Seattle Tourism

I thought I'd spend some time today as a tourist. So I took the 550 bus from Bellevue to downtown Seattle. This is one of the best ways to spend $2.50 around here. You get a lovely drive over the floating bridge, a spectacular view of the skyline and then a ride in the tunnels underneath the city. 

I got out at the Westlake Centre and slipped down to Pike Place Market for a look around. Took in the Comic Book store in the marketplace, along with the craft stalls down there and then headed back up to Westlake and the monorail terminal

There I bought a return ticket to the Space Needle and then I just waked straight into the lift (no queues) and rode up to the top where I enjoyed a coffee and took some snaps of the view.

Then back to Westlake and Barnes and Noble for a look at some books. Finally I got the bus back to the hotel and spent a happy hour or two playing with the pictures I'd taken.

Wonderful.

Heading Home

Today we headed home. Sad face.

We flew from Copenhagen Airport, and were lucky enough to find what I call the "handling space" in the airport quite easily. I think every airport has one of these. It is a quiet area, usually with tables and chairs, where airport staff take hapless passengers to tell them that their flight has been cancelled/luggage has been lost/plane is full etc etc. The one in Copenhagen is called the "transit area" and located just behind all the shops.

We sat there for a while as I fiddled with some pictures and wrote some draft blog posts and stuff. The Surface Pro 3 has proved to be a very capable travelling companion. It just works.  Battery life is great and the screen size is perfect for getting proper work done on the move.

The only thing I don't like is the way that the bright blue keyboard seems to be picking up a bit of dirt, but that is rather like buying a white pair of trousers and then complaining that they get dirty quickly. When I get back I'm going to experiment with cleaning it.

Tivoli in Copenhagen

Today we returned to Copenhagen for another day trip. And we went to Tivoli. This is a mini amusement park right in the middle of the town. It is packed with restaurants and rides of a varying degree of scariness. It also has some lovely gardens. 

This is the scariest ride I have ever seen. You sit in a fake plane on the end of an enormous arm which is whipped around at speed before starting to rotate in a whole bunch of axes at once as you fall from the sky. It looks like it has been designed to simulate every part of a plane crash apart from actually hitting the ground. I felt a bit queasy just watching it. I did manage to go on the Ferris wheel though, which was much more my style. 

Kroner vs Kronor

One of the reasons that we are in Malmo is that is is connected, via a very long bridge, to Denmark. This morning we went from Malmo (Sweden) to Copenhagen(Denmark). The English associate foreign travel with passports and people at border crossings looking suspiciously at you as you move from one nation into another. In this case it was rather different. We just got on a train in Sweden and got out in Denmark. No passports, no nothing.

I'm writing this against the backdrop of the Scottish Independence vote and it is pleasing to find that in some parts of the world it is possible to go abroad without any fuss. In the event that the Scots decide to go it alone (which would be a horrible outcome in my opinion) then at least we have an example of how it should be possible to go there without too much hassle. 

Working with the money is a pain though. One country uses Kroner and the other uses Kronor. They differ in value by about 20% or so and I keep producing the wrong notes to pay for things. I'm trying to think of an easy way of remembering which is which. I tried "Sweden has an e in it, and so does Kroner" but unfortunately Denmark has an e in it too, which doesn't help. The best one I've found so far is that money from Sweden has people on it, whereas notes from Denmark don't. And Danish money has "Denmarken" or some such clue written on it.

We went to the Post and Telecommunications museum in Copenhagen and it was great. They had a really nice cafe right at the top with amazing views. And the whole thing was free. 

Then we went to a design museum and finally made the trek to see the Little Mermaid.

Copenhagen is the capital city of Denmark and so it breaks my "Go for the small city" rule. It is nice enough, but a bit full for my liking. It reminds me a lot of Amsterdam.

Go for the Smaller City...

This place serves really nice chocolate balls

If you want to find out what a country is really like don't go to their biggest city. England is a case in point here. I'd really hate it if people thought that we were all as friendly and outgoing as the sort of folk you find on the tube in London...  

Some time back we had a really enjoyable time in Brno, which is not the largest city in the Czech Republic, but turned out to be a super nice place to visit.

When we were planning a trip to Sweden we discovered Malmö, which is the third largest city in the country. So we went there. Although, because of it's proximity to Copenhagen, we also ended up going to Denmark as well. 

Malmö is lovely. We didn't quite know what to expect, although it seemed to have a goodly quotient of museums and parks and stuff from our explorations on the internets. We we didn't spot was the Kings Gardens, which is just fabulous. 

There's even a windmill, and displays that by early September are probably slightly past their best, but still stunning.

I don't know the name of any of the flowers in this picture. And I am not proud of this fact.

Oh, and in travel writer mode: "The roots of the name Malmo is the phrase "pile of sand" and the 2013 Eurovision Song Contest Final was held in the city. The UK did not win this competition, scoring 23 points and coming 19th". 

Travel Writing from Somewhere

We are heading off on our "proper" holiday of the year today. Not that we have had improper ones earlier, it's just that this is the one that involves the use of a passport.

This departure put something of a strain on our aging frames, in that we haven't had much time to recover from the London trip yesterday before heading off to foreign parts, but I've decided that if I'm going to go of anything, it is going to be from having too much fun. 

The destination of our trip was carefully chosen by the use of Expedia and a pin, and there was actually quite a bit of confusion about just which countries we were actually going to visit.

Hopefully the handy map should give you a good idea of where we are headed. 

Just the kind of things you want to find in your room when you arrive. 

Since I've hardly done any, I thought I'd spend the week brushing up on my travel writing skills. So stay tuned for a bunch of reports from your intrepid reporter.

Go to the Science Museum

I love the Science Museum. We went there today for a little while and even though it was full of screaming children it was still well worth the trip. I took the "not particularly big" camera along and grabbed some pictures. Which I turned into black and white for some reason....

Haynes Motor Museum

Maybe one day....

One of the places that we visited on our holiday travels was the Haynes Motor Museum in Yeovil. If you like cars you'll love it there. They had some wonderful vehicles and a Mini that had been cut in half (as opposed to the one I used own, which fell in half all by itself). 

You could see all the inner workings of the Mini and I think I rather bored number one son as I went around the exhibit identifying each of the components that I'd had to replace on mine. 

If you are in the area you really should go and look around. They do go-karting too.

The Forbidden Corner Rocks

One of the many lovely gardens spread around the site. 

Today we headed off into the Yorkshire Dales to take a look around the Forbidden Corner. This is part theme-park, part country gardens, part awesome place to explore. We'd heard good things about it from numerous different sources and so we were expecting a good time.

We got one. The weather was kind to us and we had great fun wandering round. Admission is by pre-booked ticket only, which means that the place is never overwhelmed by visitors, and there are lots of things that scare, intrigue and amuse. Plus some things that squirt water at you or, better yet, the people with you.

There's a cafe with nice food and a gift shop with sensible prices and Yorkshire memorabilia. I enjoyed it at my age. If I'd been six I would never have wanted to leave. 

There is actually some blue sky in this picture. No. Really.

Dredgers and Docks

This is Orca the dredger. She'd make an awesome Lego model.....

Today we celebrate 100 years since the King George Dock was opened in Hull. To me this means a chance to go and take some pictures. We got the first bus out of Hull to the dockside and were there at the very very start. Which was nice because we got to go straight onto the boat and take a look around. I was trying out the ultra wide-angle lens.

I'm very proud of the fact that I didn't touch any of the buttons or levers....

The dredger was huge. It is basically a floating container that they take out into the estuary and fill with mud. Then they sail somewhere else and drop the mud off. The cabin was massive and had lots of interesting consoles and controls. I took pictures of all of them.

On the way out I did something by mistake that I plan to do again. I changed the colour temperature on the camera settings. This is the thing that makes colours look "right" in different lighting environments. Normally I leave it on automatic, but by pressing the wrong button I changed it to "incandescent". This is not really a problem, I can fix it later, but it does mean that you get neat colour effects sometimes.

Interesting. But wrong.

I'm not suggesting that you do this as a matter of course, but if you want to get a strange "other worldly" effect on your shots it is definitely worth a try every now and then.

We wandered into a massive warehouse that they'd set aside for exhibitions and bumped straight into Warren and the Seed crew. They were there to show off what Seed can do (which is quite a lot).

I'm not sure what Warren made of me, what with the Autgrapher pinned to my T-shirt and two cameras round my neck (actually, I am quite sure what he made of me - I just don't want to think about it) but it was nice to see them all there. At the time we turned up things were just getting going, so I think they were in for a busy time of it.

Waiting for the flood....

I had some lawns to mow and stuff to do at home (no - really) and so we had to head back to Hull. After a game of "hunt the bus" which went on for a bit longer than it really should have, we got to sit on the top deck at the front. Which was nice. 

Whitby at Whitsun

We've gone to Whitby for Whit weekend. It seemed somehow appropriate (I must have used that line before). Anyhoo, I took the camera.

I took this one of the beach, and then tweaked it a bit. 

Home via Escher

They serve the best breakfasts in the world in these parts. Amazingly good. With freshly squeezed orange juice and everything. And after we had enjoyed the meal we headed off to the Escher museum in the middle of The Hague. 

Escher pictures are amazing. I first came across his work in the book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, which is one of the best books ever written. Ever. Read it. Now.

It was nice to see his original work and find out a bit more about the chap behind the pictures. The exhibition itself is in the rather sumptuous surroundings of a palace. And on the top floor they have some rather neat interactive artworks too. A great way to spend our last morning before we caught a train and plane and headed home. 

Beer and Culture

We started off today with a trip to the Rijkmuseum. They have some superb pictures here, including the Night Watch, although it was a bit busy.

After lunch we headed for the Heineken Experience, a somewhat less cultural experience, although it did involve yeast. Fun fact of the day, the text in the Heineken logo was adjusted to create "smiling e's".

This probably doesn't improve the flavour very much, but it makes the brand look a bit happier.

Heading for TechDays via Amsterdam

Thunderbird Three at Humberside Airport. Who knew?

We are having a day or two in Amsterdam before heading off to TechDays in The Hague. So we hopped onto to the plane at Humberside and headed off to Schipol. After a quick train journey we checked into our hotel and then headed out for a walk. Of course I took the camera.

There are a lot of bikes here

Tooltip from Amsterdam...

I really do like it here. 

Hornsea is Wonderful

I said to Emily yesterday that if the weather is nice on Sunday we'd probably head for Hornsea. 

It is and we did. Of course I took the camera.

Slimbridge

Slimbridge is one of my favourite places to visit. They have lots of different makes of birds and wildlife and stuff. We went there today and of course I took some photos.

It’s a pity that the camera decided to focus perfectly on the bit behind the butterfly, but I’m still happy with this one.

England in summer. Can’t beat it.

Tiny Camera

In preparation for the Imagine Cup World Finals in Russia I've got myself a tiny camera that I can carry round at all times. It seems to do a good job of the Union Building.

My First Tomato Festival

I don’t know much about tomatoes. Mostly red, different sizes, used in bolognaise and on pizza, some discussion over whether or not they are a fruit. Oh, and in New Orleans they have a festival for them. It was a bit warm, but you could always cool down with a Bloody Mary drink. We took a wander through the French Market and I took a whole bunch of photographs.

Including this one. We have to head home tomorrow, which is rather sad as I’m just about getting the hang of “The Big Easy”.

Day off in New Orleans

If you are going to have a day off, I can recommend New Orleans as a great place to do it. First we went off to Audobon Zoo, which has to be one of the best zoos I’ve ever been to. We expected to spend a few hours there, but we ended up finding a day’s worth of stuff to keep us busy. There were all the usual zoo favourites (pictures of which will filter onto the blog over time I’m sure) along with some local specialities.

There’s an alligator lurking in this picture somewhere, I suggest that until you know where, you should rule out any swimming.

In the evening we went on a riverboat cruise which was rather splendid. There is something extremely civilised about sitting drinking a cool beer while they move the scenery past you and tell you all about it. The Mississippi is a very busy river, with oil, sugar and all sorts of other things moving up and down in huge ships. 

Today we also had a rather good sunset as well.

Going to Algiers

This morning we caught the ferry to Algiers. Its just across the river and the journey takes fifteen minutes or so. The good news is that the ride is free, and Algiers is a great place to take a look at.

Some of the land is still underwater.

And some of the houses are beautiful.

Tomorrow the main conference starts. I’m looking forward to it.