Off the record - Craig Box

I went on a Contiki trip around Europe a couple of years ago, and met some cool people. I put a call out to some who were close to Toronto and ended up with an offer to stay in Boston with a friend named Sara. Here's an out-of-context picture of her on the Metro in Munich.

Sara lives in Somerville, which is actually two cities over from Boston, but part of the "greater" metropolitan area. She works at MIT, which is in Cambridge (named for the city where this travel started a month prior), and goes to university in Boston.

Confused yet? Here's a picture. Pictures relieve boredom.

The MBTA, locally known as the T, is much older and less tended to than the Underground I rode on to the airport I departed from earlier in that day. It doesn't go all the way to the airport, the cars are wide and creaky, and it looks like they stopped upgrading anything in 1984. But, it gets you where you need to go - I was staying a few blocks from Davis station. Buses ran semi-regularly but the walk was pleasant enough.

(I think I'm danger of becoming a metrophile.)

I had the usual "look the wrong way crossing the road" problem, and couldn't figure out this crazy 'fahrenheit' system. I'd adjusted to miles per hour though, having driven around England for a month; can't estimate distance in them though. (I grew up taught only metric, yet describe myself as 6 foot tall. Go figure...)

Tourists should do the "Unofficial" Hahvahd University tour, more popular than the official one by several orders of magnitude, and now, strangely, enough, official. Go figure again. It's a great insight into the oldest university in the US, and, erm, "most well endowed" in the world. In case you're wondering about the spelling, it's how they pronounce their Rs in Boston.

They're proud of how old their institute is - founded in 1636, it's older than the Declaration of Independence (1776), for example - but they don't really have a global perspective, being that their city is named after the home of the second oldest university in the English-speaking world, founded in 1209.

Boston is also very famous for its role in the foundation of America, of course, which we'll get to in a later post.

They play up the rivalry between the City of Cambridge and the University: the gatehouse building on the right, due to taxes, was the most expensive building, per square foot, on campus.

Cambridge wanted to build a fire station near the campus, but the university only agreed to give them the land on the condition their firehouse was built in the style of a Harvard building. This almost doubled the cost, and came back to bite them when Memorial Hall caught fire in 1956. Cambridge FD claimed they couldn't respond in less than 30 mins - to a building 100m away - because they hadn't been able to afford a tall enough ladder, due to the inflated cost of the building, and thus had to wait till the building burned short enough.

Unfortunately style changes over time, and in the 1970's they built this eyesore.

The tour guides are paid only in tips, but I thought the $20 suggestion was a bit steep, compared to other walking tours I'd been on.

(skipping forward a few days again)

Recorded a television program on a video cassette recorder.  I can't remember the last time I did this.  Either I had an aborted attempt at a MythTV setup, or I watched the Torrent Channel when I 'missed' something.

But seeing as Canada can receive US TV signals, they rebroadcast all the good shows here, and S3E1 of Prison Break was on while I was out last night...

Meh, Jesus has probably seen it already.

Why do people all have identical black fabric suitcases?  It's an invitation to have everyone else who has one to pull it up, check it, and then dump it violently back on the carousel.

I went to some effort to get my new suitcase.  Two weeks before I left, I found a really nice polycarbonate Delsey suitcase at Dressmart in Te Rapa, but they only had them in pink.  They said they were getting more in.  They didn't.  They said they had other branches in Auckland and Christchurch - both places I was going to be within the week - but they didn't know where they were.  They called them to ask but never got an answer.

Tried lots of other leads, to no avail. It looked like pink or nothing, until I found exactly what I wanted - in a little non-franchised suitcase store I found while walking down George Street in Dunedin with MY MUM.  Turns out I had to go about as far south as I could before I could get my travelling companion for the north.

I was promised free wireless internet on the bus to London, but it was rather fleeting; gave up on it after a while and settled down with the iPod. Thankfully Ben, a friend from Hamilton who is now a lawyer in London, rang during this trip, and I arranged to meet him on his way home from work.

Ben lives in Rotherhithe, right on the Thames; this is an area of docklands that Maggie Thatcher renovated (with her bare hands, I hear) in the 80s, and is now a really nice area. There's a Hilton down the road, but there's snotty nosed kids down the road in the other direction. The Thames wiggles around a lot in central London, so it's close to everywhere, but you can't really get to it because the bridges and tunnels aren't where you need them to be.

I stayed with Ben, his girlfriend Tania, and his flatmates Mike and Graham. Their apartment was in an old shipping warehouse that had been beautifully converted.

Ben's friend Jeremy was celebrating his birthday the day I arrived, so we went down to Canary Wharf and played some football on a caged court down there. To say I was totally outclassed is an understatement; not only was almost everyone else a social or club player (one of the guys has just moved from NZ to the UK to go professional!) I only had casual shoes.

The rest of the evening went fine, but after an hour or so asleep I woke up with pulsating pains in my foot, which needed a day of ice and elevation before I contemplated doing anything more with it.

We went out in Soho the next night; a lively entertainment district, but with a hint of Amsterdam about it. I managed to find a Kwai Teow for dinner! I then promptly got asked to leave the vegetarian kebab store Ben and Tania were waiting in because my dish had meat in it.

As a newcomer I was dared to walk down a particular street, and I was disappointed that I only got asked if I wanted to "go upstairs and see some ladies" once. We went to a huge multi-level club called Tiger Tiger and, around 3am, I decided against going out for the all-night poker at Gutshot.

We had some great meals out in Rotherhithe - the Old Salt Quay was a nice pub on the waterfront; we also had dinner at a beautiful little restaurant called Simplicity, with a small menu consisting entirely of excellent food made from local ingredients, and three staff, alternating between chef, waiter and counter clerk.

A trip around the South Bank is a must if in London, and we went to the Tate Modern, where they had an exhibition about cities, recreating London in biscuits, and a Dali exhibition we decided against paying £11 each to see. There are a bunch of strange statues of men on top of buildings, which seem to be more art, and we found one closer to the ground also.

Monday was a public holiday, and the day of the Notting Hill Carnival. I headed out, along with 2 million of my closest friends, but I can't say I was that impressed. There was a street carnival feeling, with lots of capoeira, tents selling Carribean food and lots of DJ platforms with huge speaker stacks, but other than one troupe of drummers, the part of the parade I saw was "groups of people wearing big feathery things" and "truck with DJ playing 'Trini To The Bone' (sweet sweet T and T)". However, I did also see a guy in an Exponents t-shirt.

Tuesday, I caught up with Sammy again, bode farewell to friends old and new, and departed from Heathrow to Boston.

We all drove back to Cambridge for our last night with Cathy, as he headed off to London to start his Contiki trip the next day.

Accommodation this time was the Cambridge YHA, the last planned hostel on my trip. Hostels are very hit-and-miss: some are great, some are crap, you can't tell till you've stayed, and it sometimes comes down to what room you get. Our dorm had odd bag-like sheet things, effectively two sheets sewn together at the bottom. The showers were a bit concerning - the one across the corridor from us didn't lock, which I found out by barging in some guy just-out-of-the-shower.. oops - and water pressure and temperature were generally low. You had to hold down a button to get any water at all.

All this was made up for, though, by the fact the breakfast that was included was cooked, and included hearty bacon and egg options!

Tom shinied up the car a little, we parked it somewhere picturesque, and we put it on Craigslist and Gumtree (an Aus/UK version of Craigslist) to a pleasant result - 8 people called within 24 hours! I sold the car later the next day. It went to a good home - some recently-arrived Australian expats. They had bought a Fiat, which broke down horribly in Scotland, and caused many Scottish mechanics to turn their noses up at its crazy Italian-ness. Offering my nice parts-available British car as a replacement, I was happy to accept their offer of 90% of the purchase price - not bad for a month of ownership.

After our second night at the YHA, Tom headed off also. I stayed another couple of nights at the ex-Casa Jansen, helped Sam and Zoe move the last of their stuff, and then ran away to London on the £4 bus.

Bath is an ancient Roman city, built on a hot springs, and famous for its namesake. To us, it was a gateway to Stonehenge, somewhere that served bad salads, and a city that looked like it survived on stag and hen nights from London.

We had a guy staying in our hostel who seemed a bit boring, and hung out with us for the evening. Cool story, huh?

Our evening's trip was Bizarre Bath, a great mix of street theatre and comedy with a little bit of history and exploring the central city. Cathy even got drafted in as part of the act and asked to think of a number. (I've got a number written on this blackboard. Have you thought of one? "yes" presents blackboard with the number '1' written on it) We learned that the Sally Lunn was invented in Bath, and were treated to an escape artist stuffed rabbit.

Other cool things about Bath included the architecture of, and along, the river: they have bridges with shops on either side of them, so you're walking down the street and don't even know you've crossed a bridge.

Entry to the baths was £11 so we skipped that in favour of the trip to Stonehenge. It also seemed a little steep to pay £7 for the privilege of walking around some stones, but the atmosphere and enthusiasm of the guided tour made up for it.

The guide was an archeology student who was really excited about the history of the place. It was her first or second tour, so she was a bit nervous, but knew all the answers to the questions - in as much as no-one actually knows what people actually built Stonehenge for. Unfortunately, they didn't promote the tour well, so only us and another couple were on it.

One of the things I had hoped to do on this trip was go to the V Festival and the Reading Festival. We decided against it at £150 each on eBay (with three days camping required), in part because the only band I couldn't see elsewhere was James, and I saw them in Edinburgh. The impact of the festival was felt today however, as we battled through a 2 hour traffic jam to get from Manchester to Birmingham.

Once past the right junction, the pull of Edgbaston was great, and we slung-shot around B'ham on the M5 like a Klingon Bird of Prey around the sun in some movie about whales.

Speaking of Wales, that's where we're headed! Tom soothed my tired head with a little driving at this point, so I took the rare opportunity to take some photos from the car.

There is a £5 charge to take the nice bridge that links the correct bits of England and Wales; it's free in the other direction. This tax seems a little unfair, as Cardiff (or Caerdydd as they call it in Cymrick) is cool. The hostel was nice: we eschewed the traditional Welsh dish (cheese on toast) for their second favourite, cowl (lamb stew). I also had some Welsh whiskey.

Entertainment was the pool table, and Cathy had some fun with long exposure shots on his camera.

We wanted to do a tour of the Millennium Stadium, but it turned out the one day we were in town was a Wales vs Argentina rugby game, and there's no tour on match day. Well, why not go to the match? A Kiwi guy who worked at the hostel convinced us.

We went for a very wet wander around Cardiff the next morning - the markets are amazing, but the National Museum was a little boring by comparison to others we'd seen.

The stadium was set up to look good on TV, even though it was half empty - giant flags covered the bottom section, which was where the ball ended up half the time. The game was enjoyable - it had all the of the required elements: a close first half, a villain (an Argentinian who was sent off), some friendly locals to talk to (who suggested that the All Blacks had peaked too early) and a nail-biting last 10 minutes as the Argentinians almost clawed back from 20-27, finishing literally 10 feet from the try line.

Cymru, the Welsh name for Wales, is pronounced "comm-rie". I wondered for ages so you don't have to.

Ahhh, Manchester.  The home of Oasis, James, New Order, Joy Division, the Smiths, the Hacienda Club, and all sorts of other cool music stuff I saw nothing of.  There were a lot of record stores by the hostel but nothing that sounded like a Manchester Music Experience.

We booked beds at the YHA online and got there to find they were booked out, and someone, somewhere, had cocked up. A pity, because the YHA looked nice, and other hostels had no car parking options.  They very kindly let me park the car there and catch a free bus into town, but it was all a lot of effort for a tired cookie who had been pub crawling the night before.

This didn't stop Tom and Cathy, who went on their second pub crawl in two nights.

The only thing we really saw in Manchester, other than a lot of roads, was the Museum of Science and Industry.  The main drawcard was a Doctor Who exhibition, where, among other things, we saw a Dalek, the Cyber Controller, K9, a Slitheen, the Face of Boe, the Emperess Racnoss and a space where an Ood should be.

There was a lot to see here (check out a coat made entirely of thistle "fairies") but time was short, so we had a quick run through the engine hall and then headed off to Cardiff.