I wish I could say that I had a good weekend, but of course I had a fairly miserable one - coughing and hacking up bits of green crap, the usual fun of being sick. Still, I felt well enough to go back to school today, which resolved itself in an excessively random coughing fit in the bathroom at AHA, which turned out to be the coughing fit of the gods - went on for a good five minutes, brought tears to my eyes, the whole deal. Also left me standing there with one of those feelings one gets from time to time, along the lines of "I'm standing in a tiny little trapezoidal bathroom, painted red, and furnished in the 1930s or something. I'm coughing like mad for no reason whatsoever. This is just the slightest bit bizzare." And then I got up and walked out and carried on with the day.

Anyway. Being sick aside, I did a few things this weekend. Worked on some CC2 maps nobody is ever likely to see. Played some really fun games of Medieval Total War, which although they aren't quite of the same scale as Conrad II fighting off the entire Italian/Hungarian army all by himself in The Holy Roman Emperors, were still fairly epic. Hours long epic warfare with Khan, that sort of thing. All very entertaining, in that "Oh, he's shooting me with legions of horse archers, and all I have are spears" sort of way.

Also, I read a lot. Sharpe's Havoc I'm not going to talk about a lot, because it's a Sharpe novel and because I thought Sharpe's Rifles and Sharpe's Eagle were better. Still good, though, and I've already got the next three books in the series to keep me occupied. This is, I think, the point where I mention that I like to read a lot when I haven't got school tying me down.

Also, I read a book by one Neil Gaiman, by the name of American Gods. Just finished it, in fact, which means this is probably a bad time to be writing about it because I haven't entirely digested it yet. Not, mind you, that I'm sure I'll ever entirely digest it, because daaaaaaaamn was that book strange. Strangest book I've ever read, I think. And I pretty much had no idea what was going on the entire time I was reading it. And yet it was somehow very good. Haven't quite got a handle on that yet. Had a lot of things to say, too, which I similarly haven't quite got a handle on. One of those sorts of books. Anyway, you should probably read it. Mine is, as my host dad Paul said, not the best enticement to read it one can hear, but what the hell.

So pretty much this week has been a "Black Plague 1, Europe 0" sort of a thing. Because I sure am sick. This wasn't particularly apparent on Saturday when the St. Alban's fiasco happened, but by Sunday it was pretty clear that All Was Not Right With the World. When you and your partner are sitting down working on your presentation, and you basically fall asleep in the chair, you know that either your presentation is boring as hell, or you're just that sick, and I knew the presentation wasn't THAT bad.

Cue Monday. I'm really tired, pretty congested, but I go into school anyway, because hey, meeting and play tonight. Can't miss those. And I don't, even though I should have, since mid-play my right ear filled up with fluid and I couldn't hear anything from it, which was maybe not so good, as these things go. The play, Love's A Luxury, was pretty hilarious, though. I thought I'd die mid-play from laughter and disease, but it was good.

And, since my ear still had all that fluid and it hurt to lie down, I got all of about two hours of sleep in bed, and another hour propped sitting up on the couch, which is even less comfortable than it sounds, really. In the grand scheme of Things To Do More Than Once In Life, that experience isn't really on the list, nor is the next day, which involved the forementioned presentation on Hadrian's Wall, which went about as well as can be expected when one of the presenters looks like Ye Olde Authentic Black Plague Victim. The part of the day that IS on the list is the talk and tour we got from Christopher Walker, who's the curator of the Ancient Near East study room at the British Museum, which means he's in charge of all their cuneiform tablets. As in they have something in excess of a hundred thousand of the things in various states of repair. And, as Margalyn put it in her journal, "I HANDLED A CUNEIFORM TABLET! :)" Also got to hear a whole bunch on the British Museum's history with the things, which was cool. And of course I got to touch a random 3,000 year old lump of clay with little scratches in it. Yay.

And then I went home and slept a lot, and slept in bed this time, since the fluid levels were down from the previous raging Nile flood levels to something a bit more managable. And as sleep usually is, this was good.

And then the next morning I got up and went down to the Museum of London, which is another one of those city museums I keep talking about with all sorts of random cool artifacts about city history, including the obligatory Victorian shopfront walk, which isn't quite as cool as York's obligatory Victorian shopfront walk(s), but is still somewhere on the list of Things To Do More Than Once In Life. The next time I do it, however, I'd like to be able to do more than just shamble around doing my plague victim impression.

Somehow I also managed to make it through Westminster Abbey, which on the whole was a lot more impressive than I expected for some reason. York Minster's still cooler, but still. Still. Of note:

1. A little stone before the RAF Chapel, trod on by legions of unsuspecting tourists, saying "Oliver Cromwell - 1658" or something of that sort. Along the same lines, James I gets the same treatment, in an even less conspicuous spot.

2. The sarcophagi of Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots each have their own fire blankets.

3. Charles Darwin has a great big monument in, and I think is buried in, the Abbey.

4. Assorted royal tombs, which vary from the hella impressive (Elizabeth I) to fairly unimpressive (Edward I "Longshanks") to random stones in the floor (James I).

5. Assorted coronation paraphenalia, including the chair, which was comissioned back in Edward I's day and looks it.

All of this having been seen, I went home and slept a lot more. And here I am, staying home from school for a day finally and getting some rest. Yay.

And getting to St. Albans today to meet SNR was something like this:

Announcer: And in this corner, we have Dwip, who needs to be in St. Albans by 1, because that's what he told SNR, who's sacrificing his lunch break to be there!

Crowd: Oooo...

Announcer: And in this corner, we have the undefeated champion! The entire London Underground and Silverlink Trains network!

Crowd: *hushed silence*

Announcer: And it's 10:50 as Dwip goes for Eastcote Station to get the Metropolitan Line to Euston. But wait! London Underground has pulled the infamous "Engineering work forces you to take a slow Picadilly train" move! The train doesn't arrive at Eastcote until 11:23, and Dwip's train to Watford Junction leaves at 12:15!

Crowd: *gasps*

Announcer: But wait! Dwip has jumped the Picadilly train at 12:04, then hops a Victoria train at Euston at 12:05, arrives at 12:14, and collects his ticket and hops the Watford train 20 seconds before departure! He made it, folks, he made it! Now on to St. Albans!

Crowd: *cheers*

Announcer: But no! Silverlink trains has performed the "lie about the train time of arrival at destination" move, putting Dwip in Watford Junction 15 minutes after his train to St. Albans leaves! He has to wait for the 11:30 train!

Crowd: *groans*

Announcer: And arriving in St. Albans at 11:46, he misses SNR completely! Dwip has failed, ladies and gentlemen! London Underground and Silverlink Trains remain the undisputed champions!

Crowd: *winces*

Dwip: *crawls off to catch the next train to London*

Tharavel! Getcher completed Tharavel doc here!

Or email me, or something.

I crave ice cream. Went for my Rolo McFlurry yesterday, and two different McDonalds didn't feel like giving it to me for various reasons. Then today at Waterloo Station, it being not just sauna hot but infernal pits of hell hot, I decided that the McDonalds there could hook me up, but of course their machine broke too. So I had to content myself with this gigantic butter croiscant that was really good. But it wasn't filled with ice cream, so the effect was moot.

But wait, you ask. Why was I in Waterloo Station in the first place? Obviously to jump a train to Hampton Court palace. Henry VIII's house. Which, it being the place where the king hung out, looks hella cool and is filled with random priceless artwork. Seriously. They even decorated the chimineys. And every single room has every single wall covered in paintings, tapestries, or both. And a good many of the ceilings have assorted paintings directly on them. Add in a few marble fireplaces and thrones with velvet canopies, and it's all very impressive. It's good to be the king, yknow?

Also, Southwest Trains sucks. Never take it, unless there's something really cool, in which case take it and suffer for an hour or so and bask in the coolness. Or take the bus, but considering that I saw some really exciting grass growth action on our bus ride to Waterloo, maybe not.

Plans are in motion to shoot down the sun. More on this later.

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5/21/04 Addendum

Plans have succeeded to shoot down the sun. Also, I have had my Rolo McFlurry. The Picadilly Circus McDonald's can always be counted on to hook me up.

And my being in Picadilly Circus should immediately have you thinking "You know, I bet he went to go see the Reduced Shakespeare Company do The Bible - The Complete Word of God (abridged)." Those of you thinking that are right and can stay. The rest of you need to go back to mind reading school. Without going into a lot of detail, let me just say that it was all very hilarious, though not quite as hilarious as Shakespeare (abridged), and that I was visited in my dreams by Satan last night. He showed me my accomodations in Hell, and it turns out they're pretty spacious and comfy, since he apparently wants me to bypass all this getting tortured stuff, and move directly on to the fun stuff, like seducing mortals into great acts of evil. Sounds like fun.

Besides Laura and I doing the RSC, the entire theater class went down to the Globe theater reconstruction, hung out while they did rehearsals for Much Ado About Nothing, went down to the Rose Theater ruins to have a look, and then went to the Globe's museum to drool at the really sweet costumes that they hand sew and things like that. Very cool. And while we're on the subject of very cool, it turns out, in reference to the Rose theater stuff, that in Britain if you're building something and you stumble across old ruins or anything, you have to stop, and they send in archaeologists to dig everything up. In the case of the Rose, they actually got the builders to redesign the whole building and give them the bottom bit with the Rose. That's pretty nifty, says I.

The Central Line is only sort of ghetto. You can take it. The station decoration sucks, but the cars were ok.

5/14/04

Or so it's seemed, anyway. No sleep, you see. Terrible thing, no sleep. Makes Dwip a rather poor conversational companion, and such. Yeah.

So the first of our Sleepless in London days was Wednesday, which just so happened to be Dustin's 21st birthday. Astute readers will know what happened next. Yes, we did in fact take over not only a wine bar near the British Museum, but when that closed, we took over the Museum Tavern pub. Dustin indeed got very drunk, most of which I was there for, and apparently after I left in a vain attempt to, you know, get sleep before class at 10 the next morning, there was some good old fashioned drunken text messaging of random people's cell phones. And many tequila shots were consumed by all, except oddly me, because I for some reason didn't drink the whole night.

But wait, you ask. Isn't Thursday karaoke night at the Manor? Oh, but it is. But it is. And in true me fashion, I got there early at 8:40, and spent 40 minutes wondering where everyone was, foolishly forgetting that almost everyone was watching Finding Nemo with Dr. Garfinkle's kids. Why the popularity of kids' movies with college age people is sort of a mystery to me, but whatever. In any case, Tara and Allison showed up at like 9:30, then Jeremiah at 9:45 or so. Then Ray, this random guy in the Navy we met, and his friends all came over, so we had a good time of it until 10:15 or so, when everyone else showed up, and the party really got started. Love Shack was performed, again. I atoned for the previous night by having three Smirinoff Black Ices and a shot of something appropriately strong inside of an hour and a half or so, which considering my alcohol tolerance or lack thereof had me feeling a little bit happy. Thus it was a good night, and there was much entertainment. Not a lot of sleep, but these things happen.

No sleep, you see, because astute readers will also recognize that Fridays are excursion days, which meant getting up at 6:30 to go to Fishbourne Roman Palace (read: villa) and Chichester. This, fortunately, involved a bus ride, which meant much dozing while blaring Offspring and Nine Inch Nails into my ears, which works a lot better than you might think.

At any rate, Fishbourne was mildly disappointing, since we had expected some impressive ruins and got a bunch of fairly well preserved mosaics and things. Which is in and of itself a nice thing, but a little bit different than what we were all hoping for. However, since I'll eventually be hitting Pompeii, it should all work out in the end.

Then we went to Chichester, which is a nice, if kind of hick, cathedral city near Fishbourne. Since I just visted like five very similar but cooler places a week ago, this was rather less than exciting, but the cathedral there is truly impressive, so it all rather worked out in the end, I suppose. Too, Dr. Garfinkle, Mike, Mike, Alden, Jeremiah, and I wandered into this pub for lunch, everyone complaining all the while about starvation. The pub, much to its dismay, had a 2 entire meal for 6.99 deal. At the end of the day, this meant that 11 different plates of food showed up to our table, since I wasn't quite THAT hungry. And the food was good, though not, as the table conversation went, enough to pull a Once Upon a Time in Mexico and shoot the cook. But ah well.

Too, we had the most random encounter with this old British guy, to the tune of he walked up to our table and was like "Americans, eh? Unionists, or Confederates?" And as we're all answering "Unionists," I'm thinking you know, this guy is old, but it isn't like the Civil War was fifty years back, here. Turns out the guy had gone to the South once upon a time, and had a good old time there. Go figure. It also turns out that he was a big fan of Bush, and since we weren't, there was a rather interesting little conversation about how in the 40s he was in the Navy during the war, and they fought to stop Hitler, and how he thinks Bush is doing the same sort of thing. We also learned that they used to build destroyers in 31 days in Boston, one of which this guy apparently served on. Interesting, if strange, stuff.

And, just in defiance of the whole get out and see things idea, we then proceeded to this coffee shop, where we crashed for an hour or so until it was time to go. Whereupon there was the whole sleep + blaring music thing again, and life was good.

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5/17/04 Addendum:

So I made you wait three more days for this post why, exactly? Well, I could protest that I really wanted to talk about various aspects of culture that I experienced over the weekend, but the real truth is that putting this text file on my flash drive, plugging it into the computer upstairs, booting it up, getting all the way on the Internet, opening up the file, and posting it in MT was just way too much effort for my taste. To my credit, I got so far as the Internet bit, but then the molasses slow speeds of dialup forced me to go read some RBCiv instead. So you're sort of loved, when it's convenient. And now that I think about it, you'll all be getting this Tuesday, very likely, because I have theater tonight. Oh well.

Speaking of Civ, incidentally, I think I mentioned the whole Epic 40 thing to Toast, but really it's up at RBCiv, and you can probably figure out how to get there. Too, I'm waiting for Epic 41, so I have some good excuse to play Civ, other than "I am REALLY sucking at Emp-level games right now, and need to break that trend." Not that that's not a good reason to play Civ, but you know. If I'm going to bust out my mad trading skillz, and use my tiny island paradise to single-handedly outresearch the rest of the planet except the monstrous Mayan Third Riech using things like, yknow, libraries and universities that my cities actually BUILT, meeting the rest of the world being halfway through the ancient age when they're building, yknow, Copernicus, and then catch up and pass them with self-research, winning by overwhelming UN victory despite being involved in rampant world wars, I want to write a huge report about it. And use lots of commas and run-on sentences. Because we're all about commas around here. ,,,,,

Anyway. So Saturday Laura and I went off to go see the Reduced Shakespeare Company do the Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged). And it is some funny, funny shit. Water splashing, battery powered Godzilla toys, rap Othello... It's the funniest hour and a half I've had since Wednesday in Intercultural class when she made us watch Billy Connelly videos. That dude's funny, too. So, since the RDC does two other shows, the Complete History of America (abridged) and the Bible (abridged), we're definitely going to try to make those, especially since AHA hooks us up with an unlimited supply of cupons that give you the best seats they'll give you for 12.50. Since those seats normally cost 30+, and since we were in the second row, that's a hella good deal. If these people ever come to your large city, and I'm pretty sure they did New York for a while, go there.

And that's the theater portion of our presentation. Or will be later today when I actually give my theater presentation, but the less about that the better. Let's talk books instead. So I hear that Robert Harris' Pompeii is really good, since multiple people have given up entire days to read it now. Hopefully I can borrow it and read it. Since it's by the guy who wrote Fatherland, I'm going to just go with the majority and think it's really good by association. On another note, I actually DID read William Gibson's Neuromancer on assorted train and bus and silt strider rides places, and it was...good. Good with the caveat that it was really weird, but when the setting is a cross between Blade Runner and the Matrix, what do you want, really? Speaking of which, you can totally tell where they got some of the ideas for the Matrix movies. Not rip-off, exactly, but yeah. So, while I have recently read better books than it, pretty good. Except now I'm out of books again, and that's bad, because I've bought like six or nine or something books here, plus I brought like six more. When you can read a novel a day, this is understandably an issue.

Most of us would at that point abandon the books for the computer games, the readership of this blog being who and what it is. Fortunately for me, I brought, count them, three games with me. Half-Life I beat once. Opposing Force I beat twice, since I figured out the way the barnacle gun works so I went back in an unpissy mood and played without needing the jump cheat. Civ is, well, Civ. Still can't play BF:V, and I don't have my M:TW or Diablo 2 CDs to play those. Oh, and Blue Shift crashes my comp when I try to run it, and no CD there either. So oh well.

So there's music. Bought some CDs on the trip, and don't think I mentioned them. Greatest Hits of the Beach Boys is, well, self-explanatory except for the shit I'll take for having bought such a thing, to which I can only say that finding an affordable CD with Good Vibrations on it is a hard thing to do. And then I bought the Who's Tommy, which is a monster of a concept album, which although it has good tracks, like, yknow, Pinball Wizard, is really one of those albums you have to sit down and listen to the whole way through to get the full effect. Since it pretty much eats the whole CD, you're there for a while, but it's worth it. Also, Billy Corgan's really high-pitched voice in the MCIS Demos boot is pretty funny, as I'm sure Whir can attest to. Just thought you might like to know that.

But it's really hard to just sit down and listen to music. Idle hands and all that. So you've got to find something else to do. Like work obsessively on Tharavel, maybe. Which is why I've got about a page and a half of timeline left and I'm done with history. And after history it's just a bit of editorial cleanup and the whole bloody thing ought to be ready to go. For those of you what've been waiting like three and four years for the thing, you ought to be pleased. You'll be less pleased if you try to read the whole history in one sitting, likely, but since I'm a completeness freak you'll just want to be living with that. Also, I put together this nifty map of the city of Thurii. Yay. CC2 rocks, even if I did totally forget to upgrade to Pro before I came over here.

There. The appeasing bloggage is longer than the bit I was going to give you before, and I'm not drunk in this one. You should all be happy now. Or else I'll go into Assyrian mode and run you down in my chariot and shoot you with arrows a lot. And erect big brightly painted wall reliefs in my palace showing me shooting you with arrows. With random cuneiform. Because when you're an Assyrian you do things like that. And you kill lions. Many lions. Lion King 536 1/2 sort of kill lions.

Anyway.

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5/17/04 Addendum:

So since I'm going to be late about posting this anyway, might as well find some more stuff to talk about, eh? Like how I've got my tickets more or less for the continent trip now. And a lot of fun that was. London to Brussels on the 13th, which is on the Eurostar rail service, which supposedly is very good unless you're like me and leaving at 8:30 am, or like my roommate and thus get stopped twice for assorted hours while French soldiers climb all over the thing looking for bombs. Sort of a status symbol, really. I'm high enough now to be on Osama's list of bomb targets. Yay. Or something. At any rate, Brussels to Stockholm isn't bad either, despite my getting in at 5 pm. Stockholm to Venice, though, that's the fun one. It involves me flying out of Stockholm at 9 or whatever, getting into London Stanstead at 11, and then leaving again at 1 to get to Venice at 3. This is actually the good way, because I thought it was going to be more like 6am to 1pm waiting, which I'm sure we can all agree is rather less than optimal. It's not quite sleeping in airports suboptimal like some people are doing, but still.

Italian rail to get to Rome we'll just want to think about for a while, since I have no idea how to book it, not to mention I might just fly anyway, because lugging that many suitcases on the train is something less than entertaining.

Travel aside, more culture. Saw a brand new play last night, as in I think we were in the second ever performance or so. The History Boys is the name of it, and apparently the guy what wrote it, Allan Bennett, or so I think the name is spelled, is rather famous and all. Whatever the case, it's quite good. Set in an English grammer school (the equivilent of a US public school) in 1985, it's all about these kids trying to fake out the exam boards to get into places like Oxford and Cambridge. Along the way they run into some screwed up teachers, and rampant use of some really really screwy humor. I mean, I thought my sense of humor was pretty strange, but I'm not even in the league. Very funny, though. And has a nifty point, too. Good times. Good times.

But the Northern Line sucks. Never take it.

So many titles for this one... "No Dogs on the City Walls" was one that didn't make the cut - it's a sign on the York city walls. More I've forgotten. This one is the best, though, I think. You'll see.

In any case, here's the record of my six days, Canterbury, York, Carlisle, Hadrian's Wall, and a few points in between. Enjoy.

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5/3/04 Canterbury

Live from atop the Dane John Mound, Canterbury. This used to be the site of a Norman motte and bailey timber fort a thousand years ago in William the Conqueror's time. Now it's the centerpiece of a large park. It's about sixty or seventy feet above ground level, which gives it a nice view of the city, though most of the Cathedral is blocked by some inconsiderate trees. Still, it's one of the nicest bits of a nice city.

It also opens onto what's left of the medieval walls - you can walk them for a good distance, and some of the towers still stand. Walk them long enough, and you come close to what's left of the stone Norman keep, which is just a shell, now.

All of this is what greets you pretty much right outside the eastern train station, which I might add is horribly ghetto. But since it was a glorious day when I came out, I forgive it. I wandered around lost for a time, which is fine, since Canterbury is nice to wander in. Lots of pedestrian streets and old stuff, and finally got to the cathedral.

This, as it happened, turned out to be a mistake, since it started raining as I went in, and rained the whole time I was in Canterbury after. The Cathedral on one hand was impressive - kings, archbishops, and Edward the Black Prince are buried there, and the candle on the site of Thomas a Becket's martyrdom is quite something, but the place lacks...something. Not sure what. Maybe I was disenchanted at how it cost me an arm and a leg to get in, and they wanted more besides for photos and any real info. Whatever.

I also hit two of the city museums, which were fair - the Roman one is merely ok, but the Heritage museum covers all Canterbury history and lives in an old medieval hospital, which adds to the charm. I imagine the West Gate museum would be worthwhile too, but it closed before I got there. Ah well.

I also ran into a gaming store, the first I've seen here. Felt like home, even if it was typically English, which is to say overpriced and with no selection.

And that was more or less that. I walked in the rain for a couple hours, which sure improved my Winchester cold. Pulling into London Victoria, which like all London stations is not the ghetto, I'm finally dry and warm again. Yay.

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5/4/04 York Day 1

What does one say about York? Behind London, it is the most impressive city I've seen here, I think, and I haven't even done everything yet.

York, like Canterbury, is another of those cities that you walk out of the station and run smack into the city walls. You can also walk them, and they're quite extensive and well-preserved - 2 miles, about. And my feet, believe you me, feel both miles, not that the walls were the hard bit.

The hard bit was York Minster, which for some reason has been chiming bells for half an hour. It's allowed, because it's the single most impressive cathedral yet. And, unlike the Canterbury Cathedral, your admission actually gets you worthwhile things, like information and tours. Among other things, it has a choir screen depicting some of the kings from William the Conqueror on, all with impressive little statues. You can also walk down into the crypt/treasury/foundations, where you can see remains of Roman Eboracum's fortress, as well as three or so seperate cathedrals, and the obligatory impressive church plate.

2 pounds will get you a walk to the tower. It's 184 feet high, has 275 steps, and they're all of the 2' spiral variety. The walls, like I said, were nothing. The view from up there is amazing, of course. Panoramic views of the entire city. Good stuff.

I had lunch at a place called the Roman Baths. It's a pub, with the usual good pub food, plus you can pay to see the remains of the baths. Not much, but I liked it anyway.

I also rather like the park outside the hotel I'm in. Among other things, it has a museum and the ruins of two medieval churches, plus a working one. Close to the train station, too, so one of the first things I saw.

And that's the first of my two days in York. Tomorrow, I want to do the castle, the Viking stuff, and the city museum. We'll see.

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5/5/04 York Day 2

So going out of Clifford's Tower this morning, I happened to pass a guy and his two kids, who I so happened to see yesterday on my wall walk. Real troopers, those kids. All of 5, and they made the whole 2 miles with me. Slept good, I bet. I did.

Clifford's Tower isn't much, and not worth the price of admission. You get to see...a gutted interior and a decent view of the city. Bah. Castle Museum next door, however, is sweet. Exhibitions on daily life abound, and just for kicks they've reconstructed multiple entire Victorian streets, with attendant shops. Oh, and they mention the Sharpe TV series. They're not just books.

Speaking of Sharpe, I'm becoming a huge Bernard Cornwell fan. Sharpe's Rifles was good, and he's got an Arthurian series I'm devouring. York has a Borders (Yay!), so I've picked up some more of his stuff to occupy me. Too, it seems that not only is the sequel to Quicksilver out, Colleen McCullough wrote like two books when I wasn't looking. One is sort of a Morgan's Run "I'm still angry at the English for that whole transportation thing" rehash, but the other is a retelling of the Illiad. We'll see. Too, I believe there's a new Pratchett, and another one by somebody fairly important and good who I can't remember right now. Ah well.

Anyway. The castle stuff took me about four hours to do, and I followed it with a trip to the Jorvik Viking Center, which involves a ride in a "time capsule" through Viking Jorvik, with sights, sounds, and smells. It's corny as hell, yet entertaining.

That having been done, I browsed the Yorkshire Museum near my hotel, which coincidentally has some great ruins nearby (the ones in the park I mentioned before). The museum is packed - Roman, Saxon, and Medieval exhibits of greatness. Plus the reason why the ruins are so great - they're the Abbey of St. Mary, which was like the second richest and powerful in all England. Oh.

In any event, that's York. It's on to Carlisle tomorrow.

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5/6/04 Carlisle

The problem with Carlisle, one could say (or maybe just Longshanks), is that it's full of Scots. Quite literally, during the '45 when Bonnie Prince Charlie's Highlanders took the place over, but even today half the folks have accents. Some worse than others - I still have no idea what that guy in the street was trying to ask me.

It's been a strange day like that. I got stopped by random people twice today for things. Why the American tourist of all people? We may never know. Too, Carlisle is confusing in that it has like three roads that matter, all of which are well layed out, which means that I got lost all over today. Especially finding the castle.

The castle was pretty hard, since if you aren't on the right side of the fenced off main highway, you have to find this well-hidden subway and go under said highway. That having been done, the castle is quite well-preserved and nice, which is because it's this big red monster of a thing, with big red walls. Whole city's red, actually, from the local stone, I imagine. Cathedral's red, too. Mite odd, that - never seen a red cathedral before. Sort of a small one, too. Which is unfortunate, because there's not much more to see here.

Doubly unfortunate since the Hadrian's Wall busses are all bloody slow, and late, and early - I'll get three hours in Housesteads if I'm lucky, and I'm not even sure I can make Vindolanda. A shame, because I really wanted to see Vindolanda. Ah well. Maybe I'll do Birdoswald and take a weekend up here.

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5/7/04 Carlisle (morning)

So the B&B I'm in is pretty nice, and has the best bed I've slept in here. This is good. What's bad is that it's 9am. Nothing is open here at 9am. Carlisle is kind of hick like that. Even in York, things are open at 9am.

The real problem, mind you, is that everything shuts at 5. Everything. So of course you're left from about 5 to 11:30 when it's a good bedtime with nothing to do. Before York, of course, I just caught the train back, and all was well. Even York you could walk around. Carlisle, well, I had a short day and saw most of it. I'll see the rest today before Housesteads.

That's worth a rant right there. Unless it's a month from now and the AD122 service is running, busses on the wall suck. Frex, I'm taking the 185 to Housesteads, which only runs twice a day three hours apart, and then I'm going to walk a couple of miles to Vindolanda, see that, and walk a couple more miles to Haltwhistle and catch the 685 back to Carlisle. Argh. I have no idea what I'll do tomorrow.

And while I'm thinking about it, if you're a student, and you're spending any time at, say, three or more places, get the 15 pound membership thing for English Heritage. Because you'll really hate yourself if you don't, like me. Also, pack light on these excursion things, because that extra change of clothing sure is annoying to pack. And tear pages out of your guide book, because the fucker's heavy. Very heavy. Heaviest thing I have. Argh.

Ok. Caffiene and Housesteads, here I come.

5/7/04 Bardon Mill (evening)

This, as the two Great Ones once said, has been a most unusual day. I'm in Bardon Mill, it's close to half past six, and I'm waiting for a train that will hopefully get me to Carlisle.

That's the middle of the story. The beginning puts me in Carlisle, where my nice B&B lady, thinking I'm skipping out without paying, rather politely informs me to pay my two nights in advance. In cash. Well, since I don't really carry 50 pounds in cash on a regular basis, this involves an appearance by the husband to I guess intimidate me, and a trip to an ATM. That having been accomplished, I got on with my day, which until I got on the bus consisted of a McDonald's run for cheap food, and a trip to the Tullie House, which is a rather nice museum, with a good section on Roman Carlisle, among other things.

That having been done, I rode out to Housesteads, one of the forts in Hadrian's Wall. It's all ruins now, of course, but it's nifty nonetheless. It is in the middle of nowhere, though, with sheep grazing it. Many sheep. Baa.

And if I thought Housesteads was the middle of nowhere, Vindolanda dove off the far side of the edge of the universe. I got partway there by means of a public footpath running through the middle of the forementioned sheep. During this I joined up with two nice old English ladies, who had impressive stamina for being old enough to be my grandparents. In any event, after hitting a road, we hit Vindolanda, which is surrounded by trees and meadows and things.

The fort's not much, but the museum, both open air with reconstructions of Roman buildings, and indoors with tons of artifacts, was cool. The digging is still going, too - I listened to one of the archeologists talk about it.

In any case, the real fun involved getting out of Vindolanda to here, which got me lost on another public footpath on the way to Bardon Mill (this being closer than Haltwhistle - 1.5 miles as opposed to 4), and deposited me in this random field with horses. So I walked the mile back, after about 3 between Housesteads and Vindolanda, another mile or two down some assorted random roads, one of which had a nice random guy who directed me to Bardon Mill. So then I walked another mile or so to town, down the main road, which was lots of fun, all the while passing little "Bardon Mill, 1 1/2 mile" signs all over. Finally, I ended up in Bardon Mill about half an hour before the train was due, with some very sore legs and enough time to jot this down (or rather I cheated, and finished this on the train. Yay).

5/7/04 Carlisle (evening)

Well, I made it. I don't think this part of my foot is supposed to hurt like this, though. Then, I DID walk uphill both ways to get places. And believe me, it was UP the damn hills. Lot of them in that part of the world.

Also, Rolo McFlurries were a bit of a letdown after the Cadbury one.

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5/8/04 Greenhead (afternoon)

Once again, here I am, stuck at a bus stop in some shithole hamlet along Hadrian's Wall, waiting for another goddamn bus that isn't even the bus I was supposed to take, except the bus driver who got me here was wrong about when the bus came. Ah well. Not his fault. Nice enough fellow. Doesn't prevent the bus service here from being teh suck, though.

In any case, the Roman Army Museum isn't bad. It gives a decent account of life in the legions, and a video reconstruction of Hadrian's Wall that is definitely not teh suck. It's also near a bunch of ridges with bits of wall on them, so it's all good. Except the damn bus.

Later -

So the company what runs the 685 bus doesn't take 185 tickets. I hate this place.

Still Later -

We're in some godforsaken town before London. My 15 pound return ticket to London apparently bought me a problem on my train and a bus trip back. I see another bus trip in my life, it dies.

Not only is said town in the middle of nowhere, it's FIFTY MILES FROM FREAKING LONDON. And it's 9 pm. Long day? Ha.

Yet Later -

THat was one of those bus rides from hell, the type that never ends, complete with a traffic jam in London at 10pm on a Saturday of all times, due to construction work, of all things. Aeeyah. And of course it had the obligatory annoying kid, with annoying parents or older brothers or whatever those guys were, all of whom were loud, annoying, and very rude all trip. Poor woman in front of me was apalled - after all the "kiss her!" and "shag her!" calls to the guy next to her, I was apalled, too. What a disaster.

But hey. I'm on the tube home, and life will be good at last, provided there are Rice Krispies to be had. I'm starving.

London, 11:45 pm -

Well, there were. And that's good. And my bed's here, and that's good too.

Winchester - 4/30/04

And today I went off to...get ready for it...Winchester. Olde Capitole of Ye Englishe around William the Conqueror's time or so. So suitably back in the day for our purposes, not to mention it was the third most important city in Roman Britain, or so they say.

I should point out that it was bloody well freezing and wet the entire time I was there, which led me on a good chase for a shop to buy a hat in, but all the hat shops seem to have fled to Oxford, since I found many in Oxford, and none in Winchester. But Winchester seems to have all the ice cream and shoe stores. Don't ask me why. But anyway. Keep in mind that I was wet and cold and hurt a lot all day.

And Waterloo Station in London is, well, big. And it's sort of impressive for being big, having as it does one of those big steel and glass vaulted ceilings that seem to be all the rage these days, since the British Museum has one, too, done just before this one. That having been said, it's a big, confusing, annoying train station. But once you figure it out, it's very very easy. Pull out ticket, present ticket, get on train, sit in reserved seat, life good. Remember this experience for later. It's important.

So, Winchester. Their train station is teh suck, but we'll be getting back to that. Also, the city isn't as cool as Oxford or Bath, which may have had something to do with the whole cold and raining thing, or maybe I've just had my fill of 19th century brick architecture. Who knows.

The whole West Gate sticking out of some random buildings over the sidewalk bit was kind of cool, as was the remains of the medieval castle, which was at one time apparently sort of important as befits the whole capitol of the realm thing, until London got all big and important. There's not even much of a castle left now, since Oliver Cromwell decided that the whole castle thing was not the way to be going, and pulled a bunch down. Very sad for us, but luckily he left the great hall, and the folks after old Ollie built some really nice law courts and things on top of it all. It looks sort of strange, but it works.

The Great Hall itself is sort of cool, as big large rooms go. Victorian stained glass windows, a random statue of Queen Vickie herself, and King Arthur's Round Table. Well, sort of. Except for how Edward I had it made, and just for kicks, Henry VIII decided to make himself look good by having it painted, complete with a big Tudor rose in the middle and a picture of King Arthur that looked oddly like Henry himself. In any event, it looks cool, so we'll just be forgiving, shall we?

Out back there's a little garden, which is a nice little garden you'll just have to see pictures of to have it be nice. Sorry 'bout that.

Out back of THAT, there are four assorted regimental museums: Light Infantry, Gurkhas, Royal Green Jackets, and, uh...Royal Hussars, I think. Very Marechalian sort of places, with lots of uniforms and medals and things like that. In the Hussars' Museum I was walking through while the curator and these other guys were talking about the best means of presenting stuff, what stories to tell, and things like that, which was really cool to listen to. Plus it was warm and dry in there, which was very important at that point in my life.

From there, I wandered around a bunch, because I got lost, and eventually stumbled into the city center, where I found the City Museum. This is a three story building with lots of really stuff in it, including some nice Roman mosaics, entire 18th and 19th century shopfronts, and these wicked cool little scale models of Winchester at various points in life: Roman, Iron Age, Anglo-Saxon, and like three medieval ones. You find a lot of those, actually - I've got a picture of this hella cool Roman fort model in the British Museum - but I don't usually find myself wanting to fall on the ground and worship the things.

Speaking of worshipping things, the Cathedral is really cool, too. Big, airy, awesome vaulting, impressive decorating though not quite as nice as Oxford's, and assorted tombs, including a whole bunch of important Bishops and Chancellors of England and things, and Jane Austen, for the literary types among us. Sadly, they were most unwith photography, so no pictures of the inside, though I've got some of the outside, which is also really sweet.

From the Cathedral, I jumped on this random road, which turned out to lead past Jane Austen's house of dying to Wolvesey Castle/Palace, which is where the Bishops of Winchester used to live back in the day. Still do, actually, at least in a part of it, except they let the whole other part go to ruin, and by ruin I mean there's some assorted walls and foundations and that's about it. And just for coolness' sake, you can climb all over them and walk through them, which is sort of fun.

On the way back from there, two random English guys pulled up in a car, and asked me for directions to the city center. So I'm like "Uh, well, you may have noticed almost immediately from the voice, but I'm sort of a tourist. However, if you go the OTHER way, this may in fact take you there." To which the reply was, since the English say this to pretty much everything, "Cheers, mate." Of course the mate bit is more of a younger crowd thing, but you know.

Anyway. Wolvesey Castle, for all its being nifty, is not dry and warm. Actually, the train station isn't either (I said we'd get back there), which perhaps has something to do with a combination of three things: First, the automatic doors trigger from like fifteen feet back. Second, about fifteen feet back from the doors is where everyone waiting for the sandwich shop likes to stand. Third, ALL the seating is directly in front of the doors. So while I wasn't exactly wet, I was freezing my ass off.

Fortunately, about the time I was about ready to pull and Empire Strikes Back, slice open one of my fellow passengers, and climb inside for warmth, the train back came. The unfortunate part, and I said we'd get back here, too, is that they nicely overbooked the damn thing, which meant I was sitting in the aisle. And then they got delayed a lot. And I had a headache. But it was dry and warm. And Waterloo Station was dry and warm, even if the attached tube station looks like crap, sort of unlike, say, Charing Cross, which has awesome Trafalgaresque designs on the walls (it's the Trafalgar Square station), or Oxford and Picadilly Circuses, which have trippy little designs on the walls, or Baker Street, which has big silohuettes of Sherlock Holmes on the walls, made up of little tiny versions of same. The tube is really awesome like that. Most of the Zone 1/Zone 2 stations are really nifty.

Anyway. Next up, Norwich.

-------------

Just for the whole break from damp and cold part of our festivities, London this morning was...damp and cold. Norwich is having a damn near perfect day, though, which is all the better for me, now isn't it?

On the downside, though, I think I caught a cold in Winchester, which meant my nose decided to gush all the way up, which meant the train ride was rather less entertaining than fun. On the other hand, Norwich's train station is rather better than ghetto, and has a convenient Budgens, which conveniently carries both Kleenex and caffiene, which is, well, convenient.

At any rate, to quote the song, been spending most of my time walking through a shopper's paradise. What this means is this: ladies, go crazyh. The Castle Mall is the biggest I've seen in England so far, and actually feels like an honest to God US mall. If that doesn't do it, the city center is chock full of random shops, not to mention this sort of giant Saturday Marketesque place with tents. If you can't find something in all that, there's no hope. Guys, ditch the females, but not before taking the checkbook firmly in hand, and go check out the Castle and the hill it's on. Not only is the park there, where I happen to be writing this, most excellent, the castle itself is pretty nice, and has a fairly good museum, though it's no Tower of London. Even so, it kept me busy for a good two and half or three hours, which since I bought the cheap pass that doesn't let you go into the much vaster art galleries, isn't bad.

To be honest, between the shops, the gardens, and the castle, I haven't made it very far, because each was so nice, I don't think I'll make it as far as the cathedral, frex, though there are plenty of old churches here that I've seen the outsides of. I also haven't made it as far as the Norfolk Regimental Museum, though it's right next to the castle, so maybe I should.

On another note, I got a Cadbury Egg McFlurry from McDonalds. Strange. Good, but strange.

Writing rather later from Norwich station, which turns out not only to not be teh suck, but in fact to be one of those great big train stations built back in the 1800s when everyone built large ornate train stations because it was the In Thing, I after some rather convoluted displays of written acrobatics involving sentences of giant length (notice haven't had a period in quite some time, which means either the sentence is long or we're pregnant) and a whole bunch of commas, ought to make some mention of the whole Norfolk Regimental Museum thing. In brief, it's one of the better set up museums I've seen, though unless you're Marechal, if you've seen one Regimental Museum, you've seen them all. I never did make it to the Cathedral.

And at this point it's all about the train that in 34 minutes will take me home to London. Final verdict on Norwich (silent w in the pronunciation, btw) is this: Nice city, which sort of reminds me of a bizzare Corvallis/Eugene combo. It's sort of quiet and nice like Corvallis, but in places busy and Eugene-like - note the tented market. Too, Norwich got a lot of money from somewhere, because the castle museum and the great big library/civic center are both very new, and very nice. So probably, says the American tourist after a whole day of being there, a nice place to live.

And a slight postscript - I had forgotten one of the peculiarities of British rail stations - no trash containers. If you had problems with the IRA, you wouldn't have them either. Makes mundane things like throwing away things bloody inconvenient, though. And speaking of blood, nose, you can go die now. That will be all.