serinde

The day was mostly going to be a loss in multiple transit forms, but it was brightened a little bit by going out to early breakfast with two of S.'s friends from grammar school (!), who were also flying out that day (though much earlier than us). We went to the student caff a few blocks away and had a really nice visit before they headed to the airport, and we went back to our hotel to do the last minute faffing before making the long trek to Heathrow ourselves.

I must say, the new Elizabeth Line is a nice option for your Heathrow travel needs; more expensive, but faster & more comfortable, than taking the Picadilly Line, and cheaper & more flexible than the Heathrow Express.

Still, we had rather a lot of time to kill at the airport, so we hunkered down at the "Gordon Ramsay Plane Food" (ha ha ha), which was pricey but out of the madding crowd, and ate and drank rather too much while waiting to go to the gate. (Highly recommend their G&Ts.) The flight was pleasantly unremarkable and indeed early; Newark had its usual one border patrol station open, so that was a tiresome wait, but our bags were already on the belt when we got through and they didn't bother with Customs, so it all evened out. Beth was good enough to pick us up and give us a lift home, so we were home by 8:30 and attended to the cats (Bertie has been extremely vocal in his denunciation) and so to bed.

The only other planned meal of our trip was at St JOHN, a fabulous place which was ground zero for the nose-to-tail eating revival. I'd been there before a couple of times; S. had not, so this seemed like the moment. We could only ("only") get reservations at the Marylebone branch, rather than the mothership, but this was fine. We learned that this iteration is more in the direction of "get several dishes and share them", which was fine by us. Alas they did not have my absolute favorite dish, the bone marrow and parsley salad, but so it goes.

Started with a kir apéritif, then got the first round: a deep fried Welsh rarebit - you could think of it as a rarebit croquette and not be too far off - and fried crackly pig skin; I had a glass of their house white, and S. had a glass of Bourgogne (Domaine Bruno Colin 2022) that was notably excellent. The rarebit was delicious; the pig skin was good in its way, but a) really too rich for a starter and b) would have been better warm rather than room temperature.

Next we split crispy duck leg on a bed of sliced fennel bulb with roasted shallots, all tossed with a sharp vinaigrette. St JOHN is particularly skilful at dressings, which is important when you are dealing with mountains of rich ingredients. Followed was a slab of roast Middle White[1] pork with braised parsnips, accompanied by a salad of...I'm not sure what kind of lettuce, but it was crisp and good...with another brilliant dressing including pickled walnuts. The pork was melt-in-your mouth delicious and it could make you swear off something as crude as beef forever. We had way too much food, and I couldn't do justice to the parsnips or the salad as a result. With this, we had a bottle of Bandol (2022), of which my only wish was that they'd opened it earlier rather than when the duck came out.

I was also leaving room for dessert: we split an apple crumble, which was perfect, and had a glass of Sauternes apiece. Then we slowly rolled into a cab and returned to base.


[1] a British heritage pig breed

Both of us slept much better last night, so much so that we only woke up close to 8 (which, in theory, was our breakfast seating). We finally rolled in about twenty to nine, but no one seemed to care, so that was OK. I thought it imprudent to do another museum day, so after considering some possibilities, we opted to go to Kew Gardens[1], where I have never been, and where S. had spent a lot of happy time but not for several decades when he lived in the area.

You might say, a garden in November[2]? but any fool can make a spring or summer riot of flowers look good. If the skills are present, a fall garden can be beautiful and soul-stirring; and it should be to no one's surprise that Kew is full of these skills We didn't have time, or indeed the meat-sack capability, to see the whole thing - particularly I regret not making it to the far corner to the woodland walk - but I did at least get to visit their "Treetop Walkway", which is a circular path sixty feet (!) in the air. We had a warm-up at the cafe and I stimulated the gift shop economy, and then we took the bus into Richmond, which you might think of as Montclair but historical. (It is also the setting for Ted Lasso, for the Gentle Readers on that particular wagon.) We ambled through the high street, went down to the riverside, had a pint at a pub right on the Thames, and then back up to get dinner at a brasserie which was good enough, though overpriced (see? Montclair!). Back to the hotel about quarter past eight for a cup of herbal tea and a telly program on Brunelleschi's dome.

[1] I am deeply chagrined that there are several ways you can take a boat to Kew, none of which were available today.

[2] Had we been a week later, the gardens would have had their apparently extensive nighttime holiday stuff on; which staff were busy as beavers working to set up during our visit. That seems to be a theme for this trip.

Transfer day! We got up, had one last excellent breakfast, gathered our traps and headed to the train station (somewhat trammelled by crowds amassing for the local Remembrance Day parade). We obtained pies and beer for the journey - and tried to get some Wensleydale to bring back, but the local cheese shop only had it in wedges, not transportable wax-sealed rounds, alas - and met Beth on the platform. The train back was equally comfortable and swift, though we had some confusion around "why are some seats reserved when our booking didn't let us reserve them"; as well, there were a party of dowagers next to us who were rather whooping it up and drinking fizz at 11am. On the one hand, loud; on the other, I am pretty sure this is my future, so I steered my an annoyance into a Good For Them!.

At Kings Cross, we wimped out chose the path of prudence and got a cab to the hotel, which was about 15 minutes away in any form of transit, because London. The room is...not quite what it was painted on the website, but meets minimum viable, and the staff seem nice. I dropped my bags, turned around, and walked back to the British Library (right next to Kings Cross, yes) to meet Beth, where we did a double-header of their two exhibitions: "Life in Ancient Dunhuang" and "Medieval Women In Their Own Words". The former was small, the latter very large, and both were excellent. We had about half an hour at the end so went up to the regular gallery, which has stuff like the Magna Carta, Shakespeare's First through Fourth Folios, &c &c. At that point, the museum was closing and my feet were absolutely killing me, so we limped over to St Pancras for drinks at the refurbished Victorian booking office. The drinks were of course way expensive, but quite good; and our timing was excellent because it seems that, at 5:05pm every day, they mix up a big bowl of rum punch in the middle of the bar and serve it forth to all and sundry. So that was cool. (If you don't know why St Pancras / the Midland Grand Hotel is cool, go look it up. It's worth your time.)

However, the bar only serves (expensive) nibbles, and because it was Sunday, all the other restaurants in the refurbed part of the hotel closed early, so we wandered out to the lounge area that's in the hotel lobby, formerly the taxi pull-through between the hotel and the train station, and had perfectly acceptable (if again, overpriced) fish & chips. We took a brief walk through the old hotel to see the beautifully restored Grand Staircase - you may have seen it in the video for the Spice Girls' "Wannabe", or for most of my readership, in the Neverwhere episode "Down Street" - and then Beth headed out to her airport hotel before flying home, and we returned to base. It was only about 8 by then but we were knackered, so watched a bit of telly in bed (one episode of Alan Cummings riding the Flying Scotsman, and one episode of Wolf Hall) before lights-out.

After an indifferent night's sleep (much waking up of confused brain), we lumbered downstairs to the restaurant for a quite good breakfast; Full English pour lui, bacon & egg butty pour moi. We'd deliberately not made specific plans, electing to play it all by ear. In the event, we just stravaigled through the town, looking in (and occasionally going in) shops, ending up at Clifford's Tower, which has been much renovated from our last visit. It's still mostly ruined, but they've fixed up the inside, created some little exhibits in the tower's lobes (including an acknowledgment of the 1190 massacre of the Jewish community), and made a nice viewing area on the roof. After that, we ambled back through the Shambles, stopping at the very excellent pie place and taking our bounty into the pub next door.

At this point, I heard from the Academic Squad who were heading to York Minster to look at tomb sculptures, so we tootled over to join them. (Someday I may actually be able to see the Minster's vast array of true medieval stained glass in full glory; today was not that day, as the whole weekend continued overcast.) Beth and I took a guided tour while the others did them a photography. We left about 4pm and went looking for food, as that group had sort of skipped lunch and were ravenous, and to our mild surprise found a Portuguese tapas place that was both excellent and could support the various dietary restrictions in the party.

Much of the party returned to base; Beth and S. and I tried to get into the House of the Trembling Madness, which we enjoyed mightily on our prior visit, but 6pm on a Friday? HA HA HA HA no. We eventually fetched up at a J. Random Pub with a heated outdoor garden and had a pint, then split each to our own accommodations. S. and I watched a bit of telly (HIGNFY was about the only version of news I could put up with) and went to bed.

I confess, I bought shoes.

There is much to say about this little swath of desert that has had its fantastic, luxurious habitat pastede on yay. Others have said most of it, so here's a laundry-list of impressions.

( The Bellagio is not quite how it looks in the Oceans Eleven remake. )

We spent much of our days wandering through the other hotels (of which I have taken an infinite number of pictures). There's the obvious differences in theme, of course, but equally fascinating are the different vibes / markets aimed at...which may or may not seem incongruous with said theme. Excalibur looks like a kid's castle play set, but it's clearly aiming for the trashier, frat-tastic demographic. Treasure Island is trying to downplay the pirates thing and replace it with bQQbies. Monte Carlo looks as if it was built to be high-end, but based on the stores inside they're trying for the middlin' market. And then there's the newest places like Aria and Cosmopolitan, which are eschewing themes at all other than "sleek and modernistic".

I was surprised at how many older, skeevier-looking places are still interspersed with the mondo huge resorts. I'd just assumed they'd all been bulldozed in, but not so. Some have been borged by them--e.g., O'Shea's, at which outside bar I left my camera, is actually owned by the Flamingo next door; but you wouldn't know unless you happened to go on a merry backstage quest with a security guy to the Place of Lost And Found which leads you into the guts of the Flamingo--but I think some are still independent.

( People watching. )

This is not a cocktail society. Nearly everything is a stupidtini with flavored vodka. Save your effort and just get cheap frozen daiquiris. Though I made a connection with a bartender, who used to live on 79th and Amsterdam, and I said "here, do me a solid. Make this French 75 you have here on your menu, but give it to me in a champagne flute not a wine glass, and DON'T PUT ICE IN IT." We got on famously. I do not blame him for his employer's weird-ass ideas of what a drink looks like as long as he'll fix it my way on request.

Coffee is weak like most of the US. But there are Starbucks in many of the hotels (though not ours), so you can get something that doesn't taste like brown crayon. Exception: the French bistro in Paris Las Vegas had nice strong coffee.

The Grand Canyon is everything it says on the box. You get a hell of a view flying in by helicopter, I can tell you. I would like to go visit on foot at some point, though. And Lake Mead looks incredibly inviting when it is 115 fucking degrees.

So even when it's well over 100, you jump in the pool, and you're cold when you get out because the wind is usually so strong. Then there's a period of an hour or so where you're staying cool through evaporation (unless you're in direct sunlight, in which case you fry in about 15 minutes). Then it's suddenly too hot to breathe and you jump back in the pool and start all over again. But what really drives you back inside? You get so dried out from the 11% humidity that you feel like your skin is cracking...even when it's still wet from the pool. Terribly odd feeling, this.

We have not visited Fremont St. and the old downtown. Could have today, but opted for a lazy day instead. That's okay.

I have not gambled yet. The games seem to fall into two categories: "for suckers" and "for big-time suckers". Tonight I may try Bond's method on the roulette wheel (back two of 1-12, 13-24, 25-36; they pay 2:1) or I may not. Do you know, the baccarat they play here, you do not get to choose whether to draw another card or not? What bullshit is this?

It's been a really fascinating and fun vacation, but I think I'm ready to come home and get back to my modest city mouse ways.

nedlnthred and I had a scientifically-generated plan to go down to Asbury Park the day after the local Springsteen show, poke around, see what it was like. (And maybe, if we were super super lucky, he would drop in to play at one of the local clubs, as he is occasionally known to do...) So we did this thing yesterday. We got a late-ish start, were further delayed by major accidents, etc. etc., but finally rolled into town around 1:30pm.

I should back up to note that I have been to Asbury Park once before. It was, hm, maybe 7 years ago; we were invited to a party of a particular kind, so the redheads and I tootled down, and lordy, were we appalled. The hotel the party was in was clearly a classic establishment from the shore glory days, but the room we entered into had indelible marker on the walls, a used condom in the sheets, and a dead mouse under the bed. (And that was before the party started.) The beachfront was all run-down and almost entirely closed. We survived, we escaped, and the experience passed into legend. Although I had vaguely heard that, in the interim, the town had become something of a gay mecca, my expectations were for an entertainingly trashy kind of day.

Thus, I was pretty surprised to find that the place (well, at least the boardwalk portion) is entirely under a makeover. The beautiful old arcades on either end are being refurbished and cleaned up without being torn down and replaced with something appalling; the burnt-out abandoned buildings have been torn down, and new shops are being built; and the vendors they've rounded up are artisans, not the Usual Beach Crap. We had a long chat with a fellow who runs a pottery shop, and he was telling us that the corporation masterminding the whole affair figures this way: every town along the Jersey Shore, nearly, is aimed at families and emphasizes quantity/low cost over quality. They aren't going to be able to drag that demographic away from whatever its normal vacation spot is, so instead, they're aiming at the singles or dual-income with disposable income. So: fine dining, good cocktails, cute or quaint or artsy shops, and an emphasis on classy. It's clearly still very much a work in progress, but I quite like what they've done so far. (And I'm happy to say they do not seem to have meddled with the music venues at all. So, not your usual mode of gentrification which gets rid of anything that does not conform.)

I do wonder what the locals think of all this.

We also stumbled upon an event at the Stone Pony, being thrown in cooperation with the only non-shitty commercial radio station in NYC. It wasn't a big whoop--there was cheap bad beer (but at least you could get decent bottles, if for $5) and chili dogs and a giant inflatable King Kong--but they had local bands playing, and the one we stuck around for was not bad. I understand it was supposed to get much more lively around 7 or 8 (and if we were going to see The Bruce, that probably would have been when)--but Beth needed to get further down shore to meet her family and I needed to embark on the 1 hour 45 minute train pilgrimage back to the city, so we missed all that. But, anyways, a lovely day all around.

Actually, we got here about 24 hours ago. Checked into the hotel, which was impossible to find (driving in Sydney makes Queens look like a pleasant straightforward thing), to find a tiny tiny room smelling of mildew with drunken aspiring vocalists outside and a roar like the second half of Titanic whenever anyone in the building flushed their dunny. Also, unlike Melbourne, there is not tons of free wireless being given away like the flowers of Spring, which is why no updates 'til now. And though it's not a particularly large city, the distances are walkable, nevertheless every direction we tried to go in we were thwarted by some pseudo-highway-ish road or tunnel that impeded pedestrian progress. For all these reasons, by about 5pm we were half inclined to get the car from the rental place and drive right the fuck back to Melbourne. This was increased by our utter failure to find anything resembling a local rock scene. What the shit? Is this not Sydney, home of the Beasts of Bourbon, the Hoodoo Gurus, Midnight Oil, INXS, AC/DC, bla bla bla I could go on for a really long time? Feh.

Today, things is looking up. We have secured a room in a more central location, which does not smell like mildew and has Intarwubs and is twelve flights up so all that reach us is common city noises. We are regrouping and hope to take on the world shortly.

I made out a bunch of postcards while we were in the interior, but have failed at finding a post office. (!) Hope to send 'em tomorrow. I'll probably beat them home. Sorry.

In spite of going, what, some 900km through the interior, and in spite of NUMEROUS signs warning us of kangaroos, drop-bears, and wombats, we saw no native fauna at all, other than some interesting birds. Wait, I lie: we saw one dead kangaroo at the side of the road. Steve hypothesized it that they left it there to prove that such an animal exists, much as the creationists claim of dinosaur skeletons. Anyways: disappointing. We'll just have to go to the Taronga Zoo, I guess.

Health updates: Steve did indeed get some Nexium before we left Melbourne; thanks to damed_colonial and blarglefiend for suggestions. Driving through farm country was hell and death on his allergies, but he's better now we're back on the coast. I'm still coughing a bit. We're finding ourselves often dehydrated, as getting a glass of water does not seem a common thing in these parts, and when you ask for one you usually get a wee small thing barely the size of a Dixie cup, but we're doing our best to keep on top of it.

More later, I daresay.

It's Monday evening for us now, so let me play a bit of catch-up ball. First, I should note that, yes, I'm still kinda sick. No fever, but my sinuses are intermittently full of yugh, I have a bad bronchial cough, and I'm seriously off my feed: enough so that I'm half worried that's why I haven't gotten over it all yet. I am not permitting this to stop me, but it's having its effect on my energy levels and mood. Also sometimes hard to sleep, but far more along that line is that I keep waking up at sparrow's fart with my brain utterly awake and racing. I don't know if that's a jet-lag thing or what. Anyways, forthwith, an update:

( Sunday Sunday Sunday! )

( ...which includes window-shopping )

( Transit, dinner, and a restless night )

( Not Much A Case Of The Mondays )

( Nick Cave: Man Or Myth )

( The Lunch Shop Sketch )

( Almost There )

Haven't bought postcards yet. I probably should have, and then could have spent the evening in correspondence. Oh well.

Or, "The country cousin seeks guidance". So, here we are, eventually to depart for Faraway Lands, and I realize that there are a lot of things that my previous travels have not prepared me for, not even going to London. Wherefore, these questions:

1. Phone. We have plain ole CDMA phones, which as I understand it don't work in the rest of the world. And which, as I understand it, I can't just buy a different SIM card to make work in Australia. What do I do?

2. Laptop. That is, to bring or not to bring. Previously I whinged about my original plan of using it as an amusement device for the long long [insert Dr. Cox "long" routine] long flight being a non-starter. OTOH, it strikes me that having Teh Intarwubs readily available to us while we decide what to do on a given day is a good notion. But: will it be readily available? Are Melbourne and Sydney veritable garden lands of free wireless? Or would I be lugging around a 13" MacBrick?

3. Is it really hard to switch to driving on the other side of the road?