this is a strange place

Well, we got back safely on Saturday, been recovering for the past couple of days. Not much happened on the plane, bit of a problem with my computer toolkit at security (they don’t allow any tools in carry-on baggage in the UK, which I didn’t know) but I took it back to the Delta ticket counter and they took care of checking it for me. That made us a bit late for the plane, they had finished boarding almost everyone by the time we got there, but we still made it. The flights were uneventful, I was a bit worried about customs since I had never done it before, but that went extremely smoothly. Then back home, which felt really nice.

Time for a recap:

Things I liked about the UK

• I used a credit card to pay for almost everything, and I have See ID written on the back of my credit cards, because I would like people to ask for a photo ID when I use my cards. Here in the states it is a bit of a crapshoot if people will ask, about half the time they don’t even check to see if it has been signed. Not so in the UK. Everybody asked for my ID, I think I used my card at least 50 different places and I think only once or twice was I not asked for an ID. I really liked that.
• Fast, cheap, reliable public transportation that runs constantly is very nice. I know a lot of big cities have good subway and bus systems here in the states, but in the UK even the little towns had good bus service. Here in Lexington there is the bus that I use, but one of the things I really dislike about the bus is that it only runs every half hour, so if I miss one I have to sit there for half an hour waiting for the next one. Most of the buses in London run every ten minutes or less, same with the Underground. I know that the reason they don’t here in the states is because there is no demand, which may change with gasoline’s inexorable march. That and the trains. You can take a train from just about anywhere to just about anywhere, and the trains are nice. Here, I need to drive two hours to get the nearest Amtrak station, and it would take about 16 hours to get anywhere I would want to go (namely Prairie or Grand Rapids) and once I got there I would be screwed without a car since the public transportation is either non-existent (Prairie) or doesn’t run where I need it to go (Sparta/Grand Rapids). Maybe, maybe that will change with gas prices, but I’m not holding my breath.

Things I didn’t like about the UK

• The big city gets to me after a while. I like visiting for a bit, but I couldn’t live there.
• The constant surveillance got unnerving after a while, especially after what happened at the Eye, which I am comfortable posting now that I’m back in the states. I was getting on the London Eye, and they have a security checkpoint where they go over you with a scanner and look in your bags. It was there that I found out that it was completely illegal to carry a knife with a locking blade, no matter how small that knife is, in London. My knife, which I bought when I was 8 with my Christmas money and had been carrying for 15 years was confiscated, and I had to sign a statement saying that I had been found carrying an illegal weapon. That _really_ pissed me off. It’s an asininely stupid law, and I had checked the knife laws in the UK, and what I got from an official .gov.uk website was that a folding knife with a blade shorter than 3 inches (which my knife was) was fine. It said nothing about locking blades. I can sort of, in a way, understand efforts to curb gun possession, I think that they are misguided, but I can understand where the anti-gun crowd is coming from, even thought I still disagree with them. I cannot understand where that law comes from. I use my pocketknife every day for innumerable little tasks, and not having it for a week and a half, especially while we were camping, was a huge burden. I realize that it can be used as a weapon, but so can my hands, are you going to confiscate those too?
• There were also bag checks everywhere. Every time we went into a museum or a library, getting on the train to Paris (the other trains didn’t have any checks), getting on the Eye, I felt like they were very invasive, and grew to really loathe them while I was there. And the incompetence, at the British Library I had my small computer toolkit with me (a screwdriver, a dim chip inserter and remover, stuff like that). The idiot security guard spent five minutes looking at it, finally called a supervisor over, who took one look and said it was fine. I don’t like other people going through my stuff. Even though I’m not hiding anything, it still feels extremely invasive.

Anyhow, overall we both had a lot of fun and would definitely go again. Until later.

We took a day tour out of Glasgow Wednesday morning. Grace and I figured that it would be the best way to see a lot of Scotland in a short amount of time. Overall it was pretty good. It lasted about 12 hours so by the end it was getting a bit long being in a bus, but it was a fairly nice bus so it wasn’t a big deal.

We started out at 8:15 this morning, and took a very nice bus from Glasgow to Stirling. At Stirling, we transferred onto another nice, but not quite as nice bus that had come with a group from Edinburgh. They run tours both out of Edinburgh and Glasgow, and they meet and combine in Stirling for the journey north.

The bus took us by Stirling, so we got to see Stirling Castle again from the bus windows. The bus only made about five stops, so a lot of things we just drove past. It was a pretty packed day. Our first stop of the day was at Glencoe, we made a quick stop to see the mountains, then another stop a few minutes later at the Glencoe visitor center. The tallest mountain in Scotland and the highest point in the UK, Ben Nevis, is right around Glencoe. At a height of 4,410 feet it pales in comparison to the Rocky Mountains, but it was still really pretty. And, I’d bet that from the base to the top it was at least 3,500 ft, since obviously the base is much lower than the Rockies. It would be a nice place to spend a week just hiking. There were a lot of hiking trails and a ski resort.

Our second stop was at Urquhart Castle, which is on Loch Ness. If we had stayed with the bus we only would have had 10 minutes there, but we decided to take a boat ride across Loch Ness, and the bus met us at the other end of the boat ride. That way we had 45 minutes at the castle. Urquhart Castle was kind of neat, it was pretty well ruined but it’s always kind of neat to see what’s still there that was built hundreds of years ago. The boat ride across Loch Ness took about half an hour. It was really pretty. The water of Loch Ness is very black, and neither Grace nor I were quite sure why. We’ve both seen quite a few different bodies of water in our times, and never seen anything quite like it.

We caught up to the bus at the end of the boat ride, and took it to Inverness, the “Capital of the Highlands.” We had about 45 minutes there, and kind of ate supper. I ordered fish and chips, but I don’t think the guy heard me say “fish” so I just got chips. There was a castle there, but it was actually being used for government offices so Grace and I decided against seeing it. We didn’t have much more time than just to eat.

Our last real stop was at Pitlochney, a little town on the way back from Inverness. Grace and I had been looking for another blanket for camping, and just for a souvenir, and there was a shop there that was having a sale, so we got one for less than we had seen one anywhere else.

We changed buses again at Perth, split into the groups to Glasgow and to Edinburgh. Our bus back wasn’t real nice, but it was only for an hour or so. We headed back to the hotel to pick up the bags we had left there, and caught a train to Edinburgh.

We saw so much stuff in between our stops that it would be impossible to remember it all. They had an audio commentary that would come on with some stories and information when we passed stuff, and we have a lot of pictures from the bus. It was pretty enjoyable, a bit long, but overall good. There is no way Grace and I could have seen all that on our own in one day, but I do wish we had more time in some places. Oh well, both Grace and I are starting to look forward to being home, it’s hard to believe that the time has gone by as quickly as it has. We only have two more days in the UK as of when I am writing this. I’m not quite sure when I’ll be able to post it though, so that information may be out of date. Oh well, until next time.

Alright, so now it is Friday noon-ish or so, everything up until now I wrote Wednesday night. We took the train to Edinburgh, and took a bus to our campground on Wednesday night. We ended up getting in around 11:30 pm. It was sprinkling a little bit when we set up, but not enough to be a problem. It must have rained more that night since the outside of our tent was pretty wet when we woke up in the morning, but we stayed nice and dry, so our tent passed that test. Thursday was rainy off and on, it would rain for a half an hour then be sunny for a half an hour, kind of reminded me of Portland. We were at Edinburgh Castle, and a lot of things were inside so it wasn’t a big deal that it was rainy at times. Edinburgh castle was kind of neat, it was used as a prison for troops captured during the Revolutionary War, and we saw the Crown Jewels of Scotland, along with the Stone of Destiny, where most of the Scottish Monarchs were crowned. We also saw a giant siege cannon that shot stone balls that were probably a foot and a half in diameter. Mons Meg, I think was its name. That was pretty cool.

After the castle we headed to the Edinburgh Zoo. It was a nice zoo, we saw lions and tigers and koala bears. They had a nice penguin display and a monkey house and camels and antelope. They had an enclosure for sea lions, but they didn’t have any sea lions in it at the time (they were waiting to get some more in) which was kind of disappointing since I really like sea lions. It was fun anyhow though. There was a jaguar that was sleeping on a log and he just kind of glared at us when we started taking pictures of him. He was really close, too. They had a wolverine, but we couldn’t ever find him in his cage.

We went to dinner at a pub, I had fish and chips, Grace had a ravioli dish. They were both really good. We headed back to the campsite after that, then down to the ocean where Grace got to touch the ocean for the first time. We went wading a little bit (up to our calves) but it was quite cold. We picked up a few seashells, and hung out on the beach for a bit. That extra blanket we bought on Wednesday did the trick in keeping us warm, so we have slept better here than we did camping on Arran.

We caught a train to Birmingham Friday morning, to go see the Cadbury Chocolate factory. The chocolate factory was pretty cool, I think Hersheys had a better tour, but it was still fun. We got a lot of free chocolate, they guy handing out chocolate took pity on us because they couldn’t keep our bags for us without searching them first, and since that would take half an hour we didn’t want to do that, so we had to lug them around with us. It wasn’t a big deal though, the tour wasn’t real long and there was enough room that we could keep them on our backs.

Anyhow, we headed back to the apartment in London, where we have been packing up and having a last drink at the pub. It’s about bedtime now, I’ll probably post when we get home. Until then.

Well, we have been without internet access since Saturday, so that’s why no posts. The Isle of Arran was beautiful. We took the train from London to Glasgow, then made a change to the train to Ardrossan where we took a ferry to Brodick, which is the main city on Arran. We took a bus partway to our campsite at Glen Rosa, then walked the rest of the way. The island was absolutely gorgeous, mountains and forests. It reminded me of Colorado a little bit, but greener. And the mountains obviously weren’t as large since it’s a small island, about 10 miles by 20 miles. The ferry ride was fun, we watched a very intelligent seagull that was going from Ardrossan to Brodick using the draft from the ferry to stay aloft. It didn’t flap its wings a single time.

Our campsite was beautiful, right on a little river. There were three fields, one was pretty full (it was right next to the toilets), one that the Scottish version of the Boy Scouts was using, and one smaller field that had only one other tent on it. We actually ran into the people who were staying there, and they helped us find it which was good since it was somewhat hidden. The only disadvantage was that it was a 10 minute walk to the toilets, and there was no hot water, so no showers. Fairly primitive, but that wasn’t a problem.

Our first night we decided to stay up to see the sun set, but gave up around 10:30. It was still light out at 11:30 when I woke up. We weren’t quite completely prepared for how cold it was. We had a couple of fleece blankets, and it was enough to keep us from freezing, but not really enough to keep us warm. Fortunately, the sun came up at 4:30, which warmed things up so we got some good sleep after that.

Sunday we went to Brodick Castle, walked around that and the gardens. Then we climbed Goat Fell, the tallest point on Arran. It was about 3,000 vertical feet, and the trail was probably four or five miles long, but we made it. Unlike in Colorado, the altitude wasn’t a problem, it was just a long walk. The view was absolutely spectacular. It was almost as good as any view I’ve seen in Colorado. The air was clear and you could see for miles. It’s been a while since I’ve been able to experience anything like that, and I’ve missed it. This was the first real mountain that Grace had ever seen, much less climbed, and she had never really seen the wide-open places before (above about 2,000 feet there were no trees, from overgrazing by deer and sheep). She experienced first-hand how distances can be deceptive when things are wide open.

After that walk we were pretty bushed, so we headed back to the campsite and hung out by the fire for a bit, then headed to bed. It didn’t get quite as cold that night, so we slept better. Monday morning we were still pretty sore from Sunday’s hike, so we slept in, broke camp and took the ferry from Brodick back to Ardrossan at 1. We took the train to Wemyss Bay, where we were going to camp for the night. However, the place we were going to camp had changed ownership, and they no longer allowed tent camping, and the nearest one they knew about was a mile and a half away. Grace and I just didn’t feel like doing that, and I couldn’t get a decent set of directions, so instead of wandering around with all our stuff we just found a cheap-ish hotel (which was the only hotel in town) for the night. It ended up working out well, since it rained that night. We would have been alright, we have a nice tent, but it still would have been annoying. Plus, we wouldn’t have had a chance to let anything dry that had gotten wet, so it all worked out for the best. The hotel (Wemyss Bay Hotel) wasn’t real nice, the rooms were old, not particularly clean (but not too bad) but they had hot water (the shower was nice) and a comfortable bed. It was owned by an Indian, and it had a restaurant with some superb Indian food, and lots of it, for pretty cheap. I might not stay there again, but I would eat there again. The only weird thing was that there was no shampoo in the bathroom, and when I asked the guy didn’t know what I was talking about.

Tuesday morning we took the ferry from Wemyss Bay to Rothesay to see Rothesay Castle. It was the first castle we had seen that looked like how I envisioned a castle to look like with a moat and a wall and towers and all that. It was in ruins, so the towers weren’t standing any more, but it was still really neat. It had played a large part in Scotch history dating back to when the Vikings occupied the western islands of Scotland.

We spent a couple of hours there, then took the train to Glasgow. We got into our hotel in Glasgow (we had always been planning on a hotel in Glasgow kind of at the midway point of our trip) and it was nice, particularly after the hotel the night before. Free internet, shampoo and spotlessly clean. We dropped our stuff in our rooms and took off for Stirling. Stirling Castle was nice, in much better shape than Rothesay Castle was. I knew it before I came, but it never really struck me how much history they have here. Stirling Castle was started two or three centuries before the Americas were discovered by Columbus. William Wallace and Robert the Bruce both fought battles outside of Stirling Castle during the battles for Scottish Independence, several members of the Stewart Family ruled Scotland from Stirling Castle, it has been said of Stirling Castle that he who controls Stirling controls Scotland, due to Stirling’s strategic location. The buildings that are there today obviously aren’t original, Robert the Bruce razed the previous castle that had stood there to prevent the English from using it as a stronghold, and his son re-built it later.

We also saw the Cathedral of the Holy Rude, which is one of the older cathedrals in Scotland. It was where Mary Queen of Scots was coronated, and it is the only cathedral standing that has witnessed a Scotch Coronation. It had a lot of beautiful stained glass windows, and I discovered that stained glass windows photograph extremely well, with all the light that comes through them.

We headed back to our hotel a little after 6, ate supper at the restaurant at the hotel. I had this pumpkin ravioli thing that wasn’t very good, but Grace’s chicken was excellent, despite the fact that it took them 45 minutes to give us our food. I’m not sure exactly when I will be able to post again, but I will definitely when we get back to Kentucky.

Today was our last day in London. Grace and I spent a little bit of time at the NHM at lunch, then she went off to take pictures of Hyde Park and Buckingham Palace while I worked. Dr. Seales had a talk this afternoon that I went to, then back home to help Grace finish packing for Scotland. We took a quick trip to Westminster to take pictures of Big Ben at night. I’ll post more when we get to Scotland.

Well, we finally made it to the British Library for a tour, but more on that later.

Got up this morning after sleeping in and went to work. It was nice having internet access there. Started doing some work on writing a new program we need. We went out to lunch at a pub with some of the people working in the lab we are in, kind of to get to know each other a bit better. Grace was able to join us for that, and then pretty much right after lunch we went to the British Library, where we got a tour of some of the conservation work that was being done there. We saw Rudyard Kipling’s original Jungle Book manuscript, as well as some really old first-edition Charles Dickens books.

We hung around at the BL for a bit after the tour, saw the Magna Carta. I learned something interesting about the Magna Carta, that it was actually rescinded by a papal bull about ten weeks after it was originally signed, and it was much later that a modified version actually went into effect. The original Magna Carta also pretty much also only protected the English Nobility. There was also something complicated about how the pope and the king of England became allies right before all of that, because they had been enemies, but I don’t recall exactly how that worked.

We went to supper on the Thames, Grace, myself, Ryan, Matt and Steve. I had sausages and mash (venison sausage on mashed potatoes) and Grace had a chicken carbanero thing that was really good. Mine was good to. After that, Grace headed back to the apartment to call home and talk to people, and I hung out with the guys and we walked around and took pictures. There’s a neat-looking egg-shaped office building, and we walked around the Tower of London and Tower Bridge. It was getting pretty dark by the time we got back, so we got some good night shots of stuff.

That’s pretty much it for the day. Tomorrow is Grace and my last day in London, then off to Scotland on Saturday. Until next time.

Today went a bit better than yesterday. I got turned around getting our theater tickets for Spamalot on Leicester Square this morning, but I got things sorted out.

We finally got Internet access at the NHM today, which makes life so much easier. Not much else happened there, but it sounds like we’ll get a replacement for the Faro arm (which broke yesterday) tomorrow, which is good.

Grace and I got cookies at Ben’s cookies (as per Sarah’s suggestion) and they were really good. We also found a good Chinese restaurant and had duck. It was good. Spamalot was hilarious, not as good as Phantom, but still very enjoyable. We had balcony tickets, but the balcony was closed so we got upgraded to stall seats, four rows back. It was a little bit too close to see the entire stage at a time, but not too bad.

We leave for Scotland in three days. Until next time.

Well, the IT guys never showed at the NHM and I had a rather negative experience at the London eye, so I don’t feel much like posting right now. All I really want to say is that someone (or, more likely, several someones) in the UK government need to wake up and smell the common sense.

We finally have our equipment. Now for the next hangup - the IT guys, but more on that later.

Grace and I went down to Leicester Square to get tickets for a show tonight. We ended up getting tickets to Phantom of the Opera. We were going to go see the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace too, but the underground was a bit delayed, so we didn’t quite have time. I’m hoping to take an early lunch sometime to see it. I would be really bummed to not get a chance to see that. In fact, Grace and I haven’t even been to Buckingham Palace yet. Grace and I ended up wandering around Leicester and Trafalgar Squares, and I went to work around 1.

Our equipment got in alright, we got it set up then spent 2 hours waiting for the IT guys to show up and ‘inspect’ our equipment. They never showed, so we couldn’t actually do anything useful. We’ll try again tomorrow.

The Phantom of the Opera was amazing. I’d never been to a production like it before, something that large-scale. Grace and I were both very enthralled, and looking forward to seeing another show later in the week.

Well, I need to hit the hay. Until later.

So, I thought that we had gotten away from not speaking the language, but I guess not. But more on that later.

Grace and I slept in this morning. We were pretty exhausted from our Paris trip yesterday. We looked it up last night, and doing both the Cadbury Chocolate factory tour and Wales just wouldn’t fit in one day. It would have been about nine hours on the train, not leaving any time for the tour. We’re going to try to stop off and see it on our way up to Scotland, since it would only add a couple of hours to the trip.

Matt and Steve got in around noon, I found out this morning (about ten minutes before Grace and I were going to leave) that I needed to stick around to let them in. I thought that they were going to get keys from Seales, like I did, but I found out that Grace and I were the only ones with keys. I kind of assumed that there were one or two more to hand out. I’m kind of glad Seales called, if he hadn’t Grace and I would have been halfway to Cardiff with both the keys to the apartment when they showed up. It wasn’t a huge deal though, there wasn’t anything time critical we wanted to do in Cardiff so we just caught the train that left an hour later than we had originally planned.

Grace and I had a nice walk down Portobello Market, which is right by where the apartments are. Lots of stalls with pretty stuff, we got a few souvenirs and presents for people. Then we caught the tube to Paddington, where we caught the train to Cardiff. It was about three hours on the train. We walked around Cardiff for a while, took a lot of pictures of the castle, but we were too late to get in. Grace and I weren’t sure if we wanted to go in anyhow, it would have been 20 pounds ($40 US) for both of us. We got pictures of another nice, older-looking building but couldn’t figure out what it actually was. We had supper at a Chinese buffet, because we wanted something fast so we could catch the earlier train back to London. We had been planning on getting back to London a little after midnight, but this train (that I’m on right now) will get us back around 10:30. It was a nice, relaxing day. We mainly went just so we could say we went to Wales, and the castle was pretty neat. There’s a jousting tournament on the 20th and 21st, which would be cool to go to but that’s right when we leave. The thing that threw me a bit is that all the signs were in both English and Welsh. It was better than France, where it was just French, but I wasn’t expecting that.

Well, Grace and I are on the train now, should get back to London in about an hour and a half. The BritRail passes we have are nice, we can just hop onto and off of trains as we wish, and the trains are pretty nice too. There’s a little more legroom than in an airplane, there’s food for purchase, and the scenery is nice to watch. Much more convenient for shorter trips than flying, or even driving in some sense. I kind of wish we had more public transportation in the US, some cities have good systems (the trains in Portland were nice) but there’s no good long-distance rail service. I mean, yeah, we have Amtrak, but to take that from Lexington to Grand Rapids we would have to drive 2 hours to the nearest Amtrak station, take a train to Chicago, have a six or seven hour layover in Chicago then catch a train to Grand Rapids. It’s a similar deal getting to Prairie. Sixteen or seventeen hours on the train, and eight or nine in a car. Kind of a no-brainer.

Which brings me to a funny story. In Britain, the trains run on time. You can set your watch by the trains. On our trip from Stonehenge to Bath, some people held up the train by 30 seconds, and they got chewed out pretty good by the conductor. So, we are almost back to London when the train stops, the engineer gets on the intercom and says, in a very annoyed voice “As those of you who take this train regularly know, this is the part of the journey where we sit and wait for the Heathrow Express to get ahead of us. (huge sigh) we should be underway shortly, I apologize for the delay. We would be in Paddington Station in 8 minutes, but we have to wait for the (I could almost hear him swearing under his breath) Heathrow Express.” He said some more stuff, but I didn’t catch it. Then, about three minutes later we start going and the engineer gets back on and announces that the
Heathrow Express has gone past, and we can go. We get in about three minutes late, and you could tell that the engineer was mad when he got on the intercom. That is a far cry from the Amtrak train I was on that got stuck behind a broken freight train and we were at a dead stop for three hours, and I don’t think I even got a sorry.

We should get the equipment tomorrow, and I should actually start working. Until next time.

Is a fairly useful phrase, as is ou est la toilette, neither of which I used in Paris today.

The Paris trip went well. I was a bit nervous about the tubes after yesterday, but they were operating fine, just like they usually are. Reliable (at least mostly) public transportation is very handy.

You actually had to go through a security checkpoint on the Chunnel train, and I got patted down (“random check”) on the way to Paris. Fortunately, my pocketknife did not cause problems there, but more on that later.

We got to Gare du Nord (train station) at 9:30 or so, and walked to Notre Dame. The first sight we saw was the Eiffel Tower, though that was last on our list. Even though it was 2 miles away, it looked huge. We went to Notre Dame first, but didn’t go in. We spent an hour and a half taking pictures. It is a gorgeous building. Absolutely breathtaking. We walked around it one and a half times taking pictures. Just beautiful.

We packed a lunch, which we ate at a park next to Notre Dame. We continued to the Louvre, all the while seeing glimpses of the Eiffel Tower. The Louvre was quite awesome. I did not realize how huge or beautiful the outside was. Another half hour of taking pictures later, we actually went in. It would take weeks to see everything in that place. We were mostly interested in the Venus de Milo, and the Mona Lisa. It took a while to find them, since everything is in French and the layout was confusing. I wasn’t expecting everything to be in French with little or no English. So, we have a lot of pictures of neat things, but have little to no idea what they are. The only glitch was that they had a security checkpoint in the Louvre, and they took my pocketknife, which makes sense because a lot of the artwork is out in the open where someone with a knife could easily slash it. I got a check card for it, and retrieved it on the way out, but just an FYI for anyone going there, leave the pocketknife at home.

Our third and final (or so we thought) stop of the day was at the Eiffel Tower. Again, I was totally amazed. I had no idea how huge this structure is. We didn’t have time to go to the top (next time, and oh yes, there will definitely be a next time) but took a lot of pictures. We got some crepes by the Tower, but we had been looking for the Statue de Liberte, which is the same as the Statue of Liberty, only smaller (made by the same guy, looks the same. It played a large role in the second National Treasure movie). Grace and I thought it was right next to the Eiffel Tower, but it was about a mile away, so we decided to make a fourth stop to see that. It was probably the least impressive thing we saw today, but still kind of neat. That, sadly, brought us to the end of our time in beautiful Paris, we caught a Metro back to Gare du Nord, and I am actually typing this on the train to post when I get home.

Paris is a beautiful city. I thought London was neat, but Paris is just gorgeous. Every time you turn around, or walk a few blocks, there’s another beautiful building to be photographed. A day was not enough time to do it justice. Grace and I are planning on brushing up on our French (well, learning French for me, since I never had it) and coming back someday. That’s the only downside of Paris, is not speaking or reading the language. Grace was a big help since she knew some, but if we were going to spend any amount of time there we need to be much more fluent in the language.

Well, that’s it for today. We’re thinking of going to Birmingham to the Cadbury Chocolate factory tomorrow, then heading over to Wales, mainly just to say that we’ve been to Wales. Maybe see a castle or something. I’ll post again tomorrow. Au revoir.