by Layla
I would start this blog with an apology for a fortnight of silence and blame it on our new glamorous lifestyle, but really my parents' 10 day visit, mostly involving the receiving and building of flatpack furniture (hope they didn't think they were here for a holiday!), Roz's departure for Christmas in London, and an all-consuming fight with rubbish internet company Verizon (resulting in no internet til a couple of days ago) distracted me. On the latter point, it is fascinating how difficult it is to get on the internet here, and very much an advert for the free market. In the UK, there are about 30 broadband companies, all competing on price, speed, customer service, and quality. In DC there are two. Both are expensive, slow, and have appalling customer service. But the population has nowhere else to go, so both continue to thrive despite their inadequacies. When we told people we were seeking internet connection, every one of them had a horror story about one or other of the two companies to impart, and told us to brace ourselves. However I didn't quite imagine the month-long hassle that awaited us. Even after we'd managed to get an account and received a happy little email telling us we were now connected, we sat there, gazing hopelessly at the flashing light on the modem, and awaiting the technician, one hand holding a non-stop phonecall to customer service. On the first day that the technician was supposed to come between 12 and 4, he didn't (but claimed he had). On the second day he didn't come between 12 and 4, but bizarrely at 10:30 at night. I almost had to receive him in my pyjamas! But all of that is a longwinded way of saying hooray, we have internet!
And we almost have a bank account (though it took a discussion with one of the very top people in the whole bank for it to happen, and we still have a 10 working days wait for our bank cards). And we may nearly have iPhone accounts. (But that is unclear). Utilities do not seem to be DC's strong point... But we do have seven lovely bookcases, a cool new sofa and dining table, a cinema projector and a ping pong table. Most of our art is on the walls. And we've figured out how to have a log fire. So life is frankly quite pleasant.
I am not much further in acquiring a job - I have two potential options in the pipeline, one at a university and one at a think tank. I've been talking to more people, learning things, expanding my CV from 3 pages to 12 (somebody suggested I should aim for 50, but I really couldn't) and being very delightful, but things do tend to wind down around Christmas. So I've been writing a paper on international policies for disclosing medical errors to patients (as you do), taking my parents out for posh breakfasts in fancy local restaurants, attending multiple Jewish events (including a fab storytelling one at a quirky synagogue) in honour of Hannukah, and meeting a visiting London friend for tea as though it were Camberwell (well, a posh bit). Roz and I went to a great NASA event organised by the International Space University alumni association in a cool little bar called the Science Club. And to a LOT of glamorous Christmas parties related to Roz's work, including three in one night! Indeed, the schmoozing has been so great that I have been obliged to get business cards printed, even though I do not have any business to speak of. When I was in Boston, some of you may recall that the first thing people said in any sort of social situation was 'what lab do you work in?'. In DC, it's 'Do you have a business card?' This is rhetorical, and my lack of one so disconcerted people that I was obliged to acquire some and now hand them out willy nilly.
Christmas was spent with a walk in the sun to the White House, hot chocolate in the posh W Hotel, and an incredulous grin that we live here. Last night we hosted our first dinner party. And now Roz is off work for 5 days and we are planning a 'staycation' to explore our new home.
Saturday 31 December 2011
Sunday 11 December 2011
In which Roz and Layla schmooze, accelerate, and learn fast
By Layla
It’s really starting to feel like we live here now. Today we went ice skating at the outdoor rink at the Sculpture Garden. It was reminiscent of a couple of years ago when, on our honeymoon in NYC, we held hands, glided across the ice, and together imagined a life when we lived in America. A very funny feeling to realize we made it come true. We’ve bought some furniture (not arrived yet), we’re getting to know the local restaurants, and we’re settling into a routine. For me, this involves going to interesting health events, meeting people, and generally schmoozing. Someone from the World Bank this week told me that I shouldn’t rest til I’d had coffee with at least 50 people. I’m probably at about 15: oh dear. But what is becoming increasingly clear is that Washington is a town of connections – it’s very, very important who you know, and everyone’s raison d’etre seems to be building networks.
Presumably related to this, another DC quirk is the practice of having two events per evening. So if someone invites you to dinner at 7, it is reasonable to assume that you’ll be leaving at 9, so that you and your hosts can head off to your respective ‘second sittings’. We hadn’t realized our faux pas in scheduling one social event per evening. Fortunately we’re getting with the scene and tonight we have two – a dinner party with the local lesbians I previously mentioned, and then the gay foreign affairs people’s festive party. Indeed, it is a gay social weekend for us, with a brunch with a lesbian couple tomorrow, and dinner with Roz’s book blog boys tomorrow night. Bizarre.
All of this fast paced life makes us worry – when do we have the time to become clever? By the time a DC-ite turns up at work, he’s done some exercise, and read the Washington Post and Financial Times, is up to date with his blackberry emails (of which when Roz wakens she typically finds about 70 since she closed her eyes), and is raring to go. At what time do people wake up? I can’t imagine. But not knowing what’s in these papers is a social embarrassment. The chat is typically about the day’s politics and if you can’t hold your own, I get the impression that you don’t belong in DC. It’s a different pace, there are different rules, and different expectations. Hopefully we’ll catch up soon.
Of course it’s not quite so frantic for me. Which is why my Kindle reassures me that I’m already 17% into Poor Economics, the clever tome du jour. As Roz dashes off to work, I potter around, doing the washing up etc, and then head out for my day’s entertainment. Which usually means jumping on some shop’s wifi to check my emails, having coffee with someone interesting who pertains to health and development, and attending various health/development events run by think tanks and universities. This week I enjoyed a lecture by a Harvard professor at Georgetown University on the history of smallpox eradication on Monday, a half-day conference on global health cooperation in the BRICS countries on Tuesday, an award event for ‘Commitment to Development’ on Wednesday, a World Bank meeting on Thursday, and a conference on the strategic power of vaccines on Friday. And of course some glamorous events at Roz’s work (where I am disconcerted to hear that my conduct and actions are being scrutinized and reported to Roz’s boss…). And we have had our first visit from someone from the UK, one of Roz’s previous colleagues. We went out for tapas. Georgetown really is excellent for restaurants. We also tried another 20 of them this week. I particularly liked the Ethiopian restaurant we went to last night, though amusingly the food is better at Camberwell’s version.
As I muse upon whether to apply for university, think tank, NGO, or multilateral organisation jobs, I am keeping myself occupied by becoming a ‘Visiting Scholar’ at Johns Hopkins University, a title dignified and distinguished enough to make me feel I ought to buy a cape and a monocle. This will involve a long commute to Baltimore a few times a week, but have the benefit of enabling me to churn out some publications on subjects pertaining to patient safety and having a glamorous affiliation til I figure out what I’m doing properly. It should be good fun. And all that commuting will be helpful as I try to finish off Poor Economics…
It’s really starting to feel like we live here now. Today we went ice skating at the outdoor rink at the Sculpture Garden. It was reminiscent of a couple of years ago when, on our honeymoon in NYC, we held hands, glided across the ice, and together imagined a life when we lived in America. A very funny feeling to realize we made it come true. We’ve bought some furniture (not arrived yet), we’re getting to know the local restaurants, and we’re settling into a routine. For me, this involves going to interesting health events, meeting people, and generally schmoozing. Someone from the World Bank this week told me that I shouldn’t rest til I’d had coffee with at least 50 people. I’m probably at about 15: oh dear. But what is becoming increasingly clear is that Washington is a town of connections – it’s very, very important who you know, and everyone’s raison d’etre seems to be building networks.
Presumably related to this, another DC quirk is the practice of having two events per evening. So if someone invites you to dinner at 7, it is reasonable to assume that you’ll be leaving at 9, so that you and your hosts can head off to your respective ‘second sittings’. We hadn’t realized our faux pas in scheduling one social event per evening. Fortunately we’re getting with the scene and tonight we have two – a dinner party with the local lesbians I previously mentioned, and then the gay foreign affairs people’s festive party. Indeed, it is a gay social weekend for us, with a brunch with a lesbian couple tomorrow, and dinner with Roz’s book blog boys tomorrow night. Bizarre.
All of this fast paced life makes us worry – when do we have the time to become clever? By the time a DC-ite turns up at work, he’s done some exercise, and read the Washington Post and Financial Times, is up to date with his blackberry emails (of which when Roz wakens she typically finds about 70 since she closed her eyes), and is raring to go. At what time do people wake up? I can’t imagine. But not knowing what’s in these papers is a social embarrassment. The chat is typically about the day’s politics and if you can’t hold your own, I get the impression that you don’t belong in DC. It’s a different pace, there are different rules, and different expectations. Hopefully we’ll catch up soon.
Of course it’s not quite so frantic for me. Which is why my Kindle reassures me that I’m already 17% into Poor Economics, the clever tome du jour. As Roz dashes off to work, I potter around, doing the washing up etc, and then head out for my day’s entertainment. Which usually means jumping on some shop’s wifi to check my emails, having coffee with someone interesting who pertains to health and development, and attending various health/development events run by think tanks and universities. This week I enjoyed a lecture by a Harvard professor at Georgetown University on the history of smallpox eradication on Monday, a half-day conference on global health cooperation in the BRICS countries on Tuesday, an award event for ‘Commitment to Development’ on Wednesday, a World Bank meeting on Thursday, and a conference on the strategic power of vaccines on Friday. And of course some glamorous events at Roz’s work (where I am disconcerted to hear that my conduct and actions are being scrutinized and reported to Roz’s boss…). And we have had our first visit from someone from the UK, one of Roz’s previous colleagues. We went out for tapas. Georgetown really is excellent for restaurants. We also tried another 20 of them this week. I particularly liked the Ethiopian restaurant we went to last night, though amusingly the food is better at Camberwell’s version.
As I muse upon whether to apply for university, think tank, NGO, or multilateral organisation jobs, I am keeping myself occupied by becoming a ‘Visiting Scholar’ at Johns Hopkins University, a title dignified and distinguished enough to make me feel I ought to buy a cape and a monocle. This will involve a long commute to Baltimore a few times a week, but have the benefit of enabling me to churn out some publications on subjects pertaining to patient safety and having a glamorous affiliation til I figure out what I’m doing properly. It should be good fun. And all that commuting will be helpful as I try to finish off Poor Economics…
Monday 5 December 2011
In which Layla and Roz make their first friends, see their first DC storytelling, and explore new areas
by Layla
Ah, it is always a great sorrow when a weekend draws to a close, but particularly for me, as I have had a lovely weekend of Roz time and Monday approaches with her going off to work and me seeking purpose in my life… but that’s still a while away.
We had a very nice weekend. It started with Roz going off on a run to Capitol Hill, still overexcited by the fun of seeing all the sights of Washington on one’s running route. I tarted up my CV and had a sneaky read of my book. And then we headed out to Dupont Circle, to meet our very first potential non-work-related friends, a boy who writes a book blog introduced to Roz through her London book club circles, and his boyfriend. And we had a really lovely lunch. Upon sitting down, book blog boy produced a bag from Kramer Books, crammed with six volumes – it turned out he’d bought six books for Roz, his top recommendations covering the different aspects of life in America. We were both quite overwhelmed by both the thoughtfulness and generosity. We had a cheery lunch afterwards, chatting about all sorts of things (yet more clever people with exciting jobs), and eventually left with promises of meeting up again.
We turned around and ran straight into a lesbian couple we’d met at a party on our recce visit last month, on their way back from a visit to the women’s art museum. Delightfully stereotypical, and it made us feel very local. And so we headed to Georgetown for some unsuccessful furniture shopping and some more successful chocolate shopping…
That night was our first big Washington expedition – to a storytelling event at the other side of the city. I peered nerdily at the maps until eventually Roz rolled her eyes, threw me in a cab, and soon we emerged at a Hackney-esque area, home to the Atlas Arts Centre and our storytelling night. Other than having to down beers after buying them, only to be told we couldn’t drink in the theatre, it was a brilliant night. The eight stories were all winners from previous storytelling nights throughout the year. Immediately afterwards, we looked up the next one and booked it up!
After dinner we decided to branch out from the ubiquitous Italian and venture to the local Indian restaurant, Taj Mahal. And very nice and cheery it was too, with lovely staff and pleasant food. We sauntered home afterwards, feeling very pleased with ourselves.
This morning the sun was still out and after some pfaffing, breakfast, CV polishing, and fighting with the internet, we headed out on the Circulator bus to Logan Circle to continue our doomed hunt for furniture. But first we needed fuel – in the form of Masa 14 restaurant’s bottomless brunch. Over mimosas, ‘breakfast pizza’, ‘home fries’, and other such tasty morsels, we gathered strength and then headed out to splutter at the cost of sofas and long for a DFS equivalent.
Still lacking in furniture, we took a bus and metro to Friendship Heights, home to lots of big department stores such as Bloomingdales, and also – oh joy – TK Maxx, where we bought lots of items of the sheet/towel/pot variety before hopping sofa-less onto a bus that took us straight home. Excellent.
It’s tempting to stay at home tonight but we haven’t quite mastered shopping yet… and a local Lebanese restaurant is calling…
Ah, it is always a great sorrow when a weekend draws to a close, but particularly for me, as I have had a lovely weekend of Roz time and Monday approaches with her going off to work and me seeking purpose in my life… but that’s still a while away.
We had a very nice weekend. It started with Roz going off on a run to Capitol Hill, still overexcited by the fun of seeing all the sights of Washington on one’s running route. I tarted up my CV and had a sneaky read of my book. And then we headed out to Dupont Circle, to meet our very first potential non-work-related friends, a boy who writes a book blog introduced to Roz through her London book club circles, and his boyfriend. And we had a really lovely lunch. Upon sitting down, book blog boy produced a bag from Kramer Books, crammed with six volumes – it turned out he’d bought six books for Roz, his top recommendations covering the different aspects of life in America. We were both quite overwhelmed by both the thoughtfulness and generosity. We had a cheery lunch afterwards, chatting about all sorts of things (yet more clever people with exciting jobs), and eventually left with promises of meeting up again.
We turned around and ran straight into a lesbian couple we’d met at a party on our recce visit last month, on their way back from a visit to the women’s art museum. Delightfully stereotypical, and it made us feel very local. And so we headed to Georgetown for some unsuccessful furniture shopping and some more successful chocolate shopping…
That night was our first big Washington expedition – to a storytelling event at the other side of the city. I peered nerdily at the maps until eventually Roz rolled her eyes, threw me in a cab, and soon we emerged at a Hackney-esque area, home to the Atlas Arts Centre and our storytelling night. Other than having to down beers after buying them, only to be told we couldn’t drink in the theatre, it was a brilliant night. The eight stories were all winners from previous storytelling nights throughout the year. Immediately afterwards, we looked up the next one and booked it up!
After dinner we decided to branch out from the ubiquitous Italian and venture to the local Indian restaurant, Taj Mahal. And very nice and cheery it was too, with lovely staff and pleasant food. We sauntered home afterwards, feeling very pleased with ourselves.
This morning the sun was still out and after some pfaffing, breakfast, CV polishing, and fighting with the internet, we headed out on the Circulator bus to Logan Circle to continue our doomed hunt for furniture. But first we needed fuel – in the form of Masa 14 restaurant’s bottomless brunch. Over mimosas, ‘breakfast pizza’, ‘home fries’, and other such tasty morsels, we gathered strength and then headed out to splutter at the cost of sofas and long for a DFS equivalent.
Still lacking in furniture, we took a bus and metro to Friendship Heights, home to lots of big department stores such as Bloomingdales, and also – oh joy – TK Maxx, where we bought lots of items of the sheet/towel/pot variety before hopping sofa-less onto a bus that took us straight home. Excellent.
It’s tempting to stay at home tonight but we haven’t quite mastered shopping yet… and a local Lebanese restaurant is calling…
In which Layla and Roz spend their first DC week in glamorous and less glamorous manners
by Layla
Friday was our one-week anniversary of living in Washington DC. It’s been a funny week. I’ve not been quite sure what to do with myself. Tuesday was a particularly odd day. The sun vanished behind a raincloud. Roz went off to work, and I called my parents, then her mother, then had the landlady fix a couple of things in the flat, then went on a long trek to ‘Target’ and ‘Bed, Bath and Beyond’ in Columbia Heights to buy an array of household items. Typically, I got indecisive and stressed and came back with a rather random array of items as opposed to the sensible list my dear wife had presented to me. And when I say ‘came back’, I mean ‘was driven back by a random stranger’ – when I asked the cashier about the best way back to Georgetown, the posh woman behind me in the queue overheard – she lived practically next door and offered me a lift. On our ride home she pointed out sights of interest and discussed her life as a journalist, covering warzones, while I mused upon the very clever nature of everyone I meet in DC, and my relief that she probably was not going to abduct me…
With Roz out at a work dinner, I prepared for a quiet night in and started feeling a little morose about my possible interminable future as a housewife, but then she called and said she had an hour to spare – so we both dashed to the cool little bar in Kramer Books and drank wine and caught up with our respective days. Very cheery. Then we both pottered off to our events – hers a fancy dinner with glamorous people to discuss something intelligent; me to the late night shops to acquire some coffee for our new cafetiere. But she had found me the contact details of a ‘spouse’ of a colleague who had a proper job, so I started to have hope that life may hold something for me more sensible than housewifeliness (at which, to use an American phrase, I suck).
The next couple of days passed more cheerily, with me making lots of health world contacts, going to an interesting presentation by the World Bank of their new development report on gender equality at the Centre for Global Development (a great think tank near Dupont Circle) and a ‘congressional briefing’ on integrating family planning and HIV services in developing countries, in one of the glamorous, marble-clad government buildings, right next door to the Capitol building (at which I asked a question about whether there were any disadvantages to the approach they suggested, which resulted in my receiving dirty looks from the entire audience, and the panel staring at me, stumped).
We’ve also been doing some evening socializing – a lovely trip to the cinema that’s just a hop, skip and a jump from our flat on Wednesday (My Week With Marilyn – quite enjoyable), and a brilliant St Andrews Day celebration with the Scottish government and various fancies on Thursday, at a museum dedicated to women’s art, randomly. My parents, having heard about our invitation to this decidedly glamorous affair, had immediately ordered sashes in the family tartan for both of us, and we had spent a week waiting on tenterhooks to see if they would arrive. Sure enough, Roz’s PA extracted them from the post room in the nick of time, and we looked excellent. It was a cheery night and our first time meeting a few people nice enough to hope they might become our friends…
Yesterday, I was up early to meet the delightful and intelligent director of global health for another think tank – we had a lovely, and fascinating conversation about global health in the US over lunch, until I realized I had to leave for an event that was so very opposite that it left me feeling entirely confused as to my identity: the official spouses’ coffee morning. This took place in a mansion just outside of town that made me fear Roz ever being invited to anyone else’s house and realize that we might have lived there rather than our little Georgetown flat… The spouses in attendance (9 women and a solitary man, clutching a small daughter for protection) were very nice, but the conversation was absolutely dominated by the discussion of children, of which each attendee had a few (some present; the others mostly at the same school). Children were so dominant in their identities that four of the ‘spouses’ sported gold necklaces proclaiming ‘MUM’ in various scripts. The absence of such a necklace around my neck was rapidly noted by all present.
People tried to engage me in conversation but when I embarrassedly admitted that (1) I did not have children (nor was I desperately trying to acquire some), and (2) I was intending to seek a job, and furthermore, not even a designated ‘spouse’ job, the conversation dried up. I sat there awkwardly, sipping my cup of tea and wondering how to extricate myself from this odd little parallel universe of homework and sports days.
Fortunately one of the spouses was driving home in my direction and gave me a lift (the event clearly finishing in time for the end of the school day). I hopped off at the school gates, walked home through the woods, then up to Roz’s work to snigger at her massive office and have drinks with the boss and his wife, and then – oh joys – it was the weekend!
We had dinner in a pleasant but unremarkable Italian restaurant called Il Ricci, then popped in for a drink in our rather bizarre local pub/restaurant Mie N Yu where we had an unpleasant cocktail and a more pleasant glass of wine amid weird Thai/Turkish décor, a bellydancer, and an incongruous TV showing a basketball game. A fun and quirky end to a fun and quirky week. I wonder what next week will bring…
Friday was our one-week anniversary of living in Washington DC. It’s been a funny week. I’ve not been quite sure what to do with myself. Tuesday was a particularly odd day. The sun vanished behind a raincloud. Roz went off to work, and I called my parents, then her mother, then had the landlady fix a couple of things in the flat, then went on a long trek to ‘Target’ and ‘Bed, Bath and Beyond’ in Columbia Heights to buy an array of household items. Typically, I got indecisive and stressed and came back with a rather random array of items as opposed to the sensible list my dear wife had presented to me. And when I say ‘came back’, I mean ‘was driven back by a random stranger’ – when I asked the cashier about the best way back to Georgetown, the posh woman behind me in the queue overheard – she lived practically next door and offered me a lift. On our ride home she pointed out sights of interest and discussed her life as a journalist, covering warzones, while I mused upon the very clever nature of everyone I meet in DC, and my relief that she probably was not going to abduct me…
With Roz out at a work dinner, I prepared for a quiet night in and started feeling a little morose about my possible interminable future as a housewife, but then she called and said she had an hour to spare – so we both dashed to the cool little bar in Kramer Books and drank wine and caught up with our respective days. Very cheery. Then we both pottered off to our events – hers a fancy dinner with glamorous people to discuss something intelligent; me to the late night shops to acquire some coffee for our new cafetiere. But she had found me the contact details of a ‘spouse’ of a colleague who had a proper job, so I started to have hope that life may hold something for me more sensible than housewifeliness (at which, to use an American phrase, I suck).
The next couple of days passed more cheerily, with me making lots of health world contacts, going to an interesting presentation by the World Bank of their new development report on gender equality at the Centre for Global Development (a great think tank near Dupont Circle) and a ‘congressional briefing’ on integrating family planning and HIV services in developing countries, in one of the glamorous, marble-clad government buildings, right next door to the Capitol building (at which I asked a question about whether there were any disadvantages to the approach they suggested, which resulted in my receiving dirty looks from the entire audience, and the panel staring at me, stumped).
We’ve also been doing some evening socializing – a lovely trip to the cinema that’s just a hop, skip and a jump from our flat on Wednesday (My Week With Marilyn – quite enjoyable), and a brilliant St Andrews Day celebration with the Scottish government and various fancies on Thursday, at a museum dedicated to women’s art, randomly. My parents, having heard about our invitation to this decidedly glamorous affair, had immediately ordered sashes in the family tartan for both of us, and we had spent a week waiting on tenterhooks to see if they would arrive. Sure enough, Roz’s PA extracted them from the post room in the nick of time, and we looked excellent. It was a cheery night and our first time meeting a few people nice enough to hope they might become our friends…
Yesterday, I was up early to meet the delightful and intelligent director of global health for another think tank – we had a lovely, and fascinating conversation about global health in the US over lunch, until I realized I had to leave for an event that was so very opposite that it left me feeling entirely confused as to my identity: the official spouses’ coffee morning. This took place in a mansion just outside of town that made me fear Roz ever being invited to anyone else’s house and realize that we might have lived there rather than our little Georgetown flat… The spouses in attendance (9 women and a solitary man, clutching a small daughter for protection) were very nice, but the conversation was absolutely dominated by the discussion of children, of which each attendee had a few (some present; the others mostly at the same school). Children were so dominant in their identities that four of the ‘spouses’ sported gold necklaces proclaiming ‘MUM’ in various scripts. The absence of such a necklace around my neck was rapidly noted by all present.
People tried to engage me in conversation but when I embarrassedly admitted that (1) I did not have children (nor was I desperately trying to acquire some), and (2) I was intending to seek a job, and furthermore, not even a designated ‘spouse’ job, the conversation dried up. I sat there awkwardly, sipping my cup of tea and wondering how to extricate myself from this odd little parallel universe of homework and sports days.
Fortunately one of the spouses was driving home in my direction and gave me a lift (the event clearly finishing in time for the end of the school day). I hopped off at the school gates, walked home through the woods, then up to Roz’s work to snigger at her massive office and have drinks with the boss and his wife, and then – oh joys – it was the weekend!
We had dinner in a pleasant but unremarkable Italian restaurant called Il Ricci, then popped in for a drink in our rather bizarre local pub/restaurant Mie N Yu where we had an unpleasant cocktail and a more pleasant glass of wine amid weird Thai/Turkish décor, a bellydancer, and an incongruous TV showing a basketball game. A fun and quirky end to a fun and quirky week. I wonder what next week will bring…
Tuesday 29 November 2011
In which Layla and Roz move to Washington DC
by Layla
It’s a funny feeling to leave one home in one country and travel towards another. It was as though we were in home limbo, placeless as we flew across the Atlantic. But then, with mounting excitement, we leapt from the taxi, and breathed a sigh of relief as we found that the home we’d chosen was indeed as nice as we hoped we remembered.
A vase of flowers awaited us at the door – from Roz’s friend Ali. And then, upon opening the door, a bottle of wine on our new dining table; pale velvety sofas; a comfortable bed; furniture galore, and furthermore, our ‘float’ (i.e. cutlery, towels, toasters etc – lent to us til our own arrive by ship) nicely distributed around the flat. We quickly put away our stuff (Roz revelling in smugness at her remembering to pack hangers), and went out to buy a few essential groceries. It was the day after thanksgiving, and the official start of the Christmas season. We walked along the bustling street to the festive tones of buskers to the exceptionally posh Dean and Delucca’s deli, where we spent about a million pounds on a little bread and cheese. And walking back to our flat, we marvelled at how we could possibly live in such a posh uber-Hampstead-y area.
Tempted to fall asleep, we soon forced ourselves out of our flat again – Roz had made reservations at an Italian restaurant. It was 2 minutes from our flat and delightful, but for the screeching violinist. Unclear whether this poor man would be acceptable to people not suffering from jetlag, but in our jetlagged state, we knew we’d have to leave. Luckily two seconds down the road was Il Canale, another lovely Italian restaurant, where we shared a pizza and toasted our new life with prosecco, and propped our eyes open as long as we could!
Up ridiculously early the next day, with a brilliant blue sky, we walked down the hill, a 5 minute walk past the canal to the river. It has a nice little landscaped park, and we walked along it, past restaurants and cocktail bars, and again pinched ourselves, trying to understand if this could really be us. The walkway goes on for miles, down to Capitol Hill. But after 10 minutes or so, we popped into the local café, Baked and Wired, and then – finding it lovely but more of a coffee than a breakfast place – proceeded to yet another posh and delightful venue, Leopold’s, for a tasty first breakfast in Georgetown.
Having purchased a few bits and bobs in a fancy furniture shop, and attempted to call our parents from the dodgy internet of the local bookshop, we returned home in time to receive our online shopping from Safeway, and then headed out for a stroll along the canal, followed by J Edgar at the cinema that’s a 5 minute walk from our new flat. Nice.
After the cinema we went out for dinner at yet another fancy Italian restaurant 5 minutes from our flat. This one is favoured by celebrities and presidents, and it was delicious, if rather mad with Christmas decorations. An excellent first full day in Washington.
On Sunday, we decided to venture out of Georgetown. First, Roz went for a run along the riverside, all the way past the Washington Monument, White House, and Capitol Hill, and came back feeling pleased with herself, and told me to change my clothes as it was practically summer. Sure enough, it was t-shirt weather. We set off on a walk to the weekly lovely farmers’ market at Dupont Circle, where we bought some cheese and sampled lots of tasty things, and then to Logan Circle where we visited furniture shops and had lunch in a delightful café called Cork – the food was amazing, and we each had a ‘mimosa flight’ which means three small drinks. Pleasing. We walked home and were happy to find it wasn’t very far away.
Later, Roz went for a massage to help regain serenity in anticipation of her new job starting the following day while I did some shopping, then we went next door to Barnes and Noble (I’m in denial about it closing in December) to hear former Time editor Walter Issacson talking about his Steve Jobs biography – really interesting.
Afterwards we went home, feeling very sleepy. Roz cooked us our first dinner at home in Georgetown, and then we fought our exhaustion to walk up the hill to a wine bar we’d heard of, Bistrot Lepic. We were rewarded with a funny, quirky little bar, champagne, and cheese. And so endeth our first weekend in DC.
Today we both went to Roz’s work for a few induction things, then I left to go to a talk by one of the key players in USAID about the US government’s global health strategy, during which I was too shy to talk to people and was most irate with myself, but it was an interesting event, and they had quite a good lunch… then I went to the Social Security office to get my lost number, which will facilitate lots of utilities etc. I rewarded myself with Starbucks and their free wifi. As I pottered home, with the details of various coffee mornings for ‘spouses’ in my bag, I worried that I could get used to this. Note to self: get out to work!
It’s a funny feeling to leave one home in one country and travel towards another. It was as though we were in home limbo, placeless as we flew across the Atlantic. But then, with mounting excitement, we leapt from the taxi, and breathed a sigh of relief as we found that the home we’d chosen was indeed as nice as we hoped we remembered.
A vase of flowers awaited us at the door – from Roz’s friend Ali. And then, upon opening the door, a bottle of wine on our new dining table; pale velvety sofas; a comfortable bed; furniture galore, and furthermore, our ‘float’ (i.e. cutlery, towels, toasters etc – lent to us til our own arrive by ship) nicely distributed around the flat. We quickly put away our stuff (Roz revelling in smugness at her remembering to pack hangers), and went out to buy a few essential groceries. It was the day after thanksgiving, and the official start of the Christmas season. We walked along the bustling street to the festive tones of buskers to the exceptionally posh Dean and Delucca’s deli, where we spent about a million pounds on a little bread and cheese. And walking back to our flat, we marvelled at how we could possibly live in such a posh uber-Hampstead-y area.
Tempted to fall asleep, we soon forced ourselves out of our flat again – Roz had made reservations at an Italian restaurant. It was 2 minutes from our flat and delightful, but for the screeching violinist. Unclear whether this poor man would be acceptable to people not suffering from jetlag, but in our jetlagged state, we knew we’d have to leave. Luckily two seconds down the road was Il Canale, another lovely Italian restaurant, where we shared a pizza and toasted our new life with prosecco, and propped our eyes open as long as we could!
Up ridiculously early the next day, with a brilliant blue sky, we walked down the hill, a 5 minute walk past the canal to the river. It has a nice little landscaped park, and we walked along it, past restaurants and cocktail bars, and again pinched ourselves, trying to understand if this could really be us. The walkway goes on for miles, down to Capitol Hill. But after 10 minutes or so, we popped into the local café, Baked and Wired, and then – finding it lovely but more of a coffee than a breakfast place – proceeded to yet another posh and delightful venue, Leopold’s, for a tasty first breakfast in Georgetown.
Having purchased a few bits and bobs in a fancy furniture shop, and attempted to call our parents from the dodgy internet of the local bookshop, we returned home in time to receive our online shopping from Safeway, and then headed out for a stroll along the canal, followed by J Edgar at the cinema that’s a 5 minute walk from our new flat. Nice.
After the cinema we went out for dinner at yet another fancy Italian restaurant 5 minutes from our flat. This one is favoured by celebrities and presidents, and it was delicious, if rather mad with Christmas decorations. An excellent first full day in Washington.
On Sunday, we decided to venture out of Georgetown. First, Roz went for a run along the riverside, all the way past the Washington Monument, White House, and Capitol Hill, and came back feeling pleased with herself, and told me to change my clothes as it was practically summer. Sure enough, it was t-shirt weather. We set off on a walk to the weekly lovely farmers’ market at Dupont Circle, where we bought some cheese and sampled lots of tasty things, and then to Logan Circle where we visited furniture shops and had lunch in a delightful café called Cork – the food was amazing, and we each had a ‘mimosa flight’ which means three small drinks. Pleasing. We walked home and were happy to find it wasn’t very far away.
Later, Roz went for a massage to help regain serenity in anticipation of her new job starting the following day while I did some shopping, then we went next door to Barnes and Noble (I’m in denial about it closing in December) to hear former Time editor Walter Issacson talking about his Steve Jobs biography – really interesting.
Afterwards we went home, feeling very sleepy. Roz cooked us our first dinner at home in Georgetown, and then we fought our exhaustion to walk up the hill to a wine bar we’d heard of, Bistrot Lepic. We were rewarded with a funny, quirky little bar, champagne, and cheese. And so endeth our first weekend in DC.
Today we both went to Roz’s work for a few induction things, then I left to go to a talk by one of the key players in USAID about the US government’s global health strategy, during which I was too shy to talk to people and was most irate with myself, but it was an interesting event, and they had quite a good lunch… then I went to the Social Security office to get my lost number, which will facilitate lots of utilities etc. I rewarded myself with Starbucks and their free wifi. As I pottered home, with the details of various coffee mornings for ‘spouses’ in my bag, I worried that I could get used to this. Note to self: get out to work!
Wednesday 2 November 2011
In which Layla and Roz hunt for a new home in Georgetown
by Layla
With Roz off to work, I got my first taste of being a lady of leisure. I pottered around the hotel, then wandered down Connecticut Avenue to Dupont Circle, where I was to meet a director of global health policy at a think tank. She was lovely, though alas no jobs are available at the moment. But we had a really useful discussion about my options in DC, and some interesting mental health chat. Afterwards, somewhat confused about what to do, I gravitated to a little lunch place and read my book over salad.
I then decided to walk to Georgetown. I had scheduled three house viewings that afternoon, and I wanted to get there early to try to get a bit more of a feel for the area. Walking along M street, I turned left, and after a block, found myself crossing a bridge over the canal. The canal is quite picturesque and has a walking path that apparently extends for almost 200 miles, into Maryland. Nice. I kept walking down the hill for another couple of blocks and found myself under a flyover, and next to a road. My first instinct was 'urgh' but then I looked... to my left was a multiplex cinema! And straight across the road, there was the Potomac River, with lovely views, a boathouse, and a riverside park, here.
After pausing to read my book, I walked a bit more around Georgetown, past pretty shops and cupcake vendors, wondering if I was posh enough to live here, til it was time to view my first property of the day. Which may turn out to be the one we take! It's just off the main street, in a little courtyard, and is a new type building, rather than a traditional row house as we'd hoped. It's all white walls and shiny wooden floors, with the second bedroom being on a mezzanine, and two long, thin balconies overlooking rooftops and the pretty buildings of M street. Very modern, very nice condition. And bicycle parking. But do we want a modern flat? Do we want to live in Georgetown? I progressed to meet the wife of Roz's predecessor, who showed me their house, a nice little rowhouse, though quite dark and in less good condition (and further up the hill). Finally, having met up with Roz, we saw the third house, a bigger rowhouse, in moderately good condition, with likely fussy landlords. And then, flummoxed, we progressed to an Italian restaurant where we wrote down the pros and cons of living in Georgetown, over pizza.
Then we returned to the original flat so that Roz could see it. It still looked good, but we remained unsure. Do we want to live in Georgetown? In a modern flat? We walked back to Dupont (25 minutes), and continued to muse over G&Ts in Kramer Books, then wine and cheese in Veritas before bed...
Georgetown photos here
With Roz off to work, I got my first taste of being a lady of leisure. I pottered around the hotel, then wandered down Connecticut Avenue to Dupont Circle, where I was to meet a director of global health policy at a think tank. She was lovely, though alas no jobs are available at the moment. But we had a really useful discussion about my options in DC, and some interesting mental health chat. Afterwards, somewhat confused about what to do, I gravitated to a little lunch place and read my book over salad.
I then decided to walk to Georgetown. I had scheduled three house viewings that afternoon, and I wanted to get there early to try to get a bit more of a feel for the area. Walking along M street, I turned left, and after a block, found myself crossing a bridge over the canal. The canal is quite picturesque and has a walking path that apparently extends for almost 200 miles, into Maryland. Nice. I kept walking down the hill for another couple of blocks and found myself under a flyover, and next to a road. My first instinct was 'urgh' but then I looked... to my left was a multiplex cinema! And straight across the road, there was the Potomac River, with lovely views, a boathouse, and a riverside park, here.
After pausing to read my book, I walked a bit more around Georgetown, past pretty shops and cupcake vendors, wondering if I was posh enough to live here, til it was time to view my first property of the day. Which may turn out to be the one we take! It's just off the main street, in a little courtyard, and is a new type building, rather than a traditional row house as we'd hoped. It's all white walls and shiny wooden floors, with the second bedroom being on a mezzanine, and two long, thin balconies overlooking rooftops and the pretty buildings of M street. Very modern, very nice condition. And bicycle parking. But do we want a modern flat? Do we want to live in Georgetown? I progressed to meet the wife of Roz's predecessor, who showed me their house, a nice little rowhouse, though quite dark and in less good condition (and further up the hill). Finally, having met up with Roz, we saw the third house, a bigger rowhouse, in moderately good condition, with likely fussy landlords. And then, flummoxed, we progressed to an Italian restaurant where we wrote down the pros and cons of living in Georgetown, over pizza.
Then we returned to the original flat so that Roz could see it. It still looked good, but we remained unsure. Do we want to live in Georgetown? In a modern flat? We walked back to Dupont (25 minutes), and continued to muse over G&Ts in Kramer Books, then wine and cheese in Veritas before bed...
Georgetown photos here
Tuesday 1 November 2011
In which Roz and Layla explore DC, fail to find a home, and spend their anniversary dining with Roz's future boss
by Layla
On Sunday we were delightfully awoken by sunlight streaming in the window. We got up, put on our sturdy walking shoes (well, not really, but that would have been appropriate!) and set out to explore DC. Which is a far more pleasant occupation in the sunshine! Roz had booked brunch at a cool chocolate-themed restaurant, Coco Sala, which has prize-winning brunches. It turned out to be in the same area as yesterday's conference, but we took a long, meandering route past what we thought to be one of the apartments we were going to look at the following day, set in a lovely street, then down past the Dupont Circle area to the Logan Circle area. The houses were lovely, and the wide streets were lined by cute little cafes and suchlike local amenities. We were entirely sold on the area.
After a delicious brunch of grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup for Roz and a cheese souffle for me, we set off for more walking. We headed south to hit the famous Mall, a long stretch of grass, lined by Smithsonian museums, with Capitol Hill at one end, and the Lincoln Memorial at the other, and the Washington Monument in the middle. It felt very Washington as we strolled down the paths, avoiding the final runners in a marathon being run that day. We veered left and saw the Potomac River for the first time, glistening in the sunlight. After a stop for a drink at a sunny outdoor cafe (how bizarre to think of the previous day's snow!), we walked up through an area called Foggy Bottom (which seemed fairly dull other than its comedy name, and it being the home of several of the organisations where I hope to one day work!), and crossed over a bridge to Georgetown.
We were very intrigued to see Georgetown - it has been built up as a mythical area in our minds, very posh and picturesque, full of rich people, the streets possibly lacking in soul, but making up for it in charm, though we would not be able to afford so much as a coffee. We weren't quite sure what to expect, and I'm not sure we've really got the measure of it yet, but we walked down M Street, the main drag. Sure enough, lovely buildings, posh designer shops, a nice Barnes and Noble bookshop (where we had cookies and drinks), and Georgetown University at the bottom of the road. Roz acquired two lovely new pairs of boots, and we had a meander in a couple of mini-shopping malls.
After that, we'd hoped to view a flat but the owner cancelled, so we returned to our hotel for a rest - our feet were aching after all that walking! And then it was out again, this time to Adams Morgan. For some unknown reason I'd believed that Adams Morgan was a scary, rough neighbourhood. In fact it's arty, ethnically diverse, and quite pleasant other than being up a bit of a hill. We went to a Nepalese restaurant called Himalaya (where Roz eavesdropped on our neighbours' conversations and gained further evidence of DC being a city for clever people), and wandered around the main street before heading back to our hotel and falling asleep at a shamefully early hour.
So I only had myself to blame when I woke up resolutely at 5am! Roz eventually joined me in wakefulness, and we walked to a really delightful cafe in Adams Morgan called Tryst, where we had a 2nd wedding anniversary breakfast - bagels, yoghurt, granola. We loved it. And then we marched down the hill to meet our 'realtor', which is an estate agent. We saw four properties, all of which were no good. It was interesting to see them, but increasingly dispiriting... particularly when the one we'd rather pinned our hopes on turned out to be in a building for which the first floor was given over to a mental health clinic. We interspersed them with lunch at a brilliant political type cafe called Bus Boys and Poets at U Street, an 'up and coming', hip and edgy area of the city. Loved the cafe. So many cool venues in DC.
After our final, unsuccessful flat viewing, we trudged up the hill back to Tryst to raise our spirits with some smoothies, then headed back to the hotel to glam up and walk to Roz's new boss's house for a welcome dinner party, which was lovely. Afterwards, we popped into the Veritas wine bar near our hotel for a final anniversary glass of champagne. A lovely day.
And now Roz is off to work, and I have an appointment to meet a potential work person, and several Georgetown flat appointments... wish me luck!
On Sunday we were delightfully awoken by sunlight streaming in the window. We got up, put on our sturdy walking shoes (well, not really, but that would have been appropriate!) and set out to explore DC. Which is a far more pleasant occupation in the sunshine! Roz had booked brunch at a cool chocolate-themed restaurant, Coco Sala, which has prize-winning brunches. It turned out to be in the same area as yesterday's conference, but we took a long, meandering route past what we thought to be one of the apartments we were going to look at the following day, set in a lovely street, then down past the Dupont Circle area to the Logan Circle area. The houses were lovely, and the wide streets were lined by cute little cafes and suchlike local amenities. We were entirely sold on the area.
After a delicious brunch of grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup for Roz and a cheese souffle for me, we set off for more walking. We headed south to hit the famous Mall, a long stretch of grass, lined by Smithsonian museums, with Capitol Hill at one end, and the Lincoln Memorial at the other, and the Washington Monument in the middle. It felt very Washington as we strolled down the paths, avoiding the final runners in a marathon being run that day. We veered left and saw the Potomac River for the first time, glistening in the sunlight. After a stop for a drink at a sunny outdoor cafe (how bizarre to think of the previous day's snow!), we walked up through an area called Foggy Bottom (which seemed fairly dull other than its comedy name, and it being the home of several of the organisations where I hope to one day work!), and crossed over a bridge to Georgetown.
We were very intrigued to see Georgetown - it has been built up as a mythical area in our minds, very posh and picturesque, full of rich people, the streets possibly lacking in soul, but making up for it in charm, though we would not be able to afford so much as a coffee. We weren't quite sure what to expect, and I'm not sure we've really got the measure of it yet, but we walked down M Street, the main drag. Sure enough, lovely buildings, posh designer shops, a nice Barnes and Noble bookshop (where we had cookies and drinks), and Georgetown University at the bottom of the road. Roz acquired two lovely new pairs of boots, and we had a meander in a couple of mini-shopping malls.
After that, we'd hoped to view a flat but the owner cancelled, so we returned to our hotel for a rest - our feet were aching after all that walking! And then it was out again, this time to Adams Morgan. For some unknown reason I'd believed that Adams Morgan was a scary, rough neighbourhood. In fact it's arty, ethnically diverse, and quite pleasant other than being up a bit of a hill. We went to a Nepalese restaurant called Himalaya (where Roz eavesdropped on our neighbours' conversations and gained further evidence of DC being a city for clever people), and wandered around the main street before heading back to our hotel and falling asleep at a shamefully early hour.
So I only had myself to blame when I woke up resolutely at 5am! Roz eventually joined me in wakefulness, and we walked to a really delightful cafe in Adams Morgan called Tryst, where we had a 2nd wedding anniversary breakfast - bagels, yoghurt, granola. We loved it. And then we marched down the hill to meet our 'realtor', which is an estate agent. We saw four properties, all of which were no good. It was interesting to see them, but increasingly dispiriting... particularly when the one we'd rather pinned our hopes on turned out to be in a building for which the first floor was given over to a mental health clinic. We interspersed them with lunch at a brilliant political type cafe called Bus Boys and Poets at U Street, an 'up and coming', hip and edgy area of the city. Loved the cafe. So many cool venues in DC.
After our final, unsuccessful flat viewing, we trudged up the hill back to Tryst to raise our spirits with some smoothies, then headed back to the hotel to glam up and walk to Roz's new boss's house for a welcome dinner party, which was lovely. Afterwards, we popped into the Veritas wine bar near our hotel for a final anniversary glass of champagne. A lovely day.
And now Roz is off to work, and I have an appointment to meet a potential work person, and several Georgetown flat appointments... wish me luck!
Sunday 30 October 2011
DC: a city for clever people?
by Layla
There is something very odd about flying into a new city in which we will be living in just under a month. We landed at Dulles airport, determined to love it. The airport procedures didn’t persuade us at first – a long transit to the main airport building, and hideously long queues with one passport official for the lot of us. It took more than two hours to get from the plane to the Churchill Hotel, our home for the next six days. And then when we determinedly headed out for a drink, we were foiled first by everything being apparently closed, and then when we found Bistro de Coin, despite its lovely atmosphere they wouldn’t serve us wine as we didn’t have our passports. But fortunately they served us chips, and we staggered up the hill to our hotel feeling partially sated, and entirely exhausted.
Up far too early on Saturday morning thanks to jet lag, we got dressed and headed out in the cold and torrential rain. Luckily it was all uphill from there. We had breakfast in Afterwards, the café of Kramer Books, a really brilliant independent bookshop at Dupont Circle. Pancakes, omlette, juice, and loveliness, and a copy of the Washington Post to wash it all down. And then it was time for our first metro experience. Which was not entirely successful – the trains seem to run only once every 20 minutes or so… particularly disappointing when we realised we’d got on the train in the wrong direction! Luckily we’d bought a copy of the monthly ‘Washingtonian’ which I’d rather hoped might be a Time Out substitute. Not really, but it is a great magazine, with some listings and a range of interesting articles. Through reading it, with features not on celebrities and suchlike nonsense, but on such subjects as the white house legal team, top business people, etc, it became clear: Washington DC is a city for clever people.
By the time we got to our target station, we were sure we were late. But no, we slipped into seats in the balcony of the Sidney Harman hall just in time for what we had been looking forward to for weeks – a TEDx conference, on the vague theme of ‘place’. After a brilliant experience with TEDx in London, we had been excited about going to another, and it didn’t disappoint. For an entire day, we listened to 12 minute talks by brilliant, fascinating people on a wide range of diverse topics. We particularly enjoyed the man who invented the security words one has to type when buying something online to prove that you’re a person rather than a computer. Did you know that only one of the words is for that purpose – the other word is taken from a book that is being converted to a digital book, which is done by scanning? But the computer can’t recognise a third of the words, so this method is used to translate billions of words to enable ebooks to be published. Very clever. Also liked a NASA astrophysicist on telescopes. It was a particularly fortunate pastime for yesterday, as it was first freezing and rainy, then actually snowy! We braved the weather for delicious guacamole for lunch at a nearby restaurant, but otherwise remained warm and intellectually stimulated. A great start to our Washington adventure.
After the conference (we sneaked out a little early due to jet lag drowsiness and a dull final speaker), the rain/snow had largely abated, so we decided to stretch our legs and walk to see the White House. A longer walk than we’d anticipated, we stared up at the big white building with a little confusion. We hadn’t expected it to be right on the street… and it was a bit in need of a coat of paint! Only then did we look up and see a sign proclaiming that it wasn’t the White House at all, but the Treasury! Sheepishly we took directions from some security guards, and suddenly there it was, looming white and elegant across a pristine lawn, and just as it looks on TV (and in the West Wing!). It felt shamefully touristy, but we stood and stared in delight.
Afterwards, we walked all the way up Connecticut Avenue to Dupont Circle, and Kramer Books called for a glass of wine. I had the Horton Viogner, which just won an award for best locally made wine (in Virginia). I’ve had better, to be honest, but under the circumstances, was duly appreciative… And we may have had a piece of key lime pie…
Having walked home past Halloween costumed partiers, we were amused to find these same partiers on the news as we returned to our room for a pre-prandial rest, along with pictures of far more snow in different parts of Virginia. Seems we’d got off lightly. We were supposed to go to a fancy (and expensive) restaurant for dinner, but as we walked there, we both noted we felt rather tired (it was 9:30pm!) and not especially ravenous. And we’d both secretly noted the presence of a delicious-sounding butternut squash ravioli on the Kramer Books menu… and so Roz voiced what we were both thinking, and we sprinted through pretty residential streets (one of which might soon be our street!) to the lovely restaurant where we indulged. Afterwards, we pottered around the bookshop, which had brilliant selections of books, and on a Saturday night at 10:30pm was absolutely mobbed with people browsing books, eating in the restaurant, and drinking at the bar. As we walked past the bar, we saw a man having a glass of wine and reading the Financial Times. Roz and I looked at each other. We had come home.
We walked up the road, past more Halloween costumed partiers, and were tempted into a very lovely little wine bar called Veritas. It seemed there were plenty of places to go out, but they were a little subtle, and local. A couple of proseccos and a sneaky bit of delicious cheese later, we retired to bed, to dream of living in this city.
There is something very odd about flying into a new city in which we will be living in just under a month. We landed at Dulles airport, determined to love it. The airport procedures didn’t persuade us at first – a long transit to the main airport building, and hideously long queues with one passport official for the lot of us. It took more than two hours to get from the plane to the Churchill Hotel, our home for the next six days. And then when we determinedly headed out for a drink, we were foiled first by everything being apparently closed, and then when we found Bistro de Coin, despite its lovely atmosphere they wouldn’t serve us wine as we didn’t have our passports. But fortunately they served us chips, and we staggered up the hill to our hotel feeling partially sated, and entirely exhausted.
Up far too early on Saturday morning thanks to jet lag, we got dressed and headed out in the cold and torrential rain. Luckily it was all uphill from there. We had breakfast in Afterwards, the café of Kramer Books, a really brilliant independent bookshop at Dupont Circle. Pancakes, omlette, juice, and loveliness, and a copy of the Washington Post to wash it all down. And then it was time for our first metro experience. Which was not entirely successful – the trains seem to run only once every 20 minutes or so… particularly disappointing when we realised we’d got on the train in the wrong direction! Luckily we’d bought a copy of the monthly ‘Washingtonian’ which I’d rather hoped might be a Time Out substitute. Not really, but it is a great magazine, with some listings and a range of interesting articles. Through reading it, with features not on celebrities and suchlike nonsense, but on such subjects as the white house legal team, top business people, etc, it became clear: Washington DC is a city for clever people.
By the time we got to our target station, we were sure we were late. But no, we slipped into seats in the balcony of the Sidney Harman hall just in time for what we had been looking forward to for weeks – a TEDx conference, on the vague theme of ‘place’. After a brilliant experience with TEDx in London, we had been excited about going to another, and it didn’t disappoint. For an entire day, we listened to 12 minute talks by brilliant, fascinating people on a wide range of diverse topics. We particularly enjoyed the man who invented the security words one has to type when buying something online to prove that you’re a person rather than a computer. Did you know that only one of the words is for that purpose – the other word is taken from a book that is being converted to a digital book, which is done by scanning? But the computer can’t recognise a third of the words, so this method is used to translate billions of words to enable ebooks to be published. Very clever. Also liked a NASA astrophysicist on telescopes. It was a particularly fortunate pastime for yesterday, as it was first freezing and rainy, then actually snowy! We braved the weather for delicious guacamole for lunch at a nearby restaurant, but otherwise remained warm and intellectually stimulated. A great start to our Washington adventure.
After the conference (we sneaked out a little early due to jet lag drowsiness and a dull final speaker), the rain/snow had largely abated, so we decided to stretch our legs and walk to see the White House. A longer walk than we’d anticipated, we stared up at the big white building with a little confusion. We hadn’t expected it to be right on the street… and it was a bit in need of a coat of paint! Only then did we look up and see a sign proclaiming that it wasn’t the White House at all, but the Treasury! Sheepishly we took directions from some security guards, and suddenly there it was, looming white and elegant across a pristine lawn, and just as it looks on TV (and in the West Wing!). It felt shamefully touristy, but we stood and stared in delight.
Afterwards, we walked all the way up Connecticut Avenue to Dupont Circle, and Kramer Books called for a glass of wine. I had the Horton Viogner, which just won an award for best locally made wine (in Virginia). I’ve had better, to be honest, but under the circumstances, was duly appreciative… And we may have had a piece of key lime pie…
Having walked home past Halloween costumed partiers, we were amused to find these same partiers on the news as we returned to our room for a pre-prandial rest, along with pictures of far more snow in different parts of Virginia. Seems we’d got off lightly. We were supposed to go to a fancy (and expensive) restaurant for dinner, but as we walked there, we both noted we felt rather tired (it was 9:30pm!) and not especially ravenous. And we’d both secretly noted the presence of a delicious-sounding butternut squash ravioli on the Kramer Books menu… and so Roz voiced what we were both thinking, and we sprinted through pretty residential streets (one of which might soon be our street!) to the lovely restaurant where we indulged. Afterwards, we pottered around the bookshop, which had brilliant selections of books, and on a Saturday night at 10:30pm was absolutely mobbed with people browsing books, eating in the restaurant, and drinking at the bar. As we walked past the bar, we saw a man having a glass of wine and reading the Financial Times. Roz and I looked at each other. We had come home.
We walked up the road, past more Halloween costumed partiers, and were tempted into a very lovely little wine bar called Veritas. It seemed there were plenty of places to go out, but they were a little subtle, and local. A couple of proseccos and a sneaky bit of delicious cheese later, we retired to bed, to dream of living in this city.
Thursday 6 October 2011
In which Roz drags an ailing Layla up a mountain and miles along a cycle path
By Roz
One of the pleasing things about travelling with someone else is that it isn’t viable to go for the “hide-in-the-room” option long term, since one or other of you will eventually say “well, I guess we better go out now” and the other will feel impelled to agree. And thus it was that Layla and I headed out into the scary world of Daedunsan. Our first stop was for lunch (for me, anyway) which was a tasty vegetable bimimbap. Layla, of course, sat there watching me, whilst also writhing in pain (this proved to be a feature of the subsequent few days) – fortunately I am a heartless beast and took this as a cue to order a beer or two.
After lunch, we headed towards the park entrance and got a cable car half way up the mountain. The views were very pleasing and I must confess to a little inner joy that I had managed to avoid the steep uphill walk. On getting out of the cable car, we contemplated the view from the observatory. Given that it was 2 o’clock (and returning to the hotel a minute sooner than we needed to held no attractions for me at all), it struck me as a good plan to head up to the top of the mountain. This did not strike Layla as a good plan, in her weakened and pain-ridden state. So, we agreed that I’d head up (it was around a kilometer) and she’d read her book / doze and wait for me. And so, I headed off.
I must confess that I’d assumed that the hike would be of the usual Korean variety – in other words, very easy going, with boards all the way. In fact, it proved to be rather more hard-core than that and clambering over the rocks I felt slightly explorer-ish. Until, that is, I was passed by a man going downhill carrying a baby (a fact all the more bitter given that I was at that moment using both hands and feet to make the ascent…). The inappropriateness of feeling intrepid was confirmed when I then stumbled across a café (with a speaker playing Sinatra’s My Way…). Ah well...
Having made the ascent, I then began to make my way down. The speed and agility of Koreans when hiking became even more apparent – to the extent that I received encouraging / sympathetic smiles from some and, more humiliatingly, was told by one man to “stop dreaming and get going”! But it was good fun.
On returning to Layla, I found that she’d gone to sleep in the shade, and had awoken freezing cold and feeling rather worse. Sadly, it did not occur to me that this development should mean that we should get the cable car down again – but instead I pressed on with our original plan of walking back. This proved to be a rather painful and unfortunate experience for us both, with Layla needing to stop every 100 meters or so. But she assured me that in the moments where she wasn’t feeling dreadful, she was glad she was there.
Back at the bottom of the mountain, we decided to go and sit in the park and read and drink / snack. This we did until it became cold, at which point we headed back to the uninviting hotel. The evening is best skated over. Suffice to say that I developed something of Layla’s ailments, which took the form of a fever and overwhelming headache, so the evening was spent in the room, feeling rather sorry for ourselves.
The next morning, we got an early bus to Daejeon and then a bullet train to Seoul. On getting into Seoul, we headed straight to our glamorous and final hotel – the Fraser Suites. We dumped our bags (having got there too early to check in) and then went to explore our new area, Insadong. Slightly startled by the crowds (and still feeling a trifle fragile) we soon stopped off for a cup of tea (which in my case turned into a lemon drink which I found strangely terrifying). Fortified, we did a little more wandering and stopped off in an art gallery, where we briefly contemplated buying some art. We resisted, and then I urged that we found somewhere for lunch. Directed to an Italian place by a local tourist guide who was randomly standing on the street, we found ourselves having delicious pumpkin soup (served in hollowed out warm pumpkins), warm bread and wine. Or at least I did. Layla took two spoonfuls of her soup, turned green, and I became the beneficiary.
After which, we went back to the hotel to check-in properly. At this point, things definitely began to look up. Our room turned out to be a spacious self-contained flat with a very comfy sofa. With Layla having been unmanned by the pumpkin soup, I suggested that we settle down on the sofa, watch a film (from the extensive DVD library which the hotel had) and recover. At thus it was that we watched Good Will Hunting (a film we’d not seen before): Layla did her obligatory weeping at the appropriate moments, and it was all very pleasing. After the film, I left Layla to read and went to the gym, where I ran 10K whilst simultaneously people-watching the busy street below me (and listening to an Anthony Trollope audiobook – seemingly my new addiction). After this, we both headed to the jacuzzi / sauna to wallow in the warm water.
Evening had of course arrived, and we took the decision to resist the lure of the locality in favour of a night in our flat, in the hopes that Layla would finally recover (dragging Layla down a mountain hadn’t proved to be as medicinal as I’d hoped, so this approach seemed a reasonable alternative). We settled down with the epic Gone With the Wind (which in my view Layla had to watch before our move to DC) and got room service, including some very nice wine – and worked our way through the first two thirds of the film, before heading to bed.
The next morning, Layla announced that she was cured. The delicious hotel breakfast unfortunately demonstrated that this was not the case. But she was improved anyway. And so we headed off to hire bikes to go on a cycle route suggested by Lonely Planet (also medicinal, I think). And it proved to be a truly lovely cycle route. There’s a huge river in Seoul, called the Han, and alongside it there’s a fantastic cycle path (and a separate path for walkers) that goes on for many kilometers. Alongside sparkling water, and in glorious sunshine, we had an exceptionally jolly cycle ride. Often we cycled with huge motorways above us, and we contemplated the glorious fashion in which Korea has created a space that mixes the very urban with carving out a space for nature in the very heart of the city. It felt like the future. The paths were busy (it happened to be a bank holiday) and it was lovely to cycle alongside so many locals. The route was also peppered with outdoor exercise machines, and we felt obliged to have a little play (though Layla found this had a less medicinal result than one might have thought!).
Returning back to the hotel at the end of the day, we contemplated our options for our very last night of our lovely holiday. And so we found ourselves back in the jaccuzzi, and then off to dinner in the Italian place we’d lunched in the day before. Layla felt that she might be up to more than one mouthful of soup, and I was enthusiastic about eating something that wasn’t rice and vegetables (of which I have had quite a lot on this holiday). Dinner was really very good indeed – to the extent that Layla ate an entire bowl of soup, whilst I managed a main course as well – and then we headed back to the hotel for the final third of Gone With the Wind.
There’s little to say about our last morning in Seoul – there was an alarm clock, a 10K run down in the gym for me and breakfast - and then it was time for the airport bus. But what a lovely holiday it’s been. And that’s just as well, because in 7 weeks and 3 days we’ll be emigrating to Washington DC, where we’ll be living for the next 4 years. So this oasis of a holiday (albeit with a little illness thrown in) has been just what the doctor ordered…
One of the pleasing things about travelling with someone else is that it isn’t viable to go for the “hide-in-the-room” option long term, since one or other of you will eventually say “well, I guess we better go out now” and the other will feel impelled to agree. And thus it was that Layla and I headed out into the scary world of Daedunsan. Our first stop was for lunch (for me, anyway) which was a tasty vegetable bimimbap. Layla, of course, sat there watching me, whilst also writhing in pain (this proved to be a feature of the subsequent few days) – fortunately I am a heartless beast and took this as a cue to order a beer or two.
After lunch, we headed towards the park entrance and got a cable car half way up the mountain. The views were very pleasing and I must confess to a little inner joy that I had managed to avoid the steep uphill walk. On getting out of the cable car, we contemplated the view from the observatory. Given that it was 2 o’clock (and returning to the hotel a minute sooner than we needed to held no attractions for me at all), it struck me as a good plan to head up to the top of the mountain. This did not strike Layla as a good plan, in her weakened and pain-ridden state. So, we agreed that I’d head up (it was around a kilometer) and she’d read her book / doze and wait for me. And so, I headed off.
I must confess that I’d assumed that the hike would be of the usual Korean variety – in other words, very easy going, with boards all the way. In fact, it proved to be rather more hard-core than that and clambering over the rocks I felt slightly explorer-ish. Until, that is, I was passed by a man going downhill carrying a baby (a fact all the more bitter given that I was at that moment using both hands and feet to make the ascent…). The inappropriateness of feeling intrepid was confirmed when I then stumbled across a café (with a speaker playing Sinatra’s My Way…). Ah well...
Having made the ascent, I then began to make my way down. The speed and agility of Koreans when hiking became even more apparent – to the extent that I received encouraging / sympathetic smiles from some and, more humiliatingly, was told by one man to “stop dreaming and get going”! But it was good fun.
On returning to Layla, I found that she’d gone to sleep in the shade, and had awoken freezing cold and feeling rather worse. Sadly, it did not occur to me that this development should mean that we should get the cable car down again – but instead I pressed on with our original plan of walking back. This proved to be a rather painful and unfortunate experience for us both, with Layla needing to stop every 100 meters or so. But she assured me that in the moments where she wasn’t feeling dreadful, she was glad she was there.
Back at the bottom of the mountain, we decided to go and sit in the park and read and drink / snack. This we did until it became cold, at which point we headed back to the uninviting hotel. The evening is best skated over. Suffice to say that I developed something of Layla’s ailments, which took the form of a fever and overwhelming headache, so the evening was spent in the room, feeling rather sorry for ourselves.
The next morning, we got an early bus to Daejeon and then a bullet train to Seoul. On getting into Seoul, we headed straight to our glamorous and final hotel – the Fraser Suites. We dumped our bags (having got there too early to check in) and then went to explore our new area, Insadong. Slightly startled by the crowds (and still feeling a trifle fragile) we soon stopped off for a cup of tea (which in my case turned into a lemon drink which I found strangely terrifying). Fortified, we did a little more wandering and stopped off in an art gallery, where we briefly contemplated buying some art. We resisted, and then I urged that we found somewhere for lunch. Directed to an Italian place by a local tourist guide who was randomly standing on the street, we found ourselves having delicious pumpkin soup (served in hollowed out warm pumpkins), warm bread and wine. Or at least I did. Layla took two spoonfuls of her soup, turned green, and I became the beneficiary.
After which, we went back to the hotel to check-in properly. At this point, things definitely began to look up. Our room turned out to be a spacious self-contained flat with a very comfy sofa. With Layla having been unmanned by the pumpkin soup, I suggested that we settle down on the sofa, watch a film (from the extensive DVD library which the hotel had) and recover. At thus it was that we watched Good Will Hunting (a film we’d not seen before): Layla did her obligatory weeping at the appropriate moments, and it was all very pleasing. After the film, I left Layla to read and went to the gym, where I ran 10K whilst simultaneously people-watching the busy street below me (and listening to an Anthony Trollope audiobook – seemingly my new addiction). After this, we both headed to the jacuzzi / sauna to wallow in the warm water.
Evening had of course arrived, and we took the decision to resist the lure of the locality in favour of a night in our flat, in the hopes that Layla would finally recover (dragging Layla down a mountain hadn’t proved to be as medicinal as I’d hoped, so this approach seemed a reasonable alternative). We settled down with the epic Gone With the Wind (which in my view Layla had to watch before our move to DC) and got room service, including some very nice wine – and worked our way through the first two thirds of the film, before heading to bed.
The next morning, Layla announced that she was cured. The delicious hotel breakfast unfortunately demonstrated that this was not the case. But she was improved anyway. And so we headed off to hire bikes to go on a cycle route suggested by Lonely Planet (also medicinal, I think). And it proved to be a truly lovely cycle route. There’s a huge river in Seoul, called the Han, and alongside it there’s a fantastic cycle path (and a separate path for walkers) that goes on for many kilometers. Alongside sparkling water, and in glorious sunshine, we had an exceptionally jolly cycle ride. Often we cycled with huge motorways above us, and we contemplated the glorious fashion in which Korea has created a space that mixes the very urban with carving out a space for nature in the very heart of the city. It felt like the future. The paths were busy (it happened to be a bank holiday) and it was lovely to cycle alongside so many locals. The route was also peppered with outdoor exercise machines, and we felt obliged to have a little play (though Layla found this had a less medicinal result than one might have thought!).
Returning back to the hotel at the end of the day, we contemplated our options for our very last night of our lovely holiday. And so we found ourselves back in the jaccuzzi, and then off to dinner in the Italian place we’d lunched in the day before. Layla felt that she might be up to more than one mouthful of soup, and I was enthusiastic about eating something that wasn’t rice and vegetables (of which I have had quite a lot on this holiday). Dinner was really very good indeed – to the extent that Layla ate an entire bowl of soup, whilst I managed a main course as well – and then we headed back to the hotel for the final third of Gone With the Wind.
There’s little to say about our last morning in Seoul – there was an alarm clock, a 10K run down in the gym for me and breakfast - and then it was time for the airport bus. But what a lovely holiday it’s been. And that’s just as well, because in 7 weeks and 3 days we’ll be emigrating to Washington DC, where we’ll be living for the next 4 years. So this oasis of a holiday (albeit with a little illness thrown in) has been just what the doctor ordered…
Monday 3 October 2011
In which Layla and Roz see caves and mazes, feel seasick, and climb some hills
By Layla
Oh the horror of not having written a blog for so long! We left you in Jeju city, where we popped in to a Paris Baguette for breakfast, then we hopped on a bus in the other direction along the perimeter of the island, and got off at a random roadside with a track leading 2.5km down to what is probably the biggest lava cave in the world. A lava cave essentially looks like the lair of a giant, evil snake. It’s black, with swirls and swoops as you imagine the molten lava flowing. The cave was about 17km long, but a 1km section was open to the public. We made our way down into the darkness, and did the walk, over rough, irregular ground, til we got to an illuminated 7m high tower of lava that marked the end of the walk. Fascinating, though personally I preferred the half-lava, half-limestone caves in Hallim Park…
After a picnic lunch on the grass courtesy of Paris Baguette (I have never eaten so many bagels!) we went to the other entertainment of the day, a maze. I rather like mazes. Unfortunately this one was filled by hundreds of shrieking, shoving schoolchildren, who made the experience rather less fun… we were very bitter to see them all leaving at the same time as us! But we persisted and were successful in solving the maze.
We’d planned to go to a nearby beach after this, but the weather turned grey, so we headed back into town where we established ourselves with kiwi juices at a book café, then another café, where we made excellent progress with our books before retiring to – oh the shame – the same excellent Indian restaurant!
The next day we awoke early for what I had absolutely expected to be a treat – a three hour sail from Jeju to Mokpo, in mainland South Korea. Alas I hadn’t really thought it through. First, the weather was miserable. Secondly the boat tossed and turned. Rather than the pleasure trip I’d anticipated, Roz and I sat on the floor outside in the rain, green, cold, and nauseous, and praying for it to be over, which thankfully it eventually was. Weirdly the taxi at the port didn’t want to take us to the train station, so a 25 minute walk later, we arrived, shivering, drenched wretches, and obtained tickets.
We were off to Jeonju, a city we’d swithered about staying in, but decided to do it. A train and taxi ride later, with the taxi driver unable to find our hotel, we were unceremoniously dumped in the city centre, and left to fend for ourselves. We eventually found the hotel. It was full. They sweetly drove us to another hotel, where we settled in and then headed out for pizza, salvaging our rainy travelling day with food and later drinks at a local coffee shop.
Another bright and early day yesterday took us on an hour-long bus to the very lovely Maisan Provincial Park. The park has two peaks that look like horses’ ears, and a very, very large number of steps. The scenery was lovely and there was a really interesting area called Tapsan which consisted of temples, and stone towers. We walked past a lake, then had a very good bimimbap lunch, and finished off with a climb up a big hill, before catching a bus back to Jeonju.
We popped back to our hotel and then strolled down to a beautiful, traditional area of Jeonju called the Hanok Maeul, with lots of traditional style Korean houses, many made into cafes, restaurants, and a quirky wine museum which we visited. A music festival was starting so we had a quick listen at their outdoor stage before retiring for coffee and cake. We returned to town to get some cash and do a tiny bit of shopping (it was freezing and we bought cardigans!) and then returned to the Hanok Maeul for dinner in a lovely Italian restaurant. Sadly I’d been struck down with a dodgy stomach, which was most unfortunate. Indeed, having finished the meal and had a peppermint tea in a nearby café, I was obliged to usher us home to bed. And had a lovely night spent mainly in the bathroom…
Still feeling rubbish today, but spurred on a) by our successful trip to Maisan Provincial Park, and b) by the lack of rooms available in Jeonju this evening, we have relocated to Daedunsan Provincial Park where the tourist office man in Jeonju booked us a room in an incomprehensible local motel. This was almost definitely a mistake. There was practically nobody on our bus. We stepped off into chilly mountain air. A random shop owner approached us quizzically and I handed her the post-it note with our motel name written on it in Korean characters. She zoomed off with it to make a phonecall, and before long the proprietor of the motel was dashing down a steep hill to meet us. She then pranced back up it like a mountain goat, with Roz and me trudging weakly behind her, looking at the scary-looking restaurants, the middle-of-nowhereness, and rather wishing we were still in Jeonju. We’re now both hiding in our less-than-glamorous room and trying to work up the courage to go up a mountain…
Oh the horror of not having written a blog for so long! We left you in Jeju city, where we popped in to a Paris Baguette for breakfast, then we hopped on a bus in the other direction along the perimeter of the island, and got off at a random roadside with a track leading 2.5km down to what is probably the biggest lava cave in the world. A lava cave essentially looks like the lair of a giant, evil snake. It’s black, with swirls and swoops as you imagine the molten lava flowing. The cave was about 17km long, but a 1km section was open to the public. We made our way down into the darkness, and did the walk, over rough, irregular ground, til we got to an illuminated 7m high tower of lava that marked the end of the walk. Fascinating, though personally I preferred the half-lava, half-limestone caves in Hallim Park…
After a picnic lunch on the grass courtesy of Paris Baguette (I have never eaten so many bagels!) we went to the other entertainment of the day, a maze. I rather like mazes. Unfortunately this one was filled by hundreds of shrieking, shoving schoolchildren, who made the experience rather less fun… we were very bitter to see them all leaving at the same time as us! But we persisted and were successful in solving the maze.
We’d planned to go to a nearby beach after this, but the weather turned grey, so we headed back into town where we established ourselves with kiwi juices at a book café, then another café, where we made excellent progress with our books before retiring to – oh the shame – the same excellent Indian restaurant!
The next day we awoke early for what I had absolutely expected to be a treat – a three hour sail from Jeju to Mokpo, in mainland South Korea. Alas I hadn’t really thought it through. First, the weather was miserable. Secondly the boat tossed and turned. Rather than the pleasure trip I’d anticipated, Roz and I sat on the floor outside in the rain, green, cold, and nauseous, and praying for it to be over, which thankfully it eventually was. Weirdly the taxi at the port didn’t want to take us to the train station, so a 25 minute walk later, we arrived, shivering, drenched wretches, and obtained tickets.
We were off to Jeonju, a city we’d swithered about staying in, but decided to do it. A train and taxi ride later, with the taxi driver unable to find our hotel, we were unceremoniously dumped in the city centre, and left to fend for ourselves. We eventually found the hotel. It was full. They sweetly drove us to another hotel, where we settled in and then headed out for pizza, salvaging our rainy travelling day with food and later drinks at a local coffee shop.
Another bright and early day yesterday took us on an hour-long bus to the very lovely Maisan Provincial Park. The park has two peaks that look like horses’ ears, and a very, very large number of steps. The scenery was lovely and there was a really interesting area called Tapsan which consisted of temples, and stone towers. We walked past a lake, then had a very good bimimbap lunch, and finished off with a climb up a big hill, before catching a bus back to Jeonju.
We popped back to our hotel and then strolled down to a beautiful, traditional area of Jeonju called the Hanok Maeul, with lots of traditional style Korean houses, many made into cafes, restaurants, and a quirky wine museum which we visited. A music festival was starting so we had a quick listen at their outdoor stage before retiring for coffee and cake. We returned to town to get some cash and do a tiny bit of shopping (it was freezing and we bought cardigans!) and then returned to the Hanok Maeul for dinner in a lovely Italian restaurant. Sadly I’d been struck down with a dodgy stomach, which was most unfortunate. Indeed, having finished the meal and had a peppermint tea in a nearby café, I was obliged to usher us home to bed. And had a lovely night spent mainly in the bathroom…
Still feeling rubbish today, but spurred on a) by our successful trip to Maisan Provincial Park, and b) by the lack of rooms available in Jeonju this evening, we have relocated to Daedunsan Provincial Park where the tourist office man in Jeonju booked us a room in an incomprehensible local motel. This was almost definitely a mistake. There was practically nobody on our bus. We stepped off into chilly mountain air. A random shop owner approached us quizzically and I handed her the post-it note with our motel name written on it in Korean characters. She zoomed off with it to make a phonecall, and before long the proprietor of the motel was dashing down a steep hill to meet us. She then pranced back up it like a mountain goat, with Roz and me trudging weakly behind her, looking at the scary-looking restaurants, the middle-of-nowhereness, and rather wishing we were still in Jeonju. We’re now both hiding in our less-than-glamorous room and trying to work up the courage to go up a mountain…
Wednesday 28 September 2011
In which Layla and Roz cross the island, stroll in a park, and watch a brilliant sunset
By Layla
Roz’s cunning plan for dinner turned out to be a re-visit to the good old kimibap joint, only this time we branched out into bigger main courses, a rice dish for Roz, noodles for me, and a large amount of spiciness for both of us. Steam coming out of our ears and lips burning, but otherwise having enjoyed the meal very much, we strolled down to Dorothy and had another cheery night drinking beer and mint tea, before heading home to bed.
This morning we got up fairly bright and early, and headed for Tous Les Jours (our second favourite French patisserie chain after Paris Baguette) and had bagels and cream cheese before picking up our bags, trundling through the hot sun, and catching a bus across the island, then a taxi to the capital, Jeju-si. We’d failed to book anywhere to stay as either places were full, or else not a word of English was spoken. We asked to be dropped off near a hostel, HK Hostel, much praised by Lonely Planet, but it looked so uninviting that we swiftly dashed away to find another option. Next up was the Tapdong and Bobo Motels – I have no idea what Lonely Planet was thinking when they recommended these horrible, musty old rooms. We were flummoxed and hot til a moment of wifi in the street revealed Hotel Impress, which seems clean, pleasant, has a comfy bed (not very common in South Korea), lots of space, and a view of the sea. We dropped our bags, pleased, and headed out for adventures.
But first, of course, lunch! Roz found a scary little café and after we pointed to ‘do you have any vegetarian dishes?” phrase in Korean at the back of the Lonely Planet phrase section, the woman in charge grinned in delight and pointed at two different items written in Korean. Non-plussed, we ordered both, along with some kiwi juice, and had a reasonably pleasant late lunch of vegetarian something sandwiches. And then to our afternoon destination, Hallim Park. Which I had mistakenly thought we could access from a downtown bus stop marked in good old Lonely Planet. Actually it turned out that it went from somewhere about 3 miles from there, but a full team of non-English speaking Koreans at the bus stop got us on one bus to take us to the terminal to catch the actual bus, and finally we were off. The island is a circle ringed by a road and our bus pottered west along it, stopping every 2 minutes. Roz and I were nerdily listening to educational things on our iPhones (Spanish learning for me, economics for her) and the constant announcements of the next stop were as disturbing as the old ladies wearing giant visors jostling violently for seats, as the sea sparkled on the right hand side throughout. Eventually we arrived.
Hallim Park is a really lovely park that has all manner of areas – palm trees, bonsai trees, stone sculptures, birds, reptiles, a folk village, a water garden, and our favourite, caves made of limestone and lava. We had a great afternoon strolling around the clearly demarcated paths to piped musak from the trees, dodging giant school groups, and trying to throw sticks into a barrel, one of the folk village games. We took such a long time to appreciate it all that the place closed, and we ducked out to a neighbouring shop to buy a couple of cans of beer in the nick of time, crossed the road, and sipped our Cas beers on a beautiful white sand beach, with black lava rocks, watching a brilliant orange orb of a sun setting in the water like a giant planet.
After that idyllic moment, it was more learning for us as the bus took us back to Jeju-si and we tried in vain to find the vegetarian restaurant we’d read about (but did get to walk down lots of dark back streets…). Eventually, we found another fab restaurant, the Baghdad Café, which was an Indian restaurant that was lovely in décor, ambience, and food. We lingered long into the night before strolling through cheery streets of bars and restaurants, then heading home to bed (having struggled vehemently to make three different taxi drivers understand where we wanted to go – it’s so hard when nobody speaks English!). Night night.
Roz’s cunning plan for dinner turned out to be a re-visit to the good old kimibap joint, only this time we branched out into bigger main courses, a rice dish for Roz, noodles for me, and a large amount of spiciness for both of us. Steam coming out of our ears and lips burning, but otherwise having enjoyed the meal very much, we strolled down to Dorothy and had another cheery night drinking beer and mint tea, before heading home to bed.
This morning we got up fairly bright and early, and headed for Tous Les Jours (our second favourite French patisserie chain after Paris Baguette) and had bagels and cream cheese before picking up our bags, trundling through the hot sun, and catching a bus across the island, then a taxi to the capital, Jeju-si. We’d failed to book anywhere to stay as either places were full, or else not a word of English was spoken. We asked to be dropped off near a hostel, HK Hostel, much praised by Lonely Planet, but it looked so uninviting that we swiftly dashed away to find another option. Next up was the Tapdong and Bobo Motels – I have no idea what Lonely Planet was thinking when they recommended these horrible, musty old rooms. We were flummoxed and hot til a moment of wifi in the street revealed Hotel Impress, which seems clean, pleasant, has a comfy bed (not very common in South Korea), lots of space, and a view of the sea. We dropped our bags, pleased, and headed out for adventures.
But first, of course, lunch! Roz found a scary little café and after we pointed to ‘do you have any vegetarian dishes?” phrase in Korean at the back of the Lonely Planet phrase section, the woman in charge grinned in delight and pointed at two different items written in Korean. Non-plussed, we ordered both, along with some kiwi juice, and had a reasonably pleasant late lunch of vegetarian something sandwiches. And then to our afternoon destination, Hallim Park. Which I had mistakenly thought we could access from a downtown bus stop marked in good old Lonely Planet. Actually it turned out that it went from somewhere about 3 miles from there, but a full team of non-English speaking Koreans at the bus stop got us on one bus to take us to the terminal to catch the actual bus, and finally we were off. The island is a circle ringed by a road and our bus pottered west along it, stopping every 2 minutes. Roz and I were nerdily listening to educational things on our iPhones (Spanish learning for me, economics for her) and the constant announcements of the next stop were as disturbing as the old ladies wearing giant visors jostling violently for seats, as the sea sparkled on the right hand side throughout. Eventually we arrived.
Hallim Park is a really lovely park that has all manner of areas – palm trees, bonsai trees, stone sculptures, birds, reptiles, a folk village, a water garden, and our favourite, caves made of limestone and lava. We had a great afternoon strolling around the clearly demarcated paths to piped musak from the trees, dodging giant school groups, and trying to throw sticks into a barrel, one of the folk village games. We took such a long time to appreciate it all that the place closed, and we ducked out to a neighbouring shop to buy a couple of cans of beer in the nick of time, crossed the road, and sipped our Cas beers on a beautiful white sand beach, with black lava rocks, watching a brilliant orange orb of a sun setting in the water like a giant planet.
After that idyllic moment, it was more learning for us as the bus took us back to Jeju-si and we tried in vain to find the vegetarian restaurant we’d read about (but did get to walk down lots of dark back streets…). Eventually, we found another fab restaurant, the Baghdad Café, which was an Indian restaurant that was lovely in décor, ambience, and food. We lingered long into the night before strolling through cheery streets of bars and restaurants, then heading home to bed (having struggled vehemently to make three different taxi drivers understand where we wanted to go – it’s so hard when nobody speaks English!). Night night.
Monday 26 September 2011
In which Roz and Layla manage to eat against all the odds and go under the sea
By Roz
Layla’s fears about our dining options turned out to be absolutely well-founded. Despite all the references in reviews to the plethora of dining options nearby, we were flummoxed and gently shepherded out of the restaurant or two which we entered by alarmed waiters, having conveyed our vegetarian situation through gesticulation (I don’t think the problem was our charade, but you can never tell). And so it was that we ended up in a not very glamorous dining establishment eating vegetarian pizza (again). However, dinner was very swiftly over and we then headed over to a very lovely café called Dorothy, in which we drank beer and discussed with excitement / fear / wonder our imminent move to Washington DC.
The next morning, I got up as early as I could bring myself to (which was not very early at all) and went running. I’m not getting in quite the distances I’d like given how near my half marathon is, but something is better than nothing… I accompanied my run by listening to an economics lecture series from a CD that I was given by one of my staff (an economist, concerned about my lack of knowledge of the subject given the topics I shall be covering in DC). I therefore had the rather surreal (but entirely pleasant) experience of running through a walking trail, through parks and by the waterfall, whilst hearing about supply and demand from a leading American academic…
Back in the hotel, and smug at not having got too lost, we headed out for breakfast at a French bakery (again) and contemplated our plan to go to a sculpture park, involving a bus, the number of which we did not know, and could not find out. It will therefore comes as little surprise to the reader to hear that shortly thereafter we were ordering kimbap to take-away in the lunch joint we’d been in yesterday, licking ice lollies from the French bakery, and heading down to the port with a vague plan of taking a boat trip. In fact, we ended up booking to go on two: a little tour round the nearby islands, and a submarine trip. But we of course planned our time well enough that we were able to retreat to the lovely shack that we’d been in the day before, to eat our takeaway kimbap and sip beer.
Both boat trips proved to be lots of fun. The first took us past islands that we’d only seen from a distance and which looked very different close up: impossible to scale, and unforgiving terrain, but bemusingly nevertheless peopled with a couple of fisherman perched on a rock (with no sign of how they could possibly have got there, or possibly hope to get off again). The submarine was even more fab: it’s not something either of us had done before, and it was brilliant to see the fish and coral so close, and gave me (momentarily anyway) rather an enthusiasm to learn to dive, as we descended to 40m to look at an old shipwreck.
After these waterey adventures, we headed to the Alice café for copious amounts of peppermint tea and cake for me (and lemonade for Layla). We spent a while there, reading our books and gorging, before it dawned on us both that the café had a music selection which only entailed three songs, and that these had now been repeated a rather unfortunate number of times. So we headed back to our room, manically humming the Carpenters, and began to contemplate what an earth we can do for dinner. But I have a plan…
Layla’s fears about our dining options turned out to be absolutely well-founded. Despite all the references in reviews to the plethora of dining options nearby, we were flummoxed and gently shepherded out of the restaurant or two which we entered by alarmed waiters, having conveyed our vegetarian situation through gesticulation (I don’t think the problem was our charade, but you can never tell). And so it was that we ended up in a not very glamorous dining establishment eating vegetarian pizza (again). However, dinner was very swiftly over and we then headed over to a very lovely café called Dorothy, in which we drank beer and discussed with excitement / fear / wonder our imminent move to Washington DC.
The next morning, I got up as early as I could bring myself to (which was not very early at all) and went running. I’m not getting in quite the distances I’d like given how near my half marathon is, but something is better than nothing… I accompanied my run by listening to an economics lecture series from a CD that I was given by one of my staff (an economist, concerned about my lack of knowledge of the subject given the topics I shall be covering in DC). I therefore had the rather surreal (but entirely pleasant) experience of running through a walking trail, through parks and by the waterfall, whilst hearing about supply and demand from a leading American academic…
Back in the hotel, and smug at not having got too lost, we headed out for breakfast at a French bakery (again) and contemplated our plan to go to a sculpture park, involving a bus, the number of which we did not know, and could not find out. It will therefore comes as little surprise to the reader to hear that shortly thereafter we were ordering kimbap to take-away in the lunch joint we’d been in yesterday, licking ice lollies from the French bakery, and heading down to the port with a vague plan of taking a boat trip. In fact, we ended up booking to go on two: a little tour round the nearby islands, and a submarine trip. But we of course planned our time well enough that we were able to retreat to the lovely shack that we’d been in the day before, to eat our takeaway kimbap and sip beer.
Both boat trips proved to be lots of fun. The first took us past islands that we’d only seen from a distance and which looked very different close up: impossible to scale, and unforgiving terrain, but bemusingly nevertheless peopled with a couple of fisherman perched on a rock (with no sign of how they could possibly have got there, or possibly hope to get off again). The submarine was even more fab: it’s not something either of us had done before, and it was brilliant to see the fish and coral so close, and gave me (momentarily anyway) rather an enthusiasm to learn to dive, as we descended to 40m to look at an old shipwreck.
After these waterey adventures, we headed to the Alice café for copious amounts of peppermint tea and cake for me (and lemonade for Layla). We spent a while there, reading our books and gorging, before it dawned on us both that the café had a music selection which only entailed three songs, and that these had now been repeated a rather unfortunate number of times. So we headed back to our room, manically humming the Carpenters, and began to contemplate what an earth we can do for dinner. But I have a plan…
Sunday 25 September 2011
In which Roz and Layla have a delightful day in Busan and finally make it to Jeju
by Layla
It is rather embittering to have to speak gushingly of a day in a city I was entirely unconvinced about, and Roz smugly recommended, but I must admit our chance visit to Busan was really lovely.
After a tasty breakfast in another French patisserie (a different chain - these are so popular here, and the bakery items are excellent), and a little lingering over coffee and fresh orange juice, we braved the subway, which yet again was well organised, good value, and entirely serene. We stepped off at some random stop specified by Lonely Planet, walked for a while, crossed some big roads, and found ourselves at the sea. After a very pleasant walk along a boardwalk, and a quick pause to stock up on water, we followed the Koreans clad in bright pink tops, hiking boots, and clutching walking sticks, and climbing up many steps, found ourselves on an absolutely delightful walk along the coast. Clearly this was a popular Korean weekend pursuit, as the trail was busy. Most of it was decking and steps following the line of the coast, with the amusing occasional addition of piped musak from hidden speakers in the trees, but then after we enjoyed the picnic lunch we'd brought from the lovely French patisserie and eaten on a rocky outcrop by the water, the trail climbed into the forest. We gamely followed, for lovely views and trees, and pleasantness.
We eventually retraced our steps, paused for a beer and a brief read, sat by the sea, and then returned to the subway stop, via yet another type of French patisserie (that promised to transmit wonderful tastiness, according to its sign), where we grabbed a sneaky orange cake, before going underground. Next stop was Centrum City, the world's biggest department store, with an oversized Guinness World Records sign to prove it. Our aim was not to shop, but instead to Spaland. If Seoul's Itaewonland was an ordinary Korean bathhouse, Spaland was the deluxe version, and according to them, the biggest of its kind in the world. Clearly this was an establishment that sought to break records. It was fun to see the high scale end of Korean spa action - a £7 entry fee got us into a spa mecca, a pristine, shining, delight of a bathhouse, where we plunged into bath after bath of water of differing temperatures, jacuzzi-ness, and chemical composition, both inside and outside. It was clearly very popular with the Sex in the City crowd of South Koreans, but I do wonder whether naked socialising would ever catch on in the UK...
After a while enjoying every single bath on offer except the boiling one and the freezing one, we dried off, pottered briefly in the giant department store, looked longingly at the ice rink (well, that was just me), and returned by subway to our hotel (I shall gloss over our failure to find it for an inordinately long time... eventually saved by Roz) to freshen up for the evening.
Ravenous, our freshening up took three minutes flat, and soon we were in a nearby Italian restaurant, where we shared a mozzarella and tomato salad, a vegetable pizza, and some lovely wine. And then, dear reader, shamefully but for the sake of honesty, we retreated to New York Fries for a portion... before finishing up in a cool cupcake cafe where Roz had a lemongrass tea and I had a red velvet cupcake.
Before going to sleep, we'd agreed to set the alarm for 6:50 but it was still bitter when it went off the next morning. Nevertheless we sprung out of bed and dashed for a taxi back to the airport where, oh joy, we were finally able to get our boarding passes for the island of Jeju. A final kiwi juice in the nice airport cafe, and a disappointing microwaved bagel at the other side of customs, and we were off.
Our first impression of Jeju was wind and less sun than we'd grown accustomed to. We hopped on a number 600 airport bus and an hour or so later were deposited at Seogwipo, our first destination on the island. It's the most southernly place in South Korea, and a quiet little town. How quiet we realised when we went hunting for lunch, which we eventually found in a slightly scary little Korean fast food shop where we ordered excessive numbers of kimibap, which is seaweed rolls with rice and vegetables inside. We munched away stoically as nearby diners watched in fascination to see if we'd manage to eat the entire order. Never underestimate greed, local diners! We had a coffee and lemonade afterwards at another nice coffee house and contemplated our plans for the next few days.
After lunch we checked in to Little France Hotel, one of the posher rooms which is rather nice and spacious and not too expensive, and then headed out on a long and very lovely walk along again a boardwalk-style walkway. Jeju has a lovely tradition of Olle Walks, which are marked walking routes along Jeju's coast with painted arrows and coloured ribbons tied to trees - Roz and I mused upon how many minutes this form of signposting would last in the UK! Our destination was the Cheonjiyeon waterfall, but we walked all the way up and round it, and through a pretty park to a viewpoint of the falls, then we couldn't resist trying out a set of the ubiquitous outdoor gym equipment which we have encountered all over the place (including, later today, at a bus stop to enable exercising while waiting for the bus!). We had a hilarious time trying out all the equipment (well, except the one that made you go upside down!) along with the Korean locals, before descending to the waterfall itself, buying a ticket and strolling right to the place where the waterfall hit the pool beneath (allegedly one in which nymphs bathed). At this point huge tour buses appeared, but it was still a rather lovely experience.
About to return to the hotel, I spotted a bridge to an island that interested me, and in pursuit, we ended up at a very cool little ramshackle bar right on the water. We ordered beer and sipped very happily while reading our books. As the sun set, we progressed to the rather cool bridge (which excited Roz because of its structure - her enthusiasm for the feat of engineering was...notable) and watched some traditional Korean dancing, before hiking up the steep hill homewards. All that threatens to spoil our stay here is the total monopoly of fish restaurants - where on earth will we eat tonight? We shall soon find out...
It is rather embittering to have to speak gushingly of a day in a city I was entirely unconvinced about, and Roz smugly recommended, but I must admit our chance visit to Busan was really lovely.
After a tasty breakfast in another French patisserie (a different chain - these are so popular here, and the bakery items are excellent), and a little lingering over coffee and fresh orange juice, we braved the subway, which yet again was well organised, good value, and entirely serene. We stepped off at some random stop specified by Lonely Planet, walked for a while, crossed some big roads, and found ourselves at the sea. After a very pleasant walk along a boardwalk, and a quick pause to stock up on water, we followed the Koreans clad in bright pink tops, hiking boots, and clutching walking sticks, and climbing up many steps, found ourselves on an absolutely delightful walk along the coast. Clearly this was a popular Korean weekend pursuit, as the trail was busy. Most of it was decking and steps following the line of the coast, with the amusing occasional addition of piped musak from hidden speakers in the trees, but then after we enjoyed the picnic lunch we'd brought from the lovely French patisserie and eaten on a rocky outcrop by the water, the trail climbed into the forest. We gamely followed, for lovely views and trees, and pleasantness.
We eventually retraced our steps, paused for a beer and a brief read, sat by the sea, and then returned to the subway stop, via yet another type of French patisserie (that promised to transmit wonderful tastiness, according to its sign), where we grabbed a sneaky orange cake, before going underground. Next stop was Centrum City, the world's biggest department store, with an oversized Guinness World Records sign to prove it. Our aim was not to shop, but instead to Spaland. If Seoul's Itaewonland was an ordinary Korean bathhouse, Spaland was the deluxe version, and according to them, the biggest of its kind in the world. Clearly this was an establishment that sought to break records. It was fun to see the high scale end of Korean spa action - a £7 entry fee got us into a spa mecca, a pristine, shining, delight of a bathhouse, where we plunged into bath after bath of water of differing temperatures, jacuzzi-ness, and chemical composition, both inside and outside. It was clearly very popular with the Sex in the City crowd of South Koreans, but I do wonder whether naked socialising would ever catch on in the UK...
After a while enjoying every single bath on offer except the boiling one and the freezing one, we dried off, pottered briefly in the giant department store, looked longingly at the ice rink (well, that was just me), and returned by subway to our hotel (I shall gloss over our failure to find it for an inordinately long time... eventually saved by Roz) to freshen up for the evening.
Ravenous, our freshening up took three minutes flat, and soon we were in a nearby Italian restaurant, where we shared a mozzarella and tomato salad, a vegetable pizza, and some lovely wine. And then, dear reader, shamefully but for the sake of honesty, we retreated to New York Fries for a portion... before finishing up in a cool cupcake cafe where Roz had a lemongrass tea and I had a red velvet cupcake.
Before going to sleep, we'd agreed to set the alarm for 6:50 but it was still bitter when it went off the next morning. Nevertheless we sprung out of bed and dashed for a taxi back to the airport where, oh joy, we were finally able to get our boarding passes for the island of Jeju. A final kiwi juice in the nice airport cafe, and a disappointing microwaved bagel at the other side of customs, and we were off.
Our first impression of Jeju was wind and less sun than we'd grown accustomed to. We hopped on a number 600 airport bus and an hour or so later were deposited at Seogwipo, our first destination on the island. It's the most southernly place in South Korea, and a quiet little town. How quiet we realised when we went hunting for lunch, which we eventually found in a slightly scary little Korean fast food shop where we ordered excessive numbers of kimibap, which is seaweed rolls with rice and vegetables inside. We munched away stoically as nearby diners watched in fascination to see if we'd manage to eat the entire order. Never underestimate greed, local diners! We had a coffee and lemonade afterwards at another nice coffee house and contemplated our plans for the next few days.
After lunch we checked in to Little France Hotel, one of the posher rooms which is rather nice and spacious and not too expensive, and then headed out on a long and very lovely walk along again a boardwalk-style walkway. Jeju has a lovely tradition of Olle Walks, which are marked walking routes along Jeju's coast with painted arrows and coloured ribbons tied to trees - Roz and I mused upon how many minutes this form of signposting would last in the UK! Our destination was the Cheonjiyeon waterfall, but we walked all the way up and round it, and through a pretty park to a viewpoint of the falls, then we couldn't resist trying out a set of the ubiquitous outdoor gym equipment which we have encountered all over the place (including, later today, at a bus stop to enable exercising while waiting for the bus!). We had a hilarious time trying out all the equipment (well, except the one that made you go upside down!) along with the Korean locals, before descending to the waterfall itself, buying a ticket and strolling right to the place where the waterfall hit the pool beneath (allegedly one in which nymphs bathed). At this point huge tour buses appeared, but it was still a rather lovely experience.
About to return to the hotel, I spotted a bridge to an island that interested me, and in pursuit, we ended up at a very cool little ramshackle bar right on the water. We ordered beer and sipped very happily while reading our books. As the sun set, we progressed to the rather cool bridge (which excited Roz because of its structure - her enthusiasm for the feat of engineering was...notable) and watched some traditional Korean dancing, before hiking up the steep hill homewards. All that threatens to spoil our stay here is the total monopoly of fish restaurants - where on earth will we eat tonight? We shall soon find out...
Saturday 24 September 2011
In which Layla and Roz are unwowed by a top UNESCO city, hunt for beer and spend a day at the airport
by Layla
Having awoken from my afternoon nap, Roz and I returned to the bathhouse for a pre-prandial soak in the hot water - very pleasant. And then onwards to an Italian restaurant for our anniversary meal, which was very tasty - spaghetti with vegetables, and a bottle of prosecco. Afterwards, Roz popped in to the posh chocolate shop and bought me a red chocolate anniversary heart - very sweet. I ate it in Cafe Zoo, and we both absemiously sipped mint tea as we had failed to locate a convenient bar.
The next day we rather slept in, so it was with unwanted haste that we jumped up, checked out, and took a taxi to Seoul Station, with the plan of buying bullet train tickets to our next destination, Gyeongju, a famous and allegedly beautiful city recognised by UNESCO as one of the world's most culturally significant. Drama ensued when the ticket machine wouldn't take our card, and nor would the ATM... fortunately we eventually located the one 'global ATM', extracted as much cash as we could, bought the tickets, and retired to a French cafe for juice, coffee, and cheese bread.
The train itself was delightfully efficient and whizzed us to the other side of the country in two hours. One shuttle bus later, we were standing bemused on the side of the road trying to figure out where our hotel was. And then a cheery man from our bus offered to drive us. And despite what we have been taught, into his car we hopped. Fortunately he meant only well, and deposited us at our hotel safely and efficiently. When I say hotel, Sa Rang Chae was really a guesthouse, of the traditional Korean 'hanok' style, very pretty to look at, with cool roof that twirled up at the corners, and the rooms opening out to a little courtyard where once can have breakfast. However, consistent with its traditional style, we were allocated an 'ondol' room, which means a sleeping mat on a wooden floor; said floor is heated from below at night. Neither of us were very good at sleeping on our sleeping mat, and - rather like the princess and the pea - persuaded the owners to give us mat after mat til we perched precariously upon five sleeping mats on the second night!
We'd meant to stay for four nights, but we didn't really bond with Gyeongju (though I'd expected it to be the highlight of the holiday) and only stayed for two. On the first afternoon we ventured out into the town, past huge grassy mounds which were the Shilla kingdom's version of pyramids. Town was a busy, neon place, with huge numbers of hiking shops and various other clothes and mobile phone shops. And a couple of cafes - we had lemonade and yoghurt in one, before retiring to our ondol to contemplate the evening's options. We'd planned to go to a Japanese restaurant, but it was a bit early so we searched in vain for a bar. South Korea, outside of Seoul, doesn't seem to be a place where people sit and drink in bars. We followed the signs for 'January Coffee and Beer' up a staircase and reached a terrifying big room of individual curtained booths, but even there they failed to produce beer, only offering us the ubiquitous lemonade at a price that made us suspect we were due some kind of sordid extras along with it...
Finishing our lemonades, we hopped onto wifi and noticed a rave review on a blog of a vegetarian restaurant, just out of town. Roz pointed out that we'd spent most of the day travelling and she felt deprived of a proper adventure, so we hopped in a taxi. As we drove out of town, down a long, dark motorway, we started to get cold feet that were only exacerbated when we arrived at what I confirmed by matching the Korean writing on the sign with that from the blog was the restaurant. Soon we were installed inside, sitting on the floor at a tiny wooden table, the only customers in an austere and silent restaurant, and a secret terror that we would never get back to our hanok. Our fears were unfounded - course after course of vegetarian Korean food was presented to us, the majority of which was delicious, and when the woman in charge decided we were finished, she called a taxi for us. A bizarre experience, and a rather enjoyable one, in a somewhat terrifying way. We spent the rest of the evening on our tiny ondol listening to The Moth podcasts and playing cards.
The next day Roz headed off for a run and got horribly lost and entangled in a band of about 1000 Korean children on school trips to look at the grassy mound tombs. Having eventually extracted herself and located the hanok, we changed, ate breakfast, and took a bus to Bulguk-sa, a very famous temple complex up in the hills outside Gyeongju. It was nice to be out of town, and we explored the temple with much interest, before climbing up a steep path through the hills for 3.5km to the Seokguram Grotto, our second UNESCO World Heritage site of the day, and one of the world's top examples of Buddhist art. It was rather lovely, with a great view down to the sea. When the ubiquitous million schoolchildren descended upon us, we fled, and walked back down the long path (which felt rather more pleasant and less long on the way down!) to the original temple, to catch a bus back to town, having had a rather pleasant day.
Determined to make the evening just as pleasant, we failed to find a bar yet again, but went to a pleasant pizza place where we procured a bottle of Malbec with our pizza, and supplemented the 'tiramasu' with ice cream from a local ice cream shop, and then we picked up beer and pringles from the supermarket and shut ourselves into our ondol again for more Moth podcasts and some confusion about how long we really wanted to spend in Gyeongju. Alas our next destination required a flight, and despite there being copious numbers of these, Friday was the most popular day to fly to Jeju island, and all were fully booked. We decided to muse upon it overnight.
I slept poorly, despite the multiple sleeping pads, and in the darkness of the night got very frustrated about the flights to Jeju. When I woke up Roz, we couldn't decide what to do, but her face implied that she did not wish a third night in the ondol room drinking supermarket beer... we discussed going to a nearby city called Busan but for some reason, I had taken against this and didn't want to. We went for a stroll around the tombs, and inside one of them, and then to see an astronomy tower built in ancient times and situated in a park, before returning to the hanok, our decision made - we would go to the airport and try to get on one of the many planes to Jeju. Well, it seemed a good idea at the time...
A very hot slog to the express bus terminal had us miss the hourly airport bus by 2 minutes. Frustrated, we retired to Paris Baguette, a very popular bakery and teashop chain in South Korea that has already been our salvation. We sat down in its air conditioned serenity, had drinks and cheese rolls, and read our books til the allotted time had passed. We then returned to the bus station and took an hour-long bus to Gimhae airport. A lovely, serene airport filled with Koreans boarding planes to Jeju, there were three companies that plied the route, and each of them had a 'stand-by' desk. Korean Airways were rude and shouted at me that there were no stand-bys for the whole of the weekend. I fled to Air Busan, who put me at the bottom of a long list of potential standbys for a flight departing five hours hence. And then to Jeju Air where the air hostesses, who couldn't speak a word of English, bade me return in a couple of hours for the standby list.
Roz and I retired to what was quite a delightful outdoor cafe, overlooking the airport and the mountains, bought fresh kiwi juice, and read our books in what has ironically been one of the most relaxing afternoons of our holiday so far. It was only when I realised people had started to queue at Jeju air that I had to dash to get my standby number. Then we had a rather delicious bimimbap meal of rice, vegetables and miso soup, before returning to the Jeju Air desk at the appropriate time. Despite having handed over large handfuls of won (Korean money), we failed to get a seat on the flight and the air hostesses returned our money. I find the culture of not being noticeably sympathetic quite frustrating - first when we'd missed the airport bus by 2 minutes, and now with the flight. I sloped off to our last hope, Busan Air. After 45 minutes, we were told we couldn't fly. And as such, were stranded.
We bought tickets for the next available flight (Sunday morning), and grabbed a taxi to the place Roz had wanted to go all along, Busan. 45 minutes later, we were deposited at the Angel Motel, a fairly basic place which has the benefit of a real bed! The joy. Plus the area, Seomyeon, was bustling and full of people on nights out. Again, this seemed to mean coffee shops rather than bars, but we strode through busy, neon streets to the posh Lotte Hotel where we had cocktails (me) and wine (Roz) to the dulcet tones of a lounge singer in the hotel's bar, and then back through the streets to an Italian cafe/restaurant where they had no wine but sold us beer, which was only allowed to be sipped outside on the terrace, and certainly not inside - bizarre. It was a tad chilly but we had a pleasant drink, and were just about to head for our hotel when we spotted a 'New York Fries' joint, and couldn't resist. Another rather pleasant little establishment, we ate our fill and had a beer (inside!), before returning to the hotel at an unheard-of midnight.
Having awoken from my afternoon nap, Roz and I returned to the bathhouse for a pre-prandial soak in the hot water - very pleasant. And then onwards to an Italian restaurant for our anniversary meal, which was very tasty - spaghetti with vegetables, and a bottle of prosecco. Afterwards, Roz popped in to the posh chocolate shop and bought me a red chocolate anniversary heart - very sweet. I ate it in Cafe Zoo, and we both absemiously sipped mint tea as we had failed to locate a convenient bar.
The next day we rather slept in, so it was with unwanted haste that we jumped up, checked out, and took a taxi to Seoul Station, with the plan of buying bullet train tickets to our next destination, Gyeongju, a famous and allegedly beautiful city recognised by UNESCO as one of the world's most culturally significant. Drama ensued when the ticket machine wouldn't take our card, and nor would the ATM... fortunately we eventually located the one 'global ATM', extracted as much cash as we could, bought the tickets, and retired to a French cafe for juice, coffee, and cheese bread.
The train itself was delightfully efficient and whizzed us to the other side of the country in two hours. One shuttle bus later, we were standing bemused on the side of the road trying to figure out where our hotel was. And then a cheery man from our bus offered to drive us. And despite what we have been taught, into his car we hopped. Fortunately he meant only well, and deposited us at our hotel safely and efficiently. When I say hotel, Sa Rang Chae was really a guesthouse, of the traditional Korean 'hanok' style, very pretty to look at, with cool roof that twirled up at the corners, and the rooms opening out to a little courtyard where once can have breakfast. However, consistent with its traditional style, we were allocated an 'ondol' room, which means a sleeping mat on a wooden floor; said floor is heated from below at night. Neither of us were very good at sleeping on our sleeping mat, and - rather like the princess and the pea - persuaded the owners to give us mat after mat til we perched precariously upon five sleeping mats on the second night!
We'd meant to stay for four nights, but we didn't really bond with Gyeongju (though I'd expected it to be the highlight of the holiday) and only stayed for two. On the first afternoon we ventured out into the town, past huge grassy mounds which were the Shilla kingdom's version of pyramids. Town was a busy, neon place, with huge numbers of hiking shops and various other clothes and mobile phone shops. And a couple of cafes - we had lemonade and yoghurt in one, before retiring to our ondol to contemplate the evening's options. We'd planned to go to a Japanese restaurant, but it was a bit early so we searched in vain for a bar. South Korea, outside of Seoul, doesn't seem to be a place where people sit and drink in bars. We followed the signs for 'January Coffee and Beer' up a staircase and reached a terrifying big room of individual curtained booths, but even there they failed to produce beer, only offering us the ubiquitous lemonade at a price that made us suspect we were due some kind of sordid extras along with it...
Finishing our lemonades, we hopped onto wifi and noticed a rave review on a blog of a vegetarian restaurant, just out of town. Roz pointed out that we'd spent most of the day travelling and she felt deprived of a proper adventure, so we hopped in a taxi. As we drove out of town, down a long, dark motorway, we started to get cold feet that were only exacerbated when we arrived at what I confirmed by matching the Korean writing on the sign with that from the blog was the restaurant. Soon we were installed inside, sitting on the floor at a tiny wooden table, the only customers in an austere and silent restaurant, and a secret terror that we would never get back to our hanok. Our fears were unfounded - course after course of vegetarian Korean food was presented to us, the majority of which was delicious, and when the woman in charge decided we were finished, she called a taxi for us. A bizarre experience, and a rather enjoyable one, in a somewhat terrifying way. We spent the rest of the evening on our tiny ondol listening to The Moth podcasts and playing cards.
The next day Roz headed off for a run and got horribly lost and entangled in a band of about 1000 Korean children on school trips to look at the grassy mound tombs. Having eventually extracted herself and located the hanok, we changed, ate breakfast, and took a bus to Bulguk-sa, a very famous temple complex up in the hills outside Gyeongju. It was nice to be out of town, and we explored the temple with much interest, before climbing up a steep path through the hills for 3.5km to the Seokguram Grotto, our second UNESCO World Heritage site of the day, and one of the world's top examples of Buddhist art. It was rather lovely, with a great view down to the sea. When the ubiquitous million schoolchildren descended upon us, we fled, and walked back down the long path (which felt rather more pleasant and less long on the way down!) to the original temple, to catch a bus back to town, having had a rather pleasant day.
Determined to make the evening just as pleasant, we failed to find a bar yet again, but went to a pleasant pizza place where we procured a bottle of Malbec with our pizza, and supplemented the 'tiramasu' with ice cream from a local ice cream shop, and then we picked up beer and pringles from the supermarket and shut ourselves into our ondol again for more Moth podcasts and some confusion about how long we really wanted to spend in Gyeongju. Alas our next destination required a flight, and despite there being copious numbers of these, Friday was the most popular day to fly to Jeju island, and all were fully booked. We decided to muse upon it overnight.
I slept poorly, despite the multiple sleeping pads, and in the darkness of the night got very frustrated about the flights to Jeju. When I woke up Roz, we couldn't decide what to do, but her face implied that she did not wish a third night in the ondol room drinking supermarket beer... we discussed going to a nearby city called Busan but for some reason, I had taken against this and didn't want to. We went for a stroll around the tombs, and inside one of them, and then to see an astronomy tower built in ancient times and situated in a park, before returning to the hanok, our decision made - we would go to the airport and try to get on one of the many planes to Jeju. Well, it seemed a good idea at the time...
A very hot slog to the express bus terminal had us miss the hourly airport bus by 2 minutes. Frustrated, we retired to Paris Baguette, a very popular bakery and teashop chain in South Korea that has already been our salvation. We sat down in its air conditioned serenity, had drinks and cheese rolls, and read our books til the allotted time had passed. We then returned to the bus station and took an hour-long bus to Gimhae airport. A lovely, serene airport filled with Koreans boarding planes to Jeju, there were three companies that plied the route, and each of them had a 'stand-by' desk. Korean Airways were rude and shouted at me that there were no stand-bys for the whole of the weekend. I fled to Air Busan, who put me at the bottom of a long list of potential standbys for a flight departing five hours hence. And then to Jeju Air where the air hostesses, who couldn't speak a word of English, bade me return in a couple of hours for the standby list.
Roz and I retired to what was quite a delightful outdoor cafe, overlooking the airport and the mountains, bought fresh kiwi juice, and read our books in what has ironically been one of the most relaxing afternoons of our holiday so far. It was only when I realised people had started to queue at Jeju air that I had to dash to get my standby number. Then we had a rather delicious bimimbap meal of rice, vegetables and miso soup, before returning to the Jeju Air desk at the appropriate time. Despite having handed over large handfuls of won (Korean money), we failed to get a seat on the flight and the air hostesses returned our money. I find the culture of not being noticeably sympathetic quite frustrating - first when we'd missed the airport bus by 2 minutes, and now with the flight. I sloped off to our last hope, Busan Air. After 45 minutes, we were told we couldn't fly. And as such, were stranded.
We bought tickets for the next available flight (Sunday morning), and grabbed a taxi to the place Roz had wanted to go all along, Busan. 45 minutes later, we were deposited at the Angel Motel, a fairly basic place which has the benefit of a real bed! The joy. Plus the area, Seomyeon, was bustling and full of people on nights out. Again, this seemed to mean coffee shops rather than bars, but we strode through busy, neon streets to the posh Lotte Hotel where we had cocktails (me) and wine (Roz) to the dulcet tones of a lounge singer in the hotel's bar, and then back through the streets to an Italian cafe/restaurant where they had no wine but sold us beer, which was only allowed to be sipped outside on the terrace, and certainly not inside - bizarre. It was a tad chilly but we had a pleasant drink, and were just about to head for our hotel when we spotted a 'New York Fries' joint, and couldn't resist. Another rather pleasant little establishment, we ate our fill and had a beer (inside!), before returning to the hotel at an unheard-of midnight.
Tuesday 20 September 2011
In which Roz and Layla wish each other a happy anniversary and go to a lot of cafes
by Roz
I returned from my virtuous run in the empty and soulless gym feeling, well, virtuous. We then got changed and set off for a pre-dinner drink. We sampled our first local beer (Cass) and pondered our dinner choices. We finally settled on an Indian restaurant, mainly attracted by the twinkly lights and promise of paneer on the menu (we are very easily lured). We felt a little guilty at not having Korean food for a second night in a row, but reassured ourselves with the thought that the guidebooks claim that this is the only area in which we will get non-Korean food and the hassles of being a vegetarian in Korea will not be far off and can justifiably wait one more day… The restaurant was fine, as was the food (if nothing too exciting).
The meal was over fairly quickly – in part due to greed, and in part due to the Korean enthusiasm for bringing starters and main courses around the same time. We then headed to a bar a couple of doors down for a couple of cocktails, before pottering up the road to take a look at a restaurant that we were considering for dinner the next day (that day being the august occasion of our four year anniversary) and having one final drink in a jolly looking bar, Virgin, en route home.
I slept beautifully, but Layla was cursed with jet-lag and awoke at 3 and was unable to get back to sleep. I therefore felt it only fair that I be the one to nip out for coffee and orange juice before anniversary gifts were exchanged. We then headed out to have breakfast and fortified ourselves with cream cheese bagels in a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf (the chain we’d first come across when travelling in Borneo) before braving the metro (which turned out not to be scary at all) and beginning a self-guided art gallery tour around the palace district and Samcheongdong.
Of course, tour is rather a grand name for what was a very pleasant amble poking our noses into art galleries and – on one occasion – being filmed whilst doing so (presumably we got caught up in the PR for a show, though we didn’t quite manage to establish whether this was in fact the case). Pleasingly, lovely coffee shops seem to go hand in hand with cool art galleries, and we stopped in one for a very pleasant lunch of carrot and broccoli soup (with warm bread). As we continued on our walk, heading towards Changdeokgung palace, we passed through a very lovely area, with cute shops, cafes and restaurants – which we plan to return to at the end of the trip, when we are in Seoul again (and staying reasonably close by).
With no palace in sight, we felt a little lost, so I cunningly suggested that a good plan would be a lemonade in one of the lovely coffee shops – so that we could ask our way. The first part of the plan went well; the second not so much, since the owner / waiter didn’t speak English. But on consulting our iPhones, we realized that we had very determinedly headed in the wrong direction (Layla’s jet lag is no doubt to blame) and so we picked up our pace as we more or less retraced our steps – the speed being needed because Lonely Planet said that the palace could only be viewed with a tour – and the tour was at 3.30, alarmingly soon. Of course, when we arrived at the palace we found that (i) the tour was actually at 2.30 but (ii) it didn’t matter because tours are no longer obligatory. We rambled round the palace, enjoying the prettiness and the fact that we seemed to be the only European tourists, though I must confess we didn’t stay the 90 minutes we would have done, had we been being educated on a tour.
From there we headed to the metro, and were waylaid by yet another lovely looking café where I stuck to stereotype and had tea and we shared a less conventional green tea pancake (which bizarrely tasted very fruity) and read our books.
We are now back in our room, and I’m currently listening to Layla gently snore (pre-dinner nap to make up for sleep deprivation) and gazing out of the large window in our room looking at the quite fabulous skyline as the sun sinks, and thinking that Seoul really is jolly nice.
I returned from my virtuous run in the empty and soulless gym feeling, well, virtuous. We then got changed and set off for a pre-dinner drink. We sampled our first local beer (Cass) and pondered our dinner choices. We finally settled on an Indian restaurant, mainly attracted by the twinkly lights and promise of paneer on the menu (we are very easily lured). We felt a little guilty at not having Korean food for a second night in a row, but reassured ourselves with the thought that the guidebooks claim that this is the only area in which we will get non-Korean food and the hassles of being a vegetarian in Korea will not be far off and can justifiably wait one more day… The restaurant was fine, as was the food (if nothing too exciting).
The meal was over fairly quickly – in part due to greed, and in part due to the Korean enthusiasm for bringing starters and main courses around the same time. We then headed to a bar a couple of doors down for a couple of cocktails, before pottering up the road to take a look at a restaurant that we were considering for dinner the next day (that day being the august occasion of our four year anniversary) and having one final drink in a jolly looking bar, Virgin, en route home.
I slept beautifully, but Layla was cursed with jet-lag and awoke at 3 and was unable to get back to sleep. I therefore felt it only fair that I be the one to nip out for coffee and orange juice before anniversary gifts were exchanged. We then headed out to have breakfast and fortified ourselves with cream cheese bagels in a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf (the chain we’d first come across when travelling in Borneo) before braving the metro (which turned out not to be scary at all) and beginning a self-guided art gallery tour around the palace district and Samcheongdong.
Of course, tour is rather a grand name for what was a very pleasant amble poking our noses into art galleries and – on one occasion – being filmed whilst doing so (presumably we got caught up in the PR for a show, though we didn’t quite manage to establish whether this was in fact the case). Pleasingly, lovely coffee shops seem to go hand in hand with cool art galleries, and we stopped in one for a very pleasant lunch of carrot and broccoli soup (with warm bread). As we continued on our walk, heading towards Changdeokgung palace, we passed through a very lovely area, with cute shops, cafes and restaurants – which we plan to return to at the end of the trip, when we are in Seoul again (and staying reasonably close by).
With no palace in sight, we felt a little lost, so I cunningly suggested that a good plan would be a lemonade in one of the lovely coffee shops – so that we could ask our way. The first part of the plan went well; the second not so much, since the owner / waiter didn’t speak English. But on consulting our iPhones, we realized that we had very determinedly headed in the wrong direction (Layla’s jet lag is no doubt to blame) and so we picked up our pace as we more or less retraced our steps – the speed being needed because Lonely Planet said that the palace could only be viewed with a tour – and the tour was at 3.30, alarmingly soon. Of course, when we arrived at the palace we found that (i) the tour was actually at 2.30 but (ii) it didn’t matter because tours are no longer obligatory. We rambled round the palace, enjoying the prettiness and the fact that we seemed to be the only European tourists, though I must confess we didn’t stay the 90 minutes we would have done, had we been being educated on a tour.
From there we headed to the metro, and were waylaid by yet another lovely looking café where I stuck to stereotype and had tea and we shared a less conventional green tea pancake (which bizarrely tasted very fruity) and read our books.
We are now back in our room, and I’m currently listening to Layla gently snore (pre-dinner nap to make up for sleep deprivation) and gazing out of the large window in our room looking at the quite fabulous skyline as the sun sinks, and thinking that Seoul really is jolly nice.
Monday 19 September 2011
In which Layla and Roz travel to South Korea, suffer jet lag, and have most of their skin scrubbed off
by Layla
It feels a long time ago since yesterday, when Roz and I boarded a night flight to Seoul, South Korea. There is something soul destroying about night flights, particularly when everyone around you is snuggled and snoozing as though in their own beds, and all you can do is watch the minutes ticking by... After enjoying the film Midnight in Paris, Roz joined these happy slumberers and I wriggled and tossed and turned as much as one can do in the middle of a row of aeroplane seats. It was disconcerting to land at 4pm after all this sleeping (or pseudo-sleeping in my case) but Seoul airport was a dream of efficiency, and with zero drama we found ourselves on the 6060 bus heading straight for the IP Boutique Hotel in Itaewon, Seoul, our first South Korea destination and as ever with our first nights on holiday, something of an extravagance.
Apart from lacking a swimming pool, the hotel did not disappoint - mad decor, and very cool, sleek room on the 11th floor with a view of lots of skyscrapers and a tiny bit of the Han river. We dusted ourselves off, consulted our three guide books, and headed off to what we persuaded ourselves was dinner, a 5 minute walk away on a little street packed with restaurants. Itaewon is apparently not especially touristy, but quite popular with ex pats, and the restaurants were fittingly unalarming. We settled incongruously in a much-recommended Thai restaurant called the Buddha's Belly, and even more incongruously sipped mohitos while we enjoyed our tofu-based thai food.
After dinner we strolled back to the hotel via a chocolate shop where we bought a couple of posh chocolates, then to the hotel bar which was cool, sleek, elegant, and deserted, save for a stoical singer at a keyboard in the corner (whose repertoire included a bizarre number of Christmas songs). The wine glasses were the size of our heads, so we settled down for a drink, surreptitiously nibbling the posh chocolates. We determinedly kept ourselves awake til after 10, at which point we collapsed into bed.
At 2:30am, we both woke, bright and perky. Alas. Roz eventually got back to sleep while I read my book on Kindle, using its reading light under the covers til 6:30, at which point I finally dozed off. Roz prodded me awake at 11:30am. DIsorientated!
We had planned to go for a hike today, in one of Seoul's parks, but gazing 11 storeys down to the main road of Itaewon revealed Koreans brandishing umbrellas, and a sky the colour of lead. With guidebooks in hand, we headed for a little breakfast place called the Flying Pan, which was very cool and rather expensive, and gave us fairly pleasant brunch, though both of us felt a tad nauseous. Since pretty much everything in Seoul is closed on a Monday, we contemplated what to do with some confusion. We moved to the chocolate place for coffee (or in my case, a rather tasty berry smoothie) and contemplated again. And decided with our tiredness and the weather, what was really called for was a visit to one of Korea's bathhouses. And handily enough, one of the best in Seoul was literally minutes from our hotel.
Itaewonland bathhouse was rather scary, but no more so than the bathhouse we went to in Georgia earlier this year, on a similarly wet day, so up the stairs we strode, and we were soon given our keys for the first locker, in which we deposited our shoes. Barefooted, we proceeded to the ladies' area, where we deposited the rest of our clothes etc in a second set of lockers, putting on matching pink t-shirt and shorts ensembles that we had been issued. A shout of protest from an elderly lady in bra and pants revealed our faux pas. Off came the clothes and we were pushed under hot showers, apparently coming from a mineral spring 300m underground. The bathhouse was quite attractive, with showers along the back wall, which were filled with Korean women engaged in the very serious act of getting clean. Their scrubbing routines seemed to take a full hour, which was very impressive. Lacking that dedication, Roz and I had paid for a scrub, and before long were summoned to shiny pink tables where two very vigorous women wearing loofah gloves scrubbed us within an inch of our lives, only pausing to exclaim at the dead skin they had dragged from our protesting, very pink bodies, and occasionally point to it with an expression of fascination and alarm.
Feeling pristine, we got into the array of differently-heated hot tubs, all being topped up continuously by fountains in the shape of large, gold-painted penises. The hot tubs were just what was called for, and we spent an inordinate amount of time lazing in them while around us, women scrubbed and scrubbed. We mused over the lack of similar dedication to removing dead skin in the UK, and whether everyone else has a serious, regular scrubbing routine, at home or elsewhere, that we have been missing all these years. Anyone?
Having eventually dragged ourselves from the bathhouse, we returned to the hotel, where I am relaxing, writing this blog, reading, and contemplating dinner plans, and Roz, who is training for a half marathon which is happening in a couple of weeks, has unenthusiastically headed to the hotel 'gym' (a windowless room sporting a couple of pieces of gym equipment) to do a bit of training. Glad I'm not her!
It feels a long time ago since yesterday, when Roz and I boarded a night flight to Seoul, South Korea. There is something soul destroying about night flights, particularly when everyone around you is snuggled and snoozing as though in their own beds, and all you can do is watch the minutes ticking by... After enjoying the film Midnight in Paris, Roz joined these happy slumberers and I wriggled and tossed and turned as much as one can do in the middle of a row of aeroplane seats. It was disconcerting to land at 4pm after all this sleeping (or pseudo-sleeping in my case) but Seoul airport was a dream of efficiency, and with zero drama we found ourselves on the 6060 bus heading straight for the IP Boutique Hotel in Itaewon, Seoul, our first South Korea destination and as ever with our first nights on holiday, something of an extravagance.
Apart from lacking a swimming pool, the hotel did not disappoint - mad decor, and very cool, sleek room on the 11th floor with a view of lots of skyscrapers and a tiny bit of the Han river. We dusted ourselves off, consulted our three guide books, and headed off to what we persuaded ourselves was dinner, a 5 minute walk away on a little street packed with restaurants. Itaewon is apparently not especially touristy, but quite popular with ex pats, and the restaurants were fittingly unalarming. We settled incongruously in a much-recommended Thai restaurant called the Buddha's Belly, and even more incongruously sipped mohitos while we enjoyed our tofu-based thai food.
After dinner we strolled back to the hotel via a chocolate shop where we bought a couple of posh chocolates, then to the hotel bar which was cool, sleek, elegant, and deserted, save for a stoical singer at a keyboard in the corner (whose repertoire included a bizarre number of Christmas songs). The wine glasses were the size of our heads, so we settled down for a drink, surreptitiously nibbling the posh chocolates. We determinedly kept ourselves awake til after 10, at which point we collapsed into bed.
At 2:30am, we both woke, bright and perky. Alas. Roz eventually got back to sleep while I read my book on Kindle, using its reading light under the covers til 6:30, at which point I finally dozed off. Roz prodded me awake at 11:30am. DIsorientated!
We had planned to go for a hike today, in one of Seoul's parks, but gazing 11 storeys down to the main road of Itaewon revealed Koreans brandishing umbrellas, and a sky the colour of lead. With guidebooks in hand, we headed for a little breakfast place called the Flying Pan, which was very cool and rather expensive, and gave us fairly pleasant brunch, though both of us felt a tad nauseous. Since pretty much everything in Seoul is closed on a Monday, we contemplated what to do with some confusion. We moved to the chocolate place for coffee (or in my case, a rather tasty berry smoothie) and contemplated again. And decided with our tiredness and the weather, what was really called for was a visit to one of Korea's bathhouses. And handily enough, one of the best in Seoul was literally minutes from our hotel.
Itaewonland bathhouse was rather scary, but no more so than the bathhouse we went to in Georgia earlier this year, on a similarly wet day, so up the stairs we strode, and we were soon given our keys for the first locker, in which we deposited our shoes. Barefooted, we proceeded to the ladies' area, where we deposited the rest of our clothes etc in a second set of lockers, putting on matching pink t-shirt and shorts ensembles that we had been issued. A shout of protest from an elderly lady in bra and pants revealed our faux pas. Off came the clothes and we were pushed under hot showers, apparently coming from a mineral spring 300m underground. The bathhouse was quite attractive, with showers along the back wall, which were filled with Korean women engaged in the very serious act of getting clean. Their scrubbing routines seemed to take a full hour, which was very impressive. Lacking that dedication, Roz and I had paid for a scrub, and before long were summoned to shiny pink tables where two very vigorous women wearing loofah gloves scrubbed us within an inch of our lives, only pausing to exclaim at the dead skin they had dragged from our protesting, very pink bodies, and occasionally point to it with an expression of fascination and alarm.
Feeling pristine, we got into the array of differently-heated hot tubs, all being topped up continuously by fountains in the shape of large, gold-painted penises. The hot tubs were just what was called for, and we spent an inordinate amount of time lazing in them while around us, women scrubbed and scrubbed. We mused over the lack of similar dedication to removing dead skin in the UK, and whether everyone else has a serious, regular scrubbing routine, at home or elsewhere, that we have been missing all these years. Anyone?
Having eventually dragged ourselves from the bathhouse, we returned to the hotel, where I am relaxing, writing this blog, reading, and contemplating dinner plans, and Roz, who is training for a half marathon which is happening in a couple of weeks, has unenthusiastically headed to the hotel 'gym' (a windowless room sporting a couple of pieces of gym equipment) to do a bit of training. Glad I'm not her!
Monday 11 July 2011
In which Layla and Roz indulge in a tasting menu, sample some delicious cocktails and give the fringe festival the benefit of the doubt
by Layla
When Roz returned from yoga we decided to enjoy the temporary delight of having a big apartment with outside space and lounged, reading our books and watching the last bit of Fingersmith, before heading out to lunch at Cafe Seven, at Bloor and Yonge. Thereafter we strolled to Church Street, the gay part of town. So officially gay, in fact, that all the official street signs had rainbows on them. We pottered past rainbow flags galore, then crossed to Yonge Street where we decided to sample some shopping, Toronto style. Alas the Eaton Centre was rather unpleasant, busy, and sporting rubbish shops, so we eventually fled and spent the rest of the afternoon back on the balcony with our books, feeling so serene that it was impossible to believe our holiday might soon be over.
That evening we headed out for our most extravagant meal - a seven-course tasting menu at the George. And it was excellent. I had seven courses and Roz had a different seven, so by sharing, it was almost like a 14 course menu, and probably one of the best we've had (outside of Noma, of course!). Really interesting flavours, great textures, and imaginative concoctions. Nice. It took quite a while and we didn't get home til almost midnight.
The next day we had to pack up and clean a little in preparation for handing our apartment keys back to their rightful owners. Leaving our luggage there, we left with determination to be cheery, and headed down to the harbourfront, to visit the Toronto Music Garden, which is a special garden designed by Yo Yo Ma to show music in botanical form. As neither of us understand much about music, some of this may have been too esoteric, but it was a pretty garden. We wandered on along the waterfront until we stopped for a quick drink in a waterside pub and raindrops slowly started to fall. We'd intended to get the ferry back out to the Toronto Islands and rent a rowboat, but the sky remained cryptic and we couldn't decide if we had the nerve to get the ferry to an island with essentially nowhere to hide if it starts to rain. The ferry queues were huge with optimists, but after some deliberation, we decided to flee, and had a tasty lunch of vegetable and cheese wraps and salad in a harbourfront cafe.
After lunch we popped into the Power Plant art gallery, in the Harbourfront Centre, initially with the intention of hearing an artist talk. Though it turned out it was more of an exhibition tour, and after a quick wander around, we didn't feel the need to hear much more about the art, so we made a run for it, to a streetcar heading north on Spadina Avenue, destination Vladimir Theatre (aka a Ukrainian halls of residence next to the University of Toronto, and erstwhile Fringe venue), to see A Different Woman, a one-woman show about a Texan childhood. This play turned out to be marginally better than the other that we saw, but was essentially an overacted recounting of a misery memoir. For ninety minutes. In a hall so freezing with air conditioning that the ushers offered to rent us shawls and sweaters for $2, and we actually invested! But it was quite fun and good to see another Fringe event.
After that we went for final cocktails and a plate of chips at a cool little cocktail bar in Queen Street West called something beginning with Cz... We sat in the sun in their patio and tried not to know that we were about to return to the apartment, pick up our luggage and catch a taxi to the airport, for the plane back to London... A really nice holiday.
When Roz returned from yoga we decided to enjoy the temporary delight of having a big apartment with outside space and lounged, reading our books and watching the last bit of Fingersmith, before heading out to lunch at Cafe Seven, at Bloor and Yonge. Thereafter we strolled to Church Street, the gay part of town. So officially gay, in fact, that all the official street signs had rainbows on them. We pottered past rainbow flags galore, then crossed to Yonge Street where we decided to sample some shopping, Toronto style. Alas the Eaton Centre was rather unpleasant, busy, and sporting rubbish shops, so we eventually fled and spent the rest of the afternoon back on the balcony with our books, feeling so serene that it was impossible to believe our holiday might soon be over.
That evening we headed out for our most extravagant meal - a seven-course tasting menu at the George. And it was excellent. I had seven courses and Roz had a different seven, so by sharing, it was almost like a 14 course menu, and probably one of the best we've had (outside of Noma, of course!). Really interesting flavours, great textures, and imaginative concoctions. Nice. It took quite a while and we didn't get home til almost midnight.
The next day we had to pack up and clean a little in preparation for handing our apartment keys back to their rightful owners. Leaving our luggage there, we left with determination to be cheery, and headed down to the harbourfront, to visit the Toronto Music Garden, which is a special garden designed by Yo Yo Ma to show music in botanical form. As neither of us understand much about music, some of this may have been too esoteric, but it was a pretty garden. We wandered on along the waterfront until we stopped for a quick drink in a waterside pub and raindrops slowly started to fall. We'd intended to get the ferry back out to the Toronto Islands and rent a rowboat, but the sky remained cryptic and we couldn't decide if we had the nerve to get the ferry to an island with essentially nowhere to hide if it starts to rain. The ferry queues were huge with optimists, but after some deliberation, we decided to flee, and had a tasty lunch of vegetable and cheese wraps and salad in a harbourfront cafe.
After lunch we popped into the Power Plant art gallery, in the Harbourfront Centre, initially with the intention of hearing an artist talk. Though it turned out it was more of an exhibition tour, and after a quick wander around, we didn't feel the need to hear much more about the art, so we made a run for it, to a streetcar heading north on Spadina Avenue, destination Vladimir Theatre (aka a Ukrainian halls of residence next to the University of Toronto, and erstwhile Fringe venue), to see A Different Woman, a one-woman show about a Texan childhood. This play turned out to be marginally better than the other that we saw, but was essentially an overacted recounting of a misery memoir. For ninety minutes. In a hall so freezing with air conditioning that the ushers offered to rent us shawls and sweaters for $2, and we actually invested! But it was quite fun and good to see another Fringe event.
After that we went for final cocktails and a plate of chips at a cool little cocktail bar in Queen Street West called something beginning with Cz... We sat in the sun in their patio and tried not to know that we were about to return to the apartment, pick up our luggage and catch a taxi to the airport, for the plane back to London... A really nice holiday.
Saturday 9 July 2011
In which Layla and Roz visit cool areas and drink cocktails in high places
by Layla
After breakfast in our flat, Roz and I splashed out on more day transit passes and hopped on a streetcar to St Lawrence's Market, a nice under-cover market not dissimilar to Borough in that it sells lots of delicious food. We wandered around the stalls, indulging in a little sampling and getting into conversation with stall owners, before heading slightly further east to the Distillery District, actually an arty complex developed from one of the world's largest previous distilleries. The architecture and vibe are lovely, and we drank lemonade in the sun and spent a while pottering around galleries and crafty shops and watching people hiring segways, and had a very pleasant time indeed. After a panini and gin lunch, we decided to head to the waterfront. A meander along the cycle path brought us to a very nice bar right next to the water, with comfy sofas and a view out to the islands. We promptly acquired more gin, and a large bowl of chips, and read our books in the sun for most of the rest of the afternoon.
Home on the streetcar, we again relaxed with our books, finally feeling in the holiday vibe, til we realised that we were meeting a friend of Roz's boss in the Hyatt rooftop bar, and I'd entirely misidentified its location on the map. We leapt to attention and changed for the evening, before hopping into what proved to be a poorly chosen streetcar, as I'd randomly assumed that when we needed to make a turn we could hop on another one. Alas no such joining streetcar existed so we marched several blocks along the road at some speed and made it to the rooftop bar just a few minutes late. The woman we met was delightful. A lifelong Toronto resident, she further persuaded us of the merits of the city. It's an odd city, in my opinion. It feels more like a town, or even perhaps a suburb, with its quiet residential streets of two-storey houses and picket fences and little local parks, and apparently low crime (an argument between a streetcar driver and a passenger made the front page of the local major newspaper, as did a collision between a cyclist and a pedestrian). But it also has fabulous restaurants, cool bars, and a great arts scene (the previous evening's ill-chosen play excluded... and on a side note, Roz posted a summary of our views of said play on Twitter, only for it to be immediately found by the play's cast, who must have been somewhat crushed - the guilt!) The view from the rooftop bar was fantastic - right over Toronto - and the mohitos and G&Ts weren't bad either. Nor the tasty snacks (oops more chips...). Afterwards we headed home with falafel to watch a film, streamed from the internet onto the wall of our flat via our laptop and a projector - very cool indeed.
This morning Roz has been to hot yoga, in a studio right next to our apartment, while I devoured Annabel by Kathleen Winters, a great book. I refuse to believe it's our second last day in Toronto...
After breakfast in our flat, Roz and I splashed out on more day transit passes and hopped on a streetcar to St Lawrence's Market, a nice under-cover market not dissimilar to Borough in that it sells lots of delicious food. We wandered around the stalls, indulging in a little sampling and getting into conversation with stall owners, before heading slightly further east to the Distillery District, actually an arty complex developed from one of the world's largest previous distilleries. The architecture and vibe are lovely, and we drank lemonade in the sun and spent a while pottering around galleries and crafty shops and watching people hiring segways, and had a very pleasant time indeed. After a panini and gin lunch, we decided to head to the waterfront. A meander along the cycle path brought us to a very nice bar right next to the water, with comfy sofas and a view out to the islands. We promptly acquired more gin, and a large bowl of chips, and read our books in the sun for most of the rest of the afternoon.
Home on the streetcar, we again relaxed with our books, finally feeling in the holiday vibe, til we realised that we were meeting a friend of Roz's boss in the Hyatt rooftop bar, and I'd entirely misidentified its location on the map. We leapt to attention and changed for the evening, before hopping into what proved to be a poorly chosen streetcar, as I'd randomly assumed that when we needed to make a turn we could hop on another one. Alas no such joining streetcar existed so we marched several blocks along the road at some speed and made it to the rooftop bar just a few minutes late. The woman we met was delightful. A lifelong Toronto resident, she further persuaded us of the merits of the city. It's an odd city, in my opinion. It feels more like a town, or even perhaps a suburb, with its quiet residential streets of two-storey houses and picket fences and little local parks, and apparently low crime (an argument between a streetcar driver and a passenger made the front page of the local major newspaper, as did a collision between a cyclist and a pedestrian). But it also has fabulous restaurants, cool bars, and a great arts scene (the previous evening's ill-chosen play excluded... and on a side note, Roz posted a summary of our views of said play on Twitter, only for it to be immediately found by the play's cast, who must have been somewhat crushed - the guilt!) The view from the rooftop bar was fantastic - right over Toronto - and the mohitos and G&Ts weren't bad either. Nor the tasty snacks (oops more chips...). Afterwards we headed home with falafel to watch a film, streamed from the internet onto the wall of our flat via our laptop and a projector - very cool indeed.
This morning Roz has been to hot yoga, in a studio right next to our apartment, while I devoured Annabel by Kathleen Winters, a great book. I refuse to believe it's our second last day in Toronto...
Friday 8 July 2011
In which Roz and Layla see a lot of art and some rotten sci fi theatre
by Roz
The bus to Toronto turned out to be entirely pleasant and we had no difficulties in finding a taxi to hop into to take us to our new abode, a random flat that we are renting. The random flat turned out to be very pleasant, as did the young Dutch couple renting it (once we'd recovered from our bitterness that they own two flats in Toronto). Having settled in, admired the view (we're on the the 8th floor) we headed out towards the very centre of town, ostensibly to watch The Wizard of Oz, which was being screened outdoors, but - given Layla's presence - no-one will be surprised to learn that it also involved a snack en route (at TIFF, Toronto's equivalent of the NFT). We arrived in time to see Dorothy begin her journey down the yellow brick road, and left before the scary bit (when they are off to the witch's castle to get her broomstick). Walking home we argued over the best musicals of all time - without resolution. (But at least this is slightly less nerdy than our previous argument about favourite punctuation...)
The next morning, we contemplated our options. Without having entirely finalised them, I abandoned Layla (leaving her with strict instructions to have a plan on my return) and went for a short run down to the harbour and along it. This sounds a tad virtuous but really arises out of fear of a half marathon which I am to do later in the year - and my enthusiasm for listening to my current audiobook (My Cousin Rachel). I returned to hear Layla's plan, which I then immediately changed (what fun I must be to live with!) and we set off for the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art. It turned out to be a really sweet museum - at first sight entirely deserted (we were disconcerted to discover a gaggle of young people listening seemingly spellbound to a ?teacher / ?museum guide when we turned a corner). The current exhibition focuses on a 1980s collective based at the Cameron hotel. Interesting, though there wasn't a great deal I'd like to take home with me. But it was particularly nice to see a bit of history of an area we've been staying in (it's all near the Drake hotel). From there, we walked through a park to hop on a streetcar and head to the Church St area for lunch and a mooch. Till I spotted the Ontario Museum of Art and persuaded Layla to leap off the streetcar early (not least by mentioning there are good cafes there). Obviously, our first stop therefore was lunch, and we debated vigorously the merits of paying extra to go to the American Abstract Art Exhibition. We wavered, till Layla reminded me that we don't actually like the work of Jackson Pollock much (heresy though this be). We therefore just paid the fairly extortionate entrance fee and headed in. First we saw some modern Inuit art which we both liked, and then went on to look at the rest of the collection, and particularly the Group of 7 (a group of artists who were all of the view that Canada would never reach its full potential until it had its own distinctive art). I liked a lot of this, but I think Layla was of the view that it was a tad too chocolate box-ey. (I was mainly perturbed to find that the cover of The Welsh Girl, by Peter Ho Davies, seemed to sport a reproduction of one of the pictures - this seemed to go against logic.)
After the museum, we felt hot, and decided to head home to get our swimming gear and go for a swim in one of the city's outdoor pools. We were briefly distracted en route by a very lovely chocolate shop (where I had coffee and Layla the most delicious almond ice cream). Having collected our stuff, we were disconcerted to find that the pool we'd picked (for proximity to our flat) was entirely empty, the size of a postage stamp, and had no less than 5 lifeguards. We got changed and self-consciously made our way to the side of the pool. Two of the lifeguards came out and positioned themselves at either end of the postage stamp, prepared to leap in to what was clearly a deathly pool. I put my foot in the water. And then removed it very quickly. The water was freezing, and we were thus left in something of a quandary. It seemed a shame to give up so easily (and to disappoint the lifeguards) but... We sat on the side and dangled our legs in, hoping it would suddenly seem warmer. It didn't and after a while Layla mentioned that she no longer had any feeling left in her toes. So I'm afraid to say that we grinned at the lifeguards somewhat shamefacedly and then made a swift exit. Canadians must be a hardy race, if they are able to swim in that temperature...
We headed back to the flat, and lazed around reading and sipping some white wine. Alas, we lazed to long and then found ourselves running late for the Toronto Fringe Festival Show we'd booked for 6.30. We arrived, breathlessly, two minutes late, to find some very determined door staff who were clear that latecomers - however far they'd come - could not be admitted. We begged and pleaded, but to no avail. Sat despondently on a bench, we realised another show would be starting shortly. We bitterly decided to go and see it, and randomly got a bit of a discount (due to a kindly passing lady). I suppose that it should have been entirely guessable that a show about Star Trek (called Brother Andre's Heart) wouldn't be entirely to Layla's taste, but I doubt either of us could have guessed exactly how dreadful the whole thing would be. Dodgy, over-long script. Painful metaphors. Not great acting. And really, really chilly. Still, we enjoyed ourselves afterwards, bitching about the dreadfulness of the show.
From there, we headed to L.A.B. (Live and Breathe) for dinner. It's a restaurant in Little Italy that gets great reviews, and allegedly takes a molecular approach to its cooking. It was no Noma, but the food was nice (my parmesan croquettes were a particular highlight and Layla's carrot risotto may inspire me in the future). The wine wasn't great, but you can't have everything...
We contemplated our post-dinner options carefully (our jetlag is long gone, hurrah!). Though College Street, where we were, had hundreds of restaurants, there seemed to be few bars. Consulting my Lonely Planet iPhone app, the only option to be found there was the Bovine Sex Club (the review illuminated that the venue was not, in fact, a sex club, but rather a heavy metal rock music venue - even worse, in our view!). Eschewing this option, we hopped on a streetcar, and made our way to the Factory Theatre Bar patio, which turned out to have a profusion of over enthusiastic fringe festival people milling around. This lent it a jolly air, and we enjoyed our drink before heading home.
The bus to Toronto turned out to be entirely pleasant and we had no difficulties in finding a taxi to hop into to take us to our new abode, a random flat that we are renting. The random flat turned out to be very pleasant, as did the young Dutch couple renting it (once we'd recovered from our bitterness that they own two flats in Toronto). Having settled in, admired the view (we're on the the 8th floor) we headed out towards the very centre of town, ostensibly to watch The Wizard of Oz, which was being screened outdoors, but - given Layla's presence - no-one will be surprised to learn that it also involved a snack en route (at TIFF, Toronto's equivalent of the NFT). We arrived in time to see Dorothy begin her journey down the yellow brick road, and left before the scary bit (when they are off to the witch's castle to get her broomstick). Walking home we argued over the best musicals of all time - without resolution. (But at least this is slightly less nerdy than our previous argument about favourite punctuation...)
The next morning, we contemplated our options. Without having entirely finalised them, I abandoned Layla (leaving her with strict instructions to have a plan on my return) and went for a short run down to the harbour and along it. This sounds a tad virtuous but really arises out of fear of a half marathon which I am to do later in the year - and my enthusiasm for listening to my current audiobook (My Cousin Rachel). I returned to hear Layla's plan, which I then immediately changed (what fun I must be to live with!) and we set off for the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art. It turned out to be a really sweet museum - at first sight entirely deserted (we were disconcerted to discover a gaggle of young people listening seemingly spellbound to a ?teacher / ?museum guide when we turned a corner). The current exhibition focuses on a 1980s collective based at the Cameron hotel. Interesting, though there wasn't a great deal I'd like to take home with me. But it was particularly nice to see a bit of history of an area we've been staying in (it's all near the Drake hotel). From there, we walked through a park to hop on a streetcar and head to the Church St area for lunch and a mooch. Till I spotted the Ontario Museum of Art and persuaded Layla to leap off the streetcar early (not least by mentioning there are good cafes there). Obviously, our first stop therefore was lunch, and we debated vigorously the merits of paying extra to go to the American Abstract Art Exhibition. We wavered, till Layla reminded me that we don't actually like the work of Jackson Pollock much (heresy though this be). We therefore just paid the fairly extortionate entrance fee and headed in. First we saw some modern Inuit art which we both liked, and then went on to look at the rest of the collection, and particularly the Group of 7 (a group of artists who were all of the view that Canada would never reach its full potential until it had its own distinctive art). I liked a lot of this, but I think Layla was of the view that it was a tad too chocolate box-ey. (I was mainly perturbed to find that the cover of The Welsh Girl, by Peter Ho Davies, seemed to sport a reproduction of one of the pictures - this seemed to go against logic.)
After the museum, we felt hot, and decided to head home to get our swimming gear and go for a swim in one of the city's outdoor pools. We were briefly distracted en route by a very lovely chocolate shop (where I had coffee and Layla the most delicious almond ice cream). Having collected our stuff, we were disconcerted to find that the pool we'd picked (for proximity to our flat) was entirely empty, the size of a postage stamp, and had no less than 5 lifeguards. We got changed and self-consciously made our way to the side of the pool. Two of the lifeguards came out and positioned themselves at either end of the postage stamp, prepared to leap in to what was clearly a deathly pool. I put my foot in the water. And then removed it very quickly. The water was freezing, and we were thus left in something of a quandary. It seemed a shame to give up so easily (and to disappoint the lifeguards) but... We sat on the side and dangled our legs in, hoping it would suddenly seem warmer. It didn't and after a while Layla mentioned that she no longer had any feeling left in her toes. So I'm afraid to say that we grinned at the lifeguards somewhat shamefacedly and then made a swift exit. Canadians must be a hardy race, if they are able to swim in that temperature...
We headed back to the flat, and lazed around reading and sipping some white wine. Alas, we lazed to long and then found ourselves running late for the Toronto Fringe Festival Show we'd booked for 6.30. We arrived, breathlessly, two minutes late, to find some very determined door staff who were clear that latecomers - however far they'd come - could not be admitted. We begged and pleaded, but to no avail. Sat despondently on a bench, we realised another show would be starting shortly. We bitterly decided to go and see it, and randomly got a bit of a discount (due to a kindly passing lady). I suppose that it should have been entirely guessable that a show about Star Trek (called Brother Andre's Heart) wouldn't be entirely to Layla's taste, but I doubt either of us could have guessed exactly how dreadful the whole thing would be. Dodgy, over-long script. Painful metaphors. Not great acting. And really, really chilly. Still, we enjoyed ourselves afterwards, bitching about the dreadfulness of the show.
From there, we headed to L.A.B. (Live and Breathe) for dinner. It's a restaurant in Little Italy that gets great reviews, and allegedly takes a molecular approach to its cooking. It was no Noma, but the food was nice (my parmesan croquettes were a particular highlight and Layla's carrot risotto may inspire me in the future). The wine wasn't great, but you can't have everything...
We contemplated our post-dinner options carefully (our jetlag is long gone, hurrah!). Though College Street, where we were, had hundreds of restaurants, there seemed to be few bars. Consulting my Lonely Planet iPhone app, the only option to be found there was the Bovine Sex Club (the review illuminated that the venue was not, in fact, a sex club, but rather a heavy metal rock music venue - even worse, in our view!). Eschewing this option, we hopped on a streetcar, and made our way to the Factory Theatre Bar patio, which turned out to have a profusion of over enthusiastic fringe festival people milling around. This lent it a jolly air, and we enjoyed our drink before heading home.
Wednesday 6 July 2011
In which Layla and Roz cycle and taste wine, look at a big waterfall, and watch two plays
by Layla
We arrived in St Catharine and took a taxi to our B&B at Niagara on the Lake. What an odd place. The B&B itself was very nice, and the owner friendly and helpful. But the map's description of a few blocks from the main street translated as deepest suburbia, with houses lined up on long, pavement-less roads (people in Canada apparently do not walk). We went out for dinner at the Old Winery, a pleasant restaurant with outside patio where we enjoyed a vegetarian pizza and salad to share, along with some local wine. And then a 15 minute walk home in the deserted, pitch black, pavement-less streets, with nothing but an occasional speeding car, and the coloured hum of televisions within houses to keep us company. In some ways, not dissimilar to Cambodia, and a rather odd experience. We were thankful when we eventually reached the safety of our B&B.
The next morning, up bright and early, we suffered the bizarre B&B experience of dining with another family at one cozy table, and ate strawberries with balsamic vinegar and chocolate (random) and apple pancake cake before zooming out to Zoom, a bike tour place where we'd booked an all-day cycle tour of the local vineyards, or as they're known, 'wineries'. A really fun experience. We started with a tour of the town, being regaled with historical facts by our guide John - Niagara on the Lake was once the capital of Canada, and subject to all sorts of US invasions from just across the water. Less than a mile away we could see the US fort. Quite interesting. The town itself is pretty and twee and apparently the oldest in Canada. And they have a long tradition of theatrical festivals dating back to the evangelicals whose annual visits and performances were the highlight of the year; this tradition is now continued in the Shaw Festival, which we were to attend that evening.
Out of town, we sped on through parkland cycle paths by Lake Ontario, to our first vineyard, Lalley. Which was small and very sweet and had the best wine of the day - after tasting six, we bought a bottle of some excellent Vidal (2010) and the region's specialty, ice wine (very sweet wine due to grapes being squeezed very late, when they've been frozen by the chilly Canadian climate). That day we tried Riesling and Cabernet Franc ice wine, but Vidal was the most delicious. After a picnic lunch of sandwiches and cake and cherries by the roadside, we proceeded on to more wineries whose names I fear I've forgotten... We didn't like Reif, which was big and brash, but did like Pondview, where we bought a bottle of wine and another of ice wine. We didn't like the pretentious Iniskillen, which had ice wine for $150 (though it did taste nice), and we also tried Marynissen, popular with the government, but with the need for the wine to 'sit' for several more years, the reds were tannin-y. We finished off with a tour at the very modern operation of Jackson Triggs.
After quite a delightful day, we returned home and tried out the B&B's outdoor hot tub before getting changed and heading out on the town. We walked for 20 minutes into the main street and found a restaurant called Bistro One where we had more pizza and salad and tried the Megalomaniac winery's Riesling before heading along to the Festival Theatre to see an obscure but fab play by JM Barrie, The Admirable Crichton. A lovely theatre and a lovely play - very cheery indeed. After it we walked back in the pitch black weirdness to our B&B and headed straight to sleep.
The next day we awoke early and after a speedy breakfast of egg baked in a bread pastry shell, caught a taxi to what Oscar Wilde terms 'a bride's second disappointment', Niagara Falls. I'd been there once before on the Chinese bus tour saga, but Roz never had and it seemed mean to deprive her. After a 20 minute taxi ride (there is absolutely no public transport in Niagara on the Lake) we were deposited on a street corner. We rounded the corner and there it was - Niagara falls. It's quite an impressive sight, though one imagines it might be more impressive encountering it in the wild than framed by a thousand tacky tourist attractions, but still very cool. There are actually two falls - one on the Canada side, and a larger one on the US side. We bought tickets for the famous Maid of the Mist boat that took us to both of them, clad in matching bright blue ponchos as there was a lot of water - and so much water mist we could barely see the falls. Quite fun, if rather wet, and after it we strolled along the walkway for a mile or so, looking at the falls from above and imagining going over them in a barrel!
After the Niagara Falls excitement we took another taxi back to Niagara on the Lake and had an underwhelming lunch at the Epicurean where Rpz and I spent most of the meal weeping due to an unfortunate reminiscence of the book Rilla of Ingleside, set in Canada, which we'd both read as children and which has a particularly sad bit (Dog Monday, for those kindred spirits)... After lunch we walked back up the road to the Festival Theatre for an unplanned My Fair Lady indulgence. It had great reviews, and we were delighted to have gone as it lived nicely up to them. Beautifully performed, and a delightful musical. We have some envy of Niagara on the Lake for its Shaw Festival though in fact none of the locals we encountered had actually been to any of this year's shows!
After the play we had a taxi waiting outside the theatre to dash us back to the B&B, pick up our bags, and drive us to St Catharine's where we were to catch the 6:08 train back to Toronto. Which I can tell you was even more expensive than the taxi. So it was with much consternation that we received the news from the stationmaster that the train had derailed and would not be turning up. Thankfully our taxi driver hadn't yet gone. He conveyed us to the bus station and we grudgingly sloped onto a Megabus, eventual destination Toronto. This may not be very helpful for our evening plans!
We arrived in St Catharine and took a taxi to our B&B at Niagara on the Lake. What an odd place. The B&B itself was very nice, and the owner friendly and helpful. But the map's description of a few blocks from the main street translated as deepest suburbia, with houses lined up on long, pavement-less roads (people in Canada apparently do not walk). We went out for dinner at the Old Winery, a pleasant restaurant with outside patio where we enjoyed a vegetarian pizza and salad to share, along with some local wine. And then a 15 minute walk home in the deserted, pitch black, pavement-less streets, with nothing but an occasional speeding car, and the coloured hum of televisions within houses to keep us company. In some ways, not dissimilar to Cambodia, and a rather odd experience. We were thankful when we eventually reached the safety of our B&B.
The next morning, up bright and early, we suffered the bizarre B&B experience of dining with another family at one cozy table, and ate strawberries with balsamic vinegar and chocolate (random) and apple pancake cake before zooming out to Zoom, a bike tour place where we'd booked an all-day cycle tour of the local vineyards, or as they're known, 'wineries'. A really fun experience. We started with a tour of the town, being regaled with historical facts by our guide John - Niagara on the Lake was once the capital of Canada, and subject to all sorts of US invasions from just across the water. Less than a mile away we could see the US fort. Quite interesting. The town itself is pretty and twee and apparently the oldest in Canada. And they have a long tradition of theatrical festivals dating back to the evangelicals whose annual visits and performances were the highlight of the year; this tradition is now continued in the Shaw Festival, which we were to attend that evening.
Out of town, we sped on through parkland cycle paths by Lake Ontario, to our first vineyard, Lalley. Which was small and very sweet and had the best wine of the day - after tasting six, we bought a bottle of some excellent Vidal (2010) and the region's specialty, ice wine (very sweet wine due to grapes being squeezed very late, when they've been frozen by the chilly Canadian climate). That day we tried Riesling and Cabernet Franc ice wine, but Vidal was the most delicious. After a picnic lunch of sandwiches and cake and cherries by the roadside, we proceeded on to more wineries whose names I fear I've forgotten... We didn't like Reif, which was big and brash, but did like Pondview, where we bought a bottle of wine and another of ice wine. We didn't like the pretentious Iniskillen, which had ice wine for $150 (though it did taste nice), and we also tried Marynissen, popular with the government, but with the need for the wine to 'sit' for several more years, the reds were tannin-y. We finished off with a tour at the very modern operation of Jackson Triggs.
After quite a delightful day, we returned home and tried out the B&B's outdoor hot tub before getting changed and heading out on the town. We walked for 20 minutes into the main street and found a restaurant called Bistro One where we had more pizza and salad and tried the Megalomaniac winery's Riesling before heading along to the Festival Theatre to see an obscure but fab play by JM Barrie, The Admirable Crichton. A lovely theatre and a lovely play - very cheery indeed. After it we walked back in the pitch black weirdness to our B&B and headed straight to sleep.
The next day we awoke early and after a speedy breakfast of egg baked in a bread pastry shell, caught a taxi to what Oscar Wilde terms 'a bride's second disappointment', Niagara Falls. I'd been there once before on the Chinese bus tour saga, but Roz never had and it seemed mean to deprive her. After a 20 minute taxi ride (there is absolutely no public transport in Niagara on the Lake) we were deposited on a street corner. We rounded the corner and there it was - Niagara falls. It's quite an impressive sight, though one imagines it might be more impressive encountering it in the wild than framed by a thousand tacky tourist attractions, but still very cool. There are actually two falls - one on the Canada side, and a larger one on the US side. We bought tickets for the famous Maid of the Mist boat that took us to both of them, clad in matching bright blue ponchos as there was a lot of water - and so much water mist we could barely see the falls. Quite fun, if rather wet, and after it we strolled along the walkway for a mile or so, looking at the falls from above and imagining going over them in a barrel!
After the Niagara Falls excitement we took another taxi back to Niagara on the Lake and had an underwhelming lunch at the Epicurean where Rpz and I spent most of the meal weeping due to an unfortunate reminiscence of the book Rilla of Ingleside, set in Canada, which we'd both read as children and which has a particularly sad bit (Dog Monday, for those kindred spirits)... After lunch we walked back up the road to the Festival Theatre for an unplanned My Fair Lady indulgence. It had great reviews, and we were delighted to have gone as it lived nicely up to them. Beautifully performed, and a delightful musical. We have some envy of Niagara on the Lake for its Shaw Festival though in fact none of the locals we encountered had actually been to any of this year's shows!
After the play we had a taxi waiting outside the theatre to dash us back to the B&B, pick up our bags, and drive us to St Catharine's where we were to catch the 6:08 train back to Toronto. Which I can tell you was even more expensive than the taxi. So it was with much consternation that we received the news from the stationmaster that the train had derailed and would not be turning up. Thankfully our taxi driver hadn't yet gone. He conveyed us to the bus station and we grudgingly sloped onto a Megabus, eventual destination Toronto. This may not be very helpful for our evening plans!
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