Lisbon

After a long weekend, this ended up being a three-day working week followed by a short break with my family. We have a lot going on this summer, with both A-Level and GCSE results, our youngest making the pilgrimage to Reading Festival, and our eldest looking to get a visa and make a move to the US for ~~university~~ college. Conscious that there may not be many more holidays that we’ll all spend together, we were keen to get away, so we started looking for a destination for a short break. Lisbon seemed to be exactly what we were looking for. We found some cheap flights and a centrally located hotel, and we were on our way. It didn’t disappoint.

We flew from London Luton to Lisbon (not easy to say quickly), zipped through the airport and took an Uber to our hotel. Everything was seamless from the moment we landed. The airport is conveniently located close to the city, but far enough away that the planes don’t trouble you when you’re there.

Our orange and white Cooper Black-adorned chariot

We stayed at Brown’s Central Hotel, which turned out to be a perfect spot in the centre of the city. We wanted something centrally located and it’s literally in the name. The hotel is situated on a corner within the small grid system of avenues and streets that were established when Lisbon was rebuilt following the devastating earthquake of 1755. From here we could wander around the grid, passing the incredible number of restaurants with their street dining areas, head east or west into the historic, hilly sections with winding passages and stairs, or south through the Rua Augusta Arch, into the Praça do Comércio , down to the riverfront and the port.

Looking south down the busy, restaurant-filled Rua Augusta towards the Arch

The Rua Augusta Arch, the Praça do Comércio and the statue of King José I, by Machado de Castro

I’d anticipated that it would be a food-based holiday and I wasn’t disappointed. After dropping our bags off at the hotel we headed out to explore, almost immediately bumping into a little shop called Castro selling pastéis de nata. We insisted that we didn’t need a fancy cardboard carry case for our four pastries as they would have an estimated lifespan of sixty seconds after being handed over to us. So they popped them in individual little bags. They were delicious. Later on in our trip we stumbled across the original historic home of these pastries in Belém and ordered some more. They were good but — with apologies to their secret recipe — perhaps not quite as delicious as those we had on our first day.

Buying a pastel de nata from the fabulously posh-looking Castro

The historic counter at Pastéis de Belém

For a follow-up snack, one of the boys navigated us to The Potato Project, a small shop selling cones of deliciously cooked chips all dressed up with various toppings. We usually love mushy peas with our fries, but I could see a business like this doing a brilliant trade in the UK.

For dinner, we took a short walk to Restaurante O Chiado which had exceptional reviews on all of the websites we looked at. It was my kind of place, with only 20 seats in a little room with an authentic, rustic feel. After seeing a sizzling dish being brought to another customer’s table, we started with a plate of fried shrimp in olive oil and garlic to share, along with some bread to mop up the sauce. The tastes were incredible. For a main course, the boys both ordered ‘steak on a stone’, which according to one of our boys turned out to be “one of the top three meals I’ve ever had in my life”. After equipping them both with bibs, the raw steaks turned up alongside possibly some of the hottest objects ever known to man. They sat at the table, gently cooking their steaks until they were just how they liked them. My wife and I ordered the monkfish with rice and shrimp, which was also superb. We finished up with some small desserts and waddled back to our hotel, fully satisfied with a wonderful meal.

Monkfish with rice and shrimp. Absolutely delicious

The boys spent some time mooching about on Lime e-scooters, and eventually persuaded my wife and I to join them. They ended up being a fun and practical way to get around the city; the breeze from travelling around at speed compensated for the 35°C heat.

Outside of the main centre, there were so many narrow, winding passages to explore

They told us that they had seen people travelling around in groups in small electric cars run by Spinach Tours and thought it looked fun. We checked out their website and found that we could reserve two cars at a discounted ‘early morning’ rate for the next day for €160, so we booked ourselves in.

They took a very loose approach to verifying that we were safe to go out in the cars on the roads. Despite my youngest son only having passed his test in the past year, they only wanted to see two of our driving licences for insurance purposes. Not knowing quite what to expect, we paid a €15 insurance premium per car to limit any damage to a €600 excess for each. The lady who checked us in told us that “nobody has ever been hurt in our cars”, but followed it up by telling us that their worst accident was when someone drove one of the cars through the window of a shop. Everyone was fine, but the shop was not.

The cars were simple to operate, with motorbike-style controls including a ‘twist’ accelerator on the right-hand handlebar. There was a single pedal for the brake, and a rocker switch for the indicators that you had to deactivate manually. It took a little bit of getting used to, particularly when trying to do a hill start; you had to turn the accelerator, wait for three or four seconds and then release the brake. The other vehicles around us were mostly tolerant as we got used to them on the roads. Once we got used to them we found ourselves zipping along the faster roads at 45km/h.

Each car had an Android tablet in a magnetic case, which stuck onto the dashboard, showing you a map of where you are and where one of the various predetermined routes were. If you started driving along one of the routes, audio would kick in to act as your guide and tell you what you’re looking at. The app included suggested places to stop, get out of the car and look around, but in practice we found that everywhere was too busy for us to pull over and park up.

The biggest downside to the cars was how uncomfortable they were. We hired them for three hours but bailed out after two and a half. You couldn’t adjust the seats in any way. Both my butt and my leg were in agony from sitting in an awkward position, and I found myself taking my foot away from the brake pedal to stretch it out in the rest of the footwell as we went along. I couldn’t have driven one for much longer. It was fun, but I was glad to get out and get walking again.

As you would expect from a capital city, there is lots to see in Lisbon and we barely scratched the surface in the three-and-a-bit days that we were there. The Santa Justa Lift was located very close to our hotel and we were more fascinated by the ever-present crowd of people paying to ride the elevator to the top than we were about the structure itself. Heavy trams rumbled everywhere, seemingly defying physics as they scaled the steep streets.

Trams heading up and down the steep hill of Calçada de São Francisco

Our gastronomic journey continued with a visit to the Time Out Market, a big food hall with a host of independent vendors and communal seating. It was bustling with people. One of our boys impressed us with his desire to try something he’d never had before, going for an octopus hot dog with tiny fries.

We came across Crush Doughnuts close to our hotel and couldn’t resist stopping to sample them. The doughnuts are massive; even sharing two between four of us was more than enough.

Crush Doughnuts: peanut butter on the left, Biscoff on the right

It was fun to wander along to Lupita Pizzaria, a highly-rated pizza joint in a part of the city we hadn’t been to yet. We walked down Pink Street, past a bunch of funky small bars that looked geared to tourist crowds, as well as the smallest bar I’ve ever seen, which could literally be filled up as soon as you get four or five people in there. When we got to Lupita Pizzaria, we found a big crowd gathered around one of the doors and worried that we had arrived too late. We started thinking that maybe we should try elsewhere, but ultimately decided to stick with it. We gave our name to the lady at the door, who wrote it on a list on one of the glass door panels. We also found that she would serve us drinks from the door, allowing us to relax a bit while we waited for a table to come free. We struck up a great conversation in the queue with a guy from the US and his two sons who were holidaying there.

With our name on the door at Lupita Pizzaria, we decided to order drinks

Once we eventually got into the restaurant, we understood why it took some time. The place was very small, with just a few seats at a handful of tables. The menu was extensive, and I was excited to try a vegan pizza with mushrooms while my wife opted for a pizza covered in shaved courgettes. They were delicious, but I couldn’t finish mine.

Courgette pizza on the left, vegan mushroom pizza on the right

Breakfast is my favourite meal of the day. We managed to find some lovely places that sold all of the great breakfast things, from avocado toasts, to eggs, to açai bowls with granola. The Folks and Dear Breakfast were both excellent, but on our last day in the city we discovered Miolo, which was on another level. The décor was beautiful, with gorgeous, comfy seats and wallpaper which made a statement without being overwhelming. Someone with a very keen eye for interiors had gone to town on the place. But it wasn’t style over substance; the food was delicious.

Miolo, Lisbon. Amazing décor, even more amazing breakfasts

One evening we sought out pasta at Osteria Bellosguardo, an intimate Italian restaurant in the middle of a bunch of narrow, winding streets. The whole area around the restaurant had a wonderful rustic feel; old men with old, sleepy dogs sat on benches, chatting and watching people walk by. As we walked away after our meal we came across someone’s laundry airer placed in the middle of the street. When you don’t have any outside space, why not?

We could hear music and singing, and followed our ears to find out where it was coming from.

We came across an alfresco restaurant where all of the diners were being treated to a performance of fado, a form of traditional Portuguese music. I don’t know what the topic of the song was, but it sounded beautiful.

Watching and listening to the Fado players

On Sunday we took the train for an hour out of the centre of Lisbon to Sintra, which many people had suggested we include on our itinerary. Unfortunately, when we got there, the many tourist touts told us that the historical sites had been closed by the authorities due to the risk of wildfires. Disappointing, but totally understandable. We quickly decided to get a taxi to Cascais, a local seaside town. It was pretty, but we weren’t really beach ready and after a little bit of wandering around we decided to head back on the train.

We managed to get some runs in, heading down to the water and along the waterfront. The first day we headed west and found ourselves heading along narrow pavements in an industrial landscape. For my second run I went the other way along the river, and was greeted by a port hosting gigantic cruise ships. It’s hard to understand the size and scale of them until you are up close.

An MSC cruise ship docked at the Port of Lisbon

Some of the trauma of the 1755 calamity has been channelled into the creation of the Quake Lisbon Earthquake Museum. The reviews were good and we thought that it would be a great way to learn a bit more about the history of the city. It was less of a museum and more of an interactive experience, with a simulated trip back in time to 1755, and strict timings between each of the scenes that you visit. For the earthquake itself, you find yourself sitting on wooden pews in a cathedral, watching the start of a religious service before the shaking starts and causes havoc. We learned that Prime Minister at the time, Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, 1st Marquis of Pombal, led the reconstruction efforts which included the world’s first buildings to incorporate an anti-seismic design. Looking through my photos, I realised that we had already encountered the Marquis of Pombal on our trip — painted tiles in Restaurante O Chiado showed him proud of his work of rebuilding the city.

The Marquis of Pombal in Restaurante O Chiado

I found the Quake experience a little lacking, particularly for the entrance fee. Although there was plenty of information available in the different rooms, it felt as though it had been dumbed down in order to make it more of an ‘experience’.

Louie Louie record shop was a good find, with its unassuming entrance off some steps down a side street. They had a great selection of music, all reasonably priced. I picked up three second-hand CDs — Salad’s Drink Me, New Young Pony Club’s Fantastic Playroom and Turin Brakes’ Ether Song — for €5 each.

And just like that, our short holiday was over. Lisbon had one final surprise for us; straight after security at the airport, there were two conveniently located vending machines selling bottles of water for the retro price of €1. What a splendid touch.

It was so lovely to spend time together as a family, particularly given that one of our team is about to set off on his own university adventure and won’t be at home as much. Lisbon was fabulous, and I’d definitely like to come back.

What if I take my problem to the United Nations?

My last trip to New York coincided with the 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly. The city was bonkers, with police and diplomatic staff everywhere you looked and hotel rooms going for double their usual price. It’s always a strange feeling to be so physically close to a place that the whole world is paying attention to in that moment, knowing that it is just a few steps away.

A couple of weeks later, I found myself heading back to New York. I decided to book myself onto a tour of the building. My office is in Midtown Manhattan and the UN is only a few blocks east, so it seemed like the perfect opportunity. An adult ticket costs $22 plus admin and booking fees, which seemed reasonable. As they only operate on weekdays during normal working hours, I chose the last one of the week: Friday at 4:45pm.

I didn’t check the map in any detail and figured I would work out where to go when I got there. I meandered my way over to the East River on a gorgeously sunny afternoon.

I’d been intrigued by the building ever since I saw it in Hitchcock’s North By Northwest, filmed in 1959. To me it had always looked both beautiful and functional.

From the trailer to North By Northwest (1959)

Old films amuse me when they show how innocent the times were. In the movie, Cary Grant arrives by taxi and bolts up the stairs to the entrance. These days the premises is heavily militarised, with fences and guards separating the plaza from the world outside.

A friendly guard at the main entrance told me that the the Visitor Centre is located right across the street. I crossed over to find a grumpy security guard, who checked my ticket at the door and gruffly told me where to go. As well as my ticket, they needed to see my COVID-19 vaccination records and proof of ID. They then took a quick photo, which was printed out a sticky badge that I would wear for the duration of the trip. I now had to go back over the street again.

Badged up

Once I got into the main entrance I had to navigate some airport security-style checks, with my bags being x-rayed and my boding being put through a metal detector. The whole place was quiet, with only two of us in the security zone. I’m guessing that the facility is equipped to deal with a busy day when the General Assembly is in session, and is a little overkill for a random late Friday afternoon. A couple of minutes later, I was in.

Looking back at the flags after getting through security

Throughout the UN there are numerous artworks, gifts from individuals and nations to the organisation. As you wander to the terrace in front of the entrance you are immediately in front of two iconic pieces: Sphere Within a Sphere by Arnaldo Pomodoro, symbolising “the emergence of a new world from the old”, and Non-Violence by Carl Frederk Reutersward, inspired by the murder of John Lennon. Someone was recording a speech or piece of dialogue in front of Non-Violence, filmed by someone on their smartphone.

Sphere Within a Sphere by Arnaldo Pomodoro

Non-Violence by Carl Frederk Reutersward

Looking back at the entrance to the UN

There was much more art inside. The first piece you encounter is a life-size statue of Nelson Mandela, gifted by the Republic of South Africa:

A statue of Mandela, offering me a warm, friendly greeting

A little further in are a series of silk portraits of the previous Secretary-Generals, gifted by Iran:

Silk portraits of the Secretary-General

The most striking artwork that I saw was a gift from Belarus, a 12ft 6in by 33ft tapestry depicting the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster:

Chernobyl by Alexander Kishchenko

We also got to see a mosaic called The Golden Rule, based on a painting by American artist Norman Rockwell. The piece features the phrase ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’. As we looked at it, our guide said that we share universal values that we are all the same; I couldn’t help think of the things going on around the world which show that this isn’t always true.

The Golden Rule, based on a painting by Norman Rockwell

The ticket had advised to be at the UN an hour before my scheduled tour. As I had made it through the registration and security processes so quickly, I found that I could just walk into an earlier one than I had planned. They all leave from a central tour desk. The tour operator validated my ticket, gave me another sticker to say that I had been checked and told me to wait for the next English-language tour to start.

The tour itself was quite something. I had expected the visit to be interesting, but hadn’t anticipated that it would be so moving.

Our first visit was to the Security Council Chamber. Our excellent Ecuadorean guide spoke about the history, structure, function and even the artwork of the Chamber before inviting us to take photos. It felt strange to be in a place that I have seen so many times on television over the years, thinking about all of the debates and decisions that have happened here.

United Nations Security Council Chamber

The draperies and wall coverings in the Chamber were designed by Norway’s Else Poulsson, “showing the anchor of faith, the growing wheat of hope and the heart of charity.”

Wall coverings in the UN Security Council Chamber, designed by Else Poulsson

Translation booths in the UN Security Council Chamber

Next up was the Trusteeship Council, originally established to promote and support colonies moving towards self-government or independence. According to the UN’s website, “The aims of the Trusteeship System have been fulfilled to the extent that all Trust Territories have attained self-government or independence, either as separate States or by joining neighbouring independent countries.” This hasn’t stopped the business of the Council, and we were fortunate to be able to see a session in progress.

UN Trusteeship Council

UN Trusteeship Council in session

We then popped into the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) Chamber, recognisable by the beautiful 1950s-style orange and white curtain called Dialogos, designed by painter Ann Edholm. It’s actually the third design to have graced the Chamber since it opened in 1952.

Our guide gave us an interesting fact about the chamber. From Wikipedia:

The pipes and ducts in the ceiling above the public gallery were deliberately left exposed; the architect believed that anything useful could be left uncovered. The “unfinished” ceiling is a symbolic reminder that the economic and social work of the United Nations is never finished; there will always be something more that can be done to improve living conditions for the world’s people.

As well as the artworks, various walls throughout the building are home to informational displays relating to the work of the UN. I wondered whether the politicians that came to this place for meetings ever stopped to look and consider these pieces. There is a wall of artwork showing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, another showing where the UN is currently undertaking peacekeeping and/or humanitarian operations, an illustration of global military expenditure versus development and disarmament, and a summary of the UN’s response to the Holocaust.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Map of the UN’s peacekeeping and/or humanitarian operations

The world is over-armed and peace is underfunded

The Holocaust informational wall

Wandering around the building we got to see some wonderful unique views New York, including a new angle on the Chrysler Building that I had never seen before along with a new perspective on the East River.

The Chrysler Building from the UN

Looking out across the East River from the UN

Our final stop on the tour was the General Assembly hall. It’s a beautiful room which looks even more stunning in real life. It was interesting to learn that the seating plan is put together for each session by drawing lots to see who will occupy the first seat, with all of the countries then being seated in alphabetical order based on their English names.

United Nations General Assembly

The hall is flanked by two gigantic murals by French artist Fernand Léger, improbably known as Scrambled Eggs and Bugs Bunny.

Murals in the General Assembly hall, referred to as ‘Scrambled Eggs’ and ‘Bugs Bunny’. Yes, really.

At the end of the tour there is an opportunity to visit the United Nations gift shop. It’s a strange place, with a small selection of arts and crafts from around the world. The UK was represented by a cheap-looking tea set. There were also some garish, gigantic, trophy-like vases that were priced at thousands of dollars. Apparently, and somewhat unbelievably, they sell these big pieces on a regular basis. All of the money goes back into funding the organisation.

Wandering around the building reminded me of being at my University, which was first constructed in the 1960s. Big, airy rooms, council chambers like lecture theatres and artworks everywhere. It felt familiar, in a good way.

Visiting the UN was a great way to spend an hour. It’s a beautiful building for an incredibly aspirational organisation, filled with inspiring things.

📺 Surviving 9/11

With the 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks fast approaching, the TV schedules are filled with lots of programmes related to the event. This week we watched Surviving 9/11, a moving documentary that gives an insight into some of the lives that were directly impacted by the horrors of that day. The range of people featured in the film, and the ways in which they have survived and coped — to varying degrees — with the aftermath of the trauma, were delicately and thoughtfully presented.

It’s a cliche to say that it seems like yesterday, but it’s true. On the day of the attack I was in London, sitting at my desk, filling out a form to try and make a case for getting myself transferred to work in New York on a company assignee scheme. The bank that I worked for had recently bought a large US-based brokerage firm and we were getting a programme off the ground to integrate our two HR systems. That August, I had been to New York on a business trip and had started to build relationships with our new colleagues. Much earlier, when I started at the company in 1999, I had met a bunch of New York-based fellow graduates and made some solid friendships. I was enthused to think about spending time with them all in a new and exciting place.

Early that afternoon, I read a glib message about the first plane crash on our internal chat system and we all turned our attention to the news websites. I don’t think much work got done after that. At some point I had to walk across the city to another of our buildings for a seminar about the company pension fund. I knew it was going to be about as interesting as it sounded, but I felt obliged to go. On my way I saw scores of people standing outside office lobbies, staring through the glass to watch the news on the TV screens. At some point, somebody came into the seminar and told us that everyone was being sent home. It was weird — New York was so far away, but we somehow all felt as though we were connected to it. Nobody was sure that there wouldn’t be a similar attack in London. I packed my bag, jumped on the tube and then stayed up watching the TV until the early hours, hitting refresh on the Metafilter thread to find out what was going on via my dial-up Internet connection at home.

An American friend of mine had just moved from London to New York, and years later he wrote up his experience of that day. Re-reading it now brings back more memories. I moved to Manhattan exactly two months later on 11 November 2001. It was a strange time; when I arrived there I felt a little as though I was an outsider intruding on a shocked and numb city. I lived on my own, and spent many evenings walking for miles just to be around people. The bus shelters were still filled with candles and photos of missing friends and relatives.

My new office was in Weehawken, New Jersey, a ferry ride across the Hudson River from Manhattan. It was open plan, with glass-walled single-person offices around the edges for the senior managers on each floor. One of those was kept locked — the occupant had been tragically killed by the first plane crash as he waited for a bus to work outside the World Trade Center. In the weeks to come, I overheard my new colleagues talking in hushed but animated tones about whether his office should be left alone out of respect or cleared out so that they could move on. I couldn’t share their pain as I had never met him.

In the year I spent in New York the demand for flights from London was understandably low and tickets were cheap; consequently I had many friends and family come to visit. I loved having a stream of guests to entertain and take on a tour of the city. Some of them wanted to go down to the World Trade Center. I didn’t want to go, but I did accompany them. It felt somehow macabre to go and look. It was already a tourist destination, despite the memorial being some years away.

The two decades have passed in a flash. Watching the documentary this week reminded me of how primitive things were back then and how long ago it was. Analogue video tape recordings from the events of that day. VoiceStream being the only phone network that provided a local GSM service, on handsets with tiny displays. No mobile web as we know it now, and no Facebook or Twitter to share status updates. I still had to email or call my friends and family if I wanted to catch up. In the past couple of years I have worked with a colleague who was born after 9/11, which was difficult to get my head around at first. I guess this is what getting old feels like.

My year in New York was a seminal time for me and I think about it often. The integration programme was a great success and I learned a lot from working with some wonderful colleagues, many of whom I still speak to. My girlfriend came to visit a number of times before eventually quitting her job and coming to live with me. We came back to London together and got married less than two years later.

Twenty years on, the mental and emotional impact of 9/11 is unsurprisingly still raw for those people directly impacted by the horrors of that day. Surviving 9/11 offered a moving and sensitive insight into this. I feel very privileged to have been able to have made my own memories of the city during those fragile months.

New plane

On a recent journey home from New York I had the good fortune to travel in a brand new Virgin Atlantic plane. I’ve travelled quite a bit for work over the past few months and had gotten used to the 20-year-old-plus British Airways cabins so this was a rare treat.

Everyone on board seemed more chatty than usual, including the crew, and everyone seemed to be talking about the interior. The cabins were wider than usual, with four seats across instead of the usual three. Although the seats were very comfortable, it was a little weird to be in what felt like a double bed with a little divider and a random stranger next to me.

As the plane is so new, I was able to go back a few days on FlightRadar24 to see some of the test flights that it had taken. It seems to have spent a lot of time in the air above Glasgow, and even further back had taken what could only be described as ‘the long route’ between Gatwick and Heathrow.

The flight time to London from New York on a modern jet is so short now — we made it in 6h14m — that it almost doesn’t make sense to do it overnight anymore. By the time you get to sleep you are an hour into the flight and then you need to be upright and ready to land 40 minutes before you touch down. I had to continue my personal sleep journey at home when I got there just so that all my systems were fully operational for the day.

Thoughts on a two-week holiday in California

It’s my first day back at work today after two weeks spent visiting and travelling up the California coast from Los Angeles to San Francisco. Before it all gets lost in the mists of time I want to capture my thoughts to look back on.

Virgin Atlantic’s ‘automated’ check-in process at Heathrow is abysmal. It felt like a flashback to the early days of self-service checkouts in supermarkets, albeit in a much more stressful time-sensitive situation. The ‘job to be done’ of a check-in assistant isn’t just to review your passport and tag your bags, it is also to resolve any situations that come up such as overweight luggage and relieve the tension of the airport a little bit. Replacing this with machines is a bad idea, but I am sure there is no going back. The staff that were on hand weren’t too happy about it either.

Checking in, all by yourself

The exchange rate is terrible. With credit card fees taken into account it wasn’t too much of a stretch to just change the $ sign to a £ and be roughly correct. Great for mental conversions between the two currencies, not so great on the wallet. Despite our plane tickets being mostly paid for by airline points it was still on balance the most expensive holiday we’ve ever had. We joked that each meal consistently cost us around £50-60 for two adults and two children, unless we went out for something special in which case it was more.
There’s not much point in going to upmarket restaurants when travelling with young children. It’s not worth trading a slightly better dinner and larger expense for battling over trying something new. I know I was much worse than my own children when I was their age (they at least eat vegetables, which I am not sure I did!), I just have a newfound appreciation of it now.
Never underestimate how much the kids love a swimming pool of any kind, and how many hours of joy it will bring them.
I am so grateful that in the UK our retailers have to advertise an ‘all in’ price for consumers. It was horrible to think you were paying X but then finding out at the checkout you were actually paying X + Y% in tax and sometimes with multiple additional taxes, expecially in hotels. Blazing Saddles in San Francisco added a 4% ‘convenience charge’ for using a credit/debit card, “kind of a tax” as the lady told us. How convenient!
There is zero consistency in paying for stuff. Tap your card here, key your pin in there, swipe for this one and sign this screen/bit of paper. Occasionally, do more than one of those things. Sometimes you get an automated detailed email of your transaction and other times you don’t.
The California coast is exceptionally beautiful and surprisingly sparsely populated. We tried to travel up State Route 1, along the coast, as much as we could and were consistently treated to gorgeous scenery and wildlife. We really got a feel for just how big the state and the country must be.
Criticism of Americans for not having passports and travelling internationally is unfair. There is so much to see in their own country that there is much less of a reason to go travelling abroad. We were sweltering in 30C heat in Los Angeles and this dropped by 10 degrees when we travelled a little north. We were marvelling at how we could need hoodies in the evening whereas a couple of hundred miles to the east of us in Death Valley they had temperatures of 51C.
Cambria was a personal favourite for me. Deserted beaches, wild, crashing waves, elephant seals, a quaint town and a wonderful boardwalk. We saw Emilio Estevez there too, who happened to be holidaying in the same hotel.
Hearst Castle had the best outdoor swimming pool I have ever seen. Apparently it is still used by the Hearst family, but closed to the public. We were itching to take a dip.

The outdoor pool at Hearst Castle

Disneyland is so much fun, even with older children. I was very glad that we paid the $15 each on top of our ticket prices so that we could book our place in the speedy queue for the next ride. Hyperspace Mountain (formerly Space Mountain, now rebranded to be more Star Wars) was punch-the-air awesome and there are loads more great rides to go on. The Star Wars land was incredibly well done, with even the cafes and toilets fitting in with the theme. We started walking home down Main Street USA when the evening finale started and it was a great spot to watch the amazing show; fireworks, acrobatics, lasers, fake snow — it was contrived but it was still breathtaking.

Star Wars land

Star Wars canteen

More Star Wars canteen

Universal Studios was great, but for me it wasn’t quite as good as Disneyland and definitely not worth the eye-watering admission price. I was lucky enough to visit as a small boy in the 1980s and some of it hadn’t changed — the Jaws and ‘subway station in an earthquake’ sequences on the tram studio tour was just as I remembered and it was cool to have them scare my kids just like it scared me back in the day. The War of the Worlds set with the destroyed jumbo jet on the tram tour was incredible, as was the 3D glasses Fast and Furious sequence. With the notable exceptions of the Jurassic Park-themed gigantic flume ride and The Mummy-themed rollercoaster, all of the other rides were simulator-based which got a little tedious towards the end of the day.

A crashed plane from _War Of The Worlds_

Krustyland

The Harry Potter-themed land at Universal Studios was unbelievable in its size and scope. You felt as though you could enter many of the little shops and houses, and with a lot of them you could. The snow-covered rooftops didn’t fool us in the hot weather but we were grateful that the park had fans with water misters littered everywhere to cool us off.

Hogwarts, I presume

Breakdowns on the rides and shows seemed to be surprisingly common. We started to get a little used to audio notices that the ride was being held and would restart shortly.
For such historical places as the Universal Studios lot and Disneyland there was a surprising lack of history that you could go and find out about. Universal Studios didn’t have a book store, although the person I asked said there used to be one, which is probably a sad take on how peoples’ interests have changed over time.
I get car envy every time I travel abroad. Our car is so dated and low-spec whereas our rental cars seem to come with all mod cons. The Nissan Pathfinder we rented had some amazing features such as indicator lights near the wing mirrors to let you know that someone is in your blind spot, and an overhead parking camera that I still for the life of me cannot work out how it functioned.
Americans really know how to do ice cream. We fell in love with McConnell’s in Santa Barbara and progressed from there. It’s going to be tough to break the ice cream-a-day habit.

McConnell’s marvellous menu

The drive along Big Sur is just as stunning as everyone says. We had to stop ourselves from parking up every few minutes to take pictures.
Monterey was probably my favourite place of the whole trip. Big enough to have a good selection of paces to eat, tons of wildlife on the doorstep — we saw humpback whales and kayaked with seals and sea-lions — and a beautiful place to wander around in.
Neighbouring Carmel was gorgeous but we just stopped there for lunch; if we had more time I would have liked to have spent it there. Monterey’s car week had attracted tons of people to the area and it was by sheer luck that we managed to park there.

A car in Carmel

More cars in Carmel

…and more

Beautiful old Porsche in Carmel

The most disgustingly-decorated BMW I’ve ever seen

I could never get used to the warnings that I was in a Tsunami Hazard Zone.

Tsunami Hazard Zone in Monterey

Monterey, Carmel and Salinas are well aware of their heritage with regards to John Steinbeck. Reminders of him are everywhere you look. I was in my element. The highlight of the National Steinbeck Center’s exhibits is the original Rocinante which Steinbeck had built for his journey across America with his dog, Charley. It was wonderful to see it.

Inscription in the Carmel Bakery

Mural on a wall across the street from the National Steinbeck Center

Steinbeck’s _Rocinante_

San Francisco was much less ‘techy’ than I thought it would be. We saw more artisanal sandwich bars than evidence of technology companies. From reading articles on the Internet you would expect not to be able to move on the pavements/sidewalks for scooters and other forms of personal transport. Yes, we saw them, but they weren’t any more ubiquitous than the ‘park anywhere’ bikes in London. I also hadn’t appreciated just how far away Cupertino and Mountain View are from the city; we drove past them on our way there and they are completely separate places. The city felt like New York with more hills and slightly less people.

A typical San Francisco street scene

We’d been told about the amount of homeless people to expect in San Francisco but it was still shocking to see. So many people seemed to have complex mental health issues too. I’ve not knowingly walked past human faeces before but did so multiple times as we wandered around the city.
San Francisco smells a lot like Amsterdam did when I visited 20 years ago. The sweet smell of cannabis wafts past you on a regular basis as you walk around. What we didn’t see was many places selling it, whereas in Amsterdam it seemed to be for sale everywhere.
Alcatraz was worth seeing and the audio tour was fantastic, but I couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed by it. Maybe its reputation is so big that it would always disappoint. There was a lot of history revealed on the tour but I clamoured for more. There were teasing bits of information about some of the inmates and what they had done to be put there, and some sideways mentions of the amount of people incarcerated in the US and what that might mean today, but short of buying a book there wasn’t a way of digging deeper. I remember visiting Ellis Island in the early 2000s and being fascinated by the searchable database kiosks where you can look up details of immigrants to the US. Something along the same lines on Alcatraz would allow you to explore things more deeply, but there wasn’t anything outside of the book selection in the gift shops.
San Francisco really know how to do recycling. Everything seemed to be compostable and they went to great lengths to get waste sorted at the point of disposal. Really impressive.

Compostable plastic cup, which felt more solid than most that I’ve used in the past

Typical recycling in a restaurant

Getting an extra seat on the way home was a massive blessing. It wasn’t a great night’s sleep for anyone, but it was a lot better than it otherwise would have been.

Sleepy time

A wonderful holiday with lots of great memories made. Despite the miles we covered it still felt as though we had scratched the surface. You could probably holiday in California for years and not visit the same place twice. One day we may be back.

Not Quite Paradise

I picked up the audio version of this book after returning from our recent holiday in Sri Lanka. I had so many lingering thoughts about the country and I wanted to get another perspective before it all faded out of my memory.

This is very different to Elephant Complex, a book that I started before we departed and had accompanied me on my journey. Not Quite Paradise takes a much more personal approach. The book is narrated by the author who moved from Arizona, USA to Sri Lanka with her 15-year old son soon after 9/11. The first part of the book serves as a pretty straightforward travel diary. I had seen a review on Goodreads which said that the book was “a so-so travelogue by another author whose observations are rather standard” but for me it was lovely to indulge a little bit in hearing someone talk first hand about places that we ourselves had recently visited and and to understand what it had felt like for her. However, as another reviewer notes, she “never explains what initially attracted her to Sri Lanka” and this remains a mystery. It must have been a great upheaval for her teenage son; they eventually decide that he will return home while she stays on for a little longer. Nothing very dramatic happens throughout this part of the book, but the pleasure is in the small details of life and interactions that she has with the people, her house and the landscape.

The second half is quite different. It starts during Christmas 2004 where she hears the awful news of the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami which brought devastation and death to the island. She is almost immediately compelled to return there to…I’m not quite sure what. See it first-hand? Report on the damage? Complete the book? She doesn’t give too much away about why she wanted to make the journey, but make it she did, and her writing covers a much broader scope of the island and its recent history as she travels around in this part of the book. Some of the accounts of the tsunami are devastating, even more so as they are weaved together with details and evidence of the long Sri Lankan Civil War. The book was a useful compliment to the topics covered in Elephant Complex and I was grateful to it filling in quite a few gaps in my knowledge and clearing up my misunderstandings from the other, denser, book. The timeline covered stops short of the brutal end of the civil war and felt slightly unfinished because of it.

I don’t think this will ever be held up as one of the greatest travelogues of all time but I did find it a very pleasant read — just what I was looking for after my own Sri Lankan journey.

Elephant Complex: Travels in Sri Lanka

Read this book before and during my holiday in Sri Lanka. Gives an excellent overview of the country and its history which reveals itself to the reader gradually, culminating in an account of the end of the civil war. The chapters are sequenced and themed in a general anti-clockwise journey around the island starting in Colombo/Negombo.

On my travels I met a scientist from England who said that he found this book quite dense; I was grateful to find that it wasn’t just me who felt this! I think that the subject matter is so complex (as per the title) that it couldn’t be anything but.

A very worthwhile read if you are visiting or have been to the island. A fascinating book about a unique country.

More to follow about our amazing holiday when I get the chance to write up my notes.

Barriers, forms and looking after your customers

I pay London Midland nearly £4,500 for my annual season ticket. On Monday morning after arriving in London, bleary-eyed and limping along from my weekend's cycling, I discovered that I had left my ticket in the wrong wallet. Due to Berkhamsted station not having any ticket barriers and my train rolling up to a platform at Euston that was also devoid of ticket readers I only realised my predicament when I descended to the tube for leg two of my commute. Tube journeys aren't that expensive if you use a contactless card so I just sighed at my dozyness, resigned myself to having to pay for a couple of tube trips, waved my credit card at the yellow reader and figured I'd deal with it when I got back to Euston.

On the way home I was in a rush to catch my train in order to get to a school governors' meeting. There is always an attendant at the barriers at Euston and I thought that just perhaps there would be a chance that I would be able to let him or her know what had happened and he would wave me through. I couldn't have been more wrong.

I have discovered that the process you have to go through is as follows:

Get directed to the customer service window, usually staffed by only one person with a queue of people in front of it. On this occasion it meant that I missed my train.
Explain your predicament to the customer service agent.
Buy a ticket home (£14.40 off-peak from Euston to Berkhamsted!)
Start your journey but remember not to put your ticket in any barrier at your destination as you need to hold onto it.
At a later point, when you have your season ticket with you—probably in peak hours if this is when you usually travel—speak to another customer service agent and get a pink 1970s-style (actually revised in 1996!) carbon-copy form to fill out with your details. These details include your full credit card number and expiry date for all to see.
Hand the form over along with the ticket to be refunded, your season ticket, your photocard and wait about ten minutes for the form to be added to and stamped.
Be given the carbon copy of the form (see below) and be told that “they will call you if there are any questions, otherwise the money will be refunded in about ten days or so.”

At first it seemed bizarre to me that a company would treat its season-ticket buying customers like this, making them jump through hoops when there is a simple error. Then it dawned on me that there is probably no incentive to change—the process is such a pain that there is automatically a barrier to people pursuing refunds, resulting in more money for the company. They also have a monopoly—there is no other way of going from Berkhamsted to Euston on the train—and so it isn't that I can go to another train operator that makes a point of having better customer service than their peers.

To give the firm a little credit, they have made some things easier over recent times such as giving us the ability to log a 'Delay Repay' claim using their iPhone app. Perhaps this could be the next area to look at. I know that the company couldn't replace the outdated paper ticket system on their own, but having something on my phone that proves I am a gold-card holder would make life much easier.

St Albans clock tower

We recently had a lovely picnic in St Albans with a couple of our good friends who live there. I’ve always loved the town and it’s a great place to visit whether you’re a shopper or a tourist. The central part of the high street is pretty with a beautiful clock tower right in the centre, apparently the only medieval clock tower in the country.

One of our friends mentioned that you can climb the tower and I jumped at the chance. After giving the lovely old ladies 80p for a ticket at the entrance I heard the bell strike for three o’clock. They told me I was lucky I was on the ground floor and it was only after I got up to the belfry that I realised what they meant – the bell is BIG and you get to stand within an arm’s length of it. Being next to it and thinking that it could be struck at any time scared the wits out of me – I had visions of jumping at the sound and tumbling down the spiral staircase back to the entrance – so I legged it up to the rooftop.

The view from the top is fantastic – you get to see the cathedral as well as a lot of the town and surrounding countryside. On top of this, the masonry was covered with grafitti going back to the 1800s which completely fascinated me. I had the same spooky feeling I get when I see a photo of somewhere I know that was taken decades ago and can’t help thinking about the people that have stood in the same place years before. I took some pictures on my Blackberry but the camera is pretty crappy:

If you want to see more, take a look at the set I’ve uploaded to Flickr.

If you visit St Albans, have 30 minutes to spare, are happy to climb an extremely narrow spiral staircase and want to chance your luck with the giant bell, it’s worth a visit!

The Rex…of Cyprus?

Saw this building while on holiday in September and it made me chuckle – thousands of miles apart from our Rex in Berko but I am sure many happy nights have been spent watching movies here too.

Turning 30 on New Year’s Eve

I just had to get this post in before January was over!

I turned 30 on New Year’s Eve and to mark the occasion we had hired The Old Neptune, a wonderful 15th century house in the centre of Ipswich. My wife had arranged everything (wonderful as she is); in order to secure the house over the New Year period we had to get a committed bunch of friends together and book it up in early 2005, which we managed to do. Although at first glance it seemed quite expensive, when divided up between 24 people and paid for in stages it didn’t seem that much.

The place looked amazing on the website and the rooms looked gorgeous. In order to make sure that everyone got a fair chance of bagging one of the bigger/ older rooms, a couple of weeks before we went we put everyone’s name into a bag and made a video of a ‘live’ draw which we then posted on YouTube for all to see.

In reality the place was even better than it had looked on the website. To be able to enjoy the gorgeous front room and fire, lovely big kitchen and the wonderful dining room with so many good friends was just great.

A few of us had organised a quiz for the first night and we had karaoke and dancing on the second (which degenerated into a bizarre hatfest) – it was only by the third evening that I went to bed even vaguely sober!

For my 30th my wife made me a wonderful book with photos from my very early years all the way up to present day – a really great gift.

In the daytime we headed off to some of the lovely surrounding villages for some winter walks and pub lunches – Felixstowe was lovely (cheese and pineapple toasties, anyone?), we had a bite to eat at the King’s Head in Woodbridge and an enjoyable wander around the pretty village of Aldeburgh.

Thanks to everyone for making my 30th such a fun and special one. More photos in the Flickr group.

Not flying short haul

As the months and years roll by I find myself questioning more and more things that I do. I’ve been asked to go to Zürich for some meetings in a couple of weeks; a little while ago I would have been looking forward to a business class flight and eating out on expenses for a few nights but now the first thing that pops into my head is how bad the trip will be for the environment. There are stories appearing every day about the Siberian permafrost melting and revealing loads of woolly mammoth tusks as it does so (if that doesn’t mean much then take a look at the definition of permafrost) and the polar ice dramatically disappearing. I don’t really want to contribute to that more than I do already.

Yes, I know that I can carbon offset my flights but what good does that really do? The Carbon Trust aren’t a charity and to quote Rob Newman I can’t see them funding a project to put Bangladesh on stilts any time soon. Who they are, where they come from, who regulates them and how they came up with their pricing scheme is a bit of a mystery.

So, I’ve taken the step of looking into how to get from London to Zürich by rail. As soon as I did so I came across a splendid website which not only explains exactly how to do it but much more besides. If you’re off to Europe and enjoy travelling or simply hate flying then I seriously suggest you check it out. There are suggested routes, tips on how to get the best fares and information and pictures on the different types of carriage you can expect to encounter. The site also makes the point that a tonne of carbon dioxide emitted from a plane does 2.7 times the damage of it being emitted at ground level.

Basically, a trip to Zürich via Paris will take the best part of a day. I figured I could probably travel on a Monday and then get a sleeper service back to Paris through Friday night/ Saturday morning. I raised the thought with a few people at work today and can report that 80% think I’m nuts to even consider it. For example, when I called the travel desk to enquire whether they handled train bookings and said that I wanted to go to Zürich I was asked “Why on earth would you want to do that?” I lamely responded “Green reasons…” and started to feel a little bit nuts myself – hopefully she didn’t think that I had an obsessive colour preference or some kind of nasal condition. My boss called me “Swampy.” More seriously, he made the point that the time wouldn’t be as productive as time spent in the office – this is true, but during the whole office/ airport/ queue for security/ departure lounge/ short haul flight with food/ passport control-taxi rigmarole there is no opportunity to get a lot done whereas on a train I could at least work offline for a few hours. I might even catch up with all the emails and documents I’ve been meaning to read and get one or two of my own written.

In terms of cost, there isn’t that much of a difference between a first-class train fare and return business class flights; the train fares just seem a bit more random depending on what website, currency and method you choose to buy them.

I must admit that I do have utopian dreams of setting an example that the whole company begins to follow but in reality I know that I’d just be doing it because I believe it’s right. Plus, it would be great to see a bit of where I’m travelling to on the way.

What do you think? Have I lost the plot or am I right to be pursuing this?

Hotel reviews

I had my first hotel review published on tripadvisor.com this week. If you haven’t been there, tripadvisor is a great website that hosts zillions of reviews of hotels all over the world. It’s great when you’re booking a last minute break and the travel agent website tells you what a fabulous hotel they have on offer – you can look it up on tripadvisor to see if it’s really a stinker.

The Raheem Residency didn’t have a single review and we had such a wonderful time there that I thought I’d give something back.

Strange advert

Advert from Aladdin, testimonial for Cinderella!

This made us laugh at The Lowry in Manchester – an advert for Aladdin with a quote about how good Cinderella was!

Once upon a time. not too long ago…

…took a day out in Manchester, as the song goes. Well, it was a weekend out actually – Katie and I recently went up to Manchester for a birthday party and decided to make a weekend of it. I’d only been to Manchester once before and that was for a whistlestop trip when my brother was ill in hospital quite a few years ago. I was really pleasantly surprised by the place. We stayed at a good hotel and did quite a bit of sightseeing and shopping and all the time it felt a bit like a smaller version of central London but without the crowds of people everywhere.

The architecture in central Manchester is gorgeous and they’ve done a great job of blending new things like the G-Mex centre and the area around The Lowry with the older features. If you’re a city lover like me it’s definitely worth a trip.

Photo set now on Flickr.

Train arrivals

Going to pick up someone from the station but not sure if their train is running late? You can now check using the live arrivals board on the National Rail Enquiries website. Or you can do it by text message. Great stuff.

The loudest tears on the way home

On my journey home on the train last night a young child in my carriage was having the loudest crying fit that I’ve heard for quite some time. You know something is loud and out-of-the-ordinary when people on the train actually start looking at each other – yes, acknowledging each other’s presence – and smiling in a “can you believe how loud that is?” sort of way. I can’t believe what a state children can get themselves worked up into! You just want to ask them what really could be so bad. Like these things do, it stopped almost as abruptly as it started and left an eerie silence on the carriage.

As I was busy sorting a few emails out on my PDA at the time and found that I couldn’t concentrate I quickly hit the record button with the intention of posting it here, but, listening to it now out of context, it just sounds harrowing and horrible. Consider yourself spared.

Photos of Kerala are up

It’s taken a few days but we’ve finally managed to get photos from our holiday up on Flickr. Katie’s are absolutely fantastic and she’s already received lots of comments on them. You can find mine here.