Packing up in Hong Kong

Today our holiday comes to an end. We are packing up after a magnificent Dim Sum breakfast and a quick look at the Jade Market. While we have had a great time, I will be and I think Silver will be pleased to see Ozstrayleya.
 These are just a couple of images of a beautiful city which has changed a great deal in 20 years [the last time I was here]. The only downside was the biting things which attacked me [and only me] on the beach at Discovery Bay which seems to be the Vaucluse, Toorak or Beaumont of Hong Kong Island. The other downer was a young man who was sticking a needle in his arm and staggering around.

See you all soon.

Cheers

Ahola and farewell Spain

Denise and Amir from New York at Hotel de la Abalos

Today we left Barcelona and are currently in Heathrow waiting for out flight to Hong Kong in the morning. We spent Sunday in Barcelona after a long drive from Abalos on Saturday. It was hectic drive; we left about 12:30pm rather than the planned 11am as Abalos had a wine festival with 16 family Bodegas [wineries] open to the public! Behind these doors were all sorts of treasures.

We also spent time with Denise and Armir fro New York. Amir was on a search for the best bottle of Tempranillo... he was still looking when they has to go home! I have promised him some Two Dragons to prove there is such a thing.

inside this door....

..vats which must have
been built inside the house!
 The Vat had a label with
Cuba and a date [unreadable]

...and then in the room next door another!

Getting into the swing of things.

The trip to Barcelona was relatively uneventful; left hand drive wasn't so hard after all. We spent Sunday travelling around on a tourist bus; getting off at different places to see different things.  Will load photos as soon as I can. Off to bed now. Last night of our 'Tahini Moon'!

Driving!!

Weell it has been very exciting, turning you brain around and doing things backwards on very narrow roads.

We picked up the car from Barcellona Airport and initially the GPS wouldn't work in the car park. Just go outside the bloke said it work out there! 'Out there was a network of freeways where the speed was 80 to 100km per hour!

Too scared to go any further without the GPS we stopped and tried to get it going. Did the usual, push reset, pushed again,..and again. Still nothing. No phones working. Travel tip 378 - don't use you Australian phone by a prepaid in country of destination but don't do 'Orange'. Their coverage and service is abit like Telstras!

So Silver decide we could use the downloaded directions from Google to get us the 500km to the Hotel......hhhhmmmm.

Well she was mostly right but everything is new and the names didn't line up too well. It was terrifying!

Next thing 'Roger' the GPS speaks to us! So I pulled off the road..legally I don't care and we set Roger up to give us directions. I was very relieved as reversing your brain from 40 years of conditioning when tired is very difficult.

Needless to say we got to the hotel with only one other major incident of nearly telling Silver to drive in front of a truck as oncoming traffic is in the left lane when turning left as you are crossing the stream of traffic. That adrenalin rush lasted us to our destination.

We have discovered roger isn't very good at small villages so he will take us to the centre or plaza and thats it. Then it is up to us! People are very good in spite of the fact very few have any English.

Thats it for now. There are more driving stories particularly the drive around the roundabout the wrong way, getting too close to right side of the narrow roads etc

Abalos, La Rioja, Spain.

We are now using the Hotel villa de Abolos as our base for seeing wineries [Bodega] and vineyards. [?].www.hotelvilladeabalos.com.

As you can see our Spanish isn't very extensive but we manged to have a long conversation yesterday with Rodrigo Fernandez Gomez on his wines, wine making and vineyards. He also took us through the caves which make up the winery.

It is on 3 levels, street for fruit entry, sales and formal stuff; 'basement' c

rushing, barrel storage, then there was further steps down to concrete/limestone vats and who knows what. At one stage the entire staff was trying to interpret for us but some how with actions, common words and listening with all my faculties the message gets across!

It is a beautiful country! So much more like our home. It is arid and desert like in places and rich and lush in other places. It was also nice to leave behind the greeness of Enland. It was getting too much; it is almost unnatural to my Aussie eyes.

photos update!

here a couple of snaps from London, Avebury and Greenham!

Leaving England

The much discussed and thought about trip to the land of Tempranillo is about to begin

Working backwards from my last entry Silver and I have spent a day in London with Sue Ridgways brother, visiting the Tower of London, walking across London Bridge, travelling on the Thames and visiting Davids ‘Mine’. “We are not far from ‘Mine’ now” he would say as we walked along the cobbled paths beside the river towards his flat.

It was good to catch up in another space as we last saw him in Oz for Sue's funeral.

The 2 days before that we spent in and around Greenham Common. This is where Silver spent nearly 6 years of her life, protesting about the installation of USA Nuclear Missiles on an English Common. The activity of essentially women is acknowledged at the site and commemorated in a number of ways; through a memorial peace garden [see photo of spiral fountain] which particularly acknowledges a woman who was killed during one of the actions, maps of the common which includes a timeline of events and describes the women’s actions including the 30,000 women who circled the base holding hands and singing! Bridget our friend who also was at Greenham and Silver had a camp fire with roasted potatoes and sleepover for old times sake on Saturday night. Caro, Bridget's partner and I had a quite night in Reading Travelodge in front of the TV. It was great to spend time with both of them. They had been doing the family bit too but theirs was the living variety!

Meanwhile Silver and I had been visiting family in the graveyards of Basingstoke, Belstone and Appledore. The Smiths in Basingstoke may not be my great, great, great forebears so we have to follow them up through the birth and death certificate processes. Belstone is worth a google and doing a street level walk. It is beautiful and quirky. We found some of Silvers Reddaways there and found East Lake Farm where they lived. Appledore is where Betsy Beare, my paternal great, great grandmother came from. It is a small fishing village where Betsy's father came across from the other side of the estuary and began the market and several other commercial enterprises. None of them went to sea. There is so much to see when you wander through a town like Appledore thinking about what it might have been like a century and a half ago.

Prior to these few days we spent time in Galloway with Erica another of Silver's Greenham friends. She made us very welcome and she is great cook!

I have now done my full share of barrows [ancient burial grounds], stone circles, castles and ruins. The overwhelming greenness and short vistas, except when on the moors, is now fully updated and imprinted on my mind. Doing those jigsaws of thatched houses will be so much easier now!

Resting up in Galloway near Dumfries with Silvers friend Erica. She is great and its nice to be in the one place for a day or 2 and enjoy great cooking, conversation and the country side. I check with the breakfast politics website to see if anything has changed. Some of the footage of the Independents is interesting when they talk about the 2 party system failing and we need to have more smaller parties who form coalitions and consensus arrangements.

Photo 1 Road to Ericas; #2 Style at Hadrian's Wall [Silver and I got over and settled in for a wee and next thing some hikers popped up and started walking towards us...oppps! but the question is will we see these people again!]; #3 Hadrian Wall in paddock; # Cottage at Craig Fechen in Wales; # 4 public art in Chester. Not sure what is was about but painted Rhinos sponsored by different groups. Very colourful

Two Parties NOT preferred election!

While going along the A1 last night we were looking at the results! In each of the electorates it seems the Libs and the ALP lost and the Greens gained their loss. Jimbo in Mayo on 2pp [two party preferred seems to be in a safe seat but he only increased his margin by .6!

If it is a hung Parliament what happens ...we vote again?

If the Mad Monk gets in what happens to the 'Basin' Plan and all the good works done to date?

The SA Government seems to be stealthy moving towards the making the bunds permanent at Clayton...Lake Albert doesn't get a mention. Those acid sulphate soils are goina raise again!

[Perhaps I have spent too much time in the revival tent!

Off to Scotland today to see Erica, one of Silvers Greenham Common friends. Then on Tuesday down south, brief stop over in London and hen off to Spain before heading home.

Arrived UK this morning!

Chicago

Great Place! Heres a few pictures

The mirror image is in Grand Rapids the take off point for the music festival.

Done USA!

Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival

Again this was an extraordinary experience with wonderful food [all vego cooked on wood fires and lots of broccoli], fantastic acts and wonderful womyn. There was one Australian womyn, who happens to come from Adelaide called Sia on the night stage. Had I heard of her ...well no but Silver had mixed her some years ago at Women Performing. She had changed a bit since then and everyone seemed to like her as she belted out a few songs and assisted the protest ‘Trannies belong on the land’ protest group to stand up for a moment but it wasn’t until that we knew what that was all about! Impact zero!

Silver and I camped in the same area as some women from Chicago who looked out for us and let us sit on a comfortable chair for a few minutes! There was also a woman from NZ, who had worked in Sydney and was a trying to emigrate to Canada! Apparently you need a lot of money so you don’t cost the country money when you get older!

Best act for political content was the ‘Slanty Eyed Mamas’, 2 Anglo Chinese Americans who sang about their experience and also played an amazing electronic violin. They were poitical, very funny and in your face. I went to the Lesbian Revival tent with Sister Caroline of the Sisterhood of the Sacred Synapses. It was very satirical and used the whole evangelistic style of presentation to discuss very important issues! Check Sister Caroline out online.

Another workshop, run by a very able woman who trains across the UK, US and Mexico for a living, was on ‘Internal Misogyny’. Sounds heavy but it was for a great reflection time, sitting under an Oak tree in the woods. Probably the most practical discussion that was on was called ‘Chicken Chat’! It was good to find some women who were thinking about recycling, growing food and enjoying the process. We ran out of time. The chicken bag was a feature of the discussion.

Each festival there is a quilt constructed from scratch. This year it was particularly brilliant. It is paraded on the last night and is one of the raffle prizes. I would like to say we won it but it was not to be! I would have made an exception and bought another bag to bring it home. [photo quilt]

There was a lot of discussion on the political action, working together, coalitions and the American way of life. Holly Near left us with this thought of Dr Bernice Reagon [from Sweet Honey in the Rock] ‘that if you are doing coalition work and it is easy, then you are not doing coalition work’ ....hhhhmmmm?

Just been stymied by the ultimate piece of capitalism. There is an announcement to say free internet! I hooked in only to discover access to the home page was free but to do anything else apart form look at their site costs money!!! I would prefer to go to McDonald’s so my posts are a bit later than I had hoped.

Dunno what to call this!

I don't seem to be getting the time to put stuff up and it is not relevant time wise so you are gunna get what you get!

We arrived in Chicago 3 nights ago! The Conference is over, papers presented, posters talked about. The poster will be back in Australia next week. New Orleans is a great city and we got to do a lot of things even with the Conference to attend! The feature for me, and I think for Silver too, is getting to talk to people and hear their stories. One of the highlights was going out into the swamp with a creole fisherman and listening to the stories he had to tell.

He showed us a Cajun Fishing Village and told us the house standing had water 2'deep inside the house and the house next door had been lost during Katrina. We went into the swamp, which is the water settled and spread out over the land [no mozzies so still moving water]; bayou is the area craved out by the river in a flood [billabong or annabranch] and the river itself is very fast moving!

Public Art

there are lots of great pieces of public art. this is a field of street lights outside of the LA Museum and art gallery.

Quick Catch up!

While we were on the train we had no internet connection so I wrote the words and assembled pictures. However transferring hasn't been as simple as I had hoped so in order to get the information up I will put the photos on Flickr and improve as I go along. Enjoy!

July 19^th

Some real food at last! This is what is called the Farmers Market on 3^rd and Fairfax. At least it looked fresh and tasted great. Across the road was the biggest organic store called Whole Foods. We got the makings for a meal we were more familiar with back in our Best Western.

July 19^th FAQs

Weather has been warm and pleasant. LA not too much smog and breathing sort of ok. They drive on the wrong side of the road! This hasn’t helped our orientation to being upside down and directionless [ie knowing north, south etc] remembering to look for cars on the left rather than the right especially when you are so tired from the change of time and flight.

There is a great mismatch between the movie town image and the reality. Everything is BIG! Big people, big buildings, big things and big hearts! And Grubby. We have travelled by bus and the drivers other travellers have been so good; stopping at our hotel not the regular stop, not charging us a fare if we looked lost. Everyone has a ‘cell phone’.

Some skyline views

These scenes are the only thing that is just like the movies! The people are friendly, helpful especially bus drivers, and good fun. When it comes to the movies - tinsel bits thats when it becomes fake and boring.

Our Best Western with windows that opened!

We made it!

July 18^th Los Angeles 10am

We made it, negotiated the long queues at Border Security. Silver was ‘good’ and we passed through without a hitch, negotiated a shuttle bus to our door which took us around through UCLA campus and to the Best Western. No this art deco hotel is not the Best Western, it was next door! It was a quaint place with a pool which made it easy to acclimatise.

Our first meal was at Carney’s [apparently a famous landmark]. There was lots of chilli and grits but it was food and we were very hungry! It took us 3 days to get over the plane trip and stop falling to sleep each time we sat down.

YES that is a red colour tortilla with the salad inside

getting started!

July 18^th Sydney 10am

A strange thing has started to occur! Turtle ‘T’’s are appearing everywhere. This was taken at Sydney Airport with my niece Christine, Toby in the sling and Nathan proudly showing his Hurray, Hurray off!