No longer in America

Last night we had a pretty awsome evening in the The Village. The White Horse Tavern was charming and friendly, and I love the atmosphere of the area - it's my favourite part of New York I think. We ate at the Jane Street Tavern and had the most mellow Pinot Noir ever - with fish and chips. Very large fish and chips - there may have been three cod in there.

We walked all the way back. I'm not sure why, but wine may have been involved in the making of that decision. This morning my feet hurt. 

Staten Island was on today's agenda, but the downtown subway wasn't working. We knew this because we had been told there would be engineering works but went down to check after breakfast. There were four fire trucks and a fire car parked around the subway entrance, but we still went down to see if it was running anyway. We encountered a fireman, a strong smell of smoke and a sign that said the line was out of order due to engineering works. We came back up and admired many firemen standing around.

We debated walking, but did I mention that my feet hurt? So we took an alternative line which meant we had to change lines. It was a painless experience and I'm not really sure why we were worried about getting it wrong. We emerged right by the Staten Island ferry terminal and hot-footed it on board.  These ferries look remarkably like bright orange bricks, so taking a lovely picture of one was never going to be terribly attractive.

We only paid the briefest of visits to Staten Island, walking around the block. We saw the island's own memorial to the twin towers. Face silhouettes of Staten Island fatalities along with names, dobs and jobs make it more personal.  Such a shame that the beautiful and clever design is marred by the cheap construction and poor corrective repair. A lot of the harbour area is under construction, but we did identify a couple of grand looking official buildings as well as the Yankee's (Staten Island) stadium.

Seated on the front deck of the ferry on the way back, we were sharing a bench with a couple, when this large young man aimed his very large derrier at the three inch gap between myself and the lady next to me. He squeaked 'scuse me' while on his way down, although we had already moved apart rapidly for fear of being crushed.

He sat quietly until an older lady arrived, spotted him and immediately spoke in a very loud voice: "You did not just squeeze your very large bee-hind between those two nice people, did you? You did, didn't you? Did you at least say thank you?" He stuttered and squeaked: "Thank you."And she continued on. "And there's all that space on the other bench. There's all that space on the other bench and you still squeeze your large self in there?" I could go on... 

Back in Manhatten we searched for a cup of tea. Tea is quite hard to find in Manhatten. There are more variations of coffee than people there, but not tea. Our hunt took us to the seafront, then inland, and we encountered a wooden tugboat, a clipper, a lightboat and a street market selling creams, spiced cider and cakes. In Fulton market we finally located tea, as well as French vanilla coffee which tasted nice at the top, but less nice the further down the cup I got.

We decided to continue walking and passed many landmarks such as the Men In Black building (weren't expecting that were you?), Wall Street, Brooklyn Bridge, Law Courts, Supreme Courts, One Police Plaza, Municipal Building and the - seriously intimidating in an Azkaban way - Criminal Courts. This was not a place to be caught jay-walking.

There was some street entertainment involving some lads that were very enthusiastic and funny, and that we think were going to leap clear over the top of a line of six people. But ten minutes of standing in the cold without them even getting close to doing whatever it was they were going to do, we gave up waiting and so we'll never find out.

I didn't like Chinatown and never need to go there ever again. Heaving crowds, sticky fingers and bong stands were more than enough for me.  We got back to the hotel too early for our cab to the airport, so we diverted into the next door tavern for a final glass to say goodbye to the city that never sleeps.

Still in America

Breakfast was just as large today as it was yesterday in the same diner. Which was a good job, because last night's dinner wasn't all that great. Max's is a charming Italian eatery and the starters were generous and lovely. Unfortunately the pasta, although it tasted good and there was plenty of it - was congealed into a compacted lump - it wasn't freshly made, that's for sure. However, washed down with good wine it filled a hole. Breakfast, however, was much better value.

We wandered further downtown today, paying a visit to the Twin Towers memorial. It's very moving - the two footprints of the towers, combined with the names lost, gave a sense of scale. The water features were an artform, simple and apt, the tears of a nation falling into infinite black holes.

We learned later how some of the remains of the towers have been used to build new structures nearby, as well as other things - some of the steel has been used to build a boat for the fire department memorialising the fire fighters that lost their lives.

*****

When in New York, one has to shop, and Century 21 was our store of choice.

I was looking for evening dresses, and there were many, of all sorts of shapes and sizes and colours. There were some beautiful dresses heavily discounted to the $40 range, but none in my size. I did fall in love with one and it was in my size - but after a lot of thought, I decided that the discounted price of $1559 was a little steep for my pocket. I could get my house recarpeted for that price.

It didn't stop me from trying dresses on, however. Left my scarf in the fitting room though. Moo.

One shop spotted was 'Shoegasm' - I really don't have anything else to say about that, it sort of speaks for itself.

We took a boat tour around the downtown area, Brooklyn, Liberty and Ellis Island. The tour guide was knowledgable, entertaining and Jamaican. It was sunny with a cold breeze - perfect for taking pictures.

Probably the most entertaining part was playing musical chairs as we all had differing strategies to try and get a seat, the best view, and be in the sun, which wasn't actually achievable at the same time for most of the tour.

Discovered that my scarf had chosen not to get forgotten and was hanging on for dear life inside the bottom of my coat and hanging out the bottom. This being New York people didn't bat an eye, assuming that I'd simply decided to wear a tail today.

Next to the pier where we docked, we discovered among the steel and concrete a small patch of wild countryside - a memorial to the Irish Hunger, which you can walk through and find the rocks each with a county name on.

A hot drink was essential after the boat tour, and it was then that we discovered that American places such as Starbucks don't offer tea. Mint tea and Earl Grey, yes. But not normal tea. Except McDonalds. Who also put squirty cream and chocolate sauce on their hot chocolates.

To round off our cultural experience, we decided to visit a small museum - the Mmuseumm, which
turned out to be a hole in the wall. Literally. With beautifully assembled and laid out items of, well. rubbish, I suppose. Such as the Cornflake Collection, each flake lovingly enclosed in its very own plastic case. And a range of items removed from, erm, peoples bodyparts - such as small pencils, construction nails and fishooks.

Back at the hotel just now for a pitstop before heading out to The Village for dinner. Considered a quick snack from the mini bar, but at $4 for a small bag, decided that the pure gold crisps that must surely be inside  weren't to our taste.

Coming to America

Why is it that when you allow time for the M25 to screw up your journey, it lets you through with no problem at all? Which is why, for the third time in a row, I arrived at Heathrow ridiculously early.

But, with Virgin Upper Class tickets, this turned out to be a good thing. Our own customs and immigration area which meant zero queuing - even though I did manage to set off all the whistles and bells again. This time just my perfume and lipstick were suspect.

The Virgin Clubhouse I could have spent all day at. Spa, food, drink, enormous sqidgy chaise longe things in lime green and what looked like a 20 foot TV.

Upper Class pod seats on the plane were pretty awsome, too. Apart from the diagonal arrangement made take off and landing interesting. And the best bit? An actual bar to sit at. Except when the seat belt light came on, which was fairly frequently and resulted in a kind of mile-high musical chairs.

We decided to take a yellow cab into Manhatten from Newark airport and were horrified at the really nasty weather, but the hotel Roxy is gorgeous - more about that later. It really was a case of forcing ourselves to stay awake long enough to enjoy a glass of the world's most expensive wine in the hotel bar. Followed by crashing out in the world's most comfortable bed.

We woke up this morning to find the weather was the polar opposite of last night. It was just gorgeous - bright sunshine, pleasant breeze and just one layer of warm coat. 

We've found a little diner near the hotel for breakfast. I ordered one coffee, two scarmbled eggs and a sausage. What was put in front of me was one bottomless coffee, one sausage, two scrambled eggs, a heap of fried potatoes, and two slices of toast with grape jelly (*burp*).

We decided to explore Central Park and started at the Guggenheim, headed into the park towards the reservoir then down to the Belvedere Castle and the zoo before crossing to the Tavern on the Green.

According to Jill's iphone, we walked 12 kilometres in total. My feet's opinion on the matter is closer to 120 kilometres. Central Park, by the way, is quite hilly. There is also something to see around just about every corner - whether it's a statue of William Shakespeare, or a squirrel burying it's nuts. And the wildlife is remarkably tame - especially starlings, sparrows and sqirrels.

The zoo was kind of different. It's small, but the animals all look healthy enough if a little hyped up - the snow leopards were wrestling, the red pandas patrolling, and the sea lions jumping. It was, perhaps, all due to feeding time being imminent. Apart from the bears who were both snoring. The highlight of the tropical area was the mandarin duck who had bonded with one of the keepers and followed her around.

The subway was just like in the movies - I can totally imagine foot-chases or runaway subway trains, or underground civilisations existing there. It's dark and slightly grimy, with lots of pillars seperating four tracks.

The roads are interesting. When the little green man appears for the pedestrians, it doesn't mean that cars aren't coming through, it just means that pedestrians have priority. Which is a little scary stepping out when a car is coming round the corner at you.

We came back to the hotel for a couple of hours chilling before heading out to dinner. It's a mark of how tired we both are that we spent half an hour trying to find out the scores for Strictly, before working out that today is in fact Friday, and not Saturday.

Also, having ambulances and a fire pump attending an emergency in the building opposite us was surprisingly distracting and possibly an aesthetic bonus.

Losing your head in London

Last week's magical mystery tour involved the Tower of London. I haven't been there since sometime last century when I was a very little adventurer. It's smaller than I remember but no less magnificent for that.

I was there for business reasons and spent most of the time in the Middle Gate, on top of which Prince William and his Duchess recently stood and waved to the crowd below with the backdrop of the ceramic poppies. 

There's something quite medieval about conducting a business meeting around a board room table in a small room decorated with maces, axes and ancient swords. I didn't have time to see the whole of the Tower - in all honesty I'm not interested in history. But I do love buildings so old, or alien that one wonders how people live(d) in them.

I had lunch in the Arabica restaurant in Borough Market. Built under the arches, it's very atmospheric and produces some incredible Lebanese food. I thoroughly enjoyed tasting lots of different dishes. But, there are very few things I dislike when it comes to food - cheese, humus, olives, lychees, pickle, and based on just a single experience, Labanese food appears to incorporate almost all of them as central pieces - I did enjoy the lamb very much though.

Marshalling wise, I'm entering a new phase. I've recieved my Trainee Rescue licence and will join the crew for the first real time this coming weekend. 

Last weekend was Truck racing, something I've never really had any interest in. But when you hear those boys and girls coming at you for the first time, the power of it goes right through you. And even by racing driver standards they are completely bonkers. They managed to destroy half the Armco around Druids on Sunday. 

Coffee, by the way, is a marshalling essential.

This week's magical mystery tour isn't so much of a mystery. Glasgow as most of you know by now, is a semi-regular trip. This time I'm going by train and Virgin is looking after us there and back. So far so good. There's a gentleman occupying the seat in front of us who is talking to the chap next to him. Another stranger who keeps rustling his paper loudly - presumably because he'd rather be reading it that being talked at by the first chap.

I can, straight from the horses mouth, tell you that the first chap has taken this train about five or six times a year for the last 25 years. He can tell whether its running to time or not by the timeit reaches Crewe because it should get into Crewe at 1 o'clock, so if the train arrives here late he knows it's going to be late into Glasgow, and it's never early of course. This chap gets quite a lot of spam in hs email and he's managed to identify mot of t he thinks but of course these spam people get cleverer every day, don't they? Anyway he kows that if he gets an email asking for bank details then that' sdefiniteky spam because is own bank said so. And those talking about a booty call must be spam because he dosn't know anyone who talks like that. He knows those emails from Nigeria asking for help transferring large amounts of money are spam because well, Nigerian - but he's not sure about the similar ones that come from more respectable countries, because most of them are probably spam, but what if he missed one that wasn'? It wouldnt be right to leave someone stranded there, or miss an opportunity like that. now would it? And email isn't going to last much longer now is it? Because with the way the world's going we're going to run out of electricity soon, at least that's what all the papers are saying so it must be true and where will all these youngsters be then? He knows for a fact from his grandson that childen aren't taught  how to use a library these days, or do mathematics without a computer... 

At this point I decided to watch a movie on my ipad.

Scary airports

Seoul airport isn't nearly as polite and civilised as the city.

We recieved our fast track passes to get through customs and immigration, only to find that they apparently didn't work today. So we went through the first checkpoint where they scan your ticket and passport. And red warning bells went off. The lady scanning didn't seem bothered, but everyone else was very interested and I was expecting large persons to come and take me away. The lady waved me through and my colleague was scanned - and he recieved the red alarm treatment too.

Now, once we got through customs and immigration it was a perfectly nice airport, but going through the gauntlet was... an experience. There were lots of people of course, many of whom were not Korean - from what I can gather they were mostly Chinese.

And full of sharp elbows when it came to queuing for customs, sneaky pushing in and outright shoving their way through the queue. I've never seen anything like it. I know I'm very British with the queueing and that others nationalities have different views of queuing, but I've never known anything like the bun fight to get through customs anywhere outside post-apocalyptic scrambling for the last Mars Bar in movies.

Immigration was more civilised, although we did pick the queue with the officer who interviewed every person in front of us in depth. Except us. Maybe the red alarm at the beginning was our test instead, because except for a very fast process of our passports, she wasn't in the least bit interested. And no one came to take us away.

Flight back was very civilised, as was the M25 which was surprising for a Friday evening rush hour. Now back home trying hard to stay awake til 10-ish to maximise chance of getting over jet lag quickly.

You are never going to get food poisoning in Korea

In Seoul, people are pretty germ-phobic, so you can guarentee that food preparation is of the highest standards, and very lovely, especially the Korean Barbeque. People are also very courteous - if you see someone wearing a surgical mask, it is not because they are protecting themselves from pollution, but because they don't wish to spread the germs they may be carrying if they are not well.

And speaking of pollution, Seoul has a lot of traffic. So much that all the roads look like the M25 in the rush hour - but all of the time. Yet there is no smog and the view from the windows are an unobstructed, natural high definition. There are hardly any smokers either. In fact the city is very clean. One of our hosts - a lady as it happens - remarked that this was because they had a female president.

Arrivng at hotel after being caught in traffic, we were ushered straight into dinner where we were greeted by distictly foreign food.We could tell it was foreign because it came in lots of little dishes rather than one big one, and the only utensils were metal chopsticks and a spoon. I have never used chopsticks for real before - playing around with them at the local Chnese at home really doesn't count, but its a great way to eat, making sure your mouthfuls are not too big, and that dinner passes in a gently civilised manner.

After dinner, we ushered ourselves to our rooms. I had a long hot soak and went to bed, utterly exhausted. I slept soundly for about three hours. At which point I woke up ready for the day. At 1am. I put in three hours work before feeling tired enough that I might sleep, and I did. But that's jet lag for you.

Having aroom on the 28th floor has its drawbacks, none of which detract from the amazing view. Mostly it's the lift stopping at every other floor on the way down, which makes that essential journey to breakfast labout five times longer than you'd think - which may as well be decades when you're desperate for coffee.

We spent the day with our hosts. It was a long hard, but enjoyable day punctuated with very good food. I don't like kimchi, by the way, which is something like pickled cabbage. I won't go into the work day, except to say that this city makes the UK feel like a dirty old backwater island. Everyone is highly educated - which is a problem because its underpopulated and the Chinese are coming in to do the low level jobs that the Koreans consider themselves too educated for - but the Koreans also don't want to be relying on foreigners to do those jobs. Everywhere is very clean and people are constantly looking to the future, how to make things better, smarter.

Seoul is the digital city, and although the technology is no further ahead than what's available in the UK, it's much more widely adopted. The technical toilets are commonplace. Bluetooth devices are used routinely for workers to communicate around larger spacesfor example. Buidings go up faster than it takes for a UK architect to think of an idea - and while the apartment blocks are quite ugly, the commercial buidings are all architectural wonders. The amount of money that is clearly spent on and in the city is phenomenal.

But the business lounge at Heathrow T2 is better.

We had a Korean Barbeque that evening, which, surprisingly, was indoors, with a charcoal burner built into the table and serving staff cooking meat over it - you just helped yourself to some when it was pushed to the edge. It was divine.

Jet lag was pretty much gone by the following day when there was more work and more food. Until we got to Gyeongbokgung  Palace, which was beautiful. I don't really know what I expected, something big and stone probably, and it wasn't. It covered a fair area, but it was no higher than one high storey. It's in the process of being renovated, but with every piece of timber being hand painted, its taking a while.

The day was rounded off with dinner in the Top Cloud - a donut floor suspended above its rather tall building, so it feels like you're not attached to anything on earth. The food, as always was beautiful, but its not a place for those who don't like heights. Actually Seoul isn't for those who don't like heights really. Because everything is built high.

I'm on my way to the airport as I type. It's been a brief visit, and largely taken up with work, but this is  a country that is far advanced , bigger and better than you would expect, and filled with a people that work fantastically hard, and are gracious, friendly and accommodating. South Korea is not smewhere I had ever thought of as a holiday destination, but is now firmly on my list.

How the other half live

I've flown business class before. Many, many years ago when it basically meant a bit of extra leg room and a glass of bubbly. Nowadays it's something completely different.

Proper glass, china and cutlery for meals makes dining an exceptionally civilised affair when all about you are disposable containers housing near-plastic food. Only the incongruous plastic knives spoil it, a nonsense, as apparently no one ever used a broken glass or fork to injure and maim.

14 inch personal TV screens, armchair that convert to beds, sockets to charge ipads and mobile phones and supplied slippers, bedding and headphones complete the ensemble on an Asiana flight.

But best of all, and the reason I am dreading going back to cattle class, is that my nearest neighbour is four feet away. Socialising is all well and good, but I'll pay the loss of that price to gain space where I don't have to share spit, overhanging flesh and/or body odour.

Sleeping in a pod bed is not the most comfortable in the world, but with the help of the supplied earplugs and eye mask, I actually slept about four hours. I might have slept more if it hadn't been for the turbulence announcements.

It was also very dehydrating, but I cannot fault the attentiveness of our stewardesses. Around one stewardess for every ten people, maybe less as a few seats were empty. The moment I decided to wake up and watch a movie, coffee arrived just for me.

For most of the flight it was either dark, or above cloud. One of the few gaps in the clouds showed mountains in the region of Ulan-Ude, Mongolia.

Watched the Theory of Everything. It was good. Imitation Game was better, but I totally understand why Eddie Redmayne got his Oscar. Also Night At the Museum 3. Popcorn movie, but I love the first one. Also enjoyed breakfast in bed. Hee!

Arrived at the hotel - Intercontinental, very nice - just in time for dinner. Had some lovely people from Malaysia and Korea for company, and learned that Myanmar is apparently the best place in the world to visit.

The rooms here are lovely, and the loos are technologically baffling.

Off to bed now, so I'm hopefully bright eyed and bushy tailed in the morning.

Flying high

It's been a while since I lasted posted to this blog. Three years, apparently - how time flies! One new job, two new kits and a brand new second hand car, and we're all caught up.

Today I'm going on one of the work-related magical mystery tours that tend to be proliferate every spring and autumn. This is one of the more exotic trips - destination... well, that's a surprise for now.

I arrived at Heathrow ridiculously early. Purely because the M25 is generally clear when you've left ridiculous amounts of time, but the minute that the M25 thinks you might be only a bit early, on time or late, it throws enough 'long delays' into the mix that the traffic jams make it look like the snake that eats its own tail.

I'm the kind of person that worries she's got the wrong date. Or airport. Despite checking  everything every half hour for the previous three days. So you can imagine the internal meltdown I had when the automatic check in declared that it had no booking under my passport, eticket or booking reference number.

The helpful supervisor of the automatic checkins directed me to a very nice young lady at a check in desk who was completely unphased by my slightly panicky enquiry as to whether I'd got the right day. Yes, I had, and as I was flying business class I could use the fast track through security and the United business lounge. Wait, rewind. Business Class? Highly unexpected and totally awsome.

The security fast track wasn't. Although that was primarily because my bra set the alarms off. Yes, you read that right. My bra. It's a good classic M&S bra, nothing special or kinky, just robust underwire. Very robust apparently, and full of metal.

The United lounge is very lovely. With armchairs. And complimentary food, drink, electricity and armchairs.

So I'm sitting in my airport armchair with a glass of something nice and speculating as to what the next few days are going to bring.