New Zealand Travel Diary Part VII

When we first started talking about me coming to New Zealand, I had three things on the Must Do list: Swimming with dolphins in Akaroa, seeing Edoras and walking the Tongariro Crossing in the Tongariro National Park, which provided most of the locations for Mordor. Mount Ngauruhoe was used for Mount Doom, although I think the actual mountain slope filming took place on Mount Ruapehu a bit further south.

The last week of my NZ stay saw me heading up to the North Island to fulfil that last dream. Originally I had planned to fly up one day, do the Crossing the next, and come back to Christchurch on the third day. Elisa warned me that I might be better off including an extra day, just in case the weather turned bad, and the Crossing thus off-limits. This proved to be excellent advice and I am very happy I took it. I had booked my domestic flights before leaving Denmark, and the whole itinerary looked like this:

Monday 24th November – Fly from Christchurch to Palmerston North. Get a bus from Palmerston North to Ohakune.
Tuesday 25th – Wednesday 26th November - Stay in Ohakune, hope to walk the Crossing either Tuesday or Wednesday.
Thursday 27th November – Get a bus from Ohakune to Wellington. Stay in Wellington
Friday 28th November – Fly from Wellington to Christchurch in the morning.

My flight from Christchurch left very very early, at 5.45am on Monday morning, so I arrived in city center Palmerston North just in time for some breakfast at McD. Lovely. I had a couple of hours to kill, so I walked around a pretty park for a while and went to the visitor’s center to ask for advice and weather reports for the Tongariro National Park. The weather there changes faster than it does in Dublin, so it was vital to keep tabs on it. They didn’t really know, but told me that they would have all the information I could want in Ohakune.

The journey from Palmerston North to Ohakune was very nice, but became downright spectacular once we left Wanganui. Almost the entire trip to Ohakune, lasting an hour and a half I think, passed through the most fantastic landscape of steep green hills crowded together like spikes on a hedgehog, the road winding in and out and up and down constantly. Ohakune itself was not madly fascinating, outside of ski season - a lot of the shops were closed for that reason. The first thing I did was go to the visitor’s center and get weather information and buy some postcards, then I headed down the road to the Matai Lodge where I would be staying for the next 3 days. The hostel was very quiet, which suited me just fine – I got a 4-bed room all to myself. There are a lot of hostels or guest houses operating shuttles to and from the major walks in the national park, including the Crossing, but the deciding factor for me with Matai Lodge was the fact that they ran an early bird shuttle, so you could start the Crossing by 8am. Knowing me and my sleeping habits, getting an early start sounded perfect.

I spent a lot of time walking around the village, looking at Mount Ruapehu, which forms the backdrop for Ohakune Village. It was hidden by clouds most of the time, but I got glimpses of it every so often. This is an active volcano which last erupted, quite spectacularly, in 1996. You can buy lots of postcards with images from the eruption. I had a pamphlet describing walks around the area, but I couldn’t really get my act together enough to do one, I was too psyched about the Crossing and worried that I wouldn’t get to go because of bad weather. I did wander a bit along the banks of the Mangawhero River, and walked up to Ohakune Junction, a village 2km up the road. It was like walking around a ghost town from an old Western movie. All the shops were closed and I didn’t see a single human being anywhere.

The weather forecast for Tuesday was not great – it mentioned gale force winds and rain, so no Crossing on Tuesday for sure. Boy, was I happy that I would have an extra shot at it on Wednesday! I bought credit for the hostel computer so I could keep track of the forecasts online. There is a consensus among the shuttle operators that if winds are over 60km per hour, they will not go, for safety reasons. Wednesday initially looked bad too, gale force winds still being forecast, but it slowly kept changing for the better, with Rob making the decision at 7am on Wednesday morning that the shuttle would go. I didn’t get to go on the early bird (I guess it didn’t even run at all that day anyway), but I didn’t care. I would get to walk the Crossing and that was the main thing.

I was VERY excited when we set off, I’d been dreaming about this for so long. Mordor, here I go! I had lots of water, little chocolate energy bars and stuff for sandwiches. Rob said we should be at the Ketetahi car park around 4 for our pickup, and that this would not leave us time for climbing Ngauruhoe or Tongariro, unless we planned on running the rest of the way, but that we would have enough time to do the Crossing itself and not have to hurry. I did harbour a small dream of actually climbing Ngauruhoe, but as it turned out, I was happy enough not to have the time for it – I wouldn’t have had the stamina!

The Crossing started out nice and even from the Mangatepopo car park across flat lands, full of black volcanic rock pieces in twisted shapes and little streams until reaching Soda Springs. There’s supposed to be a little wildflower oasis at the springs themselves, 10 minutes walk from the main track, and I did try to get close, but the ground was waterlogged, so I ended up turning back before reaching the springs. There were quite a few people on the trail, a couple of hundred is my guess. The weather was really good, in spite of the forecast having promised rain in the morning – it was sunny and warm, and I soon had to remove two of my many layers.

After Soda Springs, the track led up the devil’s staircase, aptly named, because it’s a hard climb when you’re not that fit *ahem*. The trail snaked back and forth across the hill face, and seemed like it would never end. I had loads of little breaks and little sips of water, and the chocolate bars helped a lot as well. Mount Ngauruhoe was getting closer and closer all the time on to our right. Once you get up the staircase there’s a nice flat walk across the Southern Crater, or you can turn right to climb Ngauruhoe, which of course I did not. The landscape was magnificent and it was great being on the flat - there was even a bit of snow stretching across our path, which I had not expected. You can take a wee detour towards the end of the path, over to the Southern Crater lake below Ngauruhoe, but I didn’t. I wanted to get the climbing over with, and there was a bit of that to be done at the far end of the Southern Crater path. This climb was in some ways worse than the devil’s staircase – the staircase had had a proper path, bordered and with steps, but here you were on your own, just having to follow the poles that marked the route throughout. Some spots were a bit scary, open ridges where the wind was felt quite keenly.

At the top I found myself looking down into the grandeur of the Red Crater, with Mount Tongariro to the left. This is the actual Crossing giving the name to the walk – the saddle between the mountains. Climbing up to the summit above the Red Crater, I looked down on the beautiful Emerald Lakes, breathtaking in their intensity. At this point, the sky had clouded over, and Mount Ngauruhoe was disappearing from sight behind clouds as well. The trail down to the Emerald Lakes is on loose scree, which was a bit scary at first – it’s a long and very steep slope – but once I got into a sort of skating rhythm, it became fun. The Emerald Lakes were bigger than I had first thought and very beautiful, each of them with a distinct colour all their own.

From there, the trail led over to the Blue Lake, another beautiful body of water. There was a lot of snow around which you can see, so at this point I had put all those layers back on that I’d taken off during the first leg of the walk. The clouds were still massing at this stage, and I thought the rain would not be far behind, but we didn’t get a drop at all. Or maybe it stayed on the mountain, I don’t know.

Once I reached the other side of the mountain and the trail started leading down every so slowly, the landscape changed, and became all tussock and rocks. We had a gorgeous view of the land to the north and west, including Lakes Rotoaira and Taupo, and Mount Pihanga. It is a nice but very winding road down to the Ketetahi Hut, and the smell from the Ketetahi Springs slowly becomes more pronounced, which is not great – it smells like rotten eggs. I had some sandwiches at the hut, along with 20 or so other people. I was making good time, and enjoyed myself thoroughly. From the hut, it was roughly 1 ½ - 2 hours to get to the car park. The last hour takes you through a forest that feels like it will never end, plus it has at least 500 steps that you have to go down, making my legs rather sore at the end of it. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t 500, but it sure felt like it! There were around 50-70 people spread around the car park area, resting, when I got there, and I found a spot for myself on a wooden platform and had myself a drink and a chocolate bar. I was a very happy and tired camper!

That night I went to a nearby bar in Ohakune to celebrate – had a pint and wrote my diary, and went home because I was kind of tired for some reason…. Got on a bus the next day to go to Wellington, which seems like a very nice place. I stayed in a hostel across from the bus station and had a lovely early morning walk through Wellington, along the waterfront, before I caught a bus for the airport. Once back in Christchurch, Elisa and Isabella and I went shopping and the next day I went home to Denmark.

And with that I will finish my tale of the Best Holiday Ever....*sigh*

New Zealand Travel Diary Part VI

The TranzAlpine Express goes from Christchurch to Greymouth on the west coast and back again. You can easily do the return journey in a day - perfect day trip. We just had time enough for lunch in Greymouth before getting back on the train. Of course, you could stay in Greymouth (although it doesn’t seem to have much of interest) and use it as a base for exploring the glaciers further down the coast, Fox and Franz Josef. If I had had more time, I probably would have done that, because I would’ve like to have seen the glaciers, but hey, I wouldn’t really have wanted to miss out on some of the things I did see, so no complaints.

The train has really great seats, very comfortable, and big panoramic windows. For the photographers, there is an open-sided observation car. The first hour or so from Christchurch is fairly uninteresting, as the route goes across the flat Canterbury Plains. From Springfield, you go up and soon after the fun begins. You cross glorious river gorges (the Waimakariri) over viaducts, you go through lots of little tunnels (19 in total), you cross wide plains where the river braids through, surrounded by mountains. I don’t think we saw many rivers that were not braided, and I found them fascinating. A braided river is a stream that cannot decide which way to flow, so it splits up into lots of little streams that meander in and out of each other, here illustrated by a picture from one of the gorges of the Waimakariri.

At Arthur’s Pass, high in the Southern Alps, you have to go back to your seat, because you’re not allowed to remain in the observation car for the journey through the 8.5km long Otira Tunnel due to the exposure to dangerous gases inside the tunnel. Then it’s on to more woodland plains and mountains and streams until you hit the rainforest area and the river Arnold, and then finally the river Grey shortly before arrival in Greymouth. It’s a really great trip, and if you don’t want to get your face and hands covered in soot by spending all the available time in the observation car, you can certainly enjoy it very much from your seat in the normal carriages.

Needless to say, I chose to get sooty, although I didn’t realize until we got off the train in Christchurch and I went to the bathroom to wash my curiously dirty hands. Then I looked in the mirror and this black face stared back at me. It was very funny. That’s what you get for standing in the observation car going through 30 or more little tunnels! But hey, small price to pay if you ask me…

New Zealand Travel Diary Part V

So, sleeping over at the Deer Flats on the Milford Road. The area in general had apparently been used to portray Fangorn Forest in the Lord Of The Rings, and the trees sure looked very Fangorn-ish to us. There was a little pond, which turned out to be a mirror pond, as you can see. Very very nice. I loved these trees, they reminded me of the Chinese cartoons we used to watch growing up on telly, there was that kind of intricacy to them.

From Te Anau we headed east towards Queenstown, on the shores of gorgeous Lake Wakatipu. There are a lot of Lord Of The Rings locations in this region, but most of them are not ‘whole’, in the sense that they would have been combined with landscape from elsewhere to make up the scene, making it difficult to recognize any given spot. So, I’ve seen what must have been either the White Mountains (Ered Nimrais) or the Mountains of Shadow (Ephel Duath), which combined with some fields near Twizel make up the location used for the battle on the Pelennor Fields. Anyway, no more LOTR talk…for now.

The drive around the lake was very nice, the road being windy and lovely. Queenstown itself is buzzing – we took a walk down through city centre and had lunch in a great café. There are lots of things to do in Queenstown, most of them related to some form of extreme (or not) sport. After a couple of hours, we drove off again and went to Arrowtown, a lovely village higher up in the mountains, founded during the gold rush in I-can’t-remember-when. The Arrow River formed part of the location for the Ford of Bruinen, and a little further down the river was the site of the Gladden Fields, where the orcs attacked Isildur (it’s in The Two Towers). We saw both sites, but for the Ford of Bruinen only the river itself was used in the movie, the banks you see are from Skipper’s Canyon, not far from Arrowtown, where we did not go.

For once, we went out for dinner and found a really great restaurant called The Stables, with very good wine and food. It had a great table under yet another Party Tree wanna-be. Okay, so that probably requires an explanation. At the beginning of The Fellowship Of The Ring, Bilbo has a huge birthday party for when he turns 111. The main table is situated under a big tree, henceforth known as the Party Tree. In Hagley Park in Christchurch there is a tree which would have made an awesome Party Tree. I have no idea where the real Party Tree is that was used in the movie.

All in all, Arrowtown was great, and the camp site we found has to be the most beautiful and up-to-date I have ever seen. Spacious and clean and with more facilities than you could shake a stick at.

From there, we headed east towards Wanaka. To get there we had to choose between two routes. One was very scenic, and the other passed by an LOTR location. We chose the scenic route, and it was indeed very beautiful. Wanaka, on the other hand, was very windy. We parked by the lake and chilled out for a few hours before heading off again. I didn’t ever get tired of seeing beautiful lakes surrounded by snowy peaks, but I think I did get a bit used to it. At any rate, Lake Wanaka is not a match for Tekapo or Pukaki for beauty – it’s just very nice.

Speaking of Pukaki, we spent the night at the Mount Cook Lookout at the southern end of the lake, in the parking lot by the small visitor’s centre. Yet another spectacular sunset and what a view in the morning. The same thing happened as the first time we visited Pukaki – Aoraki Mount Cook was partially covered by cloud when we arrived, proceeded to become completely clear after a few hours, and then stayed that way. This prompted a change to our plans – we had to be heading back to Christchurch, but it was just too good an opportunity to miss out on, going up to Mount Cook Village for a closer look at the mountain, on a day of clear blue skies. Elisa and Stefano have tried it before, coming to the lake in fine weather and ending up in the rain once they got to Mount Cook Village. Not this time. We stopped by the Edmund Hillary Alpine Center for an hour or two and then had to go back – there was still roughly 5 hours to drive before Christchurch and home. But oh, it was worth it!

It felt weird being back in Christchurch, the camper had so quickly become home. It was like we’d been gone for a lot longer than just 9 days. But then again, we did see an awful lot of places, and all of them awesomely gorgeous. And on that note, I’ll stop here, stay tuned for Part VI, in which we go on a scenic train journey across the South Island…

New Zealand Travel Diary Part IV

The next couple of days saw us heading south-east, ending up on the Otago Peninsula just east of the city of Dunedin. On the way we stopped to see the wondrous Moeraki Boulders. They lie on a beach at the tide line, and their creation process dates back sixty million years, when they were part of the sea bed. When the coast lines eroded they popped out and that’s how you get to see them now. They reminded me of the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland in that both look completely manmade but are not.

Further south, the road from Dunedin onto the Otago Peninsula snakes along on the level ground, hugging the coast line very closely, which can be a bit dizzying, but quite breathtaking as well.
We had hoped to be able to visit an albatross colony, but unfortunately the birds were nesting that week, and all tours were off. Oh well. We ended up spending a lovely chilled-out shopping day in Dunedin town, which has the most beautiful train station I have ever seen. The name of Dunedin comes from the Gaelic name for Edinburgh, and the Scottish influence is unmistakable – even if we did end up having lunch in an Irish pub called Craic…

From Dunedin we headed west, towards the Fiordlands region. Given the weather in this area, we were trying to decide whether it would be worth our while going up to Milford Sound or not, or if we would be better off spending more time somewhere else. We ended up going for it. The Fiordlands is the 2nd rainiest area in the world – 6 m per year on average.

There are many fiords in the Fiordlands, but only two of them are currently accessible, and only one of them by proper road (Milford Sound – the other one is Doubtful Sound). The road goes from Te Anau for 2,5 hours along some of the most stunning scenery – which says a lot, this being New Zealand. This mountain looks to me like someone put flour on top and then blew on it.
In Te Anau, we had booked ourselves on a 1,5 hour cruise of Milford Sound, which was really great, although, once you got out further into the fiord, the wind picked up considerably. The landscape was majestic, sort of how I imagine the Norwegian fiords, just without all the lush vegetation. Waterfalls, waterfalls, waterfalls everywhere. We did see some blue sky in between the light showers, so our weather luck did not desert us. Yay!

We headed straight back towards Te Anau after we got off the boat, and ended up camping at Deer Flats halfway, at a gorgeous location in a little forest near the Eglinton River. But I think this is a story best continued in Part V……

New Zealand Travel Diary Part III

Okay, so this is not going to be a wordy post, because I want to give the pictures room to speak.

So, accompanied by the seemingly neverending line of the Southern Alps, we headed deeper into the heart of the South Island. Then we turned a corner and I had to pinch myself. This is approximately what we saw (this is obviously taken after we had left the camper and gone down to the shore). And no, I didn’t edit this in any way, the water is like that. The intense colour is due to light-reflecting micro-organisms or something along those lines in the water.

From Lake Tekapo we went along the turquoise canal that connects Lake Tekapo and Lake Pukaki. I think it’s part of some hydro-electric scheme or something, which is very cool. We were heading to a camping spot on the eastern shore of Lake Pukaki. As the journey progressed, we could see part of Aoraki Mount Cook appear to our right, across the canal. It was shrouded in cloud, but that cleared later on and remained completely clear. It’s quite a lovely mountain, and I took many many MANY pictures of it.

Aoraki is the Maori name, and the combination of the two names is increasingly used for the mountain. When we came upon the lake we turned right along the shore. Pukaki has the exact same very intense turquoise colour as Tekapo, but here there were more rocks and less flowers. Not that it wasn’t absolutely stunning! I think Lake Pukaki/Aoraki Mount Cook is probably my favourite place of all that we went to.

We found the camping spot after only one false turn, which turned out to actually just be a wee detour. It was breathtaking. We were sheltered by a few trees (mostly birch, and a couple eucalyptus), and had an open view of the lake and mountains. Below us was a very rocky (I guess I could call it bouldery) beach, behind us evergreen trees. We had dinner outside, as per usual, with lake-cooled lovely Mac’s Sassy Red brew.

The sunset needs no further words.....

And, I got up in the middle of the night and sat for a bit on the moonlit shore – and took a couple of pictures of the moon above. The big boulder I sat on, was a fast favorite because it had little steps and holds seemingly carved into it, so it made a great seat for more than one person.

Then of course, I got up early too, being WAY to excited by the beauty of it all to sleep properly, and sat on the big boulder to enjoy the sunrise (this picture is from before sunrise).

New Zealand Travel Diary Part II

We had a road trip planned for the South Island and to that end had rented a camper. This is a very common way to travel around NZ, and I can definitely recommend it. It gives you a lot of flexibility and the chance to experience nature first-hand. There is something quite magical about waking up in the middle of the night – and looking out the window at a sky full of bright stars over some incredibly beautiful landscape, no city lights, no lone cars going past, no other humans in sight. And then, once you start missing showers too much, you find a camp site and enjoy the mod cons for a bit before heading back into the wild.

I was amazed how quickly the camper came to feel like home, and I missed it when we returned it back in Christchurch. It brought back a lot of good memories from camping trips in my childhood *sigh*

The first night we spent in the middle of nowhere, and it was glorious. Well, we spent it beside the location used for the city of Edoras in the Lord Of The Rings movies – a hill called Mount Sunday. I had brought my elf dress and elf ears, not wanting such a prime opportunity for playing dress-up to escape me, and we had a lot of fun with the Elf Photo Sessions (yes, we had more than one, because we arrived in late afternoon, so had to wait for the light to be right on the mountain the next morning to take more pictures). The landscape is exactly like you see it in the movies, except for all the fences around the fields. There are mountains all around, many of them with snowy peaks.

We saw the moon rise over the hills and bathe everything in a silver glow, giving the mountains long shadows. It was quite simply magical, as was the beautiful and very starry sky. If you watch the Two Towers, there’s a night scene where Aragorn is smoking outside Meduseld, and Legolas comes to join him – that’s what it was like for us as well. I woke up very very early and could not get back to sleep, so I took one of the chairs out and sat opposite Edoras, writing my travel diary (of which the present post is not a transcript), and watching the sunrise. Pure bliss….

The glittering icing on the cake would of course have been to actually climb Edoras, but you have to ford a couple of streams to get there, and we were not equipped for getting wet feet, and also, we had plenty of other places to go and see. I did see what I insisted were people on top of it the evening before, which did puzzle me, because they wouldn’t have been able to get down before full dark. Stefano said they were earthquake markers, and of course that’s exactly what they were. :)

From Edoras we went back down the 48km gravel road to Mount Somers and a proper road, and headed a bit south and then west, towards the spectacular landscapes of Lakes Tekapo and Pukaki…..stay tuned for Part III.

New Zealand Travel Diary Part I

I’m not going to give a play-by-play account of the 3 glorious weeks I spent in NZ. I’m not bothered writing it, and you probably would not be bothered reading it either. Anyway, enjoy!

New Zealand is beautiful – this much I knew before going, both from seeing movies shot there, and from other people who had been. I still was not prepared for exactly how amazing it really is! Add to that our luck with weather – we had great sunny days, except for my trip to the North Island, where the weather did play havoc with my nerves due to its influence on whether I would be able to walk the Tongariro Crossing or not. People are genuinely friendly, and willing to chat to strangers and ask where you are from etc. I had to get used to the accent, and I didn’t get enough exposure to be able to understand everything or to tell the difference between an Aussie and a Kiwi accent. One of the best bits about it is that there are no big hairy nasty spiders (biggest reason I will never go to Australia) – there are only a couple of poisonous ones but they are rarely seen and they are not necessarily lethal. I didn’t go bush-walking more than I had to, because I didn’t really want to tempt fate and be one of the rare people to see one of the above.

The worst and best thing about NZ is the distance you have to cover to get there – bad because it’s an awful long and miserable journey, good because it means NZ has great potential for retaining a primeval quality and not be completely overrun by tourists. The trip there was alright, because I managed to catch a couple of good naps – I have great difficulty sleeping on planes, and had acquired some valerian root tablets in Frankfurt, but they didn’t really work. The best bit was when we were landing in Sydney and flew over city centre, including the Opera House, which of course has special significance for me as a Danish person (it’s designed by Danish architect Jørn Utzon). I had hoped to see it, but had also thought it would probably be too good to be true. But it wasn’t! What a way to start the holiday :)

Customs processes upon entry into NZ are very thorough – you have to declare if you are bringing a great variety of things, including hiking and camping gear. If you say you are bringing any of these, the items will be submitted to an inspection. In my case I had ticked the box for hiking gear, and so my boots had to be unpacked, and yer man took them away for cleaning. They had been really muddy from the visit to the soggy Lake District, and I had cleaned them before packing, but not the soles, so yer man did that and gave them back to me in a new plastic bag and sent me on my way.

It was surreal to walk around in summer clothes and sunglasses, and be looking at Christmas decorations on the lamp posts and in the supermarkets. Christchurch is a lovely city, and is not given the moniker Garden City as a joke, it really is full of beautiful gardens, and huge garden centres. You can tell that it’s a sparsely populated country – all the houses are big and sprawling, with gardens, all the streets are wide, and the general feel of the place is more similar to the US than the UK. Once you get out of the city, to the west you have the wide Canterbury Plains, bordered by the gorgeous Southern Alps, and to the east you have the hilly Banks Peninsula. There are lots of tall and dense hedges around the fields, to prevent soil erosion, and you should see the water systems they use, they can be as long as a soccer field.

The city centre of Christchurch does have a very British ambience about it, think Oxbridge. The Arts Centre is beautifully built and looks like a cross between Magdalen College and Hogwarts. We took a canoe trip up the Avon, along the edges of the Botanical Gardens – this is one of the old-fashioned punts that you can also take, if you don’t feel like flexing your own muscles.

I was booked on a trip to swim with dolphins in Akaroa on the Banks Peninsula, and we had a glorious day for it. Getting into a wetsuit was great fun, and so was the trip out on the bay to look for the dolphins, in a wee boat that could go fairly fast. The dolphins we were seeking are called Hector’s Dolphins, and are among the smallest and rarest. We did find a few, but they kept disappearing on us and didn’t seem very interested in playing, so we didn’t get to actually swim with them. I was not as disappointed as other people, I had a brilliant time anyway, and I am glad that we at least got to see some of the beautiful wee creatures up close.

More to come in Part II, and there are loads more pictures on Facebook......

Lake District Weekend - BethAnne's Birthday Celebrations

Of course I couldn't sleep properly the night before I was flying out. Anyway, flight to Manchester was uneventful, except for the gorgeous sunrise visible from the plane not long before landing. I went down to the train platform at Manchester Airport and set about figuring out how to get to Windermere. As far as I could remember, last time we had gone direct, but we didn't. And of course I had not bothered to check out what the usual routes were, ie. where were the stations I could connect from. At any rate, I asked an official-looking train person, and he helped me out. Basically, a train to Barrow-in-Furness would've brought me quite close, but it branches off into a dead end and does not actually go to Windermere. I didn't know that last bit at the time, I just recognised the name. Anyway, the train was supposed to have come by the airport, but was late and therefore did not. We were told to jump onto the next train that stopped at Manchester Piccadilly (they all do, I think), and from there jump on the Barrow-in-Furness train. So I did that, off into the blue. At Manchester Piccadilly there was a map of train lines for the region, including the Lake District, so I could pick out the route to get to Windermere. So, instead of going for Barrow-in-Furness, I took an earlier train to Preston, and from Preston I got on one for Windermere, and arrived there about 2pm. It was a lovely crisp and cool autumn day, absolutely beautiful. I had a few bulletins from the others on their journey by ferry to Holyhead and from there by car northward.

Found the Archway B & B easily enough and sat down for a chat with Jenny. Later on, I went for a ramble up to the nearby viewing point of Orrest Head, where we had gone last time as well. Of course I went the long way around, having not really listened to Jenny's directions... Pia knows it all, right...... It had rained quite heavily and I mean HEAVILY the day before so there were lots of new little rivers and lakes all over the place. Didn't really bother me that much, wearing hiking boots, the weather stayed pretty, and I was just rambling around, still being in that sort of mood where I don't care where I go, as long as I know I can't get totally lost. So, this resulted in me climbing the same field twice (it slopes up towards the summit of the hill), from different directions, getting just a tad muddy, and generally taking the very long way around, before I finally stood on Orrest Head - just in time for a glorious sunset.

The others were due to arrive at 5pm, and I had just left the summit at this time, but didn't think they would mind me making the most of the day that was in it. And they didn't, because they didn't get there until 7pm :D Dinner was scrumptious and great fun was had by all - I was the first one to go to bed, late nights and early starts catching up with me finally.

Saturday it rained. All. Day. I swear, it did not let up for even 5 minutes. So what do you do then, when you're marooned in one of the most beautiful regions in England? You go to a pencil museum! In Keswick. It was actually really cool - they had the world's largest pencil there, and some very interesting facts about pencils and graphite. Graphite is one of only two forms of pure carbon - the other is diamond! During WWII they made hollow pencils for pilots and others, to carry escape route maps and tiny compasses! How cool is that? Afterwards we wanted to go see a nearby slate mine, but there were too many deep puddles on the road, so we turned back to Windermere, not wanting to get stuck or risk the car breaking down.

Thankfully, on Sunday, the weather cleared for our birthday girl! I couldn't sleep and went for a pre-dawn walk down by the shore of Lake Windermere to the viewing point of Queen Adelaide's Hill. The shore was a bit further inland due to all the water, but did not cover the path, so I had no problems. On the hill, I waited for the sun to come up and set autumn-clad trees on the farther shore on fire, but before it could get free of clouds, they all gathered very quickly and it started to rain. Fortunately, it was only a wee shower - I took refuge under a tree - and so I waited some more, until I had to be getting back in time for breakfast at 10am. Of course, on my way home, the sun came out and bathed everything in golden glory. Where were you half an hour ago? Hrmf.

Anyway, the weather did stay clear, and we went for a lovely walk around Grasmere, including a brief visit to Dove Cottage (where the poet Wordsworth lived at one time) in search of a geo-cache. Unfortunately, the cache itself was not there, it was only a clue to its whereabouts - 7 km away, too far by half. At the end of the walk we had to cross a completely flooded field, which was actually great fun, and did include hopping from grass clump to grass clump, and jumping over deep ditches. Took us only 45 minutes, but noone fell or got wet above their calves, so that was fine. The autumn colours were breathtaking and we even had a couple of rainbows peeking through a couple of times.

On Monday, we went to the Aquarium of the Lakes, at the lower end of Lake Windermere - it was a beautiful day. Nasty surprise at the aquarium; they had added some very exotic animals to the exhibition since last time (when it was all local wildlife), including a big hairy South-American spider, and some adorable mamosets (tiny tiny monkeys). BethAnne thankfully caught me before I, unsuspecting, had a closer look at the spider cage (seriously, I would've screamed), and the mamosets proved a most excellent distraction. We watched the mother come down to pick a single grape from the keeper's hand, comparable to a melon in our hands, whereas the father stayed in the upper far corner of their cage, with the two wee babies on his back. They were the size of mice, if not smaller. Soooo cute!

On the way home we passed the flooded Bowness harbour - swans were literally swimming in circles around the little ticket huts. And then, it was nearly time for me to get the train back to Manchester in order to catch my flight back to Copenhagen. Next time, I'm climbing Scafell Pike :)

Now That's What I Call An Ice Rink - Eindhoven Ijssportcentrum

Speed skating is HUGE in the Netherlands, so I'm guessing this is not actually an unusual size rink, but I've sure never seen a 400m ice track before, much less skated on one. But now, I have :) I was there over the weekend, in case you're wondering....

And it was glorious! Very unlike any of the stamp-sized (in comparison) 3-month ice rinks that can be found around Dublin City, where they simply let people onto the ice until noone can actually move forward very much. There's a reason why I have not been skating on any of the Dublin rinks for the last few years. There's no room to actually skate and you constantly run the risk of being dragged down by some fledgling skater losing their balance. People, good thing that you're coming out to skate, but if you don't know what you're doing, stay near the barrier, please!

So, back to the Eindhoven Ijssportcentrum. There was a timer, counting seconds 1- 60 the whole time, so that you could time your rounds, which I did - 1 minute 25 seconds, at an okay pace. I would have loved to try sprinting the whole way, but I couldn't because:

a) too many people
b) dull blades
c) not enough stamina

The rink used to be completely open to the elements, but now it's semi-covered, as you can see in the picture.

New York Weekend Trip

Some have said I am mad to go for a weekend only. Maybe I am - I was originally planning to go for a full week, but as I've been to New York twice already in the last two years, I felt I didn't need a full week - I have seen and done practically all I really wanted to.

It also freed up days off to spend on other trips, which I definitely do not regret. The only thing on my list for actual sightseeing this time around is the seasonal decorations on Rockefeller Center.

For those of you who don't know, the background is as follows: My sister and her boyfriend were supposed to run in the NY Marathon this Sunday, and I was supposed to come over and cheer them on. But now she's not, because she's expecting twins. We're all still going over there anyway though. Can't wait to see how the bump is coming along!

A colossal bonus, which more than makes up for not being able to wave Danish flags in people's faces on Sunday, is the fact that we got tickets for a brand new Cirque du Soleil show called Wintuk, at Madison Square Garden for Saturday night. The show opens officially on Tuesday, but we are catching one of the preview performances. How unutterably perfect is that? I don't know much about the content of the show, which is just the way I like it with Cirque du Soleil. I'm sure it will be awesome!

I have decided that this will be the last longhaul flight I take (until such time as they invent some really really environmentally friendly fuel). The CO2 emission figures for flying are not pleasant reading, and although I know you can carbon offset your travelling (and I did), I feel that to prevent is better than to cure. All I can do is start with the woman in the mirror (sorry to paraphrase Mr. Jackson). So, I am going to cut down on flying (I am incredibly sick of Dublin Airport anyway), and see what other options there are for getting around. Busses and trains and ferries will all take longer, but I will hopefully learn to appreciate the journey as an end in itself instead of merely a means. Okay, Pia, see if you can write the next 3 sentences without including brackets, hmmmm??

Onto another topic: what am I going to do with myself in NY, except for the Marathon and Cirque du Soleil and hanging out with people?
SHOPPING!!!! I have researched adresses of interesting shops (mostly books and yarn), and will try to figure out the most efficient route to take through Manhattan for my Shopping Day (otherwise known as Monday). Darn, there goes another set of brackets!!!

New York trip, 4 Oct - 11 Oct 2006 Part II

On Saturday we set off along the Hudson River, heading north. The trees, which had been mainly green coming out of New York, gradually turned into the loveliest fall shades of amber, gold, copper and bronze, the further north we went. We stopped at Vanderbilt's mansion, which overlooks the river, to enjoy the gorgeous views:

But the best was still to come, when we arrived in Saugerties on the Hudson River - our B & B was this absolutely fantastic cottage, set near the amazingly gorgeous Esopus Creek. Thomas and I took I-don't-know how many pictures when we arrived, in the last half hour of daylight:

And again the next morning in the glorious dawn:

The proprietors' son lived on the premises in a little apartment off the kitchen area, and he prepared the most spectacular breakfast the next morning:

A bit hard to stir after that, I must say, but we had to, because we were leaving to go driving around the area for a while before heading back to New York City. I can heartily recommend staying here - the location is great, the proprietors are really friendly, and the house itself is well equipped and very nice.

Anyway, we headed off into the glorious day - first stop was the Saugerties Lighthouse. You have to walk a mile or two to get there, through wooded marsh landscape, with gorgeous views of the Hudson and surrounding landscapes on each side - it's like a little peninsula jutting into the river. The Lighthouse itself is now a B & B, and I'd say it would be pretty cool to stay there, but expensive too. I would prefer Esopus Creek though :)

After that we went off into the wild, and took a couple of wrong turns getting further into the Catskill Mountains. We ended up in this tiny village at a diminutive post office and got out to stretch our legs. A woman drove up with her friend on a golfcart-like vehicle and asked us if we were planning to rob the post office? Very very funny!

The region was very beautiful, all addressed in autumn frocks - we found the place below by chance, simply following a sign on a whim, and as you can see, it paid off. Lake Onteora was fantastic!

All in all a really great weekend! Now, back to the city.....

Monday morning, the Columbus Day parade is coming up and we're in Bryant Park near the New York Public Library with a coffee. *Aaah* Nice! I can't really remember exactly what we did that day, but I know it involved walking. I do remember where we spent the evening though - on top of the Empire State Building. Fair play to mum who is afraid of heights, for getting up there! She said afterwards that she wouldn't have missed it and it really was spectacular.

We arrived on the 86nd floor platform as the sun was slowly descending over New Jersey and we stayed until it was fully dark. Seeing the lights of New York come out was a breathtaking experience and we didn't really get tired of looking at them, especially the Chrysler Building, probably my favorite New York landmark (not in the picture, which is of lower Manhattan, with Brooklyn to the left and New Jersey to the right. You can also see the Statue Of Liberty in the distance).

The next day, our last full day, we went for a boat cruise around Manhattan. That is to say, we had to double back and couldn't do the full circle because of tidal issues. It was a really cool trip anyway though, under many bridges, and a wee detour to say hello to Lady Liberty:

We ended the day with a relatively brief visit to Central Park (which is enormous), before heading off to our last dinner together.

*sigh* What a week!

Now, in my next post, I promise I'll get back to finishing the report on the Barcelona trip......

New York trip, 4 Oct - 11 Oct 2006 - something else I did while blog was hibernating

My sis and her beau stayed in New York for six months last year, as part of an exchange program between her Danish company and an American firm. The rest of the posse took that as an excuse to cross the pond for a visit, which we (mum, dad, bro and me) did in October 2006.

We arrived on a Wednesday and had planned to rent a car for the weekend to go north into the Catskills for some lovely fall foliage sightseeing. All in all, we had a fantastic week, but I have never walked so much in my life. Worth every step, though.

New York is an amazing place to be, because it's so incredibly huge, and every time you turn a corner, there's an awesome building or landmark you've probably seen a dozen times in movies or on TV. I couldn't live there, because it's too big and I would feel like an ant in an enormous colony, without face or name, but I definitely did enjoy this visit. I think each day held its own set of incredible experiences for us, as well as just plain old good times with the family, without entering even one museum! The weather overall was just too nice, you had to be outdoors - the walk across Brooklyn Bridge, the sunset from Empire State, the harbour cruise and the upstate weekend trip - simply amazing.

Mona & Thomas had a wee small (and I mean that very literally) flat in Brooklyn, where Anders and I would be sleeping - mum and dad were in a B & B up the road. The week in brief looked like this:

Wednesday: Arrival and wee look at Brooklyn
Thursday: Walking tour with Thomas: Canal Street, Five Points, Chinatown, South Street, Little Italy, SoHo, Greenwich Village.
Friday: Walking to Manhattan over Brooklyn Bridge, Ground Zero, Financial District, Battery Park
Saturday: Driving north along the Hudson River. Vanderbilt's Mansion. Staying in Saugerties on the Hudson
Sunday: Saugerties Lighthouse, driving into the Catskills. Lake Onteora, Bear Mountain, Mid-Hudson Bridge. Back to New York City.
Monday: Bryant Park, Grand Central Station/Chrysler Building, Fifth Avenue, going up Empire State Building to catch the sunset
Tuesday: Harbour Cruise around Manhattan incl. visit to the Statue Of Liberty. Central Park incl. Bethesda Terrace
Wednesday: Going home :(

The walking tour of Lower Manhattan on Thursday was amazing. Especially because of the route we took, the contrasts were very clear between the various 'hoods. Thomas was a great guide, having spent his fair share tramping the streets of Manhattan for the previous 4 months :) I quickly fell in love with the subway stations because of the various mosaics used to decorate the walls at the tracks - the Canal Street ones were instant favorites, also because they were cleaner than in some of the other places.On our way through Chinatown, we went down to the East River at a point between Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges, majestic constructions that
they are. The latter much more so than the former, but I absolutely loved the blue hue of Manhattan Bridge: In Greenwich Village we turned back, so we could meet Mona after work in Madison Square Park. The below picture is from Greenwich Village:

Friday Mona was off work, and therefore able to accompany us on one of the many highlights of the week - the walk across Brooklyn Bridge:

Sadly, it was the only day we had semi-bad weather, although it did remain restricted to only a few drops of rain but many clouds. The other days were lovely and sunny. Then again, Brooklyn Bridge doesn't really need the sun to shine on it to be impressive, the way a landscape might do. It is an awesome structure and a very lovely walk too. It's quite a thrill watching Manhattan come closer and closer, and at the same time enjoying the views of Empire State Building and the Statue Of Liberty.

Once on Manhattan, we visited Ground Zero, after having strolled past City Hall. The small Winter Garden building, which borders Ground Zero, is a lovely place, and we sat down here inside on the steps for a bit and some of us even went shopping (it's a small mall):

Get the rest of the story in Part II.....

Barcelona Trip, 16-20 May - Part IV

..in which Eskild and Polpo go sightseeing...again.

I've forgotten to introduce the two little 'pets' that we had with us. Mona has a cute little teddy that she brings along on her travels- he is called Eskild. (This is a Danish name, and the 'd' is silent, when you say it).

Polpo is Spanish and means 'octopus' and that's what he is. I made him for little Isabella (who would be going to the wedding as well), because the first octopus she got was stuffed with cotton wool, which meant you couldn't wash him. So I made her a new one with washable stuffing. Yay!

Anyway, here they are in our hostel, looking forward to their Spanish adventure:

On Friday morning, after the sangria the night before, did we drag ourselves out of bed as planned, or did we stay in bed? We got up and were ready at the entrance of Casa Batlló at five past nine. Not bad, huh! Well....it was just around the corner....

I am glad we saved this for last. It was chockfull of whimsical details and breathtaking beauty. Gaudí can make wood and stone flow like water, it's really amazing. I'm not sure how I would feel if I actually lived in Casa Batlló, but I will recommend it to anyone who goes to Barcelona as an absolute must-see. There are simply no straight lines anywhere - check out this picture from the living room:

I have no words......

It's relatively expensive to go and see this (16.50 euro, I think), but it's worth every cent if you ask me. The following pictures are from the roof, which are full of colourful mosaic chimneys. Also, the front top of the roof is shaped like a great dragon, which of course is right up my street, and the tower with the white cross on top is just lovely.

Eskild and Polpo were not the least bit afraid of the dragon, and had the audacity to sit in its eye:

I guess it helped that they had already made friends with a big turtle at La Sagrada Familia. Some of the pillars of the Nativity Facade (I saw two, but am not sure if there are any more) rest on the backs of turtles (well, one turtle and one tortoise, to be absolutely exact). This refers to an old legend that the universe is actually carried around on the back of a turtle.

For those of you that know Terry Pratchett and the Discworld - that's where he got the idea (not La Sagrada Familia, but the old legend). He just modified it a bit, in that the Discworld rests on the back of four elephants, but the elephants are carried on the back of a great Turtle.

So here are Eskild and Polpo and the turtle at La Sagrada Familia:

Stay tuned for Part V, in which we say goodbye to Mona, who has to go back to Denmark, but hello to Yolanda and the merry revels in the mountains in Montseny.....

Barcelona Trip, 16-20 May - Part III

Well, after all the wonders of La Sagrada Familia, we needed something a bit closer to earth (just a tad closer, as it turned out). After lunch on the square in front of La Sagrads Familia, we made our way down to a metro stop to go to Montjuïc, the promontory by the port, which houses several museums as well as the Olympic village. We went there primarily to see the Fundació Joan Miró. Apparently there was some big party taking place, because there were security everywhere, and lots of people carrying glasses and tables and chairs and stuff.

Anyway, I liked what I read about Miró himself, passing through the museum, and reading the little blurbs about him in each room. I also liked some of the paintings (my favourite was 'Constellations: The Morning Star'). Then we got to the top floor where there were a few large triptychs on display. One of them (the title said something about a hermit) annoyed me no end. It was three pieces of white canvas, with a thin black line snaking across each in extremely higgledy-piggledy fashion. That was it. Another triptych was called something like 'man approaching death' (I've tried to find out online what the actual titles are but I've had no luck. If anyone knows which ones I'm talking about, ping me). Each canvas had a fat black curvy line that got longer (or shorter depending on which one you looked at first), a squiggly blob of a primary colour (red, blue or yellow) and some black-grey grass-like scribbles along the bottom. Mona and I sat down to look at this last triptych, because we wanted to rest our feet rather than because we were struck with awe. I started out being really negative about it, saying how if THAT was art, anyone could do it, and that there was no craftsmanship in it, so don't even get me STARTED on the hermit one!

But then we kept looking at this the Approaching Death triptych (I'm just gonna make up a title, seeing as I can't remember the real one), and gradually we started to make sense of it. I still think that any six-year-old could have painted it from a purely physical point-of-view, but she sure couldn't have invested it with the symbolism that Miró did. I suppose that's what makes it a Piece of Art. Nearby a few of his sketches and preliminaries for this triptych were on display, which proved that he had actually given some thought to what he wanted to display on the canvas. So I started out absolutely hating it, and I ended up kinda liking it, because by discussing it we had actually managed to find some meaning in it. But! I still totally detest the hermit triptych, because THAT makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever. So there.

Oh and downstairs there was an exhibition of other artist's works - can't remember if they were there because they were inspired by Miró. There was one, which was essentially a lot of black stuff on off-white background. The black part looked like a square rubber eraser does after you've used it a week or two, and the one corner is starting to wear away. It was called 'Patience', and it made me see red. I feel about this painting the exact same way I feel about that hermit triptych - there may be ideas, but there is no visible skill to it, and it's a combination of the two that really attract me to a painting. Witness Dalí's 'The Hallucinogenic Toreador' that Giorgia and I saw in Florida. I will never forget that. So many layers, not only of paint, but of symbolism and homages, sheer imagination and beauty. Loved it, loved it, loved it!

When we got out, the sun was slowly on its way down, and we walked up to the Palau Nacional, from where you can look down the cascading steps to the Font Mágica (big fountain, that unfortunately we didn't get to see in action) further on to Plaza de España. We sat on the top of the steps for a while, until we decided we'd better get moving or our legs would never again obey. Got a metro from Plaza de España home to Passeig de Grácia. Went to another Lonely Planet-recommended restaurant 2 minutes from Casa Batlló, which turned out to be excellent. The sangría was loooovely!! And cheap too! We had planned to get up early Friday morning, in order to beat the crowds at be at Casa Batlló the minute it would open at 9am.

Stay tuned for Part IV, in which it is revealed whether we manage to get out of bed in time or not.......

Barcelona Trip, 16-20 May - Part II

... in which we leave Gaudí and go for dinner. And then we go back to Gaudí.

Being in awe makes you hungry. So we checked out our Lonely Planet (the Barcelona only version from 2006) to see if they could recommend somewhere nice on our way home from Park Güell, which was a good half hour or more from our hostel. And they could. We wanted tapas! We quickly put together choices involving a lot of meat and heavy stuff (tortilla, albondigas, croquette etc), and so we wanted something green to balance things out. And for the record, it wasn't only Mona who wanted that....

Anyway, the menu had something called 'ensaladilla rusa', which it said was vegetable salad. Sounds good, let's get that! The first thing the waiter (very nice guy, I think I scored some points doing my best to speak Spanish with him) brought us was this mayo-smothered dish with a single wee bread stick poking up in the middle.

At first we thought that maybe it was a complimentary dish or something. Then we asked the waiter. 'That's your ensaladilla rusa, girls'. Oh! He must have gotten such a good laugh at the looks on our faces at that moment. We certainly laughed ourselves silly. So, no greens for us! But lovely lovely tapas with lovely beer :)

Next day, Thursday, we got up around 8ish, and got ready to go find some breakfast. I ended up having a waffle smothered in chocolate, which turned out not to be near as sickeningly sweet and heavy as the first bite had led me to believe. Yumyum! After that, we set the course for La Sagrada Familia. What can I say? It's a bustling building site - you can totally see why Gaudí himself said it would take 200 years to build! Nothing comes off a conveyor belt! The sheer monumental attention to detail, the craftsmanship and the knowledge that went into planning everything is just astonishing. You could spend a day here, checking out all the meanings of every statue or inscription, even though there's so little of it finished. Mona and I have already decided that we're coming back once it's completed in 2020-something.

Here's a picture of the cathedral from the Passion facade. There are going to be 3 facades, dealing with the birth, the death and the resurrection of Christ. The first two are done - the Nativity and the Passion of Christ. The Passion facade looms like a massive cave out of the belly of the building. Fro some reason it reminded me of mammoths as well - probably the trunk-like columns.

The inside is mostly a mass of scaffolding, but you can get an idea of how huge the space is going to be. They are building the central and side naves at the moment. I just want to take a moment to apologise in advance if I get some of this church part terminology wrong. I have no real idea what I'm talking about, hehe. So there. Anyway, here's a picture from the inside.

You can go up into the bell towers on either finished facade - we went up on the Passion facade side. I don't have a problem with heights usually, but this journey I'm pretty sure I will only make once, even if it was very worthwhile, and I'd recommend it to anyone who doesn't have actual acrophobia (ha! I had to look that up :D) You take a lift up to a certain point app. 60 m above the ground (the tallest tower in a pair is 100 m tall). You can then walk upstairs a bit in the other tower, and back down either all the way on your own two feet or you can get back in the lift. We chose the stairs.

Now the towers, being bell towers, are hollow inside, and the outer wall is full of holes (purely intentional ones at that). Everything is solid stone, including the stair, so it's not so much that it doesn't feel safe. It's just that it's very narrow and you keep getting wind gusts in the face, which meant I went very slowly, even if I knew I couldn't actually fall out of the tower, unless I made a real determined effort to do so. The views were fantastic, and we absolutely loved it, but I also really liked it when we came back down. Here is a picture of one of the lovely fruit mosaic clusters on the side nave:

There was a cleaning guy who overtook us and vice versa several times. The last time he was having a wee break in an alcove and he saw me fumbling my way down clutching the rail and asked me why I was afraid, and I didn't know the words to explain. Once we were down we went out on the Nativity facade side, which is chock full of little details, where the Passion facade is more stark and sparsely decorated, but no less majestic:

Stay tuned for Part III, in which we go looking at pictures at an exhibition.....