incidents and accidents, hints and allegations

What, I answered comments instead of starting this report right away, I'm losing steam now. (The sangria's probably worn off, though.)

So today we tramped around Dublin and saw All the Old Things. We started at Trinity College, to see the Book of Kells and the Long Room.

Now, I have been to see these things before, in 1997 with rysmiel and possibly also papersky. And it might be just my terrible memory (I have a journal from this era, but it's in a format and possibly a location I can't read right now), but what I remember is looking at a couple gospels from the Book of Kells, open to whatever page they decided for that time period, and then looking down the Long Room and saying "yup. Long."

Things have become considerably more informative since then. There is a couple rooms worth of displays before the Book of Kells about the history, what materials were used to make it and what the illustrations meant, the scholarly theories on how many people worked on it, what they did about errors, all kinds of things. My favorite tidbits were two: (1) there's a whole page that was copied twice, which in a remarkable show of restraint is merely marked with red crosses in the margins; and (2) the illustrations sometimes went out of their way to emphasize the Latin meaning "he (Jesus) said", including once drawing a lion, which formed the first two letters, with its paws held to its mouth, which was surprisingly adorable.

Also, because the exhibit blows up all the illustrations so you can see the detail, it's all the more impressive to see the actual thing, which is bigger than a standard hardcover these days but not that much bigger, and all the exquisite artwork is tiny.

The Long Room had a display about Brian Boru which was told with text banners on one side and the most amazing art banners on the other: you can see all of them at the exhibit's webpage, and I highly recommend looking (they're by Cartoon Saloon, a local animation studio). It also had relevant original documents and artifacts as well as other pop-culture things about Brian, like a Mexican comic book.

And, of course, it's a really long room filled with books. And the very narrow ladders needed to reach the top shelves.

(It was very crowded even pretty much first thing on a week-day morning, but with some patience and willingness to maneuver, you can read and see everything. And they send you through the gift shop on the way back out too, not just on the way in, though weirdly I was prepared to buy a big pack of postcards with images from the Book of Kells (I was going to rotate through them with the diptychs from Bath), but the gift shop would only sell me individual ones, and only 7 different ones at that.)

Before we left, we saw workers restoring the cobblestones, which involved re-laying the stones themselves and then pouring asphalt or suchlike around them with what looked all the world like gravy boats.

Then we walked over to Dublin Castle, which I was also at in 1997—I went to the Eurocon, which was held in the convention-center part of the complex. Have some pictures:

On the way: stained glass over the Olympia Theatre

An example of the conglomeration that is Dublin Castle: a medieval tower joined to a more modern building, electricity included.

Two bits of the Royal Chapel (which dates from about 1814): how you did ventilation back then, and child(-like?) faces judging you from the ceiling.

One of a set of cool sand sculptures.

Did I mention, conglomeration?

The accompanying gardens are not very interesting in the center (flat grass laid out in a circle with spiraling brick paths to look nice from above), but in each of the four corners around the circle was something hidden: a memorial, a glass snake, another sculpture, and an overlook with garden and more statuary. It was pretty great.

There was also a free exhibit on the Ulysses Cylinders, which doubtless would have been more meaningful to me if I'd read Ulysses, but the process of making the glass cylinders themselves was pretty neat: a painter sketched designs, glassworkers recreated them in very thin rods of glass, and that glass design was then impressed on the hot unblown glass that would become the cylinders. (This involved a big team of people, none of whom are credited at the opening of the exhibit, but which are mentioned in the second room, which has the details on how it was done.)

After that we had an undistinguished lunch at the first place that appeared to be open (though it was serving drinks but not food for another fifteen minutes), and then we went Christ Church and St. Patrick's Cathedral.

Christ Church was not as interesting to me, and I can't put my finger on why? I mean, both of them have needed heavy repairs over time, and Christ Church has actual crypts, but St. Patrick's must play on some prejudice of mine regarding what "old" looks like. Also, it has better stained glass and is well-supplied with anecdotes about Jonathan Swift, who was Dean there for over thirty years.

I don't have a lot of pictures, because they're dark inside and the cameraphone can't cope with stained glass, alas, but here's a few:

Flying buttresses at Christ Church—I can't remember if this is the side that's 18 inches off plumb? It's incredibly disorienting.

A well-loved cat outside Christ Church.

A rare face on the exterior of St. Patrick's: no gargoyles, no statues, just this little face and, on the window below, two looking inward at the end of the surrounding direction, which are not nearly as prominent (and not in this picture). If anyone knows more, please chime in.

Anyway, we stomped around those, and then we stomped around by the river, and then we came back to the hotel and took a short nap before dinner, being thoroughly stomped-out.

We had tapas at Zaragoza for dinner, which was very tasty and a great value—we were there just before 6:30 and thus got their early bird special, which was a plate of 6 dishes for €17 and which would have been more than enough for just me. Chad & I split one of those and also had a single extra dish, and it was all delicious. (It was often difficult to get a server's attention, but when we did, they were pretty prompt.) Recommended if you're in the area.

Tomorrow, Newgrange and Tara.

Yesterday Chad was giving a talk in Bristol (his post-mortem, with a link to the host's writeup in comments), so we stopped in Bath along the way for some tourism, and I also stomped around Bristol a bit.

We had an extremely nice time in Bath. The Abbey right next to the Roman baths is very beautiful: St. Paul's is more impressive, but this was more lovely. The ceiling has this beautiful fan-shaped vaulting, which is carried through in the rest of the design, such as the altar. Also, there was lots and lots of stained glass, which I missed at St. Paul's.

The Abbey also hosts an amazing set of diptychs by Sue Symons that pair calligraphy with needlework to tell the life of Christ. I noticed the needlework first, of course, and here are some pictures: needlework portion of one diptych, needlework portion of another diptych. I also tried to get a picture of a full diptych, calligraphy plus needlework. I ended up buying a set of postcards of all 35 diptychs, on the ground that while a print was bigger and easier to see, I didn't really have anywhere to put it, but I could rotate through the postcards at work.

Then we went to the Roman baths, which are mostly pretty nicely done. They rely more heavily than I would like on audio tours, which I find annoying because I can read so much faster than I can listen. (Also, there is a Bill Bryson portion of the audio tour that is not nearly as funny as I was hoping, though Chad enjoyed it, so YMMV.) But the signs were generally sufficient and did a good job of putting things in context. Chad's post for the day has more pictures, but here a few I took: Gorgon's face, temple of Minerva; Julius Caesar, on the left, looks down at the (untreated) swimming pool in the rain; and The Pump Room, of Regency novel fame.

After lunch, I continued my not-very-serious quest to do research for the Strange & Norrell re-read / generally amuse myself by doing things I'd read about in books by sticking my head in at the Bath Assembly Rooms, where you can see the Tea Room and the Grand Octagon for free. I also indulged myself by taking a picture of the fancy mirrors in the Grand Octagon, which are exactly opposite each other.

Then we went to the Museum of East Asian Art, which is small and has very little explanatory text, but has some nice things and is worth a look. I took a lot of pictures, and these were just the ones that were lit well enough to come out reasonably on my phone: jades: pig and carp turning into dragon; ceramics: crab and horse; ivory: cheerful Immortals and
ocean life card case; other: dragon and fox and drum netsuke (I forgot to write the material down, but it looks like clay?). (Full titles and time periods are in the links.)

Then we went to Bristol, and while Chad gave an interview and prepped for his talk, I took a little walk around. In Castle Park, I found a Bristol space egg at St. Peter's Church, which for reasons you can see in the last picture is dedicated to those who died in the Blitz. I walked down to Queen's Square, which has many elegant buildings around it, and then got slightly off-track and stumbled upon a very tiny but lovely park behind the building where the talk was being held, which turns out to be Temple Church and Gardens. If it had been earlier I could have visited the ruins of the church and seen the former Templar church revealed by the WWII bombing and admired the leaning tower, but instead I was delighted by the tree-lined path and the gardening along the ruins.

After Chad's talk we went out for dinner at The Stable, where I discovered a cultural difference in the form of my instinctive "no, one does not put a soft-cooked egg in the middle of pizza!" Also, I had some very good cider, but unfortunately I can't recommend varieties because it was a tasting menu and we didn't get the number key—I mean, I'm never going to be back there, so it hardly mattered. Then we came back, getting to the hotel after 1:00 a.m., which is why there was no post yesterday.

Today, again on the vaguely research-ish theme mentioned above, we went to Apsely House, which besides never looking correctly-spelled no matter how many times I check it, was Wellington's house after he was created the first Duke. No pictures, because a lot of it was very dimly lit—not good for art viewing, unfortunately, especially since the explanatory text was minimal and many of the painting labels were on the paintings themselves and angled in a way that I had trouble seeing. But it definitely gave me a sense of the aesthetic of the era and the massive gratitude toward Wellington—literally, in, e.g., the form of two huge porphyry candelabra from Russia and the centerpiece of a Portuguese plate service that is literally eight meters long. (Not all the plates and dishes and stuff laid out end-to-end. Just the centerpiece.) Though to my mind the most boggling was the porcelain Egyptian-themed china service than Napoleon commissioned as a divorce gift for Josephine: yes, I want to display seven meters of replica Egyptian buildings and statues at formal dinner parties and say "hey, my emperor husband divorced me, but at least I got this nifty porcelain service out of it!" (She refused it, which is why Wellington got it; the King of France gave it to him after Waterloo, IIRC.)

Anyway, I wouldn't recommend it as a general matter, but for my purposes it served well enough. But I realized I should read a decent—short!—bio of Wellington (Napoleon too, but that can wait); any recommendations?

(Oh, and there was a fox rolling and stretching in the private garden, which was pretty great; I've never seen a wild fox at such length before.)

On the way to Wellington Arch, I was amused to note that equestrians have to push for the light like anyone else.. On the way out, we walked through Hyde Park, which is very nice. We were at the end with the Rose Garden, which is very lovely but this statue is a bit of an odd introduction, since it looks like the kid is forcing water out of the fish's nostrils by kneeling on it and squeezing. (Here's another bit of the Rose Garden.) We also came across this fabulous tree with branches that grew down to the ground; as I said on G+ when I posted it, imagine growing up with this to play hide-and-seek and tree house with?

Then we had very good pub food at The Victoria near Lancaster Gate, and came back for the con, about which more in a moment.

Oh, and here's Chad's pictures for today.

Now let's see if the WiFi is back . . .

Today we started our tourism with a walk around the Tower of London (we decided not to go inside when we saw that adult admissions were over £20 and that there was a big line. I would have liked Chad to see the ravens, because they are really much bigger than I personally expected, when I saw them in 1997, but that was about it). The still-in-progress ceramic poppies installation is really beautiful and moving; here's a picture I took of poppies mounting in a wave, or maybe an incomplete arc, and Chad has a nice one of the shadow over the moat in the start of his picture set for the day.

We also amused ourselves by noting the two space eggs visible from the Tower: one, two. As I said when I posted those, Chad noted that if they hatch at the same time, London's in trouble . . .

Then we walked over to St. Paul's Cathedral, which isn't super-close but which was a perfectly fine stroll. I particularly noted the Bank of England, which is even more fortress-like than the Tower, honestly: that is just one monolithic lump of a building saying "No."

St. Paul's is of course very big and very impressive. We did go inside for that, and admired the architecture and the ornamentation. We also climbed a whole lot of stairs to get better views.

( note: contains discussion of stairs, heights, and unhappiness with the prior two )

We also looked at the chapel at the back of the ground floor, dedicated to the American dead of the Second World War, and a striking video art installation called "Martyrs" (information).

After St. Paul's we had a very pleasant lunch at Cote Brasserie, and then stopped by the British publisher of Chad's first book and had a nice chat (and admired the cover art on the wall). After that, the British Museum.

The British Museum and I did not get off to a good start with the first exhibit we went into, on the Enlightenment. It was in a long room with floor-to-ceiling specimen/book cases and for some reason I just found it oppressive and unwelcoming, all those looming cases that were only minimally labeled. (The actual thematic bits about the Enlightenment were in cases out on the floor.) And after that I may have somehow led us in the wrong chronological order or something, so I felt disoriented.

But things got better! The Assyrian lion hunt reliefs are very excellent (though my enjoyment of the realism of the lions was tempered by the fact that they were being led out of cages to the slaughter; really, they should be "lion 'hunt' reliefs"); the Nereid Monument had three statues of sea-nymphs (not placed in the reconstructed temple) whose dramatically-billowing draperies made them look like fashion models; and there were the Parthenon Sculptures, known to readers of Regency novels as the Elgin Marbles.

Really, that's why I wanted to see them, because they're in so many books I've read (e.g., one of Kate's early letters to Cecilia: "The second day, we were taken to see the Elgin Marbles, which was interesting, and to listen to other people see the Elgin Marbles, which would make the eyes roll right back in your head with boredom."). Unfortunately, the gallery they're in now is modern, donated in 1939 if we did the Roman numerals right, so the experience isn't the same.

Of course one can't talk about these sculptures or a good deal else of the art in the British Museum without talking about how it was acquired. The tone of the display's discussion is somewhat fascinating to me , such as the statement in bold letters that no, we can't put these back on the Parthenon, it's in too bad shape, even the Greeks are taking the remaining statues off . . . (You can get a sense by seeing the museum's online statement on the matter.) To me, whatever the merits of the preservation argument for removing them in the first place, the current arguments don't seem very strong, and it always seems a shame to me to split up works of art that were intended to be see as a single piece. But then, I'm probably influenced by rolling my eyes at a prior display, which noted that an ancient cylinder had become so important to the Iranian people that the British Museum gave Iran . . . a replica. Gosh, you shouldn't have.

(There was also a large totem-like carving from the Pacific Northwest, IIRC?, that the label made a point of saying was sold by the chief of the tribe after the tribe had already moved locations; things like that made me think the museum was aware that people would or should have those concerns.)

But the Parthenon exhibit is well-done and more interesting than I expected (art from the Greek & Roman eras often does not particularly speak to me). After that we popped into African art, but got shooed away before we saw more than a couple of great contemporary pieces (Chad has pictures at the end of his post). I'll never believe British museums' stating closing times again, as we were shooed out by 5:15, when the listed closing time is 5:30.

We had a bit of an unpleasant adventure after that, trying to find a Vodaphone store to buy international voice minutes (since our Internet is so bad that Skyping home won't work), during which we conclusively decided that Google Maps is no good for real-time walking, because it just doesn't update fast enough (and also showed us two stores that apparently don't exist any more). (I realize we don't walk faster than we drive, and so I can't explain why it works for driving and not walking. And yet, both after the museum and on a prior occasion during the day, it just didn't.) Also, it was raining.

After we threw in the metaphorical towel and came back to the hotel, we had restorative Indian food at a place right outside the convention center (Bollywood Brasserie or Bollywood Grill, depending on which sign of theirs you read), I lost the fight to buy international minutes online (it was trying to validate my credit card's zip code as a post code and, unsurprisingly, failing) and looked up a nearby store location for tomorrow morning, and now I've taken much too long writing this up. I think from now on I have to stop putting in links, because half the time I have to find them on my phone and then sync them in my text editor program over to the tablet, because the wireless is just that bad, which takes up lots of time.

Tomorrow, Shakespeare at the Globe in the afternoon, and maybe Wellington's house in the morning. Wednesday, Bath and Bristol for Chad's evening talk. Thursday, Worldcon starts (though there may still be tourism in the morning.) And no more spiral staircases if I can help it.

The trip report commences!

Yesterday we drove down to Long Island, where Chad's grandmother lives: we were leaving the car at her house and she was driving us to JFK. The drive down was awful, it was like Zeno's paradox of traffic, the closer we got the slower traffic was (accident, construction, accident, accident . . . ). But we'd left ourselves plenty of time and were able to have a nice sustaining dinner at an Italian place near Chads grandmother's before making it to JFK with no traffic at all.

Of course, if we'd known what was in store for us, we might not have eaten outside the airport after all . . .

( cut for conspicuous consumption and liberal guilt )

We're staying down in the Docklands, near the convention center for WorldCon, which is a good ways from Heathrow. By the time we lugged our stuff in it was about 2:30 on a bright sunny warm afternoon, and we decided to go over to Greenwich.

Our timing was really not good on this. We took a cable car over the Thames, and as we crossed, it was like heading into Mordor, looking at the wall of thunderstorms heading our way and then overtaking us. To my very, very intense vexation, I don't seem to be able to link to individual photos within Chad's G+ photo album, I'm on my tablet so I can't right-click and get the image URL and direct link that way, and I'm too tired to decide which is more vexing, selectively re-sharing individual pictures so I can link to the post, or having you all page through the entire album, or some other more sensible solution. (The hotel wifi is AWFUL. The data plans on our phones is very variable speed-wise. So I'm not pulling the photos back off Chad's camera and uploading them into my own spaces.) Taking the path of least resistance, then, Chad's full photo gallery. The, uh, fifth and sixth pictures should be of the approaching storm.

(The cable car is nice enough once, I guess, but I wouldn't go out of your way for tourism purposes.)

The rain was literally horizontal when we arrived, and we decided to make a dash for the nearest Tube, which is pretty close, because otherwise we can't do anything—the cable cars stopped running right after we arrived because of the weather. We got thoroughly drenched, and squelched our way onto the Tube and then the DLR [*] to Greenwich.

. . . where it is bright and sunny again, though windy, and stayed that way for the rest of the afternoon. The only five minutes it poured after we got to our hotel, and we were out in it. At one point we were in the park with all the Greenwich museums and it seriously looked like an oil painting, the light was so amazing.

[*] We managed to completely overlook the Oyster card touch-points for the DLR for, uh, rather a long time. I'm hoping the entirely unpaid rides are made up for by the trip from Paddington at which we entirely failed to touch out at all.

Anyway. We went to the Royal Observatory, which is pretty great. The actual observatory, up on the hill, is currently hosting a very fun steampunk exhibit re-imagining the quest to find a reliable method of determining latitude. Steampunk is not particularly my thing, but I was surprised how charming I found it. The wood-and-metal outdoor structure after the "Humped Pelican Crossing" picture (taken because, what??!!—don't explain it, it would spoil it) was part of that exhibit. The next picture is someone leaning over the meridian photo-op line; then there's a picture of part of the Octagon Room at the top that Christopher Wren designed (very pretty, hot as anything with all the windows and being at the top); then there's a series of pictures of a large drawing of a plan to lift elephants with balloons, which you all have to look at, because the adorable long-suffering elephants! Kept in a neatly-labeled Elephant Paddock! Also there is a squid under Yet Another Boat—don't worry, I'm sure the elephants will rescue their compatriot. There was lots of other things like that in the exhibit, plus some great outfits made by modern cosplayers, and an overall story about a Commodore who wants to solve the Longitude Competition with kiwi birds, and if you're even vaguely interested in steampunk, you should definitely check it out (and if, unfortunately, you can get up a steep hill and then steep narrow stairs).

We went over to the National Maritime Museum and saw the associated exhibit on the Longitude Competition ( Ships, Clocks, and Stars: The Quest for Longitude), which has John Harrison's original timekeepers as well as a bunch of other neat stuff. Unfortunately either I was too tired to get the upshot or the exhibit didn't quite make it clear that Harrison's timekeepers, though excellent, were too expensive and difficult to manufacture for a long time, so sailors used the lunar distance method (measure the angle between the moon and a star) instead for quite a while, because though it was incredibly difficult to develop (involving careful work by a pair of individuals known, deliciously, as the calculator and anti-calculator—the latter was a woman—whose work was checked against each other before being compiled), once it was done it could be mass-printed. But Chad tells me that the US Navy still teaches the lunar distance method today as a backup—not with sextants, but with computers, because it doesn't depend on GPS satellites which might be unavailable.

I'm entirely failing to do this justice! Maybe Chad will chime in if he has time. But it was pretty cool anyway.

After that we had a snack, because I'd seen signs everywhere saying the museum was open until 6 p.m., and I thought we had time. Well, no; the exhibits really all closed at 5, and they just gently shooed people out and into the gift shops then. So we missed the rest of the exhibits at the Maritime Museum; the only thing we managed was to peek into the Queen House, which had some interesting WWII illustrations on exhibit and a famous and indeed pretty spiral staircase called the Tulip Stair.

Then we wandered a bit, and had dinner at The Old Brewery which is just around the corner, and indeed part of the same building as, the "Discover Greenwich" tourist center, at which Chad had quite a good burger (with a surprisingly-large hunk of cheddar on top that goes to show that USians really do think of cheese as a condiment much of the time) and I had fried risotto balls stuffed with mozzarella and basil which is exactly what you want in such a dish.

We walked the tunnel under the Thames, which again has nothing to recommend it except that you've done it—no, wait, it also has, at least on the North end, a fabulous huge wood-paneled elevator complete with bench, and came back to the hotel. Where we fought with wifi and our new phones and then got the world's slowest drink in the bar downstairs, and holy cow but it is way too late for me to be up.

Anyway. Who's here already/always?