Dubai - June 2013

After being in retirement for 6 months the opportunity to do a little work came up whilst I was in England.   Nothing serious, just a week of work in Dubai holding the hand of a new Infostat customer as they rolled out our software.   Since I was over in England, it made sense to send me rather than have someone come all the way from California.

I flew out of Manchester to Zurich where I connected with the Swissair flight to Dubai.  A slight mishap at Manchester airport when I found my reservation had been cancelled and I had to scramble to buy a new ticket at an inflated price, but we survived.  

What a beautifully clean, tidy and modern airport Zurich is; just what you would expect from the Swiss.   Though neither my arriving or departing flight were on time, which somewhat spoiled the reputation for timeliness that the Swiss have.  Regardless, it was a real pleasure to stroll through the un-crowded airport.

In Dubai, the airport was also nice and clean and tidy, though on a whole grander scale than Zurich’s.  Then, of course, the big difference was when you walked outside and felt the onslaught of the heat and humidity.  

Dubai Metro

To get to my hotel the taxi ride was pretty much through the entire length of the city/state/emirate or whatever you call it.   I got a good feel for how modern and high rise the whole area was and how large it all was horizontally as well as vertically – all very impressive.

Dubai seems to be laid out in discrete pods of high rise buildings alongside a backbone of a major highway and metro system.   I was staying in a the Jumeirah Lakes Towers area.  The Bonnington Hotel – quite luxurious and just what I needed.

View from Burj Khalifa

The next morning was Saturday, not a work day in Dubai, their weekend is Friday and Saturday.  So I became a tourist for the day.  There is one of those hop on, hop off bus tours that takes you around the sights so I decided to do that.  That required a metro trip to the Mall of the Emirates.  The Metro itself was quite wonderful.   Air conditioned, clean, quite new and featuring the world’s fastest driverless trains.  It was a real wonder to experience it.   A long, long way from the Metropolitan Line in London.

I boarded the bus, a double-decker, with running commentary of the trip in a selection of languages and for a while I was brave enough to sit outside in the open air upper deck.   That lasted about 5 minutes.   It was hovering around 40 deg C and the humidity was high.  It was quite withering.

I don’t know what I was expecting but there doesn’t seem to be anything much older than say 10 years to see in Dubai.  Everything looks like it was just built yesterday.

Yes there is an older part of town around the Dubai Creek, but it is not that big and not that impressive.  It was nice to do a little boat trip down the Dubai Creek and observe the old dhows loading up with cargo, and the smaller abras carrying passengers across the creek.

Dubai Creek

Apart from that it was Malls, high-rise buildings, man-made islands, five star hotels and expensive shops.   I did the obligatory trip up the Burj Khalifa the world’s tallest building at 2700ft.   It is indeed an impressive structure and you can get to an observation platform about ¾ of the way up.  Then there is the indoor ski-slope in one of the malls, and the largest acrylic panel on the front of an aquarium in another mall, a huge waterfall in another mall.   Then there is the Palm Jumeira - the man made island in the shape of a palm tree, the Barj el Arab, the self designated 7 star hotel.  All impressive modern stuff but how can it be sustainable?  I want to see it in 50 years time.

Burj Khalifa

At the end of the day I was exhausted from the heat and humidity but I think that I had seen nearly everything that Dubai had to offer.  

Sunday was the start of the work week.  Nothing challenging - they just wanted someone to be there to answer questions as they got ready to roll out our software to Egypt and Indonesia.   A couple of things I noticed - there are an awful number of Brits working in Dubai, there are also an awful number of Indians too.  Some of these folks smoke - in particular the two that I was working with.  Since the trip for a smoke involved a trip from the 31st floor to the ground floor and out the door, these smoke breaks, of which there were many, were a serious drag on time.  It has been a long time since I had been around smokers.

Talking of expats, the Emiratis are a minority in their own country.  I believe in 2012 the Emiratis were just 9% of the population with a whopping 91% being expatriates.  A significant number of those are Indian, Bangladeshis, Pakistanis that do all the work.  I didn’t see where they all lived but by the time that I went to work, they were there laboring on the many construction sites, cleaning the offices and homes.  I think if you look closely there are some pretty unsavoury things going on with these folks and their working conditions.

Barj El Arab Hotel

After work, we went out on a couple of nights for a drink.  We went to the Marina area which is just another collection of high rises towers next to a marina with a lot of very large, very expensive looking boats.   The wealth is in your face wherever you look here.  Lots of bars too and alcohol though somewhat expensive is readily available for the expats.

Dubai at night

Nothing too spectacular happened for the rest of the week.  I returned back to the UK, again via Zurich overnight Thursday evening/Friday morning.   An interesting trip for sure, but Dubai is not a place I would not put high on my list of places to revisit.

Here is a link to all the photos from this trip on my Smugmug site.

Continental Europe - May, June2013

After we had finished our Dales Way walk in May, Nancy and I stayed with my mother for a few days and then headed to Germany where we had scheduled to pick up my new car from the Audi factory – a Q5 – very nice.  We flew from Manchester to Munich where we were whisked off by an Audi chauffeur to Ingolstadt, 50 miles north of Munich and the location of the Audi factory.

The European Purchase option for an Audi is quite a nice deal.  You get 5% off the sticker price of the car and of course you get to order it exactly as you want – nothing extra and nothing left off.   You get picked up from Munich airport and put up in a hotel in Ingolstadt and then delivered to the factory the next day.

At the AUDI Factory with the new car

We had a great time at the Audi factory – we were given free access to the bar and restaurant, a factory tour and a visit to the Audi museum.   The factory tour was quite amazing – such a clean place, such a quiet place, and it was amazing how much was done by robots – very impressive indeed.  Of course at the end of the day we got to drive away in this wonderful new vehicle.

Augsberg

Mid afternoon, we headed off to Augsberg, our resting place for the night.  We didn’t know where to stay, but somehow we found a nice little hotel near the center of town.  f course, the hotel was down a very narrow street and the basement parking was an even narrower subterranean entrance.  Not the place to take your new car on its first day out.  Still, we escaped unscathed.

The next day we headed out of Augsberg, itself a pretty town, to a couple of even prettier towns on the so-called RomantischeStrasse.  The first town was Dinkelsbuehl – very picturesque, very cute, but quite touristy.  The perfectly preserved buildings in the town center (some dating back to the 15^th century) were just a little bit too perfect well manicured.  As is usually the case, the large number of tourists wandering around did not add to our appreciation of the place.

Dinkelsbuehl

We moved on to one of the other towns on the Romantic Road - Rothenburg ob der Tauber.  This again was another perfectly preserved town laden with tourists.  We walked around, grabbed a bite to eat and decided we had seen enough of the Romantische Strasse.   We decided to head south (we had been heading north today) and make for the Bavarian Alps and Berchtesgarden (Hitler’s summer retreat).

As we drove southeast, the rain started and by the time we reached Berchtesgarden it was pouring down.  It was dark when we rolled into town and we were not in the mood for being selective in our lodging so we found a room in the quite adequate but unexceptional Hotel Grunberger.

The next morning we had thought we would go up to Hitler’s retreat, Kehlsteinhaus above Berchtesgarden (nicknamed the Eagle’s Nest and built as a 50^th birthday present for the man).  Alas this was not to be, the weather was not good (rain and snow at higher altitudes) and the road to the top of the mountain was closed.  We settled instead for a visit to the museum.  It was an interesting museum dealing with the rise of Hitler, his association with the Obersaltzburg area and the Second World War.  It has to be a difficult subject for the Germans to address, but I felt they did a good job here in Berchtesgarden.

In the afternoon we continued southeast and crossed into Austria and made our way to Salzburg.  We splurged on a room at the Hotel Bristol, one of the nicer hotels in town.  It was still raining pretty heavily and the Danube looked like it was in flood.  The old part of town is quite nice (it’s a UNESCO World Heritage site) but on this wet day it was hard to fully appreciate.   You would think that on a wet day like this the tourists would be few and far between.  That was not the case; they were all there with their umbrellas, which made it all the worse.

Danube at Salzburg

The next morning, it was damp but not so heavy rain.   We walked up to the fortress on top of the hill overlooking the town – the Hohensalzburg Fortress - quite impressive with nice views of the city.   In between rain showers we again wandered around the old part of town.

In the afternoon, we left Salzburg for the Czech Republic.   We were not sure where we would end up but we knew we ultimately wanted to get to Prague.  We sped east on the autobahn past Traun and Linz to tbe border with the CR.  The weather started getting worse as we drove north into the CR.  The rain was pouring down.   We stopped in Ceske Budejovice, the birthplace of Budweiser beer, but were unable to find a hotel that looked appealing so we headed further north.   We finally stopped in Tabor, a nice little town, the birthplace of the Hussites, and we found a nice little hotel in the main town square, the Hotel Nautilus.   I liked Tabor very much - at least the old town part where we were staying.  It was a shame about the weather however, but we were getting used to that.

Tabor

The next morning we continued on towards Prague.  Another damp day but things started to clear as we got into Prague.  We resolved to find a hotel on the outskirts of the old city where we would park the car and take the tram into town.   That plan did not work very well and soon we found ourselves in the middle of the old town and however hard we tried to get out we kept getting deeper and deeper into narrower and narrower streets. Since the Vitava River, a tributary of the Danube that flows through the city, was approaching flood stage we were concerned about the old town flooding so we finally extricated ourselves from the downtown area and found a place on the east side of the river between the Castle and the Loreta.  That was a good move, the area by the castle is quieter and less traveled by tourists - our hotel, the Domus Henrici was small, tasteful and great value.

Prague

Whilst we were seeing Prague in imperfect conditions - it was grey, it was wet, flood barriers were being erected, the Charles Bridge was closed for most of the time - nevertheless it is a wonderful city.  Everywhere you look in the old city there is something wonderful to behold, whether it is an elaborate astronomical clock on the old town hall, a cathedral, an elegant old hotel, a plaque to commemorate a notable resident like Kafka, Einstein, Chopin, or just some simple adornment on a building.   The place is magnificent.  Yes it is full of tourists, perhaps not so many in these wet times, but that is the price you pay in such a wonderful city.

The Astronomical Clock, Prague

We walked a lot, we rode the excellent tram system, we dined reasonably well (however food would not be high on my list for reasons to return), we went to a classical music concert in an incredible hall.   It is an impressive city and we had a great time.

We stayed an extra day longer than we anticipated and then headed out of town to the west en route for Berlin.   On the way we stopped in Pilzen for lunch and then got sidetracked into the Pilsener Urqueil brewery.   Since we were at the source of the pilsener brewing method it was only right that we do the brewery tour.  Well worth it, particularly the underground tunnels where they cold-fermented the beer in the old days.

Pilsener Urqueil Brewery, Pilzen

From Pilzen we went further west to Marienbad.   Marienbad is a strange place.  Basically a park in the middle of town surrounded by lots of very large, very ornate, Victorian era hotels.  It came to prominence in the late 1800’s early 1900’s as a spa resort where the rich would take the waters and various other treatments.  It is still clinging to this client base, though these days they are not so rich and some of the hotels show only a glimmer of their past grandeur.   Since it caters to residents who stay for a week or more and take the waters, it was not that easy to find a hotel for the night.   It’s just not something they do.  We did eventually get a room at the Danube Health Spa Resort Centralni Lazne.  A nice enough place but the residents all looked infirm in some way and we may have brought the average age down, which is hard for us to do these days.  This hotel was also remarkable in that it had the longest check-in procedure one could ever experience.  I don’t know what the lady was doing, but she was messing about with some ridiculous bureaucratic process for 20 minutes.

Marienbad

Breakfast the next morning was weird - the food was bad, the clientele didn’t look happy, there was something just too strange about the place.  We did however want to make the best of our stay so we donned our dressing gowns and slippers and padded the halls like the rest of the guests.   We went to the swimming pool and spa area, everyone else was going to various treatment rooms where all manner of baths, irrigations and potions were deployed.  The swimming bath, indoor, was one of the most ornate pools I had been in.  There were pictures of Edward VI on the walls of the hotel - I wonder if he swam in this same pool - it was certainly from that era, with elaborate tiling, stained glass roof, brass rails around the pool.

Swimming Pool, Marienbad

We then walked around the park and took the waters.   There was a pavilion with 5 or 6 different spring water outlets - one was sulphurous, one was metallic, all tasted nasty.  I guess you figure out which water is best for you condition and you sip away from these elaborate porcelain tea pot vessels.  We took the cheap option and shared a plastic cup (which you had to pay for). As the water tastes so bad they sell these wafer biscuits that you can munch on to make the whole process a little more agreeable.   Like giant sugary communion wafers.

After Marienbad we headed for Berlin arriving there in the mid-afternoon.  Here we were in another major city with the new car.  A car is not exactly what you need in a big city.  In some respects we would be better off without it.  However, we were lucky enough to find a nice hotel in the Mitte district, the Hotel Honig, with parking not too far away.   That evening we walked the local streets and found a nice Italian place to eat.  This neighbourhood looked very hip and trendy - a nice place to live I would imagine.

The Reichstag

The next day we did a bit of a walking tour of the more significant sites - Unter den Linden, the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag.   Outside the new parliament building there was something going off and we stood and observed a military band lining up and a motorcade coming down the street, then Angela Merkel herself came out to greet who we later found out to be the Turkish President.  All at a distance of course, behind a fence, but you could tell it was Angela.

A brief visit in the afternoon to the Bauhaus museum and some more wandering around. I was getting a cold (which lasted for the next 3 months....) and wasn't feeling good.

Berlin Cathedral

The next morning we visited a nearby section of the Berlin Wall. They have preserved it in various places around town and there appears to be a brass rail embedded into the pavement along it's path through the city. The other interesting thing embedded into the pavement are these small brass plates commemorating Jews that once lived in the adjacent housing and were presumably sent to the concentration camps.  

One of the last remnants of the Wall

Plaques memorializing Jewish homes in Berlin

We then went to the Checkpoint Charlie area and toured the museum there. It is a bit cheesy and touristy but quite interesting.

Checkpoint Charlie

We then drove out of town to the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. It is the nearest camp to Berlin and was used as some sort of model for the other camps. Quite disturbing really. The camp is situated in a neighborhood where people carry on apparently normal lives - shops, schools, businesses, children playing in the parks and then this place where terrible things took place. Again rather tastefully preserved and displayed if anything like that can be tasteful.

Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp

The next day we drove to Amsterdam. This would be the last stop on our trip and again another place where you don't need a car. Amsterdam is even worse for parking. After we found a hotel (a nice place with a room overlooking a canal) we sent our car to a Car Hotel. Someone comes along and drives your car out of town to a parking lot somewhere and then you call up the next day and they deliver it back to you. Kind of long distance valet parking. Not cheap either.

Amsterdam

Amsterdam is a nice city to wander around in and lots of interesting stuff going on in the canals and lots of interesting and varied bicycles with all manner of attachments going by. We managed an early morning visit to the recently restored Van Gogh Museum (before the lines got outrageously long) and then I left to deliver the car to the port from where it would be shipped back to the USA.

A Van Gogh favorite

Amsterdam Canal

The next morning we got a cab to the airport and flew back to Heathrow.

Walking the Dales Way - May 2013

In May, eight of us from Sacramento (Lisa and Richard, Barb and Howard, Shelley and John and Nancy and myself) set off on a little hike in the Yorkshire Dales.  The so-called Dales Way from Ilkley to Bowness on Windemere.  A seven day trip of some 80 odd miles through some of the most beautiful countryside in the UK.

The trip was arranged and supported by a group called Contours Hiking Holidays.  They arranged the nightly accommodations in hotels or B and B’s, the transfer of our bags each day from one location to the next and  all we had to do was walk with a small day pack.  It's a great way to hike.

We assembled in Ilkley on the Monday afternoon and checked into our first hotel, The Crescent Hotel - a nice renovated coaching hotel in the middle of town.  Ilkley is home to a Betty’s Tea Room and it was obligatory to pay them a visit.  Betty's is a very fine establishment that I had visited previously in their Harrogate location.  They are well worth a visit if you come across one.  They are famous for their tea selection and something called the Fat Rascal scone.   

Ilkley is a nice old spa town; very gentrified these days and it is perhaps a little on the expensive side as far as housing is concerned as it is well within the commuter belt for the city of Leeds.

The weather was not favourable for the start of our hike.  As we sat in the hotel bar that evening, the rain outside was coming down vertically, then horizontally from the right to left, then horizontally from the left to right.   All interspersed with breaks of sunshine.  I purchased an umbrella and a bottle of water-proofing spray.  I figured they would serve me well.

The next morning it was indeed showery so we all kitted up with our rain gear and off we went on the banks of the River Wharfe.  The Dales Way trail follows the river for a major part of the way.

Points of interest on this first day:

• St Peter’s Church in Addingham
• The Quaker Meeting House near Beamsley
• Bolton Abbey and Bolton Priory
• The Strid - a narrow section of the River Wharfe where the water surges down the narrows, apparently wide enough for someone to “stride”across.
  
  

Bolton Abbey

The nights accommodation was at the Red Lion in Burnsall.   A very nice establishment with good beer and good food.

The next day was again wet and we walked on the increasingly flooding River Wharfe.   The river was really flowing and in several place it encroached on the footpath making progress a little tricky.

The River Wharfe at Litton

Things of note today were:

• The high water flows over the Litton Falls and past the village of Litton
• Lunch in the Devonshire Hotel in the town of Grassington
• A restored Limestone Kiln on the moors above Conistone
• Sheep everywhere, cute little lambs everywhere.

That night we were in a B and B in Kettlewell.  A delightful little village, which I later learned was the location for the filming of the movie Calendar Girls.   We were to spend two nights in Kettlewell and there were two pubs in Kettlewell, so this first night we dined at the Blue Bell Inn.   Meat and Potato Pie - lovely.

Kettlewell

The next day was again on the River Wharfe but now we were higher up and closer to the source so the river was not so wide or fast flowing.    We lunched at a Tea Room in Buckden before continuing on to Hubberholme, Yockenthwaite, Beckermonds and finally Oughtershaw.   Nothing noteworthy other than the beautiful scenery.

In Oughtershaw there is no accommodation, so we were to be picked up by a taxi and transported back to our previous night’s lodging in Kettlewell.  It was a bit tight, time wise, for the taxi pickup as we underestimated our progress during the day (or we dallied too long over lunch).   

Our second night we dined in the Race Horses Inn in Kettlewell - perhaps slightly better than the Blue Bell but there’s not much in it.  I should mention that our hosts at the B and B provided us with an outstanding breakfast every morning.  As in all cases along the way, we had the “Full English Breakfast” - a fine way to start out the day.

On the next day, our fourth, we were no longer on the River Wharfe and we had a bit of a climb from Oughtershaw up to Cam Fell where we joined for a brief period the Penine Way.   From the tops we had a distant view of the very fine Ribblehead Viaduct before dropping down into the interestingly named Far Gearstones (it is just a couple of farm houses really). Then we climbed up the side of Blea Moor over some pretty rough boggy terrain before dropping down on the road under Dent Head Viaduct and on to Cow Gill.

Ribblehead Viaduct

Of note today:

• Sheep and Lambs of course, they are everywhere
• Cam Houses - a nice renovation of a very remote house.
• Winshaw - the half way point of the hike.
• The Viaducts - wonderful examples of Industrial Architecture on the Sedbergh to Carlisle railway.
• Dead Moles hanging on barbed wire to, allegedly, to deter moles from the field.
• Brass Instrument repair shop in Lea Yeat.
• The Sportsman’s Inn - so anticipated but closed when we got there.  It shouldn’t be allowed to close in the late afternoon.

Moles on a fence

In Lea Yeat, the end of our hike for the day, we were again picked up by a taxi and taken into Sedbergh.  Sedbergh is known for its Public School (for American readers, a Public School is not really that - it is a private school) and pretty much anything in the town revolves around the school.  It is also known as a book town, but, to be honest, I didn’t see much evidence of this.

We stayed in the Bull Hotel.  An old hotel in the center of town that had seen better days but had an attentive owner that was trying very hard to accommodate our every need (cleaning boots, laundry, medical attention, etc).  Thanks to Richard L. for engaging the locals and bringing the local “poet”, also named Richard, to regale us with his poems at the dinner table.

The next day our taxi delivered us back to Lea Yeat where we resumed our walk.  This was our wettest start to a day.  The rain was pouring down as we got going this morning and it didn’t relent much until the afternoon.

Notable things today were:

• Sheep and Lambs of course, again
• Adam Sedgwick’s birthplace in Dent (one of the founders of modern geology)
• The terrible knitters of Dent - quite speedy knotters with an un conventional technique

We finished the day back at Sedbergh and our same room at the Bull Hotel.

On our penultimate day, we walked from Sedbergh along the banks of the River Lune and then over the fields to our finish near Grayrigg.  The weather wasn’t too bad on this day but there was lots of mud and standing water to negotiate.  We were used to those conditions by now.

While we were walking from 10 to 13 miles per day, it always seemed to take us longer than we expected.   It wasn’t just 10 to 13 miles of straight walking, it was an endless sequence of stiles and gates, and where was the wettest and muddiest place in the entire field, it was where the gate or stile was.   That’s why it took us longer than expected to walk a mile.

Of interest today:

• The Lune Viaduct
• Lincoln’s Inn Bridge
• The Lowgill Viaduct
• The M6 Motorway crossing

At the end of the hike today we again had a taxi pick up.  We timed it better today and we arrived at the road crossing near Grayrigg a few minutes before the taxi did.  We were taken into Kendal where the marvelous Beech House B and B awaited us.  We dined in town that night in the bar at the Brewery Arts Complex, an entertainment and dining center in the old Vaux Brewery building.

On our final day again we had a taxi pick up and we were taken to our end point of the prior evening.   The weather was nice, our best day of the week.  We had some nice leisurely walking across grassy fields with lots of sheep.  Nothing spectacular, just nice walking.

We lunched in Staveley before continuing our way up the hill and over the top to Bowness.

Of note on this last day:

• Swans mating on a lake
• the Mill on the River Kent
• The Eagle and Child Pub in Staveley

We finally dropped down into Bowness on Windemere fairly late in the day.  It was our longest day’s hike and we were tired.  Someone kept a count of stiles and gates and, as I recall, it was something like 50 odd stiles and 30 or so gates.   That makes for slow progress sometimes.

It was a wonderful week through some beautiful countryside.  Despite the less than perfect weather we had a great time.  Next year - Coast to Coast, or Hadrian’s Wall?

As usual there are more photos on my SmugMug site here.