of highlights. This is partly because I'm way behind and want to get to the more interesting stuff (ie Paris), and partly because I didn't see as much as I'd hoped. A combination of poor planning, a couple of days where I was feeling under the weather, underestimated travel times, and other factors meant that I didn't see as much as I'd hoped in this part of the world. Bath got dropped completely, for example, and the Cotswolds became a lightning tour (basically an afternoon spent wandering around Chipping Campden - a town about which there is little to say other than to note that it is indeed delightful). There are also a couple of places, like the Brighton Pavilion, for which I have no multimedia to share because they didn't allow photos.

One thing I did get to have a good look around was Avebury. I was in the general vicinity of Stonehenge, but had heard so many things about how disappointing and unatmospheric Stonehenge was, I instead went to Avebury, which is the next most significant ancient monument in Britain, and is quite nearby. Basically it's a huge complex of rocks, arranged in several circles with a giant ditch and embankment as well. Like Stonehenge, nobody has a terribly good idea of who built it or why. What's really odd about Avebury is that over time the locals have just worked aorund the stones, to the extent that there are farmhouses and a tiny little village right in the centre of the circle. Sheep graze around the stones themselves. Very strange, and in contrast to what I hear about Stonehenge (which is right next to a freeway) very pastoral and relaxing to walk around.

Lego London

2006-10-10T05:22:00.000-07:00

I can imagine a few people might be a bit disappointed that my account of London didn't focus on the more traditional sights. Well, fortunately Legoland Windsor came through for you all.

Tim and I were both a bit worried that Legoland might be a bit of a disaster. After all, we are adults - really - and we were trekking halfway across London to visit a children's theme park. In the end, however, it was very worthwhile. We spent most of our time in the bit the kids rush through: the large-scale Lego models of various European cities. And of these, undoubtedly the best was the newly completed model of London. It was very impressive for its detail, the innovative building techniques, and its scale. So, like it or not, here are some highlights.

Surveying London

Trafalgar Square

Trafalgar Square Detail

Big Ben

Docklands (With Working Docklands Light Rail)

London Streetscape (Covent Garden maybe?)

St Pauls Cathedral (My Favourite)

To give you an idea of the detail on these models, they had working cars that drove around (without tracks). And there were a lot of clever little touches when you looked closely, like this appearance by Lou and Andy from Little Britain, plus the Tardis and K-9 from Dr Who.

So yes, I enjoyed Legoland. Thanks for asking.

But Why Doesn't it Look Like Kirsten Dunst?

2006-10-10T05:01:00.000-07:00

Speaking of toys, Tim and Rebecca thoughtfully remembered my birthday, and had this for me on my return to London.

The reverse is actually better yet, offering her "Special Ability" as "Cleavage." (An element of the toy that this photo doesn't really do justice). The chief liability of Marie as an action figure is the difficulty in keeping her "ejector head" attached to the body - a shortcoming, of course, shared by the real historical figure.

London Round Up

2006-10-07T09:17:00.000-07:00

Well, that gets me back to London. I spent the week between the 26th and the 2nd at Tim and Rebecca's place in Clapham Junction. It's been great catching up with them. I caught up with a lot of the headline London sites back in 2002, so during the day, when Tim and Rebecca were at work, I concentrated on a few gaps in my coverage and just generally looking around. Highlights:

The RAF Museum
Not quite the Air and Space Museum, but still worth doing. As you might expect, they have a great collection of the Battle of Britain era planes: several different varieties of Spitfires, some Me109s, and some Hurricanes. I can't rationally defend liking these planes so much - instruments of war and all that - but the plane nerd in me laps it up. Though I think you can make the case that the Spitfire is, divorced from its role, a classic bit of design. What with its sleek lines and elliptical curves, it looks like a Good Guy Plane:

Meanwhile, the main German fighter from the Battle of Britain is aggressive, muscular, and mean-looking. A classic Bad Guy Plane:

Churchill War Rooms / Churchill Museum
These are the bunkers where Churchill and the war cabinet hung out in World War II (although Winston apparently had a habit of going AWOL and puffing his cigars on top of exposed buildings during the blitz - a perfect example of the combination of solidarity with the people and cantankerous insanity in which he seemed to specialise). The key rooms themselves are hardly changed: some had been restored from photographic records, others were apparently just left pretty much undisturbed after the war.

One area houses the recently opened Churchill Museum. As a brand new museum, it was the most high tech I'd seen. Often museums do the whole "interactive" exhibit thing pretty badly. You know what I mean: press a button, box lights up, voiceover starts, person who pressed button walks away leaving "interactive" exhibit talking to nobody... and that's if the button works. However, this place did this kind of thing about as well as I've ever seen it done. Firstly the subject is suited to it, as they could build things around all those great speeches he did (so many to so few, fight them on the beaches, etc). They also had a display that was like an enormous table with interactive video screens built into the top of it, laying out all the years of Churchill's life. Touch a year and the calendar opened up to show you all the months, and then you could drill down further. For key parts of his life (eg both World Wars) you could get a virtually day by day breakdown of what Churchill was up to. Very well done.

Regent's Park
One of the classic bits of London planning. I did an assignment on this at uni and learnt all about it, although it didn't mean that much not having been there. So I went and saw it, but could only remember the broad outlines of what I'd studied at uni. So now I'll go back home, read the assignment, and put it all back together in my mind.

British Museum
I'd been here before, but I thought I'd go back again. But I came away underwhelmed. Yes, it's one of the great collection of artifacts and antiquities in the world. But they just don't present it well. It's very hard to get much sense of what the stuff is: they don't do a very good job of bringing it alive or making it clear why it's important. It's just case after case of loot, really. Although it was good to see the Rosetta Stone again, which for some reason I just find very cool, and I just love the main central courtyard around the reading room (which for years was roofed and used for storage, but was opened up again around the millennium). It's a great bit of design and just an amazing space:

Grand Final
The result wasn't what I wanted (I thought if Sydney won the AFL and the Storm won the NRL, maybe the states could organise some sort of swap), but what better place to see the AFL grand final than a London pub? We got up for a hellishly early start (4:15 - the game started at 5am in London) and made our way to the Oktoberfest Hotel. We thought this might be pretty dodgy, an impression not helped by the fact that unlike many places this was free entry, and the ad promised "AFL Grand Final 5am; Jelly Wrestling 6pm." But it was actually a good place and pof course the game was very exciting. I can't necessarily vouch for "the Fest" when the jelly wrestling is on, but it was fine for the Grand Final. And a very exciting game, obviously.

West End Musicals
Tim, Rebecca and I also did manage to fit in a West End show. We chose one from the cheaper end of the spectrum, Avenue Q, which is basically a bit of a take on Sesame Street, with puppets singing songs that play against the expectations of Sesame Street. So, for example, instead of typically affirming Sesame Street style message song, they had a song called "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist." Apparently it won the Tony (Avenue Q, not "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist").

Streets of London
One of he best things about London is just being on the streets though, as the whole place has such a big city buzz about it. And you come across unexpected things like this:

Although the actual highlight of London was the trip Tim and I took to Legoland. I'll write about that in my next post. For the moment, I'll let one image allow you to gauge my enjoyment of it.

The Nerdiest Pub in Edinburgh

2006-10-05T10:36:00.000-07:00

From my pass back through Edinburgh on the way out of Scotland.

I wonder if this guy drinks there?

Dunnotar Castle; Dissisar Castle

2006-10-04T16:18:00.000-07:00

Shamefully behind now... Internet cafes seem to have been dramatically thinned out by the Wi-Fi hotspot revolution: the internet cafes get starved of business because the techno-savvy are using their laptops to plug into free wireless hotspots (at least that's my theory). So it would seem I'm actually too technically behind to update my multimedia holiday blog. Such is life.

Anyway, casting my mind back. Ah, Scotland. Yes. Well, I made it to Inverness and then used that as a base for some day trips along the eastern coast, including the quaint little village of Pennan (photos through the Flickr link, top right). However, I was really in this part of the world to see Dunnotar Castle. Dunnotar was to this trip what the Crazy Horse Memorial was to my last trip: the place that I'd always wanted to see, which I went way out of my way for, and which was worth all the hassle.

Reasons why Dunnotar is so good:

- Location, Location, Location. Perched improbably on top of sheer cliffs with pounding waves below. I mean, look at this:

- Ruiny, but not falling apart or faked up. This is the perfect resolution of the dilemma I referred to in my post about Castle Tioram and Eileen Donan. It's in ruins, but they've kept what they have intact without compromising it. And no tacky gift shop.

- Atmosphere. When I first arrived it was shrouded in fog. Could it get any more Scottish? And the ruins have an almost sculptural quality to them. For example:

- The health and safety police haven't ruined it by roping off every last little bit of it. If you slip down the stairs or fall off the cliff, so be it.

- Lots of nooks and crannies. Just when you think you've found it all, you go through some unobtrusive, unlabelled doorway and find yourself in a system of subterranean rooms, or a three story high chamber, or a tunnel through the rock leading to the beach.

- Creepy. The basementy style rooms I mentioned lead into a big, poorly lit room (the only light comes from one window facing the sea). As you sit in the darkness with water dripping from the ceiling - complete with textbook haunted cavern echoes - you discover the plaque saying that in the 17th century 167 men and women were imprisoned in the room, many having perished. Oh, and William Wallace apparently burnt the whole English Plantaganet garrison alive at Dunnotar in 1297. Happy thoughts to ponder while alone in the dark.

I can stop seeing castles now: I have a winner.

Ness is More

2006-09-29T01:15:00.000-07:00

As you might have gathered, my account is lagging beind where I'm up to, given I'm now in London and this thing is still in Scotland.

After Fort William I headed up thorugh the "Great Glen" (the chain of Lochs tha runs diagonlly through the heart of Scotland) to Inverness. This took me along the shores of Loch Ness and past Castle Urquhart.

Castle Urquhart (top of photo) and Loch Ness (bottom of photo)

There was a time, not necessarily that long ago, when you could sort of take the Loch Ness Monster business kind of seriously. I remember a mid-80s edition of National Geographic that gave the whole business a little bit of credence. However, in recent years searches using fixed cameras, sonar sweeps, satellite imagery, thermal imagery, and aerial photography have failed to detect anybody gullible enough to believe in the monster.

Given that, I think the Loch Ness monster tourism industry can be very glad it's placed firmly on the route from east coast to west coast, so people like me tend to stop by regardless. And yes, I did go to one of the Loch Ness tourist exhibitions, and I have to say that it was actually kind of fun. Even that, interestingly, basically took the sceptic's view, which really has to be the final nail in the coffin for Nessie believers. If your monster can't be taken seriously by roadside tourist stalls, it probably time to give up the whole business.

The other big thing along the shores of Loch Ness was Castle Urquhart, which I had a good look around. It's not in fantastic shape but it has a great location and is very atmospheric. I would say more about it, but I'm afraid it was totally overshadowed by Dunnotar Castle, which I saw the next day. More about that the next time I update.

One last bit of Nessieness: my favourite ever Nesie photograph, just because the monster looks so goofy. Apparently this is known as the "Muppet Photo."

The Pepsi Challenge of Castles

2006-09-26T02:38:00.000-07:00

Well, I've finished my Scottish loop and am back in London. Scotland was great, although a bit exhausting what with all the driving.

I'd tentatively earmarked the Friday (the 22nd) for either Skye or the West Highland Railway (aka the Harry Potter Express) but ended up doing neither. Having had to race up through Glen Coe on the way to Fort William I was keen to do some more relaxed exploring and sightseeing, so I headed off into the countryside on a rather rambling route to see Castle Tioram (pronounced "cheer-um"; mispronounced "tee-or-um").

This was a castle I had strong memories of as a kid. The place has been a ruin since 1715 when its owner set it on fire (I assume he was hoping to get planning permission to demolish it and build apartments: Tioram Mews, perhaps). Despite its spectacular location on Loch Moidart, it's lain in ruins since. When I visited it as a kid you could ramble all over it, but in 1998, after a delay of only 280 years, the Highland Council finally put a building order on it and boarded it all up.

I knew all this, but it had made such an impression on me that I still wanted to go see it. I'm glad I did. For one thing the drive in was great: well off the beaten track on crazy Scottish single track roads, so I got to see a bit of the real countryside. Scotland has two totally different types of scenery: there's a lot of very green, heavily wooded foresty bits that are more like what I'd picture English countryside being like, and then a lot of classically Scottish stark bare grassland where all the trees seem to have given up and gone off to huddle by a fire in a pub somewhere. What's amazing is the way you go from one to the other over very distances, and my drive in to Tioram saw a fair bit of both.

The setting of the Castle is quite something: it's in the middle of nowhere and the edge of Loch Moidart, perched on a sand bar. You walk along the sand bar and then through head high bracken, and then emerge into very atmospheric panoramic views (ad a bracing wind). I sort of don't like posting videos, because I get self conscious about how goofy I am in them, but they give a better idea of the setting of a place like this, so here's another one.

So even without being able to get in, it was worth wandering around the outside. The whole place is a little sad, though, as the castle is basically falling down while it's stuck in planning limbo: a big bit of the wall fell over in 2000, and the whole thing has a bit of an Ettamogah-Pub-style "those walls don't look very vertical" vibe. But then, the rejected planning proposal did, according to Wikipedia, apparently include apartments, which sounds pretty horrible. (And Wikipedia is always correct).

The fascinating contrast was with my stopover on the next day, which was Eileen Donan Castle. Below are photos of both...

Castle Tioram

Eileen Donan Castle

Obviously the second looks much better, and is photogenic enough that it turns up in movies all the time (including an inexplicable appearance as the "Emergency Scottish headquarters" of MI6 in The World is Not Enough). Yet it, too, was mostly destroyed in 1719. Most of what you see was constructed between 1912 and 1932, and a lot of it not especially close to the original plan. So here's the dilemma: which is a better outcome? Back at good old City of Melbourne, we wouldn't allow a guesswork, fake heritage reconstruction of a Victorian terrace, so why is it okay for Eileen Donan? But then, at least it's not falling down. And all these castles seem to have been partially destroyed and rebuilt at some point: in a few hundred years (or possibly already) it will just be seen as another stage in its development.

Discuss.

London to Edinburgh to Fort William

2006-09-22T02:18:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm well into my trip now. I'm not sure how much I'll be able to keep up my contact (particularly the more technologically advanced aspects of it, like posting photos) as internet access has been a little flakier than I hoped. However, today I have struck the double jackpot: an excellent internet cafe in a relatively dull town (Fort William). So before I head up into the Highlands I can do the full data dump.

The first couple of days were pretty much solid travel. Firstly there was my wrong way around the world (Melbourne, to New Zealand, To L.A., to London), which amazingly wasn't quite as bad as I expected. I arrived in London in the late morning, and didn't really do anything that first day due to jet lag. However, it was great to catch up with Tim and Rebecca. I only spent one night at their place and was too sleepy to interact much, but I look forward to spending a week with them when I finish my loop through Scotland.

The second day I headed up to Edinburgh on the train (which was great: I've heard all sorts of negative things about British Rail, but it all ran on time. Edinburgh was everything I'd been led to expect: very mediaeval in character, with lots of little laneways disappearing off from the main roads. I was staying in the Old Town, which is the original old bit of it (there's also a later planned New Town from the 18th century, which I should be able to poke around a bit when I come back through on the way back). The main spine is the Royal Mile, which runs up the ridge of the hill to the Castle. My guidebook says the following about the old bit of town:

Edinburgh earned its nickname "Auld Reekie" for the smog and smell generated by the Old Town, which for centuries swam in sewage tipped out of the windows of cramped tenements.

...An etymology that makes the name of this swanky house in Parkville all the more puzzling. However, there's no sign of such things now. Apparently parts of Royal Mile were pretty slummy even quite recently, but these days it's fully gentrified and very much the centre of the tourist industry. It's remarkably intact, with really only the bottom quarter or so showing any significant number of new buildings. It's therefore amazingly unified in terms of character, but being all so old, also kind of charmingly slapdash in the way it's laid out. So, for example, you get two streets crossing at right angles, but with one about three storeys above the other: and the same old building facing both sides of the corner, with two separate street frontages at the two different levels.

At the top of the street is Edinburgh Castle. I spent the best part of a day wandering around the castle (inside and out) and it was well worthwhile. It has cliffs on three of its four sides, and this natural geographic protection gave it an obvious strategic advantage, although this was undermined somewhat by the castle's notoriously clumsy contingent of archers, who in the heat of battle would often literally shoot themselves in the foot (below).

I was impressed by the fact that despite the fact that it has been steadily added to over hundreds of years (the last bits were added in 1927), they haven't screwed it up. If they did an addition to it now, some architect would probably propose a giant glass pyramid in the central courtyard or something.

Speaking of such things, at the bottom of the Royal Mile is the new Scottish Parliament building, which was recently completed after years of controversy. It's a nice enough building, although parts of it look uncomfortably like an apartment building to me:

Yesterday I got the car and drove to Fort William, with the main stop being Stirling Castle. Similar to Edinburgh's in a lot of ways, but more fun to explore, with more nooks and crannies, and a couple of big open garden spaces hidden in amongst the walls.

I spent long enough at Stirling that I ended up being very late up to Fort William, but it was well worth it.

Anyway, my energy is flagging so I'll sign off now. However, if you'd like to have a look through some more of my photos, you should be able to click on the thingamy at the top right and go through to flickr where you can browse some of them. (The uploaded photos may get ahead of these updates).

Itinerary

2006-09-17T16:37:00.000-07:00

So here's the rough plan.

September 17: Leave.

September 18: Arrive London.

September 19-20: Off to Edinburgh.

September 21 - 22: Scottish stuff around Fort William.

September 23 - 24: Scottish stuff around Inverness.

September 25: Edinburgh.

September 26 - October 2: London, with Tim and Rebecca.

October 2 - 6: Largely undetermined activities in England and maybe Wales.

October 7 - 10: Paris!

October 11: Leave London, arrive L.A.

October 11 - 15: L.A. with Margaret and Chris.

October 16 - 19: Yosemite.

October 20: Leave L.A.

October 22: Return home.