TravelStream™ news feed for member csm on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/csm en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Mon, 12 May 2008 06:04:14 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/csm/1/1210563000/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/csm/1/1210563000/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/csm/1/1210563000/tpod.html Mon, 12 May 2008 06:04:14 -0400 First the famine, now this . . . .

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London, United Kingdom

Last evening in London -- a cool breeze finally came in out of the west, turning yesterday's broiling madhouse of harried people into a dreamland of calm strollers lazily meandering through the parks. Had the loveliest time walking from Picadilly Circus to Kensington Gardens -- Hyde Park is abloom. The Diana Memorial ("the moat without a castle" as the locals call it) was closed by the time I got there, and I caught a glimpse of color in the sky before the sun finally went down.

Can't wait to come back next Spring when I can bring Barbie and the girls and share the sights.
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London, United Kingdom

Finished off the rest of the records I came to look at and caught a showing of Billy Elliott (a musical based on the film). The score is a bit bare bones, but the story line (a kid growing up without a mother in coal-mining country quits taking boxing lessons when he figures out he's a lot better at ballet) is very well executed. The dancing was fabulous -- the kid who played Billy is still singing in soprano registers, and has amazing turns and leaps, and he taps like a typewriter. There was a great pas de deux -- Billy as a kid partnered by Billy as an adult -- and the encore had everyone -- coalminers, grandma, the manly brother -- all of them dancing up a storm.
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London, United Kingdom

OK, now I'm glad to be in a controlled environment building. We're slipping into a heat wave -- haven't heard of anyone fainting on the Tube yet, but they are making overhead announcements reminding people to stay hydrated.

Finished at the BL a little early today and took the Light Rail out to Greenwich [geek alert!]. They've done a lot of work on the Maritime Museum, which has a nice display of nautical navigation instruments, and they've done a huge upgrade at the Royal Observatory -- Harrison's clocks that won the Longitude Prize were fabulous -- the first three almost look like Rube Goldberg devices, or like something a Victorian might build in the hopes that it might double as a time machine. Also saw a few nice telescopes, including the tube from one of Herschel's scopes, and Edmund Halley's wall quadrant (picture one-fourth of the rim of a bronze circle, carefully ruled -- essentially a wall-sized protractor. Very nice.

My hotel room is proving to be a striking example of "you get what you pay for". Hotels in central London are notoriously expensive -- savings-account-emptying expensive. Almost nothing under a hundred or two hundred pounds a night, and the dollar is worth half a pound. I started prowling the web for a room about a month before I left. My favorite Youth Hostel was already booked for the weekend, and I was having trouble looking forward to dorm-style accomodations at any of the other hostels. I kept casting a wider and wider net until I found "The Central". It's on the far east side of London -- Zone 3 on the Underground, a fifteen minute walk from the Upton Park station. A steal at 24 pounds a day (with breakfast!). I checked in to a narrow sliver of a room, overlooking a curry shop, with a pub underneath.

I tossed my bag on the bed and it went through to the floor. Not enough slats to hold the mattress against my backpack -- didn't bode well for me. I gathered the kindling and propped it in a corner. There are two dozen rooms over the pub, shareing four toilets and four showers. It wouldn't be so bad if (a) it was air conditioned (b) it had been cleaned once the blitz was over (c) the pub downstairs didn't get rented out for private techno-music floor-rattling dance parties. It's a reasonably comfortable sliver of a room, but I feel like I've been miniaturized and trapped inside a speaker enclosure.

For all it lacks in decor and quiet, the people I meet at breakfast are interesting -- mostly Eastern Europeans and English people who live in the country -- mostly amused at the ramshackle state of affairs -- mostly travellers on a budget like myself -- and the neighborhoods that I walk through on the way to the Tube station are pretty amazing -- in some, women wear black over everthing save a slit for them to see through; in others they dress as skimpily as is possible. I think I've identified three sorts of cultures -- one Indian, one African, one Arab (and I feel pretty ignorant when I try to guess with any more precision than that) -- within each, there seem to be traditionalists who dress very conservatively and free spirits who dress outlandishly Western. They seem to walk down the streets unaware of each other (actually a pan-London skill) and keep pretty much to themselves. It's far off the beaten path, but I'm glad I got a chance to see it.


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London, England, United Kingdom

. . . . but the weather in London is bloody brilliant, and I'm holed up in the British Library all day!
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Cork, County Cork, Ireland

After our ass-rotting experience on the bus to Dublin and our much lovelier journey to Derry, we decided to take the train to Cork. Just outside of Dublin, we were moved to coaches (fancy buses) due to a maintenance problem with the trains. It was a surreal experience - they driver played Jimmy Buffett and Alan Jackson on the entertainment system, but I was sitting next to a woman with a strong Irish accent chattering away on her cell phone. We decided to walk from Connelly to Heuston (change of stations needed to continue to the southwest) - I'm now 0 for 2 walking in Dublin without tripping over my feet or a slick spot on the sidewalk - went all the way down the first time.

The ride to Cork was gorgeous - abandoned castles, green hills, every now and then gorgeous horses (but mostly sheep sheep and more sheep). We arrived in Cork with several hours of daylight which we used to search in vain for our hostel. The River Lee diverges as it nears Cork - the city center is built on an island in the middle of the river - it's a beuatiful city with a lot of character. Between the walk down to Belfast Central, the crossing of Dublin, and the zig-zagging around Cork, I think we posted another ten-mile day. After we found the hostel, we found the Thirsty Scholar where my colleagues April and Terri hung out last spring (academic conferences are finding groovier settings all the time), then the city centre, where we found an alleyway with Indian restaurants in it.

Monday was a bank holiday - we knew that the banks would be closed, but were surprised at how empty the city centre was before 1pm. When we finally get around to shooting our vampire movie, we know that we can get a lot done on the streets of Cork before noon on a bank holiday. The University was open - enough students around that we started to think classes might be in session (unlikely - they're nearing end of term and were probably studying in the library). It's a gorgeous campus - the architecture is lovely, the quad is well kept, the chapel features a mosaic tile floor that has intricate celtic knotwork and gorgeous stained glass. We also walked around the cathedral nearby and past the Beamish brewery (makers of a SW stout that competes with Guinness in Cork and a few other Western towns).

After lunch we took a short train ride to Cobh (pronounced "Cove" - in fact, it's hard to find Cobh mentioned on a map, a "you are here", or in a guide book without the note that it's pronounced "Cove"). It's a beautiful little town on the harbour where the Titanic last left Ireland (the Irish love to point out that it was an English captain left in charge of it). We walked up a very steep hill with houses built one right on top of another to the Cathedral, then on out of the town and into the countryside where the beautiful rolling hills were particularly well lit by the late day sunshine. Back into town and along the strand - a real getaway from the madness of city life.

The next day we hit the infamous English Market and loaded up on olives (stuffed with garlic and almonds) and cheeses for the train ride back. I'm happy to say that I crossed Dublin without stumbling - one for three, but the curse is broken.

The last end of the train ride we shared our table with a young Irish woman (twenty five years old, three kids) took pity on us "poor Americans" - she was convinced that we were destitute and bought us pints for the rest of our ride before she hopped off. Interesting, that the Celtic Tiger has done so well for them that they look at Americans as the poor of the world.
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Derry, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom

Took the train to Derry/Londonderry* today. (* more on this in a moment). It was a nice train ride out of Belfast, through the country past tiny farms with sheep and cows and horses, through tiny little towns (including Antrim, which was much smaller than I thought it would be), then along the north coast past amazing beaches - some sandy, some rocky - and to the end of the line where Derry sits on the River Foyle. I was anxious to see it because it is the last completely walled city in Ireland; Brian was anxious to see it becuase it was the site of the Bloody Sunday Massacre in the early 1970s, a key turning point in the Troubles (his senior thesis is focused on the Troubles, and two of his three classes are focused on them now as well).

*I somehow had the idea that Derry was the city in the area known as Londonderry; in fact, both names refer to the same place - the city was originally called Derry, then renamed Londonderry when the Brits brought Scots to the area. Now you can't refer to the place without implying an allegiance - Catholics and Nationalists refer to it as Derry, Protestants and Unionists refer to it as Londonderry. Maps produced in the north will typically label it Londonderry; maps produced in the Republic often label it Derry.

We had a "tourist moment" shortly after our arrival - we had a full page map of the area, from which we had guessed the size to be roughly similar to Belfast (Derry is the second largest city in the North). The wall around the city centre is only a mile in circumference, so it's only about four blocks from one side to the other. We ended up getting to walk all over the city. The bogside is the Catholic side of town, and features two-storey high murals on the sides of apartment buildings recounting the key events of Bloody Sunday. They're much more artistically produced than Belfast murals (commissioned by artists instead of by neighborhood amateurs), and slightly less vitriolic. The symbolism is very blatant, and accompanying plaques make sure that you don't miss the point. My favorite is the peace mural - a forty foot dove and oak leaf on a rainbow-hued backgrough. They've reclaimed one set of apartments for a small museum that we went through - the woman at the entry found us a few times as we went though and pointed out where things had happened. It turns out her brother was one of the people who died. Bloody Sunday started as a peace march - clergy at the front, couples brought their kids - Unionist soldiers were vastly outnumbered, and struggling to keep the march outside the city walls. Fourteen people were killed that day, giving the IRA a huge propaganda victory and making tension and violence in the North much worse.

On our way out of town, we walked through the Fountains, the Protestant neighborhood, which also features a few murals, much smaller, but similarly beautiful. Whereas Free Derry was very open and we were greeted with a lot of smiles and saw a lot of kids playing in the yards, the Fountains are a much quieter neighborhood - people peeked at us through windows and across the streets, but no one spoke to us or even smiled. We didn't see a soul under fifty, making us suspect that their kids had all moved away.

On the train ride back, "Alan" joined us at our table. He came right out of central casting (or, as I like to think of it, the Society for the Preservation of Cliches and Stereotypes). He was hammered - reeked of tobacco and hard liquor - and halfway to toothless. He charmed us with jokes and tunes and appreciations of all things American (especially JFK and Hillary Clinton and Johnny Cash). I was a little leery of him at first, then greatly saddened (he had been visiting his daughter and his grandson). Brian seemed amused at first, but the amusement turned quickly to annoyance (in addition to being loud and smelling bad, he was also a fountain of intolerance - Catholics, blacks, women).

We endured his company until he got tired of us and moved to another compartment. Two stops later, some kids threw a brick at the window opposite us. It was safety glass, so nothing came flying at us, but the thwack was very loud and alarming, and the whole pane was shattered into pieces no bigger than gravel. The kids sitting next to the window were pretty freaked out, but the conductor was pretty nonchalant once he saw that there was no broken glass on the seats and no one was hurt. Brian and I spent the rest of the ride mulling over the irony - couldn't wait to get back to the safety of Belfast.


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Dublin, County Dublin, Ireland

Brian and I took the bus into Dublin for the day. I'm still trying to sort out the experience. It only took a minute to get oriented, but there were surprises around every corner. We hadn't walked three blocks from the bus station before I was looking at the General Post Office on O'Connell street (the one that was shelled when the British sent gun boats up the River Liffey). Right in front of the post office, they've erected a massive aluminum spire - a symbol of hope (so the guide books say); for me a symbol that everything remembered would be accompanied by something new. The last time I was in Dublin, smoking was almost compulsory in the pubs, now it's banned nearly everywhere. The last time I was here, it was a thriving hub of Irish culture - Irish people worked in the shops, and Irish tourists from other cities and from the country made up the bulk of the tourist population (on weekends, they would be outnumbered, at least as measured in decibels, by German and Dutch tourists who flooded in to the Temple Bar area South of the Liffey). Now people working in the shops are from all over the world - Asian, African, East European, South American. It lends a very cosmopolitan feel to the city - for lack of a better way to describe it, it feels a lot more like any other European city I've been in, and a lot less like the capital of Ireland. Street musicians play folk music from South America and New Orleans Jazz instead of fiddle and flute celtic folk tunes. I hadn't realized it before, but when I was last in Dublin, nearly everyone was paler than I am; now I'd guess roughly half of the people in the city are people of color. Brian and I had lunch in a pub where both of the waitresses were obviously Polish. When I was last in the Republic, I talked to a man in a pub who was very troubled by the implications of Ireland's impending union with Europe - on the one hand, he thought it would present opportunities for his children that he had never dreamed of, on the other hand, he feared that Ireland would lose a lot of its character and distinctiveness. I thought about him all day. At least in Dublin, I think he was right on both counts. The other big change is that there were Englishmen everywhere - ten years ago, Londoners would look incredulous when I told them I was going to Dublin - why would anyone want to go to Dublin? - now it's become a hotspot, especially for "hen parties" (these are new to me too - we saw them in Belfast as well - a dozen or so women out for a night on the town). .

We wandered around St. Patrick's Cathedral (where Jonathan Swift worked most of his career), and then off to Trinity University where we went through the Book of Kells exhibit. I've always missed this one way or the other - it was closed for security reasons on one of my trips, and closed because the students were sitting exams on another. It's a fabulous exhibit - a couple of rooms that provide context and show how manuscripts were made, then a small darkened room where two volumes are on display - one open to a page of text, one to a full-page illustration - alongside two other books from the time. The highlight of the tour was our exit through the Library's Long Room, a vast hall that holds 200,000 books - the place had the smell of a fabulous reading room, and the books were shelved twenty feet up the walls in nooks laid down both sides of the room.

We walked down the Liffey almost to the sea - I don't ever remember seeing so many construction cranes in one place - Dublin will undoubtedly be another place altogether the next time I see it.
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Armagh, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom

Caught an early bus to Armagh, the Ecclesiastical Center of Northern Ireland, and former home of Saint Patrick himself. There are two St. Patrick's Cathedrals in Armagh. The oldest is built on the site where St. Patrick built a stone church in the 5th century. It's now a thirteenth century structure that houses the bones of Brian Boru, the infamous high king of Ireland from the 11th century. The Roman Catholic Cathedral is much larger - it was started in 1840, but construction was suspended because they diverted all the building funds to famine relief. The rose window has nice celtic knotwork on the exterior, and the floor is a mosaic of celtic knots. The public library in Armagh is a hidden treasure - one large room filled with old books, many from the 15th and 16th centuries. I saw Swift's copy of the first edition of Gulliver's Travels, opened to a page where he made corrections for the second printing. A lot of local history laying about in curiosity cabinets and hanging on the wall too. Armagh is nice - very small - small enough that often as not people passing on the sidewalks greet each other by name - and the people are very friendly, their accent sweet to the ear. The contrast with Belfast is dramatic - in Armagh, women are still wearing skirts down to their ankles and men wear slacks and proper shoes. In Belfast, miniskirts and blue jeans are everywhere. I love the way that Belfast has opened up, but I admit to missing the provincial aspects of Irish culture that I remember from previous visits.
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Belfast, United Kingdom

More classes today - first a look at the end of the British Empire, then an introduction to the Troubles. I envy Brian the classes he's taking - from what I've seen, they're all very interesting. I left him on campus to go to his tutorials and wandered down through the City Centre - a much more vibrant and lively place than it was on my last trip. The newfound peace means that there are trash bins on the streets (all removed during my last trip as a security precaution), and storage lockers in the bus and train terminals (also decommissioned during my last trip) and the EU has turned it into a much more cosmopolitan place - particularly in the centre, I hear a lot of eastern European languages. Wound my way down to The Entries, a series of narrow alleys off the old high street, and home to Belfast's oldest pubs. Had a brilliant lunch at the Morningstar - ham and bangers, with a scoop each of side dishes - potatoes, potato salad, potato and cauliflower, potato and carrots - all very tasty, all approximately the same consistency, and all of it piping hot.

Kept on looking until I found White's Tavern, allegedly the oldest pub in Belfast (operating since 1630). The first guy I asked walked me half way there, warned me twice that it was "kind of dodgy" and that I should be sure to be out before dark, and then pointed me the rest of the way with directions that didn't even get me close. Finally found it by crisscrossing the area and getting lucky (it's off High Street, just east of Lombard, in case you're ever looking for it - on a good tourist map, it's marked plain as day). I asked the barman if he knew where in Belfast you might find a Beamish; he had never heard of it. I had it years ago in Kilkenny and Killarney, and have been watching the taps in the pubs I've been in. After my Guinness arrived, the guy next to me says, "You'll not find a Beamish anywhere in Northern Ireland - it's brewed in Cork, and the folks up here wouldn't dream of importing it." He turned out to be a teacher who lives in Dublin and commutes up to Belfast to teach - a very friendly fellow who filled a page with recommendations of things to see and do the next time I'm in the Republic. Met up with Brian for dinner at a fabulous burger joint, then went to the arts cinema and saw a Spanish horror film - the Orphanage - it was pretty good - not as predictable as American horror films, and trading more on suspense than gore.


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Belfast, United Kingdom

Took the train to Carrickfergus, a Norman castle on the coast just north of Belfast. It's an impressive structure - the last of its kind standing, and a testimony to the harsh conditions of the middle ages. Judging from the doorways, I'd guess most of the occupants were a good foot shorter than I am, and the picture of daily life that was painted was pretty bleak. A scattering of mannequins left a pretty awful impression of the weaponry in use - death by crossbow must have been particularly miserable. A gaggle of schoolgirls, mostly ten or eleven year olds, descended on the place just as we arrived - they were adorable, and frazzled their tour guide, whose accent I had trouble keeping up with. (I've been finding the working class Belfast accent nearly incomprehensible, much more so than anything I've heard in the Republic, rather more like the EastEnd accents in London - they talk fast, and sound like they have marbles in their cheeks).

We got back to Belfast in time to go to class - a brilliant overview of Ian Paisley's influence on modern politics in the North that I enjoyed a lot.
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