May 31, 2003
WorldTour2003: london
Posted at 05:47 PM.
Didn't meet Alison, stayed in hotel instead. More to come...
June 13, 2003
WorldTour2003: dublin
Posted at 05:33 PM.
Al and I have been in Dublin for just over a day now. We have done the usual touristy things: the National Gallery (okay, a few good works, better stuff was by recent local abstract artists) and the National Museum (much smaller, but much better experience than the British equivalent).
We found a excellent bakery down around Temple Bar called, suprisingly, The Bakery. Just after that was a photographic institute of some sort with a design graduate show on. The quality varied a bit, but was mostly quite good. One of my favourite pieces was a illustrated children's story, The Boy Who Painted Cats.
Dublin is a nice place, we met up with our vaugely-itinerant french girl Clare last night after meandering around some first-class suburbia (it contained some fantastic photo opportunities which will be taken advantage of tonight). The three of us had an excellent dinner at Cornucopia, a vego place near the very impressive looking Trinity College, then met up with some friends of Claire's at The International Bar, a pub up the road. One of them, a local named Nile, had some very entertaining stories.
Like the time a bunch of his friends wanted to keep on drinking after the pubs had all closed, so they took the three-hour long ferry to Wales. Once in international waters, it can start serving drinks again and by the time they arrived at the destination, the pubs there were opening and they kept on drinking. Were booted out of there when the pubs closed and did the same thing back to Ireland.
Dedicated, they are over here. The amount of Guiness advertising is staggering as well. I don't think I will make it to the brewery, we're heading over to Claire's place tomorrow and that will be most of the afternoon gone.
June 20, 2003
WorldTour2003: but i'm drunk in japan
Posted at 02:06 PM.
(with apologies to Tom Waits)
Well, what a day. I finally managed to get some Yen after finding the Tourist Information Centre (it had moved). They directed me to a bank that does the same thing as your typical currency exchange but insetad of using a small machine, they use several forests of paperwork and multiple phone calls and passport checks.
After that, I headed up to Asakusa to see the Senso-ji and to say hi to the goddess Kannon and stuff. Had an excellent lunch and wandered around the area for a bit. Did the useless walking tour from the LP Guide, and it was all good.
Just been told I have less than five minutes, will abridge... now...
Went to Ueno.
Went to Shibuya.
Went back to Ginza and had some fantastic yakitori (skewers of grilled chicken) and beer from this tiny place down Yurakucho Yakitori Alley.
Went back to the hostel and talked to a guy from Boston and Brisbane and drank some Asahi (ahh-sah-hee) and hooked wintermute up to the 'Net for the first time and...