[UPDATE: Pictures now available in my Picasa album!]
Mm, Portugal. I had been determined, when this trip was in the planning stages, to go to Lisbon, despite the fact that it was actually pretty far out of the way. Now, I'm very glad we went, and I'd love to go back, but going to Portugal presented a new problem. Up till this point, my Spanish had been sufficient to get us by, but neither us spoke a word of Portuguese. Gestures and smiles, here we come!
DAY SIX
Another day, another new city. We arrived in Lisbon and stared eagerly out the windows of the bus at the sun-drenched metropolis flashing by. The bus left us in the massive Praca do Comercio, presided over on one side by an enormous white arch and opening out on the other side into the water. We went to our hostel to check in, forgetting it was barely 10am and we wouldn't be allowed to check in, and instead dropped off our stuff and, on the recommendation of the clerk at the hostel, headed towards Belem.
Belem is a suburb/neighborhood/somehow or other a part of Lisbon, and is generally frequented by tourists for its beautiful church and cloister and its waterside promenade. There was a bit of a faff getting there (we missed the first tram, then the second tram stopped before Belem and we had to take a very crowded bus the rest of the way), but this turned out to be because of another mounted parade. We seem to have been stalked by mounted parades...Anyway, unlike the one in Madrid, this was some sort of military demonstration, complete with rifles and uniforms and horses and everything. We watched the band march around for a while and then wandered on, partly because one of the regimental dogs was barking incessantly, despite the efforts by his handler to make him stop. He was probably too hot in that long coat sitting in the sun, poor thing.
We stopped at a sidewalk cafe for lunch which, though touristy, was friendly and cheap. (Get your head around that, if you can!) We made it to the church/cloister and I left Bethany standing in line while I went to check out what the deal was. It took the guard a couple of tries to communicate to me that the entrance to the cloister was free before two o'clock. I went back for Bethany and we made our way inside.
The Belem cloister is one of the most gorgeous religious edifices I have ever had the honor to lay eyes on. The ornate two-storey structure surrounds a grassy courtyard with a fountain; above, the sky was pure and unblemished blue, and the midday sun dusted the white stone walls with gold. The cloister consisted of arched walkways facing the courtyard with intricately carved pillars and columns, each one different. Even in the shade, even filled with tourists, the whole place just radiated warmth and beauty and peace. It was an effort of will to force myself to eventually leave.
Since 1) we would have to pay and 2) there was a line, we skipped the church and headed straight down to the waterfront. Beside the towering monument to Portuguese seafaring explorers, the promenade sloped down into the water, and across a narrow channel, the green hills rose up from the waves. (Didn't know this, but Lisbon is built on the estuary of the Tagus river into the Atlantic; the Tagus spreads into a wide sea before narrowing into a small channel before it issues into the ocean. This was briefly disorienting, so...now you know.) We slurped up some quick-melting gelato and then lay on the warm pavement with our heads pillowed on our backpacks, took off our shoes, and soaked in the sun.
Eventually, we had to peel ourselves from our comfortable spot and continue on our way along the water. Our next goal was the magnificent Tower of Belem, a fortress on the river. We explored from the dungeons all the way to the top of the winding staircase, where we curled up on the benches and admired the play of the sunlight on the sparkling waves. There wasn't much else to do in the Tower except admire the views and take dramatically angled pictures, but that's plenty to keep me amused.
By this time, it was getting later in the afternoon, so we began the long slow trudge back toward the tram. My foot was aching so much that we were forced to move at a painful limp, but that didn't stop me from looking at every single booth in the open-air flea market in the park between the Tower and the tram stop. I bought a few gifts before we finally made our way back to the center of Lisbon proper, although on the way back, I stopped for postcard stamps and had this delightful exchange:
Me: "I'd like three postcard stamps, please."
Younger lady who speaks good English: "Where to?"
Me: "The U.S."
Lady: *in Portuguese to an older lady behind the counter: something about Europe*
Me: "Will those go to the U.S.?"
Lady: "It's in Europe, yes?"
Me: "Uh...no."
Lady: "Where?"
Me: "Um...America?"
Older lady: "America? America!" *digs around and gets me the right stamps*
Lady: "Isn't that in Europe?"
Me: "...No."
Proving once and for all that geographical confusion is not solely an American trait.
We'd not slept much the night before, and we were both exhausted, so when we finally checked into our room, I crashed for an hour or two. When I regained consciousness, it was dark outside, and both Bethany and I were very hungry. We consulted the desk attendant and got a recommendation for a nearby restaurant in the Chiado district, so I told Bethany to get us there (she was in a traveling-on-a-budget apprenticeship/crash course) and we wandered that way together. The place that we finally found was an almost literal hole in the wall--a tiny, warm, close-quarters kind of place that looked, to me, just fantastic. Even better, as we were looking about with the kind of pathetic pleading that begs for someone to offer to let us sit with them, we were invited to sit with three very friendly Canadian woman who instantly made us feel welcome. We spent a couple hours laughing and drinking wine with them and eating really wonderful food--I had a sort of seafood stew with rice. The three ladies were sisters who travel to Europe together every year. They gave us recommendations on what to see in the city (since I had no RFS to guide me!) and made me laugh until I cried--they reminded me of the kind of carefree, wacky joviality that my mother and her friends share.
The city, which had been sun-soaked and quiet during the day, was coming awake as we left the restaurant. The streets were bright, and many pedestrian alleys were almost completely blocked by the tables of restaurants spilling out into the pleasantly cool night air. Bethany and I strolled down the streets where the whim took us, admiring the facades of churches and the music of buskers playing for wine-sipping diners. We would've liked to explore more, but we were both very tired and had a long day planned the next day, so we wandered our way back to our quiet room and got some much-needed sleep.
DAY SEVEN
We started our day with an amazing breakfast at the hostel: sausage and eggs, coffee and tea, toast and jam, all free (!!) and very delicious. Our first objective was to get tickets for a performance of fado, traditional Portuguese music, that night, but we hiked all the way up to the theater to find it closed. We finally got our tickets at a nearby mall and were ready to begin our sightseeing for the day.
Our Canadian friends from the night before had recommended that we visit an old church, only the skeleton of which remained after being destroyed in an earthquake, and an elevator that afforded a view of the whole city. We walked to the top of the elevator and had some very nice views from the bridge out to it, but they wouldn't let us up on the top viewing platform without a ticket. Screw that, we said (or I did; Bethany doesn't talk like that), and continued on.
We walked through the steep and winding streets down to the main square, Rossio, a very impressive public space framed on all sides by tall, pale, majestic buildings. Our aim here, though, was around the northeast corner of the square: a small hole-in-the-wall shop selling only cherry liqueur, which had also been suggested by our Canadian friends. We each had a taste (very sweet, with cherries floating in it!), bought some pastries at the bakery next door that had also been recommended, and continued on our way.
Our two main objectives of the day were the cathedral and the castle. Our map suggesting a walking route that connected the two through the beautiful Alfama neighborhood. I'd given Bethany the map for the day, and she got us safely to the cathedral, which was pretty but somewhat forbidding and gloomy. We didn't stay too long, since the day was bright and clear and we still had a lot to see. We wound our way through narrow alleyways between towering red-roofed white buildings, up and up the curving staircases, under laundry lines and flags, catching through narrow cracks occasional glimpses of the water shining in the sunlight below. We finally came out to a main street and marveled at the view: the jumble of red and white sloping away to the sea, crowned by majestic white churches in the distance. We paused here for a while to soak in the sun before continuing uphill.
We got a little lost, but a helpful security guard and a friendly Dutch tourist got us back on the right track, and we were soon inside the walls of Lisbon's castle. The castle sits hunkered down on the highest hill overlooking the city; the elevator that had seemed so high that morning was a small grey smudge far below. Bethany and I walked every inch of the castle complex: we visited the obligatory museum tracing the history of forifications on that spot; we visited every wall and turret in the castle itself; we visited a dig site for Muslim ruins; we even visited the cafe. The sun was bright and warm but not scorching, the sky a perfect blue, and the white city below, speckled with green and red and yellow, gleamed and shone. I could've sat up there all day in the sun, leaning on the warm stone, smelling the fresh air, breathing in the ocean and the sunlight and the beauty.
Time was short, though, and we needed to head out. We made our way back down the hill to our hostel, where we picked up our stuff, then we went by a grocery store and filled up our packs with food. Staggering back up to the Chiado district, we made our way to the theater and sat back to hear fado. This had been one of my priorities in Lisbon. Fado is a famous, very Portuguese musical style, full of sadness and longing, and the performance, though clearly aimed at tourists, didn't disappoint. Neither of us could understand a single word of the Portuguese lyrics, so we listened instead to the music of the words themselves. Fado would make any skeptic of phonaesthetics a believer; as far as I can tell, every word of Portuguese is euphonic.
From the theater we had to book it to the metro out of town. When we'd been planning our trip, I'd only really booked up to Lisbon, though we were planning to go on to Sevilla from there. Turns out that although Lisbon and Sevilla are geographically not far apart, and both major tourist attractions, there is no convenient direct transportation link between them at all, and taking either plane or train would lose us an entire day that we couldn't spare. The only solution was to take an overnight bus, departing from Lisbon at quarter to eight and arriving in Sevilla at five in the morning. Yippee.
After the plush, quiet theater and soulful music we had just experienced, it was a bit of a shock to sit in a garishly lit bus station, dreading the long trek ahead of us. We managed to find and get on the bus and settled in for a long night. I did not want to leave Lisbon at all, and watched as long as there were still lights going by. The seats were too small and, like airplane seats, seemingly designed to be as uncomfortable as possible, but sometime during the night we both managed to fall asleep and left Portugal behind in the darkness.
Showing posts with label castle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label castle. Show all posts
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
The Fringe Diaries
Edinburgh. Scotland. Land of bagpipes, kilts, thistles, haggis, the Picts, William Wallace, Robert the Bruce, and all manner of absurd stereotypes. And also, incidentally, of an enormous festival (several, actually) that takes over the city every summer. The original International Festival has been overshadowed by the Fringe Festival, mostly composed of theater and comedy, that grew up on the fringe (hence the name) of the original.
I was expecting something like a perpetual Cologne during Karneval: ankle-deep drifts of broken beer bottles, drunk people dressed up in inexplicable clothing staggering down the streets at midday, loud singing, and total chaos.
Hmm, well, not exactly...
Day 1: True to one particular stereotype, it was drizzling as I arrived in Edinburgh. I dumped my stuff at the hostel, checked my email (free WiFi, w00t!) and headed out to explore. Shannon had told me to look for the Walter Scott monument, which I promptly found: it's an enormous black Gothic spire in the middle of Princes Street Park. The Scottish really love this guy.
I wandered past the half-price booth and watched a Polish fire juggler's show before continuing up the hill to the Royal Mile. The center of the city is this stretch of road, actually a bit longer than a mile, defined by the castle on its volcanic-rock cliff at the top and Holyroodhouse Palace at the bottom. In between are pubs, bars, cafes, restaurants, historic buildings, theaters, houses, museums, and far too many tourist shops. Despite the overdose of national stereotypes spewing out of stores all too eager to sell you a kilt in "your family's" colors or salt and pepper shakers shaped like bagpipers (I seriously saw people buy these), a walk down the Mile is truly delightful--especially during the Festival, when parts of it are pedestrianized to allow for craft sellers' booths, flyerers, and street performers.
Just trying to take in the scenery and the feel of this place, I was nevertheless stopped by a street performance. The guy's entire routine consisted of interacting with his audience: mocking them, imitating people going by, digging through women's bags, and pretending to be in love. After his show, I wandered a bit more, but felt somewhat aimless; I didn't have anywhere to be, and in a busy city and busy festival where everyone else was going somewhere, it was a bit depressing. I ended up in a cafe run by a local church, which was offering free tea. Mm, tea. Coffee makes me confident and ready to go; tea makes me comfortable and calm. After I had drunk my tea and chatted with the staff a bit, I went back to the hostel to use my computer. I ended up in a conversation with two drunk Brits and two Canadians who were trying to play chess in the hostel bar. They were all very nice, but when they left to play pool, I headed off to bed.
Day 2: I started the day off with a "free" walking tour around the city, which took a staggering 3 1/2 hours--usually such tours are about 2 hours long. It was worth it, though, and very thorough. If you would like to know what I know about Edinburgh now, I suggest you go there and take the tour, because I'm not going to take the time to repeat what little of the tour I've retained. We talked about the castle, Greyfriar's Bobby, Harry Potter, and the Queen. It was great.
Afterward, our guide offered to take us to a pub where we could try fairly good haggis. A group of us from the tour decided to give it a shot, and I ordered the first plate of it, which all of us tried. To my utter astonishment, it was delicious. We hung out in the pub chatting for a while, then dispersed to go our separate ways; I stuck with a German girl who'd offered to show me where the university's offices were, and after getting lost a couple times, we finally found them. I got far more information about the university than I'll ever need and found out that there's a campus tour--something to file away.
I split up with the nice German girl and went to check out St. Giles' Cathedral on the Mile. The cathedral (which isn't technically a cathedral, but whatever, right?) sports some lovely stained glass and a very macho organ, but the best bit is the Thistle Chapel, where the Knights of the Thistle are inducted (or whatever they do to knights). For example, Sean Connery was knighted here. The chapel's itty bitty but very beautifully decorated, and there is a cherub playing the bagpipes. I love Scotland.
I got some dinner and headed to my first "real" show: a drama called 2020 vision, which turned out to be in the basement of a church. The play revolved around the idea of a future where everyone is microchipped and dependent upon technology for everything when a huge natural disaster strikes. It was very interestingly done and I was still packing up and thinking when the actors came back out to clean up and ask me what I thought. This is the thing that I love most about the Fringe--the opportunity, not just to see interesting shows, but to talk to the people who made them.
Day 3: I'd intended to spend the morning at the castle, but it took me too long to get going in the morning, and then the lure of the festival was too strong. I saw a free stand-up show in a somewhat dodgy bar and then headed back to the hostel to reserve tickets for the castle the next day and a show the day after. I'd intended to go to another show at 4, but I didn't have enough time, so I went to an improv musical at 5:30 instead.
If you haven't seen an improv musical, you should. The audience supplies the title of the musical, and with no opportunity to discuss anything, the actors improvise an entire hour-long musical from that single suggestion. Ours was entitled, "There's an Owl in the Shower," and started out as a story about shampoo coming alive and ended up with a ghost siccing a homicidal owl on a witch. Epic, to say the least.
The wet and drizzly weather had turned into a right downpour by the time the show let out, but I wasn't ready to go home, so I got a pizza for dinner from a takeout place and trundled off to the back room of another bar for another free comedy show by three guys I had talked to in the street earlier. It was getting dark when they finished, so I went back to the hostel to make some calls on Skype and eventually sleep.
Day 4: I finally managed to get myself going at a reasonable time and took myself up to the castle. Edinburgh Castle dominates the town's skyline and layout, even though it is (to be quite honest) not as imposing or impressive as other castles I've seen. It seems to important because it's perched on an extinct volcano, high up on sheer black cliffs on three sides, the fourth leading down the Royal Mile. Anyway, in the castle I saw the Honors of Scotland, a big-ass cannon, an interesting museum about Scots in war, and a demonstration about Scottish swordfighting, among other things. I managed to get myself some cream tea at about 4pm, after which I decided that it was high time I walk the whole length of the Royal Mile, since up till then I'd only seen about half of it.
At the bottom of the Mile I found the new Scottish Parliament building, which, while very significant politically and culturally, is kind of ridiculous to look at, all modern-art-y and covered in wooden accents. From there, some jutting hills frown down at the town, so I decided to climb up. A short, steep hike later and I had 360 degree views from Arthur's Seat: the rolling mountains in the distance, the Mile, the Castle, and all of Edinburgh looking very tiny, and the enormous expanse of water all the way to the horizon. It was gorgeous but very cold and windy, so I headed back down and began the trudge back up the Mile. Now, it was Sunday, and while this isn't usually a problem in big cities, that day every pub and restaurant that I poked my head into was either 1) shut or 2) full. Desperate for food--I hadn't eaten since tea, and that had been my whole lunch--I finally relented and got a sandwich at Subway. I watched part of a street show and then staggered back to the hostel.
Day 5: I started off in the National Museum of Scotland, which had a surprisingly interesting collection of artifacts from Scottish history, from ancient magical talismans and jewelry to harps, traditional garb, and some big-ass swords. I sadly only got through the first two floors (of six!) before I had to leave to go to another show.
This time it was more improv with a group called the Oxford Imps; they did many of the games that I've seen the Dead Parrots do at WWU, so it was quite fun, although I think the Parrots are better. (Uni loyalty and all that...) The best bit that they did was an improvised Shakespearean play about a foot doctor. After the show, I was right near the university, so I went on a walking tour around the university grounds. Although largely unhelpful in itself, the tour did give me a chance to talk to a U of Edinburgh graduate about life at the university and get some ideas with how to proceed. Accordingly, after the tour, I hunted down a linguistics professor to ask some more questions about applying. I also found Professor Pullum's office to take a picture (since he wasn't there...sadface), which was my one concession to my linguistic geekiness.
After some dinner, I had another show to go to. This was the only big-name show I'd chosen to see, mostly because it'd been recommended to be by the receptionist at the hostel, who said this guy was brilliant. It was a one-man stand-up show by a guy named Danny Bhoy, and his show was wonderfully hilarious and far too short. He's cute, too. All told, very good.
Day 6: I decided that I needed something a little different, so instead of heading straight for the Mile like usual, I went the other way and wandered into Edinburgh's Georgian New Town. The New Town is street after street of dignified, bay-windowed, grey-brown Georgian buildings, pretty but monotonous, but soon I came across a beautiful church to look around, so then I was happy. From there I headed back to the Mile and ended up seeing a half-price show called "Of People and Not Things", which, while touching, was essentially two half-hour monologues about losing the one you love being the end of the world. From there, I went on to a free show that had been recommended to me, but it ended up being so raunchy that I left early and went instead to another show that I'd been wanting to see: a showcase of comedians who were required to give a completely clean show. After what I'd just seen, that sounded very good to me.
The clean show was a big improvement, and I left feeling much better. Outside the door, I got into a conversation with a girl doing flyering for a show by Kev Orkian. We chatted for a while and she invited me to go to the show with her and a friend, so I agreed--why not? On our way to get tickets, I took some of the flyers and tried my hand at flyering, something I'd wanted to try ever since I'd started talking to flyerers on the street.
Kev's show was one of the best I'd seen. He impersonated Elton John and made jokes about being an immigrant from Armenia, complete with linguistic jokes (hooray!). I even got a hug from him after the show. I walked around for a bit with my new acquaintance, Naomi, and her friend, then I split off to get a late dinner at a pub before bed.
Day 7: Whew, last day. Through chatting with a flyerer, I ended up at an American's stand-up show that was just short of painfully bad, so after I escaped I decided to take a break and enjoy the sunshine a bit. I therefore headed to Calton Park to have a picnic lunch and enjoy the view of the city center and Arthur's Seat. Wandering back into the city, I stopped to watch a street magician and got selected as the "volunteer" assistant to help the magician in his death-defying stunts. That's never happened to me before, so I'm still smiling about it.
I'd been wanting to go to a show called "I bought Richard Hammond's underpants on eBay", which is how I found myself sitting in the dark in a musty cellar with about ten other people, singing along and playing a paper drum with a plastic spoon. The show was very cute, and I got some pin badges with the show's name on them that I shall wear proudly. I'd heard about another free show that happened to be just up the street, so I popped in just in time. The pirate-themed show, entitled "Jollyboat", was definitely the best free show I'd seen and included a Darren-Brown-type act by a kid bearing a remarkable resemblance to Ron Weasley. I thought that I should just go home after than and end on a high note, but it felt too early to go home, so I got a ginger beer at a bar and saw a final free show that was mediocre at best. I trundled back to the hostel and watched White Collar until a ridiculous time in the morning.
Day 8: I left my stuff at the hostel and headed back to the National Museum to see some of the stuff I'd missed, but I couldn't really make myself concentrate. After lingering on the Mile for a while, I finally picked up my bags on hopped on the train to Glasgow.
Now I know that was detail-less and boring, so if you're still reading, congrats and here's why. Edinburgh was something of a turbulent and weird week for me. Everyone I'd talked to about Edinburgh was rapturous about how wonderful it is, so my expectations were already sky-high. Besides that, every day I was there I was in a constant state of agonizing indecision: should I stay the full week? Could my time be better spent somewhere else? How many shows did I want to see? Whenever I was in a show, I felt guilty for spending the money to see another show, and whenever I didn't go to a show, I felt guilty for wasting time that I could've spent doing something more fun. No matter what I did, I simply couldn't get myself to relax. Add to this that two months of travel are starting to wear on me and the whole thing felt like going to a beautiful venue for a concert of Beethoven's 9th by a master musician playing the kazoo. Almost all the ingredients were right, but there was always something buzzing in the back of my head.
That said, I really did like Edinburgh. Well...at least, I've thoroughly convinced myself that I did, and there's no reason not to. First of all, the idea of city with a castle right smack in the middle always makes me smile, and Edinburgh is kind of shockingly beautiful, with the imposing buildings of the Mile, the New Town, and all the monuments and parks and such. I met many nice people there, and I do quite love Scotland. But because of everything I said in the last paragraph, I don't love it as much as I might've under other circumstances. There's something standoffish about it, something a little bit off. I can't describe it, but having visited a few different cities this summer, I have a pretty good sense of which cities I like--Dublin, London, Venice, and Salzburg, for instance--and which I don't. And Edinburgh is somewhere in the no man's land in the middle.
So, if you ask me whether I had a good time in Edinburgh, whether I liked it there, I honestly don't know. It's weird, I know. Sorry.
Anyway, by far the most interesting thing I did during my week in Edinburgh was talk to the flyerers. The top half of the Mile during the day is a guantlet of people--either the performers themselves or people paid a pittance to stand in the street for five hours--handing out flyers for shows of all kinds. I took every flyer offered to me and requested quite a few as well--for some reason, I often wasn't offered one--and ended up throwing away a stack of paper several inches tall when I left. The great thing is, though, that the flyerers are there to talk to passersby and convince them to come to the show. They have to be friendly or they risk you walking away. This means you can have some really interesting conversations with flyerers, especially paid ones, since they don't have the vested interested in getting as many people as possible to come. The performers doing their own flyering were also very interesting, too--you really just get to chat with them about their show, why they've come to the festival, where they're from, etc. I had some really nice conversation with some very interesting flyerers and ended up going to a lot of the shows when the flyerer took the time to talk to me. Since I was so interested in this, it was really cool that I got to try flyering myself with Naomi.
So, come time to apply for grad schools, I will definitely be applying in Edinburgh. It seems like a great place to live and a very good university. There're tons of the things to do and the people tend to be fantastic, as well as having a perfectly delightful dialect. In my head, Edinburgh was everything it should've been, for some unfathomable reason, it didn't capture my heart.
I was expecting something like a perpetual Cologne during Karneval: ankle-deep drifts of broken beer bottles, drunk people dressed up in inexplicable clothing staggering down the streets at midday, loud singing, and total chaos.
Hmm, well, not exactly...
Day 1: True to one particular stereotype, it was drizzling as I arrived in Edinburgh. I dumped my stuff at the hostel, checked my email (free WiFi, w00t!) and headed out to explore. Shannon had told me to look for the Walter Scott monument, which I promptly found: it's an enormous black Gothic spire in the middle of Princes Street Park. The Scottish really love this guy.
I wandered past the half-price booth and watched a Polish fire juggler's show before continuing up the hill to the Royal Mile. The center of the city is this stretch of road, actually a bit longer than a mile, defined by the castle on its volcanic-rock cliff at the top and Holyroodhouse Palace at the bottom. In between are pubs, bars, cafes, restaurants, historic buildings, theaters, houses, museums, and far too many tourist shops. Despite the overdose of national stereotypes spewing out of stores all too eager to sell you a kilt in "your family's" colors or salt and pepper shakers shaped like bagpipers (I seriously saw people buy these), a walk down the Mile is truly delightful--especially during the Festival, when parts of it are pedestrianized to allow for craft sellers' booths, flyerers, and street performers.
Just trying to take in the scenery and the feel of this place, I was nevertheless stopped by a street performance. The guy's entire routine consisted of interacting with his audience: mocking them, imitating people going by, digging through women's bags, and pretending to be in love. After his show, I wandered a bit more, but felt somewhat aimless; I didn't have anywhere to be, and in a busy city and busy festival where everyone else was going somewhere, it was a bit depressing. I ended up in a cafe run by a local church, which was offering free tea. Mm, tea. Coffee makes me confident and ready to go; tea makes me comfortable and calm. After I had drunk my tea and chatted with the staff a bit, I went back to the hostel to use my computer. I ended up in a conversation with two drunk Brits and two Canadians who were trying to play chess in the hostel bar. They were all very nice, but when they left to play pool, I headed off to bed.
Day 2: I started the day off with a "free" walking tour around the city, which took a staggering 3 1/2 hours--usually such tours are about 2 hours long. It was worth it, though, and very thorough. If you would like to know what I know about Edinburgh now, I suggest you go there and take the tour, because I'm not going to take the time to repeat what little of the tour I've retained. We talked about the castle, Greyfriar's Bobby, Harry Potter, and the Queen. It was great.
Afterward, our guide offered to take us to a pub where we could try fairly good haggis. A group of us from the tour decided to give it a shot, and I ordered the first plate of it, which all of us tried. To my utter astonishment, it was delicious. We hung out in the pub chatting for a while, then dispersed to go our separate ways; I stuck with a German girl who'd offered to show me where the university's offices were, and after getting lost a couple times, we finally found them. I got far more information about the university than I'll ever need and found out that there's a campus tour--something to file away.
I split up with the nice German girl and went to check out St. Giles' Cathedral on the Mile. The cathedral (which isn't technically a cathedral, but whatever, right?) sports some lovely stained glass and a very macho organ, but the best bit is the Thistle Chapel, where the Knights of the Thistle are inducted (or whatever they do to knights). For example, Sean Connery was knighted here. The chapel's itty bitty but very beautifully decorated, and there is a cherub playing the bagpipes. I love Scotland.
I got some dinner and headed to my first "real" show: a drama called 2020 vision, which turned out to be in the basement of a church. The play revolved around the idea of a future where everyone is microchipped and dependent upon technology for everything when a huge natural disaster strikes. It was very interestingly done and I was still packing up and thinking when the actors came back out to clean up and ask me what I thought. This is the thing that I love most about the Fringe--the opportunity, not just to see interesting shows, but to talk to the people who made them.
Day 3: I'd intended to spend the morning at the castle, but it took me too long to get going in the morning, and then the lure of the festival was too strong. I saw a free stand-up show in a somewhat dodgy bar and then headed back to the hostel to reserve tickets for the castle the next day and a show the day after. I'd intended to go to another show at 4, but I didn't have enough time, so I went to an improv musical at 5:30 instead.
If you haven't seen an improv musical, you should. The audience supplies the title of the musical, and with no opportunity to discuss anything, the actors improvise an entire hour-long musical from that single suggestion. Ours was entitled, "There's an Owl in the Shower," and started out as a story about shampoo coming alive and ended up with a ghost siccing a homicidal owl on a witch. Epic, to say the least.
The wet and drizzly weather had turned into a right downpour by the time the show let out, but I wasn't ready to go home, so I got a pizza for dinner from a takeout place and trundled off to the back room of another bar for another free comedy show by three guys I had talked to in the street earlier. It was getting dark when they finished, so I went back to the hostel to make some calls on Skype and eventually sleep.
Day 4: I finally managed to get myself going at a reasonable time and took myself up to the castle. Edinburgh Castle dominates the town's skyline and layout, even though it is (to be quite honest) not as imposing or impressive as other castles I've seen. It seems to important because it's perched on an extinct volcano, high up on sheer black cliffs on three sides, the fourth leading down the Royal Mile. Anyway, in the castle I saw the Honors of Scotland, a big-ass cannon, an interesting museum about Scots in war, and a demonstration about Scottish swordfighting, among other things. I managed to get myself some cream tea at about 4pm, after which I decided that it was high time I walk the whole length of the Royal Mile, since up till then I'd only seen about half of it.
At the bottom of the Mile I found the new Scottish Parliament building, which, while very significant politically and culturally, is kind of ridiculous to look at, all modern-art-y and covered in wooden accents. From there, some jutting hills frown down at the town, so I decided to climb up. A short, steep hike later and I had 360 degree views from Arthur's Seat: the rolling mountains in the distance, the Mile, the Castle, and all of Edinburgh looking very tiny, and the enormous expanse of water all the way to the horizon. It was gorgeous but very cold and windy, so I headed back down and began the trudge back up the Mile. Now, it was Sunday, and while this isn't usually a problem in big cities, that day every pub and restaurant that I poked my head into was either 1) shut or 2) full. Desperate for food--I hadn't eaten since tea, and that had been my whole lunch--I finally relented and got a sandwich at Subway. I watched part of a street show and then staggered back to the hostel.
Day 5: I started off in the National Museum of Scotland, which had a surprisingly interesting collection of artifacts from Scottish history, from ancient magical talismans and jewelry to harps, traditional garb, and some big-ass swords. I sadly only got through the first two floors (of six!) before I had to leave to go to another show.
This time it was more improv with a group called the Oxford Imps; they did many of the games that I've seen the Dead Parrots do at WWU, so it was quite fun, although I think the Parrots are better. (Uni loyalty and all that...) The best bit that they did was an improvised Shakespearean play about a foot doctor. After the show, I was right near the university, so I went on a walking tour around the university grounds. Although largely unhelpful in itself, the tour did give me a chance to talk to a U of Edinburgh graduate about life at the university and get some ideas with how to proceed. Accordingly, after the tour, I hunted down a linguistics professor to ask some more questions about applying. I also found Professor Pullum's office to take a picture (since he wasn't there...sadface), which was my one concession to my linguistic geekiness.
After some dinner, I had another show to go to. This was the only big-name show I'd chosen to see, mostly because it'd been recommended to be by the receptionist at the hostel, who said this guy was brilliant. It was a one-man stand-up show by a guy named Danny Bhoy, and his show was wonderfully hilarious and far too short. He's cute, too. All told, very good.
Day 6: I decided that I needed something a little different, so instead of heading straight for the Mile like usual, I went the other way and wandered into Edinburgh's Georgian New Town. The New Town is street after street of dignified, bay-windowed, grey-brown Georgian buildings, pretty but monotonous, but soon I came across a beautiful church to look around, so then I was happy. From there I headed back to the Mile and ended up seeing a half-price show called "Of People and Not Things", which, while touching, was essentially two half-hour monologues about losing the one you love being the end of the world. From there, I went on to a free show that had been recommended to me, but it ended up being so raunchy that I left early and went instead to another show that I'd been wanting to see: a showcase of comedians who were required to give a completely clean show. After what I'd just seen, that sounded very good to me.
The clean show was a big improvement, and I left feeling much better. Outside the door, I got into a conversation with a girl doing flyering for a show by Kev Orkian. We chatted for a while and she invited me to go to the show with her and a friend, so I agreed--why not? On our way to get tickets, I took some of the flyers and tried my hand at flyering, something I'd wanted to try ever since I'd started talking to flyerers on the street.
Kev's show was one of the best I'd seen. He impersonated Elton John and made jokes about being an immigrant from Armenia, complete with linguistic jokes (hooray!). I even got a hug from him after the show. I walked around for a bit with my new acquaintance, Naomi, and her friend, then I split off to get a late dinner at a pub before bed.
Day 7: Whew, last day. Through chatting with a flyerer, I ended up at an American's stand-up show that was just short of painfully bad, so after I escaped I decided to take a break and enjoy the sunshine a bit. I therefore headed to Calton Park to have a picnic lunch and enjoy the view of the city center and Arthur's Seat. Wandering back into the city, I stopped to watch a street magician and got selected as the "volunteer" assistant to help the magician in his death-defying stunts. That's never happened to me before, so I'm still smiling about it.
I'd been wanting to go to a show called "I bought Richard Hammond's underpants on eBay", which is how I found myself sitting in the dark in a musty cellar with about ten other people, singing along and playing a paper drum with a plastic spoon. The show was very cute, and I got some pin badges with the show's name on them that I shall wear proudly. I'd heard about another free show that happened to be just up the street, so I popped in just in time. The pirate-themed show, entitled "Jollyboat", was definitely the best free show I'd seen and included a Darren-Brown-type act by a kid bearing a remarkable resemblance to Ron Weasley. I thought that I should just go home after than and end on a high note, but it felt too early to go home, so I got a ginger beer at a bar and saw a final free show that was mediocre at best. I trundled back to the hostel and watched White Collar until a ridiculous time in the morning.
Day 8: I left my stuff at the hostel and headed back to the National Museum to see some of the stuff I'd missed, but I couldn't really make myself concentrate. After lingering on the Mile for a while, I finally picked up my bags on hopped on the train to Glasgow.
Now I know that was detail-less and boring, so if you're still reading, congrats and here's why. Edinburgh was something of a turbulent and weird week for me. Everyone I'd talked to about Edinburgh was rapturous about how wonderful it is, so my expectations were already sky-high. Besides that, every day I was there I was in a constant state of agonizing indecision: should I stay the full week? Could my time be better spent somewhere else? How many shows did I want to see? Whenever I was in a show, I felt guilty for spending the money to see another show, and whenever I didn't go to a show, I felt guilty for wasting time that I could've spent doing something more fun. No matter what I did, I simply couldn't get myself to relax. Add to this that two months of travel are starting to wear on me and the whole thing felt like going to a beautiful venue for a concert of Beethoven's 9th by a master musician playing the kazoo. Almost all the ingredients were right, but there was always something buzzing in the back of my head.
That said, I really did like Edinburgh. Well...at least, I've thoroughly convinced myself that I did, and there's no reason not to. First of all, the idea of city with a castle right smack in the middle always makes me smile, and Edinburgh is kind of shockingly beautiful, with the imposing buildings of the Mile, the New Town, and all the monuments and parks and such. I met many nice people there, and I do quite love Scotland. But because of everything I said in the last paragraph, I don't love it as much as I might've under other circumstances. There's something standoffish about it, something a little bit off. I can't describe it, but having visited a few different cities this summer, I have a pretty good sense of which cities I like--Dublin, London, Venice, and Salzburg, for instance--and which I don't. And Edinburgh is somewhere in the no man's land in the middle.
So, if you ask me whether I had a good time in Edinburgh, whether I liked it there, I honestly don't know. It's weird, I know. Sorry.
Anyway, by far the most interesting thing I did during my week in Edinburgh was talk to the flyerers. The top half of the Mile during the day is a guantlet of people--either the performers themselves or people paid a pittance to stand in the street for five hours--handing out flyers for shows of all kinds. I took every flyer offered to me and requested quite a few as well--for some reason, I often wasn't offered one--and ended up throwing away a stack of paper several inches tall when I left. The great thing is, though, that the flyerers are there to talk to passersby and convince them to come to the show. They have to be friendly or they risk you walking away. This means you can have some really interesting conversations with flyerers, especially paid ones, since they don't have the vested interested in getting as many people as possible to come. The performers doing their own flyering were also very interesting, too--you really just get to chat with them about their show, why they've come to the festival, where they're from, etc. I had some really nice conversation with some very interesting flyerers and ended up going to a lot of the shows when the flyerer took the time to talk to me. Since I was so interested in this, it was really cool that I got to try flyering myself with Naomi.
So, come time to apply for grad schools, I will definitely be applying in Edinburgh. It seems like a great place to live and a very good university. There're tons of the things to do and the people tend to be fantastic, as well as having a perfectly delightful dialect. In my head, Edinburgh was everything it should've been, for some unfathomable reason, it didn't capture my heart.
Friday, August 20, 2010
Wondering in Wales
Where was I? Oh, yes, on a small train platform somewhere in Wales.
Over the course of this trip, the First Day Rule has kind of transmogrified itself from a fun idea into a tradition. As I mentioned in the post on Venice, what it means is that, if I arrive in a new city with time to spare before bedtime, I drop off my stuff in my hostel and then set out with minimal use of a map and with no clear sightseeing priorities. The aim is to get a taste of the city just as it is--get the flavor and feeling of the streets, the basic city layout, the locations (although usually quickly forgotten) of important things like grocery stores, Greggs, and McDonalds--the latter for Internet, of course.
Conwy, my home from the 8th to the 10th, was no different. Having been unable to book a bed in the hostel, I'd instead gone for a B&B just outside the town. This was total luxury: a quiet, airy room to myself with an utterly enormous bed, my own bathroom (!), and free WiFi. Soon enough, though, I was heading back down the quiet country road to the town to have a look around--it's tradition.
Conwy, as it turns out, is positively delightful. There was just about nothing here until the time of Edward I, who decided to show those troublesome Welsh who was boss once and for all. To do this, he built Conwy Castle and the walled town of Conwy at the strategic crossing of the Conwy River, along with many other castles throughout the country. The point of the castle was to keep the local Welsh in line, and for its purpose, could be conservatively called "total overkill." The enormous structure, with drawbridges, portcullises, murder holes, fallbacks, moats and the like, was never taken by force, and you can see why: for the time, it was pretty much impregnable. Apparently, though, Owen Glendower, a Welsh rebel leader, bribed the gatekeeper and managed to take it in a brief uprising before he got squashed. (For the lulz, I'd like to point out a sentence from that Wikipedia article: "Glyndŵr was a descendant of the Princes of Powys from his father Gruffydd Fychan II, hereditary Tywysog of Powys Fadog and Lord of Glyndyfrdwy, and of those of Deheubarth through his mother Elen ferch Tomas ap Llywelyn." Yes, I've always wanted to be hereditary Tywysog of Powys Fadog. Note to self: learn Welsh.)
In any case, the town of Conwy inside the protective walls of the castle was set up for English immigrants, but it doesn't seem to have gotten very far past its original confines. A good word may be "sleepy." Sure, there are cars and Spar supermarkets and such, but walking down the streets, you kind of get the feeling that if you poked one of the buildings hard enough, it would wake up with a grumble and ask you if it was 1500 yet.
I found my way down to the waterfront as the sun was going down. The mighty castle, now crumbling but still standing tall above the roofline, dominated one end of the promenade, while the little boats anchored just offshore guarded the river. I strolled somewhat aimlessly along until I came to a mother, her teenage daughter and friend and tweenage son, doing something rather incomprehensible off the quayside. They had a small netting bag filled with raw bacon, which they threw over into the water and waited. After a few seconds, they'd pull the bag up, except now it would be covered with two or three crabs smaller than the palm of my hand, which hung on tenaciously until they were scooped up in a net and plunked into a bucket of water with their fellow prisoners. I stopped to inquire what they were doing, offered to identify the sex of the crabs (useful life skill, that) and ended up chatting and crab-fishing with them until after dark. When we split up, they counted out the seething bucket of crabs one by one as they tossed them back into the water, for a total of somewhere around 68, I think--a record for them. I said goodnightand made my way back to my B&B for some QI.
I came stumbling down the stairs the next morning just in time for breakfast, which was staggeringly enormous. I could hardly totter back up the stairs to get my stuff, stuffed as I was with grapefruit, eggs, bacon, sausage, beans, toast, and three cups of coffee. I made it somehow and headed for my sightseeing priority: the castle.
It is truly astounding to visit a place like this. On the one hand, you have the actual structure as it appears before your eyes which, although large, is really a whole lot of crumbly stone towers and lichen-coated walls with slots and holes in strange places. Within a few seconds, though, with the right slant of the sun and a dash of imagination, the old rooms come alive. Those grooves are where the portcullis slid down, and the big holes are where the big oak beams for the doors would slide in, or where defending soldiers could throw down stones or boiling liquid on potential invaders. The shelves in the walls of towers were where the wooden floors would rest, dividing towers into three or four floors while they're now open to the sky.
But one of the best things to do is find a quiet room, away from the tourists and family with howling three-year-olds. Although the sun is shining brightly, in the shade of the stones it's dim, cool and damp, so all you have to do is squint to rebuild the vaulted roof. Hang bright tapestries from the walls and add flickering candles; in the fireplace, build a roaring fire. Curl up in a wall seat and admire the room, well-furnished--it is, after all, one of the king's. And here he comes through the door, waving off an attendant, rubbing at his temples. The Welsh are unhappy, are grumbling, are planning rebellion. Something has to be done.
Then two children, chased by their mum with a pram, come in skipping and shouting and the whole fantasy evaporates into the sea air. Once again, you're back in the modern age, and you shake off the smell of smoke from the fireplace and blink in the sunlight. Slipping back in time is not hard in a place like this. In fact, it might happen if you just don't pay attention long enough. Make a wrong turning, find yourself in an abandoned passageway or chamber, and you start to wonder if the footsteps around the corner belong to a day-tripper from Manchester or a knight. The entire run-down, moss-covered ruin of former grandeur is still saturated with memory.
As you may imagine, I spent almost the whole day here. I left for a bit to get some lunch, came back, and ate my steak pie and vanilla cake at the top of the highest tower with a view up the Conwy, down the estuary toward the sea, over the tops of the castle walls, and out into the rolling green Welsh countryside.
I finally managed to tear myself away from the castle and wander around the town walls and down on the quay for a bit until a seagull pooped on me and I had to book it back home to wash it off. I changed quickly and made it into town, just in time for the start of a walking tour. The kind and friendly guide, Judy, took a very small group of us around town, pointing out details and telling us ghost stories. When we were done, I got a dinner of fish and chips and headed back to the B&B for some grease-soaked goodness.
After another enormous breakfast, I left the B&B the next morning and got on the bus to Caernarfon. Bigger, Welsh-er (apparently), and home to another huge castle from Edward I's time, Caernarfon is close enough to Conwy that I could day-trip there before heading to Manchester. Whereas Conwy feels like it could just as easily be in 2010 or 1510, Caernarfon is much more solidly modern. It, too, though, has a ruined castle, which was the purpose of my visit.
Now, Conwy Castle felt ultimately like a ruin: a dilapidated, sad, and strangely beautiful in its decay. Caernarfon Castle, on the other hand, felt somewhat strangely like a structure someone had built to look and feel exactly like a ruined castle but actually be a tourist attraction. Why this is I cannot really explain, although part of it might be the bafflingly nonsensical layout--there were some floors and hallways that I could not, for the life or me, figure out how to access, and long, curving corridors would end abruptly in tiny toilets--and part may be the converted sections housing a gift shop, video theater, and military museum. Nonetheless, I spent a couple happy hours here getting cheerfully lost before it was time to head back to the bus.
I trundled through town on my way to pick up lunch, which included a piece of cake covered in glitter. No, not sprinkles, glitter. Edible glitter. Yes, this was the only reason I bought it. Although it was delicious.
I said a sad farewell to the Welsh seashore that washed by my window. A few hours later, I stepped off the train to an unassuming platform in Hale, England, and met my new host. But that's a story for the next post...
P.S. Pictures coming eventually. :)
Over the course of this trip, the First Day Rule has kind of transmogrified itself from a fun idea into a tradition. As I mentioned in the post on Venice, what it means is that, if I arrive in a new city with time to spare before bedtime, I drop off my stuff in my hostel and then set out with minimal use of a map and with no clear sightseeing priorities. The aim is to get a taste of the city just as it is--get the flavor and feeling of the streets, the basic city layout, the locations (although usually quickly forgotten) of important things like grocery stores, Greggs, and McDonalds--the latter for Internet, of course.
Conwy, my home from the 8th to the 10th, was no different. Having been unable to book a bed in the hostel, I'd instead gone for a B&B just outside the town. This was total luxury: a quiet, airy room to myself with an utterly enormous bed, my own bathroom (!), and free WiFi. Soon enough, though, I was heading back down the quiet country road to the town to have a look around--it's tradition.
Conwy, as it turns out, is positively delightful. There was just about nothing here until the time of Edward I, who decided to show those troublesome Welsh who was boss once and for all. To do this, he built Conwy Castle and the walled town of Conwy at the strategic crossing of the Conwy River, along with many other castles throughout the country. The point of the castle was to keep the local Welsh in line, and for its purpose, could be conservatively called "total overkill." The enormous structure, with drawbridges, portcullises, murder holes, fallbacks, moats and the like, was never taken by force, and you can see why: for the time, it was pretty much impregnable. Apparently, though, Owen Glendower, a Welsh rebel leader, bribed the gatekeeper and managed to take it in a brief uprising before he got squashed. (For the lulz, I'd like to point out a sentence from that Wikipedia article: "Glyndŵr was a descendant of the Princes of Powys from his father Gruffydd Fychan II, hereditary Tywysog of Powys Fadog and Lord of Glyndyfrdwy, and of those of Deheubarth through his mother Elen ferch Tomas ap Llywelyn." Yes, I've always wanted to be hereditary Tywysog of Powys Fadog. Note to self: learn Welsh.)
In any case, the town of Conwy inside the protective walls of the castle was set up for English immigrants, but it doesn't seem to have gotten very far past its original confines. A good word may be "sleepy." Sure, there are cars and Spar supermarkets and such, but walking down the streets, you kind of get the feeling that if you poked one of the buildings hard enough, it would wake up with a grumble and ask you if it was 1500 yet.
I found my way down to the waterfront as the sun was going down. The mighty castle, now crumbling but still standing tall above the roofline, dominated one end of the promenade, while the little boats anchored just offshore guarded the river. I strolled somewhat aimlessly along until I came to a mother, her teenage daughter and friend and tweenage son, doing something rather incomprehensible off the quayside. They had a small netting bag filled with raw bacon, which they threw over into the water and waited. After a few seconds, they'd pull the bag up, except now it would be covered with two or three crabs smaller than the palm of my hand, which hung on tenaciously until they were scooped up in a net and plunked into a bucket of water with their fellow prisoners. I stopped to inquire what they were doing, offered to identify the sex of the crabs (useful life skill, that) and ended up chatting and crab-fishing with them until after dark. When we split up, they counted out the seething bucket of crabs one by one as they tossed them back into the water, for a total of somewhere around 68, I think--a record for them. I said goodnightand made my way back to my B&B for some QI.
I came stumbling down the stairs the next morning just in time for breakfast, which was staggeringly enormous. I could hardly totter back up the stairs to get my stuff, stuffed as I was with grapefruit, eggs, bacon, sausage, beans, toast, and three cups of coffee. I made it somehow and headed for my sightseeing priority: the castle.
It is truly astounding to visit a place like this. On the one hand, you have the actual structure as it appears before your eyes which, although large, is really a whole lot of crumbly stone towers and lichen-coated walls with slots and holes in strange places. Within a few seconds, though, with the right slant of the sun and a dash of imagination, the old rooms come alive. Those grooves are where the portcullis slid down, and the big holes are where the big oak beams for the doors would slide in, or where defending soldiers could throw down stones or boiling liquid on potential invaders. The shelves in the walls of towers were where the wooden floors would rest, dividing towers into three or four floors while they're now open to the sky.
But one of the best things to do is find a quiet room, away from the tourists and family with howling three-year-olds. Although the sun is shining brightly, in the shade of the stones it's dim, cool and damp, so all you have to do is squint to rebuild the vaulted roof. Hang bright tapestries from the walls and add flickering candles; in the fireplace, build a roaring fire. Curl up in a wall seat and admire the room, well-furnished--it is, after all, one of the king's. And here he comes through the door, waving off an attendant, rubbing at his temples. The Welsh are unhappy, are grumbling, are planning rebellion. Something has to be done.
Then two children, chased by their mum with a pram, come in skipping and shouting and the whole fantasy evaporates into the sea air. Once again, you're back in the modern age, and you shake off the smell of smoke from the fireplace and blink in the sunlight. Slipping back in time is not hard in a place like this. In fact, it might happen if you just don't pay attention long enough. Make a wrong turning, find yourself in an abandoned passageway or chamber, and you start to wonder if the footsteps around the corner belong to a day-tripper from Manchester or a knight. The entire run-down, moss-covered ruin of former grandeur is still saturated with memory.
As you may imagine, I spent almost the whole day here. I left for a bit to get some lunch, came back, and ate my steak pie and vanilla cake at the top of the highest tower with a view up the Conwy, down the estuary toward the sea, over the tops of the castle walls, and out into the rolling green Welsh countryside.
I finally managed to tear myself away from the castle and wander around the town walls and down on the quay for a bit until a seagull pooped on me and I had to book it back home to wash it off. I changed quickly and made it into town, just in time for the start of a walking tour. The kind and friendly guide, Judy, took a very small group of us around town, pointing out details and telling us ghost stories. When we were done, I got a dinner of fish and chips and headed back to the B&B for some grease-soaked goodness.
After another enormous breakfast, I left the B&B the next morning and got on the bus to Caernarfon. Bigger, Welsh-er (apparently), and home to another huge castle from Edward I's time, Caernarfon is close enough to Conwy that I could day-trip there before heading to Manchester. Whereas Conwy feels like it could just as easily be in 2010 or 1510, Caernarfon is much more solidly modern. It, too, though, has a ruined castle, which was the purpose of my visit.
Now, Conwy Castle felt ultimately like a ruin: a dilapidated, sad, and strangely beautiful in its decay. Caernarfon Castle, on the other hand, felt somewhat strangely like a structure someone had built to look and feel exactly like a ruined castle but actually be a tourist attraction. Why this is I cannot really explain, although part of it might be the bafflingly nonsensical layout--there were some floors and hallways that I could not, for the life or me, figure out how to access, and long, curving corridors would end abruptly in tiny toilets--and part may be the converted sections housing a gift shop, video theater, and military museum. Nonetheless, I spent a couple happy hours here getting cheerfully lost before it was time to head back to the bus.
I trundled through town on my way to pick up lunch, which included a piece of cake covered in glitter. No, not sprinkles, glitter. Edible glitter. Yes, this was the only reason I bought it. Although it was delicious.
I said a sad farewell to the Welsh seashore that washed by my window. A few hours later, I stepped off the train to an unassuming platform in Hale, England, and met my new host. But that's a story for the next post...
P.S. Pictures coming eventually. :)
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Storms Over Salzburg
Originally written July 22nd
Whew. That was scary. For a few minutes, my poor computer refused to boot up and kept shutting itself off. I hope we're past that now.
As I write to you from my bunk in a hostel in the side of a cliff in Salzburg, I can see through the window that the sky is lighting up with flashes of purple--and there's the thunder, too. It appears the storm is back.
It's been hot and muggy in Salzburg all day. That's quite a change from when I was here last with Jewell, and just caught a glimpse of the city on our way to Vienna. My only impressions were clear skies and a stunning blue mountain crowned in white. The mountains are still stunning and blue, but now it's difficult to discern their shapes against the summer haze in the distance.
Our hostel is perched on the top of a cliff overlooking the Old Town and the Hohensalzburg Fortress. Oh, lovely, the rain's begun; maybe it'll cool down. Right, cliff--this means we have to take an elevator to get to our hostel (like the Aufzug in Marburg, except you have to pay for it), but it also means that instead of traffic noise, city racket and drunken tourists outside our window, we have rain, the wind in the trees, and...drunken tourists (they're everywhere).
This afternoon, we hiked up to and toured the fortress, which is a huge hulk of white-plastered majesty presiding over the city like the figurines on a wedding cake. Which is actually not that obscure of a mental image, because Salzburg is surprisingly white with dark rooftops, quite a change from Prague's red tile roofs and application with wild abandon of riotous pastel colors to every flat surface. In contrast, Salzburg looks monochromatically dignified, like the house of an elderly woman who has chosen to decorate her house entirely in white. Maybe this was a tribute to the importance of salt in Salzburg's history. Maybe it's the natural color of the local building stone. Maybe there were a lot of ambitious and controlling little old ladies on Salzburg's decorations council. The world may never know.
Anyway, the fortress looks just like an imposing medieval fortress should: big, with lots of walls and turrets and parapets and cannons pointed toward the town. The best moment was climbing out on the highest bit with a 360-degree view of Salzburg in the hazy light of early evening. There were some museums and such that we dashed through as well, but really, the impressive exterior view and wandering around the courtyards and towers were the best parts.
Sheesh, it's really coming down hard now. I hope it keeps going to cool off the air and get rid of all the rain so we can have nice, if cooler, weather for our stay here.
We took the funicular down from the castle and rambled a bit through the streets and alleyways of the old town, waving at the statue of Mozart on the way. We stopped for a late dinner at a cute outdoor Italian place, but just as we got our food, there were amethyst flashes in the distance, ominous growlings, and then the first drops of rain. We scootched under an umbrella to finish our food and then went straight back to our hostel, where there's a lovely old ruined wall with a second that juts out from the cliff, affording a sweeping view of the city and of the lightning-lit clouds in the distance.
The storm stayed fairly far from us, but the purple light was dancing everywhere, pulsing like a strobe light. Still, there is nothing like being outside, exposed, and high up in the midst of a summer thunderstorm. Every swish of the leaves on the trees and ominous silences of the cicadas seem to be harbingers of doom, but then the horizon ignites and a glowing thread leaps from heaven to earth, and you forget that at any second your brain could be fried and your heart exploded by a strike from the heavens because it is so awesomely, wondrously, fantastically beautiful.
Mom and Janna have both fallen asleep, and I'm about to do the same. Assuming it's not still raining in the morning (and even if it is--oh well) we have a lot to do. Mozart and the Sound of Music await.
Whew. That was scary. For a few minutes, my poor computer refused to boot up and kept shutting itself off. I hope we're past that now.
As I write to you from my bunk in a hostel in the side of a cliff in Salzburg, I can see through the window that the sky is lighting up with flashes of purple--and there's the thunder, too. It appears the storm is back.
It's been hot and muggy in Salzburg all day. That's quite a change from when I was here last with Jewell, and just caught a glimpse of the city on our way to Vienna. My only impressions were clear skies and a stunning blue mountain crowned in white. The mountains are still stunning and blue, but now it's difficult to discern their shapes against the summer haze in the distance.
Our hostel is perched on the top of a cliff overlooking the Old Town and the Hohensalzburg Fortress. Oh, lovely, the rain's begun; maybe it'll cool down. Right, cliff--this means we have to take an elevator to get to our hostel (like the Aufzug in Marburg, except you have to pay for it), but it also means that instead of traffic noise, city racket and drunken tourists outside our window, we have rain, the wind in the trees, and...drunken tourists (they're everywhere).
This afternoon, we hiked up to and toured the fortress, which is a huge hulk of white-plastered majesty presiding over the city like the figurines on a wedding cake. Which is actually not that obscure of a mental image, because Salzburg is surprisingly white with dark rooftops, quite a change from Prague's red tile roofs and application with wild abandon of riotous pastel colors to every flat surface. In contrast, Salzburg looks monochromatically dignified, like the house of an elderly woman who has chosen to decorate her house entirely in white. Maybe this was a tribute to the importance of salt in Salzburg's history. Maybe it's the natural color of the local building stone. Maybe there were a lot of ambitious and controlling little old ladies on Salzburg's decorations council. The world may never know.
Anyway, the fortress looks just like an imposing medieval fortress should: big, with lots of walls and turrets and parapets and cannons pointed toward the town. The best moment was climbing out on the highest bit with a 360-degree view of Salzburg in the hazy light of early evening. There were some museums and such that we dashed through as well, but really, the impressive exterior view and wandering around the courtyards and towers were the best parts.
Sheesh, it's really coming down hard now. I hope it keeps going to cool off the air and get rid of all the rain so we can have nice, if cooler, weather for our stay here.
We took the funicular down from the castle and rambled a bit through the streets and alleyways of the old town, waving at the statue of Mozart on the way. We stopped for a late dinner at a cute outdoor Italian place, but just as we got our food, there were amethyst flashes in the distance, ominous growlings, and then the first drops of rain. We scootched under an umbrella to finish our food and then went straight back to our hostel, where there's a lovely old ruined wall with a second that juts out from the cliff, affording a sweeping view of the city and of the lightning-lit clouds in the distance.
The storm stayed fairly far from us, but the purple light was dancing everywhere, pulsing like a strobe light. Still, there is nothing like being outside, exposed, and high up in the midst of a summer thunderstorm. Every swish of the leaves on the trees and ominous silences of the cicadas seem to be harbingers of doom, but then the horizon ignites and a glowing thread leaps from heaven to earth, and you forget that at any second your brain could be fried and your heart exploded by a strike from the heavens because it is so awesomely, wondrously, fantastically beautiful.
Mom and Janna have both fallen asleep, and I'm about to do the same. Assuming it's not still raining in the morning (and even if it is--oh well) we have a lot to do. Mozart and the Sound of Music await.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Cruising Around Cardiff
Cardiff. Doesn't the very word just beg you to give it a Celtic lilt and curl back your tongue for a retroflex "r"?
Alrighty then, maybe it's just me. (Not even sure that Welsh has retroflex rhotics...I'm probably getting that from David Tennant's Scottish pronunciation. Sorry.) But this was my first-ever excursion into the lovely land of Wales. Shannon and I have been planning to meet up to to go to Cardiff ever since we realized that we'd be in England at the same time. And why Cardiff, you say? Prepare to roll your eyes, my spellbound audience: Cardiff is where they film Doctor Who, and has a DW exhibition and many locations from both Doctor Who (which, as you know, I love desperately) and the more adult spinoff, Torchwood (which I loathe with almost as much vehemence). There's no point in trying to be coy about it: we went to Cardiff because of Doctor Who.
Accordingly, we met up and drove straight to Cardiff Bay to begin our trip with the exhibition. I took pictures of almost everything, but I'll spare you the gory details of set pieces, props, and costumes, all of which were geekishly fantastic, and just give you this adorable picture of me and the TARDIS. Unfortunately for my daily food allowance, there was a gift store as well, so now I've got to figure out how to safely transport my new poster...
Given that most of you are probably not Whovians, we'll move on to...more Doctor Who stuff! The Cardiff Millennium Center has two main attractions for me: 1) it's a towering, imposing, impressive structure inscribed in Welsh and English, and 2) it's the site of the Rift, a supposed crack in space/time where the Doctor can refuel the TARDIS with energy from the universe. In case you've missed it, the Doctor's saved the world many times over, and several of those times have happened here in Cardiff, especially on this spot. Pictures were taken and more geekery ensued.
Then the randomosity of the universe kicked in. We were walking on the bay in the lovely (and quite warm) sunshine when we came upon a beautiful red building filled with music and voices. Intrigued, we poked our heads in, only to find a cultural and educational celebration of Gypsy Roma Traveller culture. There were displays about the lives of Travellers and the issues that they face, including discrimination, educational problems, and (especially in the Nazi era) persecution. There was also free food, so we stuck around, had some sandwiches, and watched some adorable children do ribbon dances to Lady Gaga. I tell you, it was completely surreal.
Anyway, after dropping by the visitor's center for a map and strolling along the waterfront (where we came across the Ianto memorial totally by accident!) we headed toward the city center and Cardiff Castle. I was surprised how much Cardiff reminded me of Dublin; it was probably the pedestrian-only zones lined with nice shops and the bilingual everything in English and (to me) a gorgeous but unintelligible Celtic language. We spent the rest of our time in the Castle; we went on a tour of the Marquess' apartments (absolutely gorgeous and very interesting), climbed the Keep, and walked around the grounds. Not to sound like a snob or anything, but although the apartments were beautiful, I've seen more impressive castles. There wasn't much to it but the apartments, the wall, and the run-down keep in the middle. Of course, we didn't have time to go through the museum part as well, but my favorite castle remains the Chateau de Chillon on the shores of Lake Geneva in Lausanne, Switzerland.
The rest of the evening was uninteresting: I got some dinner at a pub and came back here to talk to my mother, but then my Internet died and stubbornly refuses resurrection. In the morning, I have a very busy last day of sightseeing before I return to London on Thursday. And so, as it is getting late, I bid you good night.
P.S. I learned today that the word spelled "quay" is, for reasons completely beyond my understanding, pronounced "key." For heaven's sake, why? I assume that I should just go with my gut instinct and blame the French language, and sure enough, the Online Etymology Dictionary says: "1690s, variant of M.E. key "wharf" (c.1300), from O.N.Fr. cai (O.Fr. chai) "sand bank," from Gaulish caium (5c.), from O.Celt. *kagio- "to encompass, enclose" (cf. Welsh cae "fence, hedge," Cornish ke "hedge"), cognate with O.E. haga "hedge" (see hedge). Spelling altered by influence of Fr. quai, from the same Celtic source." That last sentence there is the material point; given a lack of transcriptions, I'm not sure how the previous forms of the word were pronounced. In any case, I absolutely refuse to pronounce this word as "key", because 1) "key" is a stupid word for a wharf; 2) "quay" (like "kway") is a lovely word, taking advantage of the totally superfluous letter "q" that I quite like and 3) it's all-around more mellifluous and (to my ears and eyes) more aesthetically pleasing. And Dictionary.com lists my reading as well, so I'm never ever saying it "key." Grr.
P.P.S. On the motorway on the way to Cardiff, a jet-black Audi R8 flashed by us in the other direction, looking for all the world like a Night Fury on the way to ransacking a Viking village. My heart melted a little bit...
P.P.P.S. For those of us who are Whovians, something I should note here: Despite all our previous assumptions, Daleks actually are fricking scary. There were three of them at the exhibition in a dark room filled with smoke, shrieking and blinking and firing lasers. Facing down one of those is basically staring down a screaming, hate-filled tank. I've never been afraid of a Dalek before, but now that I've looked one in the...eye-stalk, I can see how they could be such a menace. If they weren't so, y'know, pathetically inefficient and facepalmingly dense.
Given that most of you are probably not Whovians, we'll move on to...more Doctor Who stuff! The Cardiff Millennium Center has two main attractions for me: 1) it's a towering, imposing, impressive structure inscribed in Welsh and English, and 2) it's the site of the Rift, a supposed crack in space/time where the Doctor can refuel the TARDIS with energy from the universe. In case you've missed it, the Doctor's saved the world many times over, and several of those times have happened here in Cardiff, especially on this spot. Pictures were taken and more geekery ensued.
Then the randomosity of the universe kicked in. We were walking on the bay in the lovely (and quite warm) sunshine when we came upon a beautiful red building filled with music and voices. Intrigued, we poked our heads in, only to find a cultural and educational celebration of Gypsy Roma Traveller culture. There were displays about the lives of Travellers and the issues that they face, including discrimination, educational problems, and (especially in the Nazi era) persecution. There was also free food, so we stuck around, had some sandwiches, and watched some adorable children do ribbon dances to Lady Gaga. I tell you, it was completely surreal.
Anyway, after dropping by the visitor's center for a map and strolling along the waterfront (where we came across the Ianto memorial totally by accident!) we headed toward the city center and Cardiff Castle. I was surprised how much Cardiff reminded me of Dublin; it was probably the pedestrian-only zones lined with nice shops and the bilingual everything in English and (to me) a gorgeous but unintelligible Celtic language. We spent the rest of our time in the Castle; we went on a tour of the Marquess' apartments (absolutely gorgeous and very interesting), climbed the Keep, and walked around the grounds. Not to sound like a snob or anything, but although the apartments were beautiful, I've seen more impressive castles. There wasn't much to it but the apartments, the wall, and the run-down keep in the middle. Of course, we didn't have time to go through the museum part as well, but my favorite castle remains the Chateau de Chillon on the shores of Lake Geneva in Lausanne, Switzerland.
The rest of the evening was uninteresting: I got some dinner at a pub and came back here to talk to my mother, but then my Internet died and stubbornly refuses resurrection. In the morning, I have a very busy last day of sightseeing before I return to London on Thursday. And so, as it is getting late, I bid you good night.
P.S. I learned today that the word spelled "quay" is, for reasons completely beyond my understanding, pronounced "key." For heaven's sake, why? I assume that I should just go with my gut instinct and blame the French language, and sure enough, the Online Etymology Dictionary says: "1690s, variant of M.E. key "wharf" (c.1300), from O.N.Fr. cai (O.Fr. chai) "sand bank," from Gaulish caium (5c.), from O.Celt. *kagio- "to encompass, enclose" (cf. Welsh cae "fence, hedge," Cornish ke "hedge"), cognate with O.E. haga "hedge" (see hedge). Spelling altered by influence of Fr. quai, from the same Celtic source." That last sentence there is the material point; given a lack of transcriptions, I'm not sure how the previous forms of the word were pronounced. In any case, I absolutely refuse to pronounce this word as "key", because 1) "key" is a stupid word for a wharf; 2) "quay" (like "kway") is a lovely word, taking advantage of the totally superfluous letter "q" that I quite like and 3) it's all-around more mellifluous and (to my ears and eyes) more aesthetically pleasing. And Dictionary.com lists my reading as well, so I'm never ever saying it "key." Grr.
P.P.S. On the motorway on the way to Cardiff, a jet-black Audi R8 flashed by us in the other direction, looking for all the world like a Night Fury on the way to ransacking a Viking village. My heart melted a little bit...
P.P.P.S. For those of us who are Whovians, something I should note here: Despite all our previous assumptions, Daleks actually are fricking scary. There were three of them at the exhibition in a dark room filled with smoke, shrieking and blinking and firing lasers. Facing down one of those is basically staring down a screaming, hate-filled tank. I've never been afraid of a Dalek before, but now that I've looked one in the...eye-stalk, I can see how they could be such a menace. If they weren't so, y'know, pathetically inefficient and facepalmingly dense.
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