High tech challenges!

Funny thing, the keys on a German computer  keyboard are very different from the keys on a Canadian keyboard. they don't look different, but they are, not the obvious keys, but the ones that count for internet geekiness.

For example, the '@' symbol is not above the '2' but on the other side of the keyboard above an A with two wierd dots above it. Similarly. the 'Z' and the 'Y' are exchanged. Typing is very challenging. For example, if I was to type "yes, @ the zoo" using our keyboard pattern on this keyboard, you would get @zes " the Yoo@. 

This might seem like nonsense, but remember, when you type in a password, you normally can't see what you type (they come up as stars). When the keys are different, none of your passwords work. Because you can't see your errors, you can't log in to those important things you need to do. Of course you don't realize that the keys are different, so you just do it again. After a couple cracks at the password the system thinks you are some kind of digital terrorist and resets and you are screwed. Then you have to go through the whole name your dog, name your first born, and what is your wife's birthday. WHO GETS THAT RIGHT FIRST CRACK?

Wierd!

A Day in Paris

When arrived in north-east Paris at the Gare St. Lazare, we were a bit stressed because we had no place to stay and it was 1915. We threw on our packs and trudged off looking for an affordable hotel. The first one we found was €130 a night, which we thought a bit steep. The next place we looked in was €450 a night. The first place was looking pretty good. The third place was €104; we took it.

Our small room was complete with a TV, phone, nice big bathroom, two chairs, a desk and the best part, unlimited free wifi! It only had a shower (no bath) which probably accounted for the price break. We were fixed up. It was much better than the place in Portsmouth, for about the same price. We were in the 8e arrondissment, near the St. Lazare train station, not exactly tourism central. There was a huge grocery store across the street and a drug store. It was a pretty normal downtown community. There were no attractions near the hotel. The one thing there was was lots of sidewalk cafés.

Finding something to eat looked like a no brainer given the huge number of cafés in the area. We were like junkies in a drug store;  kids in a candy shop. After walking for two hours (with a short break for a couple glasses of wine) we finally agreed on a place to eat. I think it was the first one we had passed two hours ago! We ordered a plate of jambon fermier and two salad Parisiennes followed by soupe à l'oignon gratiné each. It was very good.

Friday morning was an early wakey - wakey because we had several centuries of art to sift through during the next few hours. We headed off to the Louvre, walking along the Siene, past the square where the aristocracy were beheaded. We could see the Eiffel Tower off in the distance. Nice last view if they pointed the guillotine the right direction.

Eiffel Tower, hmmm?

Tired?

Phooning around at the Louvre

The Louvre was a disaster. I think every tourist from Vancouver to Tokyo had decided to visit on the same day as us. We lined up/queued (good english word) for quite a while to get in past security, then queued (good scrabble word) for another while to get tickets into the exhibits. Then we queued for a bite to eat, and queued for a piss, and queued to look at Rembrandt's paintings.  There were a brazilian people in the Egyptian exhibit, so we queued to get out of there. The best place we found, with the fewest people, was in the apartments of Napoleon III. We had a good walk around there before saying goodbye to the Louvre and queueing to get out.

The start of the queues.

 Tired?

 Josephine's vanity.

 Napoleon III

 Nappy's dining room.

Next we did another leg of the urban version of the Bataan death march across Paris towards the Eiffel Tower. Every once in a while we could see it between the buildings, and I would get a lead mark. My shortcuts were anything but.  Who knew that Parisian streets can sometime just end. The Tower was another riot of tourists with an unbelievable number of hucksters selling everything from purple Eiffel Tower key chains to stuffed dancing cows. There were lots of guys, all along the walk and bridge near the Tower, playing that game with the three match boxes and one hidden ball. At one point we heard a police siren approaching and, quick as a flash, all the hucksters and their stuff disappeared. It was amazing.  Once the threat had passed, they were out in full force as if nothing had happened. Kind of like sidewalk gophers!

 Croatian (I think) hucksters.

The quick pack up when the cops go by.

We limped back to our hotel eager to go searching for another great French meal. Thinking that eating late was the de rigour thing in Paris, we loitered until about 2030 and headed out in search of a garlic fix only to discover that most of the smaller interesting restaurants had finished serving dinner. Bummer! We settled for some pork paté and chicken and chips, accompanied by a half litre of the best chardonnay we've ever had (the vin du moment). Nancy ordered a creme caramel for the wrap up. Instead of a small single serving in a fancy dish, they brought her a glass bread pan sized dish of it half full. She wanted to eat it all, but I felt Canada's reputation as being more conservative eaters than Americans was at stake.

Paris is behind us now. We are now on the Thalys rocketing our way from Paris to Cologne at 300 kilometers per hour. It is a very comfortable ride. I love it when we are parallel to a motorway/autobahn and the cars look like they are going backwards.

Stay tuned for our next installment.

La Voyage de Tavistock, Transmanche, a Paris.

We had a wonderful visit to the Upper Barn at Parswell Farm, Tavistock, Devon. How's that for a classic address? The Devon clotted cream flowed freely. I even had clotted cream ice cream with clotted cream on top. 

 A clotted cream fiend!

The Upper Barn is a very old barn that our friends Sarah and Martin bought a few years ago and renovated. Renovated just doesn't seem to be a big enough word. Don't think barn in Canadian terms (bright red, hemlock board siding, funny shaped roof), think of the kind of barn that some ancient English farmer built a couple hundred years ago to keep livestock in; thick stone walls with huge oak lintels over the doors and windows holding up the wall above it. Think of several hundred years of buildup of the stuff that falls on barn floors (yeah, hay). Think of how the barn would look after not being used for 40 or 50 years. Now you have an idea of the starting point for Martin and Sarah. Here are some snaps of the end result. It is fantastic.

Welcome to Upper Barn, Parswell Farm.

That is the "barn" behind Nancy with " Pendlehenge over her right shoulder on the left edge of the pic.

Sarah and me in front of the "barn."

 The kitchen with the coveted Aga stove.

 The sitting room.

 The whole kitchen.

The next phase of our Eurodash was supposed to be a simple jink over to Europe, either flying, or by train, to go and visit the Spraggs. Our simple jink turned out to be much more difficult than we had planned when the volcano in Iceland started erupting and weather forecasters in the UK forecast ash clouds threatening flight safety. That, and the three day weekend, caused a bit of a rush on the exit points. The threat of cancelled flights caused a run on the trains and ferries, and they all got booked up early leaving us naive Canuck backpackers wondering how we were going to get over to Europe. After some time searching on the internet we found a daytime crossing from Portsmouth to Caen. Fortunately Martin was driving to Portsmouth the next day. That drive saved us from taking a train back up to London and then down to Portsmouth again (London is the centre of the civilized world and all transportation links). Martin dropped us off at a cheap flea bag hotel (the kind we prefer) across the street from the ferry terminal. The Traveller’s Lodge Portsmouth is fairly spartan. We got a bed, TV, bathroom, a toilet that only flushed occasionally, and one towel for $112. No alarm clock or phone, or anything else. Still, we got a great night's sleep. That is really all you need.

Our ferry, run by Brittany Lines, left at 0815 in the morning. We boarded at 0730, found our cabin (the cheapest they offered) and were surprised at how nice it was. Of course anything might look nice after the Traveller's Lodge. Our cabin had two bunks, a desk and an ensuite head with a shower. Sure beat BC Ferries. We ate breakie, napped, had a shower, ate some more, napped all the way to Caen. The winds were howling (force 7 according to the UK met men) and there were lots of green folks around with barf bags, but we successfully negotiated la manche (the channel) staying nice and pink all the way. 

 My ferry bunk, shades of a past life.

After some busing around Caen we are now on a very fast train to Paris. I hope we can find a place to sleep that doesn't break the bank.

Just saw a guy get arrested because he didn't have a ticket! Three cops (with guns) hustled the perp out of the train car. Interesting. Glad we got it right!

The Not-very-obvious Relationship between Packaging and Terrorism.

One thing we have noticed here is how much more packaging is used in the grocery stores here as opposed to Canada. 

We have been enjoying many delicious English delicacies (is that a contradiction in terms?) while here – Stilton cheese, pork pies, sausage rolls, English cucumbers, tomatoes, chocolate, and Eccles cakes (Nancy's fave) – taken with either tea (which Nancy has finally learned how to make properly) or English cider and ale. Because eating in restaurants will break us in no time, we have been buying our food in grocery stores, and we have been eating it al fresco (on park benches), the backpacker thing, to save money. This is a budget tour!

Shopping in the grocery stores and little snack shops is a different experience for sure. There seems to be an excess of packaging on everything, from fruit, meat and vegetables to pre-cooked food. There are large sections of the store that have pre-cooked food from soups to curry and even cooked white rice. This probably doesn't sound any different to Canada, but it is. The rice, for example comes as a couple scoops of rice loosely put in a 3x5 inch hard plastic stack-able container (the same kind of stuff they use to make water bottles). Everything is like that. Even the sushi pieces come in individual packages (as if anyone ever buys one). The packaged food containers are not that Styrofoam plate and plastic wrap that you see a lot of in Canada but the same kind of packaging you might get a crush-able pie or fancy cake in. 

This might seem like a silly thing to observe in such a worldly blog as this, but here is the issue; there are also no public garbage cans or trash receptacles, because that is where terrorists put bombs. The terror linkage! Wherever we go we notice that there is no place to put our garbage (rubbish). Couple that fact with the fact that everything we buy to eat is packaged in that hard plastic leaves us in a bit of a conundrum. It's not like you can roll the package up and stuff it in your pocket; with a couple of coffee cups, a sandwich package and an Eccles cake package in your pocket, one starts to look like an officer cadet at basic training. I think that is why all the travel clothes you can now buy have pockets like combat pants and jackets; so you can take your garbage with you. Those aren't cargo pants, they're garbage pants!

Bristol (Brizzle)

Our narrowboat adventure was a great success. We covered about 75 kilometers of the Thames river, went through about 20 locks, and didn't crash or sink. Narrowboating is a really interesting and relaxing way to see the English countryside. It is easy to do. Give it a try.

After returning the Silver Swift to Anglo Welsh boats in Eynsham, we walked the 10 minutes up to the bus stop and caught a double decker back into Oxford. The bus had free wireless onboard! Brilliant! The bus got us to Oxford in about 20 minutes. We had another 20 minute wait for our train to Bristol. The number of bicycles at the train station and around Oxford was amazing.

 Royal Mail delivery bike.

 Bikes at the train station.

 Bikes downtown Oxford.

The train to Bristol (an hour and a half) was packed with people on their way to Bath for the day or the weekend. We had difficulty finding two seats together. The train was almost empty after Bath.

The crowded train to Bristol.

Fliss and Jon, our hosts in Bristol, took us all around the area. Bristol is the home of some very famous folks including the notorious street artist Banksy and the famous engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the builder/designer of the first propeller-driven ocean-going iron ship and many other engineering feats.

 I.K. Brunel and me.

 The Clifton suspension bridge by Brunel.

Bristol is also the “spiritual home” of apple cider. Here apple cider is taken very seriously. There are sweet ciders and not sweet ciders ranging in colour from pale yellow to bright orange (Cheddar Valley cider) and there are refined ciders and rough ciders. The strength varies from the strength of light beer to that of wine. Regretfully, we made an effort to try as many different kinds as we could. In local Bristol speak, we got “appled up.” They were all delicious, but I suffered the inevitable the next day. Strangely, the toilets in The Apple, the floating bar where we sampled the variety of ciders, was unisex. That is, after you went through the door into the heads, there were both men and women scrambling to get into the stalls and primping in the mirrors over the sink. The only indicator of the gender of the person in the stall next to you was the way their feet were pointing when they whizzed. It seemed to be de rigeur for the men to piss as loudly as possible, all the while farting and burping with great pride. An interesting display of manhood, where for once I could compete on even ground.

 Various ciders. Blame Nancy for the decapitation Jon.

We also had the best Ruby (Ruby Murray – curry, Cockney rhyming slang) ever at the local curry house called the Chili Inn. It was a “Bring Your Own” booze place which compounded the cider tasting excesses of the afternoon.

The next day we were taken to Bath by Fliss and Jon and spent the day walking around the historic city that dates to Roman times. It was full of tourists and everything was a little on the expensive side. £12 each just to look at the Baths. I saved the money and peered over the wall. Nancy bought a post card to look at the baths.

Bath.

The weather has been interesting both days. The wind was howling bringing a couple showers and some bright sunny periods. It changes even faster here than in Victoria.

Put Bristol and Bath on your list of places to see.

???

So we are motoring up the Thames today, just outside of Oxford and these two young women in a sleek looking pedal boat wave us down and ask us, "Is this the Thames?" I laughed. Remember, the Thames by Oxford is only about 50 feet wide. I think it is the only real river around. I wanted to ask where they beamed in from but...

On being narrow minded.

One of the nice things about narrowboating is that when the weather isn't really holiday type weather, boating is still comfortable and fun. Our boat is about 50 feet long and 6'8” wide. It has a full galley (stove, oven, broiler, fridge, lots of cupboards and even a bread box on the counter), a double bed, a full bathroom (with a shower and small bathtub), and a small sitting area with a chair and table and two easy chairs (that are much too big for the boat) as well as a small flat screen TV. I am surprised at the huge number of high def digital channels we get with just an antenna.

The galley.

The saloon.

The rack.

It's a good thing we have all these amenities because the weather for the past couple days has been rather gray and cool. That is really not a problem though, because our boat has central heating with hot water radiators throughout the boat.

Because the Thames was once the main form of transportation for goods in this area of England, all the towns are built right along the banks. It facilitates noodling along from town to town, or pub to pub complete with free mooring and very short walks to everything. The pubs are clearly marked on the chart! It can be a very lazy holiday. 

Self explanatory!

The exception is actually passing through the locks. With a total crew of two (including the skipper), the locks are an all hands on deck evolution. As we approach the lock we try and determine if our end is open or not. If it is it is simply a matter of cruising right in and tying up. If not then we must moor at the waiting point until whoever is in the lock is through. Once they clear the lock we motor in, tie up and follow the directions of the lock keeper. One of the advantages of cruising on the Thames vice some of the smaller canals is that most of the locks, most of the time, are manned by lock keepers and the lock work is done for you. On Sundays or after hours, or on the smaller waterways, the locks are self serve. Doing it yourself is not difficult, just time consuming and requires getting on and off the boat several times for each step. Realistically, three people are needed; two to handle the boat and lines, and one to do the sluices on the lock.

The eight behind us in the lock.

A crowded lock!

The river is a very busy place. There are narrowboats, modern fibreglass cruisers, rowing shells and every other form of water traffic at every bend in the river. Locking through to Abingdon yesterday, there were two narrow boats, a speed boat and an eight man rowing shell in the lock with us. There was a similar batch waiting to go in the other direction. There are permanent liveaboards in all sorts of craft all along the river. There is fresh water and a sewage pump out at almost every lock (every couple miles) and sometimes in between. It is great to see so many people using the river and so many facilities available to boaters. Rule Britannia!

Tied to tent pegs!

Getting out of London was more of an adventure that we had planned. The non-adventure plan was to take the tube to Paddington station, and then the train to Oxford where we would pick up our narrowboat. I figured about 2 hours. We had to pick up the boat between 2 and 4. If we left London by 11, we would have lots of time, right?

We got on the tube in Brixton at about 10:45 and changed at Victoria for Paddington. We didn't realize that Saturday is tube maintenance day. Things were not as we had planned. We got stuck at Earl's Court because all the lines north from there were down for maintenance. The crowds were unbelievable. We changed trains and backtracked to Piccadilly, then changed again to the Bakerloo line to get to Paddington. 3 train changes and 2 hours later we made it to Paddington.

Everything was easy once we got to the Rail station. Two tickets to Oxford were £42 (second class – off peak hours). We arrived in Oxford an hour later. The next phase was to get to the narrowboat hire company which was 4 miles out of town. I checked with a cab and he wanted £30. We walked over to the bus stop and the fare was £2, but the driver said we would have to walk a bit. No problems! Anything to save a buck! We “alighted” at Eynsham and walked along the road to the boat hire place. It was very dangerous. There was no sidewalk or path and the cars, trucks and buses were screaming by. Scarey! We arrived at the hire place just after 2 o'clock. I love it when a plan comes together.

Our boat, the Silver Swift, is great. Swift it is not, but booting around the Thames at 4 knots is fast enough. A young fellow came with us to the first lock to show us how to do it, and then we were on our own. This is a very comfortable way to see the English countryside. We headed straight back to Oxford (2 hours and 4 locks away) to pick up groceries and store barge. 

 

Interestingly, you can tie the boats up almost anywhere. There are some signs that prohibit mooring, and there are some areas that are not suitable, but most places are accessible. You just pull the barge over to a flat spot on the bank, pound in a couple big tent pegs, tie yourself to them and there you are.

We are now settled in for a steak dinner and a bottle of good red wine, watching the teams of Oxford U rowers go by, safely tied to tent pegs.