London/Ireland trip, part 3

(continued from previous post)

     Ok, I promise this will be the last post on this trip! After leaving Killarney, we headed up to Galway, We checked out of the hotel a little late, because we wanted to soak up the peace and quiet as much as possible, so we pulled into Galway right around rush hour. The hotel was pretty decent,
although it had terrible wifi, and had an attached restaurant where, with a reservation, we became the least-well-dressed and youngest couple (by at least 20 years) to have a freaking delicious meal. Thankfully, we both overate horribly, because the waitstaff was not what I'd call speedy, so we had plenty of time to digest before the bill came and we went back to the room to pass out.

     The next day, we drove into oldtown Galway, parked by the water, and began to wander. Since we didn't really plan anything, this turned into somewhat of an adventure as we left the shopping district, found a train station, trespassed on abandoned private property to get a good view of the Bay, got rained on, and found a random cemetery. Knowing that my gentleman and I both appreciate quiet and old spaces, we decided to duck in, counting on the fact that it had a plaque near the front gate to indicate that it was, indeed, open to the public, and we weren't further trespassing.

London/Ireland Trip, part 2

(continued from previous post)

     Having successfully navigated London and Dublin, we climbed back in the car and headed out to see other parts of southern Ireland. After navigating out onto the appropriate highway, I learned two things. 1) The best way to get used to driving on the wrong side of the road is to be on an open highway for mind-numbing hours. 2) Drivers in less urban areas are rather nice, and pretty darn mature. We quickly picked up that the thing to do is to be in the left lane (slow lane) until you need to overtake someone. You move right, go around them, and then get back in the slow lane. We had zero issues with getting stuck behind some jerk going slowly in the fast lane and holding everyone up. It was quite pleasant.

Chatting with strangers

     I’ve never really figured out what the standards for my shyness are. Generally speaking, I don’t like talking to people from whom I need a favor, and I abhor talking about money (I am a horrible haggler). I’m not fond of socializing in large groups of people, and I have a low-level dislike of humanity as a whole. Yet, when I’m standing in a line, or waiting for a plane to take off, or just randomly passing people on the streets, I have no problem chatting with them and starting up a friendship. Perhaps it’s the level of engagement that’s involved, I don’t know. But I am continually fascinated by how much information and background you can get from a totally random person just by saying hello.

     This past week was spent looking for a place to live with my gentleman after I graduate. We looked at a couple different places, and finally settled on one that, while not perfect, is acceptable. After we gave the go ahead for the agency to hold it for us, we took some time, driving around the neighborhoods and shopping areas nearby, to get a feel for what there was. One of the things that I saw and really liked was what looked like a neighborhood pool, basketball court, and community center not two blocks away from where we will be. Curious, I asked Angel to stop in so we could inquire about rates and suchlike.

FTP 43 - Try new things

     Many years ago, I worked at a casino in the food court. Being a friendly (if introverted) person, I soon got to know pretty much everyone on all three shifts in all of the restaurants and the production areas. One day, one of the guys who worked in the bakery pulled me aside and asked if I wanted to go to a concert with him. It turned out he was the drummer for a punk band that would be playing in Worcester, MA, and wanted me to go with him. Despite having no real interest in punk music, I figured it would be interesting, and agreed.

     On the day of the show, I drove over to his place, and right away, things got amusing. He'd decided at some point in the past to take out the front seat of his car in order to fit his skateboards (yes, plural) in there, so I rode in the back passenger seat, with loads of legroom. We chatted the whole way up there, and discovered, once we got there, that the people who were supposed to help get things set up hadn't shown. The guy who drove their gear up looked at me and said, "well, any interest in being a roadie for a night?" I laughed, because no not really, but said I'd be happy to help, long as they showed me what to do.

Lol, no. But thanks.

     It didn't get any more serious after that, either. To my surprise, my friend's band was the headliner (which meant they went onstage at like midnight...), so I had a lot of waiting around to do. Being a responsible person, however, I was back at the place about 15 minutes before time, and found out that my friend was the only band member there. Since someone had to be there, he asked me to go hunt down the members of his band... at midnight... in a town I didn't know... for people I'd met all of once. Somehow, I managed to do so, and they all got on stage on time, where I promptly discovered that no, thanks, I am not a fan of punk music. We finally packed everything back into the trailer at 1:30 or so, and my friend and I started back to Connecticut.

     Am I glad I went? Heck yes. I had a very interesting time, and learned a lot. Some of it was what I'm not interested in, but by doing those things, I have narrowed down a lot of possibilities, and it gets easier to find what I do like. Cheers!

Organization and structuring

     Taking a break from the deep, philosophical meanderings of recent posts, I'd like to say something about spring/ fall cleaning and the need for it to be done on many, many layers of life. To start with, here's a bit of background:

     I live in a nice, quiet little apartment complex in a fairly decent area. Unfortunately, it is in a no-man's land, stuck between Denver and its outlying suburbs, barely inside one district despite being 10 blocks or less from all the amenities of another one, and pretty much right on the line between two counties. For almost eight months, I have been able to work around, deal with, or ignore this, and life has gone on relatively sedately. Until my birthday last month...

     I adore my friends and family, really I do. I even love the fact that I only have one long-standing friend who lives in this state, and all the rest of them are horrible slackers, like me, when it comes to

Final countdown

This is the (backside of the) Summer Palace! Apparently, most of it was as gilded as the towers in the background at one point, but one of the queens got annoyed at the constant glittering, and asked that it be toned down, so now it's just accents and a few cupolas that are quite so gaudy. From what we were told, there are more than 800 rooms in the main palace (the multi-story area in the back), and goodness knows how many in the servants' quarters (one-story area in the foreground). We were going to go inside, but a number of cruise ships had docked and unloaded just as we got there, and the line was upward of two hours to get in, so we passed over it and just wandered the gardens. Fine with me!

   This is an example of the "english gardens" in front of the palace itself. Perhaps it's just my long association with the book/ play The Secret Garden, but I associate english gardens with fountains of roses, not laid-out gravel. Meh. Regardless, it was pretty impressive, though apparently one of the many strays about the place thought the black circle at the bottom needed some spreading out. I can't imagine how much work it takes to keep all this looking this orderly, but I suppose after 300 years, you've probably gotten most of the weeds cleared out. :)

  I have no idea what these flowers are, they were all over the Italian gardens, in a huge bush-type plant (think lilac bush size), and they smelled heavenly. If anyone can identify them, I would happily grow about 6 billion of them, just to sit in the middle and back in the scent. The rest of the Italian gardens were also wonderful, well-laid-out, with statuary and vine-covered arches. We missed the lilacs, poppies and irises, but the begonias and petunias were just coming out, so it was still quite lovely.

End in sight

   Although whether it's the end of my rope or the end of the ordeal, I'm not quite sure. Forgive the negative tone of this post, I am running on fumes... or perhaps just the memory of fumes.

   

   Moscow was unexpectedly pleasant, for the most part. We set out on Friday, meeting at the train station at 10:30 pm. This was unexpectedly complicated by the fact that the map wasn't quite honest about it's location, and I didn't know the word for 'train', but I managed to find my way to the required place in time.

We got on the train at 11:20, and set off. It was fairly difficult to sleep, between the white nights and the movement (and random stopping and starting) of the train. We were 4 to a cabin, and I got very lucky with my cabin mates, all of us being fairly calm and quiet. We sat around chatting for a bit, then hit the bunks- 2 on top, 2 on bottom. The guardrail to keep the people on top from falling out of bed was less than stable on the concept of staying in place, so we used a runner from the table to tie the two together- you can see our ingenious design on the side of the picture here.

A breath of fresh air

This is going to be a long post, so grab some popcorn and settle in.

   To catch up from the last few days, this past weekend was fairly uneventful. Another foiled attempt to go to Petergof gardens on Saturday (darn you crummy coastal weather!) had us wandering around an Ethnography Museum which, while interesting, was not what I had psyched myself up for. It was basically a history of all the people of Russia, which are quite a few, and how they used to live. The loom to the right was highly interesting to yours truly, and there was even a (small) bit of fabric woven on the other end of it, with a spinning wheel and drop spindle nearby. I couldn't imagine trying to thread a loom that uses the same type of string for the heddles as what you're trying to weave with. Headache galore.

    After about 3 hours of looking at how various groups of people lived, and working and walking around areas (about 1/3 of the whole museum) that were under reconstruction or closed for setting up new exhibits, I was more than ready to walk out. The prof apparently has a stomach (and legs, feet and back) of iron, because he then asked us if we wanted to stop for the day, and go get lunch... or go to another museum. Sharing looks of disbelief, we all promptly voted for lunch and home, as we won't have another day off til the 26th, when most of us get to start 22-24 hour flights home.

Cruise and graffiti

  Cruise! Tuesday after class, we met at a distant metro station and walked over to this where this boat was moored. I was lucky enough to get a single room, I guess because I'm old and crotchety and Artemi (the prof) knows that I don't tolerate drunken shenanigans.  And lordy were there drunken shenanigans. Just like the trip to Europe I went on with Morgana, a lot of the kids had never encountered absinthe, and thought it would be the best thing in the world to knock it back like soda. Brilliant. Anyhow.. the cruise started at 8 pm, and we had to wait a bit for a bridge to go up, as the water level is pretty high at the moment, but we kept going during the night, and arrived at Valaam Island, located at 61 degrees N in Lake Ladoga. We got very, very lucky and it was a beautiful day. A touch windy, but no clouds in the sky and probably 63 degrees (F).

Novgorod and a day off.

This is a long post, bear with!     

     This past saturday was a trip to Novgorod, a city about 2 hours' bus ride from St. Petersburg (with the world's slowest driver, though I will admit the road was pretty awful).  We met at a southern metro station at 8 am, which meant breakfast at 6 am. This would have been pretty awful if it weren't for the white nights, which, while not officially started yet, means it's broad daylight from 4 am to 10 pm. So at the very least, the day was light (if rainy) when I had to get up that early. 

Our first stop, outside the city, was St. George's monastery, built an incredibly long time ago, and beloved by someone. Sorry to be flippant, but I've been here 2 weeks, and seen over 50 churches, chapels, mosques and monasteries, and after a bit, they all start to blur together. This particular one had a lovely bell tower, which can be seen in the middle of the picture here (I swear they had us park by the kitchens, the smell was heavenly!). It was also about 20 feet from a lake that varies between 7,000 and  30,000 square kilometers, depending on the season. Seems a little imprudent to me, but oh well. Needless to say, it was more than a little swampy, and the mosquitoes were a) quite prevalent, and b) the size of small dogs. Ok, perhaps a bit of an over-exaggeration, but not by much! Only by having my hair down, long sleeves with my hands tucked in them, and long pants, as well as a scarf over my head and fanning my face often did I manage to

Weather change.

The weather has reverted back to typical St. Peterburg weather, which is very similar to Washington state- chilly, damp and drippy. Quite the change from Colorado, and while I miss the warmth, my allergies are now completely gone, yay!

   Wednesday was... quite the "adventure". We had been told we were to visit the Pavlovsk palace, so most of us dressed for indoors walking. What Artemi had failed to mention, though, is that there was a 2 mile hike on dirt (read: mud) trails to get there! I was very much reminded of Washington and Hawaii on the way, as it was through a deciduous forest with ferns for undergrowth, and where there was any grass, it was supported from underneath by moss. Quite beautiful, moreso because I was actually dressed for the weather! (My backpack, however, is not waterproof, it turns out. The dictionary I have is now quite the worse for wear.)

Pictures, take 4.

Gah! Ok, eventually I'll figure this out. What did you miss? The hour of trying to figure everything out so I don't look like a retard posting huge pictures or having broken html on the page. Lucky you. Ok, so, without further ado (hopefully), here goes.

This is the St. Isaac Cathedral, one of many amazing edifices (edifi?) around the city. This is pretty close to where I live, and I look for the dome when I get too lost in the area. There is a pretty impressive statue opposite it, and the "square" (Isaacscki ploshod) that contains the statue and cathedral is roughly the size of a decent city block. The trees are part of the random network of small parks scattered throughout the city. Since it's the only thing (I think) keeping the pollution at bay, I suppose I should enjoy them, but this week has been pollen-count-from-hell, so my enthusiasm is a touch dampened. I've already burned through my entire supply of kleenex for the trip, but it finally rained last night and I can breathe again. 

This right here is a fabulous thing. The stoplights at major intersections (and some of them are HUGE) have walk timers, showing how much longer you have to wait to get 

the next walk light, or to get across the street before you become a target. A minor touch, but as an inexperienced city dweller and pedestrian, I love it.