Trail running - who knew?

Last weekend, Tane and I joined two Aussies that like beer, two Englishmen that like tea and Stephen who likes both for a long weekend roadtrip to the Lake District. Our motivation for going was a 15 km trail run around Hawkshead, a small English village that looked like something right out of an Enid Blyton book. We hired a cottage, a 7 seat car that could fit a bike as well as our combined body weight in junk food and a cooler of beer, and off we went.

The trail run was one of those things that felt like a great idea back in January when Sarah first told me about it, and that we all signed up to assuming that we would spend the next three months training hard. Trail runs are, as the name suggests, runs through the bush, up and down hills, and over lots of gravel and mud. Naturally, though, none of us did any training, unless you count the odd walk through Hyde Park and lots of exercising my mouth by talking about my intentions to go running.

At about the 5km mark, photo courtesy of a photographer who sold me this picture afterward.

I was surprised to find that the trail run is one of the most satisfying things I have done in a long long time. The up hill parts killed me and I was sure that the downhill parts would result in a broken bone, but in the run was still awesome. The scenery was fabulous, and I don't think I have ever smiled so much while being so tired and sore. I was especially happy that my white sneakers are now a dingy shade of brown, proof to the world that I have actually used them. :)

Afterwards with James and Richard

Tane, alas, was too sick to participate, but he and the English boys had a nice run up a steep hill just for the sake of it a couple of days later.

Down they come ..

The weekend was fabulous, and I will add more photos later when I manage to get copies from some of the others. In the meantime, though, I will be searching for more trail runs to do later this year - assuming of course that the current wooden-plank feeling in my legs goes away and I am ever able to walk properly again!

Megan and some rural England

How often?

As you can see on the right hand side, I've added a wee poll of how often you read our blog. It doesn't really matter as I enjoy blogging so much I probably would continue even if no one read it (yes, like that tree falling in a forest with nobody to hear), but am just curious. I read lots of blogs and rarely leave comments, so the owners of those would probably have no idea that I enjoy their blogs as much as I do. I am interested in what you have to say in any case ...

Paris in the Spring

I never realised that going to Paris in the Spring was something to get misty-eyed about until we booked a trip there for our one year anniversary which, coincidentally, falls in the Spring. When I told people that we were going in April, I got the same reaction over and over. "Oh!" people would say. "Paris in the Spring!" I'd never been to Paris before Spring or not, so have no idea how it is the rest of the year. Maybe it was because of it being Spring, or maybe just because it's Paris, but I simply loved it there.

Notre Dame - just like in the Disney cartoon! And, yeah, the Victor Hugo book as well I suppose

We spent the better part of three days in Paris wandering the streets, sampling the food, sitting in cafes, and taking in so many cultural sights we were knackered at the end of each day. It was great fun though, especially when we found the odd place to relax and watch the world go by. This garden in Montmartre was a particular favourite.
We did most of the usual stuff while there - Notre Dame, looking at the Moulin Rogue, walking along the Seine, looking at snails on the menu and crunching up my nose at them, walking down Champs-Elysees singing "Aux! Champs-Elysees!" and taking cheesy photos in front of the Eiffel Tower. We also, of course, went to the Louvre. While I was a little underwhelmed by the Mona Lisa on account of not being able to get close enough to see the difference between the real thing and a reproduction, the Louvre was still far and away the best art gallery I have ever seen. It felt like we were there for hours, but when we left I realised that I had only seen about one tenth of what's on display, if that. The sad thing is that unless the art is located on the way to get to the Mona Lisa it is probably ignored by many who visit.

The pyramid outside the Louvre from below. If Dan Brown was correct in The Da Vinci Code, that's where all the secrets that would undermine the Church forever are hidden. I didn't see anything exciting, though.
Trying to get a look at the Mona Lisa. Yes, we found it strange that you are allowed to take photos in the Louvre as well, but without a flash it's supposed to be OK. It still feels a little wrong though...

A further highlight was the church of Sainte-Chapelle, located near Notre Dame. This church was stunning, even if we struggled with the idea of Chapelle being a religious name rather than a convicted drug smuggler currently serving time in Bali. After having a conversation in line about did Chapelle do it or didn't she, we went into the church and forgot all about the Bali Chapelle on account of it being so stunning.Paris was fabulous, and given it only takes two hours by train I expect I'll be going back a few times before moving back to NZ. I will be lucky to have such a great time as we did last weekend though, and it was a slightly cheesy but perfect way to celebrate one year of being hitched. Yay!

One year on

This weekend is our one year anniversary of being hitched! Hurrah! Apparently one year is the paper anniversary, so we have acquired two paper Eurostar tickets to Paris for the weekend to celebrate. It's been a great year, and to date probably one of the worst moments in our relationship was an hour ago when I discovered that Tane had accidentally put the aforementioned tickets in the rubbish bin. After him digging them out and grovelling appropriately, though, we are now back on track. And it wouldn't be a real marriage without the odd "I can't believe you put our Eurostar tickets in the bin!" moments, eh? As we head into year two of our civil partnership, I just wanted to post some photos of the event a year ago for a shameless foray down memory lane .

Spring has sprung?

As of a few weeks ago, Spring officially sprung. The days are longer, and I have been enjoying long post work strolls through Hyde Park after work. I have started looking through my t-shirt drawer again, and have a place in the darkest depths of the closet reserved for my winter coat. Outdoor seating has appeared at restaurants, and parties feel like they are happening a little more often. Imagine our surprise, then, to wake up to this last weekend.

Snow in Spring has winners and losers. One winner was Tane, who had never before experienced snow in a place that he has lived before. He was pretty excited about it to say the least.

The losers, though, were the new buds on the trees as well as the spring flowers. Although the snow melted quite quickly, it looked a little late for these little buddies.
Is the weather nuts all over the world or is it just here?

Down and out, and up again, in Prague

First up, I should say that Prague is gorgeous. In fact, in terms of architecture, it’s the loveliest city I’ve seen (sorry Paris), with endless streets of pastel apartments, more grand buildings than you can poke a Pilsner at and my favourites, the pointy towers.

The view from our hostel

View from the old town hall

Statue of Jan Hus

However, in Prague we were hit by something unimaginable a few months ago. For all the beauty, after a day of wandering around our reaction was a bit … meh. Yup, travel weariness had caught up with us at last.

Maybe it was the hordes of other tourists, maybe it was the similarity to Budapest (river, hilly on one bank, flat the other, lots of Austro-Hungarian splendour - but less grime and no baths) and all the other European Old Towns we’ve seen, or just the sheer amount of travel we’ve been doing in the last few months. Probably a mix of them all.

Prague: pretty darn pretty ...

... and don't we all know it.

Anyhow, we discovered a cure – day two was taken up by a bus ride into the Czech countryside and visit to Terezin (see below). Oddly, being immersed in Holocaust history (plus some greenery and open space) left us refreshed and reinvigorated. On our last day in Prague we enjoyed the city a heck of a lot more. We even had some cute little flurries of snow to add to the fairytale feel.

Central Prague

Hansel and Gretel had nothing on Lauren.

Any of you have any travel weariness stories? Have you found yourself somewhere fabulous, and been rather bored? What point in a trip does it kick in for you?

Oh, and a note on what lots of wealthy tourists do to prices. A small beer in a posh restaurant in Prage: 124 krona (c.NZ $12). The same beer in a restaurant a little bit away from the main visitor areas: 25 krona (c.NZ$ 2.50). And at a restaurant run for charity in Terezin: 11 krona.

Terezin

Tane and I spent the Easter weekend in the beautiful city of Prague in the Czech Republic. As well as spending some fabulous times strolling around the old town and sampling Czech cuisine, we spent a day in and around the small town of Terezin, located near the German border. Terezin, or Theresienstadt as it was known in German, was a prominent Jewish ghetto during World War Two before most of its 100,000 odd residents were shipped to Auschwitz and the like. Not exactly a recipe for a fun day out as such, but a very, very interesting and memorable place to visit nonetheless.

The great Nazi lie: "Work Brings Freedom"

The first place that you see when coming into Terezin is a massive cemetery and a brick fort that just looks plain creepy. After a couple of hours of wandering around inside, we also discovered that the creepy feeling that the "small fort" as it's known gets worse rather than better. It's one of those places that you can't really describe without sounding corny as walking through dismal barracks, execution grounds and past a swimming pool made by forced labourers who were later killed in some way is a profoundly moving experience.

After visiting the small fortress we ventured into the town of Terezin to get some lunch and find the famous ghetto as well. While we were lucky on the lunch front, we couldn't find the ghetto. It wasn't until we visited the Terezin Ghetto Museum that we learned that we had been walking around it the whole time as not only was the entire town the ghetto, but the place we had eaten our lunch was a SS dining hall. This was a bit of a surprise as while the town had a strange feel to it, it was just a town where people live and go about their daily business. I would love to have talked to some residents about how they feel about their town's history, but that's not exactly something to bring up with someone serving your lunch or selling snacks.

A street in Terezin. The worst part of here for me was seeing in the museum all the pictures drawn by the children who were kept here before they were sent to Auschwitz.

After a day trip to Terezin, it was a real relief to return to Prague. It's worth seeing something a little emotionally challenging every now and then though, and I totally recommend it for anyone who is interested in history and wants a little more from a weekend in Prague than beer and pretty buildings.

Still rockin' in the free world

On Friday night one of my biggest dreams came true. No, not the one where I develop superpowers and save the world from alien invaders, but something even cooler. Neil Young. Live.

Apologies to all non-Neil Young fans. This is going to be a bit long and gushy.

That's one of the best things about London - everyone big comes here a lot more often than they make it to New Zealand. This show was at the Hammersmith Apollo (a huge and acoustically excellent theatre), which was packed mostly with middle aged fans, but with a healthy portion of twentysomethings like me. I can only call myself twentysomething for the next four months, so I'm going to take the chance to do so.

The stage looked like a hippy junkyard, filled with amps, drums, various stringed instruments, an orange piano painted in flowers, letters and numbers covered in light bulbs, a wooden Indian and lots of paintings. Some guy was adding to them, painting at the back of the stage during the show, often watched by a little boy. Random. Maybe it was Neil Young's son or grandson and that was his way of babysitting.

The opening act was Neil's wife Peggy, a lovely platinum blonde with a deep, sweet voice. She played a pleasant set of country songs that drew warm applause, but that was drizzle compared to the thunderstorm when Young came on stage.

Shaggy grey hair straggling away from a big bald patch, a tan suit for the acoustic set, a paint-splattered black one later. He sat in a circle of guitars, picked up one, strapped on a harmonica and played From Hank to Hendrix. After finishing that, and each other song, he'd get up and wander around, as if wondering which of his zillion classic tunes to play next. When some wag in the front row (there were more of a few in the audience) made a crack, he turned and told them to "f*ck off. You know, you're great. I'd go anywhere to see you," to general amusement. That aside, his banter was good-natured. Every now and then he chucked in a few reminisces - like the time he wrote Don't Let It Bring You Down after coming back from seeing Hendrix at the Isle of Wight festival.

Right. He's old.

Anyway, the acoustic set was superb, a mix of famous songs like After The Gold Rush and obscure ones like Ambulance Blues. My highlight was Cowgirl In The Sand.

In the second set, he brung the grunge.

The change between Young's mellow and manic modes is amazing. That thin, heartbroken voice grows razorblades and his guitar starts to drip venom. There's one word and a world of difference between Old Man and Dirty Old Man.

Like the Stones and Iggy Pop, Young is a fogey with the energy of a teenager, jumping around the stage, tearing out solos, snarling into the mike about Johnny Rotten and the powder and the finger. The long jam at the end of the new and rather mediocre closer of the set, No Hidden Path, was self indulgent, but the encore - Cinnamon Girl and a mesmerising version of Tonight's The Night - finished the show on a high.

The Other Boleyn Girl and historical accuracy

A couple of days ago, Tane and I went to see the movie The Other Boleyn Girl. I had read the Philippa Gregory novel about five years ago and had loved it. The true story of Anne Boleyn and her sister Mary has it all - intrigue, incest (or allegations of), a King with too much testosterone and not enough scruples, one sister who became his mistress and had his illegitimate son, and a second that became his wife and lost her head. The story of Henry VIII is so filled with scandal, death and bodice-ripping, if it wasn't such a well documented part of English history is would be very easy to dismiss as legend.

After having seen Henry VIII's armour at Greenwich last year I have little doubt that a man that would wear this might also be the sort of man that would create a new church in order that he could marry the sister of his mistress

Philippa Gregory is onto a winning formula with her series portraying the Tudors in a fictional context. While Gregory took liberties in the book based on Mary Boleyn's life insomuch as she gave the characters life, from what I have read it appears she is fairly historically accurate in her portrayal of events. There is the odd turn of phrase used that doesn't sound like something from the 1520s and 30s , but apart from that I thought it was an excellent book. Historical fiction is always a tricky genre to write in, and very few books get it right to the satisfaction of people who know the period written about, or at least flatter themselves that they do. This isn't unique to Gregory's books, even some Booker winners get it wrong: Schindler's Ark took great liberties when writing about Oskar Schindler, and Oscar and Lucinda talks about coat hangers before they were invented. Not that I really care in either case.

Sometimes I hate historical inaccuracy, sometimes I don't. There is no hard and fast rule about it - for me it often depends on how the inaccuracy is presented, and how good the rest of the book is. As a rule I find that I can overlook details, but not historically inaccurate ideas - especially books where the hero or heroine from days gone has modern ideas about gender, race and class when the bad guys don't. My other pet peeve is what I can only describe as Titanic syndrome - the way almost every single modern book written about either the USA or UK that touches 1912 has at least one character die on the Titanic. That's just me though, and I don't claim to be consistent or rational in what bugs me and what doesn't.

At Henry's palace Hampton Court earlier in the year. Hampton Court is fabulous, a maze of coridoors and badly lit rooms perfect for scandal and intrige.

Before going to the movie I had read a review of it in the Guardian by a man who had enjoyed the movie, but criticised it for being historically inaccurate. The only concrete pieces of "inaccuracy" he wrote about was Anne Boleyn's necklace looking like something from the 1980s and the fact that Eric Bana who plays Henry is not fat. The reviewer has obviously not seen Anne's portrait in the National Portrait Gallery wearing the necklace, nor done his research about what Henry looked like earlier in his life. Nevertheless, I did go to the movie wondering what it would be like.

According to an exhibit here on younger Henry, he may have looked like Eric Bana when he was young. That's certainly a much nicer mental image than this one ...

I liked the movie The Other Boleyn Girl in the end. While it was a bit cheesy in places and the dialogue a bit stilted, there were some great scenes in it and I was moved by the ending in spite of knowing that it was coming. And even if it was historically inaccurate in places, I didn't care as I was too busy enjoying the movie to notice. It wasn't as good as the book, but still did a pretty good job of putting Philippa Gregory's interpretation of events onto the big screen.

I wonder what other people think though - did you prefer the movie or the book? Does historical inaccuracy bug you in books? What about movies?

Interested in your thoughts....

Deer at Hampton Court. Apparently Henry liked to collect antlers as well as wives.

A city with a bit of everything

Last weekend, Tane and I joined some other couples for a fabulous weekend in Amsterdam. I thoroughly enjoyed myself, and have decided that Amsterdam really is a city with a little bit of everything. From fine art to men dressed up as toilets, it really is a place where everyone seems catered for.

1. High brow culture

Amsterdam is the home of the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh museum. I especially loved the Rijksmuseum, it had a fabulous collection of art by famous Dutch painters such as Vermeer (also known as Colin Firth in "The Girl with the Pearl Earring") and the most amazing dolls houses I have ever seen.

2. Canals

Doing a canal cruise was one of the highlights of the weekend as we got to see the city from the water while learning interesting tidbits of information. Like, that Amsterdam has 2500 houseboats. Most of them seemed so small though I don't imagine you could live in them with more than three or four possessions.

3. The opposite to High brow culture

In the book 1001 Places to See Before You Die, Amsterdam's red light district is listed as one such place. And, while I won't be recommending that other people rush out and see it if they are at all prudish, it certainly is unlike anywhere I have ever seen. Women stand in shop windows beckoning at passers-by to buy them, brightly lit signs promise all kinds of r18 activities, and British men on stag parties prowl around in packs egging each other into the women's rooms. And, just to make the place even more surreal, large groups of elderly do walking tours of the district wearing facial expressions that are a mixture of disgust, fear and fascination.

A fabulous lolly shop near the Red Light District. Not that this has any real relevance, but I didn't want to use any dodgy photos!

5. More canals
According to one local we met, as a result tourist shenanigans in Amsterdam an amazing number of the bikes ridden by the locals find there way into the canals. Poor bikes.

6. Anne Frank's house

A highlight of the weekend was seeing Anne Frank's house, where she and her family hid from the Nazis for over two years. The house is a bit of a tourist mecca, but well worth visiting in any case. It's so cramped inside it makes the story of what happened all the more tragic, as I felt claustrophobic inside after only about 45 minutes and cannot even begin to comprehend how hiding in such a confined space for such a long period of time must feel.

So, Amsterdam really was grouse. It may be one of the most popular stag party destinations in Europe, but once you get used to the public urinals and Red Light District there really is some great stuff to see.

A very civilised high tea

For the first time in years, I decided to have a civilised birthday celebration. And what could be more civilised than a high tea on a Saturday afternoon? Lucky it was also Stephen's birthday so we could have a joint afternoon tea celebration and he could supply the tea cups and pikelets. Oh, and the house, and the tea, and prepare the food. In fact, it was luckier still that Mum had sent me some hundreds and thousands biscuits from New Zealand so I could contribute something ...

The tea party itself was a very civilised affair. We talked about civilised things, drank tea with our pinkies out, and debated whether or not one is supposed to wear or remove gloves while drinking tea. I note that we "drank" tea rather than "taking" tea, as apparently during the Victorian area saying "take" was considered vulgar. It was a pity that the table was so crammed with goodies that we could not place the tea pot with the handle facing the pourer, which correct tea drinking etiquette also dictates. Naturally we remained very civilised throughout the evening and tea remained the strongest drink consumed all day (*cough*). The author of an etiquette book written in 1912 that I once read would have been proud.

Very civilised indeed

And, naturally, photographs like this that appeared on my camera from later in the evening were a result of drinking tea to excess and eating too many angel cakes.

A not-so-gloomy birthday weekend in Budapest

Before this weekend, I knew next to nothing about Budapest, except that it was the setting for the movie Gloomy Sunday, which has a really good (and gloomy) soundtrack, and had mixed reviews from the friends who had travelled there. Lauren had seen Gloomy Sunday, plus two other Holocaust-related movies set there, and - despite being put off Eastern Europe a bit by grumpy Bulgarians - decided it would be a good place to turn 28 in.

What a masterstroke. Budapest is brilliant, in the central city at least much more Austro-Hungarian grandeur than decaying Communist concrete. It's definitely the prettiest city we've seen at night, when the gorgeous buildings on both sides of the Danube River are lit up by scores of lights. The perfect place to wander about and remember that you can still be romantic and goopy when you're old and crusty like us. It wasn't gloomy at all.

No, I wasn't drunk - I had to stick the camera on an angled wall to keep it still.

The Parliament and the Danube.

Fisherman's Bastion

As in any any self-respecting capital, there was many a stone lion to pose with.

The synagogue

The memorial cemetary at the synagogue. All the dates ended in 1944 or 1945.

Gelert Spa - nearly as good as Awakeri Hot Springs.

There was only one lowlight. Before going my workmate Jay told me palinka, the local drink, tasted like mouthwash. He was being generous.