Umamiblog

I’ve been back in Wellington and back at work for over a week now. In that time I’ve re-experienced Wellington winter (not good) and also a pay rise at work (very good). I had hoped to have updated my blog more while I was away but I elected at the time to enjoy sitting in the sun a little longer. Since I’ve been back I’ve been meaning to post my updates of the places I visited since I left the Midlands. This is still forthcoming

I have, however, been having some Web 2.0 fun (sorry JD, couldn’t resist) with my first photos uploaded to flickr and first video uploaded to YouTube. I’ve been slowly organising my photos from the trip and putting some up on flickr, I have photos from Paris and Barcelona on there now and shortly my Granada set shall appear.

But for now sit back and relax and enjoy my first ever YouTube video:

It was cool coming back from Dublin to Stansted airport and having someone pick me up. Clare, who I meet in Wellington through a good friend of mine Sal, lives in a little village in the Midlands called Thrapston. It was your quintessential little English village. The first night we were there we went to Clare’s local pub and had deep fried brie!?! My arteries are still recovering.

It was great hanging out in someone’s house as well, especially with an excellent DVD collection and an appreciation for English beer.

One day we went to Milton Keynes which is odd for England because it’s a planned city. That means grid like streets and wide avenues, etc. It just seems wrong for England but it did have a John Lewis store which I just had to do while I was in the UK. It was fun finally getting a chance to walk around a John Lewis store and just look at what it had to sell. The store did have a good selection of Tivoli equipment and also had one of those ultra-portable PCs to play with, although it was quite expensive.

Milton Keynes also had an indoor ski field, something I thought only the Arabs in Dubai were mad enough to build and use.

We also checked out Warwick Castle and made a fly by Stratford-upon-Avon. I had no idea how much of a tourist trap it was so we made a flying visit and got out as soon as we could. I also got driven past Silverstone which was pretty cool.

Above all the coolest thing was driving through the countless number of small English villages all over 500 years old with an ancient church and a pub or two. It was just gorgeous. Thanks for looking after me Clare.

Looking at the inside of the castle from one of the towers.

In the distance (about 40 miles) is Cambridge or Oxford (someone please correct me).

Looking back at the town of Warwick including it’s church.

If you look closely just left of centre you can see an awesome trebuchet. Apparently they use it two or three times a week.

In the distance to the right (about 7 miles) is Stratford-upon-Avon. The river running through the photo is the Avon.

Looking back towards the castle. If you look at the larger version you can see all the different building periods and styles that would’ve gone into the castle.

They also had a number of birds of prey. This one was looking at another bird that was making noise in a nearby tree.

Silverstone F1 raceway.

I arrived into Dublin shortly after lunch and caught their bus into town. I love judging cities by their airports. Dublin had a really busy airport that was probably a little too small for the amount of work it needs to do. I got that opinion of quite a few things in Dublin and I suspect some of that has to do with the massive growth Ireland has seen with the Celtic Tiger.

By the way, if you wanted to see what it was like being part of a herd of cattle, fly with RyanAir out of Stansted.

Because of the relaxed controls when travelling inside the EU, most people just need to wave their passport at Customs and walk through. They had only one terminal for non-EU passport holders and of course they have to spend a lot more time on each of these people. The queue was quite long and very slow moving. The Kiwi girl in front of me in the queue had some problems with her work visa and that took even longer.

The motorway on the way in was busy and you could see the yet to open tunnel that they’ve spent a huge amount of money on. I caught up with Phil, who I worked with at Intergen before he got the call back to Ireland, in town. I was still feeling pretty crappy from the fever so we didn’t get up to much for the rest of the day.

Dublin is an insanely cool city. For a city only about 10-20% larger than Auckland it doesn’t feel physically larger but it does feel like it has twice the life.

Dublin city itself is pretty cool and almost all available on foot. Guidebooks suggest to not even bother trying to drive and that was backed up by the locals. I love cities that you can walk around, only the footpaths in Dublin aren’t really suited to the masses of people that are trying to transport themselves along Dublin’s streets and alleyways.

We walked down O’Connell St which is Dublin’s main drag. Past the GPO (General Post Office) where the one of the events of the rising was held in 1916. Looking at the columns closely, you can still see the odd bullet hole (see photos below). That is what I love about Europe on this trip you can literally see these little connections to history that we can only read about back home in NZ.

We went to the National Art Gallery and mainly focused on the Jack B Yates collection which was outstanding. Big thanks to Phil for introducing me to him. The gallery has been recently renovated and had quite a cool combination between the old and the new.

Nearby was the national assembly as well as the Natural History Museum which was absolutely surreal. It felt like a vestige of a colonial period whereby every natural history museum needed to kill and stuff one of everything. There was even a Tasmaanian Tiger on display.

Very close was the street (that I’ve already forgotten the name of) that U2′s Sweetest Thing video was shot. I can imagine me asking Phil for these sorts of landmarks would be similar to someone coming to NZ and asking me where they could see sheep. The street however was still pretty cool.

We also made our way to the world famous Guinness St James Gate Brewery. You could still occasionally smell hops around the place and almost all of this suburb was part of Guiness or was once owned by Guiness.

The tour was pretty cool and well laid out. There was this odd video part with three random people talking about alcohol related stories. It didn’t really make a whole lot of sense and didn’t really enforce the Guinness brand. Odd. They did have a section with all the old Guiness advertising and marketing material and TV ads. Including a section focused on the old “Guinness is good for you” or “My goodness, my Guinness” art.

At the top of the complex you could get your complementary pint of Guinness and also look out over an overcast Dublin city in this stunning rooftop bar enclosed in glass.

One of the things you’ll notice in Dublin is the throngs of young Spanish kids who come over to go on English language courses. The funny thing is that they stay in these large groups and move around the city that way. And the Spanish also can’t talk to each other what we would call ‘normally’. They have to yell and put passion into their voice. So you’ll come across 30 kids yelling at each other walking towards you on a narrow footpath. I could see how this could be rather off-putting or intimidating to the locals.

We also took off one day down the coast a little bit on the DART to Killiney (the way they pronounce it, it sounds like Kilarney). The reason for the trip? To see Bono’s house… I couldn’t resist. Obviously there isn’t a set of signs to his house which is why you need your trusty Dublin guide, in my case Philip.

We walked up a road and opposite the Canadian Embassy residence is the gate to Bono’s house. There is an alley next to the house that is covered in graffiti and messages from adoring U2 fans. Just as we were about to leave, another troupe of screaming Spanish kids turned up so we made a hasty retreat.

Some of Dublin’s most expensive property is on this stretch of coast line. There is also the little village/suburb of (phonetically sounding) “Dunlearey” which is also quite nice. We wandered along the coast some more and after a pint with one of Philip’s mates we headed back in Dublin.

Temple Bar in Dublin is a part of the city that still has some of the old city lanes and some of the best bars – it is generally filled with tourists. We had a few pints and went to some of the pubs, one of which had a mad but energetic solo singer belting out songs with just his guitar.

Later in the night outside Burger King we watched some punter get chucked out before he got a chance to order his food. Something he wasn’t all to happy about. He endlessly repeated the phrase “I want my f…’n burger and my f…’n chips” to the less than amused security guard. This happened until some other and older random punter who was walking by decided to take issue. To cut the story short, the older guy decided to clock the younger one who promptly forgot about his f…’n burger and f…’n chips and disappeared. And yet another random punter who was just passing by decided to take issue with the older one for smacking him. All and all it was a rather sad but hilarious display of humanity.

Dublin was a cool city and it was great catching up with Phil again. If you get close to Ireland I would thoroughly recommend that you pop across and check it out. The next time I’m back I’d like to get around and see more of the country and spend more time than I did this trip. One thing though, Dublin is a very expensive city – probably on par with London.

One last note, the day before I arrived in Dublin, there was a bomb scare at the airport. I didn’t hear about this until I had arrived but it caused general pandemonium and havoc at the airport.

The day before I left, there was another bomb scare at the airport and this caused more pandemonium and havoc. Apparently there were some bags left alone that had a Quran on top of it… What was funny was watching the TV news interviewing people. Basically, all Irish people interviewed were saying how useless the airport is and how crap the whole thing was. Then all the English people interviewed said how good it was, everyone was doing the best they could and the extra security was needed these days.

Photos

The spire in O’Connell St in Dublin. Apparently they wanted a public monument that was neither political or religious. This is what they got.

The GPO where one of the events of the rising took place…

…complete with bullet holes.

Trinity College

Oscar Wilde tribute

Cool door in the national gallery. The larger narrow door on the left side is to move large artworks through the building to different exhibitions.

The street where U2 shot ‘The Sweetest Thing’ music video.

Grafton St, main pedestrianised shopping street.

Dublin Castle or what is left of it. I believe this was where the English ruled Ireland from pre-republic days.

I thought this was a good symbol of Dublin, old and new. The new influenced by the old while sitting next to each other.

The view from the top of Guinness.

Phil and I.

Temple Bar

Outside Bono’s house.

Alleyway next to Bono’s house. Click on the larger image to read some of the graffiti.

Killiney Bay.

And I couldn’t forget to include a shot of the River Liffey.

I realised late on our first day in London that I´d managed to pick something up from someone somewhere. I had a bad as fever and a stuffy nose. Bugger. I hate been sick, let alone the first time I´m in Europe. I slept and drank heaps of water and hoped for the best.

The next day we had to get out of our dive of a hostel and move to a new one between Queensway and Baywater. That was a bit of a mission, London was going through it´s little heat wave which was great on one hand. I love when it´s above 30 degrees. Only when it´s that hot the tube is many times hotter – add to that a fever and you can´t seem to control your body temperature or how much you´re sweating. Nasty.

We made it to the new hostel in the morning but they couldn´t check us in till 2pm so we hung out in Hyde Park for a while and enjoyed the sun. When we did get a chance to check in I pretty much just went to sleep. I woke up towards 8pm and started to make some plans for the following days but apart from that it was sleep and more sleep. The next day, however, I was going to be heading off to Ireland.

Having slept for an insanely long time I eventually woke up in the wee hours of Monday morning. The first thing I noticed is how light it is here so early in the morning. It starts to get light come about 2:30am and is fully bright by about 4am. It’s disturbingly early for light.

Trey and I were subsequently up quite early and by 6am we were waiting to take a tube into the city. We stopped off at Islington and found a place open for breakfast. Islington appears to have been gentrified somewhat but is gorgeous. We then went walking past these canals Trey had spotted the day before. It was quite neat and picturesque and the temperature was slowly starting to rise as the morning went on.

From Islington we followed the canal quite far until we reached another tube station that took us to St Paul’s, it was stunning from the outside and even better from the inside. Yoko Ono had a couple of things at the cathedral. This was a peace tree that people had attached little messages to – there was another similar installation on the inside of the cathedral too.

We started in the crypt and slowly moved our way to the main floor. Sitting in the centre of the cathedral and looking up is just awe inspiringly beautiful and the decoration is amazing. Of course you can’t take any photos inside and that’s probably a good thing just for the fact there would be no way you could fit in all the color and other subtleties in a photo.

Once inside you can climb up to three different vantage points. The first is the whispering gallery which true to its name you can whisper to someone on the other side of the gallery and hear them fine – the acoustics are rather unique.

If you climb even further up you get to the outside at the lower part of the dome – the views are great and as you walk around you get a 365 degree view of the city and most famous landmarks. Climb even higher and you get to a little gallery on the outside through some very narrow staircases that is above the dome. There isn’t much space at the top and there are plenty of people.

One of the landmarks you can see directly from the top of St Paul’s is the Millennium Bridge leading to the Tate Modern. We found our way down from the top and across the river Thames to the Tate. The art and architecture in the Tate was really good and there were throngs of people there. One of the coolest installations was where they’ve hooked something up to the Millennium Bridge that listens to the vibrations made from people walking over it and then using and amplifying these vibrations to create music (or just noise) inside the museum. Cool.

We then went on a riverside walk towards the Tower of London and across the Tower Bridge – taking in all the riverside sights and attractions. From there we caught a tube up to Hyde Park and walked through the park while citysiders enjoyed the long sun and hot temperatures. Its funny how less harmful the sun is when you have an ozone layer above you – it’s great.

\we then slowly made our way towards Buckingham Palace where we strolled past a live television production that I had no idea of. When we did make it to the Palace we saw a little march of the guards on duty who then promptly stopped moving at all.

From there we decided it was probably time to start heading home and walked towards the tube station at Picadilly Circus. We stopped off at Islington again to go to the supermarket which was pretty much empty (of produce rather than people). Then finally we made it back to the hostel where after a quick shower I had to collapse. We’d been out for close to 16 hours by the time we’d made it home.

Photos

Shots of the canal near Islington.

View of the street from St Paul’s

Yoko Ono’s peace tree installation.

Forgotten the significance of this but it was inside the crypt at St Pauls.

The view from the platform at St Paul’s. Towards the right you can see the ‘Gherkin’.

River Thames.

Stairs to the upper viewing platform.

Tate Modern and the Millenium Bridge.

Millenium Bridge.

Tower Bridge.

Hyde Park.

Buckingham Palace.

Picadilly or Trafalgar… someone please correct me.

I left Wellington for my 5 week jaunt to Europe last Friday but it already seems like an age ago. I decided weeks ago that even though my flight from Auckland was on Saturday I really need to leave Wellington on Friday in case the airport got fogged out. I figured at least if it was fogged out on Friday we could hop in the car and drive all night to make it in time – leaving on Saturday didn’t afford us that option.

So leaving work on Friday was a bit manic, as well as the normal pandemonium involved with having to leave projects and work, I needed to give a little presentation at our weekly end of week meeting. After finishing that I had to fly out of the office with Trey and make our way to the airport.

We made it there on time, but of course, Trey forgot his passport. That wasn’t an issue per se for that specific flight as it was domestic but he was definitely going to need it to get out the next day from Auckland. Origin Pacific, who we were flying with in this incredibly long and skinny plane, agreed to courier the passport up when a friend could drop it in for $60.

So after a mild moment of panic, things appeared to be under control and we were still on track to make our flights the next day. Of course when we wake up the next morning, Wellington airport is fogged in. After much anticipation and several phone calls to airlines and the American consulate, the passport arrives shortly after the airport finally opens in Wellington.

Flying with Emirates was reasonably pleasant. The aircraft is new and includes the latest interactive display units for all seats. It was a great way to kill time and kill time I did. There were probably about a hundred different films on there and hundreds of music albums and radio shows, heaps of games, cameras below and in front of the ship, and even a module that let you call and send emails (although at a hefty price). I watched V for Vendetta for the first time and if you haven’t seen it I would recommend it.

Punters watching France beat Brazil at the gate lounge in Bangkok

The first stop was Sydney, and then after that Bangkok, after that Dubai. We arrived at Dubai early in the morning and the temperature was already about 40degC. The sun was just coming up and somehow you could look at the sun for the first few moments it was rising – it was stunning and huge.

From what I hear Dubai is growing at an astonishing rate and I’d hazard a guess that no where is this more pronounced than at their airport. The airport itself is huge and there is construction everywhere. Our plane was one of a dozen that we disembarked from at a “temporary” terminal. This meant climbing on three huge buses that took you to the real terminal. The real terminal is massive and you can see them extending it for about a kilometer in every direction. Still they don’t have enough space for all flights.

A small section of Dubai airport

At 6am, Dubai airport is chaotic and very busy. I found Trey waiting towards our departure gate. He was talking to a US Marine coming back from Iraq and making small talk. This marine suggested the only way to succeed in Iraq was to wipe the civilization out completely because that let you start again. Of course, and I think I might label this “Trey’s Luck” but the time that he happens to talk to a marine about Iraq it’s with a nutter who thinks wiping out civilizations is palatable and of course he talks to him IN the Middle East. After beating a polite but hasty retreat we made our way to the terminal. Kudos to Dubai for putting on free WiFi access. All airports should follow suit. I can’t wait to visit for a few days at the end of our trip.

Watching the flight track, we left Dubai, flew over Iran until we reached the top of Iraq and then headed towards the UK. Having not slept that much on the previous 3 legs I grabbed a few hours before landing at Heathrow.

We received a bit of a grilling from the customs official, and then made our way to the Tube station at the airport. About 45 mins and two line changes later we found ourselves at the hostel we had a booked. It had received a few good reviews online but was a bit of a dive. Not that I cared. At about 2pm on Sunday I climbed into bed for about 15 hours…

Gone travelling somewhere warm.

Back in 5 weeks.

Hi guys, I am testing this bloggy thingy so that when John is away I can update sh*t for him. Doesnt seem hard so far….

even managed to upload an image! Lets see if i can do it again when John is not here to give me instructions…