Thursday's entertainment

Thursday, May 9^th 2013: continued

We’d effectively skipped lunch and were pretty hungry by the time we were back on the ship. But afternoon tea would deal with that. Waiter service and a window table for two so we could enjoy the view as we left Barcelona.

Unfortunately the table for two thing means that the usual social graces that hold Matt back from overeating did not come into play. He had two sandwiches (small and with the crusts cut off, by no means excessive), scone (with jam and cream), half a mini toasted tea cake, a crumpet and 4 cakes (3 of which featured cream). I had the same – but no cakes, replacing this with one shortbread biscuit.

Rather than burn some of that energy we repeated the previous day’s early evening – again having the whole of the sports deck area to ourselves (where was everyone?), enjoying the warm but not scorching sunshine. I have been amazed by the number of people around the ship looking like absolute lobsters from sunburn. Some of them have tried claiming that it is windburn. This is clearly not the case but Matt has been very restrained in not telling them all about the science of ultra violet radiation.

Tonight Matt and I may have met our match in the Talking the Hind Legs Off a Donkey stakes. Gillian and Mick were a lively couple from Scotland. My Scottish geography is not much better than my African but they didn’t mind too much educating me. We did quite a bit for our respective tourist boards – planning the cruise excursions that we would offer or that you could do under your own steam from our respective home ports. And I’ve certainly been persuaded to take a camping trip to Scotland in the summer.

Having thus far mostly managed to avoid talking about politics and trains we managed both (and quite extensively) in one night. The trains bit was probably my fault as I got rather enthusiastic when Gillian and Mick told us that they had taken the sleeper train from Glasgow to London (I do love an exciting train ride). They were really good company and we were practically being chivvied out of the restaurant as the conversation went on and on.

Friday, May 10^th 2013

We gave ourselves a break from dancing last night and went instead to the “Havana Club” to see a comedy magician. (That is he was a comedian who did a bit of magic, rather than a funny magician.) He purported to be from Cuba but we had it on good authority that he was actually from Sandwich in Kent (a lady next to us on deck the other day knew his mum). Anyway, it was really enjoyable (especially when you consider that the material that he was working with was the age of the passengers and the bountiful nature of the food on board) and the (slightly elderly) ladies who were hauled up on stage to assist with his tricks were hilarious:

                              Him: What do you do in West Wittering Jackie?

                              Jackie: I’m retired

                              Him: What did you do before you retired?

                              Jackie: I looked after old people, like what you do now.

(Maybe you had to be there but I found this hysterical, and I hadn’t even had any booze.)

Thursday's unsatisfaction

Thursday, May 9^th 2013: continued

Barcelona is probably not a city that slow tourists such as Matt and myself should ever contemplate visiting in just one day. It is just too big with too much to see and do. I think that because of this we both felt somewhat dissatisfied after our day ashore. That said however it was an enjoyable day. (Thus enjoyable but unsatisfactory.) I had visited Barcelona about 10 years ago with my mum, so left it up to Matt to choose what he wanted to see.

We spent a significant number of our touristical Euros on the touristical bus. This seemed like a reasonable way of getting around the main sights. Lo and behold while we were on the bus it started to drizzle a little and I was exceedingly disappointed not to be able to deploy my anorak. The rain didn’t last long and we were able to enjoy the spectacle of retractable bus roof being applied. AS the day wore on we had hot sunshine so my packing failed on all accounts.

Here are some facts that I learnt about Barcelona from the touristical commentary:

• The statue of Christopher Columbus in Barcelona is the biggest of the 64 in the world – his index finger is 50cm long
• There are more mopeds per capita in Barcelona than in any other European city (but I think that they make less noise than those in Rome)
• There are over 100km of cycle lanes in Barcelona
• Barcelona has 8 universities
• The first stretch of railway in Spain was located in Barcelona (that is a fact especially for my dad)
• On wedding days it is traditional to take 12 eggs to a convent

It worries me that 50% of the facts that I can remember are transport based.

Unfortunately we spent quite a lot of our limited time in Barcelona in queues. We had hoped (one of Matt’s choices to visit the Sagrada Familia and had got off the bus a stop early so that we could wander a few streets to get there. It was a longer wander than we had expected – again the touristical map was scaleless (can it even therefore technically be called a map?) – but pleasant enough. The area around the cathedral-in-construction was packed. Matt went off to use one of those toilet booths (I am informed that he got his 50 cent’s worth) while I investigated the queues. The queue to visit the cathedral was reaching round the back of it, and moving very slowly.

The queue to hop back on the bus was slightly shorter and also slow moving. I chose to join the second of these and chatted to the people in front and behind me while Matt had an explore around the outside of the cathedral. Then we swapped over – he kept our place in the bus queue (I think he had the same conversations with our queue neighbours) while I mooched around.

Once back on, we stayed on the bus and completed the loop of the ruta azul. Time was not on our side and we were conscious of avoiding being the Felicity and Terence of Barcelona: the traffic had already seemed pretty awful and the situation wasn’t improved by a demonstration that was going on (about the economy I think).

Matt had to make a choice: transfer to the ruta roja and tour around the olympic stadium area or head back to the ship via the famous La Rambla. He went for the latter.

There are several High Things To Go Up in Barcelona – unfortunately most of them were outside of our temporal grasp. But Matt had done his High Things To Go Up research and had read that there was a cafeteria with a good view at the top of a department store in Placa de Catalunya. There was indeed a good view, with the added bonus of refuelling ourselves with some good value drinks and snacks. We also made use of the complimentary facilities and I helped an American by demonstrating how to use a push tap. As time wasn’t on our side I resisted spending any in the haberdashery on the way back out of the store.

 

Suitably refreshed, we started our traverse down La Rambla. It was busy. Really busy. I particularly enjoyed our trip into the colourful Bodega. A notable experience of our walk here is that we successfully avoided pick-pockets (or if we didn’t we haven’t found out about it yet). Based on a browse of the bars we also made a good call in getting our refreshments earlier as it looked like our touristical Euros wouldn’t even stretch to a glass of water here.

Wednesday's and Thursday's preparations

Wednesday, May 8^th 2013: continued

We spent much of the late afternoon / early evening (there should be a word for that lovely time of day) on deck. Initially we were in a spot where I could get some sun and Matt could get some shade (a frequent holiday conundrum) where we spent a good while chatting to a couple from Kent. They had been married 48 years but didn’t look a day over 60 (but I am rubbish at estimating ages) and he had taken it upon himself to be an unofficial tour guide on our up-coming trip to Rome to a lady and her elderly mother – despite never having visited Rome before himself. Later we moved to the sports deck. I have no idea where everyone else had cleared off to (maybe we were missing something exciting) but we had the place to ourselves. The sun was strong so Matt hid himself away with his book under his sarong. It was an e-book so there was no page turning going on but it was the snoring that gave away that he had fallen asleep.

We needed an early night, in the knowledge that we would have a busy day ahead of us in Barcelona. So it was kind of convenient that we were sat with a nice but not exceptionally chatty couple at dinner. So dinner was over quite quickly (I do love that with whatever meal you have it comes with “your choice” of potatoes and vegetables – a different sort each evening I think) and I even managed to finish my book before sleep time – after we had taken a turn or two of the dance floor (a particularly successful foxtrot this evening).

As an aside, it baffles me that people insist on ruining perfectly nice drinks with artificial sweetener; especially when their physique and the meal you have just seen them consume would suggest that in general they have a disregard for the energy content of what they are putting in their mouth.

Thursday, May 9^th 2013

It was our earliest start yet, with a plan in mind to get into the city as quickly as possible. We had complete alarm success and headed out for breakfast (as it would possibly be a while before our next meal I stoked up with a veggie sausage in addition to my usual), packed and ready for the day, at 7.30am.

I had even pre-applied sunscreen. The weather however was having different ideas – the clouds looked ominous. So it was back to the cabin for a quick equipment swap – it didn’t look like I was going to need my sunglasses or a sunscreen top up. I didn’t mind too much though as a bit of rain would mean that I could wear my new anorak. We were just about ready to go ashore when the captain announced that we would need our passports. So it was back to the cabin to collect these from the safe. And Matt persuaded me that it wasn’t going to rain so I lightened my load a little by unpacking my anorak. I must admit that I was a little disappointed – it’s a really nice anorak.

Monday's gardens

My third day in south London, and as all my friends (or the ones in the vicinity) were working I had to entertain myself. But first I had to transport myself. It was a fairly short trip involving 2 trains and a bus. But I had brushed up my London transport skills over the previous few days and was feeling confident. I think that looking confident (whether or not you feel it) is an important factor in avoiding pick-pockets. One unfortunate lady immediately made herself vulnerable as she failed to "mind the gap" and lost a shoe down said gap whilst boarding the train. Her husband seemed to want to try to reclaim the shoe but she wanted to buy some new ones. I'm sure they ultimately went for the wise option in not delving around under the train (although it does seem a rather extreme way of getting a new pair of shoes), but they made themselves very conspicuous.

Anyway, I duly arrived at Kew Gardens. My first impression was that there were a lot of coach parties of:

1.    School children

2.    Foreign tourists

I was a bit concerned that I would get caught up with these. In actual fact I managed to mostly avoid them, with the exception of some probably year 7s drawing pineapples in the lily house.

A pineapple

A lily

After my quick trip to the lily house I think I mostly avoided the parties by avoiding the most popular attractions in the first part of the day. With the assistance of the excellent touristical map (including both a north marker and a scale) I headed off in the direction of the Mediterranean garden. It smelt wonderful and I spotted a few things that I thought might be possibles for our front garden: Genistra tinctoria, Santolina chamaecyparissus and Cistus laurifolius.

Santolina chamaecyparissus

Cistus laurifolius

It was one of those days that whatever you’re wearing it’s not quite right for the weather. I had opted for trousers and a thin jumper but when the sun came out this was too hot. But if I’d gone for something lighter I would have been too cold. Even now it was slightly cool when the sun wasn’t blaring down. So in what looked like it might be a prolonged period of cloudiness (it wasn’t the sun came back really quickly) I went into the temperate greenhouse. In the sun I would say that it was actually rather hotter than temperate. The greenhouse is due to close next month for significant preservation work and I found my walk around interesting from the point of view of preparations for this – various demarcations in bright paint and the removal of various plants to a secure part of the greenhouse. You can see why this building is grade 1 listed; architecturally I found it quite beautiful. The best plant was a caper.

Caper plant

Temperate greenhouse

Tree-top walkway
(from the ground)

Since I last visited Kew (which must have been at least 10 years ago on a really hot day) they have installed a treetop walkway. Here I did run into a small group of school children who were mainly interested in walking the “wrong” way around the walkway and seeing how much they could make it wobble. It being the summer the view from the walkway was not really that interesting – consisting mostly of green leaves. I imagine it would be beautiful in the autumn. I does realise just how high these trees are – 108 steps.

I stopped for lunch by a pond. This seemed to be a nice spot where I could watch some moorhens (or maybe coots – I can never remember which ones have the white beaks) make their nests and there were plenty of benches. I could hear a peacock so my picnic was slightly impeded by my concerns that it would want to coming after my food (this happened at the zoo once). I needn’t have worried. I should have put my energy into worrying about the ducks who were much more interested and actually required me to vacate my bench for fear of picnic nick-age.

My highlights of the afternoon were:

1. The stag beetle loggery – stag beetles are one of my favourite childhood insects. Sadly I didn’t see any today.

2. Ice-cream – I had a little mid-afternoon break to make up for my duck-shortened lunch. I love ice-cream and this did not disappoint: coffee + honey and walnut.

3. The gravel garden – this gave me yet more inspiration for our front garden. I am definitely going to try some Salvia X Silvestris ‘Mainacht’ – it was really popular with the bees.

4. Roses – I love smelling them. Today I particularly loved smelling the orangey-yellow ones which have got a lovely sort of sherbet-citrus aroma like ‘Lady of Shallot’ and ‘Lady Emma Hamilton’. It made me wonder about what the different chemical composition of the various rose smells is, and whether a friendly analytical chemist could help me out with this conundrum.

Lady of Shallot

Ice-cream break

Salvia X Silvestris ‘Mainacht’

By 5.30pm I had seen most of what I had wanted to see. There was still an hour before closing time and when I was due to meet my friends for tea so I redeployed my touristical map and headed off for the one major attraction that I had missed: the compost heap. Unfortunately what the touristical map doesn’t tell you is that the compost heap is out-of bounds to the general public so I had to make do with a distant view and a poor quality photo. Oh well.

The compost heap from a distance

Sunday's wildfowl

After a rather luxurious lie in I was setting out to make my own way across south west London. Fortunately, the directions to get from my friend Alex's to Hammersmith (where I was meeting another friend, Lauren), weren't too difficult: take a right, a left, and then another right and then just keep walking until you get to a bus stop for the 220. And indeed these directions were just right. The problem was when I got to Hammersmith. This must be one of the most complex travel interchanges I have ever experienced. Plus it was hot so that confused me even more. After several phone calls I managed to meet Lauren outside a well-known burger restaurant. From where we negotiated our way to the bus stop to get to the London Wetland Centre. 

Lauren had suggested this and I had no hesitation to agreeing because:

1. I had been before in the winter and thoroughly enjoyed myself. It now being the summer there were bound to be some different birds (maybe some baby birds)
2. It being the summer it was sunny and warm and I'd rather be outside (Lauren helped me apply sunscreen while we waited for the bus)
3. Lauren had a special offer voucher as there was a special wildlife event going on, and I love both special offers and wildlife

Before we started on any serious wildlife related activities we needed feeding so grabbed a bite to eat in the excellent café. They had my favourite type of cola. But that wasn't before I'd had a look around a few of the wildlife attractions in the main courtyard area. This included talking to a lovely lady from the British Hedgehog Preservation Society and collecting some literature about hedgehogs for Matt, my husband, who thinks they're really cute; who will glance at the pictures before passing the leaflets on to my mum who developed a rather close relationship with a hedgehog last winter.

We perused the various special wildlife activities available to us over lunch and chose to join a guided World Wetlands bird feed walk. Part of the centre is organised on a geographical basis so, for example, fowl from Hawaii are in one area and fowl from Africa are in another. The guide was very knowledgeable, being able to answer all my questions about swans. Not only is it true that a swan could break your arm, but also that a swan would break your arm (if you got in its territory during mating season).

This caused me some trepidation as I negotiated a black swan. But the lure of more baby birds was enough to make me walk boldly past said black swan. The presence of baby birds meant that mostly mating season was over so the male birds tended not to be at their most magnificent, but we still saw a few handsome specimens.

 

At the end of the tour was the otter feed. They were a bit shy to start with but the lure of fresh fish brought them out. They are truly beautiful creatures and I'm somewhat inspired to try to spot one in the wild. However I think that this is unlikely as I learnt (from another knowledgeable member of staff) that the otters native to the UK (the Eurasion otter Lutra lutra)  are nocturnal. I am not nocturnal.

After the guided walk we took ourselves on a tour of the nature reserve part of the centre. The highlights of which were:

1. Observing some keener birdwatchers than ourselves (and we are not unkeen) observing a kite (not the "let's go fly a variety") and a hobby (not the craft variety). They were so enthusiastic, it was entertaining to hear them talk, but it would have seemed rude to hang around with them and we didn't have the right kit to blend in
2. Spotting baby lapwings through the knowledgeable member of staff's telescope in the observation tower. 

I don't think that I have the patience to be a good birdwatcher.

We concluded our walk with a visit to the play area. I always think that there should be some facilities for the young at heart adult provided when I see so many fun things for the under 11s. I was desperate to go on the zip wire but don't think it was designed for someone of my mass. We did have a go on the balance beam (both of us made it across successfully) and Lauren got a bit of climbing practice in.

Before catching the bus back to Hammersmith (which was just as confusing on the second pass through) I had a good time in the gift shop. Here I could indulge in the things clearly designed for the under 11s. I bought some glow in the dark lizards, some birds that are a bit like koosh balls, a frog and two snakes. Which I am looking forward to deploying in my garden.

Saturday's centre court debut

We'd missed the first few games on Centre Court but got to our seats in a change of ends and hadn't missed anything significant in the first match. Even though our seats were four rows from the back we had a good view. That was until the person in front of us arrived.

Obscuring our view

He had very big hair and amazingly upright posture (maybe he used to be a ball boy) such that our view was almost entirely obscured if we sat in a comfortable position. So we had to adopt some slightly unusual poses to see the play. It wasn't helped by this chap's girlfriend (at least I assume it was his girlfriend) who kept leaning into him to kiss / cuddle / whisper in his ear so that the view to that side of his head was also frequently obscured. They would have been able to get a hotel room (even a nice one) for considerably less than their tennis tickets. Nonetheless we managed to arrange ourselves adequately to see and they made frequent                                                                           breaks from their seats for the loos / snacks.

As for Alex and I we were snack prepared. This had the dual benefit of:

1. Not having to pay the extortionate prices for snacks within the grounds

2. Not having to faff around getting out and in of seats and thus not missing valuable tennis

Our array of snacks included mostly refined carbohydrates but with some health benefits:

• cold pizza. Which had tomato sauce on it (a useful source of lycopene I believe) and spinach on it (a source of iron)
• oaty biscuits (fibre)
• strawberries (actually healthy - plenty of vitamin c and also some manganese)
• chocolate bar (the one mostly involving honeycomb so relatively low fat)
• crisps (I can think of nothing nutritionally redeeming about these but they taste so good).

(As an aside one of the doubles’ players was sponsored by one of my favourite type of crisp - particularly the crinkly salt and vinegar ones.)

However, the main health benefit in the above is clearly the energy supply which is after all the second most important thing about food (the most important is that it tastes good).

The snacks were accompanied by plenty of fluids. Mainly water but also a traditional English summer's alcoholic beverage - conveniently (and bargainously compared to the bar prices) pre-mixed in a can. Fortunately the toilet facilities were excellent. Although the combination of refined carbohydrate and ethanol did make us a little sleepy. I caught a snap of Alex having a mini-doze but she made me delete it.

A traditional snack

The tennis itself alternated between excellent matches and excellent players. We saw 2 closely fought battles and in the other matches both the men’s and ladies' number 1 seeds played phenomenally and basically annihilated their opponents. In the ladies' my size differential approach to tennis success held true.

Djokovic serving to success

Lisicki v. Stosur

Williams beats a gracious Date-Krumm 6-2, 6-0

I also enjoyed watching and being part of the crowd: spotting the crazy outfits and cheering on the underdogs.

Diverse spectators

I loved the hats

We weren't in a rush to leave when play had finished, having the distinct advantage of not needing any public (or indeed private) transport to get back to Alex's. So despite there being mess everywhere else I cleared up all our rubbish (separately as recyclables or non) before we descended out of Centre Court to make our way back across South West London. At a slower pace to that by which we had arrived.

Saturday's Wimbledon arrival

I had a much less eventful trip to London than on my previous visit, arriving in Paddington on schedule and showing unusual efficiency in making connections, to reach my friend, Alex's, nearly an hour earlier than the trip planner had suggested. I already knew that I wouldn't have as earlier a start as I had feared because Alex had been successful in securing us centre court tickets so we wouldn't have to chance our luck in "The Queue".

Nonetheless we departed from Alex's just gone 9 in an effort to get seats for an early prime match on an outside court. Alex set off at a determined quick march across south west London. I delayed things by:

1. Being slow at walking (in comparison to Alex particularly given the discrepancy in our leg length)

2. Dithering in the supermarket whilst selecting item(s) to augment our picnic. In the end I didn't properly make a decision and got quite a few naughty treats

We made it into the grounds and settled into some empty seats on court 2. Until a man (allegedly from the fire brigade) came along and told us that it was tickets only and that we'd have to move before play started. So we cut our losses and debated where we'd be best off. I managed to persuade Alex that a doubles’ match on court 16 might be worth a watch. Not only is doubles’ good fun, but it would probably be our only opportunity to cheer on some Brits. (I do hope that I’ve got the apostrophes in the right places there.)

We got some seats in the front row which was great apart from the occasional wayward ball and frustrated player causing me concern.

A front row view

I enjoyed watching the line judges and ball boys/girls close up. Of particular note the there was a line judge who had more than a passing resemblance to a Bond villain (actually quite a few of them did and they all had these little sponge bags in which I've no idea they carried which made them look even more suspicious) and a ball boy who was stood so upright that he looked like he was going to do himself an injury.

As for the tennis itself I didn't hold out much hope for the Brits. I have some sort of mental equation in which the size differential between the players is a significant factor in the outcome of the match (the bigger player having the advantage). And the average sized Brits were playing two enormous guys from Eastern Europe. It was a really entertaining match and the Brits did brilliantly, winning in straight sets. So my mental equation is obviously invalid.

Fleming and Murray made it to the 3rd round

We stayed to watch the end of that match before heading off to find our seats on Centre Court.