64 posts tagged “travel”

Tea and tatties

5 days ago
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Knowing that I was going to want a really good cup of tea when I got back from New Orleans I asked Julie for recommendations on somewhere in Santa Monica. She suggested the Tudor House and I gave it a go. Good call.

The tea menu was everything I had hoped for and the tea came in a generous pot and wasn't the weak, insipid stuff I drank at another place the week before. The service was friendly as you could hope and as fast as you'd expect in the US. I really didn't need the fried potatoes that came with my omelette but they were very good and I thoroughly enjoyed them. I deny anyone not to enjoy fried potatoes or a really good pot of tea.

I think I know where I'll be drinking tea when I'm next in the area.

Tea Cup

Not a paradox, a blog post

Apr 28, 2008
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Today, Massimiliano and I visited LACMA. It's a great museum, with an excellent selection of art movements and styles, although it doesn't seem to have a permanent photography exhibit. On the other hand, it seems to cater well for kids, as there were several interactive art-creation stands in and around the campus.

I enjoyed the docent talks on abstract expressionism (of which I knew nothing) and Robert Motherwell. I'm not sure if I could say that I enjoyed Motherwell's Elegy to the Spanish Republic (100) but I loved David Smith's piece, next to it. I can't find a picture on-line but this one is quite similar and is outdoors, which is where they were intended to be displayed. Want.

But I suppose that it was inevitable that having travelled over 4,000 miles from Belgium, the painting I most enjoyed from the collection was this one from Magritte, one of Belgium's most brilliant artists. It's always struck a chord with me. I expect it stems from my love of paradox and patterns. And as much as the statement is true (it's an image of a pipe), it's also funny.

Ceci n'est pas une pipe

Before visiting the museum I hadn't realised quite how close it is to the La Brea tar pits. I've wanted to visit them ever since seeing them in movies when I was a child. Standing next to them, smelling the tar and seeing it bubble away was excellent fun.

The museum and the tar pits both look like they're worth a second visit.

Tar Pit with Bubble

Ground Sloth

Can't cook, will eat

Apr 27, 2008
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I don't have a kitchen to cook in at the moment, so I bought a different set of foods than I would normally choose at the Santa Monica farmers' market, this morning.

As I've said, the really good ingredients don't need much in the way of cooking, anyway. So while it would be nice to experiment with some of the vegetables I saw there and don't have at home I wasn't too worried. I started off buying 2oz of sliced, dried persimmons. They're not too sweet, chewy and don't have that mouth drying effect you sometimes get from a raw persimmon. But they definitely have the fragrance and perfume you get from the fresh fruit.

Then the chap running the fresh fruit stand gave me a Fuji apple to test. I did and I liked it. Sweet and crispy, it was a great breakfast and most likely more healthy than a muffin or a pastry. I got half a dozen to take back with me so that I have something healthy to start the next few days with.

If it hadn't been so hot I'd have stayed longer. But it's still April and I'm not yet ready for 90°F, so I made a hasty exit and did a very un-English thing and found some shade.

Dried Persimmons and Fuji Apples

Vox Hunt: A Cut Above the Rest

Apr 24, 2008
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Show us a photo of you with a funny haircut.

This isn't actually my hair. It's a hat I tried on in a shop in Alaska. After checking in a mirror I decided against buying it.

Hair

Still lots to go

Apr 18, 2008
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So now that I've visited Colorado and China for the first time I've updated the maps of the countries and US states I have visited. Frankly, I think there's still not enough red on these maps. So much more to see. I'm hoping to add New Zealand and Ethiopia soon. And I'd like to see more of Scandinavia, Iceland, Greenland and Chile if possible.

Worldmap

Statemap

I made the maps with Douwe Osinga's visited countries and visited states tools.

A glory shrouded in smog?

Apr 18, 2008
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I'd never been to mainland China before and so I wasn't quite sure what to expect from Beijing.

I knew it had the ancient Forbidden City (which I didn't see) and was close to a bit of the Great Wall (which I also didn't see). I also knew that the PRC's capital city had grown tremendously over the last few years and was heavily populated and full of new buildings.

It is indeed full of huge, glass clad towers. And it has an atmosphere almost as polluted as the Moscow I visited in September 2001. When I went back to Moscow a couple of years later the air was much cleaner and I hope that China follows Russia's lead and takes steps to clean up its emissions act.

I did make one little tourist trip in Beijing. Guangliang suggested a trip to the new Olympic stadium. It's not quite finished yet, although it looks like the remaining work is fairly minor and the vast majority of the construction has been completed. Frankly, I think the outside of the stadium looks great and the outside of the swimming pool looks superb, too.

But as you can see in the picture below, it's not really possible to see the blue of the sky. There's a thick layer of smog over the whole city and you can taste it in every breath. But that doesn't seem to put most people off a visit, as the many visitors we saw confirmed. In fact, it was so popular, I couldn't get a shot that didn't have other tourists posing for their own photos.

Beijing Olympic Stadium (Pose)

Vox Hunt: How Bizarre

Apr 13, 2008
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Show us something bizarre.

These pigeons were found on the street in Montevideo on a Sunday afternoon. Why? No idea.

Beheaded_pigeons_461

Sleeping in the air

Apr 11, 2008
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Methought I heard a voice cry ‘Sleep no more!
United does murder sleep,’ the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care,
The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,
Chief nourisher in life’s feast.

I may have misquoted Shakespeare slightly, but sleep is important if you're going to be vaguely useful after travelling across six or more time zones. So, getting a bit of shuteye in a noisy, cramped, smelly, under-pressurised cabin is important and often quite difficult. But small comforts can make a big difference to the experience.

Which is why I'm happy to pimp a product I bought in Denver of Wednesday, which helped me get about seven hours sleep on my flight over the Atlantic. It's a soft, plush eye-mask I bought from Brookstone for $10. It doesn't have any gel inside it, so there's no problem getting it through airport security, and it rolls up small enough to fit in the case of my noise cancelling headphones.

Eye Mask

I dropped off to sleep right after take-off and only woke up when we began our descent into London and my ears popped. Being tired helped but the absence of ambient light was important, too.

The main advantage over the eye-mask you get from the airline is that it's not made of some kind of plastic or vinyl, and so there was no build-up of sweat. It was so soft and comfortable I forgot it was there.

I leave for two and half days in Beijing on Sunday afternoon and I'll be using it to get some sleep on the eastbound overnight flight.

The weather cheers up now that I'm leaving

Jan 26, 2008
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Grrrrr.

So now I'm leaving it clears up for a few hours. Last night there was a great sunset and some dry weather. Today should be dry and sunny all day, but I'll be leaving mid-afternoon. Maybe I'll have better luck at NANOG next month.

Dry at Sunset

Californian splash and drizzle

Jan 22, 2008
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Every time I visit this country another layer of rose tint is removed from my spectacles. This time it's weather.

I got up at 4.30, this morning and left for work at about 5.30. The hotel I'm staying in is further away than before and the walk takes about half an hour. That's fine. I like walking.

As I left my room and walked to the exit, I noticed that the paths between the buildings were wet and thought that it was very sensible to turn on the sprinklers late at night, rather than run them during daylight hours. By the time I'd walked 150 yards I realised that the sprinklers hadn't been running because there was a thin drizzle. It had got quite a bit heavier before I'd walked a quarter of a mile.

Shortly afterwards I saw a large pool of water in the gutter at the side of the road. I had the great fortune to be walking past it at the same time as a huge 4x4 ploughed through it and soaked my right side. And then I carried on walking the rest of the way. I was thoroughly wet by the time I walked into the office.

It turns out that I spent 22 hours traveling, yesterday and I brought northern Europe's penetrating drizzle with me. And it looks like it's staying for the rest of the week.

Californian Drizzle

Drizzle has never been my vision of Southern California. Smog? Yes. Overcast? Maybe. Sunshine? Of course. Drizzle? No. When I was here last January I had magnificent cloudscapes and dry, friendly weather. I think I may need to buy an umbrella, this afternoon.