Back in Silver Spring, my commute was consistent car-free. It’s trickier in Howard. That said, I did manage to bike to the commuter bus and ride that in the morning. Would have done it in the evening too, but I need some night riding equipment for my bike and in any event I was coming up from a game night in Silver Spring and commuting transit options are highly limited by 10:20 pm if you can’t just use the Metro.
The commuter bus, the 995, I can bike to doesn’t seem like that practical of an option for getting to work, at least not if the half hour delay was at all standard. That said, good to know I have the option available as a backup and don’t have to ask my wife to get up early if I’m carless.
After hitting the Guinness Museum we went up to see the Michael Collins Barracks art museum. It’s the annex to the downtown museum but has a rather extensive collection in its own right. One section had a range of martial exhibits, including dueling, soldiers, and more on the revolution with a bit on the civil war. There was also a temporary exhibit with neat Asian art as well as an animal exhibit, parts of the ‘dead zoo,’ while its current home was being renovated. My favorite piece though was from the scientific equipment section, it was clockwork model of the solar system that included moons for outer planets. Sadly, no pictures of the interior because it is a fairly conventional museum in that regard.
Afterwards we went off to Dublina, which felt more like a mix between Viking-oriented Renaissance Festival and a city museum. That was a fun tour and while at times a little hokey it had good maps covering the cities history, a neat archeological section, and info on Vikings that included good cultural detail. The museum was next to Christ Church Cathedral and actively laments the nearby civic office building that was apparently built over an archeological site.
Afterwards we wandered about and did some shopping and chocolate buying. Basically a flurry of activity trying to hit everywhere we wanted to that would be closed by 5 or 6 pm. Our last museum involved a return to Dublin Castle but will be saved for the next entry.
We're down to our last four trip entries! Two of them will be from Greg, and two are from me (wife of Greg, for those of you just joining in).
For our last full day in Dublin, we started off with a tour of the Guinness Storehouse. Be warned that there are lots of pictures in the slideshow. While neither of us is that much of a beer drinker (you can see a picture of me staring rather dubiously at a pint), my dad is quite the connoisseur and I figured he'd really enjoy the tour via photos.
The building was actually used as a storehouse until the late 1980's; after a while (I don't remember exactly when) it was converted over to the tour center. It's quite nifty inside as you start at the lowest level and work your way up to the seventh floor where there's a bar where you can have a pint and look out over the entire city.
The tour begins with the fact that all Guinness is divided into four ingredients: water, hops, yeast, and barley. It then takes you through the steps of the brewing process and lets you sample a bit from a fresh batch. The next parts deal with transportation and advertising; there's lots of cool stuff to see in both. Greg was particularly enamored of the small trains used to transport things around the brewery complex. After that is a brief history exhibit, a place to pour your own pint, and a temporary exhibit space that was currently being used to showcase the artwork of the cartoonist who drew the most famous ads, such as the various zoo animals who always manage to steal their keeper's brew.
We had fun at the topmost floor bar. I love places with excellent panoramic views. The windows had a few of the more notable locations marked. After we gazed and sipped and relaxed, we headed back down to the gift shop, and then on to our next stop, the Barracks Museum.
We visited St. Patrick’s Cathedral twice during our trip. The first time was just walking the grounds after arriving on an early morning flight. The second time we paid to go in. The donation required was a bit steep, particularly since the store had closed and for various reasons that was one of my main reasons for going. Oh well.
The cathedral itself was rather unique. In addition to a plethora of statues and various other pieces of art, it had no small number of flags, usually martial in origin, that in many cases were so old they were quite threadbare. Seeing them like that had a definite power to it, almost like viewing a ruin. I do think that American memorials should probably make more use of ruins when the commemorate the victims of some destructive act. Symbolism can be powerful, but it is very difficult to match the psychology effect of seeing that which remains and not an abstract version of it. I am a definite fan of the Vietnam memorial, but for 9/11 I think we would probably have been better served by keeping more of the remains of the buildings themselves.
On a less portentous note, two interesting fact about St. Patrick’s. First, unlike the one in New York, it is not a Roman Catholic cathedral. St. Patrick far predated the breakaway of the Church of England, so this isn’t a huge surprise really if you think about it. Second, the most famous deans of the cathedral was Jonathan Swift.
After visiting the cathedral we wandered around Temple Bar and had dinner at a crepe place. There were a fair number of buskers in Temple Bar as well as at the pedestrian mall at Grafton street. Generally speaking they were all pretty good and got a few coins from me. There were also a fair number of homeless people around, not more than I see in DC but more than I expected. They also tended to look younger than I typically see back home. Also, as a quick factual footnote, we actually rode the light rail after seeing the cathedral, but I don’t think this chronological aberration is really a huge deal.
The Dublin Area Rapid Transit (Dart) is a light rail system, but in terms of capacity it’s closer to U.S. heavy rail/commuter lines. Unlike the LUAS these trains actually do go out into the countryside although we didn’t go that far. In town at least the track and stations are elevated and happily they do tell you how long the wait is for a train. We did a quick one stop round trip from Tara station to Pearce if memory serves. The first train was a more classical model while the second was still fairly shiny and new.
In any event it was good to ride the Dart after taking so many pictures of traveling on various bridges around the city. Sadly I wasn’t able to get a smart card at Tara station and had to get a normal fare card. I’ve considered starting up a collection of smart cards but have utterly failed to do so at every opportunity outside of my hometown.
Hi there! Stealing the blog again for another travel post. I think I've been holding things up a little bit with the posts, so I apologize.
For our next-to-last full day in Ireland, we were trying to decide between two options: an all-day rail tour out west to Galway or a partial-day bus tour of County Wicklow, just south of Dublin. We decided on Wicklow as it sounded quite interesting and pretty, and it gave us more flexibility in our travel (and not having to get up at ludicrous o'clock was a nice bonus).
We were able to both buy tickets and catch the bus at the tourism office on O'Connell Street. There were a few hotel stops along the way, but we were soon headed out of the city. It was my first good look at the southern suburbs. Things quickly got more rural, but there were still a good number of commuter bus stops.
Our first major landmark was the lakes of Blessignton. The lakes were originally glacial valleys that were filled in with water to serve as reservoirs for Dublin. About 75 families were living in the valleys and were displaced when the time came to create the lakes, but their homes and villages remained. They can still be seen when the water level is lower than usual.
We continued onward into the mountains, stopping at the Wicklow Gap. It was very misty that morning, so the tops of the mountains weren't completely visible. There's a short movie in the photo gallery that shows the mist rolling in. Even with some obstruction, the views were very impressive. There's lots of green rolling hills and heather.
From there we headed downwards, past areas that were used for filming various movies, including Braveheart and another one involving King Arthur and Camelot. We descended into the valley of Glendalough, home to an almost 1500-year-old monastic site, but we'll get into more details on that in the next entry.
After touring Glendalough, we headed off to Avoca, home to the Avoca Handweavers and the site of the Ballykissangel television series. At the Handweavers' shop, we had a nice lunch of soup and bread and tried the lemon cake that our tour guide highly recommended, then did some shopping for various family members. We took a brief tour of some of the weaving rooms. After that, we walked down to the village, checked out the neat little library, and had a look at the river Avon. The river is very polluted due to runoff from copper mining.
We headed back to our bus and relaxed on the trip home. Our tour guide told us lots of stories. She grew up in Belfast but moved to Dublin and was quite happy with President Clinton's role in the negotiations. She also thought President Obama was a hottie. ;)
After we got back to Dublin, we did some more walking around, but that's another future entry.
Next up: Glendalough in detail, in which we discover that Saint Kevin makes anyone look extroverted by comparison.
Conditions were not right in Ireland in 1916 for throwing off British rule. A good number of potential soldiers had been mobilized, but many went of to fight in World War I. Similarly key organizers and a vital weapon shipment were both captured by the Brits. This prompted the nominal leader of the would-be revolution to call off “maneuvers” for that day in a newspaper that also made mention of the recent setbacks. This was probably the right call, generally speaking human nature errs against changing plans even when condition on the ground change so it’s hard to cut your losses.
Ultimately though the attempted at revolution happened anyways. A disparate group of Irish leaders came together and captured the Dublin Post office and were able to hold it against an initial onslaught of cavalry. Ultimately the British just sent a warship up the river Liffey and shelled the rebels from a distance. The leaders were captured and taken to Kilmainham Gaol which has quite an imposing edifice and is commonly used in films, including the original Italian job. As a practical tourist note, don’t try to take the Luas light rail line to the gaol unless you’re of a mood for a walk. It looks close on some of the tourist maps, but that is a result of inconsistent scale. Better to take the bus.
In any event, support for independence wasn’t that strong at the time of the revolution attempt, that changed when the leaders were executed. Adding insult to leg injury radical labor leader James Connolly could not stand up and so was executed via firing squad while tied to a chair. The executions were largely limited to key leaders as a result of public outcry, but by then the seeds of successful revolution were already sown. However, one thing our guide mentioned was that, with the exception of good exhibits at Kilmainham Gaol and a few other places, the Irish civil war that followed the treaty with Great Britain doesn’t tend to be as widely discussed. Score more people were executed in that conflict than were after the 1916 revolution, although in fairness the casualties were nothing like that of the potato famine which could be fairly blamed on the occupying power at the time.
I think I’ll read up on the civil war when I get the chance, I have a feeling it will be instructive regarding some modern conflicts.
Sorry for the slow pace of late. I’ve been trying to catch up some at work and my social life has been pretty busy at the same time. We caught the original Inherit the Wind at AFI last night and it was rather fun. Caught part of a lecture afterwards, apparently the most effective way to promote belief in the theory of evolution to the U.S. public is to play up the practical science that has resulted from it, particularly in the medical field. Also apparently insulting people’s religion isn’t that effective of an approach and plays into opposition framing. Shocker there.
In any event jumping back a little we returned to Dublin on the 13th and went to Dublin Castle on the 14th. Most every museum in Ireland is only open from 10 am – 5 pm, so it can be rather tricky to get in that much non-wandering sight seeing. As a result, here’s some more pictures of things we could see from outside.
We actually wandered to the East part of town a bit on the evening of the 13th and saw the Customs House, the historic center of tax flows from Ireland to Britain. Also there was a memorial to the victims of the Irish potato famine and a Quaker ship that managed unlike most of the coffin boats never lost a passenger to America. What we commonly heard about the famine was that the population of Ireland was around four million, around a million died and another million emigrated. The population is about back to the four million level but hasn’t ever gone higher.
In any event, the remainder of the pictures were largely buildings and the like that we thought were neat.
The trip from Cork back to Dublin was fairly uneventful. We walked to the station and got the photos we couldn’t easily have gotten in the rain. There was one neat panorama in an office as we walked by. For whatever reasons our seats were properly reserved this our time with our names showing up in little red LED boards by the seats. The first time they just had ticket stubs so this was a bit more impressive. For whatever reason seat reservations seemed to be in play on the northbound but not on the southbound ones. I suspect that the way the directions worked out was just a coincidence though.
The final picture is of the fare gates at Heuston station in Dublin. Those gates work fine for the dart but despite fancy appropriate tickets they don’t seem to work for the cross country rail. That said, this wasn’t a big deal as they seemed well aware of the problems and consistently took steps to allow people to get around the fare gates. I’m guessing the full integration attempt is still in its infancy, seems worth doing in the long run.
Happily our second night in Cork was not interrupted by a fire alarm. That morning, avoiding the $25 buffet in the Clarion, we went out to the English Market. I haven’t actually been too the Eastern Market in DC, but it did remind me of a higher end version of some of the indoor riverside markets in New Orleans. There’s a wide variety of small butcher stands, bakeries, and other food sources. In addition there was a neat second story cafe overlooking one of the courtyards.
Cork had a more intimate feel than Dublin. The central city is on an island between two rivers with good pedestrian thoroughfares. Beyond the rivers hills were fairly common with some streets that look San Franciscan. The weather had been moderately rainy as it was off and on for the rest of the trip, but it wasn’t so bad as to dissuade us from walking. As a side note, our walks did benefit from a set of Ireland cards we’d bought. Each had directions and commentary on the front with a map on the back. The maps were often quite zoomed in and made for handy little guides even when veering off the main path. If I find the cards in the next week or two I’ll be sure to plug them by name.
Hello again! Once more I'm stealing the blog to write a realquick entry about our trip to and from the Cliffs of Moher (about which Greg wrote the entry proper).
It's about a two and a half hour drive from Cork to the cliffs, which are on the western side of Ireland. Two major (and fairly obvious) geographical differences between there and the US:
You can a good chunk of the way across the country in two and a half hours.
The Atlantic Ocean is on the west coast.
Fairly soon after we set out, we passed through a village that was having its annual horse fair the next day. In addition to the horses that had arrived, there were a lot of vendor tents lining the streets, selling fairly random merchandise (like a bootleg Winnie the Pooh toy with the moniker of "Mr. Bear.") Traffic was fairly slow, so we decided to detour on the way back.
For the most part, the trip was quite pleasant. Good conversation and relaxation. There were a few brief downpours along the way, but they cleared up fairly quickly, and the weather was quite nice when we reached the Cliffs.
We passed through Limerick on the outgoing and return trips, but no commemorative poems were written. On the way back, we managed to repeatedly end up near a car towing a Model T.
That night, we ate dinner at a restaurant called Amicus, which had a rather interesting and diverse selection of foods. I had curry with chicken, while Greg had a pizza topped with black pudding. The experiment was interesting, though not necessarily successful.
Afterwards, we said a quick goodbye to my friends, as it was late and raining fairly heavily. I was sad to part ways, but hope that we'll be able to visit them again or have them come visit. It was really awesome to meet up with them and I had so much fun hanging out together!
Kate’s friend had been so kind as to drive us to the UNESCO world heritage site the Cliffs of Moher. The facilities there were intentionally unobtrusive and blended into the nearby hills in a matter reminiscent of hobbits. There’s some video included, I’ve got a habit of playing around switching from landscape to portrait view and vice versa. It’s probably a bad habit, I’ll cut it out for future trips unless anyone likes it. In this case the video is there to capture the tides and the rather impressive wind. We stayed away from the edges as if you were caught off guard a gust could easily push you a few feet. The rustling of the grass reminds me of some Miyazaki animated landscapes.
A few points of note. Kate’s friend let me know that these were the cliffs of insanity from Princess Bride. Also, I heard from one of my interns that they feature in the latest Harry Potter movie, Half Blood Prince. Actually he thought it was a different set of cliffs, but a quick google search seems to indicate they are Moher’s. One thing to watch out for in the slideshow: several of my photos do focus on the shoreline. There actually is a cave down there, although apparently tours by boat approach are no longer done for safety reasons. Odd cultural note, there were a fair number of adds around the country for voting for the cliffs in a 7-up natural wonders of the world competition. In any event, this is one of the ones probably worth full screening if you have the inclination.
As tourist icons go, Blarney castle did not disappoint. While the locals were surprised at the number of people, it seemed quite reasonable to me and at worst meant there was a bit of a line on the parapets. The castle does make for quite a lovely ruin as the wooden floors and ceilings have all collapsed but enough of the building was done in stone that it’s still widely accessible.
The castle itself is predominantly a keep. There is a curtain wall off to one side, but restrictions on approach are primarily a result of the hill that loops you around the castle offering multiple opportunities for defenders to shoot at you. The keep itself had a range of protective measures, from murder holes to arrow slits to small spiral staircases that in one case include a medieval security check point. From the history I read, it sounds as if the family had a tendency towards fratricide, so they weren’t necessarily being paranoid in building the defenses.
Considering I’m in political science/international relations I did kiss the stone. I figure my diplomacy and bluff skills could use all the help they could get. Supposedly Blarney got its meaning as a more refined version of B.S. because of an Irish lord that managed to effectively maintain a polite but non-committal stance towards England’s monarch of the time. Thus the applications to international relations were there from the start.
Hi there! Once again, I steal my husband’s blog account to bring you more tales of interest! (To me, at least.)
Our original plan was to meet up with a friend of mine who lives in Cork. We were going to head to Cobh (pronounced “Cove”), departure point for many of those emigrating from Ireland due to the famine, and also the last port of call for the Titanic. About half an hour before we were due to arrive, we get a text from my friend asking if we can change plans since the weather had gotten so horrible. Sure enough, we looked out of the train window to see that the increasingly cloudy weather had turned into a driving rain.
Said rain kept on as we arrived in the city. In a rare departure from using public transit, we took a cab from the train station to the hotel since we weren’t familiar at all with the bus routes and this was no weather to be walking around in. I can safely say that it was one of the two worst weather events we encountered on the entire trip. (The second would be some sporadic but heavy downpours to and from the Cliffs of Moher the next day.)
After checking in at the hotel, we rested up a bit, then headed down to the hotel lobby to meet up with my friend. This would be our first face-to-face meeting, as we’d only ever communicated online before. To my extremely pleasant surprise, another friend of ours who lives in the UK had come over to meet up as well. Totally unexpected, and really great to meet her. We then headed off for dinner at No. 5 Fenn’s Quay, which offered a nice selection of traditional Irish dishes. Much geeky conversation was had (we all play the same MMO, and Greg has absorbed way too much from listening to me babble). Afterwards we walked around for a bit, then headed back to the hotel so we could prepare for all the sights we were planning on seeing tomorrow.
First off, a few practical tips from our Ireland rail experience. Overall the system was rather straightforward to use. Prices seem to be considerably cheaper online, and you can still order tickets the night before and pick them up at the station with no difficulty. You’d have to be traveling a lot more than we did to make proper use of any of the rail passes and I’m guessing if you are traveling that much it’s probably worth also springing for the bus pass. That covered, a few details:
Reserved seats will be specified on your ticket and will sometimes be specified at the seats themselves. You’ll have a car letter and a seat number, the car letter is specified in the electronic readout on the side of the car, but not elsewhere.
People seem to regularly crowd in the close cars, leaving a fair amount of room if you walk to the more distant ones. I’m not sure how to combine this with optimal car picking for reservations.
Snack carts go through with reasonable selection. The selection is a bit better at the actual snack cars although when we wanted a full meal not all the sandwiches on the menu were available. The sandwiches themselves weren’t half bad, but they’re also not that exciting. This all really makes sense, as none of the train rides will be that long.
The fare gates seem to work just fine for the commuter rail but often were had trouble processing proper rail tickets. Fortunately they seem well aware of this problem and take steps to resolve it.
The LAUS, a streetcar light rail system, provides a nice chic way to get between the two main stations in Dublin. In this, Dublin has a leg up on Chicago where the integration of the elevated rail and the railroads is not impressive.
Trains were often a bit late but weren’t catastrophically so. I did like the reliability signs that were up in the station and included on the slideshow.
Since our first train trip was discussed in an earlier entry, let me dwell a bit on LUAS. It’s the intra-city light rail system in Dublin. There’s two lines and they don’t directly connect although you should be able to get between them via the other transit options with no trouble. The system seems pretty recent, actually, the sleek sexy cars seem like they’re from the near future or a world’s fair rather than the present. The fare machines are also nice, although the touch pads take some force to use. One cool feature, the bills and cards it would take depended on what you were buying, so it could do credit cards and larger bills and such but only for big purchases. That seems like a fair way to avoid having change problems or paying a lot in credit card fees. I’ll probably go through and tag all of my transit pictures at some point for early review, but I did take a fair number on each line to try to give a feel for the integration into the city and also what the ride was like. One last note for now, I learned from my wife’s local friend that LUAS apparently is the Irish word for tram and not an acronym as I assumed. Some clever engineer may have also back-fitted an acronym for something, but if so I haven’t figured out what it could stand for.
We had the Black Taxi tour drop us off around Queen's University. Dinner was at Vila Italia which was recommended by our driver. Not half bad. The university itself was fun to wander around in because of its interesting architecture. Also, despite its age, it did have advanced physics research facilities. Such research had a long tradition, notably visible in the statue of Lord Kelvin, an alumnus who gave his name to the temperature scale. The new library also had interesting architecture that imitated the overall design while still being of our time.
Another pleasurable part of the walk was the lovely college town by the University. It really puts College Park's Route 1 to shame although I'm told I should be grateful because UMBC had nothing at all. Finally, when taking the bus back to town, we had an interesting chat with a local we’d met over by Lord Kelvin’s statue. He was a veritable well of local information and also quite interested in physical sciences (e.g. apparently vertical take off technology has an inventor in Belfast). He recommended checking out Michael Talbot’s book, the Holographic Universe.
To my surprise, we were actually in Belfast shortly before the Orangemen march. That’s the time when a group of Unionists (Protestants who want to stay in the UK) do their traditional march celebrating the a victory of William of Orange in Ireland. As a side note, Orange was his color because he was from Holland, he was the Norman that conquered the UK. This march goes through a Catholic neighborhood and thus tends to direct clashes. The controversy over the march, and the larger marching season, is a symptom of sectarian conflict and not a root cause, but it does make for good news stories.
The tour, done in the back of a black taxi that Belfast is known for, got into the deeper issues. Here’s wikipedia’s full summary of the Troubles. A short version is that Catholics were a minority in Northern Ireland and often discriminated against. The British army was actually sent in to protect them around 1970 but ended up throwing oil on the fire at Bloody Sunday in (London)Derry when protesters were shot. Civilians were killed by partisans and security forces had happened prior to that point, but that was when the bombing campaign got going. In Belfast the center of the conflict was in two polarized neighborhoods in the West part of the city that were immediately adjacent to one another. The tour went through both of them, pictures on the Loyalist side first.
The square at the start is a march staging area. It’s surrounded by murals, some historical, some focusing on paramilitary (including terrorist) leaders, and a few that are harder to characterize.
Next stop was the “Peace wall” between the two communities. There were multiple gates with no checkpoints, though they would be closed in the evening. Similarly getting around the wall wouldn’t be hard at all. Instead, it serves to force anyone seeking to cause trouble to go through a few chokepoints, throw things over the wall at the caged backyards on the far side, or travel outside of their strongholds before or after an attack. While the Good Friday peace accord has been in place for around a decade now, our driver, Tom, didn’t think the wall would be going away anytime soon. I think he’s probably right. Walls do a good job of providing protection but they also calcify lines of division. You can’t attack as easily but nor can you intermingle.
The ones that came later on the Catholic side were more recognizable as appeals for legitimacy or agitation regarding other conflicts. The most interesting one for me was the mural of Bobby Sands, who was an IRA leader that the leadership managed to get himself elected as an MP while he was in prison. He subsequently died on hunger strike as part of an attempt to get IRA prisoners treated as political prisoners/P.O.W.s. Apparently he’s still a contested symbol between those in the IRA that compromised and breakaway hardliners, but I think the mural we saw was firmly in the mainline camp. On the Catholic side there we’d also seen a remembrance garden listing the IRA and civilian dead from the Troubles. Though there were certainly dead on the Unionist side, we didn’t see any of such shrines, so I’m not sure how they’d be different.
On the whole, the Black Taxi tour was well worth doing at 25 pounds for two people. As an added bonus we got dropped off over at Queen’s university setting up our dinner and walk for the evening.
Hello! This is not actually Greg. This is Greg’s wife. I have stolen the blog to write up a quick entry on our Dublin->Belfast train trip.
After some confusion regarding what bus route led to Connelly Station (one shopkeeper gave me walking directions, which would have been okay if we weren’t hauling luggage) we walked a few blocks, hopped a bus and reached the station.
The Enterprise train from Dublin to Belfast is pretty nice. It’s about your average sort of train ride, but there are a few neat touches like a map that lights up and shows your route. Greg’s a bigger train geek than I am, so I’ll let him add any additional points in a later entry. Along the way there was one really spectacular view of a huge valley with towns spread all across.
Belfast Central Station seemed bigger and more impressive than Conolly, although that could partly be because Dublin splits its train routes between two stations (we’ll use Heuston later when we go to Cork). Getting a bus to city central was quite easy (walk outside to marked stop, wait, find bus) and having all the buses end up at Donegall Square (right in front of city hall) meant it was always easy to find our way back on later trips.
We checked into the hotel and headed off to climb Cave Hill, which is wonderfully awesome and gets its own entry. It was also exhausting, so after we got back we grabbed a tasty dinner at Deane’s Deli (a bistro practically across the street from the hotel) and headed back to get some rest.
So, after a delightful Fourth of July and wedding, I’m leaving for Ireland tomorrow. Currently we’re planning to spend most of our time in Dublin (and at location a day trip away) with a few nights in Cork and in Northern Ireland at Belfast.
So, while internet access and inclination to post may be spotty, I should soon have some good pictures and stories. If you have any recommendations please drop them in email or via comment. Similarly, if you’d like a post card, drop me an email with your address. I can’t imagine being overwhelmed by reader comments, but just to be safe, that offer is limited to the first five respondents.
Since I'm using a picture of her with a chimp, I'm throwing on the disclaimer she includes with such pictures:
Disclaimer: Chimpanzees shown here are not pets, nor should they be considered as such. Chimpanzees are wild animals that belong in the forest, and the pet trade fuels a vicious cycle of wild chimpanzee slaughter and abuse. Chimps shown here are orphans and must be taken care of in a sanctuary environment that mimics as best it can thenatural environment of chimpanzees and attempts to minimize the trauma already inflicted on the infants.
Chimpanzees do NOT make good pets. They are wild animals, unmanageable in a domestic setting, strong and willful and dangerous. For more information, please visit:
This Tuesday, the Montgomery County Council unanimously supported a light rail Purple Line to connect Maryland’s inner Washington suburbs (Nice WaPo summary by Katherine Shaver). The line runs through Prince George’s county whose Council already fully supports the proposal. They also approved a study of single tracking for a few parts of the soon to be rail trail. I don’t see that happening. There’s a reason the words “single tracking” strike fear in the hearts of Metro commuters.
There’s a lot of people who worked very hard for to reach this step. Politicians, transit activists, and environmentalists have all made it possible. I’m grateful to all of them and many are even friends of the family. But I think they’ll forgive me if I focus for a moment on the work my father has done. He’s been trying to get the Purple Line, or its earlier incarnation the Georgetown Branch, for most of my life. Jay Walljasper, writing for the AARP, was kind enough to briefly profile him along with two others in a recent bulletin. The photo is by Chris Mueller of Redux, I think he did a rather good job. Amusingly enough that was the location they spent the least time at, because Silver Spring’s Metro platform can get rather cold. I’ve long watched all the work this has taken, I’ve helped with part of it, I’m proud of my Dad and of all of you.
There’s a good article in Salon’s Ask the Pilot column. Not a lot of new information on the specific case, but some context.
And lastly, let this be something of a lesson for those passengers who ignore those pre-takeoff safety briefings, scoffing at the seeming impossibility of a water landing. I know, the briefings are too long, too wordy and too bogged down with legal-ese and minutiae -- but there is good information in there, from the location and operation of the exits to the proper use of flotation devices.
True enough. Anyways, thank goodness everyone handled themselves well and got out safely. Speaks well of US Airways’ crews.
For those of you that support better transit in Maryland, the Post is doing an online survey of preferred options for the Purple Line. Light Rail is handily winning, but since polling is rare for this sort of thing, it’s worth a little effort to run up the margins. So far there’s less than 900 votes, so if ten of you vote we can move it a percentage point closer to 90%. Pretty dang simple since it’s a one question poll, assuming you have a Post login already, but I’m assuming most of you that live in the area do.
Now as to the content of the article. It’s a piece by Katherine Shaver noting the substantial support for light rail despite higher cost.
Here’s the summary of the arguments:
The state's study estimated that by 2030 bus rapid transit would generate as many as 58,900 daily trips while light rail would attract as many as 68,100. A light-rail line's capacity also could be increased more easily than a busway's, supporters say.
Most important, rail supporters say, fixed tracks attract developers who want to ensure that people have a fast and permanent way to ride transit to their shops, restaurants, condominiums and office buildings…
Busway supporters say a bus rapid transit system would bear little resemblance to the lumbering buses to which Washingtonians are accustomed. The buses are sleeker and roomier, proponents say, and outperform traditional models by using exclusive lanes and stopping much less frequently, only at designated stations.
I think the key argument is capacity. The buses are basically maxing out around 60k whereas Light Rail can go a good deal higher. Basically you can only run any sort of transit so often, so once you hit that point raising capacity means longer vehicles which means rail. There are busways in the DC Metro area that certainly could use moves towards bus rapid transit, but in an already developed area like the DC Metro area it’s so dang politically hard to get the designated right of way, even for busses, that you might as well fully exploit it. This is particularly the case when you have a county owned right of way like the Georgetown Branch which is perfect for rail because it was already a rail line in the past.
Anyways, please take a minute to vote. The more overwhelming the margin, the easier to convince officials of public support.
For those of you unfamiliar with the project, it’s an addition to the D.C. Metro transit system that would connect the inner-suburbs. When the Metro was designed it took a spoke approach to let commuters get into and out of the city. However, at this point, a lot of travel takes place between the suburbs and would be well served by a dedicated light rail line.. For more, see purplelinenow.com.
The environmental impact study just came out and their seeking citizen comments. Here’s some scheduling details and an alternative for those who can’t make it:
You may also email testimony by January 14, 2009. Simply send your comments totestimony@purpleline.info with "Purple Line DEIS Comment" in the subject line and include your name and address in the message.
I put my three minutes worth of speech in at the New Carrolton event this past Friday. I mostly covered all the ways I could have used a good high capacity line while growing up in this area and waiting most of my life for anything to happen. On Sunday a post editorial does a pretty good job of explaining the advantages of doing light rail over bus.
The report does conclude that bus rapid transit is more cost-effective than light rail. But those numbers are based on estimates through 2030. Light rail requires a bigger capital investment initially but is sturdier and, in many cases, more cost-effective in the long run. If Metro, which has operated for more than 30 years, is any indication, the Purple Line is likely to operate far beyond 2030. Light rail also provides more flexibility in the probable event that ridership exceeds estimates — just add more rail cars. Even critics of light rail acknowledge that the trains will be significantly faster than buses.
Noah Millman of the American Scene has a spectacular review of Hamlet as staged at the Stratford Festival. I would love to catch that staging, although I doubt I will. Nonetheless, this is the best piece of criticism I’ve read in a while and I read a fair amount of good criticism.
A sample:
Why do we take to Hamlet [the character]?
The false but easy way to make the necessary connection with the audience is simply to make Hamlet more appealing – play him as less brutal to Ophelia than the text directs; cut lines that play up his brutality; and so forth. The more true but also too easy way to make the connection is to play up Hamlet’s weakness, his psychic vulnerability – make us believe that, on some level, he really is mad. Carlson takes the harder, truest route, and aims to win us over by sheer display of intelligence. His Hamlet is peevish and dispeptic, but he runs rings around everyone else in the play. He does not want to be alone, but he is alone, perforce, and that loneliness has made him bitter. And you can see him, over and over again, trying to find someone who will not disappoint him, and finds only Horatio...
The blog itself, the American Scene, is one of the conservative/libertarian blogs I read for good writing and insight into that part of the opposition that argues in good faith. This sort of piece is my reward.
Wired has a 10 photo spread on the world’s most impressive subways. Sadly, though not unreasonably, Washington doesn’t make the cut. I’ve ridden six of the ten, I will not be satisfied until I’ve ridden all of them. The picture below is of Moscow’s, I knew that it was impressively engineered and timely but had no idea it had any stations this opulent.
Europe is well known for having excellent passenger train service while America’s trains typically run on track where freight has priority. Almost any regular Amtrak customer has had experiences where they have to weight for a freight train, which isn’t surprising as the freight companies own most of the tracks outside of the Northeast corridor. Interestingly, according to a recent Paul Krugman post, Europe may have the opposite problem.
I was a bit surprised early this week reading about the ferocity of fuel protests in Europe led by fisherman, truckers, and farmers. The farmers I expected, the fisherman were a bit of a surprise, but the relative strength of the truckers may have to do with the above graph. Regardless, goes to show that in our efforts to improve passenger rail in America we probably put some emphasis on new track rather than undercutting our relative strong (and quite energy efficient) freight rail system.
Still on vacation. Anyways, a bit more detail. I've been staying in St. George, Utah. The saint in question is not the dragon slayer but apparently a Mormon settler that found that potatoes can help prevent scurvy. Interesting if true.
Saturday we hit Zion National Park and today Bryce Canyon. Zion really feels huge, lots of big edifices on both sides. Bryce is more spread out and has 'hoodoos' which are not just a voodoo related term but also covers neat rock pinnacles. Of the two we had more fun at Bryce, but I'd recommend both.
I've taken lots of pictures, but I'll put them up when I have some down time.
Doing some geography sightseeing with family. Posting will thus be rather limited for the next few days and may simply not happen. In exchange, I’ll be sure to post my pictures when I get back. For now, here’s one from the general area.
Image by James Gordon used under a creative common license
[Dallas-Fort Worth] airport appears to have discovered an as-yet-unknown-to-me way of making air travel unpleasant -- there are no electrical outlets anywhere. At first, I’d thought this was just a particular instance of the common airport phenomenon of insufficient outlets. But no -- there are these power charging stations where you can pay money and charge up your iPod, cell phone, laptop, whatever. Nice work. It makes you wonder why they let you use the restrooms for free. Both in the airport and on the plane, that’s a potentially lucrative profit center.
I’ve been seeing more desk areas and less outlets in a lot of new airports. I thought that most of the desk areas were free and just crowded but I’m not sure. But I’ve spent many a minute hunting down outlets so the idea that they’re going to start intentionally giving us even less is scary.
That said, I’d be willing to pay to get outlets on international flights. It’d be cheaper than buying an extra battery.
So last week I attended a Montgomery County Council open forum in Silver Spring. I stayed for about a half hour of it. Went pretty well in my estimation, the questions from the audience were pretty good and the Council members were willing to engage the issues and indirectly talk about some of their areas of disagreement. The audience and County Council were both strongly pro-Purple line, so that was reassuring.
I’d been there to hand out leaflets before the meeting. That went pretty well, I’m rather good at leafletting and unlike many volunteer campaign activities I quite enjoy it. I was a little slow to recognize some of the Council members walking in but the one time it mattered I came up with a name.
Other causes leafletting were for saving a Piney Branch school pool, Clinton and Obama people, school board candidates, and group opposing adding gender identity to protected categories in the county. The group basically argued that male transvestites would run rampant in women’s rooms. There were three people in traditional Muslim garb and a woman in standard Western dress trying to get signatures to get a petition. The women’s husband was also hanging around in a low-key manner, I think because he realized, rightly, that the cause may inspire some fairly vehement disagreement.
The school board leafletter actually told off the one woman in Western dress for being a demagague. The husband then pointedly but silently returned the bit of school board lit, which I suppose is the classy way to handle it. That said, ideologically, my sympathies were with the school board lady. Harassing people in bathrooms will still be illegal regardless of whether gender identity is protected, their issue is scare-mongering. That said, I didn’t tell them off, but they didn’t bother me after I looked at their lit and returned it. I think they were more interested in attracting female support.
Traveling, hence no post yesterday. Sorry about not giving warning.
Anyways, my parents have a timeshare down in Longboat Key, Florida. Nice place, shame it had Katherine Harris for a representative.
I was reading glancing at the Longboat Observer. Lead on the Democratic endorsements:
"It is an intellectual mystery how voters can embrace Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. (John Edwards is essentially out of it).
There is no other way to describe Clinton and Obama then as socialists.
Heartwarming. But it is nice to read something like that and remember just how small our differences are on the Democratic side and how great our selection is. Everybody is backing some form of universal healthcare even if Obama is still wrong on the mandates issue. Good times. (For the record, if they had a gun to their head, they'd ask that the trigger would be pulled, then they'd go for Obama as a second choice).
Photo by cmiked used under a Creative Commons license (Not using my own shots as we couldn't find the camera connector cable)
The main point is: in one sprawling area are many hundreds of individual art factories, in which teams of artists crank out hand-painted replicas of any sort of picture you can imagine. European old masters. Andy Warhol. Gustav Klimt. Classic Chinese landscapes. Manet. Audubon. Botero. The super-hot and faddish contemporary Chinese artist Yue Minjun, whose paintings and sculptures all feature people wearing enormous grins. Thomas Kinkade, the "Painter of Light." Walter Keane, the "Painter of Mawkish Big-Eyed Kids."
This and more is on sale, priced more or less by the square meter. We saw suppliers delivering huge rolls of canvas, to be converted into "commodity art" -- which is what the English sign on one store said.
We weren’t in Shenzhen long, so we definitely miss Dafen, the art factory village he’s talking about. The phenomenon isn’t quite so pronounced in art districts in the big city, although I do recall some shops that were similarly loaded with paintings.
Instead the main thing I remember are fake art students. My guidebook regularly warned me against them. They hung out at major tourist spots, including within the Forbidden City and told me about this art show that featured some of their work. Essentially they were just hawkers with more than average English skill. They’d lead you to an overpriced shop. I never hit one myself, but I was rather surprised to see an "art exhibit" was in the Forbidden City itself. I guess it was rented out just like the other museum shops.
I read an article in the Economist on China’s troubles dealing with all the laid off People’s Liberation Army soldiers. The Army is shrinking fairly rapidly in an attempt to modernize. Used to be they could just be sent to State Owned Enterprises, but there’s less of those now and the ones still around resent having ex-soldiers dumped on them. Many soldiers just get sent back to their village.
Back when I was studying this issue, I read about a few PLA pensioner protests in Beijing. Those tended to be big news and were handled fairly delicately as the authorities realized the precariousness of their position. This isn’t to say that promised concessions ever came through, but when the pensioners resisted crackdowns the government often backed off a bit.
Anyhow, while in China, I noticed a fair number of gents wearing camouflage jackets. I wasn’t sure at the time if it was just a popular look or they were former PLA. Based on this article, it sounds like they may well have been former soldiers that were demobalized.
The trip home was fairly uneventful. As much as I enjoy looking out the window while flying I may give up and start doing more aisle seats. It’s nice to be able to stand up and walk around on a long flight and I won’t always have an exit row. That said, there were some interesting views on the way back. Alaska was quite pretty and I did the equivalent of cloud spotting on the terrain below.
In one amusing coincidence, there was a former cabinet official and top board member of the think tank that employees me on the plane. I knew his aide and so said hi to him and got introduced in turn to the dignitary who was quite nice. The Dulles shuttle and customs are really the great equalizer.
I had one mandarin orange with me when I got off the flight. They don’t actually give you anywhere to dispose of them once you leave. I was expecting at least one area to dump items you don’t want to take through customs, but apparently we don’t do that in the U.S. any more. I was a bit worried as one of the customs guys told me I’d have to take it to agriculture.
However, when I reported it I was thanked for being honest and just given a card that said I needed to see agriculture. I swung by agriculture, dropped off the orange, and was on my way, only thirty seconds the worse for wear. For the record, I was planning to rage against the paranoid security measures, I’m happy to have been wrong in this case. Then I met up with my parents and my soon to be fiancee and got the heck out of Dulles.
The Summer Palace continued to inspire for the second half of my visit. We were short on time so I missed the Naval contracting debacle that was the Marble boat and instead Rick and I headed up the Temple of Buddhist Incense which you see behind you (note that translations of Summer Palace sites are highly inconsistent).
The walk up to the Temple was a lot of fun and gave me a chance to get a close look at some of the roofwork. The view from the base of the temple was quite satisfying, much like the hill next to the forbidden temple it gave a great view of all the elegant nearby buildings. Interestingly, the Empress Dowager and the Empress had separate courts. The Emperor was effectively under house arrest in his, although in fairness to the Empress hers didn’t seem any nicer.
Our final stop on the way out was this neat market bisected by a canal. There were drawbridges on both sides and all the works in it had traditional garb on. I didn’t buy much at all but it was quite fun. Particularly because Rick haggled hard, walked away, and then ultimately the merchant gave in to a final bit of negotiation from opposite sides of the canal!
Took an unmarked taxi back and despite attempts to offer overly high prices back we got the same rate that we got over. After a subway trip back I hit the post office and then got a taxi out to the airport. The drive wasn’t that bad although apparently it can get really backed up by traffic. Beijing Airport was on the whole rather nice and friendly, United even upgrade me to an exit row. Sadly there were no outlets and no places to mail postcards once you got past security. I bought some Olympic mascots from a merchant that promised to drop the last few postcards in the mail. Obnoxiously we had our liquids taken from us, again, when boarding the plane. So I lost the iced chrysanthemum tea I bought after getting past security. Not cool!
For my last day I didn’t need to leave for the airport until about 3 pm and so I decided to take a trip to the Summer Palace. The original palace was destroyed by the 8 Allied Powers and my guide book recommended against it as mostly being a nationalistic complaint. That said, it did get a picture in the Baltimore Sun that made it look like an interesting ruin, so maybe I’ll stop by next time.
The intact palace was built back in 1750 but was most strongly associated with the later Empress Dowager Cixi and is a sprawling park with a range of temples, courtyards, and gardens. To a greater extent than at the Forbidden Palace, many of the buildings have been converted into antiquities museums. Sadly most of the indoor museums didn’t allow pictures, but that’s no different than the West. This is my kind of palace really. I like big castles and fortresses well enough, but when it comes to Palaces I prefer them broken up and generally park-like.
The picture above is from the Garden of Harmonious Interests which was quite delightful. There were actually a few different choirs, amateur I'd think, that were performing in the various stages, a phenomenon I saw elsewhere in the Summer Palace and back in Xi'an. They didn't always live up to the name of the garden. After leaving the Garden we swung by the a stage/palace area which had live shows. After that, wandering by yet more pretty buildings, we came to a museum with a neat range of historical artifacts. Not quite up to Shanxii Provincial museum standards but none too shabby.
We'd actually bought the fully inclusive ticket in advance, I think it was a good deal if you have the time, all the special locations were worth it. I'm not sure I can say the same of my 2 yuan Corn popsicle, it was unique but that's about all I could say for it. Also, on a tourist advisory note, use bathrooms whenever you can, they're hard to find.
After getting back from the Great Wall I did some money withdrawing and shopping before we headed off that evening to get Peking Duck. The restaurant was in a hutong, which is a neighborhood with one story buildings and small windy streets. They used to be quite common in Beijing but are steadily being replaced with denser developments. They also don’t tend to have many amenities, so restrooms are often outside of the houses and communal. The PRC’s concept of eminent domain doesn’t have nearly as many protections as in the West, so not surprisingly all the bad things that can happen when your neighborhood gets razed are a bit more common here.
The Peking Duck place was actually quite class even so. I’d never had it properly before. Apparently the routine is to get a crepe, put soy sauce on it via a cucumber slice, get a slice of duck, and then roll them all up and eat the crepe like a mini-burrito. All of this should be done with chopsticks to really do it right. Took a little effort but I could pull it off. The dinner was quite tasty and an excellent note to end the official part of the trip on.
Afterwards Rick and I went to take one last look at Tiananmen Square at night. Unfortunately, while it was just a ten minute walk away the group took a bit too much time touring the hutong the restaurant was located in, so the lights were already out. The square proper was actually fenced off and had the occasional patrolling guard, which is apparently not standard practice. After taking the subway back, I hung out a bit with my fellow travelers and slept my last night in China for this trip.
I actually didn't bother with a lot of the English mistakes. They're
still quite common but in an era of LOLcats I'm not sure they're still
all that funny in their own right. I considered Article 11 to be an
exception. This was from the area near the big Goose Pagoda which was
highly touristy but interesting.
[Note: This may be a repost. I originally published it as a page and not a post, so I'm not sure if anyone actually saw it (nor am I sure what the difference is).]
The total distance we walked was just 7-9 km but we took our time looking at the scenery and there were a lot of rough bits, so it took about three hours. There was actual a variety of sources of difficulty that made the wall trek fun:
Steep stairs, as previously mentioned the stairs are sometimes no wider than my feet.
Rough bits where the stairs had devolved into basically broken rock or might not have been properly carved in the first place.
Smooth bits where the whole top of the wall was sheered off. The walk was still rough enough to give some traction, but there weren’t really fortifications on the side to use for support.
Parts where the wall has given way (typically at former gates or such where there was only an arch and not the full wall base) that you had to traverse by going on a trail.
Anyways, I fairly stupidly did all my planned purchasing from our "helper" in the first half of the trip. This left me in a bit of a foul mood regarding the "helper" in the second half who regularly pointed out what great friends we were and how I could buy a book later. (I ended up buying a bit less than a book, but still). However, the trip was still far too fun for even that to really throw me. Katie showed more wit and wisdom than I did and actually managed to shake off her people for the whole second half.
The final exit was neat. There’s a gorge with a small river that you can pay 10 yuan to cross by a hanging bridge. After that there’s an easy and well-maintained walk down an artificial bit of wall to the tourist trap entrance/exit. We had lunch there and took our group shot. Traversing the wall was actually a fairly expensive journey (40 yuan at the start, 40 yuan for the second half, 10 yuan for the bridge (so $15 or so total) plus stuff I bought). However, it was well worth it particularly because the hike was fun in its own right even before considering the unbeatable views. That said, my favorite of the trip bit was probably still the bike-ride through karst country since that got me more of a feel for modern China.
I’ve thrown one up on Google Web Albums. It’s about 230 so about 20 minutes at 5 seconds a picture. I think I may later throw in a few slides to establish location, but I haven’t found a good tool for that yet and am a bit too busy to make them by hand.
We had quite a journey to the Great Wall. We got up early in the morning, piled into a bus, and rode for around two and a half hours. The point was to get an entry area that would be largely devoid of tourists and it did indeed pay off. There was a bit of a climb to get to even one of the lower points of the wall.
On the way up, we were accompanied by a batch of merchants with a new skill: unrequested assistance in exchange for guilt. Some of our more experienced travelers were able to shake off the help, I wasn’t quite so strong and occasionally didn’t actively refuse assistance and felt obliged to buy a few things. Ultimately, it would have been a better experience had I just said no solidly at the start and stuck by it. Our ’guides’ had some useful information and did make things easier, but I enjoy rock scrambling. Fortunately I did have the willpower to do many bits on my own often having to shake off a helping hand.
The Wall is nothing short of amazing. It’s hard to really grasp the sheer scale of the thing. The great satisfaction of the Great Wall is being able to look forward, sometimes with slight horror, at what you have to climb and then being able to look back at how far you’ve come. It’s a trick a fair number of action RPGs have picked up, to their credit. Anyhow on the first quarter the walk was reasonably smooth, although the stairs were often quite steep and at times no more wider than the width of my feet. The stairs within the towers tended to be particularly bad, although the view from the top was often worth it. In the end, only myself, Katie, and Mick decided to go for the whole walk and rather than heading on to the bus decided to trek all the way to the restaurant where we’d have lunch.
As a side note, in one of these pictures, I helped Mick hold a Union Jack. While I’m an Anglophile, I pledge my allegiance to the U.S. However, the guy’s crazy enough to carry it around with him and he served as a police trainer in Iraq, so I figured as an American the least I could do to show some gratitude is to help him hold his flag.
As I mentioned in my Forbidden City post, I went to Jingshan park after leaving the Forbidden City. The park is quite large and has a hill made of earth dug up to make the boat and some nearby lakes. There’s a small admittance fee and getting there also demands shooing off bicycle cart drivers. Both Bob and my guidebook strongly recommend against using them, apparently they tend to go places you don’t want to go and then renegotiate the price. When we went for Peking duck on a subsequent night, there was actually an angry group of drivers that briefly followed our taxi. Apparently the driver was treading on their turf.
Anyways, the ascent has stairs and such and isn’t that bad. However, I was feeling a bit sick and tired so I strained a bit. The view from the top is quite good and as my pictures show Beijing is defined by sprawl. The city just spreads out with both dense and low-rise sections. The city does benefit from a good subway system, so it isn’t that hard to get around, but the feel is very different from Hong Kong. There’s also a series of ring roads that reminds me of the attempt to deal with D.C. beltway congestion by just building an additional farther out beltway.
After our misadventures on the taxi ride home I enjoyed some downtime and then went with the group to an acrobatics show. I had a bit of a headache, so I’m fairly glad I didn’t try for the high pitched Beijing opera instead. Anyways the show was quite good, but I didn’t really feel comfortable taking video during it so the footage doesn’t really capture what was going on.
Anyhow, there was a group of girls who seemed to be in their teens and boys who seemed a bit younger and they were all quite good. The main point of note was that they were trying bits that clearly pushed the limits of their abilities. They sometimes didn’t quite make the jump and a half-dozen bowls were kicked up by unicycle riders but not caught on their heads. In an impressive feat of stamina, one acrobat managed to do her full range of contortions while suffering from a nosebleed. Some of the cutesy bits involved the boys who for one act had stagehands dressed as turtles and for another wore about four hats each and then passed them all around. All in all a great show.
Bit of a walk to dinner which was fairly good and had some spice. The bathroom at the place was a good deal less pleasant and made me miss the relative luxury of even cruddy American restaurant bathrooms.
The Forbidden City is actually quite the large palace complex. I’d say it has the area of a couple city blocks. The general design, courtyards broken up by large sub-palaces, is fairly repetitive although the art varies some with each section. Interesting, you can tell a building’s importance by the number of little animal guardians it has at the upper corners of the roof. If it’s eleven, than the building was used for the Emperor’s most important functions. It is neat though being able to freely wander, back when this place was in operation for a guy like me to get in I’d have to be a top scholar or artist or give up hope of children.
There’s a lot of paintings on the buildings, statuary, and carved stone. The statuary and some of the giant water buckets used for fire extinguishing were gold coated. Some of that gold was stripped off when the place was raided by European powers back during the Qing Dynasty. The most precious treasures are actually over in Taiwan, although there is a neat clock museum. I didn’t actually see what they did have in the treasure gallery, Mick said it wasn’t that great and it cost extra. And speaking of costs, there was a quite affordable resturant. I got a good lunch and drink for around twenty five yuan (~$4).
Spending only a few hours wasn’t enough to really explore the place, although if we were guided (it was just me, Rick, and Mick) we may have seen a few more highlights. The audio tour was alright but the wifi proximity sensors didn’t always seem to trigger and there was no rewind or fast forward available. Also my guidebook incorrectly promised Roger Moore. The garden at the far end was quite neat and were I to go back I’d definitely take more time to explore it. There was one neat climbing area that apparently the Emperor and a consort would go up once a year to dine at the pagoda at the top. After we left we climbed the hill in Jingshan park, which was created using the soil from the moat. Good quick hike and a nice view from the top.
After my post noting the downsides of Washington’s National Mall I’ve got to say that Tiananmen Square makes us look good by comparison. The main problem with the Square is Chairman Mao’s mausoleum which is large, ugly, and central. It’s surrounded by communist art that’s not too shabby, except for the one guy who looks like a fascist. Apparently the mausoleum might not be around forever. Mao had specifically requested that he be cremated and I’m told the building destroys the Fung Shui of the square. If you like you can wait a few hours to shuffle by what’s allegedly his corpse, but I passed on that one.
This is actually one of the few places I saw guards with guns. Most everywhere else they were unarmed. Amusingly, I saw one changing of the guard in Xi’an that included a ceremonial walky-talky handover. That said, most of the patrols didn’t have weapons even here. There wasn’t a huge presence on the mall itself although this was the first place I saw marching squads. Instead I’m told they just have a huge surge capacity available within a minute or so.
Surrounding buildings include an old school Victorian architecture station, a national museum that’s presently closed for renovations (I saw trucks driving in and out at night), the Great Hall of the People, and the entrance to the old imperial city. The portrait of Mao was certainly big, but still a bit smaller than I expected. Anyhow, for all DC’s problems, the monuments are prettier, there’s more museums, I prefer earth to stone in a square of this size, and that’s not even counting the whole police state and massacre thing (China in general doesn’t feel like a police state but Tiananmen certainly does). I think the Mall is definitely the better gathering spot of the two.
Evac from Xi’an was a bit hectic because the central train station is overwhelmed and doesn’t have room to expand. After getting through security, higher than usual for US trains but well less than US trains, we had to sit for a bit awaiting boarding. I was fairly miserable due to a cold that only then decided to hit me really hard. When our train arrived we crammed in through the ticket gate and then up and over a pedestrian bridge to our boarding platform.
Incidentally, I carried two backpacks on this trip, a big one of mostly clothes and a smaller school-sized one that had my laptop as well as clothes I couldn’t stuff into the main bag. My big bag could also function as a roller bag and I sometimes used it as such when pavement was available. I did so on this occasion.
It was a mistake, it mean that my hands were tied up and made the stairs going up to the bridge a real pain. As a result of my hands being tied up, my wallet got nicked, I suspect this happened in the crush right before the stairway. Happily, I had heard from Bob that pickpockets would be a problem in Xi’an. As a result, after getting sick of using a money belt, I transferred most everything to my passport satchel bag. Only lost a wallet, less than 100 yuan (~$15), and my Library of Congress reader ID card. I was still a bit sick for the train ride, but we had fun celebrating. Maureen’s birthday and the boxed dinner they offered was pretty good.
Regardless, the train ran a couple hours late. I actually was glad, this cost us some time in Beijing but meant we didn’t have to leave at an early hour. We caught a taxi to our hotel, or as the case may be a similar sounding hotel near by. Bizarrely even having cards with the name of the hotel and maps doesn’t seem to be enough for the taxi drivers. This actually happened again later in the day. I have an instrumental approach to taxis, if I can get within a block or two of a weird destination I try to get out immediately, my traveling companions were trying to get to the exact location, took another fifteen of lost taxi driver to convince them to go with my methods.
By comparison, I only made one or two mistakes on the subways and the signs were always excellent. The subways were actually dirt cheap here, only 2 yuan. They’re installing fare gates, you can see them up. But for now, you just pay to buy a ticket than give it to a gatekeeper. Not that efficient. James Fallows actually has a post with some of the cards that will soon be used. The new system should probably be in place for the Olympics this coming summer. Regardless, moral: subways rock!
[I added a bit more to this entry within a few minutes after first posting it.]
After having been thwarted twice by limited and even inaccurate ticket window hours, I finally made it up the Bell Tower in Xi’an as my last tourist act in the city. It was well worth it. There was a traditional performance on the inside including a massive set of chimes that had to be rung with this big wooden rod. Not surprisingly the bell pictured above was even louder and you could get three rings for a couple of bucks. Afterwards they recommended putting your hands on it, which was a lot of fun because you could feel the thing vibrate. There was also a shadow puppet exhibit on the inside and a few bush sized bonzai trees on the outside, all and all a fun place to visit.
[Trimmed bit about the departure from Xi'an so it can go with next entry and the pictures.]
And to end this particular entry on an even happier note, the ringing the chapel bell pun in the title is not entirely inaccurate. When I got back from China I proposed to my girlfriend who I suppose, much to Gene Weingarten’s dismay, I’ll now refer to as my fiance[e]. The actual pieces of jewelry I gave her I picked up in the Shaanxi museum back on Thursday[, silver and jade, I hope. Back at work my co-worker pointed out that the Dragon necklace actually fits well with the typical Chinese Dragon-Phoenix wedding theme. However, she added that the Dragon typically went with the male. Oh well, who said we went with traditional gender roles (or traditional gendered spellings of fiancee)?]
After heading back from the Terra Cotta Warriors, Rick and I went to visit Xi’an’s great mosque. Not surprisingly it was located within the cramped streets of the Muslim quarter. It took a bit of doing to find, navigating this area reminds me some of Quest for Glory II, large spaces can be hidden within small streets.
Regardless, the mosque itself is quite impressive with elegant gardens. If memory serves the mosque had five sperate courtyards, all in a row, with the main worship area at the far end from the main entrance. There was a worship service ongoing when I visited and side rooms were curtained off while the sound of prayers reverberated from loudspeakers. Overall it was more what I think of as a temple aestetic. A pagoda served as a minaret and so forth. That said, there were the occasional bits of Arabic, more common as I got deeper in, as well as depictions of Mecca and the like.
My timing was good and I arrived at the largest square near the main worship area as the prayers turned into a speech of some sort followed by fairly overpowering chanting. I didn’t get too close to the enclosed worship area since there were signs requesting that visitors not do so. Regardless, the site was definitely well worth the visit. By being a bit more ascetic it kept the beauty of Chinese temple design while toning things down a bit. I rather like the balance. The churches I noticed looked a bit more like western churches. Probably because Islam arrived comparatively early via the Silk Road and I don’t think Christianity made inroads until later.
I’ve started throwing in links to the photosets for past travel blog entries. I’ve done a few early ones and have linked to all the sets for Xi’an. [They’ll be in the start in brackets]
Go here to see all the albums for my China trip. I’ll throw new sets into the collection as I put more up. They are still grouped by blog entry to keep it to a manageable number of pictures at a time. I’m presently working to get it down to my 100 best photos, but that’s taking a little longer than I hoped. Check in early next week, hopefully, to see that.
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