Tuesday, November 1, 2011
A Foggy Day in Santa Monica
We spent our spare day in Santa Monica where we walked in the fog on the pier and beach. The fog made in coolish and we'd left our jackets at the hotel (where it was warm). Quite spooky looking out to sea through the fog, very suitable for Halloween.
Adults everywhere got into the swing of Halloween, including this cute deer at Barnes & Noble bookshop. Ahhh Barnes & Noble... We spent some time there buying books (David) and a Nook Color e-reader (me). Yes I know B&N doesn't like Australians but I have strong hopes of getting around that and have pre-loaded it as much as I can.
Lunch was on a third floor rooftop overlooking Third Street Promenade and was nearly too chilly till they turned on a heater. Great small dishes of Asian/Latin American food to share: we didn't much like the yucca chips but all else was delicious.
Adults everywhere got into the swing of Halloween, including this cute deer at Barnes & Noble bookshop. Ahhh Barnes & Noble... We spent some time there buying books (David) and a Nook Color e-reader (me). Yes I know B&N doesn't like Australians but I have strong hopes of getting around that and have pre-loaded it as much as I can.
Lunch was on a third floor rooftop overlooking Third Street Promenade and was nearly too chilly till they turned on a heater. Great small dishes of Asian/Latin American food to share: we didn't much like the yucca chips but all else was delicious.
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Los Angeles
We made it to Los Angeles and so - surprisingly - did our luggage as we only had 20 minutes in Atlanta to travel by train from B concourse to D. Atlanta has long escalators that plunge you under the runways to a train that comes along every five minutes to whisk you away to the next stop and another very long escalator up. But our cases must have taken a quicker route.
Our travel agent booked us into a medium hotel (on Qantas we hope) and we had a mediocre sort of meal with
a waiter
straight out of Fawlty Towers and are very ready for bed after the exhaustion of 8 hours sitting in planes. Why is that I wonder?
Our travel agent has booked us on Virgin Australia Monday night at 9.25 pm so we have a day in LA to follow Jenny's advice.
Outside is the city that never sleeps:
Our travel agent booked us into a medium hotel (on Qantas we hope) and we had a mediocre sort of meal with
a waiter
straight out of Fawlty Towers and are very ready for bed after the exhaustion of 8 hours sitting in planes. Why is that I wonder?
Our travel agent has booked us on Virgin Australia Monday night at 9.25 pm so we have a day in LA to follow Jenny's advice.
Outside is the city that never sleeps:
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Crisis!
Qantas has grounded all aircraft! We will be stuck in Los Angeles waiting to get back home. Jenny: what can we do in LA for one day? Our travel agent is hot on the job so I'm not worried; we'll get home even if it takes a while.
Tim got bagels for breakfast which we ate with the delicious wild mayhaw jelly. Mary knew it is a wild hawthorn and googled it to discover that it used to be a family tradition to go mayhaw picking in the woods - "a tradition now sadly defunct" - except at Wokulla Springs. Somebody should tell them.
Meanwhile today we are watching The Game Florida Gators versus Georgia Bulldogs and the Dawgs are winning which is causing great anguish in this house.
When The Game is over we will attack Ben & Jerrys ice-cream. It was buy one get one free at Publix so I bought 6 different flavours: Pumpkin Cheesecake, Chunky Monkey, Cherry Garcia, Red Velvet Cake, Everything But The... and Imagine World Piece. The names are a big part of Ben and Jerrys. If you suggest a name that they adopt you get a lifetime supply of ice cream.
Here we are with Tim and Mary optimistically toasting the Gators' success:
But they lost 20 to 24...
Tim got bagels for breakfast which we ate with the delicious wild mayhaw jelly. Mary knew it is a wild hawthorn and googled it to discover that it used to be a family tradition to go mayhaw picking in the woods - "a tradition now sadly defunct" - except at Wokulla Springs. Somebody should tell them.
Meanwhile today we are watching The Game Florida Gators versus Georgia Bulldogs and the Dawgs are winning which is causing great anguish in this house.
When The Game is over we will attack Ben & Jerrys ice-cream. It was buy one get one free at Publix so I bought 6 different flavours: Pumpkin Cheesecake, Chunky Monkey, Cherry Garcia, Red Velvet Cake, Everything But The... and Imagine World Piece. The names are a big part of Ben and Jerrys. If you suggest a name that they adopt you get a lifetime supply of ice cream.
Here we are with Tim and Mary optimistically toasting the Gators' success:
But they lost 20 to 24...
Friday, October 28, 2011
Wakulla Springs and St Marks
Nancy and Al came early to pick us up today and drive us two hours north to the REAL Florida - the land of cypress knees, swamps, alligators and good-ole-boys in pickups. We had sausage and biscuit (scones) in Perry for morning tea and coffee then pushed on to St Marks, formerly San Marco when the Spanish had it. It was a fort strategically placed where Wakulla and St Marks rivers meet and flow to the sea and like so many historic sites changed hands from Indian to Spanish to British then American. Now it's a peaceful spot with only the fort foundations left and a good place to launch your boat for a day fishing.
Then when you don't catch anything you can have lunch at the Riverside Cafe which is practically IN the river it's so close. We had steamed oysters to start - rather odd - then
I had breaded shrimp and the others had blackened grouper.
Next stop was Wakulla Springs State Park (nearly to Tallahassee) which has a most surprising hotel, a 1930s grand mansion which has been turned into a hotel - Nancy and Al have stayed there many times and often bring visitors. They have a particular fondness for old hotels. We've known Nancy and Al since we lived in the same apartment complex and our children became friends. Al was on sabbatical at the time but returned to Gainesville to become a professor at the vet school.
We took the boat ride on the Wakulla River, through the swamp and over the springs and it was gorgeous! Just one other couple and us (how unlike most places in America) and so much wildlife - 12 manatees, alligators, big and little fish and any amount of birds. Spanish moss hangs from the trees and when the boat engine was turned off all you could hear was the croaking of frogs. The spring emits 250
million gallons per day of fresh clean water - amazing to us! There were a few kids jumping off the diving board but otherwise no-one. I could have gone around again it was so good.
We stopped at a good-ole-boy selling honey and jelly by the side of the road and I bought a jar of wild mayhaw jelly. My picture is of Nancy deciding to buy some of the Tupelo honey.
St Marks also has a National Bird Reserve so we drove out there to a land of sea and sky and a dyke between the sea and swamp where you can walk looking at seabirds one side and swamp birds the other as it is a staging post for birds flying south for the winter. It's also a breeding place for monarch butterflies which were so busy that I could photograph them close up. Al had a lovely time with his binoculars looking at birds until the no-see-ums forced him back to the car.
We drove past the honey man for the third time in search of the perfect place for a picnic which turned out to be Wakulla Beach, deserted except for a dog and a woman netting for bait fish. Here we had smoked mullet from Riverside, crackers, olives, nuts and the wild mayhaw jelly which is a lovely pale pink and tastes of quince crossed with pomegranate. A winner!
The two hour trip back on route 19 passed quickly. Many thanks to Al for his excellent driving and to Nancy for her inspired choice of outing!
Then when you don't catch anything you can have lunch at the Riverside Cafe which is practically IN the river it's so close. We had steamed oysters to start - rather odd - then
I had breaded shrimp and the others had blackened grouper.
Next stop was Wakulla Springs State Park (nearly to Tallahassee) which has a most surprising hotel, a 1930s grand mansion which has been turned into a hotel - Nancy and Al have stayed there many times and often bring visitors. They have a particular fondness for old hotels. We've known Nancy and Al since we lived in the same apartment complex and our children became friends. Al was on sabbatical at the time but returned to Gainesville to become a professor at the vet school.
We took the boat ride on the Wakulla River, through the swamp and over the springs and it was gorgeous! Just one other couple and us (how unlike most places in America) and so much wildlife - 12 manatees, alligators, big and little fish and any amount of birds. Spanish moss hangs from the trees and when the boat engine was turned off all you could hear was the croaking of frogs. The spring emits 250
million gallons per day of fresh clean water - amazing to us! There were a few kids jumping off the diving board but otherwise no-one. I could have gone around again it was so good.
We stopped at a good-ole-boy selling honey and jelly by the side of the road and I bought a jar of wild mayhaw jelly. My picture is of Nancy deciding to buy some of the Tupelo honey.
St Marks also has a National Bird Reserve so we drove out there to a land of sea and sky and a dyke between the sea and swamp where you can walk looking at seabirds one side and swamp birds the other as it is a staging post for birds flying south for the winter. It's also a breeding place for monarch butterflies which were so busy that I could photograph them close up. Al had a lovely time with his binoculars looking at birds until the no-see-ums forced him back to the car.
We drove past the honey man for the third time in search of the perfect place for a picnic which turned out to be Wakulla Beach, deserted except for a dog and a woman netting for bait fish. Here we had smoked mullet from Riverside, crackers, olives, nuts and the wild mayhaw jelly which is a lovely pale pink and tastes of quince crossed with pomegranate. A winner!
The two hour trip back on route 19 passed quickly. Many thanks to Al for his excellent driving and to Nancy for her inspired choice of outing!
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Gainesville Florida
Here we are in Gainesville where we lived 1976 to 1979 while David did his PhD at the University of Florida, home of the Gators.
Things have changed a lot since then: to start with the U of F now has 50,000 students instead of 30,000 so that's a lot of extra people. Entrance requirements are rigid: the grading system is 1 to 4 and undergraduates here need 4.4 to get in! We are staying with Mary and Tim who are associate dean of research for the discipline of agriculture (Mary) and Director of the Forestry School (Tim). We have known them since 1991 when they spent 6 months on sabbatical in Mount Gambier with their daughters Dorothy and Susie who now have children of their own. Antonio, their 17-year old adopted son from Paraguay lives with them plus Star and Jazz the two dogs.
This is a lovely time of year to be here as the temperature is just right: most of the year it's very hot and air-conditioning is a must. But it's too cool for the swimming pool so I brought my bathers for nothing.
David spent the day at the University revisiting old haunts and having lunch with Mary: I had the generous loan of Mary's sister's car and zoomed off to the Oaks Mall which I always loved when lived here. Driving was fine and I kept to the right easily and the Mall was just where it used to be near I75. One of the new shops is Teavana which I really liked - all sorts of expensive flavoured teas. (I hope I can get them through customs. ) No bookshop any more, as at Blacksburg - books are out of fashion...
Susie came to dinner with us at nearby Haile Village, new since our time, and a charming place of shops and restaurants with fairy lights in the trees and apartments above the shops.
She has fond memories of Mount Gambier and would love to return.
Things have changed a lot since then: to start with the U of F now has 50,000 students instead of 30,000 so that's a lot of extra people. Entrance requirements are rigid: the grading system is 1 to 4 and undergraduates here need 4.4 to get in! We are staying with Mary and Tim who are associate dean of research for the discipline of agriculture (Mary) and Director of the Forestry School (Tim). We have known them since 1991 when they spent 6 months on sabbatical in Mount Gambier with their daughters Dorothy and Susie who now have children of their own. Antonio, their 17-year old adopted son from Paraguay lives with them plus Star and Jazz the two dogs.
This is a lovely time of year to be here as the temperature is just right: most of the year it's very hot and air-conditioning is a must. But it's too cool for the swimming pool so I brought my bathers for nothing.
David spent the day at the University revisiting old haunts and having lunch with Mary: I had the generous loan of Mary's sister's car and zoomed off to the Oaks Mall which I always loved when lived here. Driving was fine and I kept to the right easily and the Mall was just where it used to be near I75. One of the new shops is Teavana which I really liked - all sorts of expensive flavoured teas. (I hope I can get them through customs. ) No bookshop any more, as at Blacksburg - books are out of fashion...
Susie came to dinner with us at nearby Haile Village, new since our time, and a charming place of shops and restaurants with fairy lights in the trees and apartments above the shops.
She has fond memories of Mount Gambier and would love to return.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Virginia Tech
Today Jim took us on a tour of Virginia Tech campus which stretches over a huge area and comprises many large building including a football stadium that holds 66,000 fans - and did so last weekend for Homecoming. (They're the Hokies and the football team is doing very well in the current competition.)
A memorial to the 32 students and faculty shot by a deranged student in 2007 is most moving and we spent some time there reading about the victims.
The Hahn Horticultural Garden also has a memorial, both in restrained good taste - but so sad. The Garden has beautiful trees, ponds, flowers and no-one there, so wonderfully peaceful. Carol and I went off to the hairdressers while Jim and David went target shooting from the back patio. (The yellow ATV is to drive up the hill to check the target. )
A memorial to the 32 students and faculty shot by a deranged student in 2007 is most moving and we spent some time there reading about the victims.
The Hahn Horticultural Garden also has a memorial, both in restrained good taste - but so sad. The Garden has beautiful trees, ponds, flowers and no-one there, so wonderfully peaceful. Carol and I went off to the hairdressers while Jim and David went target shooting from the back patio. (The yellow ATV is to drive up the hill to check the target. )
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