The Boat Race

Not 'a' boat race, 'THE' boat race.

Every year, for the past 160 years, Cambridge and Oxford have a crew race. I'm not sure if the location has changed over time, but these days it takes place down the River Thames, free for all of London to see. Specifically, the race starts at Putney Bridge then heads west around some very sharp turns and ends in, um, let's say Chiswick. The main point being that it does not go through central London and conveniently starts a mile away from my house.

The race this year was on Sunday afternoon. Being free and all, about a gazillion people headed down to the river to see what they could see. I'm not sure how many of these people actually went to Oxford or Cambridge, but we were seemingly the only people not drinking vast quantities of alcohol. But this was no tailgater - the people in front of us (who had come by bike) popped a bottle of champagne.

We were in Bishop's Park, which while just down from the bridge, has a long length of river frontage and a big square in the middle where they'd set up a big screen so you could watch the race once it had disappeared from view. We got to the park about 45 minutes before 'The' race, any about 15 minutes before the 'juniors' race, which I took to mean 'the B team' race. 'The' race garnered two hours of tv time, despite being less than 15 minutes long, thus allowing us to learn all sorts of things (as did that morning's paper). For example, there were 18 people involved - 16 rowers and 2 cox people. There were just as many Americans (5) as British people (5), and there were a fair number of 2008 Olympians involved. The tallest guy was 6'9", and they tended to be around 25 and post-grads. Oxford were the favorites, and to give away the end, they did end up winning.

HOWEVER, the race was quite exciting, mainly in that Cambridge was able to take the lead, it was announced that 80% of people ahead at that point won the race, at which point Oxford roared back to take the lead (with some minor oar clashing). I assure you, times are tough for the losing side, they're just allowed to sit there and skulk while the winners get given a trophy and the winning team's cox guessed tossed into the river.

I took some pictures, but at present we are experiencing virus issues and aren't allowed to plug devices into our computers, so I fear an alarm going off if I make such an attempt...

Spring!

Spring arrived yesterday in London, catching many of us off-guard. After spending some of my Saturday walking around the neighbourhood bundled up and wearing a scarf, you can imagine my surprise when I walked outside yesterday and was confronted with the beer garden at the White Horse being backed by coat-less revellers, the barbecue seemingly going at full blast. While I'm not sure of the temperature, it was indeed a beautiful sunny day, and it has been followed up with another temperate, although hazy, day today. So perhaps this is in fact evidence of a seasonal change and not just a blip on the radar of what has seemingly been an endless winter. It's mid-March, so I guess it had to happen sooner or later.

I must admit this sudden seasonal-change has caught me somewhat unprepared. For example, I've been meaning to get a bike (I work in sustainable travel, I might get ridiculed if folks find out I don't have one!) and most certainly don't have one yet. I had spotted one I liked at a nearby cycle shop the weekend before, so we popped in again yesterday to discover they were now all of out that bike and I didn't particularly care for the alternatives. It seemed I had been beaten to the bunch by those forward seeing folks who knew that spring was about to pop around the corner!

On the other hand, we have totally been on the outdoor ball for a good week now! We hauled ourselves down to the garden center the weekend before and picked up some soil and some seeds for Mark to plant in his 'earth box' on the balcony, which he finally got around to planting yesterday. We shall be expecting some leafy arrivals, well, hopefully at some point. We are also considering additional balcony plant options, but admittedly the allure of many plants are sort limited when confronted with the prospect of having to walk home with them. To be honest, it was miracle enough we were able to get the potting soil home without any major back injuries.

So at some point we will get some more plants for the balcony, perhaps a couple chairs to sit on to watch the sunset (and of course the District line!), and we now have a mini-barbecue on the way. I've found another bike online that I like (it comes with a wicker basket!), but it's currently out of stock until Easter, so perhaps I'll make that leap sometime soon as well. And given the change in weather, I also feel like now I can start returning to Bishop's Park for general outdoor activity and river-viewing!

Red Nose Day

Today is red nose day. No, that does not mean you have to spend the day drinking until your nose turns red. Instead it means that it's Comic Relief's big fundraising day, and if you care about others you will have by now gone to your local Sainsbury's and spent £1 on buying this year's nose. And wearing last year's nose does not count.

Comic Relief is essentially a charity that raises money for the needy in both Africa and the UK. It's essentially hard to disagree with and so a lot of hoop-lah goes into their big fundraising events every year. A group of somewhat random UK celebrities (aka, no one in the US has ever heard of them) climbed Kilimanjaro last week, there are random celebrity dancing shows now raising money for the charity, and last but not least, at Mark's work you have to pay £1 if you wore red today - and £2 if you didn't. Basically, there's no way to avoid this thing, and you will inevitably feel guilty if you don't donate a bit of money.

Personally I prefer to give money to charities that I support, not just to ones that make me feel guilty if I don't. Luckily my work is not squeezing money out of me today, and I will tactfully avoid any telethons that may or may not be taking place that involve celebrities dressing up in silly outfits and making fools of themselves with intermittent messages telling me what good work the charity does. It might make me seem like a bit of a scrooge, but it just sort of irks me the way they roll the whole thing out!

Treble

I have recently noted a few more signs of obstinacy amongst the English. Number one: they use the word 'treble' instead of 'triple'. There is absolutely no reason for this, as far as I can see. If one of the two options actually resembled the word 'three' it would have upper hand, but as both exclude the 'h', I don't really see how either one could be better than the other. However, as Americans use the word triple, we should win as there are more of us. I'm not sure if anyone in these parts has yet been tempted to use the term 'three-peat'.

My next sign of obstinacy is the use of the word 'fixture'. Sports teams do not have 'schedules' they have 'fixtures'. Up until I learned this little trick I found it next to impossible to find out when Chelsea would be playing at home (and I can therefore make plans to avoid game traffic), as when you look up 'Chelsea schedule' you don't really find anything of use. However, as I discovered the other day, if you look up 'Chelsea fixtures' you are immediately lead to a schedule of games. So another thing to keep in mind - my gym has a class schedule, Chelsea has a list of fixtures.

Let's say you want to arrange a meeting of some kind. The Anglo you are aiming to meet with will again not check their schedule or their calendar, they will check their diary. Mind you, I have no idea what they record their personal thoughts and feelings in if their diary is just a list of dates. Of course, a wall calendar is still called a wall calendar, just to be annoying.

So to sum things up, if you want to jot down on your calendar that there are three soccer games on Saturday, you would write that there is a treble bill of football fixtures in your diary.

Don't say I never taught you anything useful!

Euro Transit

So I've been to my fair share of European cities now, and feel like I can make a stab at judging their levels of transit provision. I take a lot of digs at the London underground so I suppose it's really only fair I do a bit of compare and contrast!

In the last few years I've ridden underground systems in London, Munich, Madrid, Barcelona and Paris. Amsterdam and Dublin do not have underground systems, instead relying on overground tram networks. Here are a few pluses and minuses on all of these:

Paris - an extensive combination of small trains running on tires and massive trains that run into the suburbs. The underground trains stop approximately every one minute, convenient if you're lazy, otherwise a bit overkill. Not the cleanest or the newest but the same could be said for Paris in general. The French have other priorities. Ticketing system is relaitvely straightforward and stations have ticket machines with an English option. Recommend only using when travelling great distances.

Barcelona - my most recent experience, system covers the city center quite comprehensively but doesn't run very far outside of the center. Stations relatively far apart, ticketing was easy (English option again) and all of the trains were relatively modern, some of them extremely so, with all of the carriages being open ended like you were traveling around inside of a speedy worm. It was also, in general, quite clean. Recommend for frequent use, beyond reason. Was also very cheap.

Madrid - again quite comprehensive and easy to follow. A little more dodge than the one in Barcelona and a little more confusing regarding ticketing (you needed an extra little ticket to get to and from the airport, although I might be confusing it with Munich!). But again modern and got me where I needed to go. Recommend for longer distances and travel to the airport.

Munich - most complicated ticketing system I've ever come across, although I would probably think that about London if I didn't use it every day. Also a combination of city only and regional trains. We got lost in stations on multiple occassions and often opted to walk, even though it was beyond freezing outside. Recommend for leaving the town centre, but walk around in town.

London - by far the most comprehensive system in regard to reaching beyond the city center. Ticketing is somewhat confusing, especially when you add Oyster cards into the mix. Within the heart of London it can be easier to walk, but anything beyond and you'd be a bit silly to pass it up. However, extreme crowding is an issue. Also the only city where I've seen live screens detailing the current level of service on each line. Not sure if the other cities just don't frequently distribute this information or if they don't have problems with delays.

So there you have it, a very quick comparison of underground systems in a small smattering of European cities. In general terms, when visiting a city I think it's best to do as much walking as possible to see bits of the city you would otherwise miss, but it's also worth doing a little research about these systems as I foresee things being quite troubling if you choose to forego them altogether!

Barcelona Day 3

Our flight on Tuesday wasn't until almost 10 pm, so we essentially had the whole day to play with. We started the day by checking out and leaving our bags at that steal of a hotel. Determined that we could do 'better' than the day before, we walked most of the way to the Sagrada Familia before popping into an adorable little bakery for some coffee and croissants. Both were excellent. We then hopped on the underground and whizzed to the end of the line, which was near the bottom of the massive park/hill to the west of town. We were intending to take a funicular up the hill and then have a look at some of the features within, such as the Olympic stadium and some ruins or the botanic garden. Alas, we couldn't find the funicular, despite having numerous maps that told us where it should be. So instead we ended up weaving and climbing up this steep hill.

From the edge of the park, way up on the hill, there is an amazing view of the city. You can basically see everything, including the sea. After briefly considering trying to find the stuff within the rest of the park, we instead decided to hop on the really, really big funicular that takes you from this park on the top of a great big hill to a tower near the aquarium and then to another tower near the beaches. After great confusion with the little ticket man, we determined that the final station was closed so we could only go to the aquarium tower. That was fine with us, and off we went.

Now, looking back on this, I'm not quite sure what drug I had taken that convinced me that this was a good idea. I'm using the word funicular as that was the technical term used on the maps and books, but really it was a pre-historic cousin of Portland's aerial tram. It appeared as if some person (likely on a dare) had strung up some wire really, really high up in the air and attached a slightly over-sized tin can to it to casually fling unsuspecting tourists to their death. While the view was breath-taking, I couldn't help but feel the end was near every second I was in that thing. Mark loved it. As demonstrated in the photo, the only time I got a genuine Mark smile in a photo was after we got off of that thing! I was just immensely relieved the second station was closed and that we had only gotten a one-way ticket.

Next on our list of all important things to do was to go to the food market off La Rambla. It was sort of like Pike Place Market, but you have to take out the fish counters and put in meat counters. And take out the flower stalls and put in meat counters. And take out everything else that isn't food and replace it with meat counters. Oh, and of course there were fruit and veggies and such, and olives. And maybe some candy? Anyways, my favorite was the long row of pig legs (hoof attached!) for you to take home and cut up for your own 'jamon'.

We planned on going to the concert hall next to hop on a tour to see the crazy moderniste interior, but all of the English tours were booked up until the next day. Alas, so instead we continued to the medieval quarter, stopping off at Starbucks on the way for lunch/restroom. We sat in the little mezzanine area, basically underneath a very low beam. In another sad moment, when Mark stood up for his turn to use the restroom, he did so quite quickly and ended up hitting his head quite forcefully on the beam. In a good/bad twist of fate, his sunglasses were on top of his head and took the brunt of the force. One of the frames broke and one of the lenses fell to the floor (but aside from a scratch was undamaged). Aside from the sadness of breaking his sunglasses and a small head wound (with minimal bleeding), Mark was okay. He was also somewhat cheered when we happened across a sunglass shop after leaving SB and he was able to explore new sunglass possibilities. For the rest of the day Mark just made do wearing sunglasses with a broken frame (I'm sure not that many people noticed, to be honest).

So off we went to do some shopping, hitting a couple of pottery stores along the way and getting a fabulous spoon rest that matched our olive dish purchase of a few days earlier. I have discovered that I have a weakness for Iberian pottery! Once it started to near 4 pm we decided we best have some dinner. Some places were closed for siesta but we did happen to come across a very nice looking place that had reasonable prices and other customers. The food was absolutely delicious! We were very pleased. We were saddened however, that by the time we finished it was time to start the long slow trek back to the hotel to pick up our bags. Mind you, we stopped in plenty of shops along the way so that lessened the blow a bit. Oh, and we stopped off for a last glass of wine at our favorite little wine bar.

Things have stretched on for long enough so I'll wrap things up! The journey home wasn't too bad save a train that didn't show up. We finally got home at 2am and were very sleepy the next day! We are now planning on making regular tapa/cava trips!