Thanksgiving Weekend in Boston

Headed back to Boston

Seattle (Day One)

My flight to Seattle ending up being a bit more eventful than I had planned, but all in all it went pretty smoothly thanks mostly to some pretty awesome customer service on Frontier's part.  Seattle so far has been chilly, although the rain's held off which is nice.  I haven't seen much of the city yet but I did walk around part of downtown and do some window shopping which was fun considering it involved bookstores, sustainably made clothing, and fluevogs.

Right now I'm settling down for the night.  I'm tired, having gotten up at five in Minnesota, but I'm tempted to stay up just a bit later to soak in more of the odd quiet that's settled over this room full of people who haven't quite fallen asleep yet.  Ten minutes ago the room was full of conversations, none of which I understood aside from the odd English phrase, and now it's silent save the occasional noise from the street.  It's nice, more like the last couple of nights I spent in Minnesota than a night spent in the middle of the city.

Oxford

Oxford is amazing. I may have overdone it a bit, but I can't think of a single thing I wouldn't have regretted leaving out. 

I spent most of my short morning wandering around trying to follow the directions I had written down, until I came across the information center. I know I could have looked up directions on my phone, but there's something about paper maps and directions that make more sense to me.  I bumped into a lot of cool stuff as I walked around: a couple of buildings closed for a graduation and the graduates themselves, an Oxfam shop and a street market.  Plus, I got a nice overview of the town which made the book nerd and history geek parts of me very very happy.  I may have imagined Oxford dozens of times in a bunch of different time periods, but there's nothing like experiencing it in person.

Radcliffes Camera and the Bodleian were absolutely stunning. Radcliffes camera was undergoing renovation so the view was a bit restricted but the view of the new Bodleian made up for it well enough.  As for the old Bodleian, I don't even know where to start. Even if I ignore the history and the tens of literary connections, the buildings themselves and the exhibits are fantastic.

There were two exhibits, open to the public at the Bodleian.  the first is a book binding exhibit with books based on works by Shakespeare.  The second is an exhibit on magical books. I could have wandered around either exhibit for hours. The book binding exhibit in particular was inspiring. I may have bound a few books if my own and seen a fair number of other people's work, but there's no comparison. The books were exquisite works of art.  The magic exhibit, complete with Ashmolean texts!, made me realize just how much Oxford as a place has been ingrained in the books I read: everything from Pullman's "His Dark Materials" to the Narnia books, "Alice in Wonderland", and "Alice I Have Been". 

The latter two books are based around events that occurred in Christchurch, another of my stops.  The meadow and Alice's Shop were both whimsical and the gardens were beautiful as expected.

After leaving Christchurch, I headed back toward where I had started, wandering through the shops in Highgate Center and stopping off at the Castle and the Ashmolean Museum before ending my day a bit early back at the bus station.

Thoughts from London (Day One, Part Two)

Sleep last night was a bit disjointed. Going to bed early meant getting woken up a couple of times by people chatting as they returned to go to bed.  It also meant dealing with the humidity that comes from breathing in an enclosed space before the room outside your curtained bunk has time to cool off completely.

I was up at 2 am recording more snippets of memories: the prevalence of support for local and/or organic food, how nice it was to see an entire aisle of eggs sitting on shelves instead of in giant coolers, rapeseed oil in all of the ingredient lists instead if canola, and the dark wood and orange linens of the hostel contrasting with their space age-esque bathrooms.

The list continued to grow throughout the day, with Red Box as an office supply company, the grass on the side of the road is tall and yellow, cows grazing in meadows in astonishing numbers, trash cans are labeled "rubbish" and called dust bins, "Greens" are filled with cobblestone not grass, Bakerloo is a thing that exists, and it's legally required that you wear a seatbelt on the bus.

London Day Three (Columbia Road Flowers' Market and the Eastern Portion of the Thames)

On Sunday I was up early to go to the Columbia Road Flowers' Market and check out the shops before tackling part of the Jubilee Walkway.  The sites pictured include the market as well as The Royal Hospital (I took a bit of a detour to Whitechapel), Saint Paul's Cathedral, Tower and Southwark bridges, The Globe Theatre, Clink Street, the Winchester Palace ruins, Southwark Cathedral, Hays Galleria, St Katherine Docks, The Tower of London,  All Hallows by the Tower Church.

Last Day in London (aka London Day 4) and Edinburgh Day 1

LAST DAY IN LONDON (AKA LONDON DAY FOUR) AND EDINBURGH DAY ONE

I wrote this up shortly after my arrival in Edinburgh.  If it sounds a bit different from my usual posts it’s because I was ridiculously tired and reading way too much John Green at the time.

It's my last day in London so of course the weather has to pull out all the stops. Possibly it's the universe's subtle way of saying "move on" but whatever the reason it's freezing cold, then it's hot, then it's raining, than it's not.  My umbrella may be broken but I’m still spending a good part of the day in Saint James' Park, sitting in alternating bands of sun and shade, finishing the last book in the Hunger Games Trilogy. 

I've come to love London and there's so much left I have to see.  I’m about to go take in Buckingham Palace.  I've already seen Parliment and Big Ben.  Later today I’ll move onto the London Eye, the Southbank neighborhood festival, Blackfriars Bridge, St. Paul's Cathedral, and Covenant Gardens.

 *

Now, it's late in the day, almost seven, and I'm exhausted.  I pick up my bags back at the hostel and head for the bus station.  The trip this time goes more smoothly than my departure to Oxford.  I know where I'm going even with the wonky elevator setup in the Green Park tube station.  There's no wandering around looking for a bus stall so I spend my last few minutes in London securing myself a seat on an overbooked bus, putting in some earplugs and falling asleep.

 *

When I woke up this morning I was in Edinburgh.  I picked up a map from the bus station's information center and asked for directions to my hostel.  I ended up with a mini tour of the city drawn out on paper and a couple of good laughs.  Heading out, I was surprised to find the streets quiet, the city it seemed was still asleep at seven thirty.

I walked through St. Andrew's Square and passed the Scots Memorial in the Prince Street Gardens.  I watched shop after shop of tartan (plaid for the US folks) pass by, along with stores with names like 'TheHouse of Fraser'.  The architecture here is distinctly different from anything I had seen in London.  I'm in the older part of the city called Old Town and it's obvious; it's beautiful.  I have to keep reminding myself not to stop in the middle of the sidewalk and stare.  There might not be people around to bump into me but I'm not sure how long that will last.  I feel in a way as if I've stepped back in time or into a book and I love it.

I drop my bags off at my hostel and start my trip around town.  Nothing is open; the shops don't open until nine thirty and the National Museum of Scotland at ten.  Greyfriars Kirk is open though, so I wander around there first.  So many of the names here are familiar to me, the last few months have unintentionally revolved around Scottish history.  Greyfriars Bobby is a mystery to me though, a small terrier whose loyalty is now legendary.  It's a touching story and one that lends an element of realism to my meandering.

The museum is also intriguing.  I spend the early afternoon in an exhibit chronicling the whole of Scottish history from the Picts through the Uprising into the modern day.  It's like watching Neil Oliver's documentaryseries but with real artifacts and interactive displays.  I happen across the Lewis Chessmen and have to refrain from having a total geekout, because these were the chess pieces in the documentary and they're even more unsettling in person.

After the museum, I stop outside the Elephant House where JK Rowling wrote the first of the Harry Potter books.  It looks like any other cafe, quaint but bustling.  The only difference is the sign in the window proclaiming it's fame.  I continue back toward the center of the city and walk through part of the Royal Mile to get to St Giles Cathedral which is now open.  The stained glass is beautiful, of all the cathedrals I've been to on this trip, this one has my favorite windows.  There's a band playing, and I sit for a while to listen.  If the acoustics in a church are great, they're even better in a cathedral.

When the band packs up I head back to my hostel for a nap.  It's dinner time now and I'm going to have to find something to eat, somewhere on that map I got at the bus station there's a couple of grocery stores marked off. I may just eat what I have with me, though. I'm feeling like I need to take a nice long break tonight.  I have quite a day planned for tomorrow to make up for the fact it's supposed to rain on Thursday.

Derry, Cara Dillon and the Fleadh

On Thursday, Sammy and I went to Derry for the Fleadh. More accurately we went to see Cara Dillon, but the celebration was a nice addition. The weather was rather bad so I don't have much in way of photos or video, but I had a lot of fun all the same. I spent most of the afternoon at the Tower Museum in their 'History of Derry' exhibit which turned out to be a nice prelude to the concert. 

The concert itself was fantastic. The atmosphere was more festive than I had expected given the pseudo-formality of the occasion which was nice. There was a camera crew there for the first half of the show, shooting film for part of the Music Promise BBC documentary series, which sounds like it'll be interesting.

 The set list was a balanced mix of the more typical small band performance and the arrangements done with the Orchestra.    I don't have a complete listing of the songs, since there were a couple I didn't recognize, but in addition to The Lass of Glenshee and She Moved Through the Fair, the following were played in something resembling this order:

Johnny Lovely Johnny

The Lonesome Scenes of Winter

False False

Black is the Colour

Maid of Culmore

High Tide

INTERMISSION

Streets of Derry

Fil, Fil a Run O

The Snows They Melt the Soonest

Hill of Thieves

P Stands for Paddy 

Encore: Parting Glass 

For those of you not familiar with Cara, there's a great recording from her performance on Friday at the Fleadh.

 

Oxford

Pictured: Radcliffe Square, The Bodleian Library, Christchurch College, Oxford Castle, The Ashmolean Museum

The Last Month: Instagram Style

The Last Month: Instagram Style

25 June 2013

11:18 pm local | 02:18 am est



Number of times the gps has been wrong: 5
Number of ants stuck in my shoe: 4
Number of bookstores visited: 16
Number of visits to Asian grocery stores: 3