Nottingham

I went to Nottingham the weekend before last. The weather was awful while I was there, rain rain and more rain.

As a result, my memories of there are mainly grey, so I made a virtue of that for this picture.

Because it was raining, I spent most of my time dashing between shops where I overheard these gems. This first one reminds me so much of this Victoria Wood sketch.

Two elderly women and a middle-aged man are chatting in a charity shop, at the counter.

Woman 1: "It'll be one of the lads from the priory. There's always young men at the priory."
The man confirms it is one of these lads.
Woman 1: "Is it Mark? Or Rob?"
Man: "...eh...it's got a K....eh, Karl?"
Woman 1: "Cole?! Kyle?! Oh Karl... oh yes, he's a nice lad. Doesn't say much... well, I suppose he does to you..."
Then, the first woman abruptly changes the subject and says to the second woman: "Now she said she didn't like it strapless!"

---

Meanwhile, it was anything but a quiet day out. I saw:

• A fist-and-kicking fight break out on the tube (at 7am on a Saturday morning!). Dramatic.
• A French guy in tears, slumped on floor of St Pancras Station.
• A young woman on the train momentarily losing her tickets and bursting into tears
• A woman chastising her child in a shopping centre, telling her, "You're a wicked little girl!"
• A man crouched in the foetal position in a Nottingham phone box.

Amongst Tourists

I recently entered a Guardian Witness Been There photo competition - its subject was street life.

I don't often take photographs of people, so my street life is more likely to be a nice building or architectural feature.

One picture did come to mind: a photograph I took of tourists in Prague's Old Town.

In it, throngs of tourists await their chance to photograph the moment that figures appear on the Astronomical Clock on the Old Town City Hall. During summer, thousands of tourists and tour groups fill the Old Town Square.

Though I'm a tourist myself, I get great enjoyment listening and overhearing the observations of other tourists - such as:

• "Switzerland is SICK!!!" a woman exclaimed to her friend.
  
  
• "I'm going to have some serious CzechSlovak meat tonight!" said an Australian man on a train to Prague to his travelling companion.
  
  
• "Oh, I really like it here, it's so quaint!" said a young American woman wandering into a square in Budapest.
  
  
• "What's in Bratislava?" asked a Canadian man to his wife.
  "Well... there's a beautiful cathedral," she replied.
  "What? Another one?! There's a surprise..." said he wearily
  
  
• "Well, now, look at all this art!" said a woman as she wandered into the Prado Museum in Madrid.
  
  
• "I want to go where we belong!" said a woman arguing with her boyfriend in Prague's Wenceslas Square.

Salamanca Siesta

On top of slightly wintery weather in Madrid, I picked up a touch of stomach flu, so I was feeling a little wobbly and not super-happy.

By the third day of my trip, my tummy was feeling more robust so I decided - quite on a whim as I passed by - to stop in a little local bar in Salamanca.

Inside, it was decorated very typically Spanish - terracotta tiles, wood-lined walls painted dark red, jamón hanging from the walls.

As I sat with my drink, feeling pleased that the barman had called me 'caballero', I watched the other customers.

• A slightly swaying drunk guy good-naturedly chatting up a woman who laughed along when he won on the slot machine.
• A pony-tailed old guy fixing the cigarette machine, whilst warble-whistling along to Christina Aguilera's Beautiful and hum-singing along to Taylor Swift's Trouble.
• A woman silently drinking her coffee within minutes, who, as she leaves, turns to the staff and says, "no hay mucho blah blah blah" while pointing at her mouth.

The Souvenir Museum

When I'm travelling, I always make sure to look in souvenir shops.

I love them, seeing what sorts of random things by which cities and countries can be remembered. But I really don't buy very many souvenirs.

So I've set up a pinterest board to display my favourite souvenirs.

Sights in Brazil

My final post about Brazil - here are some of the other things I saw!

• A mouse scuttles out of a shop onto the footpath. Some girls shriek. A young man rushes out behind the mouse, chases it, stamps on it, and kicks it out into the road. "Ooh, couragi," coo the girls.
• A woman on the gay beach at Ipanema, determinedly chatting up every man she could find, with raucous laughter, coy glances and a huge bottle of wine.
• Muscle milk muscle growth supplement on the menu in a cafe. The Brazilians do take their muscles seriously...
• A bar playing only the hits of Toni Braxton.

Travel moments

I've just finished reading two books on the theme of travel and how you write about places you have visited and people you have met or seen: Paul Theroux's Tao of Travel and Jan Morris's Contact.

Both are full of short scenes from long travelling lives, particularly Jan Morris (some of which are also on this tumblr account).

Each scene or moment feels like it could be saying something profound, some kind of a metaphor for the city, country or people. But sometimes it just describes a moment or place in time, something random that happened, a one-off chance encounter.

I write about these sometimes (like in Istanbul, Monaco and Gibraltar - my favourite being my 'what I saw in New York' blog post) - and I'm going to share more.

Beautiful Budapest

When in Budapest, look up.

Budapest's buildings are beautiful and ugly, a fascinating mixture of all kinds.of architectural styles: gothic, classic, art nouveau, brutalist.

 

The beautiful buildings radiate, adorned with symbols and alive with detail.

 

 The uglier buildings are monumentally so, and tell of a dark history.

I went on a communist tour to discover some of the sights. The guide Andrew mentioned that during the communist times, the city was grey. Buidlings were neglected, allowed to accumulate layers of pollution and urban grime.

 

When the 1990s came and the ending of the communist era, the sense of optimism for the future must have been matched by a sense of joy at seeing buildings like these shine again.

A Trip to Tallinn

I recently went to Tallinn, capital of Estonia, for a weekend. This year, Tallinn, along with Turku in Finland, is European Capital of Culture.

So I went there to see lovely medieval streets and cultural what-nots. Here's what I saw...

• Cute, winding old streets and soaring spires on churches, towers and the city walls.
  
  
• The first thing I saw as I wandered down the street was a display of old maps of Tallinn through time. Amazing!
  
  
• The streets were alive with the sound of music. Singing has a politically and culturally significant in Estonia (they had a singing revolution) so street corners had stages and impromptu choir gatherings.
  
  
• To that end, I also heard Eric Saade's Popular played 7 times in the one night. Now, that's popular.
  
  
• A dank pedestrian tunnel turned into an art gallery.
  
  
• An old lady who was very proud of herself for wearing blue, black and white (the colours of the Estonian flag.)
  
  
• A international parade of nations during a medieval jousting display, with by Koreans, Japanese and Georgians (amongst others) living in Estonia.
  
  
• My favourite sight was the town's old pharmacy, which is the world's oldest continuously-running pharmacy. Displays showed lotions and potions from the past few centuries, including sun-bleached dog faeces, parched bees and dried toads.

Experimental travel

I've had The Lonely Planet Guide to Experimental Travel on my bookshelf for about 7 years. It's one of those books you read with lots of things to do, but that you never actually get around to doing.

Well, no more. I took it from the shelf, perused it and found the following ideas which I'm going to  try out in London.

A-Z TRAVEL

• Choose a town to visit from A to Z. Find the first road beginning with A and the last beginning with Z, and draw a line between the two. Walk the length of this line and discover the city alphabetically.

ALTERNATING TRAVEL

• Leave your home. Take the first road on the right, then the next on the left, then the next on the right, then the next on the left, etc. Carry on until something blocks your path and you can't carry on.

CHANCE TRAVEL

• Insert the name of your home town into the index of a world atlas (if it's not there already). Throw a dice then count that number of lines down from your town. The one your finger lands on is the destination of your trip.
  
• So for example if you live in Melbourne, Australia:

• One will take you to Melbourne, USA
• Two will take you to Mele, Cap, Italy
• Three will take you to Melekess, Russian Federation
• Four will take you to Melenki, Russian Federation
• Five will take you to Mélèzes, Rivière aux, Canada
• Six will take you to Melfi, Chad

END OF THE LINE TRAVEL

• Take a bus, tube or train out of a city and travel until the end of the line. Find accommodation to stay the night and explore the suburb that you find yourself in.

EXPEDITON TO K2

• Explore the area on a town plan or map that sits in the square marked K2. Take full advantage of all cultural attractions, gastronomic delights and watering holes in that area.

BARMAN'S KNOCK

• Go to your favourite pub and order your favourite drink. Ask the barperson where their favourite pub is and what they drink there. Go there and order their recommended drink, and then repeat the exercise with whoever serves you, and so on. 

SYNCHRONISED TRAVEL

• Travel a synchronised path with your friends and discover whether parallel lines ever meet.
• Participants travel around a chosen location using a 10-stage set of common directions, taking notes and photographs to record their experiences at each stage. Where directions don't match the environs, improvise.
  
• The first stage is your starting point.
• Walk in any direction for 50 to 100 paces, and then turn 180 degrees.
• Continue walking in that direction until you see something blue.
• Make a left turn and walk 50 to 70 paces.
• Walk in any direction until you see something that either is or looks like the number 7 or 11.
• Take the first left, and continue walking until you find somewhere to sit.
• Choose any direction and walk for 25 to 50 paces.
• Continue walking until you see an unusual colour, shape or texture. Turn 180 degrees.
• Keep walking in any direction until you see an archway or an unusual architectural feature.
• Head for home, but continue looking for something that catches your eye. 

TAKING A LINE FOR A WALK

• Create an itinerary by drawing on a map.
• Using a pencil or GPS, super-impose a drawing on a map, which will then form your itinerary.

There are lots more ideas on the Lonely Planet's Experimental Travel page.

In fact, the book was so good, I was inspired to make my own experiment:

ALPHABET SOUP

• Each person writes a letter on a sheet. These are organised to create name of place (or nearest place in index). Go there.

So, I'm going to try out some of these in London (and maybe elsewhere!). I'll let you know how I get on.

Nordkapp - Europe's most northern point

I've just spent a week or so in Norway. I had decided to go all the way to the top, to Nordkapp. That's considered to be Norway's most northerly point and also Europe's northernmost point (sort of... everyone seems to just plain ignore the fact that there are other headlands further north).

Sadly, I didn't quite make it. I got 34 kms away, a small village called Honningsvåg. The road further north was closed because of strong winds. So I went as far north as possible.

I took great comfort in an exhibit in the town's museum which noted that, in 1905, Queen Maud of Norway didn't make it either. Bad weather also stopped her journey northwards.

So instead of photographs of the real thing, here are a few arty views from the Nordkapp Museum.

The real Nordkapp may have looked like these - lots of icy, snowy mountains in the north of Norway, taken during my two 17-hour  trips on the Norwegian ferry Hurtigruten.

By happy coincidence, in February, when I travelled from Gibraltar to Seville, I passed through Tarifa, mainland Europe's most southern point. It's fair to say, it was warmer.

I've also been to mainland Europe's most westerly point, but the most eastern may elude me (because there is no exact location), but I'll console myself with the staggering fact that Honningsvåg is further east than Athens, Belgrade, Riga and Tallinn. Wow.

What's in Gibraltar?

Continuing my posts on curious places (previously: Albania, San Marino), I recently flew to Gibraltar.

Gibraltar occupies a dramatic peninsula jutting into the sea, the majority of which is taken up by a whopping big rock.

The sights of Gibraltar are the mountain, the cheeky monkeys up on the mountain, the caves within the mountain, and the view of the Strait of Gibraltar from the mountain.

The rest is a town which looks a bit Spanish, but feels a bit English. New Look, Marks & Spencer and other British shops line the streets, along with duty free alcohol and perfume shops.

Unlike in Spain, the streets clear come sundown. "We live indoors like the English, not outdoors like the Spanish," one man said to me.

The local gay bar was empty, with the owner wistfully lamenting the departure of the sailors at the naval base.

Gibraltar airport brings a giddy thrill, as you can walk across the runway. The main road into the city crosses the runway which has had to be fitted into an awkward space. Sadly this thrill won't last for much longer as a road's being built under the runway.

And that is Gibraltar.

What is in Albania

A few weeks ago, during a holiday in Corfu, I went on a day trip to Albania. We took a ferry to a town called Sarandë and a bus to UNESCO archaeological site called Butrint.

Butrint was very interesting - a huge site, dating from Roman, Greek, Venetian and Ottoman times.

Sarande surprised me - it was a new town, built in the early 20th century. The town was very modern - lots of art-deco-ish architecture. It was quite Miami. The bars and restaurants seemed modern and new - a very different place to how I expected.

What was odd, however, was that this town with nice buildings and a long, lovely seafront promenade was empty. It was 4pm on a Wednesday - there was hardly a soul to be seen. Perhaps it was an Albanian version of siesta?

I particularly enjoyed seeing Albanian folk-pop videos on a screen in a café. I can't decide who my favourite performer was: the woman called PONI or the woman bottom right below: she certainly was her own biggest fan.

What's in San Marino

I've long wondered exactly what is in San Marino. Just what keeps such a small state afloat and what goes on there?

In my recent trip around Italy, I decided to stop overnight in San Marino. Perched high on a mountain, San Marino city overlooks the rest of the tiny republic. The San Marino flag features three towers on three peaks, the symbol of San Marino.

There are also a variety of tacky-sounding museums (the Museum of Torture, and the like). Mainly, it seems tourism is the prime industry here with souvenir shop after souvenir shop.

Sadly, when the final bus leaves at half past six, San Marino empties. I walked around the town, seeing closed shops, empty bars, empty cafés and empty restaurants. It was all rather disheartening.

Happily next morning, everything was busy again and San Marino seemed a happy place. So happy, indeed, that the police wear delightful mustard yellow shirts. Lovely San Marino.

Eurovision in Italy...

They say there's no interest in Italy for Eurovision, but I spied:

• This year's Hungarian entry blaring out of a car stereo
• A full page article about Eurovision including a picture of Svetlana wearing Fuck The Crisis t-shirt
• Lulu's Boom Bang a Bang being used to advertise fruit juice.

Cabo da Roca - Europe's most westerly point

Cabo da Roca is Europe's most westerly point. Well, Cabo da Roca is continental Europe's most westerly point. Europe's most westerly point is in Ireland, Iceland, the Azores or French Guiana - depending on perspective.

The land to the north of Lisbon, around a town called Sintra, is forested and mountainous. These uplands stretch on to the coast, ending at Cabo da Roca, which is about 140 metres above the ocean.

Getting there is remarkably easy - it's something of a tourist attraction, of course - take a train to either Cascais or Sintra and then bus 403 from there along winding roads through green countryside.

There isn't much at Cabo da Roca - a pointless tourist office (I wandered in, they ignored me), a restaurant (empty) and a tourist souvenir shop (nothing but usual stuff). A lighthouse, built in 1772, is closed.

Two monuments can be seen - one (oddly) to the Rotary Club sits a little distance back from the headland, and the other juts proudly into the sky, with a cross and an inscription: Onde a terra termina e o mar começa... / Where the land ends and the sea begins...

But Cabo da Roca's beauty isn't in buildings. All around you is the world's grand scale and beauty. Looking down the cliff at the crashing waves and spuming foam of the Atlantic, the full brunt of the ocean hits you. It's unrelenting, it never stops - the tide keeps on coming.

The horizon remains constant, always there, always distant. You could be anywhere, but this is somewhere. My trip benefitted from a sudden change of weather - from drizzly, grey and dull to blue, shining and resplendent.
Cabo da Roca is peaceful despite the fierce ocean, green with sea-gorse and nature's geography at its best.

Observations on Portugal

• Itinerant Londoner was right - the food in Portugal is disappointing. Try as I might, I did not find mijas on the menu, and instead was left with oily, greasy and largely flavourless food. Once or twice, I did think "yes, it's stodge, but glorious stodge" a la Nigella, but that was rare.
• It struck me that while the high-end restaurants may have brilliant food, more commonplace, everyday cafés and such churned out basic, unadorned food. A bit like the food at an Irish wedding - plain and simple, nothing that'd scare that aunties and uncles.
• Cakes, buns and tarts, however were divine, especially the pasteis de nata and pasteis de Belem (above).
• There are a lot of pharmacies in Portugal. Lisbon seemed to have one at every turn.
• My favourite of Lisbon's gay bars were Setimo Ceu in Barrio Alto - ace music, friendly staff and a cool magazine-collage wall - and Max in Principe Real, unadorned, unpretentious and friendly.
• My favourite Metro stop (in Porto) was Estadio do Dragao - simply for the phlegmatic tongue-twisting way it is pronounced. In Lisbon, I quite liked Marques do Pombal as it sounded like Marques do bumhole. (Mature, I know)
• My very favourite things were: azulejos and seeing Cabo da Roca - more of this later.

Anthony Gormley's statues on Crosby Beach

I went to Liverpool last week, and continued on to see Anthony's Gormley's statues on Crosby beach. The statues were installed there in 2005 as a temporary art project, but are now permanently installed.

Crosby is a non-bathing beach - but the statues ignore that. 100 statues are placed along the beach, in the tide and out to sea. The way they look despends on the tide - whether it's in or out.

The statues are entitled 'Another Place' and I really liked how they were looking across the sea, maybe towards Ireland or towards America.

Millions of people left Liverpool's port to sail to America in the hope of a new life. Millions of people left Ireland for Liverpool in the hope of a new life. Are the statues looking back to the past or forward to the future?

I was reminded of a big tradition in 19th century Irish art of Ireland imagined as a maiden, Erin, standing on the shore looking out to see for her exiled lover to return to free her and the nation.

Who or what are the statues looking to?

Wish I was there

When an idea forms in my brain, I often find myself thinking that I wish I'd thought of it earlier. For instance, I wish I had thought of my map collecting project a year ago, and could have collected maps from my trips to Poland, Latvia, Sweden, Japan etc. This thought came to me again a few weeks ago. We went for a day to Hastings, during the lovely weather of the Indian summer.

As we walked along the clifftops, I looked out to sea. I was taken by the strong, vivid, complimentary blues of the sea and sky, divided by the horizon. I took some photographs. I was pleased when I looked back at the photographs, but thought that these could have been taken anywhere. There was a universality in the combination of sea and sky.

I again started to wonder why I hadn't thought of this idea earlier. A framed picture formed in my mind, showing 8 small photographs of the sky and sea, each taken in an entirely different location, yet each with a similar and timeless universality.

I thought about this some more when I got home, and started looking through my photographs pictures. I found that kernels of this idea had formed, but nothing fully fledged. The photographs below are from Brighton, Barcelona, Japan, Cork, Kerry and San Francisco.














I love how each photograph could be anywhere (with the possible exception of the photo from Barcelona). There is sky, there is sea. But each photograph is, for me, grounded - that is Kerry, that is Barcelona etc. My memory of these places influences my viewing of the photographs. So while I was disappointed that I had not had this idea sooner, I found that thinking about how the idea traced its way through my previous travels was as rewarding as any ultimate framed picture.

Japan-style

I've spent the past couple of weeks working on this image from my trip to Japan. I put most of these photographs on the blog inMay. I wanted to do something more with them. So I collaged the best photographs together, making a large poster print which I've framed and now adorns my bedroom wall. It measures 30 x 40cm, and is a riot of colour. I'm really quite pleased with it.

I'd like to sell this, and any other image I've done, as prints. So if you'd like to buy a print of this, just let me know by commenting or emailing or any-way-you-can and we'll organise something.

Air-port

A new airport terminal in Marseille was in the news last week, as it is being dubbed Europe's first no-frills airport. The former freight warehouse has been minimally transformed into an airport, designed to cater for the burgeoning low-cost airline market. This article describes the airport - only minimal seating, very few mechanics with passengers carrying their own luggage to security, there are no carpets and passengers walk to the plane, rather than on ramps. The idea is that the airport cuts down on costs and time spent waiting.

I can't quite decide if this is a good idea or not. Cutting time and costs is to be commended, but it should be questioned what is being lost. Airports are strange spaces, devoid of any identification. One airport wall could almost be any another. If it were not for the shops, restaurants and other amenities, airports could be in any city, any country, anywhere.

I remember quite a few years ago, Cork airport unveiled a statue of the ex-Irish soccer manager Jack Charlton. This statue was located in the main hall of the airport. The statue is gone now, as is the sense of the space as being Irish. The new terminal is a very bland space - the most Irish aspect is its use of wood as a decorative material (an almost ubiquitous feature of contemporary Irish industrial architecture). In the run up to the launch of the airport's new terminal, Cork airport ran an ad campaign saying "Soon, you won't know where you are" referring to the great changes in the airport, but equally having a poignant double meaning.


San Francisco airport was the probably worst airport that I've been in. Nothing about it said "San Francisco". I arrived in the evening, the airport was relatively quiet. But more than that, it was dull. All I remember from the airport is grey - grey walls, grey carpets, grey atmosphere.

I quite like airports. I like knowing where I am. I'm always keen to find the large signs outside airports declaring the town or city, and disappointed when they're not there. I feel sad that airports are not more rooted in their cities. Maybe I'm overly sentimental, of course, as airports in the modern travel industry seem to have become nothing more than in-between spaces, out-of-place buffer zones.