My mother came to visit recently and got to see her grand-daughter for the first time. We took several little trips over 2 weeks, and had a blast. Grandmas like new babies, and this one seemed to still be pretty excited even though this is her 7th.
train to polperro
Mom got here on a Friday afternoon, so I took the train out to Heathrow to meet her. I came directly from work, so I was still in my suit and tie. She thought this looked pretty funny and told me that I looked like a real dad. Great. We went back to the apartment and she got to meet Isa, which of course was a lot of fun for everyone. We stayed the night at the apartment and got up really early the next day to catch a train to Cornwall. Actually, the train went to Plymouth which is is Cornwall, and also happens to be the place from which the Pilgrims departed England for North America. These people were religious nuts who were being kicked out of England. Of course they thrived in North America and their crazy ideas have since defined the moral tone of our country. There’s something else for which we Americans can be resentful of our erstwhile English overlords: couldn’t the king just have just burned them at the stake or something? Oh well, too late now. Plymouth itself is a big run down, but does have a neat old town and harbor. This was the baby’s first long train ride, 3.5 hours, and she did fine, sleeping most of the way.
early early early at Paddington station
luggage…
baby on a train!
From Plymouth we rented a car, and drove out to our rental house near Looe. Looe is an old fishing village that has sort of become a crappy English holiday town: lots of dudes with shaved heads and tank tops with bad tattoos and bulldogs out walking with their rough looking wives who are smoking and pushing strollers while eating chips. The place is supposed to be quaint, but it’s really just kind of shitty. I was bummed out by Looe to be honest. The area just outside of town is quite bucolic and nice however, and Reba had found us a really cool house in this area, way up on a cliff overlooking the ocean. The view from the cliff was lovely and in some ways, reminded us of Santorini. We had planned lots of little day trips, but as it turns out, vacations with babies are quite different from those without babies. Getting going anywhere is a fairly big production, and needs to be timed carefully to avoid meltdowns. So, we ended up staying in the house quite a bit, which was fine with me, because I could lay on the couch reading, looking out over the bay, drink an ice cold Stella and chill with the baby all at the same time, which is pretty much Ean heaven.
the good life!
I got a lot of reading in over the trip. I banged through a few economists, a biography about Sonic Youth and an analysis of the letter writing relationship between James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, which was pretty great. Jefferson was kind of a nut, and seemed to believe that people should rise up and violently overthrow their governments every few years. That aside, there were a lot of great ideas moving between these two guys, with interesting ideological conversations played out against a backdrop of a pretty crazy period in history. This is a nice companion to the Portable John Adams, another book I’ve recently read. Good shit, Maynard. I also got a chance to write some songs, and worked out a way to play guitar and rock Isa’s car seat at the same time with my foot. It definitely put her to sleep a few times, which reminds me of a few Birdbath shows from back in the day.
captive audience
Driving around the area, we came across a neat little town that our cabbie in Plymouth had recommended to us: Polperro. This place was way more my speed than Looe, it had a medieval waterfront stuck down in a deep valley, beautiful sea views, a bar with microbrews, and a really great fish restaurant, Nelson’s. In my experience, this is a rare thing in the UK, because to most people here, “fish” = deep fried cod with chips and mushy peas. Not that I don’t like a bit of fish and chips now and again, but there really is a lot more to seafood than that. So, finding a place that did Cornish fish stew, fresh scallops, Atlantic lobster, and had a premier cru Chablis really turned my crank!
lunch in Polperro
Polperro Harbor at low tide
check out the angles on that window
river tour with mom
The trip back to London was nice, and after a week of chilling with books, beer, baby and guitar, I was feeling pretty relaxed. St John’s Wood is a bit on the crazy side recently, because Lord’s Cricket Ground is a few blocks away, and the English are playing the Australians for “the ashes”, which is a complicated rivalry thing that I don’t really understand but also don’t really care enough about to figure out. Anyway, the neighborhood is loaded with guys wearing crimson and gold ties in support of their team (whichever it is) and the neighborhood pubs which are usually empty and peaceful are basically overflowing with loud drunk sports people (in ties).
A few months back, Kaysa set up an outing for Alan, our friend from SBS who was going to get married soon. Al is not the typical guy, so the typical stag party with strippers and shots and whatever didn’t really seem to suit him. So, Kaysa came up with a swell day that included a boat tour of the Thames in London, a kite festival, a micro brewpub, and dinner at some kind of weird German restaurant with accordions and lederhosen all over the place. I found out on this outing that not only are Germans as weird as I initially suspected, but also that a boat tour of the Thames with a stop in Greenwich is a really great day out. So, I took my mom down to the pier at Westminster, and got us on a tour. There’s a lot to see from the river down there… the tower of London, Parliament, the London eye, the golden hind, the tower bridge, the place where they used to chain pirates us to be drowned by the incoming tide, etc. etc. My mom really enjoyed all of this, and snapped lots of pictures. We made it down to Greenwich by late afternoon and stopped at the totally awesome Meantime Brewing brewpub, the Greenwich Union. Micro-brewpubs are kind of rare here, so a visit to this place is a real treat for someone from the pacific northwest. After a late lunch, we walked up to the royal observatory which is on the top of a hill in a huge park, and you can stand exactly on zero degree longitude.
mom at zero
(not) visiting the queen
My club arranged a special after hours guided tour of Buckingham Palace, and the event happened while mom was in town. To be entirely honest, this is the exact same tour that any tourist can get as long as he buys a ticket and turns off his cell phone, but I think my mom enjoyed telling her friends that she might bump into the queen anyway. The Palace is kind of what you’d expect: big, fancy, lots of art and gold stuff, has a throne room, etc. It seemed pretty well maintained to me, but according to the economist, the place is falling apart. It was fun anyway, and I think my mom got a big kick out of seeing the collection of royal dresses that are on display there, so it was worth it. We finished the tour with a glass of champagne on the back patio and then it was off to the club for dinner. Total London stuff… a bit silly, but lots of fun. We didn’t see the queen though.
la Coruña
I really wanted to take my mom to Spain on this trip as well. Our normal M.O. for trips over here is to go to 2 separate places NOT in London, for 1 week each. This keeps things relaxed without too much running around but also gets me to somewhere a bit different from here. This time, with the Palace tour, it was going to be hard to squeeze in a second place without it being London, and since I have all the London I could ever want and we only had a few days left of vacation, I tried to find somewhere that is close by to visit. A friend of mine at work is from a town called La Coruña which is on the north coast of Spain in a region called Galicia. It’s only a 1.5 hour flight from Heathrow, and is near a town that my mom really likes, Santiago De Compostela. So, I booked some tickets to Coruña and some reservations at their nice hotel, the Finisterre. Arriving was a bit weird, as there had just been an ETA terrorist bombing that day in a nearby town (Burgos), so the immigration guys had a field day with my passport. The problem with my passport is that with all the travelling I’ve done in the past few years, and the greedy passport page habits of the UK visa people and the Chinese government, I’m all out of space, and it’s pretty difficult to tell where I’ve been because of all the stamps stamped on top of each other. So, I had to fill out some explanations of where I was staying, how long I would be there for, etc. and have some conversations that stretched the limits of my high school Spanish. Eventually we got through, but it took maybe 20 minutes to convince them that I really was a tourist. Funny! Once we got settled at the hotel, things were just fine… a quick walk put us at the Plaza of Maria Pita, which is the typical Spanish grand plaza with restaurants and people out for walks, etc. We found a nice little seafood tapas place, and dug into some great Spanish dinner. The Spanish pace of evening is something I really enjoy: strolling around, finding a place to eat, wine, tapas, more strolling, the dinner process takes hours and hours, but isn’t tedious, just relaxing. Plus the food is AWESOME. The local Orujo is a joy as well, the perfect after dinner drink. There aren’t a lot of “sights” to see in Coruña, so we spent a lot of our time in this way, which is perfect for me, and seemed to go over well for mom too.
dinner Coruña style
We did take one day trip to Santiago de Compostela, which is an ancient pilgrimage town which has drawn people from all over Europe for centuries. The big cathedral there is quite beautiful, and features a giant incense burner that is swung across the gathered pilgrims, apparently the original idea was to deodorize the stinky bastards after their long unwashed trip across the continent. The cathedral also has a neat column where people repeated placing their hands over the centuries has worn a hand shaped indentation into the rock. The first two times I was here, in 1987 and 1996, you could walk up to the column and put your hand into the grooves, which was pretty neat because of all the people before you who had also done this. Unfortunately for us, but perhaps fortunately for the column, it is now roped off and you can only look at it. This is probably for the best, I bet there are more tourists visiting that city in one 21st century summer than in 20 years of the 15th century, and this really neat relic could be at risk of falling apart if it’s not conserved properly.
handy…
We also visited the Santiago hotel where my mom and dad stayed when they first went to Spain in 1983, the Parador. This is across the square from the cathedral. I think that was cool for her. It was certainly cool for me because I ate some killer Jamon Iberico.
mom standing on the cathedral steps with hotel Parador in the background
mom and the cathedral
looking out over the bay at breakfast
The last thing we did in Coruña was visit the old roman lighthouse at Finisterre (Latin Finis and Terre?), which has been standing since the year 2. It’s had a LOT of changes since then, such as an entirely new roof structure and external walls added in the 18th century, but it’s still there, and makes a pretty good background for mom. I walked up the stairs inside, and it was a a weird combination of claustrophobic because of the tight winding staircases, and agoraphobic because of the high tower with no railing. Cool view though.
lighthouse!
All in all it was a pretty good trip. Now, I’m back at work in my suit.
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