Wrocław

We’re in Wrocław right now, and I’m using free internet at the Tourist Information center, so I don’t actually want to linger too long. I’m just updating as to my whereabouts. The pronunciation of the town name, by the way, is quite different than it looks, which can pose a bit of a challenge at the train station. I practiced for days.

We’re off to see patriotic panoramic art, and then to see the rest of the town.

And my mother’s last comment is true—you have to use pictures to get people to comment. Ah, well.

(Incidentally, I have learned and forgotten how to say, “I’m sorry, I don’t speak Polish” at least three times).

Kraków

And now I’m in an internet cafe in Kraków. Sadly, Jaynna left today, so Debbie and I are on our own for the rest of the trip. We also weren’t able to extend our stay in our current hotel, so we’ll be moving our stuff across town at some point this afternoon.

We’ve explored a little bit so far. I’ve taken the required picture of St. Mary’s Church in the square (the square, according to the Rough Guide, was the largest square in medieval Europe). And this morning we went to Wieliczka, where we visited the salt mine. The walls were delicious.

Warszawa

Well, we were in Warsaw until yesterday, and now Debbie, Jaynna, and I have made our way to Lublin, in southeastern Poland. Lublin isn’t a tiny town, but enough people have asked us why on earth we’re here for us to decide that maybe it’s not a popular tourist destination. Ahh... but the vodka is plentiful—what more do you need?

Tonight we take the train down to Krakow.

You don’t go to Scotland for the weather

This is a quick post, since I’m running errands in preparation for the next leg of travel, but I wanted to post a few pictures of my day-long bus trip to the central highlands of Scotland. Although this wasn’t the original reason for the day trip, it actually made for a perfect activity while I was recovering from a nasty cold. The weather was appropriately atmospheric, and the scenery was beautiful.

This is Hamish. He gets pictures taken of him all day long, and was expert at posing:


This is Doune Castle, where part of Monty Python and the Holy Grail was filmed. The picture is partially obscured by the rain that was falling on the lens:


The Falls of Dochart are especially lovely in wet weather:


The rowan berry has protective properties, according to Celtic legend:


And this is Dougie, who guided the day trip, and accompanied the lovely scenery with any number of colorful, grim tales, most of which ended with the abrupt death of the main character:

In Edinburgh

I’m at a hostel in Edinburgh, using the free internet—which is slow, and which someone has mysteriously set to French (and I can’t figure out how to switch to English), but that’s what you get for £11 a night. £11!! And if you pay by the week, it’s only £50. Two of my flatmates were looking for work (which made me feel a little lazy), but they were perfectly willing to go out in the evenings to join me at the pubs and listen to music. Pretty lucky for me.

Now I’m off to eat and check out the castle.

Let the games begin

Yesterday was my last day in the London office. Now I’m doing a little bit of traveling before heading back to New York. I’ll try to post occasionally, but the posts will be shorter and will involve fewer pictures. I’ll do what I can.

Tacking & gybing, rockin’ & rollin’

This weekend I went on a sailing trip.

We flew the flag of the country of the boat. Here, the UK. This is also a picture of the life preserver, with a diagram (difficult to see here) of a very unhappy-looking stick figure getting rescued.

The classic method of telling what direction you’re going.

On Sunday we headed east, where we could see the tall chalk cliffs.


And of course, no post about a boat trip would be complete without pictures of the captain and crew. Matt was our fearless leader, and Orla, Hsiao-Wei and I made up the crew.

“Trip” suggests that we were going to a destination, however. The trip was originally supposed to be from Brighton to the Isle of Wight, and back the next day. As it turned out, we made it only about halfway to the Isle of Wight before the wind died on Saturday, so our trip turned into two mini-trips: one day west and back; the second day east and back. I learned a new word, though: “becalmed.”

Weekend again

Today is my last Friday in the London office—wow! And instead of an office-related picture, I’m posting a picture of Beth and her friend and colleague Tania, both of whom were in London on Wednesday.


And I’m going away for the weekend, which will hopefully generate an interesting picture or two. We’ll see.

Looking stern in the museum

I’m finishing up at work this week, which, while necessary and time-consuming, isn’t particularly interesting, at least for a forum like this. I’m also trying to figure out what to do with my time off—again, time-consuming and I hope it leads to a few interesting things to talk about here—but it isn’t really fertile ground for coming up with posts.

So here’s a picture of one of the Easter Island statues that I saw while wandering briefly in the British Museum last weekend. I was impressed by the stoicism:

You can feel the excitement in the air

Wow, there’s always a big buzz on the street when the Rolling Stones are in town:

One more month

Someone mentioned to me that they thought I’d Photoshopped the picture in the last post. I did not. It is simply a dramatic picture with a very small depth of field. It might even be Art. I call it, “Mechanical Pencil on a Financing Document.”

And in other news: my UK adventure is quickly drawing to a close. As of yesterday, I have only one more month here. And only one more week at work. It’s hard to believe.

Nothing but work

I’ve been doing nothing but work for the past few days. Here is a picture of work:

Southall

This weekend, I went with a couple of other people to Southall, sometimes called Little India. We ate Indian food and walked around. There’s an open air market on Saturdays that we caught the end of. Although we saw no live chickens there, we did see instructions on how you should handle them if you need to bring them:


We finished the excursion with a trip to the Glassy Junction pub, a Punjabi-themed pub, with Punjabi-themed decorations on the side of the bar:

Carnival in England

Over the August bank holiday every year, Notting Hill has its Carnival, where people parade down the street, dance to music, get drunk, eat street food, and pay large sums of money to use residents' bathrooms. I went with some folks from work, including Nir, who was (and still is, although he’s not in London any more) visiting England for a wedding.

Here’s a picture of one of the parades:


And a picture of one of the sound system set-ups:


(This particular place was playing “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’,” although reggae was more common elsewhere).

On Monday night, Nir and I went to see this play. It was really good, but is it truly cultural if there are no hot pants or full-frontal nudity? I’m just not sure.