And So to Home...

Well, all good things must come to an end, and this holiday had to end sometime I guess.  It's taken me this long to get unpacked and brain-cleared to finish this blog.  Also, I was waiting for Tony to get home; Qantas decided to pull the 'we'll never get you there' routine once again, and various delays and dramas later, Tony arrived home 2 days later than I did.  Needless to say Qantas is not on his Christmas card list, nor will it be featuring on his choice of airlines for future flights...

Practicing pipers

Strongmen at Highland Games

So what did we do on our last 2 days or so of the holiday?  Well, firstly I take you back to Scotland, where we took a fast and comfortable train from soggy Edinburgh over to Glasgow.  At first glance it looked a lot brighter; maybe it was due to the lack of enormous hills and gothic architecture, who knows, but we brightened up immediately we got into the taxi.  We were off to a dream of Tony's - to see the World Pipe Band Championships, and we had prime seats in the grandstand of the Level 1 Bands final, so we were pumped and ready to go!  The championships were held together with a Highland Games and Dancing Championships on Glasgow Green (say that with the lilt, please!), so it was a sea of kilts and wellies and damp earth, and a cacophony of pipes from eight different arenas and any spare wee patch of ground that bands could practice upon.  It reminded me of the Highland Games in Hawkes Bay, but on a way, way grander scale.  We had a bit of time to kill before the finals, so we wandered around taking in the sights. The Highland Games are where the strongmen try and out-macho each other, lifting tractor axles and throwing huge weights in the air etc, while making the appropriate manly expressions of agony.  I didn't get to see any dancing, more's the pity, but I saw some lassies getting trophies, and imagined my niece up there one day :)  Then it was time to make our way to the prime seats, where we watched 18 different pipe bands play 2 different sets each, to determine the overall World Champion.  These are the best bands in the world, and one of them was from New Zealand, so we cheered loudly when they came marching smartly in.  In addition to the kiwis there were American, Canadian, Irish, and of course Scots bands; the Northern Irish ended up taking the overall prize, with Canadians second and a Scottish band third, so the Scots don't always have it their own way.  They were all very good, and I wouldn't have envied the judge's job as they tried to identify the smallest differences in order to rank them.

The weather in Glasgow put the changeable weather of New Zealand completely to shame. It was literally every 5 minutes that we were either shedding a layer or putting one one again.  We actually got sunburned in the 5 minutes it decided to be fine!  Anyway, we got back on the super efficient train and steamed our way back to Edinburgh, where it was, typically, cold and raining...

The next day it was back to London, overnighting at a hotel near Heathrow, but allowing ourselves a final day's sightseeing as our planes didn't take off until late at night (well, mine did - Tony's...well...).
So we sped into London and concentrated ourselves around the Westminster area.  Buckingham Palace was a sea of tourists watching the changing of the guard, St James Park was a mecca for sunbathers in deckchairs, and Westminster Abbey area was the usual horrendous melee of people.  On the off-chance, we decided to find out whether there were any Houses of Parliament tours left for the day, and we were extremely lucky to get on a tour leaving after 30 minutes!  What a magnificent place to have a seat of power!  The site of the old Westminster Castle, the Houses of Parliament are incredibly detailed, neo-gothic buildings of millions of windows, crannies, carvings, decorations and embellishments, with the ancient Westminster Hall, dating from the 11th Century, merged in.  It's all very 'know your place' in there; the red-emblazoned House of Lords' chamber is nearly 1/4 of a mile from the Green Common's chambers, and nary the two shall meet.  We were whisked through the various rooms by our efficient guide, and got to stand behind the Prime Minister's seat in the commons and see the robing room where the Queen gets to put on the frightfully heavy crown every year to open Parliament.  All very ceremonial and splendid, but very interesting to see.  Then it was out into the sparse sunshine, a small sit-down in St Thomas Hospital's small park, and then back on the tube to the airport.

And there our holiday ends.  A real trip of the lifetime.  I will have to re-read all the blogs to remember the good bits.  There were no real bad bits - we've been so lucky with everything we've experienced.  I hope you have enjoyed reading this tale, and maybe I'll write again on our next 'trip of a lifetime' :)

To see the final photo album, please click here.

Big Ben, splendid as ever.

Edin-brrrr!

So, what of Edinburgh?

"This braw, hie, heapit toun" (Lewis Spence)

While you are thumbing through your ancient Scots-lish phrase book for that one, chew on this one:

"This accursed, stinking, reeky mass of stones and lime and dung" (an obviously pissed off Robert Carlyle).  

The Edinburgh-lovers among you would probably take offence at that one, so I'll find some nicer things to say about the place later!  But really, people, who in their right mind wants to live in a place that requires 4 layers of clothes, a rain poncho and a woollen hat as mid-summer clothing??  Not moi... 

The Gothic Rocketship -
egads!

I am a desert dweller, which means it's boringly sunny and hot all year long. It also means that my system now takes extreme exception to less than perfect weather.  I noticed this first last year when I went back to NZ in wintertime, and went into hibernation mode as soon as I got off the plane.  Well, arriving in Edinburgh, the same thing happened, and Tony had to lever me out of the B&B with a crowbar after hiding under the bedcovers for nearly 24hours!  My whole system shuts down - brain power (yes, more than normal..!), will to live, etc.  So I was not feeling that charitable about this place of grey skies and dark buildings.  Edinburgh is like the English town of Bath on steroids, and thats just the New Town area.  The Old Town is a dark mass of gothic splendour piled high on the ridge of an ancient volcano and dug into the crevasses beneath, topped off with the famous castle of Edinburgh Tattoo fame.  Everything is monocoloured browns and greys, with the odd smoke-blackened super-structure as embellishment.  The horrendous 'gothic rocketship' (Bill Bryson) which is the Scott memorial is case in point. I am dead certain that thing scares the hell out of any child who happens to see it.  Speaking of smoke-blackened, I hate to think what the air pollution would have been like in the old days, as if you look skywards there are hundreds upon hundreds of chimneypots on the roofs.

"You might smoke bacon by hanging it out of the window" (Robert Southey, 1819).  Ok, that bad...

Och, wee Bobbie...

Anyway, yesterday the 'Scottish Mist' (yes, euphemistic expression for rain here) had briefly lifted enough for me to be willing to poke my nose outside, and we made it into the city and up to the castle.  It's really a magnificent place, and due to the foul weather we didn't have to queue, which was a real bonus.  After that we walked a little down the Royal Mile and ran into one of the dozens of street performers here for the Fringe Festival. He was an ex-Cirque du Soleil acrobat, so it was an amazing performance. Today the sky was light grey,  Scottish for 'fine weather'.  I put on an extra layer just in case. We went wandering to find the wee Greyfriars Bobby statue (*sniff*), and his wee grave (*sniff*) at Greyfriars Kirkyard near his auld master Jock (*sniff*)...I always feel teary thinking about the wee dog standing vigil for 12 long, cold, scottish-mist-filled years at the graveside, don't you?  Then we got on a tour bus to go out to the Queensferry area, and take a boat out and under the Firth of Forth Rail Bridge (the first Firth of Forth bridge, and now they're going to make a Third Firth of Forth bridge...try saying that fast!!) and over to Inchcolm Island and its medieval monastery ruins.  That was a great afternoon out, watching seals watching our boat, seeing the thousands of birds nesting on the island, the melancholy but beautiful ruins, and seeing the amazing bridge architecture up close. In addition, the bus tour took us through the different rings of architecture of the city, and gradually the place began to grow on me.  It really is a spectacular place, full of amazing buildings and some damned hardy people.  And so to end this blog, I'll add this observation

"Came to Edinburgh by night, astonished at the city next morning, wild dream of a great genius. Finest city in Europe may be, in time, the world" (Benjamin Haydn, 1820)

"Piled deep and massy, close and high

Mine own romantic town" (Sir Walter Scott - he of the gothic rocketship...)

Photos from our Edinburgh travels can be seen here.

Old Town skyline

London Times

Interesting times in old London town in the past couple of days.  What started as an angry backlash against police daring to shoot a career criminal dead, has now become the opportunity for any disaffected youth with a smartphone to score some new electronic gear, burn a few shops and cars, and generally have a great time menacing people.  People are finally starting to comment in the newspapers that police should actually start re-growing the teeth that have been gradually taken from them by civil libertarians over the years, and start kicking butt.  However, if they do, then I'm sure the outrage from said civil libertarians would once again take centre stage after the smoke from the burned and looted buildings dies down.  I would not like to be a police officer in any large British city tonight, that's for sure.  As for Tony and I, we are hunkered down in our miniscule hotel room (practice for when we buy our caravan/trailer in the States!) listening to the sirens, and hoping the thug brigade doesn't decide to move their merriments to the center of the city.

Royal Albert Hall,scene of the Proms

In any case, we have been doing the touristy things that bring in millions of tourists every year.  We went to the Proms last night, which was a frightfully jolly time, what.  The Albert Hall is really something else, and the atmosphere was wonderful, with the center of the floor taken up with the 'fiver' crowd (who queue all afternoon for five-pound tickets, then stand for the entire performance) and the odd shouts coming from other areas of the audience when things happened in break times.  We had swivelling seats! Which enabled us to swivel to a more comfortable position to see the stage.  Really quite ingenious indeed.  On the musical menu were several Scandanavian pieces, including a piano concerto played by a wonderful woman who became totally involved in her performance and looked like she really enjoyed herself.

Lower level of the Tate Modern

Today we went into town and hit St Paul's Cathedral nice and early, before the serious crowds happened.  We made it all the way to the top of the dome, a lung-busting 528 steps, which afforded wonderful views over the City of London and the brown, muddy-looking Thames River below.  Then we crossed the Millenium Bridge (which infamously had to be strengthened all those years ago or it would have shaken itself to death) and called in at the Tate Modern Gallery, in the old Battersea Power Station.  We spent way more time in the museum shop than the actual galleries (casualties of having been at the Met and MoMa in New York - sorry Tate!) and walked past the Globe Theatre (too expensive - leave it for another day) which looked quite spectacular from the outside at least.

The London Stone, Cannon St.

Tony then went over to Tower Bridge to have a look at the mechanics.  I've been there before, so I went on a more elusive quest; to find the 'London Stone', which the Romans installed as a central marker in Londinium, out from which all their roads in this small island radiated.  For something that was regarded as a symbol of authority and the heart of London for so many centuries, it is now a sorry sort of thing, cowering, dark and hidden behind glass and a battered grate in a Cannon Street wall, and not even really noticed by anyone passing by unless they were purposefully looking for it.  As I crouched low to try and get a half-decent shot through the glass (nearly impossible to do), I could see a few people wondering what on earth I was doing.  Did they know what was hiding behind the glass?  I think it's probably more significant than half the other touristy things here that people queue for hours to see, but that's just me I guess. I wonder what the Romans would have made of today's rioters.  Mincemeat, probably!

Well, tomorrow we are taking off 'oop north' to Edinburgh.  This will be new for both of us, and I'm looking forward to seeing the city that so many people rave about.  Rave, that is, and not riot...

To see photos from our time in Kent and London, please click here.

That was the USA, and now on to the next bit...

We are now in England.  Made the hop across the pond, and as predicted it's cold, old and expensive!  But no, one must come to England with positive thoughts, so I will attempt to be more positive, once I've had a bit of a kip and regained some sort of brain function.  We are staying with my wonderful aunt and uncle in a 17th century farmhouse on the shores of the Thames, in Kent.  Tony has gone gallavanting off to discover how they do farm things in this country, so I have some peace and quiet to catch up on this blog and then have a nap.

Well, the last two days in the USA proved most productive. We got just about everything done that we meant to do, including night and day views of New York from on high, getting all the New York City Pass coupons used up except one (Museum of Natural History, and I've already seen that in the 'Night at the Museum' movie, so I'll consider that 'done'..!), and actually wander with time on our hands through some really nice parks.  I was very disappointed with the Empire State Building however, as it was insanely crowded and badly organised. We had left it until 9.30pm to go up, anticipating fewer crowds, but no - it was crazy.  And mostly crazy Italians, which can drive you insane if you are queuing with them in front and behind you...they NEVER stop emoting!  (And we were jammed in between another pack of emoting Italians in the tube today coming from Heathrow - someone on high must be hinting that we should visit Rome next, or something.)

A few summary facts about our trip to the States, just to bore you with numbers;

• Number of States visited: 11 (NY, DC, PA, MI, MN, ND, SD, WY, IA, WI, ME)
• Number of Canadian provinces visited: 3 1/2  (Ontario, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and we were technically in Manitoba at the Peace Garden, but we have no stamp)
• Number of hotels stayed in:  412 (well it felt like that many!!)
• Number of plastic utensils, cups and plates thrown away in said hotels (but mind, they are trying to be environmentally friendly by re-using their towels) after having our 'continental' breakfasts: about 1000
• Number of soft pretzels eaten: Far too many

• 

  Weird food...

  Transport used: car, bus, train, helicopter, plane, ferry, segway, subway, buffalo (ahhah, just kidding about buffalo, just seeing if you are still awake)
• Number of live buffalo seen: 0 (I believe there are in fact no buffalo in the USA, and it's all a trick to get tourists to come)
• Weirdest foods eaten and drunk: Dr Pepper, jerk chicken, pork ribs in a bag (like chips), biscuits and gravy (ewww how could they DO that to perfectly good scones??)
• Friendly people met:  Just about everybody - thank you America for having some mighty fine people living there.

Well, the time for napping has come and gone; cousins here to meet!  Must go.  Will update whenever we next get to a web connection that doesn't cost a fortune - something I doubt will happen often here in the UK....onwards and upwards!

To see the final photos from New York, click here

Back in the New York Groove

Someone amped up the frantic pace and crowds in New York since we've been away. Or else we've just been in the country waaaay too long!  It was a shock to come back to the pace, after the laid-back countryside and laid-back people and open sky.  We are back in the same wonderful hotel, the Affinia Manhatten, but we are skywards by a long shot this time, up on the 23rd floor.  It's amazing how loud the sirens are up here, however; Tony says it's because they are echoing up the canyons of buildings.

Tony at Grand Central station

Art Deco entrance, Chrysler building

Now we have just a few days to do everything we didn't do last time, including using up our New York City Pass 'doing' all the main attractions.  But what to do?  We are past rushing around at 90mph doing 10 things in a day - we've been on holiday too long and are getting a bit worn down after all the miles, hotels and calorie-laden meals. So yesterday we went on the 2-hour Circle Cruise around the bottom half of Manhatten Island, packed in like sardines with hundreds of other tourists in a hot boat (but we nabbed the very front of the bow position, which was great for photos...until my camera's battery ran out.....nuts!). We also got to Grand Central Station, which is such a beautiful building, and the lobby of the magnificent Art-Deco masterpiece, the Chrysler building, but that was it for the day.

Today we started off bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, but that only lasted until we got galleried out!  First stop was the final Frank Lloyd-Wright building in our tour - the famous Guggenheim museum.  The spiral part of the museum was filled with distinctly uninteresting works consisting of a few lack-lustre dobs of paint placed strategically around the walls (but I'm sure they could wax lyrical about it if they wanted). The annex wing had the old masters, which were much more interesting; Picassos, Degas, Gaugin etc, and there was also a fascinating work of $100,000 of $1 bills (real ones), stapled to an entire room's walls.  Aim was to bring an abstract number like 100,000 to life.  It sure did that!  Actually, all I could think of was how to steal it...but that's just me...then it was back to the Met - first time for Tony - and yet again it was overwhelming. This time we only got to the Greek, Roman, Asia/Pacific and a bit of the Medieval areas. I saw a kid's book in the Met shop (oh god give me that $100,000 art exhibit and an hour in the Met shop and I'd be a really happy camper!) that points out all the good bits in the Met. I should buy it for next time, so I can get to the good bits fast and make a bit more sense of the place.

So, only two days remaining before we head for the UK. There is still the Empire State Building, the MOMA, the Rockafeller Plaza, the Flatiron building, the Trump Tower, all the little neighbourhoods in Manhatten like Soho and Greenwich village, shopping, dining, Ellis Island, Staten Island, Coney Island, Broadway, more art galleries, architecture.....argh!! Stop the clock!!

Statue of Liberty, from the Circle Cruise boat.

Out East, eh!

We are now in Canada; Nova Scotia, to be precise.  Why stay just in the USA when Canada was just over the border, over there near Maine? So we decided to keep going, and pretty soon the time zone changed and the money got prettier, so we figured we must have reached the Canadian Maritimes.

Maybe the KVLY-TV mast...

We left Fargo on the 25th, but not before we had chased all over gravel roads in deepest farm country, being chased by thunderstorms, to find the 2nd-highest structure in the world, the 628m KVLY-TV mast, which is near Fargo.  We are now not sure we found the right one as we had forgotten to input the actual GPS coordinates and found TWO really tall towers, but I'm sure one of them was it!  That was the last adventure we had with our car and Betty Lou, the GPS, and the next day, after 3206 miles and some amazing memories, we handed them back to the nice Alamo people at the airport.

Then we boarded the plane for the first of three flights that were to have taken us to Bangor.  However, as we had been warned, domestic flights in the USA are temperamental.  And sure enough, as we landed at Minneapolis and checked the boarding gates for the next flight to New York, we found out the flight had been cancelled due to thunderstorms, and we had been rescheduled to a flight the next day.  Damn and blast it!! So we had to find a hotel in Minneapolis (again! That's 3 times we've stayed there now), at our own expense mind, as Delta does not provide accommodation if the flights are cancelled due to weather.  Then, heart in mouth, we appeared at the airport the next day and hoped like hell we'd finally get to Bangor.  Which we finally did, via Detroit.

Our East-Coast ride!

Luckily we'd had the hire car booked from the 26th, so we picked it up straight from the airport.  And what a car!  The Alamo lady must have seen the gleam in our eyes, and promptly suggested the red Mustang convertible!  Actually, it's a bit of a pain to do big miles in, beautiful and throaty though it is, as there is very little in-car storage space and the air conditioning is iffy, but the stereo is fantastic and we look so COOL in the thing...so we set off and went across the border to Canada quite quickly, as Bangor is very close.  The roads over here are not as good as they could be, with some huge potholes that trip up the unwary (i.e. us), and the provinces seem to be very quiet, with a lot of quite unkempt buildings and only very small businesses.  But the scenery now we are in coastal Nova Scotia is fantastic.  Peggy's Cove is one of the most famous spots in the area, with an oft-photographed lighthouse, and a small community clinging precariously to the granite rocks.  Personally, whoever decided to first settle here in the early 1800's should have been lynched! But here the settlement stays, and it's really quite pretty when it's fine.  Even when it was foggy last night I got some amazing photos of the tiny harbour.  We are staying in an incredible B&B at Peggy's Cove(which is for sale, in case anyone is interested!), and went for a big drive today around the little coves and bays to the south of here.  Truly spectacular, and I could stay for days just taking lots of photos if I had a really decent camera.  Photos I took of the harbour last night can be seen here.

Tomorrow it's back to New Brunswick and St John again, before heading back to Maine and ending our all-too-brief stint over East.  Will have to come back!

Peggy's Cove lighthouse.

Where America Goes to Shop...

Mall of America amusement park.

 Dubai Mall might say it's the biggest mall in the world, but after visiting Mall of America just outside of Minneapolis/St Paul today I think it's pretty close to call.  It's truly huge - so huge that there is a full-size indoor amusement park in the middle of it, as well as the aquarium that Dubai Mall has (pff so last year!).  It's definitely more a middle class shopping experience than Dubai Mall, which aims for the rich Emirati customers with its designer boutiques and expensive chain stores, and I tell you, people watching over our slices of (very nice) pizza, we saw some real American sights..! On the bus from Toledo to Dearborn, we had overheard an elderly black lady chatting to the bus driver about her experiences in New York.  This was delivered in classic 'Black English' style that you hear in the movies, and damn, I wish I had my tape recorder because it was a classic conversation. Anyway, she was saying about New York that it was not so much 'shop till you drop', as 'shop till you DAAH (die)', and I think now I can understand where she was coming from, watching the crowds grazing in shops here!!

The $12 spa treatment...for your 'American Girl' doll...!!

Anyway, what caught Tony's and my attention was the 'American Girl' store. Have you heard of this doll? Boy I wish she were around when I was a kid, or around in some part of the world that I currently reside, because I would have myself a good old spending spree!  This doll is every kid's dream, with every kind of historic era costume and accessories, sports and music stuff...I just could not believe what was there to be bought for this $100 doll.  As one mother tiredly told us in the store (her daughter had the 'made like me' doll, which had the same colour and length hair as the little girl and was sitting in a pushchair dressed in the same clothes as the daughter...), 'I wish I'd never heard of this doll'.  On the second floor was a cafe where you could have food and drinks...with your doll...there were special doll's chairs and party food there for the doll.  And downstairs, well, you could give your dollie a spa treatment.  I kid you not.  A spa treatment, for a doll, complete with a robe and slippers (optional expense). Fancy a new hairstyle, pierced ears, nail treatments or a skin polish (to wipe off those fingermarks)?  All available...remember for the DOLL...for a nice price.  And of course there were lots of matching outfits for girl and doll, so after her spa treatment they could get dressed up and waltz off into the massive mall to do more shopping together.  They sure start their consumers young over here!

We decided to go on a movie date while we were there, so we went to see 'Transformers 3', in 3D, naturally; no big dumb movie these days is worth its salt unless it is flinging body parts at you in 3D.  Yes, it was big, and dumb, but it sure was entertaining! One annoying thing however; we were looking forward to seeing New York trashed, as this seems to happen in every big dumb movie. Because we've now been to New York, we could say 'wow, we've been there' as the building gets slammed by some 3D monster.  But no. Michael Bay decided to set the movie in Chicago, where we haven't been.  So that was disappointing, but at least New York lived to fight another day, until the next big dumb movie!

And we live to fight another day on the uneven roads and mostly plastic food of the USA's highways and byways, as we make our way back to the final stop for this car, Fargo, where we started 13 days ago.  I wonder if we'll look at it in a different, more jaded light now.  Still, I can't wait to get back there.  I liked the place, and I hope we can get another slice of certifiably delicious paah (pie) at the nice little cafe before we hand the car back.  Fargo, here we come!

For random photos from the last part of our road trip, click here.