James Tucker in Cov

Elephants!

2009-09-08T10:18:00.006+01:00

The Elephant and Castle is the symbol of Coventry, though I've never really found a convincing explanation as to why. Apparently they represent, apart and together, strength and patience; for a symbol so ubiquitous (it's on lamp-posts, bollards, and anything run by the Council), it's a little non-specific. The motto camera principis - Prince's Chamber- refers to the Black Prince's history with the city, so that makes sense, but the elephant just seems to be something they picked because they liked it.

This one just looks so jolly. This guy and the one in brass at the top of the page kind of demonstrate that people didn't have a great idea of what elephants looked like in the 1500s.

These two are much more recent efforts, and thus 'better' in that they look like elephants, if I may be snobbish about 16th century anatomy.

And we also have the elephant in chair and carpet format all over the medieval guildhall, though it now has a cat sitting on top of its crest as well, to symbolise 'watchfulness'- another noted inaccuracy?

Hampton in Arden

2009-05-03T14:30:00.004+01:00

The next stop past Berkswell, towards Birmingham, is Hampton in Arden. Here you're very close to the Birmingham Airport, but Hampton seems a pretty small village still with a couple more shops than Berkswell, and a school and library. It's still very much a collection of older houses on the crest of a hill around the church and the village pub. Lower down, though, are some pretty grand Georgian or Victorian houses that look over the nearby farmland.
The church is a pretty straightforward Gothic renovation of an older Norman one, and an old ditch separates the graveyard from what seems to be an old manor house. I couldn't see much of it, but it was built up on one side by some huge stone retaining walls, and is apparently a large, half-timbered house, and with the church and the pub, takes up the very top of Hampton's hill.
On the marshy ground below Hampton is the medieval Packhorse Bridge, with the much more modern railway bridge in the background. There used to be a cross on the bridge, and on its stump has been carved the parish boundary between Hampton in Arden and Berkswell (the H/B to the right). The whole area now is part of a wetlands reserve, but if you duck under the railbridge, you'll find yourself in a field looking to Berkswell.

Berkswell

2009-05-03T13:36:00.006+01:00

Berkswell's a tiny little village between Birmingham and Coventry, and can only be got to by taking a local train and then walking about a mile and a half along some pleasant country lanes. Or you could bike from Coventry, which would take well under an hour. Outside of Berkswell is Ram Hall, an old manor farm with an interesting chimney and a sideline in making sheep's cheese.
The village itself has one shop/postoffice/tea shop, one pub, and a church. About half the houses are hundreds of years old, and there is a farm on the main street, with cows staring at the pub diners across the road. The village green has a set of stocks with five leg-holes, supposedly built for the most regular offenders, who were a one-legged soldier and his two drinking companions.

The church really is the highlight of Berkswell, though. Built next to the eponymous well, which may have been used for baptisms, it was mainly built in the Norman period, though the very odd octagonal vault under the chancel apparently might indicate Saxon origins. In any case, it's had a long history of renovation and addition, with some windows and a tower from the Gothic period, a late-medieval gallery one one side, and a two-story porch outside the Norman door. The arches on one side are Gothic and on the other, Norman.

Antwerp

2009-02-16T11:26:00.010Z

The last of the big Flemish cities we visited, we did as a day-trip last summer. The weather was pretty back-and-forth, but we saw the centre of the city without too much rain.
Like the other cities we visited in northern Belgium, Antwerp had a spectacular central square, with guild-houses like those in Brussels. In front of their town hall was a statue of the mythical founder throwing the severed hand of a giant. A fountain of water spurts from the wrist.
There weren't as many medieval buildings as in Bruges or Ghent, I don't think, but there were a few streets that can't have changed much in 600 years. Antwerp's also a much bigger city than Bruges or, I think, Ghent, and so the central area's surrounded by more modern developments from the 1700s to Europe's first proper skyscraper. In the 1500s it had taken over trade and power from Ghent and Bruges, and was one of the largest cities in Europe.
The cathedral, which was never really finished, has a tower 400 feet high, and 400 feet long, and has a couple of Reubens altarpieces inside (he's buried almost nextdoor), but I was more interested in the various pieces of medieval wall-painting which were whitewashed over (presumably during the Reformation),
and which have survived pretty well to this day. The central crossing also has a Ely- like octagon instead of a tower, which looks a lot like the spire of a Russian church from the outside (that said, I've seen a tower like that in Brussels, too).
Instead of being intercut with canals like Bruges or Ghent, Antwerp's on a very large river, and on the banks of that (and amid a pretty unseasonable storm) we saw a castle, neatly decked out with a Roman-style coat of arms, and a statue of a mischevious giant outside. Next to that was a huge brick fleishmarkt, the guildhall of the butchers, which is supposedly meant to look like a piece of bacon. We also wandered past an old printer's museum that was just closing, and through all sorts of squares with odd bars and whatnot.
The exit from Antwerp's pretty dramatic, because the station (which is next to the zoo) is one of the great old steel and stone palaces of the 19th c., but in this case, has been updated for highspeed rail, and for more platforms, by having them added in below. Someone standing in the old ticket hall can look down on three more levels of platforms, the newest and fastest trains pulling in and out of the bottom floor.

Castle to Castle

2008-10-25T11:32:00.008+01:00

Last Saturday Laura and I walked from Kenilworth Castle to Warwick (which has a castle we didn't look at). Kenilworth's about a mile from the University, just south of the edge of Coventry, and is one of the prettiest towns I've seen. There's a long main street, lined with very old houses and a couple pubs. At one end is the church and some shops, at the other end is the castle, and some more pubs.
The castle's obviously seen better days (it was 'reduced' during the Civil War), but was one of the biggest, and hosted all sorts of Kings and Queens in its history. The picture above doesn't really do it justice for sheer size until you realise that the wall around the base is 12 to 15 feet high.
From there the walk's a pretty simple one across farm fields and a small woods, until you hit the suburban outskirts of Warwick. That said, it was a six-mile walk, and a pretty windy day, so it wasn't the easiest going in the world.
Once we hit Warwick, we were reminded that this was the Mop Fair weekend. This started as an employment fair for domestic help, apparently, and is now just a big carnival.
Brilliantly, they set up the rides right in the main square, near the church and inside the city gates. We could see edges of the castle from here and there in the streets, but were much more concerned with having some dinner than in walking down to the walls again- we've been to Warwick before, and it's pretty easy to get to from Coventry, so we can go again.

Edinburgh

2008-03-28T14:11:00.005Z

After our trip to St Andrew's, Laura and I went to Edinburgh, my second trip there in a year- I saw in the New Year with Tyler on the edges of a wind-blown Castle Street. This time the weather was much nicer, a crisp sort of autumn day that was still a little too early in the year to be that cool.
As always, the castle was the centrepiece of the town, which we visited this time around. Along with all of the other phases of the building- the old chapel, the practical defences and the Victorian nationalism of the museum buildings, are touches of the community of soldiers who were based here. A small corner of a lower bastion is a graveyard for the dogs of the regiments, including one for a dog named Scamp, which might be visible below. Tom the Gun, the soldier who's fired the one o'clock cannon for some years, now has his own brand of whisky, and his face on all of the signs explaining the whole custom. We left the castle with enough time for Laura to be terrified on Prince's Street when the gun went off.
In the museum quarter was this Andy Warhol exhibit we missed in favour of a locally famous picture of a skating clergyman, and spent a surprising amount of time in the (rather good) park-level expansion's gift shop.
As for me, I was especially struck by how tall the old buildings could be, and how dense the old town must have been. At times there must have been eight or ten floors above, which I think does qualify as a skyscraper.

Windsor

2008-03-28T13:49:00.005Z

Windsor Castle is conveniently close to London, and apparently such a draw that there are two separate rail lines terminating there. Choosing the option that avoided going through Slough, which is distressingly close, we headed to Windsor along the southern route, passing through Kew instead. Windsor's also really quite close to Heathrow, and I'd think you could see the castle pretty clearly from the left windows of a plane taking off- it can only be a couple of miles. Despite all that, Windsor is a pretty small and quiet sort of place, still totally dominated by the castle. It rises considerably above the river, and sits beside the 650 acre Home Park and the 5000 acre Great Park, which includes the castle's 3 mile driveway.
The castle's divided into lower and upper wards, and is probably close to a mile long in total. At the dead centre is a circular tower on a mount (right in the picture above), a development of the original fort built by William the Conquerer. The Lower Ward, closer to the town, contains St George's Chapel, the home of the Knights of the Garter, and probably one of the best late-medieval churches I've ever seen. The carving and vaulting are of the flashiest possible sort, and the tombs and statuary from both monarchs and famous knights are fantastic. There's also a collection of Tudor cottages for some of the staff, and a circular group of houses for the choir of the Chapel.
The Upper Ward, nearer the Park, is the bit you can't visit directly. The state apartments, dining rooms and exhibitions are all here, but so are the actual Royal Residences. This bit most clearly shows that most of the castle has been rebuilt in the 17th and 19th Centuries to a sort of story-book ideal. The exhibition of drawings we caught included Michaelangelo, da Vinci, Reubens sketches, and that was a tiny bit of the whole collection. There is also the tour through the great dining halls and so forth, which are impressive, but I liked the drawing rooms and breakfast areas, with their views over Eton (and, alas, Slough) for absolutely miles.

After all that, a tour through the old streets of Windsor was a nice change, as was the trip down to and over the river to Eton, and the famous school there. We didn't see much of that, but it did blend into the town at the edges, with some very old shops and houses turning out to belong to the school, and several more catering pretty directly to the student population. Even from there, you can see back to the castle from almost anywhere in the area.

London at Christmas

2008-01-20T21:17:00.000Z

London was done up nicely for Christmas this year- I thought Oxford Street pretty tacky, especially as it was essentially a disney film advert, and Regent Street was abstract atomium shapes. However, down towards Marble Arch were these angel shapes, and Debenhams was brilliant. The toy window had hundreds of stuffed animals on strings, being moved like puppets, doing things like decorating the tree and handing out gifts.
The whole thing was set to a weird, hooting and mechanical sort of soundtrack that made it sound like a slightly creepy toy factory. At the other end of the town was Bow Lane, a small shopping area in the shadow of St Paul's, who I think did the best job of doing simple decoration, though it's slightly odd, because there are very few people around there at night. I was certainly the only one.

St Andrew's

2007-11-10T13:39:00.005Z

Laura and I went to St Andrew's for an academic conference in September, staying in University halls and wandering around the town. It's a nice, very small place on the coast, accessable through a couple of miles of Scottish countryside from the train station. The train ride from Edinburgh was good, with views back to the city for half the trip. For the first couple days, we didn't get to see the main sights of the city, except glimpses down streets and over rooftops. Even with that, it would have been worth visiting, as the beach (seen in Chariots of Fire) and the famous golf course fed a nice quietish place with good fish and chips, pubs and an abundance of second-hand stores.
That the ruined cathedral, once the largest in Scotland, isn't even the most famous thing about the town is part of it's charm, as is the way in which it has now turned into a large park, with graves around the walls- the only burials inside them are from before the Reformation. Most of the missing stone has gone on to build the towns and university buildings; free, carefully-cut granite apparently being too big a temptation for the townsfolk.
You can spend a lot of time in St Andrew's without seeing the golf-course, oddly. It's quite close to the centre of town, and all, but aside from a row of dominating clubhouses and golf shops, there's not quite the industry around it that one might think. Of course, we were there for an academic conference, and there was no tournament on; I rather expect it's a bit busier at other times.

Brighton

2007-11-04T18:47:00.000Z

**
Despite being November, Laura and I went to the sea-side to see Brighton, and got a pretty good day for it.
Brighton has been, essentially, London-by-the-sea for the last 200 years, being a pretty upclass summer resort, patronised by royalty and brimming with Regency theatres, townhouses and palaces. This is basically what we were expecting to see, along with the old city centre, which still has traces of the old fishing town.
However, the first thing we visited was the North Laine, an area of shops and 'counter-cultural' boutiques, where you can buy t-shirts of all your favourite communist dictators, incense, and healing crystals. Despite this, it wasn't nearly as annoying as its counterparts in London, or Toronto, and I ended up being tempted by a blue suit in a mod-themed shop. Might end up going back for it. After only that part of the visit, we both really liked Brighton.
Still to come was the Pier, a huge entertainment area built out from the busy shoreline. Most of the seafront is huge white hotels, with fish-and-chips places built into the seawall. Along the pier are shops selling doughnuts, video arcades, restaurants, bars and, at the end, a full-blown amusement park. Unlike the west pier, a mile down the beach, the main pier is shiny, new, and busy, even now. Laura and I rode the haunted house, and I did the big spiral slide (apparently from the top, you can see the Isle of Wight, but I didn't know that until I got down). Anyhow, the whole thing was way more fun that I expected it would be.
After that, it was off to the Lanes, the old town, largely Tudor buildings which were now pubs, restaurants and hundreds of jewellers. A 1960s development dropped into the middle actually didn't disrupt things too badly, and adds some walkways and patios a level above the street which must be excellent people-watching. There were also some of the specialty pet-supply stores we from the Beaches know all too well.
And, although we didn't go in, the Royal Pavilion is striking no matter what angle you see it from, absolutely incongruous, but surprisingly good in the flesh. I always looked forward to seeing it, under the impression it would be faintly ludicrous, a folly like the Albert Memorial or Casa Loma, but it's not, really. The architect may be using Indian elements in a western layout owing a lot to neo-gothic, I don't know, but it really works for me.

Birthday

2007-09-25T21:13:00.000+01:00

I turned 25 yesterday, and Lauras got us tickets to go up the London Eye, the 430-foot ferris wheel on the South Bank. It never looks like it's moving from the ground, but it goes around at a fair old clip once you're in it- a circuit takes half an hour. Up there you're right over Parliament and with a good view of Buckingham Palace, but the sun was also streaming from that angle, and so it's the pictures looking to the City, and to St. Paul's, that really turned out. And yes, we could see roughly where we live from up there.

Ely

2007-09-02T17:34:00.000+01:00

Ely used to be an island well known for its eel-fishing, and is now a slightly high point in the flat, flat Cambridgeshire fens. It's about the only decent place for miles and miles to build, and so it's where a huge monestary was founded in 673 by St Ethelreda. It's a very small town, notable mainly for the cathedral and the former home of Oliver Cromwell, which is right next to it.
The cathedral, the main reason we went, is visible from a huge distance, and quite distinctive. Built from the 1100s, it seems to have had some issues with collapsing towers- one of the flanking front ones is missing, and the great central tower fell down in 1322 (the stone, by the way, was bought from Peterborough Cathedral for 6000 eels a year). The repair of the huge hole left in the middle is probably the most famous thing about Ely, for it was redone in wood, not stone, and as an octagonal lantern. I'm pretty sure there's nothing like it anywhere else.
One of the great things about such a quiet, near backwater, town is that you get things to yourself, and so I was able to go right up the tower on a small tour of the octagon. To get there, you have to walk across the roof a hundred-odd feet up, and then clamber around the huge old timbers, which were hundreds of years old when they were cut in the 1320s, and are still holding the whole thing up. The statues and paintings here are about the only surviving ones here, as they couldn't be reached by the government forces when the monestary was dissolved, or by Cromwell's men a century later. The views, inside and out, were incredible, but the little things you see inside the roof of such a huge building were almost more rare to see. Laura sat that bit out, and had what I'm told was a very good tea and scones.
There's also a great collection of monestary buildings, once ruined and now reused for school or cathedral functions. One great hall is now, in fact, a street- the interior walls now the facades of the buildings lining it. Some were attacked in the Peasant's Revolt of 1381, which ended up marching on London.

Lowlands Church-shops

2007-08-28T22:22:00.000+01:00

These shops in Brussels (top), Leiden (middle) and Amsterdam (etc) are all about 3 feet deep, and built up against the wall of a church- which presumably gets rent. I've never seen it outside the low countries, but since it's across both Catholic and Protestant lands, and seems to date from the 16-1700s, I guess it's more a local custom than anything else.
But, then, I haven't checked or anything.
There's also clearly been no preservation society that decided that the stores must go, and the church stay, and that's probably the more likely reason for the difference. St. Paul's Churchyard used to be full of bookshops, if I remember.

Herne Bay

2007-08-26T01:09:00.001+01:00

Just along the coast from Whitstable, on the north side of Kent, it Herne Bay. Herne Bay has been a tourist destination for a long time, and has been built that way as a result. It once boasted the second-longest pleasure pier in England, complete with railway to get to the attractions. Sadly the middle part fell down in a storm decades away, and the end is stranded out there in the sea (right). The end still attached to shore is an enormous, sea-worthy roller-rink. This may be related to why Whitstable is now the chic sea-side resort.
Herne still draws in huge number of visitors, mainly from Kent, for mini-golf, arcades, and standard summer attractions, as well as a good few brave souls who want to swim in the Thames Estuary/ North Sea (I did). It's also in view of the Sea Forts and the offshore windfarms. and has the ruins of Reculver church on the horizon. About the only flaw I can think of with the views is the 60s pleasure pier and the fact that the sun sets behind you, over land.

Ghent

2007-08-21T22:58:00.000+01:00

I was in Belgium again last weekend, and this time took a day-trip to Ghent, which is a little North-West of Brussels, but is a thoroughly Flemish town. Like Bruges, it peaked in the 13th century, and remains a tourist site largely due to the buildings and history of that period. Unlike Bruges, it's a fair-sized town in its own right, and has more going on than just the tourist industry. As a result, it's not quite as picturesque, but there's more to do there, and it's more surprising when an aristocrat's castle pops up on a side street.
The main focus of the town, like Bruges, is the town tower/carillon/safehouse, though this one is not attached to a great hall like in Bruges. Instead, the hall adjoining was started in the 1300s and finished in the 1900s. The great tower does have some companions, though, those of the church of St Nicolas and the Cathedral of St Bavo. St. Bavo's contains a huge Van Eyck altarpiece from the early 1400s, which we got to see. Like so many great churches I've seen in the Netherlands and Belgium (Leiden, Utrecht), St Bavo's has been through some rough times and been rebuilt since. In this case, it has brick ceiling vaults from the 16th C, as apparently the entire roof fell in at this stage. There was substantial work going on in any case; the entire choir was off-limits while we were there.
Ghent has a castle built as much to intimidate the town as to protect it, and a couple of nobles' houses meant to shelter the rulers from the people. It also has some interesting communal and guild buildings along its riverfront- for weighing and storing grain, and for regulating trade, mainly. The grain stores, the really old buildings, do look their age, but also look really Dutch, with gables and stepped frontages.
Like the hall in the main square, the Stadt-house had to be finished after a long gap due to the decline of the city's fortunes. It was started in one style (flamboyant gothic) and finished in another (cod-neoclassical). Like a lot of additions to older buildings, the new style was ground-breaking, different, and conveniently, cheaper. Without all the stonemasons carving small statues and filigree, the look of the building was mainly down to one man- the architect.

Whitstable

2007-08-07T23:05:00.000+01:00

It's been a pretty grim summer, weather-wise, but Laura and I took advantage of the nice weather the other week to go to the North Kentish sea-side, at Whitstable. It's quite popular as a resort these days because it was never a resort before, and so is quaint and 'authentic'. There are still oyster-fishers and whatnot around, so it is a bit like an East-Coast fishing village.
Whitstable is famous for its little paths leading down to the beach, one of which (Squeeze-gut Alley) is less than two feet across at one end. Besides that, and an ersatz castle at one end of the beach, the attractions were good fish and chip shops, boat tours out to the seal colonies, wind turbines and sea forts, and the various beach-huts people were renting to stay in down the bay. Besides the traditional British sea-side shack, there were converted fish-smoking huts, grain stores and boathouses to stay in, almost all of which were sided in clapboard (rare in the UK). These buildings aren't quite as immediately on the sea as they were, as the town is vulnerable to flooding, and so a sea-wall provides a nice walkway alond the steep pebble beach, and puts you above both the water and the town.
I find it interesting that just around the headland, a mile away, Hearne Bay is no-where near as prosperous, because since the 1880s they have built attractions, hotels and a bandstand, and are thus, today, 'tacky'. We've since been to Hearne, and it doesn't have the same feel as Whitstable, but it's more of a proper summer day at the Midway/Beach/Fair. But that'll be another post.

Rochester

2007-07-23T21:58:00.000+01:00

Well, work's been brutally hard, lately, and the weather's been really rough. We have been going on some trips around the London area, including Rochester, which is only about 45 minutes by train from home into Kent, and on the Medway river. Being one day's ride from London, Rochester's one of those Norman towns like Lincoln or Durham that have a huge cathedral and castle built right beside each other in the centre of town. Rochester's castle has nothing on Durham or Lincoln- not the views, not the size. But it is older, and virtually identical to the Tower of London, though largely in ruins.
It's also just a nice town, and we went on a nice day. There were morris dancers, and a variety of Charles Dickens-related stores, as apparently a number of Dickens tales are set in Rochester. The organ was going most of the time we were in the cathedral, which also supplied a nice garden to sit in. Actually, come to think of it, most of the castle was just an open space with people lounging around and playing football. It's a good place to go on a sunny afternoon, buy some used books, and just sit around and read. Unusually, we can away with no clear idea as to the quality of the pubs in Rochester. But then, we already knew we were going back.

Whitechapel

2007-07-10T22:14:00.000+01:00

There was a while, after we discovered it, but before we got food poisoning there from a bad bagel, where we spent a fair bit of time in Whitechapel. The east end is being colonised as an arty/hip sort of place, and Whitechapel/Spitalfields/Brick Lane is the centre of that. This is Jack-the-Ripper territory.
That aside, it's a pretty interesting place. The whole area's history can be summed up by the fact that there's a building that started as a Huguenot Temple, was converted to a synagogue in the 19th Century, and is now a mosque. We visited another old townhouse that had had its backyard converted into a second local synagogue, which has been decaying for a while now. It's perfectly proportioned, and so seems much bigger than it really is inside. And from the outside, you'd never know it was any different from the other houses on Princelet Street.

I do plan on getting to more of the East End, the docklands and the rest, but this is an interesting place to start.

Greenwich Maritime Museum

2007-07-10T21:55:00.000+01:00

After getting back to London from Toronto (more on that later), Laura and I were fighting to stay awake. With a nice day, and wanting to stay local, we wandered over to Greenwich and dropped in to the National Maritime Museum. We saw Nelson's uniform from Trafalgar, complete with bullet hole, and the stern of the HMS Implacable, which a great-great-grandfather of mine served on when she was a training ship. I was pretty dazed, but the wave tank and underwater exploration kit they had there was some really good museum interactivity. Also, there were scale models of ships, which makes my day most of the time.

Heavy Weather

2007-05-26T23:49:00.000+01:00

Well, it's been a while since I've put anything up here, but it's not strictly my fault- I visited Gloucester, and took pictures and everything, but I haven't been able to get them posted successfully. Bah. Anyhow, here's just a good one I got heading home from work last week.

Roman Forum

2007-04-23T21:50:00.000+01:00

The Forum and the Palatine Hill are the centre of old ancient Rome, and I guess it's pretty lucky/incredible that so much of it still survives. The forum is the old city centre, full of republican temples and buildings, and then is towered over by the Palatine Hill, covered in (and mostly made of) ancient palaces. At one end of the whole spread is the colosseum, at the other end is the Senate (which still stands!) and Roman city hall. The Senate end (left) contains the Rostrum (apparently a low wall) where people made speeches and met up, a pillared temple, and triumphal arch.
Off to one side are the remains of the Basilica of Constantine, a huge, but less graceful Imperial building. Only one of the three aisles remains, but that's plenty all on its own. Apparently this is what the original St. Peter's would have looked like.
The Via Sacra is still pretty recognisable. To the right of the road is the Vestal temple, and to the left is apparently where Julius Caesar was cremated and memorialised. The hill rising to the right is actually mostly one huge ruin of Imperial palaces (see below). Anyhow, it was a hot, dry day, and though thousands of people headed into the site (it's free) we got there early enough to get a run of the place. The Palatine hill and Colusseum are more impressive in size and design, but it's the various familiar names and styles of the forum that really left an impression on me.

Gloucester

2007-04-12T00:00:00.000+01:00

Gloucester is an old town on the banks of the Severn, in Western England. It was an old Roman town, and the four main streets (Southgate, Eastgate etc.) still run straight from the four gates to the central square, apparently on the old street-plan.
Gloucester has a small port at one end of the city that connects the Midlands canals with the sea via the Severn, and has some huge warehouses (being converted into condos, inevitably) to attest to that.
The main attraction in is the collection of churches, including a full set of old monastic ones, and the cathedral. Gloucester's cathedral has features from throughout the middle ages (see left, where Norman meets Gothic fairly inelegantly), but is probably most famous for its late High Gothic cloisters, which were used in the filming of Harry Potter films recently (right). The fan-vaulting on the ceiling is probably the first anywhere, though it was taken to greater heights on buildings like King's College Cambridge and the Henry VII chapel in Westminster. The ceiling in the nave is slightly earlier, but absolutely studded with gilded roof bosses and sculptures. Both the east windows are huge expanses of stained glass, and the choir is dark and richly decorated. And, there's a murdered King (Edward II) and a dispossessed one buried there too (William II's brother). The cathedral seems to have needed some pretty desperate repairs at some point, as there have been some extra buttresses tacked on here and there.
Still, the rest of the town, port and all, didn't seem anything too special, though that's what you get for going places in the rain, I guess. Summer by the river might have been a better option.

Rome III

2007-04-11T23:36:00.000+01:00

There's not an awful lot you can really say about St. Peter's Basilica. It's huge, but somehow doesn't seem as big inside as it does from the outside. From the outside I have no problems saying that it's probably the biggest building I've ever seen. Inside are a multitude of altars (at least 3 of which have the preserved bodies of popes visible through the front) and devotional works, primarily made of marble. Under the central altar (the bronze sculpture over it is over 100 feet tall) is a pit, in which can be seen the original late Roman shrine to St. Peter, still basically intact. Even farther below that is a series of caves in which an ancient cemetary has been found, which adds something to the claim that St. Peter's body is buried right under the church bearing his name.
We also managed to get into the crypt of the basilica, which put us level with the old Roman shrine to Peter, and in the tomb of the Popes. There were about 10-15 stone tombs there, including a very large and very plain one for John Paul II in a special side niche. It's obviously quite hard to get into the proper catacombs where the old graveyard is, but it was still interesting to find this core of the church that had been repeatedly built around.
Leaving the Vatican, we walked towards the river along a medieval city wall. This was the Pope's secret escape route to his castle- the Castel Saint Angelo. The castle, which we didn't go in, is actually the tomb of a Roman Emperor (Hadrian, I think). The papacy simply put some battlements and buildings on top, had them lavishly decorated, and made plans to flee there in case anything went badly wrong. There's a similar tomb for the Emperor Augustus, but it was never made into anything, and still stands on the other side of the river.
We had dinner near the Campo di Fiori, finally having discovered where the nightlife in central Rome was (about 200 feet from where we'd been looking,and ended up having a pasta meal in what I think was a very old house (on the right hand of the street). Like a few others, it had a proper tower, and I think that means it was the home of someone fairly important in the middle ages- I've heard of tower cities elsewhere in Italy, anyhow.
PS Below is one of St. Peter's greatest monuments for sheer lunacy- a marble skeleton running out with a blanket over its head. And it's about 25 feet high.

Rome II

2007-04-08T22:07:00.000+01:00

On day two in Rome, we headed out to the Vatican, with the plan of getting there nice and early (around 8 AM) and thus being at the head of the line when the doors opened between 9-30 and 10. It basically worked, and despite there being apparently between 15-20,000 people in the museums that day, it only occassionally felt massively busy and that was always due to the dreaded tour groups.
The Vatican museums are basically two parts- the old papal palaces, which contain rooms decorated by Fra Angelico, Raphael, and of course Michaelangelo, and the two huge galleries (they must have been nearly a kilometre long each) which house the various collections of art (Early Christian, Egyptian, Profane/Classical etc). We did the apartments first, and were routed through about thirty different rooms on our way to the Sistine Chapel, which we were always promised was just around the corner. Tour groups got to cut straight to the photo-ops, but we'd be in a collection of 20th Century religious painting, open the door marked "Sistine Chapel" and then end up on a roof somewhere. In the end, this was pretty good, as we got to see some things I never would have known were there, such as Raphael's frescoes (top).
The Gregorian Museum of Profane Sculpture was closed, which really disappointed me, because I wanted to see some of the famous Greek sculptures I knew were there, such as the Laocoon group, which was pulled out of the ruins of Nero's Golden House in the Renaissance. The palace had been untouched for 1500 years, and when it was finally explored, artists like Michaelangelo were faced with ancient sculptures every bit as good as their own. Instead of seeing those, I did get to see things like a 20-foot wide red marble bowl, apparently from Nero's rotating dining room.
On the long and winding way out, we saw papal artifacts such as the holy hammer and trowel used for putting up and taking down that wall in the north door of St. Peter's (only open for jubilee years) and then stumbled onto a courtyard full of old greek and roman statues. Most of the realyl famous stuff like the Apollo Belvedere and the Laocoon group were there. The fact that western civilisation basically forgot how to make art like this for a thousand years kept weighing on my mind, as did the fact that it was only rediscovered at a time when people were finally catching up to what the Romans had been able to manage.

Rome I

2007-04-08T19:39:00.000+01:00

A couple of weeks ago Laura and I got the chance to go to Rome for a four day long weekend (cunningly planned right before the four-day Easter long weekend). The basic idea was to see the main sights of Rome and to get somewhere much warmer than England (the trip was planned in February).
We flew out of the city airport, London's answer to the Toronto Island Airport. It's about 2 miles from where I live, and not all that busy, so we were able to take the Underground right there and breeze onto our plane (we did have to walk across the runway to get to it though). There were about 20 people on the flight and the main thing was that we got a pretty good view of the Alps, though exactly where, I'm not entirely clear on. We flew into the main airport in Rome, which did at least have a good rail link to the city.

We went to see the Trevi fountain in a rainstorm, which made London look the better option, and then somehow found our way to the Spanish Steps (above left. John Keats died in the house to the right of the stairs), which are also at the edge of a large set of public gardens. From there it was a short walk to the Pantheon (top) and the old Ghetto, as well as a Roman temple complex rediscovered in the 1920's. There was also a small island in the Tiber, reached by a Roman bridge and guarded by a medieval tower-house (right). So, we were doing well, but despite being in the centre of old Rome, we could barely find a place to eat, let alone get a drink or dessert or whatever. The main squares, lined with cafes were few and far between; there were, however, about a million twisty old streets to explore endlessly. On one of these we finally found a place to eat- good, cheap pasta and wine. Just when we thought we had this whole Rome thing figured out though, we headed back to the Metro station. Closed at 10:30 on a Thursday.

Work

2007-04-02T20:08:00.000+01:00

Here is a view of my work and its surroundings- I work in the basement of the black building on the lower right of the picture. Not bad, eh? And if it's nice out I can have lunch in the park, which gets really busy, but is still nice. There are even tame squirrels that'll take food from you if you let them (okay, that doesn't sound like a trick. I'll have to get a picture up).

Charlton

2007-03-12T12:33:00.000Z

Apologies for the long delay; Laura and I have just moved to London. We're in the East End, south of the river, in a place called Charlton. It's near Greenwich, and has its own Premiership football team (the stadium's not far from our house at all). It's pretty quick to get into town by the local trains, and it's got the full range of shops and whatnot. At the top of the hill (we live at the bottom) is an old village, centred around a Jacobean manor-house, kind of like Aston Hall, but a bit smaller. The church there contains the grave of the only British Prime Minister to be assassinated, Percival. Parkland goes all the way down from Charlton Hall to the Thames, about 10 minutes walk from the house. The Thames Barrier's there (you should google it; it's pretty neat). I've taken some pictures of the barrier, and will be posting them as soon as I'm able- at the moment I'm having to use the free wi-fi in Leicester square, which does get me into central London every day, but doesn't allow for much in the way of posting things.
Cheers!

Bruges

2007-01-17T19:50:00.000Z

Bruges is one of those 'must-see' places in the northern, Dutch-speaking, part of Belgium (Ghent's probably the other one). Laura and I went on Boxing day, which is a pretty ordinary day there (though, to be fair, the train was really quite busy, and we stood most of the way). It was a cold and foggy day, which actually worked pretty well there with the medieval feel to the place.
Basically, Bruges reached the height of its power and influence about 1350, at which point they went on a building spree, and then watched their economy collapse. As a result, almost nothing has changed in 650 years. Bruges has been criticised as a dead city, but it's pretty obvious why it's such a tourist attraction.
That large tower is the commercial hall of the town- it housed the city treasury and all the important documents in a box that needed 8 keys to open (which is impressive for 600 year-old ironwork), and has a courtyard for markets. The city hall is actually beside it, and the royal palace behind, making for three major centrepieces to the city (the cathedral was somehow destroyed by the French in the 18th century. I have no idea why). I climbed the tower alongside Peter Kent, the Canadian newcaster, who was on vacation or something, and managed to be in the belfry when the clock chimed. I'm not sure anyone could hear until we got to the bottom.
Bruges is famous for its canals, like so many other cities in the low-countries, and they do give the town its most scenic spots. They're a lot more domestic than Birmingham's, or even than Amsterdam's, having more in common with Leiden or The Hague.

Christmas in Brussels

2007-01-10T22:19:00.000Z

I spent Christmas in Brussels this year. They light up the town square nicely, and there were children's choirs singing there when I visited, as well as a market running through the major streets to a really good skating rink and funfair. The best ferris wheel I've ever seen was part of the fair- it had a rocket going up through the canopy of the ride, and a pterodactyl, and odd little moving photos and all the rest.

I also took a walk around the Ixelles neighbourhood (home of a lot of minor ambassadors) and saw the budgies, which live in one square in a couple of enormous nests. On the way home I passed through an old abbey that at some point was turned into the Belgian military academy (though it looked pretty derilect when I was there), and is also home to the National Geographic Society, which looked pretty militarised in itself, really.

Tamworth

2006-12-12T21:49:00.000Z

The town of Tamworth is just outside of Birmingham, and is the old political capital of Offa the Great (c. 750); Lichfield, down the road, was his religious centre. Today, though, it's a pretty typical market town, with some great names in its past and some interesting buildings scattered about. Tamworth Castle is the most interesting of those- built after the Norman Conquest, when Tamworth was important, it has survived because there was never again much need to sink capital into defending the town. The old circular Norman motte-and-bailey fort is essentially the same, though inside it has been filled up with living quarters from various times.

Avebury

2006-11-16T13:53:00.000Z

Just before I went back to Canada, I stayed with relatives in Andover, who have put me up there several times when I'm in the south of England. The day before I was to leave, my cousin Laura drove me and Laura (no relation) to Avebury, an ancient stone site relatively near to Stonehenge, and dating from (quite roughly) about the same time. The site at Avebury is a lot more extensive than Stonhenge, though not as spectacular. It's a huge area enclosed by a hand-dug ditch, inside of which are two circles formed by large standing stones. The whole thing was built thousands of years ago, and a surprising amount is still intact.
In the meantime, however, a perfectly normal little village has grown up in the middle of all of this, consisting of a dozen or so houses, a church and a couple of pubs. The roads in and out of the enclosure use the gaps created thousands of years ago, and the two roads follow the same tracks that have always been there. The ditch and rampart are handy for keeping in the sheep that graze all around the village, and occassionally eat moss off of the standing stones.
Just outside the village (down an old ceremonial route lined with rocks) is a huge artificial hill- Silbury hill. It's basically a pyramid made out of chalk, and covered with earth, and though not much to look at, gets pretty boggling once you realise the work put into it- it's 130 feet high and the largest of its kind in Europe. Unlike a lot of similar structures, it doesn't seem to have anyone buried in it.
Basically across the street is the West Kennet Long Barrow, which was used to bury people- around 50, at minimum. It's 100 meters or so long, but the 'open' area that was used as a tomb is much, much smaller. It's apparently older than Stonehenge, and was in use for thousands of years. For whatever reason, the texture of the rocks inside the tomb looked really artificial, like those you see in a museum exhibit about cavemen. Apparently, the museums are doing a decent job after all.

The Bullring at Christmas

2006-11-15T15:20:00.000Z

Warwick

2006-11-13T11:31:00.000Z

In the spirit of Lichfield, Warwick is a town that's remarkably close to Birmingham, pretty famous, and yet a place I've not yet been to. On previous trips to England I've visited the castle, like seemingly everyone else, and was suitably impressed. But I've never really looked around the town before, and it was pretty interesting. The main downtown is demarcated by the East and West gates, which each have a chapel built right on top of them.
The chapel at the Westgate is actually part of an ancient home for old soldiers- the Lord Leycester Hospital. A lot of it was built as the city's Guildhall in the 1400s and was converted in the 1570s as a retirement home. 8 elderly veterans still live there and manage the place. The old buildings are covered in heraldic symbols, such as the Sydney porcupines and the Warwick bears- all symbols of the family that founded the place, and still act as patrons. They are also some of the only old wood buildings left in Warwick- a fire started just east of the Hospital in 1694, and most of the city centre was clearly built in the early 1700s, including the faux-gothic church that has a smattering of classical elements up the front tower.
Below the castle, running to the river, is Mill Street, left, which was also spared from the fire. It used to be the main street in Warwick, leading up to the town from the bridge over the Avon River. When the bridge was replaced and then collapsed, Mill Street became a dead-end, and was basically preserved. By then it was getting pretty dark, though it was only 4:00- you can see the pictures getting dim.

Lichfield

2006-11-08T10:18:00.000Z

When I take a train from Longbridge (the extreme south of Birmingham) to the city centre, the trains are bound for Lichfield, to the north of the city. Until Saturday, that was basically the sum total of what I knew about Lichfield, even though it has a cathedral and is apparently really quite old. We decided to go there, though, as it seemed foolish not have gone to see somehting so close, and accessable by local rail.
Well, Lichfield's old city centre is very nice, if a lot like most other English market towns, though it has some claims to fame- Samuel Johnson was born here (house to the right), as was Elias Ashmole, who founded Oxford's famous Ashmolean museum, the actor David Garrick, and Erasmus Darwin, Charles's father (I think). It was also the capital of Mercia in the 700's, and as Offa's capital was briefly the Archdiocese of England- taking that honour away from Canterbury for about 20 years.
There were a few nice old tudor buildings and passageways, and a great deal of Georgian ones- the 1700s were a real heyday for Lichfield- as well as the normal things you'd expect from a cathedral close, even if it is a small one. Anyways, for something so close to Birmingham (about 30 minutes from the city centre), Lichfield is really poorly-known. There's an upshot to that, though. Some cathedrals and their closes are quite ready for tourists, and need to be, and so the places where people live and work are carefully fenced off or otherwise segregated. In Lichfield, I'm pretty sure I could have walked into the Dean's garden and had a chat with him- everyone was just going about their normal business. And, yeah, being November might have influenced that.

Manchester

2006-11-08T09:56:00.000Z

Well, I'm back in the UK now, having caught a last-minute deal on a flight into Manchester (which is only an hour and change from Birmingham). My flight stopped in Glasgow for an hour or so, and I got to share the lounge with a few dozen Celtic fans flying out to Portugal somewhere for a Champions League game. They were all wearing Celtic jerseys (or Ireland ones) and drinking at 7 am. One guy was asleep on the floor, wearing a gorilla suit with a jersey pulled on over it. He had no luggage.
I spent about two hours in Manchester before getting on my train, and I was tired etc. so I didn't make much of an effort to do much outside of walking around most of the downtown. I was pretty impressed- like Birmingham, it has a lot of huge 19th century buildings, and some very new modernist stuff, but Manchester is light on the hideous 50's-60's brutalism in concrete that Brum has so much of. Its downtown also seemed a bit larger, even though it's a smaller city, but I think that's just because it's more unified, and not cut up by as many canals, rail lines, and expressways.

Ottawa

2006-11-07T11:20:00.000Z

All the good weather and luck I had built up in Kingston evaporated the second I headed north to Ottawa to get my UK visa sorted out. The morning was nice, but by lunch, when I'd left the High Commission and had some time for sight-seeing, it was raining rather hard. Getting around Ottawa was an absolute nightmare, largely because the system of one-way streets really clogs when people park across the intersections, which seems to happen rather a lot. I got a look at the By-Ward market, where they charge $7 for a lunch-time pint, and at the giant spider in front of the national gallery. ( I wish that national museums would take a cue from the UK and drop admission fees, though).
I headed around to Parliament, which looked pretty good on top of its multicoloured hill, and did what little of the tour was open that day (ie. going up the Peace Tower, then back down), but that at least allowed me to dry off before making the long, long walk to the new Canadian War Museum, which is excellent, even if it is out of the way. The current exhibition on the Seven Years War is really quite something.
And then I trudged back in the rain to try and find a cab, got stuck in yet more gridlock, missed my bus home, caught another cab to the train station (dinner having been abandoned), and then got to sit on a Via rail train for an hour and change as it tried to tow another train (!) near Brockville. So, I've not got a lot of kind things to say about Ottawa, except that I'm sure it's nicer in the sunshine, and that their hockey team is finally playing to its potential (ie 5-7).

Kingston

2006-10-27T04:04:00.000+01:00

The other week (I have been having computer troubles) I went to Kingston (site of my undergrad years) on my way to Ottawa, as part of the Great Passport Adventure Of Last Week. I was graciously put up by Jenna and Absent Kevin, and re-aquainted with the Toucan and poutine within hours of arrival. For all that I've spent the last year in the UK, I'd put the basement of the Toucan in Kingston as one of my favourite pubs ever, still.
The weather was incredible, and was probably one of the last days that the city looked that nice- Kingston has a nasty habit of getting bleak and very, very grey come the winter, as everything is made from the same grey limestone. In the bright sunlight, though, it all just looked agreeably solid and time-tested.
Oh, and I saw a snake.

Muskoka

2006-10-13T01:59:00.000+01:00

So, I've not updated in a while. But there's a reason for that. I've finished my master's dissertation, and moved back to Toronto for a while. It's not been terribly exciting, in short. However, this Thanksgiving weekend, I went with my family to Lake Muskoka to close up the cottage for the winter.

As Muskoka is farther north than Toronto, the weather was a little cooler, and the leaves had really begun to change colour. For the first time, in fact, we saw busloads of tourists up to see the fall colours wandering around the town of Bracebridge. In any event, it was lovely. Less than a week later, it's much, much colder, and very windy. The harsher end of autumn is already here, apparently.
Those are the falls in Bracebridge, at top, which stand at one end of Manitoba Street (left), the main street in Bracebridge ( I love the small-town Ontario street-names, which are always grand and well-thought-out: Dominion, Manitoba, King, Queen etc, even if they aren't as descriptive as some of their English counterparts).
Below is the lake from the general vicinity of our cottage. The water was still warm enough I probably could have gone swimming, though the water level was low for some arcane reason to do with fish wintering or something.

Otters!

2006-08-12T23:33:00.000+01:00

Otters! Including some babies. Apparently they work in packs and are fairly brutish little things. Who knew?

I assume this guy is at least as lucky as the Albino Kingston Squirrel. Probably more.

And there are lemurs for good measure, too.

Boating in and around Wales

2006-08-12T22:56:00.000+01:00

So my family came to visit a few weeks ago, and we rented a canal boat and headed along the Llangollen canal to (surprise) Llangollen, which is Wales. Although essentially a floating motel, the canal boat is a very slow floating motel, and so we got a chance to get a good look at the scenery. Although it was what you'd expect from the English countryside, and later more mountainous Welsh, the weather was anything but normal. It was hot. In fact, it was apparently the hottest a July has ever been in the UK. This added a certain dimension to the entire project, but we managed to make it through. I also, foolishly perhaps, went on a series of bike rides on the roads around the canals.
As the canal heads into Wales, the landscape starts getting a little more varied. In order to manage without too many locks, the canal was built (in the 1800s) with a series of aquaducts and tunnels, often one right after the other. They are real landmarks, and it's quite something to be a hundred feet over a field of sheep on a boat. Chirk (top), which is the border between England and Wales, has an aquaduct leading right into a 400 metre tunnel (the picture at the bottom of the post was taken from the boat as we headed towards the tunnel). The aquaduct runs beside and slightly below a later rail viaduct built on the same route. It's also home to an enormous castle. Impressive as that is, it's not even the biggest one on the route- the aquaduct at Pontycyllte (right) is close to 1000 metres long and 130 feet high (how's that for mixing measurements?).
Once across that, it wasn't far to Llangollen itself, a nice tourist town dominated by the remains of a castle (seen above the canal, above left) . Built around 1250 by the locals, it was burned down around 1265 by the locals, so it wouldn't be captured by the English and used against them. The Welsh Eistedfodd, a large choral festival is held in town every year, so it is a fairly well-known place. I walked up there on my own earlyish one morning and got a view back as far as Pontycyllte, down to the town, and up the river, even with the summer haze. I was the only one up there at that time, and it was nice to have the run of the place, sitting on a mountain over a town.

Lincoln

2006-07-14T00:55:00.000+01:00

So, I emerged from Birmingham to head North East for a day-trip, this time to the city of Lincoln. Lincoln's been around for about as anyone can figure out- it's on top of a really big hill, near a river that runs to the sea. The Romans took it over from some locals about 2000 years ago, and it's been a pretty major place ever since (although that implies it's pretty major now; it's not). Lincoln has a lot in common with Durham, in that it's got a castle and cathedral built side by side, which went up in at the same time after the Norman conquest. Lincoln was a pretty major city during the 12- and 1300s, but hasn't done an awful lot since, which is why it's so nice now. For some reason, there were no tourists though- I guess it really is that obscure?

As you can see to the right, the castle and cathedral are at the top of possibly the steepest hill I've seen in a city. The top part of the street (past this picture) is actually called "Steep Hill". On the left of the picture is a pair of houses built in the 1100s, known as the Jew's House and Jew's Court. They were the centre of a England's largest medieval Jewish population until a series of pogroms in the 1300s. The remains of the shrine of St. Hugh- the fictional boy killed and eaten by the town's rabbis- are still in the Cathedral. The cathedral itself is on the right. It's hard to avoid creeping into most pictures. It was built around 1100 and was probably the first English attempt at gothic, with the result that there are a number of mistakes and just plain mistakes, like the part of the ceiling that doesn't quite match. The towers were added slightly later, and additions like the great bell and the circular windows periodically threaten to collapse the whole structure.

Below the cathedral are the ruins of the Bishop's Palace, which was gutted in the Civil War. Someone parked a sportscar there, so all the pictures I took there tend towards ads for Lotus. Across the square from the cathedral is the castle, from which you can get some pretty long views. The top left picture is from the observatory tower, below. It houses one of the four remaining copies of the Magna Carta, and an victorian prison which was pretty eerie. They tried a system of total isolation, with prisoners wearing masks when mingling so that no-one knew who he was in with. Even the chapel was arranged so that each inmate could only see the preacher.

Anyways, the day was about perfect, in the low twenties with a clear blue sky, which is as nice as it is rare around here.

Utrecht

2006-06-06T19:55:00.000+01:00

Utrecht is the last place I visited on my recent trip to the Netherlands. It's about 45 minutes from Amsterdam by train, and is a smallish university town, though I think bigger than Leiden. The quieter residential area can be seen top left, though a lot of this has been taken over for university departments and the like (they have almost buried the canal there, but you can still boat in it). It has a fairly well-done new shopping area to one side of the old town (old town, right), and seems like a pretty lively place. The old town does really well by the university, with some really great nightlife and local stores. A lot of the restaurants and clubs have extended basements that stretch under the road to the river, so they have patios on mutiple levels- you can sort of see that in the picture above right.
Apparently, Utrecht went to war with Amsterdam a couple of times in the middle ages, and one of Amsterdam's towers today has an inscription mocking their smaller neighbour. Utrecht used to be pretty heavily fortified in the 18th C., and the remains of the city walls are still visible in some of the parks. Like Leiden, Utrecht has a huge, half-built church, though this one was finished before a hurricane (!) knocked part of it down. The part that's been saved has had the open face bricked up (below left). The main tower stands some distance from the Choir, with a square in between that still shows the old church floorplan (there are old gravestones, pillar bases etc- below centre). Like in Amsterdam and Leiden, the carillon, in the main tower, seems to be pretty important, playing a different tune every hour that can be heard anywhere in the old town. From a number of angles (below right) it's actually hard to notice that there's a chunk of the church missing. Except of course that most churches don't have trees growing out their sides.
Also, for some unclear reason, there is a UFO crashed into one of the newer office buildings.

This

2006-06-05T19:30:00.000+01:00

Is what I had to pass on my way to the grocery store today... Birmingham remains classy.

And yes, my route to the grocery store includes industrial canals and an alleyway.

Leiden

2006-06-04T19:32:00.000+01:00

Leiden is like Stratford-Upon-Avon for the Netherlands. It's a scenic town that recalls the country's Golden Age, and it's the birthplace of their best-known artist, Rembrandt. It also has a small University, the oldest in the country, and it's there that the first tulips grown in Holland were planted. The future pilgrims of the Mayflower tested local patience for a spell before being moved on to make the trip to Plymouth. As a result of all of this, Leiden is a pretty well-known and travelled spot, but I found it really quiet and peaceful. That said, the town symbol is a really angry lion. With a sword.
The town is on a few islands in the Rhine/Rijn, with a couple of canals thrown in for good measure. There's a sort of castle (it's a circular wall on top of a really small hill) and a great old church that was one of my favourite buildings I've seen yet(right). The town clearly gave up on building it halfway through, and instead of a great high gothic stone building, they got half of one, and finished the thing off in brick at half the height. The people of Leiden also seem to love their cats, especially their cat-doors. I saw one with a ramp attached so that the cat could get into the second-story apartment.
I only spent an afternoon there, but I think I saw everything that there really is to see- the town has a pre-planned route through it that takes you by everything (except the little fort) in about an hour. One other neat, well-planned thing is that even though it's a smallish place, there is a huge bike parking lot (right) near the train station.

Amsterdam and the Hague

2006-06-02T20:17:00.000+01:00

I spent only a few hours in the Hague, but from everything I saw, it is one of the quietest 'capitals' in Europe. Technically, it's only the Seat of Government, but as far as I can see, Amsterdam's being the capital means absolutely nothing. There are some nice streets of small embassies, an out-of-the-way business district, a modest downtown palace (and apparently a pretty big one on the beach I managed to miss, and the Dutch Parliament. I walked through a small brick gate, and sat down on the steps of what I thought was a church while I tried to work out just where the parliament buildings might be. Of course, I was sitting on the front steps of them, at 10 AM on a weekday (left), and only was there nothing going on, there was no security or police. Forget some massive act of sabatoge, I could have written my name on the doors in chalk and gotten away. Still, it was a nice first taste of the Netherlands, and a contrast with Amsterdam, which was absolutely teeming. At the bottom of this entry is a somewhat more scenic picture of the Hague. And a picture of a herring stand.
Amsterdam seems to be mainly four squares and a number of concentric canals. As such it's hard to feel as if you're ever at the centre of it, even when you are. It's nice enough, but the tourism and sheer press of the place sometimes made it a little hard to take, especially in contrast with the small towns a half-hour train ride away. As you might expect from a city built on mud, almost none of the buildings are strong on right angles (right) Gareth and I rented bikes there, and boy is it nice to ride them. The special lanes are a bit above the road, and a bit below the sidewalk, and you essentially have the right of way over anyone- pedestrian or car. As the whole country is also very flat, it makes cycling a bit of a dream- you don't really have to think about it. Everyone in the Netherlands biked, too. Men in business suits, students headed to convocation, parents with their children hanging off the back. And though noone really had flashy bikes, and though there were more bikes than people, theft is apparently an issue, because everyone was scrupulous about locking their bikes to every possible surface. Often twice.

Versailles

2006-06-01T10:35:00.000+01:00

Versailles is exactly as spectacular as you assume it would be, except for the construction going on in the front yard. And in the Hall of Mirrors (top- if you look closely, you'll see that it's been divided in half by a mirror so they can do construction. It's actually hard to notice until you walk into the wall). Really, the whole place is just dripping with wealth; a sort of physical justification of the French Revolution.
The best part, though, is probably the gardens, which are full of fountains and lakes. At least half the fountains have sculptures sitting in them, usually of the scary variety, like the frog-men spitting water, or that really angry fish.
Oh, and also in the gardens are two smaller palaces (about the size of a high school each) built on the site of a former peasant village. These summer retreats are at least a 20 minute walk from the main building, presumeably all one needs to get away from it all. And, to add insult to injury, on the site of the village they pulled down Marie Antoinette had a fake village built, so she could play at being in the country. It's pretty much out of a fairy-tale, especially the crumbling plaster and bricks which have been painted on. There are some spectacular newer bits built in the 19th C., including a French Hall of Victory, which stops in 1807. Seriously.

Paris

2006-05-31T17:39:00.000+01:00

So, I headed off on a 10-day trip through France and the Netherlands. My first arrival was in Paris, which I've visited before, but this gave me more of a chance to look around the older part of the city. I went down to the old Catacombs, which are stone quarries that have been filled in with bodies from the old medieval graveyards. It was pretty eerie, filled with skulls and femurs mainly, piled up along the sides of the pathways. The catacombs connect with more quarries and sewers under Paris, which apparently has one of the most extensive underground networks of its kind.
The sheer size of things like the Louvre and the Eiffel tower continues to impress me, even if the number of tourists was already out of control. In all, though, I spent most of my time wandering around, and reading The Line of Beauty, which I really liked. I planted myself on the Ile Ste Louis (the view from there's below) for a good few hours just to finish it off.
As in Brussels, there were ruins of the old city under the most important parts of the existing one- in this case the old Louvre, which was much more of a castle, and the old streets under the Place Notre Dame, which go back to the Romans. So I spent a lot of time underground.

Exams

2006-05-11T21:51:00.000+01:00

So, like half the people I know, I haven't done anything especially social or exciting, on account of exams for the last little while. I am almost out of the woods now, though, and have some big plans for the future. Above, however is a picture of the Old England building in Brussels, now part of the Museum of Musical Instruments. Under the royal square to the right are the remains of the old palace/castle that I got to poke around in.

Hillwalking

2006-04-18T22:54:00.000+01:00

I went to Derbyshire for some less-civilised exploration, hiking the first few miles of the Penine Way, a trail that goes to Scotland from the mid-North of England. We started in Edale, which has about 8 houses and a pub, and then through some valleys with occassional farms and rather more sheep, and then headed up the side of Kinder Scout, which I'm told was about 2000 feet elevation. From the top, you can see to Manchester (and maybe Wales). The top wasn't the moor I expected it to be, but more a moonscape of rocks and peat. The way down went through a series of river valleys and ended at a resevoir we'd been able to see from the top-- well, kinda. In the picture at left, we walked all the way across the top, and down and around the left side. The rocky bit there is a waterfall I've shown panoramically below. We still had to walk into town, which was a nice little place called Hayfield. With a pub.

Brussels

2006-04-11T23:15:00.000+01:00

So I went to Belgium last week, as noted below, and spent 4 days in Brussels. I knew very little about the city, except for its reputation as a rather concrete and grim centre of the European Union bureaucracy. Whatever the truth of that impression (I sure didn't see it, but I never went to the 'EU Quarter'), Brussels is first and foremost the longstanding capital of an historically prosperous and important country. It has absolutely everything you could want from a European city-- medieval churches and town hall, palaces, its own style of architecture, art galleries, waffles, and beer. The Grand Place is the standout part no-one misses, a square with the medieval Hotel de Ville surrounded by 17th century townhouses (below) used by guilds. It's the centre of the city, and the spire of the Hotel's spire can be seen from anywhere-- that's it in the picture above left A real highlight for me was visiting the ruins of the palace used by the Holy Roman Emperors that's now buried in the basement of the Royal Palace-- there's even an old street still down there. (The picture above right is of the square outside the palace.) Almost every private building in Brussels is a townhouse (like in Amsterdam), so there is a huge variety of architecture (more on this later). I was also really impressed by the art gallery, which had Bruegels and Bosch's more bizarre paintings on display, which was a nice touch. I didn't know a thing about Brussels until I went there, but I liked it a lot-- it's a lot friendlier than Paris or London. Especially Paris. Their city's mascot is 'Le Manekin Pis'- an example of the 'small boy peeing' school of sculpture. They frequently dress it up in leiderhosen, uniforms, or whatnot. Next week, it's due to be dressed like Nelson Mandela. Seriously. And of course, they have an Atomium, and not every city can say that. Also, say what you will about cheap flights, I love taking the train when I can. Random castles! Accessable stations!
Below is a bigger shot of the Grand Place, and the Place Grand Sablon- the antiques district.

Atomium!

2006-04-09T17:53:00.000+01:00

I went to Brussels for the last weekend, and, amongst other things (Belgian beers, art nouveau, waffles), went to go and see the Atomium. It's part of the 1958 World's Fair site on the edge of town, and can be seen from most rooftops and hills in the city. When I went on a saturday morning, it was incredibly busy, and there were long lines just to get in, and then to get up to the top. It's in the shape of a giant iron atom, with each of the balls a two-level building, and the connecting tubes containing stairs or elevators. Most of the rooms are dedicated to telling people about the creation and building of the Atomium itself, though one is full of glowing sculpture, and others display more general exhibits about 1950s modernism-- there are Minis and other cars (including that old BMW where the whole front of the car opens), as well as all the fridges and such being classic examples. One of the spheres even has a bunch of spherical beds-- children can stay in the building as part of school outings. At the very top of it all is a restaurant and some good views across all of Brussels. Although you can't really see much from up top, the Atomium is more than just a celebration of 50's modernism (there isn't much in the way of kitcsh)-- a lot of people really seem to regard the Atomium as one of the symbols of the city, if not the country. A CN tower from another era, I guess. The recent renovations probably also account for how busy it was...

Downtown Birmingham

2006-04-01T00:48:00.000+01:00

Wherein I make Birmingham look like a refined European city. To its credit, Birmingham did an awful lot of building during its prosperity, especially during the late victorian period when Joseph Chamberlain was perhaps the most progressive mayor in the UK. To the left is the cathedral, which was built as a church and upgraded much later, when Birmingham was made its own Bishopric. The square around it (right) is probably the most 'old-world' view in the city, but looks are deceiving. Behind those buildings is the 'Gun Quarter', home of dozens of arms manufacturers in sprawling factories-- some of which are still there. Also, the kids at the bus shelter were engaged in some kind of gang war along the entire edge of the Cathedral Close. The huge Council House (a view of the side, left) which is now a pretty good museum and art gallery, is next to the City Hall (sadly under renovation), home to the country's biggest pipe organ. The Council House was damaged in the war, but most of the exhibits had been moved out by then. The stores on the right are a good example of the sort of architecture that can still be found in the commercial areas of the city-- there may be plenty of concrete boxes from the 60s along these streets, but more of these survive than we give credit for. Not are there some gracious old piles still around, but all of the buildings in this post are in a large downtown pedestrian zone that includes the main shopping areas as well as the cathedral and city government buildings. Which is nice. I have no idea what the building to the left is for, but it is in a corner of the huge public square at the front of the Council House. And I like it. [Update- Apparently it's the old Post Office building. Thanks!]

Aquarium

2006-03-27T15:22:00.000+01:00

So, living about as far from the sea as is possible in England, it's always amused me that there's a Sea Life Centre in Birmingham, and a big one at that. It's almost as if the powers that be decided that no-one in the country should live more than 100 miles from live haddock or something. Anyhow, there were rays and small sharks, as well as various odd things like glowing fish and rare seahorses. The real attractions, though, were the otters and the sea turtles. Otters need little in the way of presentation- just set them up and they'll amuse you for hours. And so it was. One of them took about an hour to eat a single shoot, because of his seeming insistence on drowning it first, while another lay on his back and threw a nut into the air and then caught it again for a good twenty minutes, often dropping it despite having webbed 'hands' (nature's catcher's mitts). More time was spent designing the turtle tank, which was also full of hundreds of other fish and a shark or two. There were numerous windows into the tank and a glass tunnel which ran through the middle of it (a smaller version of New Zealand's Kelly Tarleton exhibit, which I visited many years ago). The turtle seemed to recognise its dramatic setting, and swooped onto the tunnel from various angles, usually causing a stir-- it was about five or six feet long, and apparently weighs upwards of 400 pounds. In keeping with the maritime theme of the day, we got a bit soggy on leaving the place, because it's been raining here for about 8 of the last 10 days.

Door Knockers

2006-03-21T17:19:00.000Z

Here's another thing that I'll be adding to over the months- comedy door knockers. The one on the left is from the North door of Durham cathedral. It was a sanctuary knocker-- any criminal who got ahold of it could stay in the church for 40 days setting his affairs in order before being turned over to the police. The original is in the crypt of the cathedral now. The other one is from the old Fish Street in Worcester, and is on the door of a Tudor house near the River Severn.

University of Birmingham Campus

2006-03-14T23:34:00.000Z

So here it is, where I go to school. It was founded in 1900, around the central courtyard that still defines it. Birmingham was the first of a series of Universities formed around this time, which have been known as the "Redbrick" Universities ever since. The major force behind the founding of the school was Joseph Chamberlain, the former mayor and Cabinet Minister who's responsible for a great many of this city's great projects. The land was donated by a major land-owning family, and the trademark buildings I've posted pictures of here were the first ones built. They form a 'D" shape, with the 100 metre-highclock tower ('Old Joe') at the centre. Forming a second quad outside the flat side of the D are the Arts Building, Library, and Staff House, the three buildings I probably spend the most time in. They aren't very special to look at, though only Staff House is truly ugly. Also on the campus is the Art Deco Barber Institute, our art gallery and music venue.
The 'D' shaped building, the Aston-Webb building, is the administrative heart of the school as well as holding several departments, such as geography and (I think) some natural history-type classes. Each of the domes you can see is in fact the front of a large building, so that from above, Aston-Webb looks like a spoked half-wheel. This can sort of be seen from the back. The main entrance contains the largest of the domes, and leads onto the Great Hall, which is as impressive inside (though it be under construction) as out.
Apparently Aston-Webb is based on Byzantine architecture, specifically St. Mark's Cathederal in Venice, and the belltower on the Town Hall Tower in Siena, Italy. As some of the pictures show, we don't quite get the weather to match.
[Update: I have since changed in some pictures taken when the sun came out]

Filler?

2006-03-10T10:45:00.000Z

It's getting to be the essay crunch time, and I'm pretty unlikely to be travelling anywhere at all for the next two weeks, unless it's the library (ironically, I'm not sure I have many photos of campus I could post. Later, I guess), so it's all Brum, all the time here. Like this skyline. As the second-biggest city in the U.K., Birmingham actually has a lot of interesting stuff in its downtown. However, most of it was built after the war, when architects had a wee bit of a concrete fetish. But there is some interesting modernist and brutalist stuff kicking around (see the circular tower there) as well as some very recent renovation, such as the new Bullring mall, with its Selfridges department store (the silver blob).

Signs

2006-03-05T21:46:00.000Z

Here are two of my favourite signs of late- from the churchyard in King's Norton, and from a side-street in Worcester. Apparently 'Fruiterer' is a real word; I still find it funny.

Down To Worcester

2006-03-05T21:04:00.000Z

I really didn't know what to expect in Worcester- I've never heard much about it. As it turns out, it's a very pretty town (and I had a sunny day), with the River Severn winding through it and populated by swans (this was actually the first time I've seen swans flying- they tend to have their wings clipped). Down by the river are its large cathedral (above, with swans) and close, in the centre of town is the largely Georgian and Victorian High Street, and a bit farther out from the river are a series of medieval streets, courtyards and alleys, with a lot of the original buildings.
King John (one of the less popular monarchs) is buried in the cathedral, as is Prince Arthur (the older brother to Henry VIII), but they are probably not the city's strongest royal link- Charles II fought a battle here to try and take the country back from Cromwell & co., but lost, and was forced to flee. The house in which he hid is now a pub (and it has its own jail), and his statue adorns the Guildhall in the centre of town (right). The Commandary on the edge of town was a headquarters for this battle, but I forget which side's (I suspect Royal).
I quite liked the cathedral, because it was built and rebuilt so many times from 1100-1500 that virtually every style from that period can be seen. The windows get less and less pointed the farther east (and thus later) along the building you go, and the basement is a forest of old Norman pillars. Plus the inside has been spruced up pretty well--Arthur's tomb (the structure to the left) is a masterpiece of Tudor stonework, as one might expect, but there are also some great medieval carvings of demons roasting people, and knights fighting lions, and unicorns with wings and such.
The town has also built a number of newer shopping developments in the old alleys and courtyards of the medieval town, and I thought they worked well, moving from promenade to courtyard, and branching off in unpredictable ways like the old markets would have. The architectural style is also sufficiently diverse to keep the ancient feel, without trying to look "Olde Worlde". I really liked Worcester, in a quiet way- and it has Birties of Worcester, which should really be worth something. Below are (left) the High Street near the Guildhall, and (right) Friar's Street, the heart of the old town (and about 3 blocks from High St.)

Digbeth

2006-02-27T20:15:00.000Z

Digbeth is just to the south of the Bullring in Birmingham, and is an old industrial area. It's still largely full of garages, warehouses and car rental places. The central feature of it all is the colossal set of railway arches marching out of the city through Digbeth. The neighbourhood is built around them, and there are businesses inside the arches themselves, both in the piers as you pass through under the railway, and also odd, sometimes makeshift structures built in and around the arches. Overall, Digbeth is pretty grim, but like most of the city, there is potential for gentrification in the complex of brick warehouses. The one place (one street, really) that seems to have really gone for it is called the Custard Factory- it reminds me of Yorkville in Toronto, actually. There are a couple of vintage shops, music stores, a vegetarian cafe, several art galleries and a couple of large clubs. There are a couple of new, somwhat gaudy buildings in there, as well as some debatable sculpture. The only indication from the main street of all of this is the brightly painted warehouse walls, as the newer buildings are hidden around corners.
As for the rest of Digbeth, there is little in the way of retail business outside of a couple pubs (one dating from 1368) and clubs, but here and there are some interesting proto-hippy sort of cafes and whatnot scattered through the area. It doesn't look likely to explode into the next exciting place, but clearly people are trying. And what's there doesn't look likely to go away.

Birmingham's Canals

2006-02-27T17:55:00.000Z

One of the things Birmingham is trying to make itself known for is its canal network. The canals run through the centre of the city, meeting in a couple of places right downtown. The canals were used before trains to transport goods to and from the factories of Birmingham, and were therefore essential to the growth of the city as a centre of industry. They connect to the network of canals that run across the United Kingdom. Stratford and Oxford are both on canals that connect rather easily to Birmingham.
The Gas Street Basin (right) is the centre of the whole network, where a couple of different canals meet. There are a number of narrow-boats there, and it passes under clubbing district of Broad Street (above left). At the bottom is a boat roundabout to handle the traffic-- something I've never even heard of before.
The canals were private property, and were run by separate companies, in the manner of the railways in a later era. As a result, there are few ways in an out of the network, and even then the entrances are usually tucked away in the form of small doors, or stairs off the side of bridges. As the canals are also lower than the average street level, they form in many places a sort of parallel city you can slip into, visible off the occasional bridge, or down an alley. But, of course, Birmingham is trying to revitalise itself, and the canals are a natural point to build new development. At the moment, it's rather like the Waterfront in Toronto, with cultural institutions springing up beside sushi places and new bars. At the Mailbox and Brindleyplace (left), on opposite sides of the Gas Street Basin, the process is complete, and they are probably amongst the nicer places in Birmingham, if all very new and shiny.
Below is the aforementioned traffic island (outside the National Indoor Arena), and to the right, the canal system heading off into the Jewellery Quarter down a system of locks, and a more low-key development of condos built around them.

Short hop to Oxford

2006-02-19T22:36:00.003Z

So I also wandered over to Oxford this week, and spent a day. I am vaguely familiar with the city, but did a wander around some of the more obvious places. As school is in session, most of the colleges were closed to us, but there's still enough to see. I put a special emphasis on Saxon towers (the old church tower I climbed, the remains of the castle/prison, the city walls-kinda). The city block with the bulk of Hertford College and New College is spectacular. The Turf tavern and an old B & B are nestled in tiny alleys between them, and near-invisible from the street. And then, once inside New, one gets an idea of how huge the complex is. Within the college (see picture at right) are the substantial remains of the city wall, an old church, and a wooded mound. This mound is the remains of a mass grave of plague victims, and I am told (by history students, not epidemiologists) that the Black Death may well be active within the pile still. Which makes the benches on top a nice touch, so you don't have to sit on plaguey grass. Apparently, if you stand at the bottom and clap, the mound squeaks. Interestingly, this pile would have been inside the old city walls at the time, I think, whereas I would have opted for 'outside'. Hindsight's 20/20, 600 years on. Also, like York, everyone in Oxford owns a bike, and tears around town on it. It's a nice change from the urban assault course that most of Birmingham resembles.

Durham

2006-02-17T20:40:00.000Z

It's been reading week, and I've been getting around England some to see the sights I've missed so far. By far the most important place on my list to me was Durham, up in the North-East of England. It was a three-hour train ride, and I travelled rather more than half-way across the country to get there (passing by another of my favourite northern citys- York- on the way, and was lucky to be able to see the river and Minster from the window).
Durham has been a major religious site since the 900s, the final resting place of the body of St. Cuthbert, chased away from his grave by Vikings (legally, in some respects, he's both alive and a major landlord). The Normans built the current cathederal and castle in an astoundingly short time (1080s to 1130s), and the whole city is on a peninsula in the river Wear. The Bishop of Durham was also the holder of Cuthbert's lands and a feudal lord, with the title Prince-Bishop. He only gave up the title in 1832, when he turned his castle over to found Durham University. The town itself is tiny-you can walk into the countryside in 15 minutes- with only about 5 streets all leading from one of the three old bridges (the Elvret bridge has an uphill slant, interestingly enough) to the market square, which is for some reason adorned with sculptures of local birds, like Puffins, and, oddly, monkeys. The personal belongs of a three-foot tall Polish nobleman, who lived in Durham until he was 94 are kept in the town hall. All of this is on some immensely steep hills, and many buildings are 2 stories at the front, and 6 or more at the back, with wonderful little alleys running from street to street, which helps with a sense of discovery (see left of middle picture). A nice old teashop, Rumbletums, is in one of these tiny, near-vertical alleys, but I missed its closing.
But for all that, the main thing about Durham is the monumental cathederal, with its immense columns, twin towers at the front, all stacked next to the castle on the top of a cliff. The view from the top of the main tower is amazing, and the close is a perfect little world unto itself. The iconic view of the west front (top left) is from an old mill, which is now the University's boathouse, and the whole thing is a world heritage site. I've run out of superlatives, but Durham has probably given York a run for its money for my favourite English city. Go if you can.
PS.- You may have noticed from the photos, but Durham was the first time I've gone out exploring where the weather's been nice. Sun and everything! It's typical of the weather around here, hovering around 8-10 degrees, higher with sunlight.

Stratford Upon Avon

2006-02-17T18:10:00.000Z

So, as part of my MA, I have had to go to Stratford to use the archives and documents of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. Last week I had to work up a bibliography about the town and its pubs (my choice of topics). So, learning about the town, and then being able to walk around the town saying "Ah, the Cage pub used to be there" and such. As far as I can tell, Stratford has one of the best collections of old Tudor buildings, many of them associated with Shakespeare and his family (ie. the St Edward School, above left).There are other famous connections, though, as Harvard House (a mid-sized house with wonderful carving, right) was the early house of the man who would later 'found' Harvard University. And, of course, the whole place is lovely. I had lunch at an old pub (built 1660, or at least some of it) across from the Royal Shakespeare Company's theatre. It's technically the Black Swan, but during the Second World War American soldiers camped across the river, and referred to it as the "Dirty Duck", which is how it's still largely known. Plus, it's where all the RSC actors hang out, apparently, so there's considerable star power associated with it (ie. Lawrence Olivier, Ian Richardson).

Jaunting Around Bournville

2006-02-08T00:22:00.000Z

The main thing about Bournville (about 5-6 Km from the University) is the name Cadbury. George and Richard Cadbury set up a chocolate factory here in 1879. From then on, they both expanded their works, and, due largely to their Quaker beliefs, set about making life better for their workers. The entire neighbourhood was built for workers, and the houses are still under the protection of a Trust. Most of the houses were built around 1900-1910 from what I could see, but the whole project is still running strong. Some of my best pictures are blurred, but they show a postcard of an English village, with one exception-- there are no pubs.

I'm told the workers still join in things like the factory cricket team. At any rate, the clubhouse for the Bournville Cricket Club (left) is both on the factory grounds, and the biggest clubhouse of its sort I've seen. Behind it, but not really visible, is the large Baths built by the Cadburys (there is a war memorial commemorating more than 200 of its workers who fell in the First World War) and the local train station, painted in Cadbury Purple.

One of the other remarkable things the Cadburys did was move two old Tudor-era houses to the area, on the edge of its central park. One is a barn-like structure from north of Birmingham, the other is Selly Manor (right) (Selly Oak is the neighbourhood between me and Bournville). It's relatively small for a manor, but it has three floors, several additions, and even a priest hole-- a hidden compartment a Catholic priest could hide in when the Tudor soldiers came calling. Many of the great houses around here have such things, and I'll probably get around to doing a post just about them. Anyhow, it was Sunday, and everything was closed, so there'll be more from Bournville.

Out and About in Kings Norton

2006-02-06T16:54:00.000Z

Kings Norton is an area about 10 km South of the University. It has been a town apparently since time immemorial, and became part of Birmingham when that city expanded in the 19th Century. I went there yesterday to have a look at the old Tudor Inn and Grammar School (on the second floor of the building to the left), which are on opposite sides of the Churchyard (St. Nicolas's Church is impressive too). Apparently Queen Henrietta Maria stayed in the Inn during England's Civil War, on her way South with troops raised in Yorkshire, while the troops stayed in what is now King's Norton park.

The Saracen's Head (right) is on the same side of the churchyard as the Green, an ancient open space, where Prince Rupert's troops were attacked in the Civil War, and where there is still a centuries-old fair. On the same side as the school is the park and the canal. Below are pictures of the inside of the schoolhouse (through a keyhole!)and the churchyard. In 2004 both the Grammar School and Inn won a BBC competition to find properties in need of restoration, and are supposed to be given about 3 million pounds from the lottery heritage fund. The school looks pretty good, but the Inn is a bit of a wreck inside.

Ahoy-hoy

2006-02-04T23:32:00.000Z

This blog isn't particularly to share with the world my opinion on this, that, or the other (though I'm sure that it'll find itself on here anyhow) but to keep people up to date on what I am doing on my year abroad. So, there won't be much on here until I do something interesting.