Cambridge

Punts on a river. It's the Cam, not the Cherwell, and that's the original Mathematical Bridge rather than the replica at the Iffley Lock in Oxford, so this must be Cambridge.

I only spent an afternoon there, so have no real standing to list the similarities and differences between the two college towns (not that that has ever stopped me.)

I had a couple of dreams this week when a bad cough was disrupting my sleep where I was wandering through the streets of Oxford, completely lost, and finally realized I didn't know where I was because I was actually in Cambridge, not Oxford. But honestly unless I was standing in front of one of the colleges or the Corpus Clock or this bridge, I probably wouldn't know the difference.

Saturday reflections

Punts under Magdalen Bridge.

Random things I saw at Magdalen College

 

Magdalen Bridge

The bridge sits at the top of the High Street, so I've crossed it many times, usually stopping to look at the punts on the Cherwell below. But from the footpath you can see the bridge from below and watch the punts as they go through the arches.

Rainy day

It's been raining all week here, reminding me of that last day sightseeing in Rio in the rain.

This is the view from Corcovado, the mountain with the statue of Christ the Redeemer. This panorama of the tiny boats and the city in the foreground, and the mountains fading away in the mist, was actually much more impressive than the actual statue we climbed the mountain to see.

Brown Station

Almirante Brown is an Argentine research station in Paradise Bay. I like the way the red jackets in the zodiac match the buildings.

Whiplash

Monday morning I woke up to snow-capped mountains in the Beagle Channel.

24 hours and three flights later, I was dragging luggage through the deserted Miami airport. My flight landed at 4:30 am, which ought to be illegal, and it was dark and drizzly all day, which added to my sense of disorientation. Where am I again? Oh, right, for some reason, I'm in Miami.

I went for a walk and found a cafe with excellent huevos rancheros, but after that I just watched TV in my room and counted down the hours until I could decently go to bed.

Just before sunset, the skies cleared and I got my first look at the Miami skyline across Biscayne Bay. That's better, I thought, and was asleep within minutes.

A foggy day in New York town

A picture of the Hudson from last winter: fog, a ferry, a gull soaring overhead.

Plus you can't even see New Jersey.

Still lifting her lamp

I posted this on a political blog (Balloon Juice) I follow today, about the ugly rally that took place a few blocks from my apartment last night:

...Something that kept me hopeful through the barrage of ugly news yesterday:

I teach English to adult immigrants. This semester we’ve been learning about American elections, and I’ve been surprised by how interested they are in the history of the Constitution, the various compromises that were made, and the struggles for voting rights. So for our class trip, I took them on a walking tour of Lower Manhattan on Saturday. We visited Hamilton’s grave at Trinity Church, Federal Hall on Wall Street where Washington was sworn in and the first U.S. Congresses met, the plaque marking the building on Maiden Lane where Jefferson used to live and where he, Madison and Hamilton had the famous dinner in “The Room Where it Happens,” Fraunces Tavern where all of them used to eat and which was damaged by a British cannonball during the revolution. Then a ride on the Staten Island Ferry for a good look at the Statue of Liberty.

All of my students have kids, many of them have multiple jobs, and they give up their Saturdays to learn English. They are smart, funny, interesting, curious, and remarkably kind. They are everything that is right about this country, and we could use several million more of them. When I vote this week, I will be voting for many things and many reasons, but I want to give them the country they deserve.

I ended up voting today instead of waiting. Voting, for all of us.

And still more boats

 

More boats along the Thames

There are a variety of narrowboats and houseboats docked along the side of the Thames. Some of them seemed to be leisure crafts, though I only saw one or two actually out on the water, and some of them seemed to be residences.

I took the picture on the left from the water, on a Tea on the Thames cruise, where alas the high blood sugar brought on by consuming multiple scones with cream and jam apparently left me incapable of taking a decent photograph. I saw the bâteau ivre on the right on one of my walks.

Lost boat

In an inlet off the Thames path, this boat from Balliol College. There were college boathouses all along the water there, so I'm sure someone knew the boat was there.

Sunday morning on the Thames

There are two rivers in Oxford: the Cherwell, which is small and sedate, suitable for punts and kayaks and paddleboats, and the Thames. This part of the Thames is supposedly “really” called the Isis, only acquiring the more famous name when it merges with a river called the Thame (singular) south of Oxford. But all the signs in the city refer to the river as the Thames, and the paths along it as the Thames walk, so much as I like the idea of a River Isis flowing past the dreaming spires of Oxford, there seems to be a consensus that this is the Thames, no matter what the guidebooks say.

The two rivers merge just below Christ Church Meadow. The buildings in the background of this picture are some of the boat houses of the various colleges at the point where the two rivers meet, and the conjoined river leaves all the frivolous punts and paddleboats behind. This is a serious river, full of serious rowers (and the occasional tour boat.)

I had no idea that Oxford was so full of waterways—there's a canal in addition to the rivers, and tributaries and channels and small inlets branching off of all of them. The walkways along the Thames are full of small arched Venetian bridges spanning all the small bodies of water feeding the larger ones. It's completely charming, and I particularly like that I can take the Thames Walk from my hotel to the Folly Bridge when I'm going to the city center, instead of walking on the street the whole way.

View from Magdalen Bridge

I didn't take many pictures yesterday, and by the time I took these pictures of punts in the Cherwell I could barely hoist the camera. So they're a little blurry, but I like them anyway.

It's not just the convoys

Some of the many fishing boats working the canal.

Suez sunrise

It had been announced that we'd arrive at the canal at 3:30 in the morning, so I thought that by the time I woke up we'd already be in the middle of it. But ships travel through the canal in convoys, and though we were the first ship in our convoy, we didn't start through the canal until it was light.

I took this picture before we entered the canal—one of the many fishing boats working the waters around Port Said.

Urban poetry

Boats pulled up on the beach near the fish market in Chorrillos.

August sipped away like a bottle of wine

Central Park lake this afternoon -- it was so hot and humid that rowing a boat wouldn't have been my idea of summer fun, but this couple apparently disagreed.

Classes started on Wednesday, so summer, such as it was, is over for me anyway. Last night when I walked through my living room on my way to brush my teeth, I wondered how I had managed to get so little done on the closet reorganization yesterday. And then I remembered, Oh yeah. I was doing homework.

Flashback: Alexandria 2009

After looking through the Saqqara photos, I started going through the rest of the pictures from that trip. Not surprisingly, I don't remember even seeing some of some of the sights I photographed -- the harbor in Alexandria, for example. I remember the highway along the coast, and the library, but not the fort or the harbor.

This isn't a very good picture, but I like that cluster of boats and the solid wall of old buildings in the background. 

Urban poetry

 A kayaker enjoying the last days of summer by the USS Intrepid at Pier 86 on the Hudson.