The past several days have been spent in a winter wonderland. For those of you who don’t know, some friends and I have been working our way through the alphabet of places to spend Hogmanay and New Year. This year was the 10th installment so we spent a few days down in Jedburgh in the Scottish Borders. Our base was the fabulously equipped Bairnkine Cottages a few miles outside Jedburgh where we were made to feel very welcome.
We saw the Bells in at a wonderful ceilidh in the Town Hall and then somehow made our way back through the snow to the cottages. The next couple of days were spent relaxing, building snowmen and igloos, and ferrying goods from our abandoned vehicles at the bottom of a hill, near the main road.
After a steady drive back up to Edinburgh on the Saturday we were a little taken aback to see the mostly city clear of snow – which we’d kind of gotten used to. It turns out that we needn’t have been too upset though: a further several inches fell overnight and covered the city once more.
It has been quite rare in recent history for Edinburgh to have snow laying for any length of time and as such I noticed a few things. Not being able to rely on the council, people will seemingly clear the pavements only to the edge of their property line and not one centimeter further. Messages in the snow are commonplace – usually obscene ones left on car windscreens but I did notice one helpful message informing the car owner that they had left their lights on. On a grander scale I witnessed a guy shoveling a Spanish message in the snow (with his scarf for the tilde in ñ) for his friend to photograph from their fourth-floor flat for use on a CD sleeve.
Pride of place has to go to this though. It was nice to see a little imagination and something a bit different on Rothesay Place: a snow Sphinx and mini-pyramid!
So that’s that over and done with. I traveled westwards by train, plane and automobile for over 31,000 miles until I got back to where I started out from a few months ago. I beat Phileas Fogg by a few days. I’ve eaten subs, grinders and hoagies. I’ve renewed friendships and forged some new ones. I’ve experimented with facial hair, driven for the first time in a decade, jumped from a really high building, rolled down a steep hill in a ball, fell out of a perfectly fine airplane, shaved my head, met my baby niece and just about melted my credit card to boot.
Continue reading ‘There and back again’
Today I purchased a day ticket for the Tokyo Metro and set off exploring, armed only with my iPhone subway map. I started off in the Sony Building, mainly slobbering over the 70″ Bravia (a snip at ¥4 million) and the stunningly slim XEL-1 OLED unit. After that I had a shoe shine outside Yūrakuchō station before jumping back on the tube and heading towards Tokyo.
Continue reading ‘Going underground’
If anybody were to ask me what the “must do” of Melbourne is then I’d have to say that you need to actually get out of Melbourne. The Neighbours tour is amusing enough but I would have to suggest a Great Ocean Road tour.
I went on one yesterday. It was a long day, setting off at 0730 and getting back to the city a little after 2100. We took in Geelong, Torquay and Bells Beach (as referenced in Point Break – the actual beach was in Oregon) before heading along to Split Point lighthouse (as seen in Mad Max and Round The Twist).
Having driven down the west coast of America it was a great pleasure to have someone else do the driving and consequently feel free to enjoy the views without worrying about crashing the car. We were so much closer to the water and maybe because of this the waves were on a far more impressive scale. The waves fell almost as if they were in slow motion. The water wasn’t exactly clear due to the recent rainfall.
However, the waves on the surf coast paled in comparison to those on the shipwreck coast. It was an extremely windy day which whipped up the ocean. The waves were honestly the biggest waves I’ve seen outside of a Laird Hamilton film and they crashed over the 100 foot cliffs.
We stopped at Mait’s Rest Rainforest and Kennett River to see some wild koalas and hand-feed King Parrots and Rosellas. Some kangaroos were also grazing in the nearby fields but there was still no hopping action.
The highlight of the day was taking a short helicopter flight over and around the 12 Apostles. After this, we made short stops at Loch Ard Gorge and London Arch before driving back to Melbourne.
Now I’ve recovered after being taken around the Kings Cross area for my cousins birthday, I headed into the City and walked from Darling Harbour up to The Rocks, Circular Quay and around the Botanical Gardens. I remember a rumour that one of the guides on the Sydney Harbour Bridge climb was Kristian Schmidt (you’ll know him better as Todd Landers from Neighbours). I didn’t particularly want to blow a couple of hundred dollars to find out so I hopped on a bus to Bondi. I opted for the 333 limited stop service (AUS $4) instead of the Bondi Explorer (AUS $39). I’m not sure exactly why the regular bus was so much cheaper. It may have been a little slower but I was still walking on the beach 30 minutes later.
I carried on my walk along the coastal path down to Coogee. I arrived in time for the reply of last nights game between Spain and Italy and by luck walked into the Coogee Bay Hotel Sports Bar which is home to the two largest plasma televisions in Australia (103″ Panasonic TH-103PF9UK).
I fancied Spain before the tournament got underway so I’m glad they’re through. Who knows, the “Spain never wins a major trophy” hoodoo just may be over.
I took a trip up to Katoomba and the Blue Mountains yesterday with my aunt and uncle. The scenery and views of the Three Sisters are amazing – easily worth the drive. While it was apparently raining back in Sydney, we were blessed with unseasonally warm and sunny weather.
We also took a trip to Scenic World and had a ride on the steepest incline railway in the world (a maximum gradient of 52 degrees) down to the Scenic Walkway in the lush valley below where the temperature drops by a good few degrees. It was midweek so the place wasn’t all that busy but I’m told that at the weekend you can barely move for all of the tourists.
It’s supposed to be Winter here at the moment but the daytime temperature is still nudging 20° Celsius now that the rain from last week has dried up. The country has been under drought conditions for six years so all precipitation is actually welcome.
This place is simply massive. The UK could fit into New South Wales alone seven times over. Australia is a place that is full of things that will kill you, ridiculous place names like Woolloomooloo or Ulladulla and strange-looking foodstuffs in-and-among the familiar. I’d never even heard of a durian or a garingale before never mind seen or eaten them.
I decided to head down to Rotorua, the cultural heartland of New Zealand today. I had a wander around the geothermal pools of Kuirau Park and gazed over to Mokoai Island. There is a strong smell of sulphur in the air because of the multitude of vents and also steam billowing out practically everywhere.
While I was there I had to try Zorbing. Specifically a Zydro experience where you aren’t harnessed in, but sit in the Zorb with a couple of buckets worth of (thankfully warm) water. I guess it was like being back in the womb. Actually, more like being in a washing machine once the thing got going down the zigzag path. I should have thought ahead and taken some socks and thrown them in there with me.
If I’m being honest (and I usually am), New Zealand was almost an afterthought. I’m glad I made the stop though and I would like to come back when it’s summer here and explore the islands and culture.
At least I’m used to the local time now. Adjusting for Australia and Japan will not be such a big deal anymore.
I am have wroting this a week last Monday1. I really don’t know what day it is anymore. The whole International Dateline thing has confused me. It’s supposed to be a leap year but I’ll still only have 365 days thanks to the 8th of June being taken away from me. I do feel like I’ve been short-changed if not downright robbed. What’s going to happen when SCRAM jet engines become commonplace and you can circumnavigate the globe in six hours?
Maybe it was the beers I had while watching repeats of the Euro 2008 matches so far but the bottle of 5 Hour Energy I brought over from the USA did diddley squat. I fell asleep for a couple of hours and I’m going to have to call it a night properly very shortly.
1 Present ultraconditional subinverted semi-active past subjunctive deponent aorist tense.
I went for a walk today to assure my legs that they are not redundant after yesterday’s Segway tour. I wandered through Soma and Mission, stopped for an ice cream at Mitchell’s and then climbed Twin Peaks before descending to stroll through Golden Gate Park. The walk up is pretty tiring but you can drive (or be driven) most of the way up.
I got all the way down to the beach and the Dutch Windwill but was exposed to the wind that almost blew me from the summit of Twin Peaks earlier. It felt like my legs were being sandblasted so I hightailed it back along Fulton to the Civic Center. All told I clocked up over 17 miles today.
I really like San Francisco but I don’t think that I could ever live here. Building a city on a major fault line just seems to be fundamentally flawed to me.
