London - touristy things...

The British Museum: 

Just wow. I love the British Museum. It’s so big and there’s so much to see that it’s easy to get tired and overwhelmed, there is just so much to take in. One of the reasons I would love to live in London is so I could go to the museums and galleries all the time and spread the experience out. It’s impossible to see everything or even enjoy everything in a short amount of time. So we rushed through, trying to get the flavour of the place.

There’s a new building in the middle of the museum, (well, new to me, I think it was built in 2000) – excellent architecture. It’s called the Queen Elizabeth II Great Court (not the most imaginative name) and it’s made the Museum’s inner courtyard into a large covered public square. It is a two-acre space enclosed by a glass roof with the famous Reading Room at its centre.

Tate Modern:
There was some wonderful work here. I’m more a Renaissance person when it comes to art, and often Contemporary Art leaves me cold with it’s obscure, often difficult, self-referential navel gazing. But when it’s good, it’s very good. I did find the temporary exhibition much more interesting than the general collection though.

The National Gallery:
The best, best place to go in London. It has some of my all time favourite works. I also spent quite a bit of time photographing gilt frames which I think will become a new obsession of mine. This is a truly wonderful place.

Afternoon Tea at the Ritz:
A super touristy thing to do, I know. It was fun though. There was far more food than we could eat – I don’t know how other people do it. I’ve read that there are better places to go in London for afternoon tea, but I’d never been to the Ritz, so that’s where we went. To be fair to the whole of the UK though, everywhere we went served excellent tea and scones (I tried them absolutely everywhere we stopped for a snack). Maybe it’s one of those cultural things, where the local standard is so high, there is just no place for terrible tea and scones, a bit like being in Rome (where there is no decent tea at all) but the coffee and the pastries are fabulous practically anywhere.

London - A Houseboat on Regent Canal...

I love London. I was born in England (in Cambridge) and my family moved to Australia when I was seven. Since then I’ve been back to England a few times, and on two of those occasions I’ve been back to live for a few month in London. I love it. I think it’s partly a trace-memory of childhood, the low skies (even when they’re sunny), the smell of train stations, and damp leaves … it’s hard to describe what it is, because it’s not anything in particular, but I do feel at home there. Luke on the other hand had been to London once as a teenager and didn’t like it, so I was on a mission to convince him that London is a fantastic place.

Fortunately, we had a great time. You know how, if you get the wrong set of circumstances even a fabulous place can feel awful, well we were lucky that we got a great set of circumstances so it was easy to see how impressive London is.

Firstly we stayed on a canal boat on Regent Canal near Islington. What an interesting place to stay, quirky, quiet, but walking distance to Kings Cross Station. Regent Canal is beautiful. I got the feeling these canals were a bit dilapidated and a bit of a wasteland, but now they are thriving and interesting, but remarkably quiet considering this is the middle of a huge, bustling city. There are lots of people walking and cycling the canal paths, or just sitting and enjoying the views, there are waterside bars, restaurants and music. There’s even a canal boat that’s been turned into a book shop. Our canal boat was right at the end of the tow path, so it was very quiet and private – but just minutes to interesting things.

Then the weather was beautiful the entire time we were there. Hot even. We took the tube, and busses. We walked to a local supermarket for supplies (I’m interested in how different supermarkets are around the world – I think supermarkets and hardware stores are a really good way to get a feel for living in a city). Almost everywhere we walked in London there was some historical ‘thing’ just around the corner (not just the famous bits I mean, but ordinary local houses or churches or re-used gasworks turned into housing.) It’s a fascinating place. And sometimes it is the famous things, blue plaques on so many buildings, or finding yourself walking through a square or street you’ve read about in books or seen on the telly. It’s a great place, and of course it has some of the best art and science museums anywhere. But that’s another post.

Edinburgh...

I have an ongoing list of places that are good to visit (but not live in), and places that are good to live in (but maybe not so interesting to visit), and usually when we travel I work out if I could live in a city, or if it’s more a visiting kind of place. I’m not sure which category Edinburgh fits into but I think maybe both.

For example when people come to Australia they all want to visit Sydney (quite rightly). It’s a beautiful city, vibrant, lots to do. And it has all the famous landmarks; you can climb the harbour bridge, visit the opera house, eat by the wharves, visit great galleries – of course you’d choose it. But if you were coming to live in Australia rather than visit, I’d argue Adelaide is a better (easier) place to raise a family and live a good life (unless you’re very rich – then choose Sydney). Adelaide is a much cheaper place to live, and much smaller. You can have a nice big old stone villa for the price of a flat in Sydney, you’re always pretty close to amazing, uncrowded beaches. The traffic is manageable even at peak hour. Get in the car and drive a couple of hours and you’re entering the outback and small country towns, then a couple more hours and you’re in deserts like nowhere else on earth. Adelaide had a great Festival and Fringe, good dining, and the best wineries in the whole country (I might be showing my bias there). It’s easy to navigate, clean, and pretty friendly. So Sydney’s a great place to visit, but Adelaide’s a great place to live.

There are some places that are both. I think Rome (my favourite city in the world) is both. And maybe Edinburgh is both too. It has that small city feeling that Adelaide does, like you could get around it easily, and it’s friendly. Plenty of students too, so it seems young and vibrant. And it’s an interesting place to visit. We did some touristy things (as you would) the Castle, an underground ghost tour, whisky tasting, but we also just walked and walked (it’s steep but compact). 

The art gallery is very good, the permanent collection was impressive, and they had a temporary exhibition while we were there called Beyond Caravaggio (about the influence of Caravaggio on other artists) which included a number of Caravaggio’s that I wouldn’t otherwise have seen including the Supper at Emmaus, and Boy Bitten by a Lizard (I could have seen both in London if it hadn’t been on loan, but still) and The Taking of Christ (which is usually hung in a Jesuit Community building in Dublin, so it’s unlikely I’d ever get to see it) and Saint John the Baptist in the Wilderness (which is hung in Kansas City Missouri – so I would probably never ever have seen it).

Edinburgh was a great place to visit, but I also suspect it would be a pretty darn nice place to live, I’m going to leave it on both lists for now.

The Scottish Highlands...

After our wonderful stay on Orkney we drove down the middle of Scotland, and spent a few days in the Highlands. We stayed at Dornoch, and visited Dunrobin Castle and Glenmorangie Distillery.

By this stage we felt pretty much at home in Scotland. We’d been to a couple of distilleries (I’m not a Scotch drinker so I can’t tell you much about that) and we had eaten out quite a bit (very good seafood), and I suppose we’d also got used to the oldness of it all (I mean that in a good way – history you know), the changeable skies, the scones (excellent) and the friendly people.

The afternoon at Dunrobin Castle was particularly good. I realised there would be a limited number of castles I could drag Luke through, so there weren’t many planned for the trip. But this one was close, and it had a falconry display.

Actually there were a number of different birds of prey in the falconry demonstration, including a European Eagle Owl that sat right next to me (this may have been the absolute highlight of my trip). All the birds are rescue birds and there was a good environmental message attached to the display. It was really worthwhile. The birds were stunning, and extremely clever.

The castle itself and the gardens were beautiful, there was a bagpiper outside and a fire downstairs, it felt well run and interesting. Interesting historically, but also interesting in seeing how other people live. I guess that’s why we do it – a window into a world we don’t inhabit.