Urban poetry

Bryant Park becomes a Christmas market during the holidays, and picking my way through the crowds on on the adjacent sidewalk on my way home tonight was annoying. It was so cold and these people are so slow!

But this line of pedicabs waiting for fares cheered me up, though my admittedly Scroogey self would have probably gone for the one not dressed as Santa Claus. Just because.

I did actually take a pedicab once, many years ago. I'd been to a corporate Christmas party, and it had started to snow. I wasn't dressed for the weather, and there wasn't a cab to be found (pre-Uber days) and so when the guy on the bicycle offered to take me home for what a cab would have cost, I climbed aboard. And it was strange, but fun, and I will probably never do it again.

Bath

I spent the afternoon in Bath today—it was supposed to be a day, but the British Railway system had other ideas. It's theoretically only an hour from Oxford to Bath by train, but you have to change trains halfway there, and because the first train was a few minutes late we missed the connection to the second train, and had to wait on the platform at Didcot Parkway (an English name if I ever heard one) for an hour and a half.

And this was after having to stand on the very crowded train from Oxford, although I had a reserved seat in a different car. People were crammed in so tight that it was impossible to move, much less change cars, and I was half-bent over some suitcases in a corner trying very hard not to have a panic attack from claustrophobia. I did have a seat for most of the ride on the second train, but my knees and back have yet to forgive me for that first cramped half hour. So, our plan to arrive in Bath at 10:30, visit the Roman Baths for a few hours, have a nice lunch at a famous fish and chips place, and spend the afternoon visiting the Abbey and the Jane Austen Centre, turned into arriving at twelve, having tea and a scone for lunch before visiting the baths, and walking around the city for an hour before getting on the train back to Oxford.

And it was worth it. Bath is a lovely city, very different from London or Oxford, and worth seeing even for a few hours. But next time—and I hope there will be a next time—I'll try to visit when it's not the height of tourist season and spend a couple of days so I don't have to rush.

Urban poetry

I find it hard to believe that anyone actually rides these things around downtown Reno, but they can't be merely decorative.

Not anachronistic at all

As we walked through Al Balad, we constantly had to jump aside to avoid the golf carts that the construction crews, and occasionally other, unidentified but obviously official, types were driving. And when the walk was over and it was time for us to meet the bus taking us back to the ship, we also went by golf cart. I took the picture on the right through the windshield as we careened around corners at a speed I hadn't realized golf carts could achieve, while the call to prayer from multiple mosques echoed through the streets.

That's actually my favorite memory of Jeddah. (The horse-drawn carriages at Petra have also been replaced with golf carts, and while I appreciate how much more efficient the carts must be, not to mention cheaper to feed, I did miss the carriages.)

Carretas

Oxcarts—called carretas in Costa Rica—have been used in rural communities around the world to transport goods, but these distinctive bright orange and red designs are unique to Costa Rica.

The tradition began when a farmer wanted to decorate his carreta so he could use it to take his family on Sunday outings, and he painted it orange because that was the only color paint he had. And then of course everybody wanted one. A highly decorated oxcart became a status symbol because it meant the family was wealthy enough to hire an artist, and different regions developed their own styles of decoration.

This carreta was at the Doka Estate Coffee Plantation in Alajuela.

Moynihan Train Hall, inside

 

Welcome to British Columbia

I'm wide awake after not nearly enough sleep, listening to the gulls crying in the harbor from my hotel bed in Victoria.

I still have almost an hour to kill before they start serving breakfast, so here's a brief recap of yesterday's adventures. It's a four-hour trip from Vancouver Airport to Victoria -- a bus drives you onto the ferry, you disembark and enjoy the scenery for an hour and a half, then reboard the bus for the 40 minute drive to downtown Victoria. The buses leave every two hours, and I had reserved the one scheduled to depart two and a half hours after my plane landed.  That would give me plenty of time to go through immigration and collect my luggage, and possibly grab a coffee or something to eat before settling in for the trip to Victoria.

The flight was uneventful, and we actually landed a few minutes early. So far, so good. I was scurrying along the corridors on my way to Immigration when I noticed a crowd up ahead blocking the way, and a guard herding us over against the wall into what was apparently a feeder line leading to the actual Immigration area. Vancouver has become a very popular destination for vacationers from Asia, and I had heard that the immigration lines could be very long. This was apparently an understatement, but I had plenty of time so I wasn't worried.

We shuffled past the main line and it was impressively long -- a huge room with a line that snaked back and forth into twenty long columns of people. (Yes, I counted. There wasn't really anything else to do.) Then we turned a corner and there were ten more columns to the line! At least it was moving fairly quickly, and I still had plenty of time to make my bus, so I just kept my head down and trudged along for what turned out to be more than half a mile of line. (Yes, I checked my Fitbit. There wasn't really anything else to do.)

Finally, after 45 minutes, I got close to the end and learned that the line I had been standing in wasn't actually the immigration line; it was the line to get on the escalator to go down to Immigration and stand in the REAL line. I did not count the columns there. By that point I was dizzy from all the switchbacks, and my backpack was digging into my shoulders and I just focused on getting to the end of the row, turning, and getting to the end of the next one, and fantasizing about the lengths I would go to to avoid ever having to go through immigration in Vancouver again. For example, would I be willing to fly into Saskatoon, go through immigration there, then take a thirty-hour bus ride across the prairies to British Columbia? Why yes I would.

Retrieving my suitcase turned out to be the next hurdle. I only had twenty minutes before my bus left, and I had been in line so long my flight no longer appeared on the information board so I had no idea which carousel was mine, and I had to wander around and check each one. Finally, suitcase! Ten minutes to go! A quick pee, a Kind bar and a bottle of water from a newsstand which was going to have to hold me until I got on the ferry, and I made my bus with almost a minute to spare.

I settled back in the seat, caught my breath, and learned that due to mechanical difficulties -- a polite way of saying that the engine wouldn't turn over -- we were waiting for a replacement bus and wouldn't be leaving immediately after all. The replacement bus turned out to be a borrowed Air Canada shuttle, and after somehow managing to cram all of our luggage inside, we raced off to catch the ferry.

And the shuttle caught on fire half a mile from the ferry terminal -- I am not making this up, as Dave Barry would say -- and we found ourselves standing by the side of the highway with all of our luggage (see picture above), while the BC police secured the scene and attempted to commandeer a third bus to take us the rest of the way.

We missed the ferry. It was a two hour wait for the next one. But I got here eventually, and the little I saw of Victoria through my half-closed eyes looked quite charming.

Now I need my breakfast.

Do you want that here or to go?

I hadn't realized that Savannah was such a party town, kind of an eastern version of New Orleans. I saw several of these trolleys, which are basically bars on wheels; the riders pump bicycle pedals to move the trolley along while drinking.

There was a mixup with my hotel check-in, so they gave me a voucher for a free drink in the bar. When I went to collect my glass of wine, the bartender asked, “Do you want that here or to go?”

Urban poetry

I meant to post this yesterday, but I was working on an art project and meeting a friend for lunch, and just forgot. How time flies when you aren't employed is something that continues to astonish me.

Here are two pedicabs parked on the street next to more traditional cabs. They're for the tourists obviously, but I did ride in one of these years ago when I was leaving a work event late on a bitterly cold, blizzardy night and there were no taxis to be had. I was reasonably warm under the awning and it was surreal to glide so slowly through the snowy streets, behind plastic sheeting like the temporary walls surrounding delis and flower stands in the winter.

I negotiated a cheaper than usual price for the ride before I got in (the usual fare is $5.00 a minute) but it still cost me three times as much as a regular cab, so I will almost certainly never do it again. But I do love that memory, of the snow whipping past, the driver a black shadow with legs pumping, and the empty streets vague and magical through plastic windows.

More of the Oculus

A view from outside.

Because it's long and narrow in shape and gets wider below street level, the Oculus looks surprisingly small from the street.

Except for those enormous wings, of course.

Urban poetry

It took me a few years to get there, but here's the interior of the World Trade Center transportation center, also known as the Oculus, designed by Santiago Calatrava.

Monday I was looking through architecture photos online and saw an interesting photo of the exterior. It reminded me that I'd always wanted to go back there after it opened, but the few times I've been in Lower Manhattan in the past few years -- for classes or jury duty -- I never had time.

Now I've got nothing but time, so I hopped on a bus and went downtown on a whim. It was a clear sunny day, cold (because January) but not unpleasant with a cup of hot tea in hand, even by the river. I walked around, drank my tea, took some pictures, then got on another bus and came home.

I loved being able to do that.

A view of the park

This is how I saw most of the gorilla trek.

When we were in the thick jungle, it was surreal to lie there and watch the canopy pass overhead. But during the climb, riding the teepoy was like being on a slow-motion roller coaster. (My Fitbit buzzed me halfway down the mountain, mistakenly believing that I had reached my step target for the day -- if you ever need to cheat your Fitbit just hire a teepoy.)

Carry that weight

Bicycles in Rwanda aren't just personal transportation; they're also used as taxis, and, as in these pictures, as the means to move impossible amounts of cargo.

All of these shots were taken through the windows of a moving vehicle so they're blurry, but this is one of the things I will remember most about Rwanda, and I want to share them anyway.

Public transportation, Valparaiso-style

A few of the many funiculars that crawl the steep hills of Valparaiso and connect the lower and upper town. I rode several of them, including one that seemed to be a mom-and-pop operation -- a woman came out of an adjoining room where she seemed to be eating lunch to sell tickets and operate the cars.

Adventures always look better in the rear view mirror

Astute readers will have noticed that there aren't any pictures taken on the morning ferry ride from Providence to Newport. That's because there wasn't one -- or rather, there was a ferry, and it left for Newport as scheduled at 9:30 am. We just weren't on it.

There's a free shuttle that runs from several locations in downtown Providence to the ferry, and we were at the convention center stop early. Where we waited. And waited. We called the ferry company, but the customer service desk was closed for the holiday. Jayne was on hold with the main ferry office when a beat-up Providence city bus with a Not in Service sign pulled up and the driver announced that this was the super-duper emergency backup holiday shuttle. Hurray!

The only problem was that she'd never driven the route before, and she wasn't exactly sure where she was supposed to drop us off. And we had five minutes to get there. And so though we were later told that they had held the ferry as long as they could, we ran down the ramp to the landing just as it pulled away.

The next ferry wasn't for three hours, and since the ferry landing consists of a parking lot, a trailer and a Pepsi machine in basically the middle of nowhere, hanging out for three hours wasn't an attractive option. Especially since the 12:30 ferry was completely booked and there was no guarantee they'd even let us on it.

That's when one of the women selling tickets, now and forever to be known as Saint Lori of Providence, came to the rescue. She arranged for a van to pick the seven of us up and drive us to Newport, where we arrived at Perrotti Park only a couple of minutes after our ferry did.

Needless to say, those of us on the 5 o'clock ferry returning to Providence were in line by 4:30.

Whittier Tunnel

I didn’t know this was coming, and that was probably a good thing. The town of Whittier, where we were boarding a boat for a day on Prince William Sound, has been accessible by road since 2000. Before that, it could be reached only by boat or by railroad, the railroad access via a long narrow tunnel under Maynard Mountain.

Digging another tunnel would have been prohibitively expensive, so they just upgraded the existing tunnel so it could be used by either trains or cars. But not at the same time. And only in one direction; there’s just one lane so the traffic changes direction every hour.

It’s a claustrophobe’s nightmare. The tunnel looks like it was hewed out of the mountain by orcs; the walls and ceiling are rough stone, and you drive right on the train tracks for roughly two and a half miles (or ten years.) I wasn’t reassured by the regular appearance of safe rooms, to be used in case of fire or earthquake, or by the fact that after a train passes through, traffic has to wait while the tunnel ventilation system runs and makes the air inside breathable again.

It’s actually very impressive. But if I ever go back to Whittier, I think it will be by boat.

Above the line of cars waiting for the signal to enter the tunnel. And because we hadn't eaten in at least an hour, our wonderful tour team produced snack trays for us to nibble on while we waited.