Staying in Edinburgh

Yeah, really far behind now, but want to chronical.

Edinburgh was fantastic. It is another city, like Plymouth, that far exceeded my expectations. The setting with the castle high above with the craig and tail, volcano landscape was amazing. I’m a castle junkie, and that was awesome to see.

I got in, checked into my not so great hotel room across the street from the rail station. It was very old, but not in a good way. I’m sure the bedspreads were very nice 40 years ago, and the carpets 60.

But, hotel rooms aren’t what I’m visiting, so out I went to the city. I went east toward Carolton hill. There are many monuments and such, and, of course, a geocache. It is called “Athens of the North” for good reason. Easy cache find. Also the only one I got in Scotland.

The next day I got up bright and early to catch a train to Stirling and a bus from there to Doune. I really wanted to make it to Doune castle where they did most of the Monty Python and the Holy Grail filming. I walked through the charming little town toward the castle. As I arrived at the entrance, I went to pull out some cash and found only change. All my notes were gone. Stupid shallow pockets. I estimate I dropped £30-50 on the bus. Guess I made someone’s day. It wasn’t mine though. Luckily they took cards for the small admission fee. The woman working there was very friendly and sympathetic. We actually spoke quite a bit. She asked if I wanted a free audio guide. Of course! It was well worth it, even if it wasn’t free.

I started it up and heard Terry Jones’s voice. Yay! It started something like “In 1974, some friends and I made a very silly movie here… 600 years previously…” it was a fantastic mix of real castle history and some Python mixed in. Mostly that was optional. “If you want to know why this room seems familiar to Python fans, press play now.”

It was fun because they included some retrospectives as well as playing film audio in relevant places. Nothing like hearing the Camelot song in the room they danced, or hearing how the prince just wants… to Sing! while looking out the window of “Swamp Castle”. Or the castle Anthrax scenes. that building was a lot of places!

I have to point out that visiting all these media inspired places, I am genuinely interested in the places apart from that. Those things are just the impetus for going there in the first place. And there’s also nothing like having Terry Jones describe toilet logistics of 600 years ago.

A brief failed attempt at finding another geocache was still worthwhile. Neat rural area north of the main part of Doune. I’m pretty sure that marks the furthest north I’ve ever been. On land at least.

Staying in Bristol

Well I’m actually on my way back from the Isle of Avalon right now, but more on that later.

I arrived in Bristol still relatively early in the day. I found my way in what I later discovered was the long way to the hotel. The City Inn Bristol. I highly recommend! It’s really close to the Temple Meads train station, so very convenient from that perspective. The woman checking me in was actually from vancouver, BC, so that was mildly amusing. It was funny when she told me where I could find the lifts and then “corrected” herself to say, “elevators.” Now, all the hotels I booked were roughly the same price. I tried to find the cheapest non-scary hotel, located close to rail transport that had wifi. Kind of amazing what that means in Bristol. The room is about four times the size of the tiny London hotel. It’s very clean. The have free iMacs in the room to use for free, connected to the Internet, skype set up, Mini bar, bathrobes, free DVDs to check out from reception, free real breakfast, etc.

Anyway I was there about 20 minutes max before I was on my way back to the rail station, the shorter pedestrian route through Temple Quay (pronounced “key” I’ve learned in recent years). I then took the train to Gloucester. (pronounced “Glaw’ster”) Next stop on the Harry Potter tour I seem to be on. They filmed some scenes in the cloisters there.

On the walk there, I noticed among the signs for various attractions around town was a sign for the Beatrix Potter attraction. I managed to walk right past it on the way to the cathedral without noticing. I think I even took a picture. Beatrix Potter was a very big part of my childhood. My godmother every year would give me a new book and the corresponding stuffed animal. Jemima Puddleduck and Tom Kitten were my favorites. I still have them, I believe. So, I had to go there!

I was unaware that one of her books was “The Tailor of Gloucester”. The illustration was actually of this shop. When the proprietors heard my American accent, they asked if I was with some kind of tour. I didn’t understand what she said. I told her I was travelling all by myself and wasn’t even staying in town. She was shocked and fascinated that I could do such a thing! So, apparently it’s not just Americans who are stuck in tiny bubbles. Still she enjoyed hearing all about the general game plan of my trip. I bought the book that inspired the shop/museum.

Then, back to Bristol! After three train trips that day, and staying in a real hotel for a change, and going on day 6 of travel, I decided to stay in for the evening and figure out how to do my laundry.

Got in one geocache too.

After about six hours sleep, I went downstairs, grabbed a quick breakfast, and rushed off to catch the first bus of the day to Glastonbury. (376@0800) There were two reasons to go early: one, the annual pilgrimage to the abbey was to start at noon and two, I’m still trying to leave open the possibility of stonehenge tonight for the solstice.

I arrived in town around 9:10. The bus drop off is right in town just outside of Glastonbury Abbey. I went straight in. They made sure I knew about the pilgrimage and said it shouldn’t interfere with my sightseeing too much. It made photography tricky. I rushed around through the ruins to get as much done as I could through the bound-to-be-crowded later spots. I then took my time and was able to actually spend well over two hours there. It was filling with pilgrims before I left.

From there, through a complicated series of events, I took a back way to climb up Glastonbury Tor. It involved crossing private lands. It was allowed though as they’d all provided right of way. Still felt weird though. There were a lot of cows and sheep along the way. The gates were designed to only allow non ranch animals through, such as humans. It was a fairly steep but short walk to the top. As I approached the very top of the Tor and St Michael’s tower, I burst out laughing. The top was full of cows! Watch your step!

I stayed there for awhile then made my way down a different path heading more towards town. Somehow I never passed by the direction of the geocache up there. There must have been a third path, but I was not aware of it.

I got to the bottom just outside the Chalice Well and Gardens. The well is supposedly where Joseph of Arimathea washed the Holy Grail when he was dropping it off up there. There were many areas withing the place which were geared for “quiet reflection”. It was a very lovely place. One spot in the middle is the lions head fountain. This is the designated place where people come from all around to drink from the waters. The sell empty bottles so you can fill up and have a couple glasses standing by as well. I didn’t intend to drink, but I figured, hey, I’m here, it’s a thing. I had a small sip. It was not tasty.

Not too far from there was the rural life museum. There was a geocache hidden outside. I found it. It was the first cache of the trip so far that I’d seen with any travel items. In this case, it had one travel bug (TB) from Germany with a goal of getting to Stonehenge then back home.

OK, OK, I get the point. Apparently I now *had* to go to Stonehenge for the solstice that night. I was about 90% until that point. I took it with me. Went very quickly through the museum while I was there then headed for the bus stop. I had about 45 minutes until the next bus so I got my second bacon and cheese pasty. It’s becoming a habit now. Also looked around all the new age shops that have flocked to Glastonbury over the years.

Waiting to catch the bus I was chatting with a woman originally from the Caribbean. We had an interesting time discussing language differences. We found out between the three countries we have three different words for eggplant/aubergine/something egg. And she was confused when she asked for a pear and got a fruit when she wanted what we call an avocado. It was sparked by me explaining I tell people here I’m a scientist, while back home, I tell them I’m a chemist. If I said that here, they’d think I was a pharmacist. I’ve yet to figure out a good way to convey not-a-pharmacist-chemist.

Back in Bristol for only an hour before taking the train to Salisbury. It was full and standing. I hadn’t known that was allowed. Got to Salisbury around 6:30 which is when they began the bus service towards Stonehenge. £9 for a return ticket. (return = round trip). I asked as I bought the ticket from the driver if I’d be able to come back tonight. “Sure, if you get bored that quickly.” Relieved, I made my way to sit down with knowledge that the last train was to leave for Bristol at 10.

It took over a half hour to get to the drop off, then a mile to walk (or run/walk in my case). I was so unbelievably excited to get up amongst the stones. Bag check upon entering. Huge police presence. Not too overcrowded yet as they’d just opened up recently.

I walked up and cautiously touched the closest stone.

I took a picture of the TB resting on one of the horizontal stones then asked for someone to take my picture standing in the middle of some stones, with and without the TB.

I wandered around, photographed like crazy. Tried some special effects shot. In retrospect, I fear I took a *lot* of highly overexposed pictures by accident because I forget to change settings back. I’m afraid to look! I finished up my first 12GB memory card during the Stonehenge trip.

Before I left, I made the rounds and carefully touched each upright stone as well as some that weren’t upright. I know I had an enormous grin on my face.

I made my way back to the bus drop off point and waited for the next coach. After everyone exited, I stepped on, “return to the rail station?”

“Sorry there’s no return services on these buses tonight. You’ll have to walk in to town.” I think my jaw dropped wide open. I mentioned that the previous driver there said I could. The guy directing traffic talked him into it though. “She’s got a nice smile.” OK… So he let me on. I rode back upstairs to the station. Not sure why they wouldn’t allow it, seeing as they’re going there anyway on their loop.

Arrived at the station, went in, saw the next bus leaving was for Bristol Temple Meads. It was one minute from departure. Ran out to the far platform, boarded 5 seconds before it left. Nice.

Eek. I’m falling way behind. I’ve actually finished my three night stay in Edinburgh and am back in London but I haven’t even finished the stay in Bristol yet!

The next day I was essentially out of my planned activities for staying in Bristol. This is mostly because I worked efficiently to finish the stuff I really wanted to do in case I wound up at Stonehenge all night and needed a day to recover. Since I got back to the hotel before midnight, this wasn’t much of a problem. I let myself sleep in, investigated a few things and decided that I didn’t include Wales in the trip and I should rectify that. After all, Bristol is practically right by the border. Without too much time for research, I decided on Cardiff. It is the capital, a large city, and a very short trip over from Bristol. I loaded a few geocaches and off I went.

I walked out of Cardiff central a ways and initially wasn’t very impressed. It took awhile to find the more user friendly parts. Once I did it was quite nice. Still not as fond of it compared to other cities on the trip.

I found a couple geocaches, ate some lunch outside. It turns out Cardiff Castle was having their annual “Joust!” event. This made it a less exciting day to visit and it was much more expensive. I decided to at least go in at the time of the main event to see some of the jousting.

Somehow having this medieval stuff going on around it made the castle seem fake somehow. I guess they have done a lot of renovation on it too, so it doesn’t have the “old” feel of the other castles around here.

I do love seeing the dragons everywhere. I wanted to try to find one last geocache which was going to also be an excuse to see a big park in town. I started out along the castle and began taking pictures of all the various animals along the wall. At this point a local, Kevin, decided to chat me up. He was a tad annoying. Just a tad though. My usual response to “where are you from?” is to say, “Seattle.” This is usually enough. They can usually already tell I’m American if they’ve heard me speak, so that’s not what they’re looking for. Kevin didn’t seem to get it, so I said America. “You’ve come all this way just to take pictures of these animal statues?” Um, yeah. That’s all I came for… Anyway, eventually Seattle rang a bell and he said “Ah, Nirvana!” heh. I got bored with all the photos, but felt obligated to continue. He left when I entered the park thankfully.

The park was nice. I crossed the bouncy bridge, found the spot where the geocache was hidden, and decided I didn’t need to find it that much. There were about 100 different metal fence posts I would have had to run my fingers behind. Plus spiders.

With that I walked back to the rail station through a possibly questionable neighborhood and returned to Bristol.

(in reality I’m now leaving Brussels for Amsterdam, so the lag time gets worse…)

The following morning I headed for the station and the longest train trip of the trip, to Edinburgh. About 6 hours. I had planned to hop off the train in Derby and then York, but the crowdedness of the train and fear of getting a seat on the next train dissuaded me. Also Derby seemed to be in a full industrial area, so not particularly engaging.

Staying in Plymouth

OK. I admit I was wrong about Plymouth. I thought it was a mistake to stay here at all. That I’d only want to pop in and see the Mayflower Steps and be done. It is absolutely amazing here. I write this as I’m dining outside on a cliff overlooking the sea. Fish and chips and Pinot Grigio.

The whole center of town is a long stretch which is pedestrian only. There are shops on either side and the middle is a large section of parkland. There are gardens, benches, streams, rockeries, monuments, etc. As you head south toward the water you get to the hoe, which is a very large grassy/forest area. There’s a light house and more monuments. This goes all the way to the cliffs looking out over the water. It is a brilliant view from all along here. Simply far surpassed my expectations.

The mayflower steps are not all that remarkable. I expected ad much, so I wasn’t particularly disappointed. What was strange is that as I approached, the place was packed with teenagers. There were a few taking turns climbing up to the roof of the monument and jumping off into the water. This despite the copious no swimming/ no diving signs. Not all that odd for teenage behavior, but then I overheard grey haired adults who were clearly in charge of them asking if anyone else wanted to jump off. I didn’t recognize the language the group predominantly spoke. I think I frightened them off with my picture taking. I don’t feel bad about that.

I turned around and saw a tourist info building. It was called the Plymouth Mayflower. They had £2 admission to a museum upstairs. I was barely there in time. Last admission 3:30, I was there at 3:15. I took copious pics in lieu of spending copious time. They were, as usual, perpetuating some inacurate info. Nothing major though that I could see.

After all this I went back to the hotel to drop off my excess belongings to go geocache in, no kidding, Central Park. I found three all told, plus one on the way there. It was a nice park to wander in. I’ve noticed most people have a very cavalier attitude about their dog handling. Most keep them off lead. I saw one guy with 5 all wandering freely. I often see dogs without being able to pick out which is their owner because they are running everywhere. And I’ve yet to see a single person pick up after their dog, despite stations for that. That part is not cool.

I spent so much time in all this that nearly all food options were closed. Even the tavern I checked out stopped serving food at 8. I was in the wrong part of town for trying to eat late, I was informed. Never the less, I was directed to a place called the Steak and Omelette around the corner. Got some spaghetti. It was comfort food and tasted good.

Used the rather interesting shower this morning at the B&B. Then had a quick B and headed to the train station. On to stay in Bristol for three nights now. I don’t anticipate doing much actually in Bristol, but we’ll see.

Staying in London

Day one in London is more or less an extension of the day before. I basically missed a night. Got to Heathrow, brushed my teeth, put in my contacts, went through Passport Control, found Heathrow Express, which unexpectedly validated my flex rail pass for day one. Got to Paddington station. Took tube to Earl’s Court and found hotel from memory. Checked in early. Super tiny room, tinier toilet, ground floor. Decided since it’s already a rail day to go to Oxford. On the train right now.

OK. I’ve now been in oxford about 2.5 hrs. I ended up giving in to the lazy and sleep deprivation by way of buying a hop on hop off tour ticket. Pretty sure I was the only one under 50. But, it meant I saw more than I would have otherwise and with more background info. I hopped off and was about to go down to Christ Church college on my own to try to pick out Harry Potter filming locations when I saw a sign for guided walking tours of places from HP, Morse, and Lewis. There was quite a wait as I’d just missed the last one. Hopefully I’m not making a mistake in doing it. Also had an allergy fit and then it started raining a bit after being crazy sunny and warm. Now I’m glad I dressed for cool weather. Oh, and I found my first geocache in the country here as well.

I think I can now safely declare that the weather in Oxford is bipolar.

The tour almost didn’t happen. The guy needs five participants minimum. He was a rotten salesman. We eventually had enough and headed out. (By the end of the tour we had 11.) Went to Jesus college, and several others I can’t remember  before heading to Christ Church college. That’s where the Harry Potter filming locations were. I realize I was an annoying tourist for that being my primary interest. I could tell the tour guide was masking his annoyance about showing people this fantastic college and having people just interested in the HP parts. To be clear, I greatly enjoyed the rest of it too, but I probably wouldn’t have been in the town at all if not for that.

Filming locations were the dining room/great hall. As we entered the building I saw a “no indoor photography” sign. My heart sank. There hadn’t been any such signs all day. I went up to the guide and quietly said, “really no photos?” He said to go ahead. It was really just a policy to avoid people using a flash. I’ve noticed far too many people don’t know how to turn theirs off. So, I took a bunch of pics. Some other visitors not in the tour saw me, looked shocked, and tried to silently tell me it wasn’t allowed. I stopped to appease them, but really because I had enough pics. Then the cloisters which are another filming site I recognized. He pointed out the tree under which Malfoy was turned into a ferret.

That done, I walked back to the train station a severe storm broke out. Lots of hail. Thunder, lightning. Rain started collecting in the overhead lights and pouring down. It was fascinating.

I was nodding off about twice a minute for the trip back to London. End result was I went to bed before 8pm. Not that I stayed asleep I woke up around midnight and it took hours to get back to sleep.

Day two. I couldn’t help it. I recreated day one of last trip and took the tube to Westminster station and took exit 3, literally right next to Big Ben’s tower. It’s so freaky. Since it was sunny, I went to do the London Eye first thing. (geocaching on the way) They were loading it up for the first time when I got on. It is pretty neat. It goes around once every half hour and there is ample opportunity for picture taking.

After that I was drawn in by the movieum folks. It was alright. The props were neat to see. They could have done a better job of indicating what was authentic and what was a reproduction.

Next up was Tate Britain. I first planned to do both Tates that day and take the Thames boat trip between them. I was quite art museumed out by the end though. Instead, I walked back up to Westminster, along the south bank, and caught the tube at Embankment. Went over to Hyde Park. Wandered toward Kensington Gardens. There was a fair amount of geocaching in all this. It was neat to finally see all this. I hadn’t gone there last time.

I went out for Indian food at Masala Zone. I normally don’t like to do sit down restaurants while solo travelling. It was ok though. Food was good, but nothing super spectacular.

Then night pictures around Big Ben, London Eye, and Westminster Abbey.

Day three. Return to Westminster Abbey. It was so amazing last time. It just kills me to not be able to take any photos in there. It would be a zoo if it was allowed. I’m starting to think it’s my favorite London attraction. This time I took some notes so I could better remember everything. I took my time going through to make sure I saw everything. I think I was there for nearly three hours.

Next up, tube to Mansion House, cross millenium bridge, take pics of Globe Theatre (because I was there), and visiting Tate Modern. This Tate is generally more interesting. It’s a little out there in some respects.

Next, a return visit to The British Museum. Admittedly, I mostly just hit the highlights and my favorites. I didn’t even use a map this time. The Rosetta Stone was the first stop. Always a big crowd and tricky to get good pics. I waited my turn to move up and took both SLR and iPhone pics.

Quick diversion about doing the mobile uploads. I really like sharing what I’m doing on the trip in nearly real time. However, I know these weak iPhone pics are probably all most people will see of the trip. It makes it hard to decide if/what to upload, when I’d really rather people look at the good pictures if I had to choose only one.

After the British Museum, I hit a wifi spot and searched “longest escalator London” the result was Angel station. Apparently the longest escalator in Western Europe. So exciting! That involved a change at King’s Cross. I’d heard they’d relocated Platform 9 3/4 due to construction, but I wasn’t sure where. I headed toward where it used to be and recognized it surprisingly easily. I wandered around the area, not sure where to go. There was nothing obvious. Oh, except for the giant sign saying, “Looking for Platform 9 3/4?” on bright orange. Oh. Heh. More Americans hit the old area as I was heading to the new. I troubled them to take an iPhone pic for me when they got there as it seemed worth sharing. They seemed too lost for me to worry about handing over the phone to them.

Followed along to Angel to take exciting video footage of the longest escalator ride. Both ways.

Got on the tube headed the wrong way for the first time ever. Easily corrected at the next stop. It was the height of rush hour though. I packed in like a sardine and barely fit. I thought to myself, “It’s amazing how much I love the tube even when it’s crowded.” famous last words (thoughts). Even more people piled in back at Angel. I was squished to the middle, holding the very high ceiling bar. As we approached King’s Cross, we stopped before the station. If I were prone to panic attacks or claustrophobia, it would have absolutely kicked in. I felt I couldn’t breathe. I started to think I was going to pass out. I carefully kept my knees bent and tried to breathe slowly and carefully. It took way too long! Even if it hadn’t been my stop I would have bailed there. I was nervous to get on the Piccadilly line, but it was largely uncrowded.

Went to Piccadilly circus, which was a refreshing openness. Loitered there for a bit. Used wifi to send mini-updates.

Then back to the hotel and sleep! I was in bed by 8pm, which is noon back at home. I woke up at 11. Was up until 3am. I have no time zone now.

I’m now on the train to Plymouth as I’ve typed out most of this. Passed Exeter St Davids. Water! Cliffs! Neato.

Leaving Seattle

For the most part, I wrote these blogs on the road using the wordpress app on my iPhone. I’ve been back for three weeks now, so I should probably start doing something about uploading them… Apologies in advance that they get absurdly detailed on rather boring details. I was passing the time, alone, and wanting to document everything so I’d remember later. I’ll probably be editing to add in various details and hope to add photos to later entries. I’ll also roll them out over time a bit so as not to overwhelm anyone who will actually take the time to read these.

FYI, my flight left Seattle at 6:35AM, was set to arrive in NY at 3:00PM. The second leg departed from NY at 6:00PM to arrive at about 7:00AM in London.

On the flight to New York. Won the first round of trivia on the plane. Now watching Mythbusters on satellite about yawning contagion. Yeah, can’t stop yawning. The 3.5 hours sleep last night probably isn’t helping. Ideally I would stay awake for this flight then sleep on the flight to London arriving at 7AM. In reality, if sleep wants to happen, I should probably let it.

I just paid $6 for a movie on a tiny screen. Milk. Must pay attention.

Movie is still on, but I just wanted to point out I can see Chicago from here, over Lake Michigan right now.

There certainly are a lot of peanuts and peanut products on this plane. Seems so strange now.

Finished the movie just under the wire. Starting descent. Have to turn off phone momentarily.

This is so weird. I’m at JFK. I got an automated phone call telling me the flight is one hour delayed. The internet tells me it’s one hour delayed. Nothing at the airport indicates any kind of delay. Charging phone and the reserve charge thing.

That was a very enjoyable if not productive second flight. The plane departed late because it was going to be a shorter than planned flight. Apparently they can’t land at heathrow before a certain time. They left an hour late and arrived early. The plane was a 2-3-2 configuration. I had a window in the back. An 18 year old guy sat next to me. I assumed he’d be annoyed by anyone not in his age group and assumed I’d be left alone to try to sleep or to play with the games or watch the free on demand movies. He looked oddly familiar to me. I’m not sure how we started up the conversation, but we ended up chatting for hours. And not in the “will you please stop talking to me” way. You see, he’s a shockingly well travelled, educated, and knowledgable teenager. Turns out he’s been to over 60 countries and has grand plans for more. It took a lot of encouragement for him to believe I really wanted to hear his travel stories. It was neat to see someone else able to rattle off names of African nations while pointing to a blank map of the continent. Anyway, it was fun to hear the srories. He did enjoy the conversation too, BTW. He was so pleased by all of his travel so far that day including meeting rapper Ludacris at the airport in Miami and loaning him a dime. Heh. He still had another long flight to Helsinki to go.

But it meant little time for sleep. I played a couple movies/tv shows and curled up in uncomfortable to my neck positions. I wasn’t aware so much of the sleep, but apparently I got some. I woke up to find that they had served breakfast. My seat mate had grabbed one for me, thankfully. Large dinner, breakfast, free games, and movies. I love international flights.

So with still little sleep under my belt for the equivalent of two nights I finally arrived in London at about 7am.

Las Vegas mini-post

For anyone interested in the random happenings of my vacation, you can see my microblogs on here on twitter.

Chicago Day 3

I mostly failed in the sleeping department last night. I was up until after 2 am, just being busy not being tired. I also woke up before my alarm was going to go off. That latter part is a good thing, I guess, since it wasn’t *too* long before. I usually do better in my day the less I have to hear alarm clock buzzing.

The situation with the second day of the class was kind of amusing. I walked over with my co-worker and we realized that someone else was sitting at the table we were at the previous day. Don’t people understand that assigned seats are understood for things like this? Anyway, we sat at a table with two young women from the Midlands in England. It was interesting speaking with them as we ate our breakfast, despite the loud noise that was going on above us. The leader of the class informed us that there was a bubble on the roof above us. Apparently this is a very serious issue and they needed to work immediately to rectify the situation. Um, huh? A bubble? OK… So, we found out we were to move to a conference room at the other end of the floor for the class today, but we’d eat in the room with the loud noises. This was only the latest in a series of problems that plagued this class, what with presenters not being able to make it, other presenters giving those presenters presentations. And the very confusing juggling of presentations, meaning that some concepts which were discussed in detail on day one were finally “introduced” on day two. It overall wasn’t a very cohesive course this way and would have been extremely confusing for the newbie. I’m just glad I had a pretty strong basis for it. In fact, a lot of it was repetitive for me from an earlier workshop I attended in 2005. During today’s session, the lights kept randomly dimming and coming back on. I suspect it was someone leaning on a light switch or something, but we never determined the source. The new room had a cool view toward the south, directly toward the Sears Tower. I hope some of the pictures I took from all our various conference rooms turn out.

The class ended early, as expected. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, it was beautiful. Complete turnaround from the weather forecast I had seen a day before. I decided to take advantage of it while I could and do the observatory tour.

First, of course, was Sears Tower because it’s required. I walked down, took the elevator down a level, and was pleased to see a short line where it looked like it was normally quite long. The woman in line after me had her luggage and thought she could hop in for a quick trip up and down while she was waiting for someone. She learned she was wrong. After buying the ticket and having the person 3 feet away tear it, we got to wait in the next line. This line was to get in to watch the required 8 minute movie. The seating was all occupied, but they allowed extra people to fill in along the back and sides. This seems out of the norm to me for things like this. Fire codes and all. Anyway, I happily took a seat on the floor in the back corner. After the illuminating film, the door opened up and we got to wait in the third line. This one was actually for the elevators. In the middle of the line was a revolving door. Since the line moved in spurts, occasionally someone would end up hanging out inside the door. The elevators held a lot of people. There was another quick movie on a screen above the elevator door. Something with animated birds. I didn’t get very much of it because of the rowdy group in my elevator, exacerbated by the major ear popping situation. The trip up to the 103rd floor only takes one minute. Then, finally, we were at the observation deck. It was high. Things were small. You could see in all directions. Took lots of pictures. I also got a picture for another virtual cache. Pretty cool.

Now, if you know Chicago, you’ll realize my decision making for today’s activities was a bit questionable. I decided to go to the Hancock Observatory too. I’d heard it was better than the Sears Tower one. They’re pretty far apart. I walked the long way. I knew it looked ridiculous, and yet, I did it anyway. I headed east in a vain attempt at another cache that I think I’m declaring not important enough. Eh. Then I walked passed the Route 66 cache on my way to Grant Park. I have done so much repetition already. I went to look at Buckingham Fountain (the one in Married with Children) but it wasn’t going. Sad. Started walking north in the park passed the bean yet again, passed R2 again, then north on Michigan Ave. Along this stretch is the Magnificent Mile. This stretch is full of lots of high end shopping. Yeah, that just screams me. I did go into Water Tower Place briefly partially because it was recommended by a co-worker, but really only to use the facilities. I just realized that the building I took a picture of because it looked like a giant sand castle is the Chicago Water Tower. Huh.

Across the street is the John Hancock building. My destination. My feet and legs were already trying to revolt when I arrived. Here there weren’t as many delay strategies, but the elevator situation was less than ideal. It was a cool view from the 94th floor. I think I liked it more, but I don’t know that it was that much better than the Sears Tower. They kind of blurred together. The Hancock building is much closer to Lake Michigan, so that aspect is pretty cool. They have some more amusing things there. There are a couple of staged areas for picture taking that make it look like the person in the picture is doing something dangerous, like lying on a beam way up in the air or window washing. If I wasn’t already ready to die, I would have probably paid the nominal fee to be able to come back at night and see city all lit up. Oh, well.

I summoned my strength to walk all the way back to the hotel. This time on a diagonal, so I got to follow whatever route the walk lights wanted me to take. I arrived back at the hotel just as the evening wine reception was under way. I’d missed it the previous two nights, once by being on an airplane, and once for being out geocaching. I went up to my room to pull myself together a bit first then made my way down for free wine. I had a glass of Chardonnay and spoke briefly with a guy who was waiting for his wife. He lives in the suburbs of Chicago. His wife is a gynecologist. At first I was glad to have someone to talk to. I had a hard time getting a feel for his personality and he seemed a little odd. I was kind of glad when he had to go away. I finished that glass, got a refill and took it up to my room. I took a nice soak in the tub and finished the wine off. I felt much better. I think it was mostly the wine part that did it.

Tomorrow I hope to do museumy things. I’m not sure which yet. I’ve gotten very conflicting info. I won’t worry about it too much. I’m just going to play it by ear. Hopefully I’ll be smart enough to stick to one part of the city, or get on a train at least if I don’t. Oh, and to actually *bring* my prepaid train ticket with me and not leave it in my suitcase in the hotel room. I should probably go ahead and do that now.

BTW, despite my stupidity, I still really like Chicago.

Chicago day 2

Most of today was taken up by the conference. Something amazing happened there. I raised my hand in a room of 50 or so strangers, waited for a microphone, and asked a question of the panelists! And even more amazing, after they answered it, I asked a follow up question! It was a rare feat. I didn’t stop shaking until about 30 minutes had passed, but I did it and didn’t die. Wow!

Before the class though, I woke up a little early. I got a call from the New York co-worker who is also attending and we agreed to meet in the lobby at around 8:30 to walk over. I had time to head out and see the area a little bit first. I walked toward Millennium Park. It was rainy and cold and windy. Right before the park, I saw my first R2D2 mailbox! I photographed it. Once in the park, I tried to take the picture for the virtual cache called “Cloud Gate aka The Bean”. The effect isn’t quite so good when rain is dripping down the sides. I headed back to the hotel, got there just in time. As we walked to the conference, the rain turned to snow. That was better. The class was on the 37th floor of a building. It was really distracting at first to see the snow speeding by sideways behind the presenter, and then on the side, to see the snow hovering in place and rising. Luckily it didn’t last too long. Cool view from up there though.

After class, my co-worker and I went our separate ways until we were going to meet up for dinner. I, of course, took the opportunity to geocache some more. I had realized after the fact that that R2D2 mailbox was the R2D2 mailbox that I had printed out a cache page for. Unfortunately, waaaay too high a muggle quotient to even consider trying to figure out where the actual cache was. Maybe later. I did, however, get more pictures of me with the Bean, this time dry. I won’t be able to log it until I get home though, since I don’t have any way to get my pictures off my camera.

I then accomplished my main geocaching goal for this trip. I dropped off a Unite for Diabetes travel bug at the cache called “One End of Route 66″. It wasn’t easy. I knew exactly where it was going to be, but timing was everything. I pretended to drop my glove and made the grab while picking it up. It was nearly impossible to open the Altoids tin. I had to take the geocoin that was inside to make room for the bug. I’ll have to bring it back to Seattle and drop it off somewhere. The bug is supposed to go to Woodbury, Minnesota. It’s closer now. It started in Mexico, spent a few days in Seattle, and now it’s at the end of Route 66.

I came back to the hotel. Read up on a few things, logged my finds, caught up on the internet. For dinner, we ran out on the reservations we had and instead wandered around north of the river looking at our options. My co-worker is apparently hard to please, or possibly just in need of someone to say, “We should eat here.” It was interesting getting to see the stuff that was around though. We walked into the House of Blues restaurant. So much to look at. An hour long wait for food though. There were a lot of expensive steak places. I mean a lot. We really didn’t go that far, but I think we saw at least 5 places with $40+ steaks. We actually ended up at one. Sullivans. I had the small fillet mignon (only $27) and some horseradish mashed potatoes. They were both ridiculously good. Especially the mashed potatoes. Yum!

And now, I’m back at the hotel, again trying to remind myself I’m in central time. So far, I really like Chicago. I didn’t expect to, but it’s pretty cool. It’s easy to navigate, relatively clean, full of large public art, lots of interesting looking places, apparently good public transportation. Clearly no shortage of good food. I realize it’s been about 24 hours, but so far, so good. I’m glad I opted to stay the weekend.

Traveling to Chicago

Another trip means another blogging frenzy. Hey, it’s what I do.

So, today was all about getting to Chicago. Well, actually I woke up at 5 something and couldn’t go back to sleep for a variety of reasons. Not a terrible thing I guess, since I have to now adjust to Central Time. I eventually got up and drove into work, arriving at about 7:30. I was starting to regret that I had agreed to go in at all, given my increasing nervousness about the whole airport transportation thing. I don’t know why, but I always get nervous about it until I’m at the gate. (And as we’ll cover later, often until I’m on the plane.)

Unfortunately, there was a meeting at 9 that I needed and really wanted to be at. At 9:30 when the meeting started to run long, I had to leave it in progress, grab my laptop and boarding pass and run out the door to go home. Luckily the roads were wide open, so I arrived at about 10. The driver was scheduled to arrive at 10:15. I had to do the last second packing bits and a brief tidy to try to make my house look slightly less horrifying since people are going to be there while I’m gone. Eek! I took out the glass to the recycling bin outside and noticed the town car at the foot of the driveway. I looked over and he said he was ready. It was about 10:05. Hooray! Well, in that case I’m ready too! So, I went in, grabbed the suitcase, said goodbye to a very confused Kipper, locked the door and I was on my way to the airport.

Since I had my boarding pass, I just had to drop off my bags at the bag check area. The line seemed longer than the check-in line. Hmmph. I hear the person behind the counter tell someone else who is going to Chicago that they had to cancel a flight there this morning. (Uh-oh! This doesn’t sound good…) When I got up there, another woman took my printed boarding pass. She crossed off the gate (C18 ) and wrote C16. OK, so the gate changed. Happens all the time. Then she crossed off my flight number and wrote a new one. “Wait, the flight number changed?!” She ignored me, and turned her attention to another agent who tells her she can’t just write it, she has to print me a new one. Meanwhile, I’m all confused. She prints the new boarding pass for the other flight which says across the top “Standby – added to list” Huh? They ask, “Did you request to go standby on an earlier flight?” “Um, no, I didn’t.” “Would you like to?” “Will my confirmed reservation still stand if I do?” “Yes.” “Well, then sure.”

So, with two boarding passes in hand, I head to security. They stamp both of them. I’m pretty sure the security guy quietly said to me “You did good. Thanks.” Maybe I made it up, but I got a chuckle. I do have airport security down to a science.

I notice the standby boarding pass says boarding starts at 10:25. It was already about 10:45. Gah! Rush to gate… thinking it’d be cool to rush straight onto a plane, still keeping in mind the overheard comment about a cancelled flight. Out of breath, I arrive to see not much activity and a lot of people waiting. At the podium it says boarding time DELAYED, next update expected by 11:30. OK, so the rushing wasn’t so much important. The gate agent informs me that there was “a foot and a half of snow this morning in Chicago.” Wow. I knew it was snowing there, but….

Now, coincidentally, my parents were leaving for Los Angeles about an hour after my scheduled flight. I checked on their gate out of curiosity. D9. Well, if there’s time, but it’s not exactly close, since that’s at the end of D and I was at the end of C. While I was waiting, the flight I was actually booked on (the 12:22) was moved to gate D8, right next to my parents’ gate. Heh. But I was stuck waiting for the standby.

11:30 came, and they just updated the expected new info to 12. At this point, the two flights weren’t that far apart in their projections. Out of boredom and curiosity, I walked quickly to the end of D and back. No parents.

Everything gets a little fuzzy here, but I talked to gate agents several times. I’ve never done the standby thing, so it was a little confusing to me, especially with the two gates so far apart, the departure time getting close, and having no idea how likely it was that I’d make it on the “early” flight. I also made another dash over toward D and happened to see my parents just after the passed through security. Part of me was worried that they’d realize that it was my flight next to their gate and not see me there. They worry about that stuff a lot. Anyway, I told them the whole situation in many run-on sentences and excruciating detail. Hey, kinda like this. I didn’t talk to them long, but just as we walked back toward the food area. I headed back to the gate, since that whole standby thing probably means I should stick close. By the time I got back around 12, the “early” flight was just being updated with an actual departure time of 1:35. The later flight still said 12:25, but I was pretty sure that was still a “next info by” time. It was. I felt much better when they were updated to 2:35. OK. Eventually, I find out I am going to get on this flight. So, I have officially flown standby now, I guess.

We ended up taxiing out to the end of the runway and then pulling out to let a bunch of other planes cut in front of us. It was weird. We ended up taking off just before 2. So, the flight that was supposed to leave 1.5 hours before my scheduled flight ended up leaving 1.5 hours after I was originally supposed to leave.

The flight was fairly uneventful. Many people on the flight were expecting to miss connections. I paid $5 for a sandwich since I hadn’t gotten much opportunity for eating yet.

As we finally dipped below the clouds, I’m getting ready to see this blizzardy coverage of snow on everything. Um, yeah, not so much. It would appear the gate agents were drastically overstating it. There were MAYBE a couple inches. Now, granted, some of it could have melted, the rain could have washed some away and all that, but otherwise, uh-uh. I guess it was actually more a visibility issue, so they were limiting the number of inbound flights.

Baggage claim was another ordeal, but not really worth talking about aside from the woman sending her son through to the restricted area to unstick some bags that caused a jam.

Then the train. Direct line to within a couple blocks of my hotel. It took longer than I expected though. That airport is a long ways out.

Now, I’m at the hotel. I just ordered a $26 spaghetti marinara because I wanted food and it was already after 10. It’s amazing how something that’s $14 on the menu ends up as that much. Sigh. I have issues with room service, but sometimes you just gotta. Well, I’m going to eat it and try to convince myself that it’s time for bed.

New England – Days six and seven

I’m now blogging about the last two days from the plane. Of course I’m typing them in Word and will have to copy/paste them later. I’m a little sleepy, so I’ve already been napping through the DVDs I brought on board. I want to stay awake though and I also don’t want to forget more stuff. Mostly, Im just very ready to be back in Seattle. I?m done with travel for the moment. It’s been a pretty exhausting week.

On Day 6 aka Monday, I spent my first full day in Boston. The main portion of the day was spent on the Freedom Trail. This is a trail that goes throughout the city of Boston that takes you by numerous historic sites. It is marked on the ground in either a red paint stripe or a row two red bricks wide (offset by a grey stripe on either side if it happens to be set in a red brick area). This is a convenient way to see everything with minimal fear of getting lost or of going into a questionable area.

I actually started the day looking up geocaches that were in the vicinity of the Freedom Trail. I found were convenient to where I planned to be, so I entered them into my GPSr. That actually helped me decide where to start. My hotel was in Bulfinch Triangle and there are two convenient places to reach the trail from there. Each one is close to an end. I decided to head to the North end and do the trail backwards. The first geocache was in Paul Revere Park just across the Charles River. It eluded me. I felt I was wearing my stupid hat, as it was supposed to be easy. I even triangulated the coordinates to the exact center of the path I was on. I didn’t want to waste too much time, so I decided to begin my trip along the trail just on the other side of the road. I followed it along all the way to the end where the Bunker Hill Monument is, to find it… closed. There was a big fence out front forbidding access to the monument. Well, that was anticlimactic.

I went back down and decided to skip the alternate branch toward the wharf area where the USS Constitution lies. (Don’t worry, I go back on Day 7.) I went back along the trail and stopped off at Copp’s Hill Burial Ground. (I’ve seen way more headstones in the last week than I think I’ve ever seen in my life.) I then continued on to Christ Church in the City of Boston, more commonly known as The Old North Church. Site of the ‘One if by land, Two if by sea’ phrase. I went in to the church which was filled with box pews. I don’t think I’ve ever seen box pews before, so that was a little odd. The docents routinely give talks from the pulpit about the history, dispelling myths and giving insight into certain features of the church. I took a seat in one of the pews and listened to the talk. One of the things she said was that if you buy tea in the gift shop next door, there’s no tax. Hee! She also talked about the organ, the carved wooden angels which are 100 years older than the church, the chandeliers, the height of the box pews, and what is probably the oldest collection box in the country “and it still works.” She also started to dispel some of the myths surrounding the stories, mostly propagated by the Longfellow poem about that night.

Right behind the church is Paul Revere mall (the open space near stuff kind, not the shopping kind). There’s a statue of him on horseback there.

Next was the Paul Revere house which I tried desperately to miss. I checked my map twice and eventually had to double back twice because I missed it. It was easy to stay on the trail, but somehow also easy to be oblivious to passing the important bits because you’re looking in the other direction. Most attractions had a large sign out front of a certain type. The house had a sign, but it was different. Also, there was a church/school across the street where children clad entirely in red played stickball out in the yard. Eventually though, I noticed it and went in for the self guided tour. The house was originally built in about 1690. Paul Revere lived there during the time of the revolution, starting in 1770. He owned it for the next few decades but, likely didn’t live there very often in the 1780?s and 90?s. The house has had many owners over that time. In the early part of the 20th century, it was restored to close to original. The tour goes through 4 rooms, entering from the back door. Most items in the house are period pieces with no real connection to the house. A few items upstairs were said to be owned by the Reveres, but not necessarily in the house. There was a dresser, a large upholstered chair, and a black rocking chair that were owned by the family.

Next I returned to the site of Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market. The upstairs portion of Faneuil Hall (the Hall part) was closed due to filming. For the exact two days I was in town. There were a bunch of media trucks out front with recording equipment. They seemed to all be coming from Fox. I continued on to visit my next geocache location. Since the cache had been disposed of many times in the past by grounds crew, this cache had been turned into a ‘virtual cache’ meaning you have to do something specific to prove you’d found the location and for what purpose. In this case, I had to find the ‘medallion’ on the ground with a specific name on it and take a picture with my GPSr and some part of me visible in the picture. Most people just include their feet as they take the picture from above. That was too boring for me, so I took a self portrait trying to get all aspects visible. It was in Post Office park. It’s a good thing it wasn’t a real cache, because there’s no way I would have been able to go for it. The place was wall to wall muggles on their lunch break. Every bit of grass was covered by people.

I returned to the trail and entered the Old State House. (I love that all these places have the word “Old” in their names.) From there you could overlook the site of the Boston Massacre and hear a bit about it. It also is the entrance to the State T station, where I caught the train to the airport this morning.

A lot of the sites are very close together in this part of town. It’s a little confusing. There was also the Old City Hall, which now houses a Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse. Nearby is the site of the first public school in America. The Granary Burying Ground was next. This cemetery is home to the graves of many revolutionary types, such as Paul Revere, Sam Adams, John Hancock and others. It also has the grave of Ben Franklin’s father and all of the victims of the Boston Massacre.

While in this burying ground, I made the third geocache attempt. The information on the cache said the coordinates would get you inside, then you’d have to rely on geocaching instinct to find it. It was also stated that you could access it at any time with some maneuvering outside the fence. Hmm. This one eluded me as well, but it turns out I should have listened to those instincts more.

The next stop on the trail goes via Boston Common to the Massachusetts State House, which was… closed. And I was determined to see the trail to its end, so I followed along the line to the very end in Boston Common to find a Visitor Center, which was… closed. Most of the locations along the trail close at about 5. It was about 6 when I completed the trial.

In the commons I made my way to the 4th and final cache attempt of the day. This one I found rather quickly. The only tricky part was the people factor. Not too bad though. I spotted what I believed to be the cache and made my way over to grab it then took it away to sign the log. Upon returning it though, I was a little too obvious, but people still had no idea what I was doing. This cache was also very close to the original “Cheers” location. Apparently the Bull & Finch pub has even officially renamed itself as cheers. I got some exterior pictures, as used for establishing shots on the TV show, then made my way inside. I didn?t get anything here, but instead just looked around a bit. I was feeling pretty dehydrated at this point, despite all the water drinking, so I wasn’t really up for a drink.

I then just spent awhile in Boston Common. There was one particularly peaceful and pleasant spot where I could have happily sat for hours.

On day 7 I was starting to get pretty weary, so I didn’t do a whole lot. I tied up some loose ends on the trip though. I did find the two elusive geocaches, so apparently I took of my stupid hat on Tuesday. They seemed obvious once I found them. I also visited the USS Constitution aka “Old Ironsides”. Got the free 30 minute tour from one of the sailors stationed there. After that I went aboard the USS Cassin Young for a self guided tour. It was a little weird and I kept feeling that I was doing something wrong. You kind of just walk on and poke around. Very strange. If I didn’t see others doing it, I probably would have that it wasn’t OK. The ship was commissioned in WWII and also served in Korea.

After all that, I went up to Harvard. I followed most of the “One hour tour of Harvard” map suggested in the pop out map I was using. I was actually pretty under whelmed. I keep hearing about how beautiful this school is. I think UW is leaps and bounds ahead of it in that department.

And now I must take a moment to rant about the current state of payment for the T. I researched in my own confusion and found that plenty of locals are ranting about this too. Historically, to ride the T, you purchased tokens. They are now switching over to the system of using tickets and cards, as have most other major subway systems in the world. I support this switch. Their transitional implementation, however, is horrible.

At the moment, stations take either tokens or tickets, but no station takes both. There’s also no way to know in advance what any station in particular will take. So, if you want to save time and buy your return fare at the same time, you may be SOL. When I first arrived at the airport station, they had the kiosks from which to buy your tickets. There were signs all over saying to get your pre-paid cards for all your fares to save time. Nowhere was there any indication that the tickets aren’t accepted at all stations. Being new though, I thankfully just bought the 1 trip ticket. When I was ready to return to my hotel, I quickly calculated about how many trips I’d want to take the next day and bought a $5 ticket because I knew I’d use at least three the following day in addition to the one I was about to take. At this point, I hadn’t run into any token-only stations, so I didn’t know they existed. When I entered North Station the next morning, I was confused by the lack of turnstiles, and the woman who worked there standing by a large cylinder with a hand-written ‘tokens’ sign. At this point ‘tokens’ made no sense to me as the system didn’t use them as far as I was concerned. She was talking with a man for quite awhile and I waited and watched others. A man walked by, holding up his ticket/card. I followed suit, while still confused, and assuming that the system was out of service there or you paid up ahead or something. I later realized I had snuck onto the subway. Oops. The next station was a ticket-only station, so all was still well as I left for Harvard. When I tried to get back on at Harvard, however, I discovered the bizarre truth. The turnstiles had a token slot and a card slider thingy. I saw someone use a token then I saw someone swipe a card. They both made it through OK. So, I approached and swiped my ticket, which had a stripe on it. Turnstile wouldn’t let me through. I looked at the card. Nope, that was the only direction that made sense. Tried again. Nope. I stood back a moment to survey the situation. A man from the booth said, “Can I help you Ma’am?” I turned to him raised my ticket and said, “I’m confused.” He replied, “Those don’t work here.” What? So, I went to him and gave him cash for a token. So, of the (I believe) 6 stations I used, I think 4 took tickets and 2 took tokens. This morning I did manage to use up the last of my ticket to get to the airport, so I’m glad I didn’t over-buy. That’s only because I made an unscheduled stop at Boston Common in the afternoon to wander and sit.

According to some random posting on the internet, I guess the visitor passes are good at either station, but with those, you don’t use the turnstiles at all, just show them to the attendant. Also, the 1 day pass is for a specific date, not 24 hours. That’s kind of annoying, but not a deal-breaker. It wouldn’t have been worth it for me though, with the amount of trips I made.

I finished up my evening going to a pub for a burger. Harp was very close to my hotel and I]d passed it a few times. I also had to make a stop at CVS to buy a pseudoephedrine product due to my predilection to have the stuffy nose while traveling. It started a couple days ago. Only in the evenings at the hotel though, during the day I’m fine. I didn’t want to chance the extreme intense agony I experienced on the plane ~5 or 6 years ago that took months to fully recover from.

Weirdly at the CVS, most pseudoephedrine products had little tags to get them from behind the counter, and there were signs all over the section saying that by law all pseudoephedrine products were to be retrieved from the front counter. However, there were a few items on clearance, one of which happened to be exactly what I wanted. And they were just out on the shelf. I re-read it several times to make sure I wasn’t missing something. Nope. That was weird.

So now I’m on the plane, Seattle-bound. I’m over a very flat, brown patch-worked ground. We’re scheduled to land in just under 2.5 hours. It’s annoying that flights are longer heading west, even though the time-change makes it seem like you have more time. I would prefer a longer flight heading east when I’m trying to get more sleep on the red-eye. Instead, I’m crazy enough to agree to go into work for a half day after this. Despite the part where, when factoring in the time difference, I got up at 2:15 this morning.

I also think it’s funny that Alaska flies to Boston only from Seattle. Two flights each way each day. They have just the one gate, always B15. And the ticket counter is only open for a few hours twice a day to accommodate those flights. This is the first time ever that my plane has been at the first gate after going through security. I almost didn’t believe it.

I was wondering what security would be like at Logan, since that is the place where some 9/11 planes departed from and I’ve heard a few tales of their heightened security. Eh, not really. They didn’t search my backpack here, like they had in Seattle. Same steps as everywhere else. Line moved pretty fast. Less than 10 minutes for sure.

OK, I should stop rambling. Just because I’m trying to kill time doesn’t mean I have to take it out on a helpless blog. I should probably let Word know that “blog” is a word, huh?

Still got over an hour on my battery. Love this computer. With the work computer I would have had to switch to the spare battery long ago.
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Now home after spending my half day at work. I also forgot to mention the horrifying experience I had yesterday afternoon/evening. The internet went out at the hotel. I fiddled off and on for a couple hours before finally calling the front desk, who confirmed it was a hotel-wide problem. It didn’t return until after I went to bed. Very scary.