A short trip and a big change...

   Not that I didn't like the UK: I loved it. The countryside was always green, and the dark rocks and dark castles that punctuated the Scottish landscape were simply amazing. Not to mention the Museums, which are enough in themselves to make the trip; but, and again but, I got tired, in just a few weeks, of the rain, and the overcast skies—beautiful as they often were—I missed the sun. And somehow, I knew that when I came to France, I would find sun. Funny then, that shortly after I first saw land from the ferry, I also saw blue sky, and the sun began to come out.

  Now I like the sun, but I don't so much like the heat; but heat is what awaited me here. Guillaume, the first person I couchsurfed with here in Rouen, said that it usually rains here, so I guess I feel like France wanted to give me a good welcome so it pulled out some fine weather. Fine, but hot. So today I wandered around sweating, my flip-flops squeaking annoyingly, but it was great. I did what I usually do when I have a city to myself: I get out of it, and find the nearest bit of open space. In this case that meant I walked up the hill to the North-East of the hostel where I ended up spending the last night here in Rouen, and there, with a view of the city, I found my hillside, wedged between two rows of houses, but wide enough to feel like the real outdoors. I really thought, when I first got up there, that I would just come up there and spend the night, but that wasn't to be in the end, partly because I really wanted a real shower, and so far France seems to be much less well-endowed with public facilities where a good hobo-shower is possible. So I ended up at the hostel. Big deal: it's only money, to quote many a good consumer.

   But so far I'm finding it to be everything I thought it might be. It's not all good, but a lot of it is! I love the cheese that's ubiquitous and delicious. Today I at neufchâtel, which is shaped like a heart. And with that I drank apple cider, which is local, and ate a baguette, and some dried pork sausage. Kind of amazing. Oh, and they also make a good espresso here. Interestingly, it's more like the type of espresso you'd get in Montreal, than what you would get on the West Coast. The standard shot is a single, and it's not ristretto. On the West Coast, you have to search to find somewhere that will make you a single, and then even if you want a double, it's always going to be ristretto, unless the barista doesn't have a clue, in which case it will probably just be crap. Here, though, you can get a good standard single, which can be quite nice. And they are everywhere, and you don't have to worry about them maybe putting it in a frickin' paper cup! I hate paper cups! Well, haha, I digress a bit. Suffice to say that that aspect is quite to my liking. I went to a market today too, which was quite cool. I guess it was just full of French food, but it was cool. For instance, I've never seen fresh almonds for sale. But I saw them today, and it wasn't some really fancy store. It really looked fairly not-fancy, but they had some cool stuff. Not the kind of variety that I'd expect in California, but cool, fairly nice-looking vegetables, and definitely a very interesting cheese section.

   And yes, there are awesome bikes, old bikes, with 650b wheels all over the place. I may have died and gone to heaven, but I don't think my feet would hurt in heaven, and I would definitely have a bike to ride.

   But maybe I'll go back to the UK for a moment. I went to Oxford and Cambridge, and I like the former more. So there. But in Cambridge I surfed with Thilo, who lent me a bike, so what did I do? I found a bridal path and got out of town. Very cool, and very lovely. Well, except for the explosives testing ground next to the bridal path at a certain point. Luckily I didn't die. The signs were very blunt and to-the-point. I also went to the Fitzwilliam, which was, like most of the museums I visited, incredible.

Coming into Edinburgh was one of the most beautiful landscapes I've ever seen anywhere: green, then ocean, then castles on islands in the ocean, then green, the rocks, then more castles—it went on like that—and it was really stunning. That said, the two days I spend in Edinburgh were rainy, and people said that that's what it's like most of the time. I did get to go to the national gallery, which was awesome. They had some lovely impressionist paintings and some really amazing Rubens as well. Then on to Glasgow, where most people said I shouldn't go because it wasn't really that nice. But I loved it. I loved it because it was amazing to see somewhere from whence some of my ancestors had come, and it was amazing because of the art that came out of there. I didn't realize that Mackintosh was from there, and that he has a number of buildings around town that were his designs. One of them is the Glasgow School or Art, which is a really beautiful building. It's got details that I feel tend to get left out in modern architecture most of the time. But anyway, that was great. I also went to the Kelvingrove museum while I was there, and it was there that I learned about the Glasgow Boys. They were active in the late 1800's, and the style is somewhat post-impressionist, but in any case, it has what I love in a painting. It has what Cézanne has, but in a different palette; it has what Monet has, but with slightly stronger strokes or something like that, but whatever it has, it has something that I really love. I also discovered the glasgow colorists, which were really interesting as well. The one I liked the best was named Peploe, I believe. I kept looking at his name and thinking “people”, but that, of course, wasn't right. So there: I found some amazing art. Did I mention Newcastle? No, of course not. Newcastle was wonderful in so many ways, though the museums that I visited there were, well, only one! And it was mostly closed for new installations, so I just got to see some art from people who had painted in that immediate area, and man, there have been a lot of great painters in that area! But then, feeling like I needed a bit more of an art fix, I decided to go to the library, which was right next door, partly because it looked to be one of the first libraries whose stacks I could actually visit without a card. So in I went, and what do you know, but the first thing I came across was a section they called “The Gallery”, which was simply a ton of art books! Well, I started looking through them, and pretty quickly found a book about landscape photography, which has always been something I have loved/hated. I've loved it, because I love landscapes, and want to make pictures of landscapes, but I've hated it because it's so clichéd, and so many people hate it (I can't think of anyone that I know who likes it). I think it's just considered low-class, sort of mass-appeal photography, so the high-art circles don't like it, and so I have a certain stigma around it, but that's probably completely silly on my part. I don't know, and I guess I've started to think that I don't need to know. I think that one of the things that the UK did for me is show me how important art, in one form or another, is for me, and photography is one form that I can use to represent the beauty I see in the world—and maybe the representation will end up just being for me—but I think it might just still be worth doing. Anyway, that's just one of the many things that I found in the UK, but I think it's an important one!

   One last thing that I found in the UK, was Gulliver's Travels which I've of course heard of over the years, and I even think I've owned a copy or two, but somehow I've never read it. So I was in HMV in Oxford, looking for some new headphones because mine were getting to the point where on top of now working very well, they were a bit of an embarrassment because of how destroyed they were. So here I am, and I come across this table of 1 pound books, and Gulliver's Travels is among them, and I just think, “yeah, I should get that”. It's a really light book, with small type, so it's a perfect travel book. And so I started it today, on my hillside, and at the front of the book, it tells the history of Collins publishers (now HarperCollins): they started in Glasgow! Well, hey now! So what do you know? I started reading it, and ended up reading something like 150 pages today! It's a fantastic book! Sure, it's a little dated, but really not so very much, after all, and the stories are really a lot of fun. So I've thoroughly enjoying my reading so far, and I don't think I'll have the book all that long.

   So, I've left out more than I've put in, but I've put in a few things that have stood out. It's more thematic, really, since I left out the trip with Wajahat to the Isle of Wight, which was really cool, and I've left out Portsmouth and London almost completely; but, you can't get everything in at once, and I've got a lot of photos to put up, so I imagine it'll be good to have a reason to right more.

  So here are some photos.  They're all mixed up, but at least they're fairly small.  Consider this writing and these photos like a description of mountains that is performed by throwing a piece of fabric over them so as to only show the peaks.  Though I don't know that these could really be called the peaks.  Whatever.  That would be a big piece of fabric.  Well, something like that.

Baby geese in Oxford.

In Cambridge.

The famous one in Cambridge.

Dig the glass.

It was cherry season in England.

Christchurch College in Oxford.

As above.

Cream tea at the Nosebag in Oxford.

Next to the National Gallery in Edinburgh.

Edinburgh Castle.

Jenna's guy.

Blue door in Camridge.

Edinburgh.

In the Fitzwilliam in Cambridge.

"So, I think her family's got a lot of money...."  At Magdalen College, Oxford.

S'me outside Cambridge.

Millennium bridge with a rainbow in Newcastle.

Same in raised position.

Oh boy what's it called in Oxford.  There was a great concert going on inside while I took this, so I sat outside and listened for about an hour.

Outside Cambridge.

Newcastle and church.  Newcastle.

Old cemetery in Oxford.

Cool motorcycle shop in Newcastle.

Oxford.

Oxford.

Oxford.

Oxford.

Perfection in Oxford.  I love the proportions here.

On the way to New College in Oxford.

Inside Worcester House in Oxford.  Read it. 

Oxford.

In Newcastle (actually in Gateshead).