Stowe and Sunshine!!!!!

Well - almost - it was sighted occasionally, but at least it did not rain on me.

I started the morning with one last circle through Oxford, past the Sheldonian Theatre, through the Bodleian Library Quadrangle, around the Radcliffe Camera, and past the church of St Mary the Virgin - so many spires indeed!!!! There really are students in gowns swooping by on bicycles, dons in full academic regalia seen only in Auckland ad graduations, and aged "scouts" in bowler hats guarding the doors of the colleges. Perhaps it is all just turned on for that film crew still ensonced in the Radcliffe Camera, and they all disappear after the fiming.

I then set off through assorted M and A roads, and gazillions of roundabouts to Stowe in Buckinghamshire, which is regarded as the greatest of the English landscape gardens. Capability Brown was gardener here for 10 years, and it truly an amazing place. It is rather a cross between the gardens at Stourhead and Blenheim Palace, with some of the extensive scope of Blenheim, and some of the intricately constructed woodland lanscapes of Stourhead. It takes hours to walk around, and even then I don't think I covered it all.

In the middle of the gardens is the massive Palladian mansion which was once the seat of the Duke of Buckinham, but has now become the prestigious boy's public school of Stowe. It looks an incredible environment for a school, and to cap it of there were assorted games of cricket goingon, with boys watching from the great steps in front of the house, over the velvet green of the cricket pitch - terribly English.....

Coming back I put petrol in the car - no pre-programmable pumps here!!! - then stopped off at a country pub for a beer, and to watch Tim Henman get put out of Wimbledon 3-2, after pulling back up from 2 sets down - terribly English also.....

Tomorrow is off to Germany, via the horrors of Heathrow.

Blenheim Palace and More Sogginess

Well my most useful travel item has been my collapsible umbrella - sunglasses are rather superfluous. Wilton House Garden was toured in the misty rain, Stourhead was 20% pouring rain, and today my Blenheim Palace garden meaderings were abbreviated by yeat another downpour - ho hum - English weather and all that.

However - back to the beginning.... Blenheim Palace house is a truly splendid place, on a par with Hampton Court in quality, though perhaps a bit smaller. A gift from Queen Anne to the first Duke of Marlborough in thanks for his defeating the French, and setting the stage for the ascendancy of England, and the decline of France. The history of the family parallels English history with kingly alliances, leading up to the connections woth Winston Churchill, Antony Eden, and Lady Diana Spencer. Subsequent Dukes have developed the gardens, particularly with the help of Capability Brown, and they are HUGE!!!!!! Walking around each loop of the garden takes 30-45 minutes, with enormous lawns stretching forever, thousands of trees, and a mixture of natural woodland gardens, formal Italian gardens, and a beautiful water feature garden.

The interior of the house is fabulously decorated, with enormous tapestries commissioned on Belgium by the first Duke to commemorate the victory at Blenheim (hence the Palace's name). Later the ceilings have been lavishly glided with the help of Vanderbilt money after the 8th Duke married Consuelo Vanderbilt. (Her mother locked her in her bedroom for three days until she would agree to marry him - they had an unhappy 20+ years together before divorcing, but her dowry was very beneficial to Blenheim Palace, and her mother got a Duchess for a daughter, so there was some mutual benefit it seems.)

The house was the base for MI5 during the war, as Hilter planned to rule from there when he invaded England, so had instructed Goerring to spare it from bombing - a very handy protection for MI5, of course.

So I have now done three grand country houses and gardens, each beautiful in its own way. Wilton House had the amazing Cube Rooms and stunning, though smaller gardens; Stourhead had the most beautiful garden of them all, with an interesting, but lesser house, and Blenheim Palace is the grandest house of the three, with extrenely expansive gardens - even though the rain did limit my walking around them to only two hours!!! Tomorrow is Stowe, supposedly one of the greatest landscape gardens, then it will be beating my way back to Heathrow to catch the plane to Germany ...........

Driving has been rather a mission, as one rally needs a navigator to manage the multiplicity of roundabouts whcih seem to po0p up every few miles. Aucklanders crash their way around the Panmure roundabout, while English drivers manage similar roundabouts just to get to the supermarket. So far, other drivers are very courteous, and have only honked at me in anger a couple of times as I got confuse about which lane I needed for which exit. Getting into Heathrow should be fun, as it involves getting on and off the M25 ring-road rather quickly, then finding my way back to the rental depot - all in the fun of travelling....... (photos to follow)

Dreaming Spires, etc., etc.,

Jet lag has some compensations, so a 5.30 wake-up had me on the streets of Oxford by 7.00am. Oxonians are not early risers, so I had the place to myself for about a half hour, which made snapping easier without the ever-present hordes of tourists and crazy bike-riders. It was also icy cold, and an hour of ooh-aah over ancient stone colleges drove me into a cafe to thaw out. I have yet to see a glinpse of the endangered creature, the English summer, though I have mostly managed to dodge the major deluges that have hit the other parts of the country.

A day was spent following the trail around the Old Sheldonian Theatre, the Radcliffe Camera (which was roped of for filming - tee hee - irony ...) and the multitudinous beautiful old colleges around every corner of cobbled streets and blackened stone walls. I did the usual tour of Christ Church College, and the "Harry Potter" dining Hall, and beautiful cathedral. Poor old Wolsey didn't do to well with his buildings - he lost Hampton Court to Henry when he fell out of favour, and Christ Church was going to be Cardinal College in honour of him too, until he proved rather hopeless at organising divorce-on-demand for Henry. So Henry took that over too....

The Ashmolean kept me busy for the afternoon, admiring such treasures as a Stradivarius violin AND guitar, plus the usual range of Greek, Roman and Egyptian antiquities. And also, as soon as I can load the photo, I am sure I have found the inspiration for the gloriously tack Dodi-andDiana sculpture in Harrods - it is a Greek bronze with similar upstretched arms, and proably even less artfully draped clothing.

The evening was a little gem, as I attended evensong at Christ Church Cathedral - an hour of fabulous singing from the little and big boys of the cathedral choir. All quite beautiful - and free too!!!! After which I flopped into bed at Nic Smith's lovely little house right in the middle of Oxford - quite exhausting.... photos to follow when I am somewhere else other than the free hour at Oxford Library.

Old Stones and Stone Villages

On the road from Salisbury to Avebury to wander the old sarsen stone circle, the on to meander around the Costwold stone villages of Upper and Lower Slaughter, and the picture-book Stow-on-the-Wold.

Avebury is a very relaxed ruin site, with sheep munching around the ancient stones, and nimble feet needed to keep out of the extraordinaruly large sheep poos all around - they are not at all like the dainty little pellet-type I am used to, but large steaming piles!!! The stones are smaller than at Stonehenge, but the circle is much larger, involving clambering over stiles and through farm gates to complete the circle.

From there I headed for the Cotswold stone village area, and indeed they are a beautiful series of villages and towns of honey-coloured stone, ranging from tiny villages up one-way roads, to larger towns such as Stow and Burford, replete with a thousand tourist souvenir shops. The Slaughters look so perfect they seem like a movie set, and the people all look correspondingly affluent. I wonder where the postie manages to live?????

I am now ensconced in Nic Smith's little bijou house in the centre of Oxford, with spires all around, and bicycles everywhere. I am setting off today to immerse myself in the history - and my internet time has run out!!!

Stunning Stourhead

The gardens of Stourhead are like no others in England, or probably anywhere. Designed in the 1700s by Henry (The Magnificent) Hoare II, they are unique in that there is not a flowerbed to be seen - instead, they are designed to be a wonderful woodland walk, with entrancing vistas of lakes, lawns, follies, shrubs, bridges etc, opening out at different angles as you walk the two miles around the garden. Whereas yesterday I went dotty over thatched cottages, today it was snapping one beautiful chocolate box vista after another. The rain had come down again, but we managed to dodge the worst of it by breaking our walk midway in a pub for lunch, then wandering for a half hour of bright sunlight past a faux-Pantheon, a Palladian bridge, a huge grotto, all around a beautiful meandering path on the edge of the ornamental lake. More rain sent us scurrying for shelter, with umbrellas at the ready once more, but the misty version of the views had their own beauty. This garden is the beginning of the landscape architecture that was continued later by Capability Brown, as a break from the tradition of the formal French garden. It is maintained by 10 full-time gardeners and an "armada of volunteers" according to our very own volunteer guide who took us around.

The house at Stourhead has a great collection of Chippendal furniture, including a wonderful circular desk with individual locked drawers around the top for each tenant farmer's rent book and ledger. A Chippendale son lived at the house for some years making the furniture, so it is everywhere in the house, even including the Chippendale bench we sat on in the entrance hall to put little blue plastic bag covers over our shoes.

There is also a "Pope's Chest" which was apparently made for Pope Sixtus (??V or VI), which looks like an over-decorated baroque cathedral, covered in jewels and painting, with about 100 little drawers of various shapes and sizes making up the different parts of the "cathedral". Little treasures of painted miniatures were discovered in some stuck drawers, and there are still two little drawers that, tantalisingly, they cannot get unstuck.

The rain had not deterred other tourists either, it seems, as the car park was full as we left - obviously if we let the rain put us off, we would not get to see much of England!!!

Grand houses, thatched cottages, and ancient ruins

Wheww!!!! Much ground has been covered today as I roamed the country lanes around Salisbury. I was a caricature tourist for the first half hour, jumping out of the car to photograph the thatched cottages, until I realised there were an awful lot of them, and I did not actually have to photograph every one!!!! The country lanes have lived up to my expectations of hedgerows, and wandering streams and towering archways of green meeting overhead in a gorgeous green gloom. Getting lost a few times was even better, as I discovered little serendipitous treasures of fabulous villages straight off those chocolate boxes, with names to match. Teffont Magna, and Great Wishford were the two little gems of today, but there were several others of equal charm. (Photos to be attached shortly when my poor camera has recovered enough to upload some photos.)

Wilton House was the next stop, with the wonderful Inigo Jones Cube Room and Double Cube Room. I was the first person there for the day, so I was pounced on by eager guides who wished to give me a personalised tour to break their tedium. A huge Van Dyck larger than my house adorned one end of the Double Cube Room, and had been brought down from the Earl of Wilton's London town house on an open cart!! The grounds were stunning, with a beautiful Japanese-inspired water garden.

My umbrella began the first of its regular subsequent outings at this point, as the English summer weather demonstrated the reason for the lovvely greenery everywhere. Glastonbury is on this weekend nearby, so I imagine it wll be the usual mud-bath there as well.

After Wilton house I headed through an enchanting country lane route towards Stonehenge. Crossing the solid traffic jam headed to Glastonbury, I arrived at the Stonehenge parking lot in time for a parade of Druids leaving the site, draped in white robes and assorted other strange paraphernalia. The effect was somewhat dampened however, as they all gathered under a Warehouse-style gazebo in the parking lot, and all handed over their white Druid robes to be packed up into Warehouse-style plastic boxes for loading into the back ofa very non-Druid white panel van. They all looked like slightly tatty supermarket shoppers, rather than mystical priests and priestesses.Stonehenge itself was suitably amazing, and it is a very evocative place, high on the windswept plains with panoramic views of the surroungding countryside. The Summer Solstice the previous day had had the sun rising through the most northerly arch, and it would then start to travel back along the arches to the Winter Solstice.

Old Sarum was next on the list, so I again struck an eager-beaver guide who took two of us on an exhaustive and exhausting tour of the ramparts and rooms of the old Sarum fort. They have only excavated down as far as the Norman ruins - the Roman ruins of Sorviodunum are 17ft further down, and the Iron Age ones are deeper down again. The ourline of the cathedral which preceded the Salisbury Cathedral can also still be seen.

So at this stage I crawled back to Salisbury, to succeed in getting myself lost for hald an hour driving around the one-way streets, overshooting where I needed to go, and getting stuck in places I couldn't get out of. A kind lady took pity on me, and told me to follow her car to lead me to the entrance to Mary's street - there are lovely people everywhere when you need them!!

So I have done country lanes, thatched cottages and villages, stately homes, prehistoric ruins, and a Norman fort all in one day - hence the exhaustion...... Tomorrow is Stourhead.

First Stop Salisbury

The usual delight of a 25-hour trip landed me safely at Heathrow where I was extremely glad to tbe met by Mary Thoreau. She drove my little jet-lagged self in my rental car to Salisbury, safely negotiating all the M5/M3/Mgazillion motorways necessary. We passed Stonehenge coming in to Salisbury, but for some bizarre reason, it being the Summer Solstice, it was closed off to traffic by several million orange traffic cones. I wold have thought it would have been the exact day that all would-beDruids would have headed there to prance naked at dawn. There were assorted hipp-type characters hitching rides on the road-side, so perhaps their Druid aspirations had been foiled.

Salisbury is an attractive town whcih we wandered through on our way to lunch at the Debenham's Cafe, according to instructions from Kath and Dave who had discovered this little piece of ancient building tucked at the back of a department store, and converted into a cafe. The usual fare of paninis and latte was available, with thankfully no ancient food on display. After lunch was the first dose of tourist-mania, with a visit to Salisbury Cathedral which truly deserves its reputation as one of the most beautiful cathedrals. It is nearly 800 years old, and was built in the "amazingly short time of 38 years", which is of course amazing when one considers the prinitive tools and engineering equipment available for the constructon of the soaring vault. Apparently cathedrals under construction at the time regularly fell down, as they learned along the way how to make them stand up!!!

Crowning the cathedral is a fabulous spire, but it also nearly caused major disaster. The cathedral was not designed for a spire, but some queen commented that it really looked like it should have one, so 7000 tons of stone were duly plonked on top of the roof to make one. Unsurprisingly the beautiful soaring marble pillars inside developed an alarming bend in them over the next hundred years. Sir Christopher Wren was called in about the problem, for which he suggested a solution of a band of steel around the spire. This seems to have solved the problem for the last five hundred years or so, but our little group of tourists all still looked a bit edgy and shifted nervously out of the way, when we gazed up at the gentle curve of said pillars!! The cathedral is not one of the biggest around, but it has truly beautiful proportions and stunning sight lines down the nave. The Chapter house next door also holds one of the four copies of the Magna Carta, written in amazingly tiny script on vellum.

Today will eb Wilton House and off into the English countryside.

More later.

On the Road Again 20 June 2007

20 June 2007 will see me off again the the European Association for the Teaching of Academic Writing (EATAW) conference in Bochum, Germany from 30 June to 2 July.

Last Bite of the Big Apple

The last weekend in NY was spent in a flurry of last-minute sightseeing, plus some quintessentially NY/US experiences. On Saturday Steve took me for breakfast at a neighbourhood cafe then on a walking tour of the West Village and the trendy shopping streets of Greenwich Village. We wandered the fashionable streets of hugely expensive apartments, drooled over the foodie heaven of Dean and DeLuca and watched all the hip shoppers browsing the windows of latest fashions.

Sunday morning I took off for Harlem to the Abysssinian Baptist Church, Adam Clayton Powell’s base in the 60s and 70s, for a touch of gospel singing and Hallelujah-brother!!!!!! It felt quite brave to be venturing by subway into Harlem, but it all turned out very proper middle class. The church may have been a hotbed of political action 30 years ago, but being mentioned on the tourist websites plus the gentrification of sections of Harlem and the upward mobility of the black congregation has meant that its demographic has obviously changed. I was waiting for the 11am service, and the exiting 9am (yes – two-hour services!!!!) congregation had more fur coats, gold jewellery and designer handbags than I had seen on Fifth Avenue!!! During the 11am service, every person recognised for some reason seemed to be a professor of this, or a doctor of that, so it was hardly a walk on the wild side!!!! The choir did sing well, the minister had a wonderfully sonorous voice that made his reading of the anatomy of the heart (I kid you not!!!) sound like a Churchillian call to arms, and there were a few muted “Yeah, brother!!”s during the sermon, but the upmarket middle class congregation was certainly not about to do any waving of arms or rolling of eyes to accompany the singing!!!!!

My last bit of sightseeing was to walk out onto the Brooklyn Bridge for a final view of the NY skyline. When you have seen it so many times in movies and TV shows and everlasting Seinfelds, somehow New York seems familiar even when you first arrive – it is one of those cities that belong to the world.

The late afternoon was Superbowl Sunday, which required some buying of beer and potato chips to consume in front of the TV. There should also have been pizza to complete the correct cultural diet, but I bent the rules a bit and cooked chicken instead. Steve and I watched the game, and consumed the aforementioned beer etc., so I did my bit to fit in with the natives. Poor Anna was buried in her room as she had been for days, studying for the New York Bar exam, so she only surfaced occasionally for food and water.

Last night in town – out to JFK tomorrow, and heading home – will try to think of something hugely insightful about my travels to sign off with may last blog entry.

Cruising Fifth Avenue

No trip to NY would be complete without hitting the shops, so after a zoom through Macy’s, dodging the predatory cosmetics saleswomen, I started down Fifth Avenue with a mix of window-shopping and a few sorties into Bloomingdales and Saks and more dodging of extremely predatory cosmetics saleswomen. What is it – do I really look like I need their help that badly that they just about tackle me as I dodge past??? I suppose they must all be on commission, so you cannot walk down an aisle “Just looking, thanks” without being accosted and cajoled in a most off-putting fashion. I might actually have bought something if they had left me alone. However, more looking, then fainting at the prices on the tags achieved no purchases, so I wandered off the Avenue into St Patrick’s Cathedral during the crowded lunch-time Mass. (Rather a valuable bit of real estate, I imagine...). It is a beautiful cathedral, and seems quite a “lived-in” church with workers popping in, not like just a tourist attraction as some cathedrals can seem.

Further on down the Avenue is the wonderful New York Public Library whose Reading Room I had been told was a must-see, so that was my next stop. The Reading Room was indeed beautiful, with amazing ceilings, but the star of my visit was the amazing exhibition of mediaeval illuminated manuscripts. There were dozens of these, some religious books, some history books, map books and atlases, and all hand-decorated in exquisite colour and detail – and this is just a part of the library’s treasure trove, only on display for a few months. I snuck some photos despite the camera ban, as I just could not resist. Another of those surprising treats........

That night was dinner at Lo Scalco in Tribeca with an old friend from Auckland, Ross Collard. Two star Michelin restaurants are indeed a special treat for the country-cousin-come-to-town!!!!!

MOMA and Pooh

Setting off for the Guggenheim, Steve and I ended up at MOMA – due to the slight practicality that the Guggenheim is closed on Thursdays, but I think this serendipitous change was actually for the best, as MOMA’s collection is probably more comprehensive than the Guggenheim’s. So we set out to wander through the amazing displays of rooms full of Matisse (much prefer his sculpture to his paintings), or three different styles of Picasso all painted in the same year, or the concept of the chair executed in an incredible range of possibilities. The space of MOMA itself is also a work of art, with the enormous open atrium, and stairwells and galleries offering interesting angles and views of artworks. “Modern art” was probably not my favourite style, but MOMA presents it in interesting ways, plus the obscure squares of brown/black paint (why is THAT art?) are well compensated for by pieces of great beauty, even if I don’t understand them all. And strangely, there was almost the identical beige-brown splatter Pollock that I thought I had seen at the Met – oh well, I suppose he had to pay for the groceries too..... The design section of light fixtures and chairs etc was also surprisingly beautiful, and the outdoor sculpture courtyard had wonderful pieces of Rodin and Picasso and others that little philistine me did not recognise.

Exiting MOMA, across the street was a branch of the NY Public Library, outide which was the irresistible invitation to “Come upstairs and meet the real Winnie the Pooh.” Who could not follow this summons? So up we went, and there in a cabinet were the real original toys of Christopher Robin that inspired the books – Pooh is a Harrod’s bear given as a present to Christopher Robin when he was two years old, and all the other toys look much loved as well. So for the benefit of Julia (and, I confess, myself), we signed the publicity waiver and were allowed to photograph them through the glass!!! Quite an unexpected little highlight.

That evening we went to a stunning Broadway show called The Producers - now turned into a movie - which was extremely funny, and had something in it to offend everyone - as the show's centrepiece "Springtime with Hitler" might suggest. Imagine singing, dancing Hitler and Nazi chorus lines, with showgirls adorned with pretzels and sausages, old ladies demanding bizarre sexual favours, and you start to get the idea.

Lower Manhattan

Everyone has to do it, so the (free!!!) Staten Island Ferry trip past the Statue of Liberty was next on the list, plus sailing past our eponymous Ellis Island. The view from the ferry again brings the stark 9/11 reminder with the gap in the skyline so close to the ferry’s route, that travellers that morning must have been horrifyingly close to the unfolding scenes.

Sections of the Financial District and the adjacent City Hall buildings are now a barricaded enclave, with (rather artistic...) solid brass street barriers protecting the entrance to Wall Street, black-clad, assault rifle-toting guards on the municipal buildings, and the whole section around City Hall check-pointed and blocked off to traffic apart from buses and official vehicles. But business carries on and the nearby Century 21 outlet store, directly across from Ground Zero, is thronged with office workers looking for bargains of designer leather jackets reduced from $2000 to only $1200 alongside $5 T-shirts. (Note: I©NY T-shirts are 8 for $10 in Chinatown, and $25 each in some tourist shops!!!!!). The skyscrapers are amazing, and even more so when one I was craning at is apparently only 1/3 the height of the now-vanished Twin Towers. Strange how something that is now absent still has such an amazingly strong presence.........

Meandering Through the Met

The Metropolitan Museum was my first bite of NY’s cultural banquet – OK – no more florid metaphors!!!!! The meandering bit refers to the vast number of inter-connecting rooms at the Met which mean that despite its vast size, there is more of a feeling of wandering through a rather eccentric house made up of rooms from all sections of the globe and times in history. There are the art galleries with the usual stunning array of paintings, the Egyptian and Grecian collections, the entire reconstructed rooms from European castles and so much more that a one-day visit can only be a very tiny bite.

I also experienced a common phenomenon – that the special thing I had gone to see what not what impressed me the most, but rather some unexpected gem. The large splattery beige, black and brown Pollock was my “must see” painting, but what grabbed me was the Georgia O’Keeffe collection. I returned at the end of my wanderings to sit in front of the Black Iris painting to marvel at its wondrously sensuous effects. The other enchanting item was a “no photos” room entirely made of exquisite wood inlay. It was the study of an Italian nobleman, and every inch of the walls and floors is covered in intricate wood inlay work, often creating a trompe l’oeil effect such as a view through an open window, or cupboards and doors. The impression of such a museum is – how many years would it take me to see it properly?? I limited myself to one floor, and still only touched a fraction. Oh well, you are always supposed to leave something to go back for........

First Bite of the Apple

Being a goofy tourist isn’t actually that dumb after all. After recovering on Sunday from my travel travails, and going out to dinner with Steve and Anna at a rather lovely NY restaurant (with an NZ connection through Peter Gordon) I set out on Monday on the double-decker red tourist bus that circles Manhattan, and I most heartily recommend it. Despite looking the aforementioned goofy sitting up on top and gawping at the sights, it is actually a brilliant way to get one’s bearings and gain a brief overview of where what is and which places one wants to return to. The “uptown loop” is particularly good as it covers a route that you could never manage by yourself, weaving through the Upper West Side, circling the wonderful vistas of Central Park, into Harlem, and down the Upper East Side, with all the snippets of history and goss trivia thrown in. The Harlem history was particularly fascinating and some of its upmarket housing areas quite surprising, although we did briefly skirt the slum areas, and of course our bus did not venture into the badlands. The “downtown loop” connected with this and led us through the West and East Village, Chinatown, the Financial district and of course the still-haunting gap in the skyline of Ground Zero. Despite the vibrations of reconstruction, the crowds gathered around the perimeter still gaze in a respectful quiet at the minute-by-minute time-line attached along the wire barricade, illustrated with the still-shocking photos of that morning’s destruction of 9/11.

So thus oriented, and with my weekly subway pass and NY map, I was ready to set forth exploring.

Milano, the Heavenly Duomo, and the Airport from Hell

Defintely a mixture of heaven and hell!! Out of the mountains, and through to Milano by train, in the middle of the snowstorm that we had been desperately wanting in the mountains for the last two weeks!!&^%$#@!!*&!! Mountains in the snow may be fabulous, but big cities turn into dodgem tracks with cars and pedestrians slithering in all directions. However, the Duomo dusted by snow is actually rather magical, and the inside is as breath-taking as I had been told - also the Milanese in snow boots and cold red noses are rather less daunting. The Galleries shopping area opposite the Duomo was full of fabulous shops and clothes which no doubt at other times would have been adorning the beautiful people.

The next day getting to the airport turned into a traveller’s nightmare. The snow by now was half a metre deep on the (uncleared) sidewalks, and the taxis had all either slithered into the snowbanks or my hotel had not bribed the right taxi companies, but for whatever reason, not a taxi was to be had to get me from my hotel the six blocks to the airport bus stop. So when the going gets tough, the tough get going – down the middle of the street ( the only clear route) lugging my wheelie suitcase and lurching sideways out of the path of any oncoming traffic as the lights changed!!! 20 minutes later I staggered onto the bus, and the 40 minute trip to the airport became nearly a two hour crawl past all sorts of motorway mayhem.

Needless to say the airport was closed when I got there, and a reality TV script ensued of desperate queues at check-in counters, lines snaking in all directions, and would you believe it NO E-MAIL CONNECTION!!!!! I threw a minor hissy fit at the “Internet connection” office people who told me that they used to have one, but it broke!!!!! A kind man in a nearby queue took pity on the crazy lady, and came to my rescue with his Blackberry to e-mail Steve in NY to say I would be delayed. He even thoughtfully asked me for a secret code that Steve would know could only be me, hence a special little note added that “Oscar would love the snow”....

A delightful night followed when I discovered the useful piece of information that it is more marginally more comfortable to sleep on the carpet in front of the check-in counter than on an airport chair – in case you ever need to know to stake your claim. The next day the planes did get moving and after yet another McDonald’s airport meal in Frankfurt – my third in 24 hours- I made it to NY to meet up with Steve and Anna. We do take international travel of zooming around the globe at the flick of our credit card hugely for granted, so perhaps a little stint on the floor of Milan airport is a not-so-bad reality check.

Mountains as far as the eye can see

The Dolomites were as amazing as ever, with snow stretching in endless slopes, and my skiing varying from pretty good to ....... well..... The villages are all incredibly Heidi/Sound of Music, and there is even an Edelweiss Valley.... But much good wine was drunk, good food was eaten, and good conversation was enjoyed - the photos give a teeny taste.

Lake Garda, Cat Pee, The Dolomites and Ice Cream Snow

My last day in Vigevano was planned to be a trip to Milan, but a rail workers' strike changed our plans to a much better option as it turned out. Katy drove us to Lake Garda and the winter light on the lake with all the beautiful old hotels lining the shore was just magical. We took a boat to Isola dei Pescatori (Island of the Fishermen) which is one of the beautiful Borromeo islands in the lake. It is still the home of many traditional lake fishermen, their dozens of cats, and a pervading aroma of cat pee due to the lack of rain to wash it all away!!!! Despite this it is a beautiful place which made me wish I could paint to capture all the changing shades of light and colour on the water, the mountains and the lovely old buidings.

The next day it was off by train and bus to the Dolomites, past the towering cliffs between Verona and Trento, with teeny hillside towns and monasteries watching over the valley as the train slid through. The bus trip from Trento to Campitello is more ooh-aah territory as we passed through town after town straight out of the Tyrolean picturebooks, as this is regarded as Sud Tyrol rather than Italy by many inhabitants for whom Austrian German is the first language rather than Italian.

I have now spent a week zooming all over hundreds (quite literally) of kilometres of snowy slopes covered in ice cream snow. Alas the ice cream is becoming a bit too frozen as we need more fresh snow so I am doing my skiing early in the day while the grooming and man-made snow keeps things nice, then I go sightseeing in the afternoons. We hope to go to Bolzano on Tuesday to see the Ice Man, then it is off to Milano for a brief morning's sightseeing before heading to NY to see Steve and Anna.

Ciao and love to all.

Vigevano

Katy Hannan collected me from Milano Linate airport and has brought me to stay with her in the lovely historic town of Vigevano which is every woman's dream as the shoe capital of Italy. I have done my bit for the local economy by acquiring the obligatory minimum of two pairs of shoes from the local market. Katy's apartment is a very stylish place in a remodelled section of the walls of the ancient fort - my bed is under some very ancient looking beams, so, please, no jokes about old ruins in the same room. The inner part of the town is all cobbled streets and tantalising glimpses of courtyards through iron grille gates, plus a lovely piazza for leisurely strolling.

Tomorrow we go to Milano for a day of sightseeing, so I hope I do not feel too much like the country-cousin-came-to-town alongside the elegant Milanese women. I am pleased to hear that the scaffolding is off the front of the cathedral, so I shall have an unobstructed view of the clean and shiny version of the building's facade.

On Friday I shall be off to Campitello, where the Internet cafe is "out of action for the winter"!!!!!!!!! so my next update may be a while.

Last Days of London

The last weekend in London has been rather a blur of activity - meeting up with Mary Thoreau, the British Museum, the Lion King, and sung Latin High Mass a Westminster Cathedral - whew!!!!!

Mary (my co-author for the two books is running a language school in Spain and was in London for a conference. We met up for gossip and coffee before I hit the British Museum with K&D. We did the "Lonely Planet five must-see sights" which of course only scratches the surface, but gave us a great taster, as we oooohed at the Elgin Marbles, aaahed at the mummy collection, whizzed by the Rosetta Stone, zoomed down to the Benin Bronzes in the basement, and were suitably impressed by the splendid dome of the Reading Room.

The Lion King was a stuning performance with top-calibre performances, music, costumes and enchanting animals. The Hyenas were probably my favourite, but a surprising beautiful acrobatic ballet segment was a close second. Thank you Father Christmas and K&D for the ticket.

A change of pace for the morning saw us absorbing the beautiful choral music at Westminster Cathedral, and dredging up the forgotten memories of singing the Pater Noster along with the little postcard choir boys.

Tomorrow is dealing with the Tube strike to make my way to Gatwick and on to Milano...... Ciao .........

The O'Sullivans of Killarney

It is a miracle that Auntie Annie O'Sullivan ever made the connection with our long-lost O'Sullivan relations in Killarney as the name is everywhere in Kerry. In the space of 100 metres in the main street of Kilarney there is O'Sullivan's Bike Sales & Service, O'Sullivan the accountant, O'Sullivan Photograpy, O'Sullivan's Pharmacy, and O'Sullivan's Bike & Outdoor Shop, then at Beaufort Bridge I turned down the road to the old O'Sullivan farm, beside O'Sullivan's Foodstore................

So I found my old Irish cousin, Danny O'Sullivan who at 90 years old is still milking his 18 cows twice daily in his modern cowshed, except when they are dried off in Dec/Jan for calving - scarily he is still driving too. He is full of the Irish blarney, and despite my only understanding 1/3 of what he said because of the thick Irish brogue, he regaled me non-stop for three hours with tales of family folk-lore. His mother was a great cook apparently, and meals for 15 were no problem - often including many Republicans on the run......... As a small boy he was drilled in not telling anything to anybody, especially the Black and Tans, even an especially Irish saying, "Mister, there's not even a house where I live.." We also had a very pious cousin called James who used to come to Danny (a lifelong teetotaller) early in the evening before a visit to the pub so "I can say my Rosary now in case I'm too drunk to say it when I get home.." On the day of Danny's Confirmation he walked two miles early in the morning there and back to do his farm work, put on his best suit then walked four miles there and back for his confirmation, came home, took off the best suit and helped with the milking!! Obviously a recipe for a long healthy life...

The new house that Danny built in the 1950s stands beside the stone house that O'Sullivans lived in probably for hundreds of years - Republicans on the run and all - it is now used as a farm outbuilding and the old kitchen fireplace is used for an activity that would give Kevin the horrors. He feeds his cows silage in winter, so every few days there is a large plastic and netting cover to dispose of. Danny gave me the prime fireside seat to warm myself as he prepared his ritual. A sheet of newspaper in the fireplace was splashed with diesel from the tractor with a brush and an old paint tin - 90-year-old Danny then lit this, and when it didn't burn so well, more diesel was splashed all around. He was very pleased with himself that he was drying me off after our ramble through the muddy farmyard, while I was trying to edge myself discreetly away from the roaring flames!!!!!

However despite these activities he is a very spry fellow and wonderfully full of stories. The surrunding Kerry countryside is very beautiful and quite like New Zealand in many ways. Echoes of the past were noted in the sign outside the cathedral in the evening where there was a benefit concert for "Homeless Kerry Emigrants in England" - despite the Celtic Tiger there must still be some who fall through the cracks.

So a few Irish beers, and a quick and too-brief drive through the stunning countryside, and onto Ryanair back to London.