Taking the Plunge

Last night I met some people in a pub. Nothing particularly unusual about that, you might think. But these were fellow members of the online travel community Virtual Tourist. 

Virtual Tourist has been around since about 1999 (long before Facebook or Trip Advisor), and so, like the London Underground, its infrastructure is a bit creaky compared with more recent sites, but I like it because it is an excellent source of information, with helpful members and well moderated forums.

I have been a member for 11 years now, contributing reviews and answering forum questions, but this was the first time that I had actually attended a 'meet'. It felt slightly odd introducing myself by my online username, but it was a very relaxed and friendly occasion.  Now I have dipped my toe in the water, I will definitely attend another meet further afield.

Free Entry

Unusually, this  year we have spent our main holiday in the UK, driving down to Devon to be precise. Whilst the weather may not have been perfect every day, one bonus was that it gave us an opportunity to make good use of our various memberships.

Powderham Castle 

We have membership cards for the National Trust, EnglishHeritage, the Historic Houses Association Friends scheme, the Royal Horticultural Society, the British Museum Friends scheme, the Royal Shakespeare Company and a National Art Pass.  Sometimes places we visit are in more than one scheme so there is a shuffling of cards at the entrance as we try to work out which card gives us the best deal. 

In a 9 day holiday in Devon we visited seven historic houses, two ruined castles, two museums (one of them twice), two zoos, a model village and some caves. Of these, we had free entry to the all the houses, the castles and the museums. Our National Trust (NT), English Heritage (EH), Historic Houses Association (HHA) and Art Pass  (AP) cards all came into their own.

Garden At Overbeck's

Great Chalfield Manor

Historic Houses

Great Chalfield Manor (NT) 

Greenway (NT)

Coleton Fishacre (NT)

Overbeck’s (NT)

A La Ronde (NT)

Powderham Castle (HHA)

Cadhay (HHA)

Castles

Berry Pomeroy Castle (EH)

Totnes Castle (EH)

Museums

Torquay Museum (AP)

Torre Abbey (AP)

Torre Abbey

Totnes Castle

A La Ronde

Greenway

Sci-Fi Exhibition, Torquay Museum

Coleton Fishacre

This is a win-win situation. The organisations benefit from our membership subscription and feel good about helping a good cause, we get free entry to lots of interesting places, and we can spend the money we save on admission in the tea room and shop.

A more detailed account of the trip can be found on the TravelSIG blog here.

The Mysterious Garden

 “Someone gave us a snake last week, but a caiman ate it,” Felix shrugged. He did not seem unduly concerned about the fate of the unfortunate reptile. His interest was in conserving flora, not fauna. The lake in the centre of the Jardin Botánico del Orinoco might contain fish and caimans, but the plants were the main thing.

Jardin Botanico

I had not intended to visit the gardens. I was in Ciudad Bolivar for its historical connections, before spending some time at a jungle camp on the Orinoco delta. It was purely by accident that I had seen a sign as we had driven in from the airport the previous day.  I always make a point of visiting  parks and gardens in any city I visit, so I checked my guidebook for information.  There wasn’t any.  The Jardin Botánico was marked on the city map, but the only mention of it in the text was in the directions to a restaurant. This piqued my interest. I obviously needed to find out whether the garden actually existed. At least if it was no longer open, I would have somewhere to eat.

More urgently than that, I needed to find my hotel.  The taxi driver first stopped outside a building that looked very closed, and crucially, was not at the address on my booking confirmation. I remonstrated, but he continued banging on the door.  Eventually, a man in a grubby t-shirt who had clearly been roused from his siesta emerged. It transpired that the closed-looking building was the sister hotel of the posada where I was staying. As it was low season they didn’t bother to staff both hotels. 

Casa Piar

The historic quarter was colourful, to say the least.  In Plaza Bolívar the bright pink Casa del Congreso de Angostura where the Angostura Congress was held in 1819, jostled for attention with the vivid blue Casa Piar where General Manuel Piar was imprisoned in October 1817 and the ochre yellow cathedral.

Music from a service in the cathedral could clearly be heard as cleaners swept the plaza. In one corner an incongruous note was struck by a group of youths putting on stilts. The service ended and the worshippers, dressed in business clothes complete with name badges, filed out of the cathedral, laid a floral tribute in front of the Bolívar statue in the centre of the plaza and posed for a group photo.  They then left, led by the boys on stilts. 

I set off in a different direction, in search of the mysterious botanical garden. Following the map in my guidebook I came to a park. Perhaps this was it? But then I noticed a group of buildings in the distance that looked like the entrance to a something. On closer inspection it was definitely the entrance to a garden. I couldn’t see a ticket office anywhere but a party of schoolchildren were going in, so it must be open.  I wandered in.  Someone waved and shouted at me so I wandered out again.

Through a mix of Spanish and sign language I inferred that I should wait.  Eventually, Felix arrived and explained, in excellent English, that visitors had to be accompanied by a member of staff. He offered to show me round. Among the plants he pointed out were a baobab tree and a purple-leaved plant which he told me was known as the cockroach plant, but the dominating  feature was bromeliads, both in pots and living on trees. These are very expensive in Venezuela and are therefore regarded as a status symbol. Security at the gardens is tight.

The garden has two main functions: conservation (of plants, snakes not so much!) and education.  Hosting school visits is the education side of their work, but preserving rare species is just as important. Felix led me to a greenhouse in which cuttings and seedlings were being propagated in old plastic drinks cups filled with river sand.  Can you get more eco-friendly than that?

I insisted on making a donation towards expenses and set off in search of that restaurant.

Get thee to the Monastery!

In October 2008, my husband went to Granada on a travel writing weekend.  I went along for the ride, and explored on my own. Three days in Granada is rather more than most casual visitors allow, but I found plenty to fill my time.  

Friday 

View from the Alhambra

Arrive at Hotel Casa del Capitel Nazari – a sixteenth–century mansion with lots of courtyards.  It can only be entered by pressing a bell outside and waiting for someone to open the door.  Our room seems rather dark (dark wood ceiling and shuttered windows) and there isn’t much storage space, but at least the walls are a homely yellow.  The hotel is in the Albaicin district – very picturesque, but the narrow streets are not closed to traffic, so walking up the road involves taking one’s life in one’s hands (one side are houses, shops and restaurants opening directly onto the street, and on the other is a low parapet and a drop into the gorge.  It’s the sort of place where you might see a hit and run attempt in a film.

We meet the rest of the participants of the travel writing weekend for dinner at Rabo de Tube on Paseo de los Tristes. Nicholas, a long-haired TEFL teacher, remarks that he has “too many parakeets” in his garden in Richmond.  How is it possible to have too many?  Though he adds that they gang up on the blackbirds like a sort of avian mafia.

Saturday 

I wander around the renaissance and baroque part of the city, where the Cathedral and Capilla Real are located.  There are helpful plaques describing interesting buildings in Spanish and English. 

After a while, I head up the hill towards the Alhambra.  The walk takes me through a wooded area, with conkers underfoot. When I finally locate the ticket office, the automatic machine accepts my card, despite statements to the contrary on my booking confirmation.  I notice some pomegranate trees. Pomegranates, the symbols of Granada, are everywhere – even the pavement bollards are stylised pomegranates. I start my visit at the Generalife, which is crowded. I'm impressed by the size of the cockscomb plants, (celosia cristata) which are several feet high, not like the little pot plants my dad used to grow. The idea of a running water handrail is intriguing, but don’t think it is very practical. 

Then I enter the Palace of Charles V, and visit the (free) Alhambra Museum inside. There is a display relating to the restoration of the lions from the Courtyard of the Lions in the Nasrid palace. According to the display panel, figurative art flourished in Al-Andalus from the  Umayyad period and Caliphate to the Nasrid dynasty, when objects and living beings were commonly represented in private houses and palaces. The fountain in the Courtyard of the Lions has required constant repair, the first having taken place in the sixteenth century. The current restoration has allegedly revealed more realism in the sculpture, a more stylised, svelte figure, technical sophistication and detailed sculpting, especially in the paws and belly fur.  I looked closely at the paws and belly fur, but I couldn’t make out that much detail myself.

After a refreshment break, I visit the Alcazaba or old citadel and climb the Torre de la Vela (Watchtower) from which there is an excellent view of the city and the cathedral.  

Finally I enter the Nasrid Palace, which is the highlight of the Alhambra.  It is very beautiful, but crowded, despite the timed ticket entry. A grey cat prowled around one of the courtyards as if he owned the place. Perhaps he did.

On my way out, I pass the travel writing group who are on their way in.  I leave them to it, and go for a late lunch.

After a siesta, I join the travel writing group back for a book reading by Chris Stewart. The moral appears to be, if not ‘make it up’ at least ‘embellish and modify’.  

Later, we all go to Mirador de Morayma in the Albaicin for a formal dinner.  The point of this restaurant is supposed to be the view – Morayma was the wife of the last Nasrid King, Boabdil, and this is said to be the location of the house where she was exiled, spending her time looking out at the palace of the Alhambra.  But our group is seated in an inside room, so we do not get the benefit.  The food is OK, though the vegetarian sitting on my left is not impressed by the lack of choice, and someone else is disappointed with her fish.  I choose a cold soup of garlic and almonds which is ‘interesting’, but I wouldn’t have it again, followed by meatballs with potatoes.   The meal is on Spanish time, so we don’t sit down until about half nine, and finish after midnight.  I am not the only one with a stomach on English time who finds this a bit hard going. 

Sunday

I walk round by the cathedral first thing and notice beer glasses lying around, also a strong smell of urine and general litter, but the street cleaners are about. I decide to come back when they have finished, and return to the Albaicin to visit the Archaeological Museum, housed in a sixteenth-century mansion. The exhibits range from the Paleolithic to Moorish periods. Although the descriptions of exhibits are in Spanish only (beyond my elementary level), there are excellent explanatory drawings which make everything clear.

I stroll around the Albaicin for a while, trying to avoid treading in the dog poo which decorates the pavements and eventually wander back down to the Cathedral area to visit the the Capilla Real (Royal Chapel).  It contains the tombs of the Catholic Monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella and their daughter Joanna the Mad and her husband Phillip the Fair. It is surprisingly light inside because of the white marble.  It is possible to go down to the crypt to see the lead caskets containing the actual remains, but I am more interested in the small museum containing amongst other things Isabella’s crown and sceptre, and Ferdinand’s robes, as well as works of art from Isabella’s collection.

Later, I  come across a brass band, wearing uniforms with purple trim, lounging around outside the main Post Office. I have obviously just missed their performance. I walk along Acera del Darro and come across a market of stamps, coins and postcards.  At the fountain I find tables where women are sitting around making lace, and stalls selling patterns and bobbins. Mickey Mouse is going around selling balloons to children.

Back in Plaza Bib Rambla there is another Mickey Mouse with balloons, and also Winnie the Pooh. I  am intrigued by a children’s roundabout, which is powered by a man sitting on a sort of bicycle contraption. The ‘horses’ are made of old tyres (they aren’t all horses – there is at least one dragon or dinosaur).  

We skip the group arrangements for dinner, and do the tourist thing in Plaza Bib Rambla at Restaurant Manolo. We manage to sit down to eat before 8.00 p.m.  I have sopa picadillo (chicken, bacon  and egg – it has an odd, animal flavour like wet donkey), pork loin skewer (Gordon Ramsay would not have approved of the presentation, but it was very tender) and home made crème caramel (‘flan’). 

Monday 

I visit the monastery of San Jerónimo. The monastery was founded by the Catholic Monarchs and handed over to the Hieronymite order. In 1523 the Duchess of Sesa obtained the main chapel to use as a family vault and she commissioned architects to give the Gothic structure a makeover to bring it into the Renaissance style.  Inside is a cloister filled with citrus trees (orange, lemon and lime) edged with jasmine.  The sweet, cloying scent is almost  overpowering. 

Monastery of San Jeronimo

Walking anti-clockwise round the cloister, I come to the refectory, which is simply furnished with wooden benches, whitewashed walls and wooden ceiling.  The chapter house and sacristy are in a similar simple style, with some religious paintings and statues. Finally I come, with a shock, to the main church. This is a total contrast, with deep ceiling relief, painted walls and ceiling and gilded altarpiece and a recording of baroque music playing.  I have the place virtually to myself.

When I can drag myself away, I  visit the Cathedral.  The space inside is huge, and remarkably light and airy, massive white columns with some gold detail. There is no prohibition on photography, so it is full of snapping tourists, but fortunately it is large enough for them to be spread out and not ruin the atmosphere.  There is also a small museum displaying vestments and gold and silver chalices.  

I encounter another of the travel writing group's hangers-on at a cafe, so join him for coffee, and rave to him about the monastery of  San Jerónimo until he decides to go and see for himself. Later I walk back to the Albaicin to meet Neil at the end of the travel writing weekend.  He is talking to another participant, who asks if I have seen her husband. "Yes, I just sent him to the monastery" was probably not the answer she was expecting.

The travel writing weekend was organised by Travellers' Tales.

Cowardice and Omelettes

I have been struggling to come up with a suitable idea on the theme of ‘Serendipity’ for the Bradt competition. One example of serendipity I did come up with I rejected because it is so long ago now, but I thought I would share it here.

Oetztal Glacier

It took place on one of my early foreign holidays with my parents in the mid-eighties.  We were staying at Obergurgl in Austria’s Öztal. [Note: this was so long ago that the Öztal’s most famous resident, Ötzi the Iceman, had not yet been discovered.] On this particular day we were taking a coach tour around the valley. Lunchtime was approaching and the coach stopped in the village of Vent. Our guide said that we would take a walk to a restaurant she knew.  All was well at first: it was a pleasant walk through the alpine countryside.  I noticed a sign (in German) mentioning a suspension bridge, but thought nothing of it. Until we reached a terrifying-looking suspended footbridge across a chasm and were informed that our lunch stop was on the far side of it. 

My father, who had a head for heights, made it across with no difficulties.  I found the whole thing far more scary, but was also terrified of being left behind (this had happened once when I got ‘stuck’ whilst walking in the Malvern hills), so inched my way across, looking straight ahead and determined that if I made it over, I would refuse to return. If necessary, I was sure they could send a helicopter or something to pick me up. One I set foot once more on terra firma, I looked back, only to find that my mother was rooted to the spot on the far side, absolutely refusing to move, despite the offers of help from members of our group who were more chivalrous than my father. This was serious.  She was the one with the money to pay for our lunch. 

Blissful ignorance of what lay ahead.

There was nothing for it but to go back.  This time, my passage was impeded by a woman who was standing in the middle of the bridge taking photos. I’m not sure how I managed to squeeze past.

Reunited at last, my family returned to the village, and sank into the nearest restaurant.  The menu was not extensive, but the fluffy golden cheese omelette with sauté potatoes was the best I have ever eaten, before or since. That made us feel a whole lot better, especially when the rest of the party returned, reporting that their lunch had been nothing special.

We asked our guide why she hadn’t mentioned the bridge. ‘If I did that, people wouldn’t come with me’ she replied.

Adventure in Japan

“I would have got away with it if it hadn’t been for those pesky time-travelling racoons!” Not a sentence one uses every day, but in this case it fitted the situation perfectly.

I was exploring Kitakyushu, on Japan’s southernmost island, with my husband and a toy Womble, called Bungo.  My husband’s continuing mission was to explore the parts of the world that had given Wombles their names. My continuing mission was to humour him and keep him out of trouble.

Kitakyushu

Bungo had proved something of a challenge in terms of Womble-related place names. Initial research had identified a Bungo in Angola, but even after meeting the author of a new Angola guidebook, who told us how good elephants are at crossing minefields, I was not keen. 

Eventually we found that Bungo was also the old name for an area in southern Japan. This seemed a more promising holiday destination. When our travel agent mentioned  the Bungo channel, which separates the islands of Kyushu and Shikoku, I thought we could tick this one off the list by the simple expedient of taking a ferry and then have a nice relaxing holiday enjoying the cherry blossom and historic buildings. It started well: we visited the Peace Park in Hiroshima and the sacred island of Miyajima, where deer walk the streets, and then travelled down to Matsuyama on the island of Shikoku, where we visited the castle, donning the outsize plastic mules provided before attempting to scale the terrifying vertical wooden ‘stairs’.

Then we took the ‘Ferry Cross the Bungo’ and arrived on the island of Kyushu. Exploring the northern part of the island, we found ourselves at Kokura castle in Kitakyushu.  Unlike Matsuyama, this is a modern (1950s) reconstruction, so the stairs were not scary at all. There was even a stairlift, so it was fully accessible. Inside were a diorama of the castle in the 17^th century; a motorised replica of a palanquin so that you could experience what it would have felt like to travel in one and a reconstruction of a  samurai strategy meeting. On the fourth floor was a little theatre where they showed animated films about the history of the castle. One of these, ‘The Story of Kokura Castle’, starred a time-travelling raccoon family.

Bungo and his bridge

There is absolutely no way that a Womble-obsessed Doctor Who fan could resist time-travelling raccoons, so we stayed to watch the film.  However before they showed the raccoons there was another film, ‘Express Messenger Mr Gen’s side trip travelogue on Kokura castle town’ from which we discovered that there was a Bungo Bridge in the town.  All we had to do now was find it. My hopes of a cup of tea and a sweet bun rapidly evaporated.

A helpful tourist map showed us that the bridges in Kokura all have nicknames (Bridge of the Sun, Bridge of the Moon, Bridge of the Seagull, Bridge of Wood etc.) We walked along the river bank, checking them off as we went. Some of them had artworks which reflected their names, which helped. The Bridge of the Sun had a sun mosaic, the Bridge of the Wind had a wind sculpture. Bungo’s bridge, the Bridge of Sound, had none of these, but there were at least some plaques indicating the name in English, so we could be sure we had found the right one. As I dutifully posed for a photo with Bungo and his eponymous bridge, I knew we would never have even realised it was there if it hadn’t been for the raccoons.

Trailing Around Hull

Fish, Ale, Old Town and Poetry: Finding the connection between these subjects seems like it might be a round on the BBC quiz programme Only Connect. In fact they are all the subjects of ‘trails’ which can be followed round the city of Hull.

Hull's Fish Trail

The poetry trail of course relates to Hull’s most famous modern poet, Philip Larkin. Andrew Marvell, who was born near Hull and attended the local grammar school only merits a mention in the leaflet for the Old Town Trail. Larkin, who moved to Hull in his early thirties, gets no less than twenty-five plaques on places associated with his life and poetry, all in and around Hull.

On a recent weekend, I followed three of these  trails around the Old Town.  Whilst they cover something of the same ground, it is surprising how many things you can miss first time round. 

The Seven Seas Fish Trail is perhaps the most unusual of the Hull trails.  It was originally commissioned from the artist Gordon Young by the City Council for the Hull 1992 Festival. It comprises forty-one separate representations of different fish species (from Anchovy to Zander) in the pavements of the old town. The free Hull Old Town and City Guide includes a handy guide to the trail, with a paragraph about each fish, and a location map. The map also shows the Ale Trail locations, so you can make your choice as appropriate. Back on the Fish Trail, each artwork is in a very different style.  The Eel sculpture comprises 14 steel eels (try saying that after you have been on the Ale Trail!) set into the decking of the boardwalk alongside the Hull river.  Whitebait are stamped into the paving bricks around the corner of George Yard. Garfish is carved into a slab of slate near the Victoria Pier. 

Well, would you call this a 'window'?

The Fish Trail takes in many places of interest around the Old Town, but in order really to understand the history and landmarks, you need The Old Town Trail leaflet produced by the Hull Civic Society, which can be purchased for £2 from the Tourist Information Centre in City Hall, at the start of the trail. Without the aid of this leaflet I might never have found England’s smallest window at the George Hotel. I had ventured into the remarkably-named ‘Land of Green Ginger’ earlier in the day, but completely failed to spot the ‘window’.  In my defence, I think it is less a window and more of a slot with delusions of grandeur.

Larkin Trail

The Larkin Trail is the longest of the Hull trails.  It comes in three sections which cover the city centre, the wider city, and the surrounding area.  I only followed the city centre part, but even so it covered rather more ground, from the Paragon Station and the Royal Station Hotel to the Hull History Centre.  At each location there is a plaque explaining its significance, and a relevant line  from one of his works.  One plaque is inside Marks and Spencer in Whitefriargate, the ‘Large, Cool Store’ of Larkin’s poem, where

“Bri-Nylon Baby-Dolls and Shorties
Flounce in clusters”

If you follow this trail online at thelarkintrail.co.uk with a smartphone, you can click on each location for text of a related poem and more general information, including sound clips, such as an excerpt from Alan Plater’s play about Larkin, or some of Larkin’s beloved jazz.

Whichever you choose, following a trail is a great way to explore.