http://bootlog.com/rss.php?cat=travelogs Follow everybody's travelogs at bootlog.com en-us Thu, 09 Sep 2010 12:07:20 EST Thu, 09 Sep 2010 12:07:20 EST http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/rss/rss.html webmaster@bootlog.com http://bootlog.com/index.php?cat=travelogs&aut=Liz&sub=archive&id=63
Soph, Mark & baby Thomas were in London for six weeks and are back in Melbourne again. It was great to finally meet Thomas after watching him grow for months! We had a few goes in the park, dinners out in Kilburn and a couple of days on the Isle of Wight together.

Amanda & Simon (from Canberra) travelled around Spain and Portugal for a month, so I met them in Madrid for a few days in mid August – thanks again Mandy B for booking an apartment with a pool! We enjoyed Toledo (about half hour train ride from Madrid) which is a mediaeval walled town and historically tolerant of Catholics, Jews and Muslims all living together. It was also very hot at 41C at 5pm! We went to the Prado which houses amazing paintings by Goya, wandered around the old parts of town and stumbled across a little street festival in a neighbouring barrio, lavapies, on my last night. Fantastico!

Last weekend was another visit to sussex for Amanda & Brian’s silver wedding anniversary. Lovely tea party in Rushlake Green with a fly over, Warbleton Brass Band, and lots of sandwiches and cake! On Sunday we had another relaxing day at Hever Castle. Brian and the band were playing there. The weather held out for us too and so we had a very pleasant time enjoying the music in the forecourt of the castle.

Coming up is a week off at the end of September – Fiona and Guy get married in a fortnight and then head out to the UK & Europe for their honeymoon! Will see them for an England celebration before they head off to somewhere sunny. When back in the UK again, Guy heads home for the footy grand final weekend and Fiona and I will head up to the Peaks District with her parents for a few days. Lots of walking and photography to come.

New photos in “Spring/Summer 2010” and “Madrid”.

Hope everyone is well
Liz xx ]]> Mon, 23 Aug 2010 05:23:00 EST http://bootlog.com/index.php?cat=travelogs&aut=Liz&sub=archive&id=62
Why is that no matter how many ‘proper’ castles one sees, ie military stylie castles/chateaux/schloss/slots not palatial estates, one still gets excited by the dominating architecture, marvels at the weather beaten landscape and generally glosses over the atrocities of war/defences that have taken place over the centuries?

Carla and I went to copehagen last weekend for a few days and had a great time. The castle i’m referring to above is Elsinore no less (ie the setting for Shakespeare’s Hamlet). Located in Helsingor in northern Denmark and at the most easterly point (ie narrowest bit of sea between Denmark and Sweden), the castle is actually known as Kronborg Slot.

Despite making a fairly late decision in the day to go to Helsingor (when we were in Sweden for lunch), the weather was not summery (hot chocolates were required after our looksee around the castle grounds) and the train tickets were quite expensive, this was my highlight of the trip. In the morning we caught the train to Malmӧ in Sweden. Had a wander around the castle there and learnt a bit of local Viking-Mediaeval history.

Whilst in Denmark we enjoyed some amazing food – Vietnamese (quite famous restaurant/quite expensive/quite large cocktails/quite a lot of fun!), brunch, large open sandwiches, pastries, and touristy pizza by the harbour in Nyhavn. It did take us a while to find a proper cup of tea but we succeeded on our last day in Christiana, of course.

Christiana is an interesting area – one part is very salubrious and trendy (where we had our cup of tea and an impressive lunch) and one part has been a hippy commune since the 1960s. Needless to say they’ve been trying to bulldoze it down for a few years now which would be a shame really. The central part of the commune area slightly resembles Hamsterdam from The Wire, but without visible evidence of Class A drugs. The rest of the commune is focused around a lake. It did feel a bit strange being able to wander around these lovely odd, little houses obviously made from reclaimed materials nestled on the banks of the lake. Although following a track, we did feel like we were wandering around people’s front and back yards but I could appreciate why people have chosen to opt out of mainstream life and live here. We also saw a couple of artists studios making use of the old military buildings which was this area’s main purpose during WW2.

Other points of interest/highlights in Copenhagen were: the Castle, the botanical gardens, the Round Tower (for good views over the city), not bumping into Queen Mary from Tasmania, the canals and associated boat ride, the absence of the statue of the Little Mermaid (devastated we were), the National Museum, the honesty of locals in paying for tube tickets, good contemporary art in random places, lovely gardens and parks, liz & carla’s eurovision point allocation system, many copper statues with verdigris, and lots of cute baby birds!

Photos are in “Copenhagen”. They’re not as good as I would like unfortunately. I think i’ve got a bit out of practice lately. Need to rectify that before I go to Madrid (in August with Amanda & Simon), Derbyshire (in September with Fiona) and Tanzania (in February for a 2 week photography safari!).

Watch this space! Love Liz xx ]]> Tue, 08 Jun 2010 06:43:00 EST http://bootlog.com/index.php?cat=travelogs&aut=Natalie&sub=archive&id=5 i'm slowly learning peoples names and being very open about the fact that i have trouble remembering names is helpful to them understanding why i keep asking for it. what also helped was the time when they had a welcome party for all the first years and i had to do a self-introduction i had such a case of stage fright that i couldn't remember my own name.....
the next day was a softball match where everyone dressed up in funny outfits and decided the winner using scissor-paper-rock. they've also introduced me to the world of multi-player scissor-paper-rock, which i am still getting a handle on.....
there has been much karaoke happening and a few bbqs and stuff. been to purikura a few times. very different from in australia....

oh yeah, and uni's been..... uni. homework, weekly exams, speeches, all the happy fun stuff that is implied by an exchange. mid-semesters have started. last thursday was the kanji mid-semester. i hate kanji. tomorrow in reading japanese mid-semester. i still hate kanji. wednesday (at 8:45 am) is normal japanese mid-semester. i'm pretty such kanji is not going to be fun in relation to that, either >.<

i have less time left in japan than i've spent here so far, and this is making me depressed, because i love this city. it's gorgeous and convenient. the uni's not to bad, either. and i really, really don't want to go back *sigh*

i've also decided that it would be better for me to apply to go to year in japan for second semester next year instead of first semester. wish me luck!

oh yeah, and happy birthday to simi- hope you had a blast last night and will continue to have one tonight as the celebrations continue.

if you want any points expanded, email/facebook me directly and i will respond in excruciating detail- i promise :D ]]> Sun, 06 Jun 2010 18:18:00 EST http://bootlog.com/index.php?cat=travelogs&aut=Eloise&sub=archive&id=54
Places I went: today I went to Tongli, one of several ‘watertowns’ around Suzhou. These are basically Lijiang-style old towns with wider canals and Chinese rather than Naxi architecture. Tongli, at least, also looks a bit more run-down. Before getting there, I had a bit of trouble finding the bus station - Keyun Beizhan, which according to the travel guides is ‘next to’ the train station. It turns out that ‘next to’ in this case means across the road, along the canal, under a large bridge, and around the corner. They also say that one can buy tickets which include the bus price in the entry ticket, from a window at the end of the bus station. The Dutch woman had reported that she hadn’t been able to find this (though apparently she had little difficulty with the bus station itself!) but I actually found it first, because it is at a completely different site. That site is ‘next to’ the train station for values of ‘next to’ which include ‘across the four lane road and over an iron bridge that crosses the city moat’ - but once you make it that far it’s quite easy to find, turn right once you’re over the bridge and it’s the last window of the small building before you actually hit the buses. Once there it’s a ten minute walk to the old town or you can get a shuttle (I didn’t to go there but did to come back). Anyway, the old town has several sites and lots of tourist shopping. I visited one old house, one garden, and the Chinese Sexual Culture Museum. The house and garden were pretty but pretty much the same as others of those things. In the garden I sat for a while, listening to some musicians who were playing in some of the buildings and decorating the scenery, and several people (mostly members of passing tour groups) took my photo. The sex museum (which used to be in Shanghai - I see from Alex’s old travelog that they tried to visit just after it had moved) was quite interesting. It is set in a large garden of fertility statues, and has exhibitions on ‘sex in primitive society’ (including lots of vaguely suggestive rocks), ‘marriage and women’ (including the results of a Republican-era survey of Nanjing prostitutes, complete with pie-charts drawn by 1930s statisticians, and thumbscrews apparently used on disobedient prostitutes), ‘sex in daily life’ (including ‘trunk-bottom pictures’ that a mother would put at the bottom of her daughter’s trousseau so she would know what to do on the wedding night), and ‘unusual sexual behaviour’ (including scandalous stories about monks and nuns). There was also a life-size statue of Leda and the swan, which was the centrepiece of a room devoted to books written by the scholars who started the museum. Of course, a lot of it (especially the ‘women and marriage’ section) just presented the standard CCP line on such things, but at least it made the exhibitions mostly coherent.

People: This morning the Dutch woman in the dorm left for Hangzhou. In the evening I talked a little to the same Chinese woman from yesterday. I think she had noticed me watching some other guests show of their purchases, so she also showed me the souvenirs she had bought. When she was telling me about a shirt she had bought I asked if she thought it was a good price, then how much it was, then where I could get it. She laughed and said, ‘that’s so Chinese!,’ but then she gave me directions. I wonder if she thought foreigners don’t usually care about getting a bargain? She also told me how cute I was when I was sympathising with her about how often to wash her hair. Oh well, I’m glad she found me entertaining! ]]> Fri, 28 May 2010 00:21:00 EST http://bootlog.com/index.php?cat=travelogs&aut=Anna&sub=archive&id=25
But I digress. My friends and I were chatting recently about the oddities of living here, specifically when walking, running, cycling (enter chosen fitness strategy) around town. For some weird reason everybody who passes us stares. Noticeably. Like they’d never seen someone getting about on two feet and a heartbeat before. And usually the following day someone you barely know will walk up and tell you they saw you walking. Why wouldn’t you want to, with beautiful blue skies and enormous footpaths?

Ironically we’re all trying to drive less and walk more because we’ve all started noticing weight gain. We were trying to put it down to side-effects of lead in the water, until someone piped up and said they had only been drinking bottled water. Grrrrr. So now I guess we have to face facts and attribute this effect, in our case, to the abundance of other beverages consumed more commonly after 5pm, in houses.....friends houses, public houses etc, ahem. Still, if you’re a sweetish wine drinker try the Brown Brothers Zibibbo Rosa. Lip-licking champers.

So now I'm a hippocrit. ]]> Wed, 26 May 2010 14:04:00 EST