Tales from Gap Yah for Grown Ups

Going native in South Africa

annaandandrew — Mon, 1 Oct 2012 17:47:00 GMT

For travellers who’ve been going eastwards round the world, taking a five hour flight westwards from Mauritius to Cape Town was a bit of a wrench but that’s what happens when airlines pull flights for commercial reasons. Despite Anna’s best efforts it proved impossible to fly South Africa-Mauritius-Australia on our Lufthansa tickets.

But hey, Cape Town’s a great spot. It’s not as ominous as Johannesburg and is a rich mix of races rather than just blacks and whites. We put up in a neat little hotel in the Muslim quarter close to Centre Ville called Rouge on Rose and aside from the 5am muezzin, who is at least live and can sing, it’s been great.

We lobbed mid afternoon but hit the ground running by having tea at the Mount Nelson Hotel (a magnificent relic which we joked may allow some oldies to eat one meal a day) and then going up Table Mountain in the cable car.

The latter was chancy because of wind and the inevitable cloud but we got lucky and it cleared after we’d been standing disconsolately around the lower cable station for about ten minutes. Anna had been to Cape Town in 1980 and had “done’’ the cable car but was happy for a second bite.

It provided the wonderful vista you would expect, allowing us to orientate on Day One and look all around, almost to the Cape of Good Hope 50km to the south. The paths along the top have been greatly improved and we also met some dassies, aka rock hyraxes, that look like something between an earless rabbit and a West Australian Quokka. Because there’s often so much cloud on the top, for reasons of cold vs warm air, there’s actually a great deal of foliage they can feed on.

So pleased were we that we then repaired to a tapas joint called Fork and discovered it is more than just a rude word when pronounced with the local accent. It was jumping. despite it being Monday night, and we discovered a South African grape variety called Pinotage, as in Pinot grafted onto Hermitage .

Tuesday was always going to be Robben Island day, since we were booked on a tour starting at 3pm, but we made good use of the morning by checking on my grandfather’s grave in Maitland Cemetery , about 8kms east of the city centre.

Ursula, the lady who runs the hotel, said it was a grim place so we were ready for disappointment, but she lined up a friend called Myrtle to take us there and she came good. The grave took a bit of finding as there are two ledgers, one for each end of the huge and somewhat dilapidated cemetery, but a bit of persistence and some help from a former gravedigger called Philip nailed it.

The 1920 headstone’s in perfect order but it’s leaning forward, which I thought could be fixed by some judicious application of concrete. But we quickly worked out it was being pushed over by a bush growing behind it. Philip, a mixed race guy who’d had a tough life but had a great attitude, said he was retiring in six weeks’ time but could fix it by weed killing the bush then pulling it out, then if necessary applying a bit of mix to steady things. So I gave him some cash and he said he’d get straight onto it, while Myrtle made suitable noises about coming back in a couple of weeks to see how he’d gone. This one won’t be going through the books but it should produce a result of sorts.

Robben Island, meanwhile, was absolutely as described in the brochure. There was half a boatload of 13 year old African kids from way inland, some of whom cheered and others squeaked when the ferry started to roll a bit.

The clear highlight of any such trip is Nelson Mandela’s cell, where he spent around 18 years, but it was reinforced by our being shown around by a former prisoner called Ntando Mbatha. He brought the whole grim place to life and like Mandela he’s ready to forgive, but not forget. The children, black and white, were mesmerized by listening to a real live former prisoner, even though the most dramatic thing he seems to have done was to train with the ANC in Angola. He got around seven years for that.

It’s hard to say much that’s new or insightful about Robben Island except that all the grim stuff happened in our lifetimes and boycotting the notorious Springbok Rugby Tours, not that I did, turned out to be one of the more effective ways of bringing Apartheid to a close. The parallels with the Berlin Wall, by the way, are quite startling, particularly as the outside perimeter of the prison had the same type of guard towers and dog runs that were so notable in Berlin. The bad guys do lose eventually.

Having got back at 6.30pm we headed for a seafood restaurant down by the wharf and shared a “platter for one’’ that included two crayfish halves, a dozen mussels, LOTS of calamari and two sizeable bits of fish. The waiter was right in saying that it should suffice for two.

Wednesday was Cape of Good Hope day. It’s not the southernmost point in Africa but it will do given how far away Cape Agulhas is. We went with Myrtle who has Afrikaans ancestors and thus something of an accent, but a good heart. Highlights included the Kirstenbosch botanical garden with enough proteas to cause Anna to concede it might EVEN be better than Melbourne, and about twice as much wildlife as we expected.

We met: about 200 penguins, two troupes of baboons, four zebras crossing the road, a male and female ostrich, and a pod of whales in a bay on the way back. Our attempts to photograph the zebras, rarest find of the day, were flummoxed by the fact that our good camera lens has sand in it and anyway, they are impeccably camouflaged.

We were also serenaded over lunch in Simonstown (near the navy base) by an a capella singing group of seven guys, followed not long afterwards by a small battered man in an oversize tweed jacket and a bandanna singing a satirical song in Xhosa (we were told) until the security man moved him on. The little man, who was quite feisty, reasonably wanted to know when he was moved on and the others weren’t. Because you’re crap, pal, is what might have been said but that was not in the script. Key point was that the Cape itself is beautiful. As at Augusta in WA you look south and breathe in, knowing there’s nothing between you and the Antarctic.

On return we were sufficiently knackered to order in a pizza and a nice bottle of white whine, which collectively came in at under $20.The low price excitement carried on into Thursday when we hired a shopping trolley car for the day for about $35 plus petrol.

The main virtue was that no one was giving us relentless detail with a strong accent but this Chevrolet Spark (hah!) did get us to Stellenbosch and to a cheetah conservation farm at Paardevlei on the coast east of Cape Town. The weather was patchy but we got a good feel for Stellenbosch, spiritual home of what David Dimbleby described as the lost tribe of Africa.

They laugh, drink coffee, chat in the street, study at university, are mad about rugby and do everything we do, but all in a 16^th century form of Dutch with a few bolt-ons. And the handicrafts in their shops are impeccable so we can’t write them off. We haven’t mentioned the Wallabies vs the Springboks in Johannnesburg coming up on Saturday, on the reasonable premise that the locals will win.

Re the cheetahs, there’s a smart outfit trying to educate farmers about the benefits of having Anatolian sheepdogs (like a Great Dane with attitude) look after their sheep and keep predators away…thus causing fewer cheetah casualties. It was pretty rainy (one of a tiny number of such days we’ve had) but Anna was allowed to pet a cheetah cub called Elsa. She was so excited she forgot she’s allergic to cats….. but no harm done.

For a finale to the day we went to an excellent African restaurant where they have a fixed menu covering about ten dishes from all over Africa. Then, just as we were close to leaving, the entire staff came through singing and dancing to an African drum. In a confined space it was up there with the pipes and drums: brain addling but very uplifting.

On Friday we were off to Johannesburg on Mango Airlines. I sat beside a Qld med student called Annabel who said that the Groote Schur hospital in Cape Town where she had been placed, got an average of six gunshot cases a day, almost all from the black shantytowns. We were at the back of the plane and the wind was shocking near our destination, so we were thrown around more than somewhat and very glad to get on the ground.

We hired a VW Polo and headed off west to Mafeking, which turned out to be four hours away up near the Botswana border. The road led us past the Marikana mine where 34 miners had recently been shot dead. The wind stirred up the dust horribly from the platinum mine spoil tips and it seemed a pretty hellish place although fortunately, as we headed further west down a progressively narrower road, it cleared. We were looking for “”the real Africa”” and found it in Zeerust, a farming town 40kms short of Mafeking

Zeerust was nominally an Afrikaans town but we saw only one white man there, stomping along in shorts and boots. Everyone else was cheerfully and erratically African, risking death crossing the street and generally chilling. Then it was on to Mafeking or Mafikeng, where my grandfather had been during the siege in 1899. Fortnunately we’d booked into the Protea, best hotel in town, but everything else was untidy and litter strewn, with few buildings more than 50 years old.

Fortunately our waitress at dinner, Lemme, turned out to be a bright spark with a dazzling smile, lifting our dented spirits. Also, the hotel was hosting a “matriculation formal’’ attended by all the teenage leavers from nearby high school, which was noisy and over the top like any formal in Australia. The boys were done up in sharkskin suits, shades etc while the girls teetered around on absurd heels trying not to fall over. That all shows that Mafeking hasn’t stood still. Now its population is almost entirely black and almost entirely cheerful.

Saturday dawned bright and clear and we had a look around the 1900 graveyard until 10 am when the museum was due to open. Long story short, the staff had all gone on some Heritage Week event elsewhere. Grr. As we later realized, this is the downside of Africa, perhaps mitigated by the fact that local interest in a war 112 years ago between two groups of imperious honkies is thin at best. Why should it be any other way? Mafeking is 99 per cent black these days.

So we decided to alter the angle of attack by going to Mafikeng Game Park and were well rewarded. It’s not lion or leopard country but we got hefty numbers of giraffe, white rhino, warthogs, ostriches, boks various, buffalo , zebras and wildebeest, and that’s despite having left the binoculars at the hotel. We can now almost tell the difference between a springbok (curly horns) and an eland (straight horns, same colour as a rhino).

And in the afternoon I finally tracked down a Siege relic, being Cannon Kopje. It had nothing to do with my grandfather, who was the civil administrator trying to curtain the occasional excesses of Baden Powell, but it was the scene of a skirmish and featured still visible bunkers made out of old railway line and corrugated iron. Fittingly, it was next to the psychiatric hospital.

We then watched the Wallabies getting comprehensively smeared in Pretoria (31 points to 8) by the Springboks, topping off what had been a disappointing end to what had otherwise been a wonderful trip to South Africa.

Sunday was a travel day, to return the hire car and hopefully see more animals in a reserve up near the Botswana border. You won’t be surprised to hear we wren’t allowed into Botswana because the hire car wasn’t insured, not that we wanted to do anything other than collect another country. And the reserve was a dud after Mafeking, producing nothing more than a raft of springboks, elands and ostriches. If there were rhino around, the hot day kept them under trees.

So we skedaddled back to Johannesburg in the hire car which registered a minor protest by showing us a warning light for the “engine management system’’ about half way back. Somewhat jaded by then, we decided to bat on and to our surprise the light went out when we refueled the car.

As we write this, we’re sitting in the Oliver Tambo International Airport awaiting a flight back to Perth and then another to Sydney. Morale? Anna reasonably pointed out that if she had know the Mafeking leg was going to be such a sweat she wouldn’t have come. But we did it, we’ve seen it and most relevantly we can say we’ve Seen Africa.

And we’ve seen the world. We’re dying to see our gals again and I’m dreading going back to a real job. But if we were offered the chance to do a similar 11 week trip, I’d take it tomorrow.

Two little dots in the Indian Ocean

annaandandrew — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 16:45:00 GMT

We travelled to what seemed like the end of the earth and found paradise…on two little dots in the Indian Ocean off southern Africa beyond Madagascar: Mauritius and its little sister island Rodrigues, 650 kms further east.

Never heard of Rodrigues? Neither had we until two years ago my old Mauritian friend Pauline Noel (I went out with her brother Eric when I was 20 and met her for the first time in London the year after!) said she was moving there with her charming husband Mario to build a house with panoramic views of the Indian Ocean.

This longest leg of our Gap Yah journey saw us leave London on Saturday afternoon, fly Lufthansa to Frankfurt, then board an A380 jumbo for an overnight trip to Johannesburg. Despite killing five hours in the comfort of the Air France lounge in Jo’Burg (thanks to the A.Main charm), we were pretty exhausted by the time we arrived at our little hotel at Pointe D’Esny in Mauritius, which we then vacated just 10 hours later for the final flight to Rodrigues. We nearly missed this last leg as Air Mauritius prides itself on closing domestic flights 45 minutes before departure and on taking off early!

Rodrigues reminds me of Gaugin’s paintings of Tahiti in the early 20^th century: exotic-looking women in brightly coloured clothes, friendly if lethargic locals speaking a barely comprehensible creole, craggy mountains perched above a bright blue sea, an island ringed by coral reefs and lagoons, and market gardens worked on every flat patch of land. Roads teeter up and along the mountain ridges and are patiently co-inhabited by smoky old buses, immaculately dressed school children, motorcycles, chooks, goats and anything else that wants to go somewhere.

Though part of the same nation, the Rodriguans are proudly different from Mauritians. They even voted (unsuccessfully) to remain a British colony when Mauritius voted for independence in 1968. They are descendants of freed Madagascan slaves and are more homogenous and African in appearance than the average Mauritian. They seem to love life despite living modestly, though not on the poverty line.

Pauline and Mario met us at the (grossly oversized) airport and took us to Tekoma, our beautiful new hotel (only open since July and us the first Aussie guests – now that must be a record?!) on the east end of the island. There is nothing between here and Western Australia, save 5,000 odd kms of Indian Ocean. It has a wild, woolly, windy (yet luxurious) feel, which I liken to Kangaroo Island’s South Ocean Lodge…but on a much lower budget! Oh and the massages and manicures are half the price and twice as good!

We settled into a daily routine of meeting up with Pauline and Mario in the morning (courtesy of Mario driving 20 minutes at 30 kms an hour over rutted tracks to pick us up in his ute) to go for different walks around the coast. All the little inlets and coves have lovely French names like Anse Bouteille, Riviere Banane, Pointe Coton and Petit Graviers.

Lunch chez Julienne-Noel followed: gin and tonics with the most amazing fragrant limes (the only reason I agreed to lunchtime aperitifs) followed by fresh fish, vegetables or other local dishes. Their north-facing house has 180 degree ocean views and catches every breath of wind. They have kept it simple, with an enormous living room and veranda occupying most of the living space. It is notoriously difficult and expensive to build in Rodrigues, as nearly everything needs to be shipped in from Mauritius and the local tradesmen are pretty good at finding any excuse to be somewhere else at critical moments in the construction. Pauline’s and Mario’s patience has been tested…

One day we borrowed the ute and went off to Port Sud Est on our own. The top of the mountain was enveloped in cloud and rain, but by the time we got to the east coast – down a new but hairpin bend road - it was simply cloudy and windy. After another coastal walk and a creole lunch at the Hotel Marouk, Andrew hired a windsurfer. I didn’t want to rain on his party but it was pretty clear from the outset that this would be a battle between one middle-aged guy who hadn’t windsurfed for several years and a relentless 35 knot wind. Forty minutes later (and him more in the water than on the board) I sent out the “rescue” boat! Nothing that a soak in our hot tub at Tekoma (a huge stone affair set in a private courtyard with ocean views) and an afternoon siesta couldn’t fix.

Our four days in Rodrigues passed so quickly…we were really relaxed after such a short stay and felt so fortunate to have got to know this little piece of heaven with Pauline and Mario. We flew back to Mauritius on Friday morning and got a taxi back to Pointe D’Esny, this time to stay at Pauline’s cousin’s holiday house. Patrick D’Arifat is another Mauritian I met in London all those years ago and we even shared a flat for a short while on Sloane Square (a place with a grand address and grand exterior but a frumpy interior and ferocious landlady).

His family’s beach house is literally on the beach at one of the nicest beaches in Mauritius. From there we headed out for a tour of the island with a friendly taxi driver we secured for the day. First the markets at Port Louis and a wander round the capital, which boasts a particularly pompous statue of Queen Victoria and some fine old colonial buildings. The market itself is very much like those you find all over India – lots of cheap stuff, great fruit and veg, and Indian vendors prepared to sell their mother for the right price.

I was also keen to revisit the Botanic Gardens, about half an hour north of Port Louis, which were famous for their huge waterlilies. Sadly, the giant lily pads eluded us, and Pauline says they have been struck by negect and then disease. It was great, though, to relax under the huge old fig trees after the bustle of Port Louis. Lunch then up the hill at the Maison Eureka (nothing to do with the gold rush). The house is a lovely colonial home from the early 1800s with furniture and décor that looks entirely original and in good nick. The terrace has been turned into a restaurant with really good Mauritian cuisine.

Our last day on Mauritius before we fly westward to Capetown (yes, it doesn’t sound logical, given we are on our way home, but try telling the airlines that). An early morning Skype with Mum back in “Melbie”, a dip in the ocean just outside our door, and breakfast on the terrace with view of the same. How on earth can we get our heads back into real life???!!

Photos: Two little dots in the Indian Ocean

annaandandrew — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 16:15:00 GMT

Stretching friendships in England

annaandandrew — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 23:23:00 GMT

We got very lucky flying out of Berlin on Friday. Lufthansa’s entire flight staff were on strike (after being asked to take a hefty pay cut) and we were on a Lufthansa ticket. Fortunately their subsidiary British Midland Airways wasn’t and we got over to Heathrow unscathed. Plus, the whole place was still in Olympics mode (despite things being all but finished) and several staff accidentally smiled. At Heathrow.

We took the underground to South Ken to see Hugh Stewart and his girlfriend Wendy, and were amused to see someone had painted over the usual array of “Asians Out’’ trackside graffiti with an ocean of brown paint. That, plus the sun shining, made London look the best we’ve seen in decades. Hugh had said ”call when you get to South Ken’’ but after a muffin and a coffee we realized we didn’t have his number , so we took a cab instead and surprised them.

They’re in his late mother’s small but perfectly placed flat just off the King’s Road. Hugh, whose speciality is striding ahead through crowds then telling you (if you can keep up) where you are going, suggested a trip over Westminster Bridge on ”Boris Bikes’’ via Parliament Square. We managed it though it’s hard to sightsee when you’re trying to dodge between a builder’s truck and a Big Red Bus.

Hugh then persuaded me up a whirly dirly thing beside the London Eye that had us swinging madly out at 45 degrees, at about 25 metres or more in the air, and I took nervous photographs while he chatted casually about celestial navigation. His nerve exceeds mine by a handsome margin, although Anna stayed on terra firma.

We had a sushi lunch by the Eye (of which more later) then took a ferry down to The Tower of London. Life got complicated when Hugh later realised he had left his backpack on the ferry containing his snappy camera, and Wendy’s purse and iPhone. However some smart work with the “Where’s My Phone?’’ app allowed Hugh to see on a map of London on his laptop a certain dot going down the river each time he refreshed it. Even though the ferry people were pessimistic, he got to the ferry just before it went off for the night and found the bag entirely intact. He said he only ran two red lights en route, which we think may be an understatement. He gets about in a boy racer Audi.

Wendy, who is a joy, made us a lovely Boeuf Bourguignon and we knocked off a bottle of champagne (that we thought we had lost in Germany but which turned up under the driver’s seat) to celebrate the reappearance of the bag.

Saturday dawned fine and after a leisurely breakfast we bussed (top deck of course) to the London Eye for a glorious trip round. I had got it confused with Tony Blair’s Dome, which everyone hates, but this is a deserved commercial success because it gives a fantastic view from lots of angles at a leisurely pace. And by the way, if you wonder why there are no old Citroen HY vans in France (the old corrugated iron travelling henhouse) it’s because they’re all being used as fast food outlets on the South Bank.

Then it was off for the evening’s entertainment. Hugh had invited a clutch of old St Andrews University friends and no less than 17 were on the list, us included, for drinks at their place followed by an Italian dinner down the street.

Most were London locals eg Kieron and Sarah Lynch, but Jerry Stoke and his wife Phyllida came down from Birmingham, and Charles Watkins, whom we had just seen in Paris, made it over too. We hadn’t seen Jonathan Green and his wife Beverley for over 20 years (nor Prudence Lynch nee Renny) and it was just huge.

Stephen Preston, who is a wonderful guitarist and singer of funny songs as well as a keen sailor with Hugh & Wendy, took up the instrument AFTER we left the restaurant and every single guest had gone back to Hugh & Wendy’s. He and I did a harmony duet of a gloomy old Kris Kristofferson song call “The Other Side of Nowhere’’ we hadn’t sung together for at least 25 years, then he sang two much funnier numbers, one being a Morris Traveller song to the tune of the Beach Boys’ ”Little Deuce Coupe’’, the other being a spoof on “”Me and Bobby McGee’’ which I think started “Busted flat in Stoke Newington’’ or maybe Basingstoke.

Sunday: Anna woke up early, washed up all the glasses, then did a Skype call with Iona and Laura in Melbourne to celebrate Laura’s 19^th birthday. She brought the laptop in to me to wake me up and Iona said ”No offence, Daddy, but you look like a cancer patient’’ after Anna nudged me into singing Happy Birthday. Not my finest hour.

“I hear you cut loose last night’’, added Iona with emphasis. It was a joy to talk to them, since both were on great form. Laura’s going like Steam as imminent vice president of her college and Iona had just been to the University Winter Games at Mount Buller, where she took part in the giant slalom, beating six others, and beat more than half the starters the cross country competition. Plus she got the loan of a very sharp ski suit!

Wendy had a concert with the London Late Starters Orchestra where she plays the violin, so Hugh took us off to Paddington after another leisurely breakfast. We could get used to this. Tim and Sue Knight had gamely driven up from Bristol for Hugh and Wendy’s bash, only to have to host us back at home on Sunday.

Sue came to pick us up and take us off to her and Tim’s wonderfully comfortable house where they’ve lived for the last seven years since she took up a teaching post there from which she’s just retired at an absurdly early age.

Like many of our friends they have sons and daughters who have just left home, although their Harry had come back mit nice Californian girlfriend Kerry-Anne from a surf coaching job in Costa Rica, en route to another in Hossegor, by Biarritz. Harry’s internet skills allowed us to watch Andy Murray beat Novak Djokovic for the US open, although there seemed to be a lot of Arabic writing in one corner of the screen. Anna’s warming gradually to Murray but he ain’t Roger Federer.

Sue, now a proud Bristolian, showed us lots of old town, Brunel Bridge over Clifton Gorge, and indeed the Close at Clifton College where there’s a breathless poetical hush tonight. She noted that the Wills family, who made their fortune in the triangular trade involving slaves and tobacco, founded Bristol University when one of their children failed to make Oxbridge. More on the Wills later.

Tim’s full of cerebral causes like electoral reform and macroeconomic theory, but also helps out with the Citizens’ Advice Bureau, perhaps the better to understand the human condition. He did say that one character pushed an unopened final demand letter towards him and told him to open it. Tim said, if you can’t find the bottle to open an envelope you might as well piss off until you do, which sounds like tough love.

On our second day (we do lots of two day stops, to keep our welcome alive) Sue dropped us at the SS Great Britain, Brunel’s great ship. I was pleased to notice my Uncle Dick got an honourable mention as first chairman of the project which brought the world’s first propeller driven passenger ship back from the Falkland Islands in about 1970.

It’s now a top drawer attraction which is so well restored in its best known guise as the ship that made 43 return voyages to Melbourne in the 1860s and 70s, that schoolkids who’ve seen it actually bring their parents along later. To give you an idea, the doctor’s surgery actually smells of ether and there’s a back projected rat scurrying around the galley. Much of the attraction comes from the quirky diary entries they’ve assembled from former passengers, making thoroughly un-Victorian snarky comments about each other .

Anna found time to get along to a hairdresser in Clifton and came back a slightly dazzling blonde but it SHOULD fade. We then set off back to Newbury, near where old friend Cecilia Lloyd (ex Ingram) lives. It was 12 years since we’d seen her since when she’s been married again and widowed. To no one’s surprise, since Hamilton Lloyd was 89 when she married him. And why not. They had four great years, she says, and she’s all the better for it.

She lives at Litchfield, on an estate owned by another branch of the Wills family, in a lovely little house where bunnies and idiot pheasants bounce or strut across the lawn depending on genus. She has three grown up children Henrietta (whose wedding we attended from Paris in 1989) Toby and Tancred, and around nine grandchildren. So we got all the goss in one go. It was wonderful to see Cecilia and our visit hopefully buoyed her up a bit. Lots of hearty meals and worthy walks but also a lovely lunch at the Cricketers’ Arms at Longparish.

AND we got to Highclere Castle, AKA Downton Abbey. It was a bit of a challenge not to allow yellow coaches into the photos we took but we reckon we did pretty well. It’s a Victorian pile in a wondrous location in a huge estate, actually owned by the family of the Earl of Carnarvon, who helped Howard Carter find Tutankhamun’s tomb. There were lots of free plugs for the TV series of course, and mobs of interested visitors from all around the English speaking world. We gather the family were on their uppers before the TV series came along. The best room is the hall, with its own skylight three floors up, but for various reasons no doubt related to commerce we weren’t allowed to take photos.

AND we also visited Highfield House in Binley, where Uncle Dick and Aunt Deenagh used to live. It’s about two miles west of Cecilia’s house.

It’s currently a bit tatty but rented by a nice lady who engraves glass, so our visit at the very least produced a couple of belting gift ideas for Cecilia.

Last but not least we climbed an iron age fort, Beacon Hill, on the Highclere estate and found Carnarvon’s tomb, where he is reportedly buried with his favourite racehorse. And while we were looking at that, a Spitfire flew over, with its V12 Merlin engine making a noise like no other. Perhaps the fact that it’s about four times the power of the average Cessna is relevant. Meanwhile, you can’t say the Brits don’t do history. Thanks, Cecilia.

Then it was back to London, this time to see Avivah Wittenberg and her new man, Tim. She’s a pocket rocket, Swiss Jewish Canadian leading light in the move to get more women into management jobs, using the crystal logic that companies which do that will make more money. He is a sculptor whose hobby is restoring old steam driven boats. They seem to get on very well in a complementary way.

It turns out they live about half a k from where we had cycled the previous week with Hugh , just east of Waterloo Station in a wonderful ex-squat that Tim bought 15 years ago and restored himself, as an architect manqué.

They gave us a lovely dinner then the next day Friday we went our separate ways. Avivah and Anna went to the Tate Modern in the old Bankside power station and I tried and failed to have lunch with Flora, Hugh Stewart’s daughter and my god-daughter. We were victims of my crap phone, mostly, but have subsequently exchanged cheery emails.

Things picked up as we went to Hedda Gabler at the Old Vic theatre, about five minutes’ walk from Tim’s house. He was pretty pessimistic, noting that Ibsen can be heavy going, but we all enjoyed it hugely as the script had been adapted by an Irish playwright with a sense of humour . Serious theatre doesn’t have to be serious and this wasn’t, as Tim happily conceded afterwards.

Saturday morning saw Anna and me having brunch with Miranda and Helen Maclean at Borough Market, not far from Tim and Avivah’s. That was a joy as we had had Helen staying with us in Oz until June and we hadn’t seen Miranda for three years. Miranda’s got a promising real job working with a Sloane Ranger tea company in Fulham and Helen’s also looking like a good chance for a proper job in London based on her time in Oz.

All too soon we were on our way to Gatport Airwick for a marathon series of flights starting with Frankfurt, then Johannesburg, then Mauritius. Unless you’re at the front of the plane, and we weren’t, air travel remains the bane of such adventures.

Photos: Dawdling through Deutschland

annaandandrew — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 23:52:00 GMT

Dawdling through Deutschland

annaandandrew — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 18:09:00 GMT

Sunday

A reunion with the Grutzner family in Germany was a key part of our Gap Yah planning. I hadn’t been to Peitz since 1990, when I took Christina and a 9-year-old Manuela home from Paris after their very first trip to the West, and Andrew had never been but was curious to understand their lives, my antecedents and to practice his German.

It took us three and a bit hours to drive from Hof to Peitz through lovely rolling hills, almost following the Czech border, with sun on the hilltops and mist in the valleys. In these conditions, it was hard to imagine the old DDR.

When we arrived at 25 Altebahnhofstrasse the family was in the garden and a 3-generation gaggle of weeping Grutzner women rushed towards us, with Anna Marie, Christina and Manuela in the lead. A series of large meals then followed – all involving cakes and coffee and sometimes beer - and the day lasted well into the night.

Monday

Christina took the day off work and showed us around the distinct with her friend Burkhardt. We revisited the house at the old family farm where Mimmi grew up, though is looking the worse for wear. Andrew got excited about an old DDR border patrol boat parked in the yard but the rest of us could only see the junk!

We climbed the Festung tower in the centre of Peitz, which has been well restored and provided good views of the district. Anna Marie then organised a bike trip round the lake to a nearby restaurant with Christina, Burkhardt, Tomas and us. At 78 she is amazingly fit, but then all the Peitz women live well into their 90s. It was sad to leave her though there’s every chance we will meet again.

We drove up to Berlin via the Polish border town of Guben, about 30kms north east of Peitz. Crossing the Oder River into Poland satisfied Andrew’s curiosity about a country he’d never visited though the badly made streets, rundown houses and shops advertising cheap cigarettes were a bit depressing. We drove into Berlin after a brief stop at Uli’s parents to return Otto, the German GPS, then on to our rented apartment in Zionkirchstrasse in the old East Berlin.

Tuesday

Zionskirchstrasse is in a delightful area of cobbled streets, pre-war apartment buildings and small squares, the nicest of which contains the Zionskirche where Deitrich Bonhoeffer once preached. After getting acquainted with the local bakery and our washing machine, we headed out to drop off the hire car, a longer and more complicated process than it should have been. But afterwards we emerged from the brand new Hauptbahnhof just round the corner from the Reichstag.

Sir Norman Foster’s rebuilding of the German parliament building is fantastic. You can still see the odd bullet hole and the original façade is once more intact but the new glass dome, ascended via a ramp curving up the inside, provides spectacular views across the city in every direction and aims to convey the openness of modern German democracy. We had lunch (a glass of wine and seafood risotto) on the lovely terrace restaurant at the top and felt we had at last arrived in this fascinating city.

No visit to Berlin is complete without a pilgrimage to the Brandenburg Gate, so we traipsed off for the obligatory photo and to marvel at what has been a rallying point for Germans seeking change since it was built in the 18^th century. Napoleon cheekily removed the gates en route to Moscow but the Prussians got them back after Waterloo.

Wednesday

A slatey grey sky, a drop in temperature and drizzly rain by the time we got to the Pergamon Museum mid-morning. The Pergamon Altar and other German archeological finds from the 19^th century place this museum as a serious rival to the British Museum for the best collection of Greek and Roman antiquities in the world, and the giant Gates of Babylon are gorgeous with their row upon row of mosaic lions and other beasts.

In the afternoon we went to the disappointing Checkpoint Charlie museum. The checkpoint itself is now “guarded” by some tacky actors in US military uniform and sneakers and is a really just a photo opp for American tourists. Inside was not much better: a great collection of genuine escape vehicles and devices (and the stories that go with them) but a lot of junk too.

In the evening We took the s-Bahn down to Manuela and Torsten’s apartment in the southern Berlin suburbs and all went out for dinner in a nearby Italian restaurant. Eight-month-old Sarah provided lots of laughs and a trip to Australia is still firmly on their family wishlist…

Thursday

On the recommendation of my book club friend Dee, we took a Cold War “Fat Tires” bicycle tour through the eastern part of the city. It was hosted by Tom, a smart young Welsh guy with a nice sense of humour, whom we met at Alexander Platz. Last time I was there it was still the proud centerpiece of a totalitarian state!

Tour highlights for me included the remaining eastern section of wall with the famous (post 1989) graffiti of Brezhnev and Honeker kissing, the bookshop from the final scene of The Lives of Others, and an amazing four euro Turkish lunch in Kreutzberg. In the evening we also discovered in our own Bernauerstrasse neighbourhood the spot – immortalized in an iconic Cold War photograph – of a young East German border guard jumping the barbed wire to run to freedom.

Tomorrow is an early start (try 5am) to catch our flight to London. Lufthansa cabin crews have called a national strike today but we are quietly confident that our codeshare flight will be run by British Midlands…fingers crossed.

La Belle France

annaandandrew — Wed, 5 Sep 2012 02:16:00 GMT

Every journey begins with but a single step and ours started at 5.30 am in a bid to beat the traffic flowing north into France. You won’t be surprised to read that there were moments early on when we were the only people on the road and worried that perhaps the world had ended and we hadn’t been informed.

We romped through potential choke points at the border and Narbonne en route to Perigueux just north of Bordeaux. Part of that planning was based on pessimism and part was the fact that Igor and Martine, Manon’s parents whom we were going to see further north in Angouleme, were also coming back that day from Spain and there’s something a bit pathetic about visiting people who haven’t actually got home yet.

And we were also on a sentimental journey to the Dordogne area, where we’d had a canoeing holiday shortly after getting married in 1990. Maybe it was the first flush or some such but we couldn’t recognize anything much except the atmosphere. So we fitted in a visit to Souillac then Sarlat, where the Saturday market reportedly attracts hundreds of sweating Poms in socks and sandals, seeking the authentic French experience and finding a) a parking ticket, b) overpriced baubles and c) each other.

We swept on knowingly to have lunch (back in France, remember) at Les Eyzies where the French Government has financed a very good prehistory museum. Bones of mammoths, giant aurochs, tigers etc were all the go although they did go a bit hard on the Neolithic arrowheads. Seen one, you’ve seen ‘em all.

So, on to Perigueux where we had a Mercure hotel room booked Centre Ville, and nice too. Another midsize French town, with Roman origins and enough winding cobbled streets to satisfy any pedant. We even found a “national’’ boule competition there. Short of finding an old French bloke in sky blue overalls riding a Solex with an unlit yellow “mais’’ fag in his mouth and a baguette under his arm, that’s as Gallic as it gets these days. Bear in mind, if you will, that 2CVs are all but extinct and even the venerable Citroen HY van, the big boxy one with corrugated sides, is only now usually found in gardens holding up vines. Sic transit Gloria.

And thence to Angouleme for Sunday lunch with Colette, Iona’s host mother in 2007, and dinner with Igor and Martine. What a day! We found everyone absolutely delightful and Anna’s French went through the roof. Colette is a wonderful warm widow who teaches phys ed, and her son Timothee is now 20 and doing a management apprenticeship and practicing his English. She’s something of a traveller now he’s grown up and we’d love to see her (and potentially Timothee) in Australia. She adores Iona and gave us a lovely lunch.

She showed us the Lycee Marguerite de Valois, where Iona had been, which has around 2000 pupils and looks like a luxury liner hard aground. Lots of suitably evocative photos taken , then we were off to Igor and Martine’s down the road where we got an equally warm welcome even though Manon wasn’t there…yet.

Igor, who is about six foot two and looks like a rock guitarist, combines an ironfounding job with fixing houses and we found him wearing a new red tee shirt he’d bought in Spain featuring a Citroen 2CV. Much Pastis was drunk and his and Martine’s wonderfully inclusive family (including Martine’s sister Cecile who lives across the garden in a barn that Igor fixed up) took us to their hearts. Igor and Martine also lent us their bedroom.

On Sunday, after Igor and Martine’s tour of the town (another midsize belter), Manon arrived with her friend Pierre, who is a part time model and had all the Mums sighing. A suitably massive lunch followed and then at 3pm we had to go on to the next stage, the Loire. Before we went Igor gave me the proverbial shirt off his back: the 2CV shirt, freshly washed. What can you say? He is so generous it’s almost a worry. I certainly stopped pointing to things and admiring them in case he gave them to me.

Then it was off to Tours, up past Poitiers, to book into the Hotel Monarque in Azay Le Rideau on spec, to good effect. The only monarch we could find had stayed there was the ill fated Edward VIII, Duke of Windsor, and his skinny wife, but it was a lovely hotel all the same.

We’d hoped to go to our old stamping ground, the Maison de Garde at the Chateau de la Mothe in Artannes Sur Indre nearby, but it is no longer available for rent and there wasn’t even a diner open in Artannes. But we went to Artannes the next day and walked through, remembering the time we’d had a big dinner at the Auberge de La Vallee du Lys and got back to the chateau by feel, in unlit streets on a moonless night.

Then off to the wondrous garden at Villandry, revived by a genius Spaniard in about 1907, and a sampling session at Vouvray where there is a light bubbly wine that tastes of gunflint and costs a fraction of Champagne.

We then set off up the road to see our friends Charles and Sylvie Watkins in Montmorency, north of Paris, for dinner. We got stuck on the Peripherique of course, and lobbed in late, but they had seen it all before and laughed. Much cheer over drinks and dinner. Younger son Benjamin was absent, reportedly in love, but Jeremy was in residence and told us about his (water) engineering course at Strasbourg which may well land him a job.

Wednesday was Nostalgia Day for us. Charles dropped us at Enghien station and we set off to “do’’ the 6^th arrondissement. RER to Port Royal, then a walk through the old ‘hood and through Luxembourg gardens where I hired a yacht for old times’ sake. We went past the Sorbonne and Lycee Henri IV , where Charles teaches. Then down to Bon Marche, a bus or two, and the Hotel de Ville. The Conciergerie, meanwhile, where Marie Antoinette was imprisoned, has been cleaned and looks glorious.

The Hotel de Ville had an excellent if wrenching exhibition about the 9600 French Jewish children who were killed at Auschwitz between 1942 and 1944, which for what may be the first time actually noted that the roundup had been by the French police, not the Gestapo. It’s taken a while but the truth is out.

On Thursday Charles and Sylvie took us to Malmaison, Napoleon and Jospehine’s love nest, where there’s a lot of early 19^th century art in sometimes dubious taste, plus the best version of David’s painting of ol’ Boney crossing the Alps. Charles has his doubts about Bonaparte so we enjoyed looking at the closed Berlin carriage he took on the Moscow campaign I 1812 (there and back please, you will note) and which the Prussians captured entirely intact at Waterloo. That’s two-nil.

Then we drove round eastabout to St Maur to see our friends Jacob and Martine Mayne, late of Sydney, and their son Theo who, unlike his two glam sisters Alice and Matilda, was at home. The traffic was terrible, thus usefully puncturing our notion that we could live in Paris, and we took hours to get there but the company was a joy and by the time we drove home (with a bit of help from Otto the German GPS system) the road was all but clear. Alice is French pairs rowing champion although she just missed out on Olympic selection, while Matilda has fallen in love with a double bass player. Theo, whom I used to throw in the air, is now 17 and starting his Bac in between video games.

It was back to Montmorency late and an early start for Luxembourg (the duchy, not the garden) to see two old Paris friends, Marianne and Bertrand de Mazieres. We did stop at Reims to say hello to the cathedral and to find a patissier to sell us two religieuses to mark our exit from France. It was, yes, a religieuse experience to eat those custard puffs.

Marianne greeted us with open arms after a 17 year absence and gave us the guided tour of the Grand Duchy, which we joked had been closed when we tried to have lunch there on a Sunday many years ago. She was a very funny guide and we had a lot of laughs despite the rain before meeting up with Bertrand, a heavy at the European Investment Bank, for a pizza in an Italian place that was half the price of anywhere else and just jumping.

He too has a wonderful dry sense of humour. His job is raise finance for EU infrastructure projects, which takes him away for long periods. Luxembourg has had a slightly bogus boom because of the EU’s Three Capitals (Brussels, Strasbourg and Luxembourg) policy which means you can’t buy a terrace house for 2 million Euros. They rent!

As with so many of our friends, they still had one child at home and we met Antoine, now studying PPE at Durham in England and breaking all the girls’ hearts. Just to ram home the point, he also has a slight French accent when he speaks English. No shoving in the line, girls. We last saw him when he was three.

Marianne had been all set for the full art tour and leisurely lunch but alas we had to keep moving as we have to get to Berlin. We spent a longish day driving without mishap and got to Naila, just inside the old West Germany on the Eastern border, by around 5pm, reaching a little hotel I had booked. It was folklorique in the way that it was full of farmers eating dinner at 5.30pm…so we did the same and had schnitzels various in a pizzeria nearby at around 6.30pm. Highlight of the meal was when we explained to the table next door that we were from Australia and thus brought the whole restaurant joyously into the conversation. Everyone else had been pretending not to listen, since we were the only strangers in the place.

Basking in Barcelona

annaandandrew — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 01:29:00 GMT

Monday

We can’t say we weren’t warned: Barcelona in August is like sticking your head in the oven and finding you can’t escape when you’re cooked! The temperature didn’t drop below 30 degrees all week, even in the wee hours. Thank God for our beautiful, air-conditioned Caller Aribau apartment.

Driving into Barcelona was slightly complicated (none of the signage seemed to offer Centre Ville!) but there was (paid) parking next door to our apartment and we gladly abandoned our little Polo there for the rest of the week. A washing machine and free Wi Fi completed our domestic bliss…

Lynne Cossar, Dave Burgess and their lovely boys, Max and Darcy, are living a few blocks away in the Eixample district, so we met up and sauntered out to the Bar El Velodromo, a stylish yet inexpensive Art Deco café which apparently has been the scene of many a Catalan political intrigue over the decades. Delicious cannelloni, vino and a great catch up on what it’s like to live in Barcelona.

Tuesday

Andrew and I spent the day discovering the old city with its narrow winding streets, old churches and elegant townhouses, the latter tucked discreetly away behind courtyards. Prosperous Catalans don’t like to flash their wealth about, especially in this economic environment, so it’s hard to differentiate the affluent from the struggling merely by the exterior of their apartment buildings.

The old city is great wandering territory and easy to get cheerfully lost in. Andrew visited the city museum in search of Roman ruins while I searched in vain for shopping. A lot of the little boutiques were closed and boarded up but it was hard to tell if they were shut for the August holidays or out of business. We also ventured down the famous Las Ramblas boulevard, but it was a tourist-filled nightmare, so we retreated into the nearby market for 1 euro cups of cold watermelon and some shade.

Dinner chez Burgess and Lynne managed a touch of home with a tasty Bill Granger chicken curry. Max and Darcy have both grown a couple of inches, are speaking Spanish like the natives and are playing lots of football as talented young recruits for FC Barcelona. More on football shortly…

The owners of their huge (150 sq m), rented apartment have left all their belongings in situ so it’s like stepping into someone else’s Barcelonan life. The Virgin Mary at the front door and the formal reception salon are particularly nice touches. We were less enamoured of their tiny lift, which got stuck with me, Andrew and Dave in it while Lynne woke a neighbour for a key (at some time close to midnight) to get us out!

Wednesday

We had booked tickets online for the extraordinary Gaudi La Sagrada Familia cathedral and felt very smug when we jumped to the front of a 1-2 hour queue in the blistering midday heat. The cathedral is a 100-year work in progress for which Gaudi left detailed designs after his untimely death in the 1920s under a tram. Like it or love it, you cannot help but feel awed by the amazing sculptures, stained glass windows and modernist interpretation of a gothic cathedral.

We then had another welcome swim in the Med though it would be fair to say that most of the city had the same idea and we were packed in like sardines.The Barcelonetta waterfront area was reclaimed, extended and redeveloped for the 1992 Olympic Games. Barcelona used to face inwards (with a fortress mentality) and ugly railroads and factories lined the seaside. Now there are beautiful beaches with real sand, palm trees and a giant copper fish sculpture overlooking the water (more attractive than it sounds…)

Later we went with Lynne and Dave for an evening of enchanting architecture (Gaudi’s Batilo building), music (a soulful girl on Spanish guitar), drinks (the usual), the sound of crashing glass (as Andrew broke not one, but two, items during particularly quiet moments in the performance) and barely suppressed laughter (see last item).

Thursday

Having taken fright at the 1-2 hour queues for the Picasso Museum a couple of days before, we booked online and sauntered straight in this morning. The museum is in a lovely old townhouse and mainly features Picasso’s very early works including the “Science and Charity” masterpiece for which he won a prize at the tender age of 15! The museum proved beyond any doubt that he was a painter of massive talent , by any conventional measure, before he struck out in his own style.

Robert Hughes declared the nearby Santa Maria del Mare gothic cathedral the finest church of its type in Spain so we popped in to find an organist practising and light pouring in through the stained glass windows. They were offering tours of “the terraces” for a modest 5 euros and we joined a small group of Catalans (as the only English speakers) for an amazing wander around the rooftops with spectacular Barcelona views in every direction.

Lunch down at the Barcelonetta at Jai Ca – another Lynne recommendation from the Movida foodies’ guide to Barca – which looked like nothing much but was amazing food, friendly and pretty cheap. We chose three simple seafood plates which came laden with fresh prawns, razor clams and barbecued squid.

We had booked in the evening to go with the Burgess clan to one of the great Spanish football matches of the year: local FC Barcelona (Barca) vs arch rivals Real Madrid at the Camp Nou headquarters of Barca on the north-west edge of the city. Picture 95,000 Carlton and Collingwood supporters watching the AFL grand final and you can start to imagine the scene. Throw in a sweltering night, some questionable personal hygiene, zero crowd control and no metros after the match finished after midnight and you’re getting closer. Oh and Messi (the Barca messiah) was emblazoned on the Barca shirt of just about every supporter.

No goals were scored in the first half then two in 30-second succession early in the 2^nd half, one by either team. This chain of events had two delirious Barca fans beside us going absolutely bananas with lots of “puta” this and “puta” that aimed at Real Madrid and its hero Ronaldo. (haven’t checked the precise meaning in the dictionary yet but it doesn’t leave much to the imagination). We had a quiet giggle with a nice boy from the Gold Coast who had bought a single ticket and found himself next to us. Luckily the night ended with a Barca victory so the crowds making the 5 km walk back to town at 2am were cheerful.

Friday

A late start then Lynne and I spent the day doing some serious bonding over coffee. Lunch was at the Four Cats, a French style bistro that was frequented by Picasso and other painters of the Catalan avant garde at the turn of the 19^th century. When he couldn’t pay for dinner Picasso used to draw the restauranteur a picture and many are still hanging on the walls.

Needless, to say we also shopped. Lynne knows lots of great little boutiques and I did succumb to a fabulous Desiguale skirt and a beautiful beaded summer dress that has a distinctive Spanish look (but was probably made in China!). It was really special to share these past few days with her. The autoroute and a 5.30am start to drive back to France await in the morning.

Une semaine on the Canal du Midi

annaandandrew — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 02:47:00 GMT

Going cruising on a canal is a wondrous change of pace because there’s a speed limit of 8 km/h in France and every time you feel like doing anything energetic, you arrive at a lock with a restaurant nearby and the lock keeper has gone to lunch. Call it enforced idleness or thoroughly dissolute behavior: it worked for us.

We drove down from Nimes to Carcassonne and met Fiona and Robin, who had just flown down by Ryanair from Prestwick in Scotland. We all booked into the Hotel du Donjon inside the walls of the magnificently (if slightly erroneously) restored old city. We understand that when the big reno job was on in the 19^th century they forgot that it doesn’t snow in Carcassonne, so the turret roofs were pitched way too high.

Robin’s pet phrase when the crowds get to him is “show me an empty glen’’ and it’s fair to say that Carcassonne intramuros in August is just heaving with visitors. A vignette was watching a Brinks armoured car coming under the portcullis at 8.00 am to load up with yesterday’s tourist dollars before the next lot followed it in. But our hotel had a magic garden where we spent a lot of time before collecting the boat on Monday afternoon. We also enjoyed watching the closing ceremony of the Olympics on the television but it wasn’t as good as the opening.

The plan was to take a week, Monday to Monday, doing the eastern third of the Atlantic-Mediterranean canal and it worked a treat. One village blurred into another, as did the restaurant lunches, while evenings were spent tied up beside the canal somewhere quiet. The boat was a 37 foot “plastic fantastic” but was of neat design, with a good cabin (and bathroom) at each end…and a fridge. Most of the photographs we took were of the table on the back deck. Local wines, fruits, pate and cheeses were the go plus enough bread to keep the canal ducks very happy.

Key details are that the most scenic part of the canal (which incidentally dates from 1680, thanks to genius tax collector Paul Riquet) runs between Trebes, just east of Carcassonne, and Capestang, which is just short of Beziers, and we covered that. Most of the bridges were scenic plus, the towpath was well patronised by cycling families, joggers and fishermen, and there were old mills and other industrial archaeology wherever you looked.

And the towpath has a plane tree every 10 metres, or did until a root fungus got into clumps of them that forced their destruction. One theory is that the steel pegs the cruisers use to moor may carry the fungus, so we dipped ours in disinfectant in a belated attempt to reduce the damage.

But the main virtue of a canal trip is just letting your mind slip. The boat putters along at a slower pace than the bike riders, many of whom turn “”bonjour’’ into a three syllable word by cranking up the Midi accent. Big old barges occasionally provide a scare and there are of course locks, but they are automated these days and managed by magnificently Midi-speaking lockkeepers. There’s no physical work except managing bow and stern lines, since the rest is done by electricity and remote control. There’s a run of six of them at Fonserannes, just west of Beziers, which caused one bemused tourist to ask me if they were all natural. Er , non Monsieur, but I was nice about it. It could have been the Captain Haddock hat I bought for 3.5 Euros that caused him to find an excuse to talk to such a wise looking bloke.

Incidentally, back in 1983 they commissioned a giant boat lifting device to get round the locks, based on a huge long ramp and a Haulpak sized Darth Vader lifter painted blue and red, but it was abandoned after the brakes failed on its third manoeuvre. The cynics say that Mr Riquet’s shade must be smiling at such a failed improvement on his design.

We also fitted in a couple of side trips down to the Med after Beziers and before Agde, using the two bikes we had rented to good effect. Like Carcassonne it was heaving (unlike most of the space in between) but there’s something less stressing about being cheek by jowl on the beach and in the water with people who speak a different language.

The canal there is much more Camargue type country, if you ignore the fun fair and the monster truck demolition derby being set up nearby.. You know you’re in a popular French beach resort when the traffic’s jammed, there’s dust everywhere and a bloke in a loudspeaker van is driving about spruiking tonight’s big ”spectacle’’ to which punters are invited to come in numbers. He had to do without us, but good luck to them.

For all that we were very sad to give the boat back on Monday morning, to resume getting about in our little hired Polo which carried four adults and their luggage about 20kms back to Beziers. We were also rewarded with a traffic jam, to bring us back to earth. It was also tough saying goodbye to Fiona and Robin in Beziers after such a magic week, but Barcelona and our friends Lynne and Dave were firmly calling.

Meillonnas not Mayonnaise

annaandandrew — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 20:02:00 GMT

Day One

After a long day in the car from Erlangen it was delightful to slip into Jura time and wander the village this morning. In the afternoon we did the same in neighbouring Treffort. These delightful little towns struggle to keep the primary school open, spend all their money on the wrong things (each and every one of them has a huge hall, used once or twice a year for mayoral events!) and absent owners renovate the old houses but visit infrequently from Paris. That said, Elaine and Colin have carved themselves a lovely existence and are making the most of all that French rural life has to offer.

We had a hilarious evening with Wiebke and Michel, friends of Elaine’s & Colin’s, who had kindly invited us to gatecrash their dinner invitation to E & C. Wiebke is a professional chef, mad keen traveller and multi-linguist so we were well fed, wined and entertained variously in French, German and English. I also rediscovered the humour in Andrew’s same old same old jokes told in another language complete with French pantomime gestures.

Day Two

Andrew is still claiming jetlag and woke at 10am this morning. After a lazy breakfast we all went into the nearby metropolis (read: small provincial town) of Bourg en Bresse to view the sites while we waited for lunchtime. B-en-B has a smattering of 13^th century half-timbered houses, a lovely 19^th century theatre, fine Gothic church and lots of picture postcard crooked lanes and geranium filled streets. Lunch outside and my first taste of foie gras in a delicious salad.

On the way home we stopped to look at the 16h century royal monastery and church at Brou, which were built in a style called flamboyant gothic! The church has a striking tiled roof in the style of the architecture of Beaune.

In the evening we settled down to a fix of Jeux Olympics on the TV, which Colin has just had connected to the BBC – our timing was perfect for a change! The Beeb doesn’t get quite so one-eyed as Australian, French or US TV commentators and the Poms have more to boast about than usual. Colin cooked us his delicious signature dish of “poulet au facon Helliwell” - which has even featured on the menu of Wiebke’s restaurant .

Day Three

Elaine: We can’t say you didn’t warn us – France was one big parking lot today as we inched our way southwards along with every Parisian family, Belgian grey nomad and Dutch caravan for the grand “fuite” and annual holiday to the Mediterranean. So we left the autoroute near Valence and took a long but scenic drive on N and D roads through the Ardeche hills and down into the countryside north of Nimes.

Nimes (with accent circumflex on the i) was 35 degrees in the shade but with a big blue sky and the smell of the Med in the air. After a swim in the hotel pool, we wandered into the old town for dinner. It is a beautiful small city with more than its fair share of Roman antiquities. None of this crumbled down stuff though: there is a well-preserved and nicely restored 2 AD temple and amphitheatre right in the middle of town. A lovely stopover before we drive to Carcassonne and our canal boat holiday with Fiona and Robin.

Erlangen pilgrimage

annaandandrew — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 19:55:00 GMT

When you’ve crossed the Pacific in a one-er, the Atlantic seems like a pond. Lufthansa did a good job getting us over but we have to say the world spins too fast. When you take a seven hour flight ex NY starting at 6pm US time, it’s only about five hours later that it gets light again.

But that’s life. Frankfurt Airport, like Changi in Singapore, does everything as efficiently as you could imagine and we were driving out of the car park in a Hamburg-registered VW Polo 50 minutes after landing. The autobahn was the inevitable challenge, providing the usual entertainment of big Mercedes and Beemers going past at 200 km/h, since we weren’t in the mood to go a lot faster than 130. But aside from getting lost early, we did fine and my German was sharpened by asking some four locals where our friend Uli’s Weidenweg address was in Erlangen, just north of Nuremberg. Top marks to the bin man.

Seeing Uli Buettner was a big hinge point on our trip. Uli and his wife Birgit had hosted Laura some three years before, and they had both visited us in Sydney in November 2011. Sadly Birgit passed away in March, and we wanted to make sure Uli was holding up.

He’s doing well, with a lot of help from late 20s daughters Ulrike and Anke, and Anke’s new husband Vincent. We had two nights in Erlangen interspersed with a day trip to Bamberg, half an hour north, where I had been in 1968 and Anna in 1980. Erlangen’s a nice town but Bamberg was amazing, with winding streets and the lovely old town hall in the middle of the river Regnitz where I’d done classes. Letting Uli drive us up the autobahn at a rate of knots in sixth gear in his Merc was a view from the other side.

Ulrike’s a genius at jigsaw puzzles, so Anna gave her a puzzle of the Golden Gate bridge. I had jet lag, which mystified Ulrike slightly, but she has a wonderful relationship with all her relatives including Vincent. Her brother in law is your modern Renaissance man, having been educated in Copenhagen and speaking English like a native, and telling funny stories in English including the accents. He and Anke brought forward their wedding date to February to include Birgit because and then held the formal reception in April in a long-booked Schloss.

We had a boozy dinner chez Uli the first night, then a Bier Garten dinner the second night at the Kitzmann brewery, celebrating 300 years. Lovely stuff and a lot of fun with schnitzel and liver.

Wednesday was a travel day from Erlangen to Meillonas, near Bourg en Bresse, where our friends Colin and Elaine have bought a marvelous, quirky 18^th century house. Elaine worked at one point for Westpac in Paris and their lives are a neat mix of French food, English tea and German breakfast cereal.

Bumming about in Brooklyn

annaandandrew — Wed, 8 Aug 2012 01:57:00 GMT

Friday

We set off from Brooklyn for the ultimate tourist experience of a cruise on the Hudson River and around the Statue of Liberty. Turned out it was us, a couple of locals and about 300 Chinese visitors who are very keen on all things democratic but are still mastering the fine arts of queuing, photography in crowded spaces and listening to the guide…bit of a bunfight really!

Uptown for a second –and this time successful - attempt at the Guggenheim Museum. The Frank Lloyd Wright snail-like building is absolutely astounding with its light-filled, circular ramp to the 7^th level and a red Calder mobile bobbing from the ceiling. We loved a couple of the galleries but the abstracts and expressionists had us scratching out heads.

Next some more research for Iona’s uni exchange and down to the area around New York University in Greenwich Village. The heat, the Chinese and all the kulture had so exhausted us that we slept on the Washington Square lawn before retreating back to Brooklyn for another Ample Hills ice-cream…and we weren’t the only ones with that bright idea!!

In the evening the two of us took up Denis’ recommendation and walked down the road to the Café Cubana, our first experience of Cuban food and $6 lime daiquiris. Loved the chicken with mango salsa, the Havana décor and the daiquiris…though nothing a few thousand litres of water the next day couldn’t fix.

Saturday

Brooklyn has a great Saturday grower’s market where our breakfast-on-the-run comprised a delicious bun and quality coffee (yay about time). We also loaded up on fruit and veg, including three punnets of perfect raspberries for $10.

Andrew and I took fresh watermelon and grapes with us to do a sweltering walk across the Brooklyn bridge over to Manhattan. Great views all the way and not too punishing distance-wise though a few too many dopey tourists and gung-ho cyclists for my liking.

The new-ish High Line walk we did afterwards was much more local but also provided great city views and people watching. Built along an old raised subway line along the west side of the lower-midtown, it’s a great example of clever eco design and urban regeneration. Some really stylish and no doubt pricey new apartments overlook it.

In the early evening Denis took us to Williamsburg, the newly trendy part of Brooklyn, where all the edgiest and most interesting eateries, bars and boutiques are to be found. We dined at a great place called St Anselm’s (the patron saint of steak?). Andrew and I both had an outstanding “butcher’s steak” for a mere US $15 a head.

Sunday

We’d pre-booked tickets online to visit the 9/11 memorial, which opened on the 10^th anniversary last September, and so turned up at our appointed timeslot on yet another hot, sultry New York day. Predictably, a 20-minute security regime followed before we reached the site itself.

The black marble memorial had seemed a bit austere on TV but was actually beautiful in its simplicity. Two huge, square pools cover the exact footprints of the north and south towers, each engraved with the names of victims around the edge. Within each square is a 30-metre fountain descending into the earth. There are no other plaques or political statements or explanations, just the 2,900 odd names themselves, including one of a woman “and her unborn child”.

There’s also a tree, the only one to survive the collapse of the twin towers, which has been nurtured back to health and replanted nearby with the financial support of the Bavarian Government.

We then returned to Dana and Denis’ apartment in Brooklyn for a delicious Caribbean lunch that Denis had picked up from a nearby hole in the wall. We briefly saw Dana’s Dad and mother-in-law who had dropped Sydney back from a sleepover tired and imperious but as gorgeous as ever. Then it was time to say our goodbyes and Dana drove us to Newark Airport in New Jersey for our flight to Frankfurt. We’ll miss you guys!

Noo Yawk

annaandandrew — Tue, 7 Aug 2012 17:37:00 GMT

Travelling to the eastern US without going to New York is a bit like having a bath with your socks on, so off we went on Tuesday July 31.

It’s only a four hour drive from Bawston and what’s more, you can collect states. You start in Massachusetts then go SW through Connecticut, around Rhode Island, maybe glancing off Noo Joisey before hitting New York State. We’ve now got six: California, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York.

The big detour was a shopping attack at Woodbury Green factory outlets, an hour out of NY, on recommendation from Anna’s friend Tash. Imagine ten thousand already quite well dressed people bargain hunting in a place got up as a New England village, hitting each other with Lacoste carrier bags and you have some idea. Add in the fact that they’re about equal numbers Anglos, French Canadians, Chinese and Brazilians and you can imagine what the food hall sounded like.

We’d actually set off underweight so we could get some new clobber at half price. Tee shirts, runners and other assorted footwear went in the bag, Anna’s highlight being a couple of very nice slinky dresses for laughable sums while I got a Ralph Lauren blazer with what seems like neon buttons that completely outclasses everything else I’ve brought.

After what Anna later admitted were four hours and around $800 (I’d retreated to the café with my New York Times half way through) we batted on down for the big one: driving into NY.

The good news was that by then we’d had the car for four days and Anna had a slew of maps, most kindly provided by Henry in Canada. It was a snap, much easier than Boston, particularly as you count down the street numbers from 250^th to 41^st as you go south. It only gets messy after the 60s as you jostle with taxis that try to toot their way ahead of you and ignore lane markings.

And the crowning coup was handing back the car about three blocks from our hotel, thanks to Melodie having booked the hire for us. We actually felt like geniuses, helped by the fact that we were able to walk through the concourse of Grand Central Station en route to the hotel.

And the Library Hotel! We’ve booked two nights there as a bit of a splash before decamping to Brooklyn to stay with Dana and Dennis (and their lovely daughter Sydney). It’s small, friendly, perfectly located and unlike the place in Boston, the Wi-Fi and the fridge and the TV actually work. And the front desk just helped us get tickets for tonight’s showing of War Horse at the Lincoln Centre. Magic.

Sightseeing? We went up the Rockefeller Centre in the morning “Top of the Rock’’ to orientate (tick) then went south with our new one week subway passes past Wall Street to the Battery to go to the Statue of Liberty. Our first setback was that it was raining and cloudy and you can ‘t see a thing, plus the ferry didn’t go from the Battery (at the foot of Manhattan) anyway. And when the going gets tough, these urban guerillas go back to the hotel for a rest.

Later: War Horse was a wonderful show. It was directed by the National Theatre in the UK and the actors were locals in NY, and very good if a bit more racially diverse than history buffs would like. One British officer was Vietnamese and one of the soldiers was African American. But hey, this was never trying to be historically accurate. The acting was good but most of the joy was in the puppet horses, operated by three people each and each capable of carrying a man. A very memorable evening and a great opportunity to see a show that is currently running in the US and Canada but hasn’t got to Australia.

Thursday: Fell at the first fence by finding the Guggenheim was closed but gave nearby Central Park a shake on a hot day. Cross, then Tick.

Went to MoMA instead and went well. Tick. It has late 19^th and early 20^th century art that beats almost everywhere else outside maybe the Musee D’Orsay. Picasso, Van Gogh times three, Cezanne, Gauguin, Leger, Toulouse Lautrec, Degas, a roomful of Monet water lilies, etc etc. That was on the Fifth Floor. Then we went modern on the Fourth and it just wasn’t the same. Warhol and Lichtenstein were the best known, AND local, but a lot of the other stuff hasn’t really stood the test of time and while it was pretty “out there” in 1910 or so, now it firmly isn’t.

There we went off to the UN to have a guided tour and that worked well. It’s a bit tatty as few of the 163 countries seem to get round to paying their dues but we were shown round by a nice Japanese lady who is a clear believer and told us a lot about all those subsidiary things like UNICEF and UNHCR and landmine removal etc that don’t get as much publicity as the often difficult issues like Syria.

And then we went to Brooklyn. Took bags on subway to Dana and Dennis where we were happily reunited with a couole whose wife Dana used to work for Anna in Sydney. Their daughter Sydney is now three and gorgeous as ever. Little Miss America with an Australian name . Dana and Dennis live in the garden flat at the bottom of a nice 1890s brownstone and they had vacated their room for us so we took them and Sydney out to dinner. Chaotic but fun, topped off by the world’s best ice cream at a new place nearby called Ample Hills Creamery where Anna had an ice cream called “caught in the rain’’ because it tastes of Pina Colada.

Friday…back to Anna.

Photos: Noo Yawk

annaandandrew — Mon, 6 Aug 2012 01:29:00 GMT

Hitting the Big Apple

Travels through New England

annaandandrew — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 08:38:00 GMT

Thursday: Last day in Magog, Canada

Andrew and Henry played golf on the nearby Hermitage 9-hole course, which is nestled between the lake and a lovely forest. They barely saw another soul and Henry’s golf was a triumph of experience over youth. I did a bush walk through the same forest, equally deserted, but was lucky enough to hear, then spot, a rare owl.

In the late afternoon the two of us took a canoe out onto the lake. The water was millpond calm and we managed to paddle a reasonable distance along the shore for an uninterrupted view of some truly amazing Quebec real estate. Mount Orford shrouded in mist in the distance was also beautiful.

Melodie later showed me photos of Magog in mid-winter: it’s hard to believe it’s the same place with a frozen expanse where the lake should be and hardy locals driving 4WDs into the middle to fish through holes in the ice.

Friday: Vermont

We said goodbye to Melodie, and Henry drove us down through Quebec (pronounced Kebec, not Kwebec) and across the border into Vermont in a lazy two and a half hour trip from Magog.

The US border guard at Stanstead was a laid back local who was far more interested in the fact that anyone could possibly have 11 weeks holiday than whether we were undesirable aliens. Stanstead literally sits on both sides of the US-Canadian border and neighbours cross the street - and countries - to have a chat or to mow each other’s lawns. George (Baby) Bush wanted to put a concrete wall across the entire 3,000 km border after 911 but the locals in towns like this wouldn’t have a bar of it!

We stopped for a coffee at the Brown Cow café for the usual bad American brew (why do we persevere?!) and a chat with the friendly owner, who reminisced about his exchange student from Port Macquarie and was selling raffle tickets: first prize a gun.

Vermont is drop dead gorgeous. Andrew reckons the Vermont logo should be a ride-on lawn mower, given their prevalence. The trees are beautiful now but must be amazing in autumn. Also love the brightly coloured timber houses and barns, most of which seem to be converted into “antique” shops.

At Burlington “international” airport we sadly farewelled Henry and picked up our hire car. The Avis guy – this time an Aussie from Cairns – upgraded us to a great big something (Ford Escape???) which he assured us isn’t a gas guzzler….on va voir as they say in France.

We drove south through some lovely countryside with the Green Mountains to our east, stopped for lunch in Middlebury, a small university town, and arrived in Woodstock (still in Vermont) in the early evening.

Woodstock –picked via Google for its proximity to wiggly green roads - is not the famous music festival Woodstock but is New England at its best: every street and building a piece of history but not too twee. We had dinner at Bentley’s, a great restaurant-cum-bar with delicious food, mean blood orange daiquiris and a big flatscreen TV they had kindly tuned to the London Olympics opening ceremony – wow what a spectacle!

Saturday: More Vermont

This morning we went back into Woodstock, where the annual book festival was on the town green so we lashed out and spent $11 on half a dozen 2^nd hand books and (yet another) indifferent coffee in the main street. We then pottered on in the Escape to Queechee Gorge, which the local tourism authority ambitiously describes as the Grand Canyon of New England. But we did spot a couple of very playful chipmunks and some colorful (almost A-team) birds.

In the afternoon we came across a fantastic pick-your-own blueberry farm – nearly two kilos for $10 and the biggest juiciest berries on bushes nearly 2 metres tall - eat your heart out Iona! We also enjoyed the longest covered bridge in the US at Windsor, a town that has seen better days but still attracts tourists for this attraction alone.

Torrential Sydney rain cut short our afternoon wanderings through southern Vermont and a big hotel room with hot tub, view of the Connecticut River and unlimited Wi Fi across in New Hampshire beckoned. It might even be a Thai takeaway in front of the Olympics kind of night….

Photos: Canadian exploits

annaandandrew — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 11:19:00 GMT

Canadian exploits

annaandandrew — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 09:32:00 GMT

Montreal 1

Brandy Ho’s in San Fran was a significant step up from our previous Chinese dinner and we were in good shape to get the plane to Montreal on Saturday afternoon. Air Canada got off to an indifferent start by charging us $C45 to carry our one bag each to Montreal, the thin excuse being that everyone else did it. We were at least warned that they charge for food so we teetered onto the plane carrying a substantial picnic.

And it was a very new Airbus 319 with inflight entertainment etc for the five hour flight, a mere hop after the Pacific. My third cousin Henry Yates was there to meet us on landing and took us off to his family house in TMR, The Mount Royal, which as a former resident of Melbourne (in the 1960s) he compared to South Yarra. That’s versus the very grand Westmount’s Toorak, which we saw with Henry on Sunday morning.

Tootling around in Henry’s 2010 Lincoln was a bit of a change from San Fran’s hurly burly public transport, and very relaxing. We went to lunch at Henry’s tennis club, the Hillside Club, in some style and it was the club manager who told us that ”Mr Yates was chairman of the club’’. Henry was born in 1935 with his identical twin Ted, whom we also know, and whom he regularly impersonates at social functions, to much hilarity.

Henry’s like that…low key but fun. He regaled us with how, as a young chemical engineer in the 1960s, he decided to try his luck for 18 months in Australia, nailing a job early with ICI after deciding that Newcastle with BHP, another job offered, might not be such fun. He lived a champagne and chips existence where one minute he was being introduced to Robert Menzies on election day (for a 20 minute chat, which tells you how confident Menzies was), and the next he and a mate were driving a 1962 VW beetle from Melbourne to Darwin on some seriously unimproved roads. Henry said the recommended practice if you got stuck was to sit by the car and set fire to your spare tyre if you saw a plane passing.

He’s old Montreal, entirely and cheerfully Anglo, but his wife Melodie has some French Canadian and Irish ancestry. (She was away at their house in the country at Magog, where they spend more than half the year.)

They’re entirely cool about the strong and reportedly growing French culture in Quebec and say separatism is on the wane after hitting 49.4 per cent in a referendum, thanks to a lot of trivial linguistic folly such as changing the word STOP to ARRET on road signs when the word STOP is universally understood. He speaks Churchillian (engineer’s) French himself.

We “did’’ old Montreal on Saturday afternoon and very lively and charming it was too. A good small museum at Chateau Ramezy, circa 1705 marked out the history, which tilted Anglowards in 1757 with General Wolfe’s capture of Quebec. There were various revolts and lurches in the early 1800s and for a while the Catholic church preached an early form of ”back to the farm’’ Petainism. Henry told us that well into the 20^th century there was a slavish adherence in some rural communities to what the priest said, right down to leaving rows of stones in the fields so they could warm the crops on sunny days.

But he pointed out that the French settlers had always brought intellectual traditions with them, unlike the Boers in South Africa, and what struck us was how there was a kind of intellectual and artistic competition between the French and the British for two centuries, with considerable artistic and architectural legacy to prove it.

We had a brief look at McGill University, well situated in Centre Ville thanks to Mr McGill having donated his farm in the mid 1800s when Montreal was a tiny town that had just outgrown its defensive city walls.

Tuesday: Off to Ottawa with Henry to see the sights and meet his and Melodie’s daughter Brenda, who was a total poppet. Unlike Canberra, Ottawa had long been a commercial town before being declared the capital, with Henry noting that it was quite a place with loggers and fast ladies and riotous times. A bit quieter now.

We had lunch in the very splendid Chateau Laurier Hotel, a Gothic revival pile built in 1912 that characterised the rival Canadian Railway Companies’ habit of building big hotels near the railway and hoping they would come, And they did.

Karsh of Ottawa, the famous Syrian born photographer had a studio in the hotel in took wonderful photographs of people like Churchill, Einstein and author Stephen Leacock, displayed on the walls.

Wednesday: Change of author now…We drove down to Magog today, a beautiful lake about two hours’ east of Montreal, where old Canadian families have traditionally spent the summer months. Henry and Melodie’s home is in a to-die-for location right on the shores of the lake and is a gracious 1920’s house surrounded by trees of the same vintage in an estate of similar houses. It is also part of a club with lovely restaurant, golf course and tennis courts.

Thursday: Today we met Cindy, Melodie’s niece, who is Anni Rowland Campbell’s great friend. Given Andrew’s distant family connection with Henry, I think that makes us practically related! We are hoping to “do drinks” with Cindy before we leave Canada. Andrew and Henry swore they saw a rare red squirrel near her house…Cindy can you vouch for this????

Henry, Melodie, Andrew and I went for lunch in a very cute town called Hatley, further along the lake. Most perfect summer’s day. Had the best fudge I have ever tasted with walnuts and maple syrup. We then went back to Magog to take the brand new cruise boat out on the lake to spy on all the other lovely lakeside houses. Henry drives us down to Burlington Vermont on Friday to continue our travels towards Boston…stay tuned.

Veterans of San Fran

annaandandrew — Sat, 21 Jul 2012 11:49:00 GMT

Day Three continued: We went along to the Beach Blanket Babylon cabaret in the evening (thanks Richard, thanks Haysey) and enjoyed it enormously. Hillary Clinton and Tina Turner were my favorite send-ups. Amazing to think they have reinvented that show for more than 30 years and it’s still topical and funny.

Day Four: We had a lazy day today, wandering along the waterfront, eating ice-cream from Ghirardelli’s and visiting the maritime museum. So glad we didn’t bust ourselves with a big trip out of the city to the Napa Valley vineyards or the redwood forests…

Thankfully we had pre-booked a night tour to the notorious Alcatraz prison - on an island in Sam Francisco Bay - as it is booked out until late August. We had planned to take a cool 1950s replica tram along the waterfront (the Embarcadero) to catch our ferry but it had broken down. We ended up doing a very brisk kilometer or two by foot in Olympic time …and were the last onto the ferry.

Alcatraz is a spooky place with a spooky history, told well by the Parks Service guides and their audio tour. You’d think at least the prisoners had wonderful views but none of the tiny cells faced outwards…they could, however, hear the laughter and clinking glasses of New Year’s revelers across the water. Another meal afterwards at Fisherman’s Wharf, this time at Alioto’s, for a warming clam chowder.

Day Five: A late start and bus over to the Haight- Ashbury hippy district for the Flower Power walking tour. This was the cheap area to which the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and others moved around the 1967 Summer of Love to smoke dope, play music, avoid the Vietnam War and love each other.

Real estate prices there are now worse than Sydney, with the magnificent decorated timber terrace houses all going for well over $2 million. At least the locals have a sense of humour: a sanitation truck for the Ker Plunk company passed us on Haight Street.

Our guide Izu (that’s Suzi backwards without the s) was fashionably late but so passionate about the sixties that our small group had to beg off after 3 and a half hours. Uzi was a child of the hippy era, had been at Woodstock (All I ate was one tomato in 3 days), was a little the worse for wear but totally charming and still a firm advocate of tie dye fashion. Her dachshund Benny reminded me of our childhood dog Mitty – small, brown, opinionated and very loyal.

Tonight we are off to Brandy Ho, a Chinese restaurant recommended by a local on the cable car who says most of the Chinatown restaurants favour cheap over quality. We will be sad to leave this city: it has been great fun and a younger me would be plotting to come back and live here! Tomorrow we fly to Montreal.

First shaky steps in San Fran

annaandandrew — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 03:22:00 GMT

It's a heck of thing to look in your passport to find you haven't been out of the country for two and a half years but that's what we discovered while waiting to board United Flight 870 at Sydney airport: but it certainly heightens the anticipation.

Which is good because it was a 13 hour flight at the back of a fairly venerable 747. It was not merely the aircraft that was up in the numbers a bit...so were the crew. They took understandable pity on us (you know the pairs of seats just in front of the dunnies in the tail?) but they were all well up in the paint cards age-wise, as Runyon would have put it. That was confirmed when the purser announced one of the hosties was having her last flight after 42 years' service with the airline. That got a big clap, as much in awe of how long she'd stuck it as it was wishing her a good retirement.

And we lobbed in SF around midday, having left Sydney at 3pm the same day. Time travel on the cheap. Got a shuttle van into our Hotel, the Handlery in Union Square, and aside from feeling totally knackered and our having gone for a walk in the wrong direction, to get over the smell of kerosene, plastic and age old airline meals, it's all good.

Turns out we were walking through the Tenderloin area which one well dressed man warned us was "a bit sketchy', which is a line to remember. But the various hoboes and characters were actually less full-on than the panhandlers around Union Square. One man with a sign saying "Why Lie? I want a beer'' told us later that for some reason "all the Aussies stop by'' so we gave him a dollar.

We decided there's no time like the present to give things a shake and took the famous cable tram up and over to Fisherman's Wharf just as the sun was setting. This was more like it. Yes, it is a totally touristy thing to do but it's also unique. Keener travellers hang onto the outside of the tram but we were taking it easy inside.

The wharf is actually huge and very good because there are real fishing boats and real wholesalers down there. Anna had fettucine with mussels and garlic sauce and a perky Californian Pinot Grigio that handsomely outclassed the plastic bottled stuff on the plane. I kicked off with a clam chowder and plan to eat everything ever mentioned in Damon Runyon while I'm here, kicking off with a cheese blintz or two.

A couple from Texas explained the cloudy weather by saying that until about September each year the currents come down from Alaska, then they switch to come up from Hawaii. Our first day was colder than Sydney but things picked up later.

Day two: went mad on a tandem bicycle. Magic stuff. After a leisurely breakfast in David's delicatessen over the street we took the 30 Bus back over to Fisherman's wharf (cable tram being chokkas) and hired a tandem from an Irish boy who started off spruiking in a strong West coast accent and finished in broadest Dublin once we'd rumbled him.

There's a great bike ride over the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito (very chi-chi but after the panhandlers, a nice relief) and then on to Tiburon, on the bother side. It's 18 miles in the old money and then you get the ferry back. A perfect day out, particularly as the sun came out later on as we were having Mexican lunch in Sausalito.

Riding a tandem requires a bit more communication than we started with, since every gear change gives the rear passenger a bit of a jolt. There were lots of jokes from other riders about the passenger not pedalling but as a test I asked Anna to put her feet up, on a flat stretch, and after a couple of hundred metres was ready to concede that her contribution actually made a big difference.

Had dinner in a not very exciting Chinese restaurant in Chinatown. We guessed it was going to be a bit ordinary when we noticed that there was only one Chinese looking family dining there. We were also told by a lady we met on the tram that she lived in Chinatown and never ate out there, despite (or rather because of) her being a foodie. She has recommended a place called Brandy Ho’s which we will give a shake to in due course.

Day Three…Wed July 18. Bit of a sluggy day after our bike exertions. We went to the Earthquake exhibition at the California Academy of Sciences and discovered it was opposite the De Young museum which featured a major exhibition of Jean-Paul Gaultier dresses. So we went our separate ways and did well.

Then we grabbed a bus through the Haight-Ashbury area and went up to the Coit tower, a local lookout point, and then looked at Lombard Street, the zigzag street that has featured in a number of films we can’t currently identify without help from Google.

From there I went back down to Fisherman’s Wharf to look at some historic ships while Anna went off shopping. My great (or maybe great great) grandfather used to sail from Port Glasgow to San Francisco and back in about the 1890s, having children at four year intervals, so it was great to see the Balclutha, built at Connells in Glasgow, from that time and find it fitted the narrative. He was killed by a block coming out of the rigging , a common fate for seafarers.

And the USS Pampanito was a World War two submarine that not only spent time in Fremantle but also picked up 73 Allied POWs (mostly Australians) off Hainan island after torpedoing the ship that was taking them to work in the coal mines in Japan. There is film footage on YouTube of the oil-covered survivors being pulled up onto the casing so it was very moving to see exactly where that happened. It was of course amazing to see how small the sub was inside, even being a long range job that was 115 feet long and around 1500 tonnes. Crew of 90 plus 75 survivors!

Photos: First shaky steps in San Fran

annaandandrew — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 02:46:00 GMT