Guildford: The County town of Surrey

We visited the town of Guildford to participate in an Open Day at the University of Surrey. Before my son decided to go to the University, I had not really heard much about Guildford, let alone the county of Surrey.

Although we took a cab from Heathrow, it is possible to reach it via train, but you would have to take the underground to Waterloo station before taking the train to Guildford. I booked a cab from Guildford, thus reducing the taxi fare to 45 pounds, rather than the 65-70 pounds you may have to pay if you got a cab at Heathrow when you arrive.

We had a chance to go through the town the evening we arrived. We stayed at the Mandolay Hotel which wasn't great but was OK. It is an old building, but has wireless Internet and is close the town centre.

The town has a main shopping street with a lot of posh stores, and looks quite lively, since everyone was out and there were lots of parties going on even though it was a weeknight. It also has lots of good restaurants with different cuisines, which is an indication of a good social life in town. We took the easy way out and dined at a T.G.I. Friday's. The town seemed quite safe to us.

The university is only a few kilometers out of the city center, and has very good bus connection. There are a few bus stops within the campus. The accommodation buildings are usually close to the central campus (Stag Hill) but there is a new development nearby in the Manor Park campus which will accommodate several thousand students. All undergraduates are guaranteed a student room (same with all international students) and there is a variety of accommodation possibilities both in and out of the campus.

The university is well-known in the area of satellite research and has a Space Centre. It has established a commercial company to launch small satellites into space and has been quite successful. It is in general notorious for research but also has a few departments that produce much-required practical talent for the industry.

Los Angeles Highlights

Here are some good and bad highlights and some facts found during the Los Angeles visit.

The Good

• Lots of space. Freeways have 5-7 lanes. Plenty of roads to choose from.
• Variety of food and cuisine to choose from. A welcome change from the Netherlands.
  
• Shopping malls open 7 days. Some restaurants (e.g. Denny's) open 24 hours.
• Free WiFi pretty much everywhere. Big contrast with Europe, where you have to check whether WiFi exists, let alone free, even when you stay at a major hotel chain.
• We were always treated with a lot of excitement when we told people we came from Europe. For some reason Americans are fascinated with the idea of Europe, even when they haven't ever been there. (Immigrant nation?)
• Pretty good weather. It was between 16-24 degrees, which is quite good for end March-early April (although not as good as in Florida)
• Cheap. Nowadays with the euro more than 1.58 to the dollar, it is cheap. It is usually cheaper anyway because of the higher competition.
  

The Bad

• Freeways and secondary roads are blocked most of the time, even in non-rush hour periods.
• Nobody seems to follow the speed limits. I was always the slowest, regardless of which road I was on.
• Lots of fast food and opportunity to consume lots of fatty food.
• Parking fees. I don't know how much I paid for parking fees, but it must be around 15$ per day. One thing to be kept in mind is that most parking lots have agreements with the restaurants or similar places close to them, and you can get a much cheaper rate if you "validate" your parking ticket (basically buy a coffee or something simple, and you get the lower rate. I got an example where I paid 1$ instead of 8$ after validation)
• Local newspapers (in this case the Long Beach Press-Telegram) are pretty boring. Better get one for a big city (in this case Los Angeles Times, which was not as good as some of the better papers like The Washington Post).
  

The Ugly

• America is a land of contradictions. People standing roadside at intersections, asking for money or food.
• Area around department stores like WalMarts seem to be pretty unsafe.
  

Facts

• The Los Angeles area has lots of Hispanic Americans, as well as a large community of Asian Americans. Spanish is heard a lot. Some shops have second signs in Spanish, but it seems there is no official policy yet.
  

Los Angeles Travelogue -Day 15-April 5-The Trip Back Home

The two weeks of holiday passed too quickly for our taste. We probably saw only a percentage of things to see in the Los Angeles area, whereas we covered most of the stuff in Long Beach, except maybe attending the Toyota Grand Prix, which was to be held two weeks after we left.

I had to spend some time at the Fox Rental counter in the Los Angels airport area, since they did not refund the full fare they asked on the way in, although the booking company had said I should pay only the basic fare. Finally the manager came in and reassured me that they would reimburse me and send me e-mail about it.

The trip back was easier, since it took shorter to go East. Our Continental flight from Los Angeles to Houston was on time and uneventful. However, a surprise was awaiting me in Houston. My passport was checked twice in Los Angeles, without any problems. When I gave my passport in Houston, the person checking it suddenly noticed that the cover was ripped. This must have happened in between Los Angeles and Houston, and could have happened because I put it in my handbag, which was fully packed.

The airline employee said she could not allow me to travel with this passport. I told her that the passport had been checked twice in Los Angeles and there was no problem with it, but she was not convinced. She said security regulations were very clear (and the alert level in the U.S. was Orange, somewhere in the middle of the scale) I showed her my Dutch residence permit and tried to reason with her while time was passing.

Finally she decided to call Amsterdam and ask for guidance, since I was going there. She came back and said she found somebody to answer the phone (it was like 1 a.m. there, so I'm not sure who they talked to) and they had given me an exception this time and I could travel, but I should renew my passport as soon as possible. Thanking her, I gladly boarded the plane. Since there is no embassy in Houston, I don't know what I would have done. The nearest embassy was in New York and I probably would not have been able to travel there due to the problem of my passport. Anyway, this major problem was solved easier than I thought and we were back on track.

The trip to Amsterdam was truly uneventful, except for the lack of decent movies on Continental's system. This time, unlike the trip to the U.S., the interactive mode worked and I could try some of my skills on the slow computer games in the console. I watched the movie P.S. I Love You, which was O.K. but not exceptional. I also watched a couple of episodes of House, which was far more interesting.

Amsterdam was waiting for us with a 10 degree colder weather, but at least we were back home and ready for the next trip!

Los Angeles Travelogue-Day 14-April 4-Del Amo Fashion Center-Long Beach

The day before our return trip, we wanted to go shopping for one last time. After searching from the Internet, we found the Del Amo Fashion Center in Torrance to be a good choice. The mall was relatively close, around 17 miles from our hotel.

They claim to be the biggest completely indoor mall in North America. I am not sure whether that is correct, but this is certainly one big indoor mall. It expands horizontally, but all stores are connected to each other. In general malls end with one of the big department store in their peripherals. Here it is a bit misleading, since you think you reach the end , but then you discover that you could pass from the North Mall to the South Mall by passing through one of these department stores, so you have to be careful and not miss it.

It is a combination of luxury stores and more regular shopping opportunities, so it could server everyone's interests.

There is only one big Food Court and a few small ones which really consist of one or two choices. If you go to the wrong Food Court, you could be disappointed, and the signs do not really give you any clue, since they refer to any size as the Food Court.

There is also an outdoor promenade which has some brand name shops and a large movie complex. All in all, a good combination of stores.

We went back to Long Beach to pass some more time at GameWorks and then had another short dinner at Islands, to go back to the hotel and pack or bags for the return trip.

Los Angeles Travelogue-Day 13-April 3-Universal Studios-Take 2

Since we had not really had enough time to visit all the attractions in Universal Studios, we had to go back.

We started our second day in the studios with a visit to Universal Citywalk, which we had basically ignored the first time.

Once especially interesting place in Citywalk is the Hard Rock Cafe Hollywood. It is a distinctive building, with a huge guitar installed at the front. Inside you can see guitars from famous personalities.

We first went to the Waterworld show. This is basically a live stunt show that takes place in the world of the movie Waterworld, starring Kevin Costner.

The show involved water skis, a lot of high jumps into the water, explosions, even an aircraft flying into the water. The stunts were exceptionally good, and a part of the audience (the ones sitting in the appropriately marked "wet seats") got really wet. The fight scenes were heavily choreographed and not interesting, but otherwise it was very impressive. The stunt men had wireless microphones so that the dialogs could be heard very clearly.

Next we went to a real special effects show, which utilized the techniques used in the movie Backdraft, starring Kurt Russell. We went through three different studios, with increasing special effects, which were very realistic. The last studio was the most interesting, where conditions such as depicted in the film were created, with a lot of bang, fire and heat. They also threw in a bit of scare by dropping the surface down and creating the impression of a real fire.


We continued to see special effects by going on the Special Effects Stages. This show uses volunteers from the audience and is very entertaining. They show how to use the blue screen technique (actually green) to place actors onto a scene, they used animated characters, did some scary stunts, recorded sound for a set of short movie pieces and showed how the result looked like, so this gave us a lot fo idea about how movies are actually made. The show was very much improvised, and the hosts were very quick-witted, that made the whole thing very enjoyable.

Finally we went to the highly acclaimed show The Revenge of the Mummy. This is a very fast (and very quick) ride which takes place in the universe of the movie The Mummy. It involves some scary initiation by Imothep, but is so fast that you do not have time to get scared or even see what you might be scared of. Involving some backwards movement, this was the fastest and most nauseating ride I have ever been on. As mentioned above, it is only a fast ride and would have had the same effect if it had something other than The Mummy as well.

In the end we saw most of the attractions and finished our theme park tour in this trip.

Los Angeles Travelogue-Day 12-April 2-Long Beach Aquarium

We started the day with a late lunch at Parker's Lighthouse in the Shoreline Village. It is one of the nice series of restaurants at the waterfront. It is a 3-story building with a magnificent view of the bay, the Queen Mary on the opposite shore and even as far as San Pedro nearby. We sat on he second floor, but the third floor is probably the best.

The menu was rich. The place has live jazz certain evenings, when it could be even more interesting.

We visited the Long Beach Aquarium, which is claimed to be the one of the largest aquariums in the United States. It has both an indoor and an outdoor part, and lots of very interesting sea life forms that are specific to the Pacific Ocean.

The indoor area has three separate galleries, the Southern California Gallery, the Northern Pacific Gallery and the Tropical Pacific Gallery.

The outdoor pools had a variety of stingrays, some really huge. Aquarium employees allow children to "pet" the fish, being very careful to use only two fingers. One of the caretakers explained to me that rays are not really dangerous unless you step on them while they are lying at the bottom of the sea or the pool. The sting seems to be a defensive weapon only.

There were also a couple of smallish sharks. What I couldn't figure out was how the sharks and all the other fish stayed in the same tank/pool and still survived. I couldn't get a very definitive answer. The outdoor pools also had a collection of seals and walruses. It was also interesting to see these sea creatures from the observation windows in the lower floor.

There was also a 3-D show displaying creatures of the deep ocean, but we did not have too much time, so we skipped it.

All in all it is an impressive place, but I still thought it was not as rich and interesting as the New England Aquarium.





We ended the day with another California Pizza Kitchen dinner.

Los Angeles Travelogue-Day 11-April 1-Disneyland California

It would be unthinkable that a visit to Los Angeles does not include a visit to Disneyland, the original Theme Park.

Although we had spent around 4 days in Disney parks in Florida in 2000, we wanted to see the original Disney park. This was a bit tricky, since our children had grown now and Disney might not be very appealing.

Disneyland is close to Anaheim, so this time we went East, rather than going north towards Los Angeles. The quickest route was to take 710 North and switch to 605 East, but this would result in about 26 miles, so we took the shortest route and stayed off the freeway, taking about 20 miles to go there.

Unlike Universal Studios, Disney did not have any multi-day or multi-park discounts, so we had to pay full fare for everybody. You can select the regular Disney Park or the Disney's California Adventure to go, but you have to select while buying the ticket.

Avoiding all the photo opportunities with Disney characters, we first went into Futureland, and on to the Star Tours. This is basically a simulator that uses the Star Wars theme. The auditorium consists of moving seats and includes a large screen that you basically jump into, literally. The ride is a bit nauseating, but it is a short ride anyway.

When we came out of the ride, we saw the youngsters preparing for the Jedi Knight Academy. Suitable for ages 4-12, this training consists of the youngsters donning Jedi robes and training with a couple of very impressive Jedi Knights (very capable actors). It even involves an appearance by Darth Vader. Even watching the show was entertaining.

We then went on the Matterhorn Bobsleds ride. This is a very fast ride that goes through a mountain (representing Matterhorn in Switzerland) and puts people into two-person toboggans similar to the ones used for winter sports. Although very short, it gives you a feeling that must be similar to the real toboggan athletes. Not for the meek of heart....

The next show was a kind of exhibition that is looking into new inventions and innovations, thus the name Innoventions. There are virtual sports, a lot of XBox games, interactive displays, but most of the exhibits were closed, so we could probably see half.

Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters is a slow of ride using the world of Pixar's Toy Story. Everyone is given a blaster and asked to blast enemies. The drive is very slow, but it is not clear how to increase your score, more suitable for young children.

Jungle Cruise is a boat tour in a pseudo-jungle, where you meet a lot of fake animals and funny situations. Very boring...

Haunted Mansion is a slow ride through a dark atmosphere with a lot of holographic ghosts. Some of the scary moments were spoiled by youngsters who basically repeated loudly what the presenter was saying, since they had already been there and had memorized the supposedly scary statements.

Downtown Disney is similar to the Universal Citywalk, with a lot of shops, but unlike the Universal version, it has lots of Disney-related stuff, so less interesting, whereas Universal is very Hollywood and hip....

So, in total Disneyland had many more attractions (most of which we have not seen) but these are simpler and in general targeting a younger audience.

The day ended with dinner at California Pizza Kitchen.

Los Angeles Travelogue-Day 10-March 31-Shopping at Los Cerritos

After a long day at Hollywood Boulevard, this was meant to be another day to rest. So, we took the easy way out and went to a nearby shopping mall. (Yes, even after more than a week in the Los Angeles area, we found things to buy)

The Los Cerritos Center is a mall somewhat in between the Lakewood Center (an average mall) and the chic South Plaza Mall that we had visited in this trip. It had lots of good stores and an upbeat atmosphere.

After another day of shopping, we went back to Long Beach and enjoyed the marina on Shoreline Drive. The area looks like a construction site, mostly because they are getting ready for the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach. This is an annual race which takes place on the Shoreline Drive and seems to attract a lot of attention. However, they have to take a lot of precautions and thus they close off lots of roads, put a lot of emphasis on protection and this starts way before the Grand Prix dates, which for this year is 17-20 April.

The day ended with a dinner at the California Pizza Kitchen.

Los Angeles Travelogue-Day 9-March 30-Hollywood Dreams

Hollywood Dreams

Hollywood is the heart of the world's cinema industry. It is where the giant American cinema studios produce and present their latest dream worlds, and where the Oscars are presented with all their glamor every year. It is the writing on the mountain, possibly one of the best-known icons of the world.

But I had no idea what Hollywood looked like before this visit to Los Angeles. We had actually got a glimpse of it on the I-101 highway to Los Angeles, in the form of road signs, but that was it.

We decided to go and walk around in Hollywood Boulevard and see everything to see about the actors and actresses.

This meant another trip on 710 North from Long Beach. However, there were very few trucks now on the highway, this being Sunday, so this made the trip slightly easier. I say slightly, since the I-101 was still pretty packed.

Some city guides I read recommended that we go to the Hollywood and Highland Center in the intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue. This is a very posh shopping/entertainment center, with very good parking facilities underneath, so it was a good choice. Since it is on Hollywood Boulevard, you can just get out and see the landmarks of Hollywood quite easily. It also has a few viewing balconies from which you can see, for example, the Hollywood Sign.

Since we were quite hungry after a long drive, we looked around and found a California Pizza Kitchen restaurant. This is a chain we saw in a couple of places around Long Beach and Los Angeles. They have pretty good food and open until quite late. The service is also usually quite good.

Once we were sufficiently full (so that we could embark on our quest) we went out to Hollywood Boulevard.



The Celebrity Stars
The Hollywood Walk of Fame is actually a sidewalk on Hollywood Boulevard (running on both sides of the road) that goes on for about 3.5 miles, and has around 2000 stars dedicated to actors, actresses, directors, and other members of the film industry, as well as to some fictional characters important enough for Hollywood.

We walked on both sides of the Boulevard and saw most of the stars. I did not know at least half of the names, some of which are obscure contributors to the film industry, known by insiders but may not mean anything to the general public.

Images in Wax

While we were walking to see the stars, we noticed an interesting place on the Boulevard. This was the Hollywood Wax Museum. It was interesting to compare this with Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum. We had seen Madame Tussaud's in Amsterdam and in London.

Although this museum probably had more Hollywood celebrities, the quality of the wax figures was not so good. The displays were supported with elaborate sets from various movies, but the figures just... did not look like the originals, to say the least.

Guinness World of Records Museum

Since we bought a combined ticket, we also could see the other attraction right across the street, namely the Holywood Guinness World of Records Museum. This "museum" is a kind of tribute to the Guinness Book of World Records and has many interactive displays asking Guinness trivia questions and exhibits of world records. Mildly interesting, if you want to see videos of some of the record achivements.
Virgin Megastore

There was also a Virgin Megastore branch on Hollywood Boulevard. This was a medium size branch with a lot of CDs, DVDs, and also MP3 accessories and other game-related stuff. It was surprising to see that they had CDs about major world cities, around a certain theme.

I also noticed that Scientology had a strong presence in Hollywood. They had several locations, including a permanent museum depicting "Psychiatry: Industry of Death" and a Ron L. Hubbard Gallery. Remembering Tom Cruise's rant against psychiatry a few years ago, this is not surprising. This is also confirmed by the Church of Scientology and their Citizens Commission on Human Rights.

After walking along the Boulevard for a long period of time, we decided to go back and took the long drive over I-101 and I-710 back to our Long Beach hotel.

Los Angeles Travelogue-Day 8-March 29-Murder Mystery in Long Beach

We started the day with a late breakfast/lunch at Islands Restaurant at Long Beach. This is a chain serving burgers, some very nice desserts and similar decent food. We also spent some more time at GameWorks, which seemed to be habit-forming.

Dinner Theater is an entertainment type that is popular in the United States. It consists of a restaurant meal served during a play. Los Angeles also has a few of those.

I had tried to reserve a table in one of the most famous dinner theaters called The Dinner Detective, but the shows were all sold out, so I found an alternative, which was coincidentally in Long Beach. Although originally designed as a show to be performed on a boat or cruise ship, it was now running in different hotels in Long Beach.

The show we went to is called "Alibi Aboard" and is run by a theatre company called Killer Entertainment. It was currently running at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Long Beach, but was scheduled to run at the Long Beach Hilton in April. It is basically describing a 19th century theatre company which is playing melodramas but has had the bad luck to have two members of the crew being killed recently. So, they are recruiting for some of these positions among the audience when... more murders occur.

These events are occurring while you are having your entree and then your salad and so on, and there are interludes where you can actually leave the table, but you have to come back once the act is on again. The play is based on a plot, but there is a lot of improvisation involved. The cast learn the names of (and basic facts about) the audience and jab jokes at them during the play. They also get help from some of the audience during the play, so it becomes almost interactive. The talk is very witty, a bit old-fashioned (assuming the time is the end of the 19th century) and there is a lot of word play and word games. A lot is taken from early silent cinema like the case where the "villain" is on screen with a certain body language and background music depicting that he is a bad person. This is enacted in the play and the audience is supposed to react with astonishment when the villain appears.

The "audition" for the missing actors is done with the audience and is maybe the funniest part of the show. One of the audience members got so much carried away that he performed the same scene three times, very aesthetically dying every time and getting a lot of applause from the audience and from the players as well.

Of course there is the traditional making fun of the French, a lot of songs accompanied by the audience and jolly good fun. At the end of the play, the audience is asked to guess who the murderer is and why. The one who has the best guess gets a nice prize, there are also some runner ups getting small prizes. The outrageous or funny guesses are also exposed, slightly embarrassing the owners. My younger son got it right and got a small prize, so he was very happy.

The players were quite friendly, they did not even refuse requests to get photos after the shows, and they said good bye to each audience member separately at the end, shaking hands.

I had read positive remarks about the Dinner Detective. The difference was that in that show, some of the audience members also turn out to be actors, so you never know if your table mates are actors or just regular guests. Apparently they also try to misguide you with the talk they have during the play.

All in all, this genre of entertainment seems to be very enjoyable and is recommended for anybody who hasn't had the experience yet.

Los Angeles Travelogue-Day 7-March 28-Shopping in Costa Mesa

After a busy day at Universal Studios, it was time to relax a little bit and do some shopping. We searched for a chic, upper-class shopping mall and found out about the South Coast Plaza shopping mall in Costa Mesa.

This was a mall we could reach by going North on I-710 and then taking the I-405 to San Diego and taking off at the Bristol Street exit, about 27 miles to the east of Long Beach. Although it was a bit far away, and the traffic was quite heavy as we had got used to in this trip, it was really worth seeing it.

It is a mall with a lot of luxury shops for brand names like Benetton, Chanel, Guess, Armani and other familiar clothing shops like Banana Republic, Lacoste, etc. The mall is very clean and the clientele seems to be different from other malls. There is a luxury hotel nearby and the architects have designed an overhead passage for pedestrians that goes over the highway to the mall from the hotel. The mall also has an extension which can be reached through another pedestrian bridge and has an Apple Store and a Borders bookshop among other specialty shops.

The visit to this mall was good, to reflect the different quality shopping experience one might get in California. As usual the day was tiring with all the walking done within the mall, and we had a quiet evening in the Shoreline Village with a decent dinner at the Outback Steakhouse. This is an international chain, and has an Australian theme. We did not eat kangaroo meat or anything fancy, just regular steaks or chicken menus and the food was good, but not exceptional.

Los Angeles Travelogue-Day 6-March 27-Universal Studios

After a couple of days of avoiding it, we finally decided to go to a theme park. This is of course the compulsory part of any visit to the Los Angeles area, especially if you have children. After pondering for a while whether to go to one of the Disney parks, we decided on the Universal Studios theme park.

We had been to the Universal Studios theme park in Florida, about 8 years ago and we had thoroughly enjoyed it. That one actually consisted of two separate theme parks, one being the Islands of Adventure. I think we liked the Islands of Adventure better than the regular theme park.

Universal Studios in Los Angeles has only one theme park. Of course it also has the actual studios in the same area, so that might be the reason for the lack of space. The trip from our hotel in Long Beach consisted of a long drive with lots of trucks on the I-710 North, then a short drive on the I-5 and finally an equally long drive over the I-101 to Los Angeles. The last part consisted of going all the way around Los Angeles and taking the Universal exit to the studios.
I was especially annoyed by the sheer number of trucks over the I-710, but apparently that is the so-called "truck road" and seems to be always busy with trucks. The 30-mile distance took us almost an hour, especially due to very slow traffic once we approached Los Angeles.

Once we reached the studios, I found a parking lot close to the entrance and parked there. However, that turned out to be only one of the options, since we found out that we could have gone much further and parked close to the theme park entrance as well, instead of the main entrance from the Freeway. However, this was not a major problem, since Universal has some fun buses (tram-like, but going on wheels) that take you up the hill to the main entrance.

We then entered the Universal CityWalk, which is basically a collection of chic shops, cinemas and restaurants you can enjoy before or after you visit the theme park. There are a couple of good brand names (like Guess) and also locations that you could stay after hours for some night-time social activity.

Universal had a promotion, giving you unlimited entry within 2008 when you buy a regular daily ticket. This is slightly worse than the Annual ticket, which is valid for 12 months after you buy, but still a very good deal, since we have only lost 3 months from the year.

The first thing that reminds you that you are in Hollywood is the number of shows related to the movie industry or celebrities. As we entered the theme park, a Marilyn Monroe lookalike was lip-syncing to Marilyn songs on an old car, with a variety of dancer girls accompanying her. The stage was called the Blues Brothers show, where we would later on see a Blues Brother lookalike show.
We took a Studio Tour, which was done with trailer cars which move slowly through the studio area, also going between the actual production studios. This is done with some long trailer cars and basically consists of a tour of the production areas of the studios, with a few simple shows added in between.

These shows consisted of a short time with King Kong, a shortened version of the Earthquake show we had seen in Orlando, a short demonstration of special effects with a theme from Fast and the Furious (the third movie which takes place in Japan) and a very short version of the Revenge of the Mummy (from The Mummy Returns) show with a lot of scary scarab beetles.

We also saw lots of famous cars used in movies, interesting for those who like that kind of stuff, mildly amusing for me. The Boeing 747 crash site re-enactment from the movie War of the Worlds was also interesting, with the detailed handling of the set.
The rest of the tour was basically our guide (and sometimes Whoopy Goldberg on the TV screen) giving us facts about the area we were passing or the particular movie-related activity they were mentioning at the moment.

This tour was certainly very inferior to the MGM Studio Tour we had seen in Orlando in 2000. Still it gave us an idea about how Universal Studios worked, and also reminded us that they produced most of the action movies that we enjoyed so much.

We passed by the House of Horrors, which looked very intense. We wanted to visit the "Fear Factor:Live" show but missed the show time and had to wait for a later show time. In the meantime we went to the Terminator 2:3D show. This is a combination of live actors preparing the audience for the show, and 3-D movies (actually starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and the rest of the crew) you watch with plastic glasses for 3-D. This show was more or less identical to the one I'd seen in Orlando 8 years ago, so no technological improvement. It was shorter though.

One thing to mention is that the theme park consists of two levels, the lower one reachable from the upper one by going down a series of 3 separate escalators. This takes a lot of time, especially when the escalators are crowded. It might be a good idea to plan the shows by grouping them according to their location in the park.

While waiting for Fear Factor, we took the Jurassic Park ride. This was a very much shortened version of the Orlando Jurassic Park ride and was a big disappointment. It was as if someone wanted to provide a summary of the ride and eliminated big chunks of it. I will not give away the only surprise of the ride, but it was nowhere near the Orlando version.

Finally we attended the Fear Factor:Live show in a big auditorium. This is a shortened but live version of the popular TV show where contestants have to do some interesting stunts (much easier than the real TV show) and also eat/drink/swallow unmentionable horrors such as worms, pig entrails, live bugs and similar atrocities, in order to win a 50,000 dollar price. The theme park version consisted of three games, and the contestants were park visitors who applied and auditioned for the parts on the same day.

This was the pleasant surprise of the day because of interactive nature and also the fact that the stunts were real (albeit simpler than the original show, understandably). The presenters were very professional, and they also did a good job of preparing the audience for the show, doing all kinds of tricks and practical jokes while the auditorium was slowly filling up before the show.

We were also able to see the Blues Brothers (lookalikes) performing on their stage as we were going out.

We could not finish all the activities in this first day of the studios, so we decided to come back to it sometime next week.

A late return from Universal meant we had to struggle and find a place to eat dinner, and we decided on Denny's which was open 24 hours. Not the best treat maybe, but nobody complained when it was close to 10 p.m. at night.

Los Angeles Travelogue-Day 5-March 26-A Day in Long Beach

After our day at the Science Center in Los Angeles, we decided to stay in Long Beach and have a low-key day. After a breakfast in Denny's, we quickly discovered a few interesting places in the Pike, which is an entertainment and restaurant complex spread over a relatively large area. It is still under development, as proven by a lot of shopping areas still vacant, but it looks like a great potential for the near future. It is connected to the Shoreline Village via some pedestrian bridges, which makes it even more attractive as a place to in the evenings or during the weekend.

GameWorks

We went to the GameWorks entertainment center that is in the Pike area in Long Beach. This is a chain of entertainment centers all around the U.S. (also in Mexico and Dominican Republic), and contains many arcade games, a bowling alley and food. The arcade games can be played easily by means of a smart card that you can swipe before each game, thus avoiding the necessity to carry lots of tokens or small change in your pockets, and it is easy to re-charge the card if you feel a great yearning to play more. The variety of game play is good, although I did not see too many new arcade games.

After we had a short bowling session on the mediocre bowling lanes (but with good balls) we tried out some of the arcade games.

Borders

There are a couple of good bookshops I like in the States. Borders is one of them, however, I found that I usually go to Barnes and Noble or Waldenbooks in my frequent visits to the East Coast. In this visit, I found out that Borders was actually running Waldenbooks as well, and then I found out later that Waldenbooks is now teamed up with Amazon, so that when you search waldenbooks.com, you are redirected to Amazon.com (This probably means that Waldenbooks has transferred its online sales function to Amazon through an agreement).

The Borders shop in Long Beach is quite good. It is large enough, and has a cafe inside (Seattle's Best Coffee, a competitor to Starbucks). It also has reading areas where you can actually sit down and read books, or you can sit at the cafe (inside the shop) and read your books.

We spent a long time in the bookshop and replenished our supply of new books, before we headed back to our hotel to rest and get ready for the next day.

Los Angeles Travelogue-Day 4-March 25-California Science Center

On the footsteps of science....

On our 4th day, we decided to visit the California Science Center which is in the South of Los Angeles, close to the city. We started the day with another breakfast at Denny's.

I have always liked visiting science museums or science centers. The best one I can think of is the Museum of Science in Boston, which I had visited in 1991. It was so interesting that my son, who was only about two years old at that time, thoroughly enjoyed it, and we had a full day of exploratory fun.

Nemo in Amsterdam is also quite attractive, and we've been there a few times, always with lots of things to do.

So, I had some high expectations when I drove from Long Beach to Los Angeles to visit the center. The traffic was quite bad, although we had started late in the morning, hoping to avoid the morning rush hour. Although the distance from our hotel was around 20 miles, it took us close to an hour to reach the Center, since we had to go over I-710, then over I-5 on to I-110.

There are many buildings inside the compound that contains the Center. These vary from the African-American Museum to the Air and Space Exhibit and to the main building of the Centre. The Centre is a 3-story building with many permanent exhibits that are essentially free to the public. However, they have special exhibitions from time to time, and there was one of these when we went there. There is also a standard IMAX theatre showing many 3-D movies.

Body Worlds 3 is a controversial exhibition by German scientist Gunther von Hagens. He has invented a technique called plastination, which essentially consists of using vacuum to extract body fluids and parts and replacing them with plastic, thus creating real body parts or whole bodies without the effects of decay that they normally go through. He works with donated bodies, but the whole idea of exhibiting real human bodies (albeit with most organs and internal structure removed) is controversial, to say the least. (I am puzzled why Christian fundamentalists in the U.S. have not yet discovered this, since they even oppose scientific research involving embryos or stem cells). On top this controversial idea, the exhibit has a kind of artistic stand in that it puts the bodies in various artistic - often semi-erotic - poses to emphasize a bodily function, usually to show the work of muscles or other bodily parts for a certain function.

After a few of the rooms, it seems to become too much to see all these - almost real - bodies, regardless of the scientific value it is claimed to have. I think education about the body can be achieved much better using animation or special effects, which would also be much more instructional. I really do not see the appeal in seeing a body which holds all the removed organs in a bundle on top of the head (just like an African woman carrying a jug of water on her head).

One reason why taking photographs or even sketching on a paper was prohibited in the exhibit might be to avoid any reaction coming from conservative circles as a result of seeing pictures or sketches of the displays.

We then went to some of the permanent exhibits in the same building. I must say I was really disappointed with the level of sophistication these exhibits had, even when they contained interactive displays. The Air and Space exhibits were also devoid of any interesting artifacts, with a few simple hands-on experimentation opportunities.

I would suggest anybody who wants to visit the Center not to waste their time on this public institution. Maybe the (low) quality of the exhibits are due to the free entry, but still that does not prevent me from a very low rating.

Dinner was at Boston's Gourmet Pizza Restaurant and Sports Bar. We sat at the restaurant section, since the Sports Bar had several big TVs very loud. The food was good and the service satisfactory.

After the dinner, we dropped by the local Wal-Mart Store and bought some stuff. Wal-Mart seems to be the location for most of the unfortunate people in the States. There were people begging for food, getting money through the Money Order service, and in general everyone looked pretty dejected.

Then we went back to the hotel for another night's rest.

Los Angeles Travelogue-Day 3-March 24-Shopping at Lakewood

After the really tiring day of activities in Long Beach and vicinity, we decided to have a low-key day. The first thing to do was to have breakfast, and we chose to go to Denny's. Although I'm not too familiar with this chain, apparently it has more than 1600 franchises throughout the U.S. and several hundred in Japan and other countries. The differentiating factor from other chains is that it operates 24 hours, and also offers breakfast, lunch or dinner practically whenever you want, although there are some restrictions.

The Denny's on Long Beach Boulevard was OK, a little bit worn out maybe, but the service was quick and the food plenty. We had a late breakfast and all of us were quite satisfied with the quality of the food.

We then went for shopping at a nearby Mall in Lakewood.

I must admit that I like the Mall culture in the States. The most appealing part is the ability to go and spend some time in a Mall any time you want. Living in a country where most shops close by 5 o'clock in the afternoon and almost nothing is open on Sunday, it is probably understandable.

Lakewood Mall was somewhat typical, although maybe not one of the big ones in the area. However, its vicinity to our hotel in Long Beach made it the proper candidate for visit. We had actually wanted to go there the Sunday after we arrived, but it was Easter Sunday and the Mall was closed.

We spent there a long day, and had to walk along the different axes of the horizontally situated buildings along the mall area. We also had a visit to the nearby Circuit City to look into some electronics and computer stuff.

Our lunch and dinner were also in the Food Court of the Mall, so it was a pretty uneventful day. As to having any rest. Well, it was not eventful, but we did have to work long distances, so everyone was pretty exhausted by the time we got back and it was a night of early sleep.

Los Angeles Travelogue-Day 2-March 23- Long Beach Attractions

Long Beach Harbour - Russian Submarine

After a short breakfast and some cups of coffee to get rid of the effects of jet lag, we went for a walk on the small path in front of the hotel looking at the harbor. The view was equally amazing in the morning, as it was at night. We were going towards the famous cruise ship Queen Mary, which was now being used as a hotel and also as an attraction.

A package deal gave us a ticket for the Queen Mary and also the Russian Submarine Scorpion lying in front of the Queen Mary. I was a bit sorry to see that the Star Trek attraction had just left Long Beach a little while ago.

The submarine was quite interesting. Although we have seen many submarines in movies, seeing the cramped space of a submarine and walking through it was a great experience. I certainly know I would never be a good submarine man, since I need some space to operate.

After strolling through the submarine and listening to explanations in English (with a Russian accent) we had some more time before our guided tour of the Queen Mary, so went on a self-guided short tour. We went through the various lower decks including the engine room. There are always rumors of the ghosts of Queen Mary, but we never saw one! (Although there is a Ghost hunt tour you can take after midnight)

Queen Mary

Queen Mary was a great cruise ship operating between Southampton in England and New York city. When the war started, it was converted into a troop-carrying ship and started carrying American troops to England to help the war effort. Starting with around 5000 troops per trip, the capacity was boosted to 16000 troops towards the end of the war. There were about 10000 bunk beds established, and the rest were handled by means of hot-bunking (namely those off-duty taking the beds of the ones going on duty, with three 8-hour shifts). The trip from New York to Southampton took around 5 days.

Although Queen Mary was equipped with a formidable set of weapons (you can see one of the guns in the picture) and was protected at least part of the way with other military ships and aircraft, it was never approached or harmed by the enemy, due to the sheer fact that it was faster than many of the enemy vessels or submarines. (These information taken from our tour guide James, who was very eager to test us from time to time. This was the WW2 tour, but there are other tours as well)

After the tour (which took about an hour) we sat down and had some drinks in the bar, listening to live jazz from a sort of okay trio of musicians. We thought that the barman looked more like a musician (maybe singing soul).

After touring the upper decks as well, we ended our tour. We could have easily taken more time to go through the sip, and also could have tried one of the ghost tours, but we were a bit tired, so went back to the hotel to rest a little bit.

Shoreline Village

After a short rest, we went out to have an early dinner and see some of the neighbourhood. We hopped on the car and went to the nearby recreation area called the Shoreline Village. This was a small neighborhood in front of a big marina, and had lots of restaurants to choose from. After a brief walk, we decided to get Mexican food and went to Tequila Jack's. It had standard Mexican food such as burritos, enchiladas and a variety of meat dishes, it was not super, but was good, especially after a long day with a small breakfast.

After getting some stuff from a local grocery, we ended this first day. It was a slow start to the vacation, but was necessary to get rid of the jet lag and slowly get into action.

Los Angeles Travelogue-Day 1-March 22- Flight - Long Beach

Arranging the Trip

Using the Easter vacation as an excuse, I arranged a two-week holiday in the Los Angeles area. It is going to be my first visit to the area. My previous visits to the West Coast were one short business trip to San Fransisco/Santa Clara area and a tight visit to Redmond, WA (see Seattle travelogue)

In arranging the trip, I checked close to 15 Internet booking sites and finally ended up using a combination. Strangely enough, when I tried to make a single combination booking which included the flight, hotel and rental car, I ended up having a more expensive total trip. I separated the flight from the hotel and rental and ended up saving about 500 dollars on the total cost of the trip. I think this shows that the Internet booking web sites still have some software polishing to do. As in most cases I used travelnow.com for the hotel and rental car, whereas I booked a Continental flight from their own web site.

The Flight

The Continental Airlines flight from Amsterdam was on a Boeing 767 and was delayed by one hour, but still managed to meet the scheduled arrival at Houston, Texas, the transfer point for this long trip. Service was quite acceptable, but the movie service had frequent interruptions and was not so enjoyable. I managed to watch August Rush.

Entry to the U.S. at Houston George Bush Airport was one of the easiest I ever had. One reason for this might be the total physical separation of U.S. citizens/permanent residents and foreign visitors in the entry and Customs checks areas. Since there were enough Security officials it was a very smooth process that took less than 20 minutes (in comparison, my average waiting time at Wshington Dulles airport is around 1 hour, whereas this is close to two hours in Atlanta. It took us around 3 hours and a quarter to fly from Houston to Los Angeles on a Boeing 737.

Our rental car was ready when we reached Los Angeles. I booked this from Fox, a relatively unknown rental car company. I had no problem initially, however they did not have too many alternatives when I tried to upgrade the vehicle class. I got a Chrysler Jeep which was just good enough to take us and our luggage.


Long Beach

I have arranged the hotel in Long Beach, which is around 22 miles from the Los Angeles International Airport. It took us more than 45 minutes to reach the hotel due to heavy Saturday afternoon traffic and of course due to me taking wrong turns at least twice.

We were booked for the Long Beach Coast Hotel. It looked very attractive on the Internet Web site, but you never knew. We got a Bayview room and the view from the room was really amazing. Overlooking the Long Beach Harbour, it had a magnificent night vista.
Since we were dead tired from the long trip, we did not really do anything on the first night, apart from a short dinner and a quick decision to sleep early.

Escher Museum in The Hague

Sometimes we tend to spend our energy to visit far-away lands and cities and seem to forget about (or not notice) the gems that might exist in our city. This was what I noticed had happened to me when I found out about the Escher Museum in The Hague (in the Netherlands) where I've been living very close to in the last 12 years.

Since this was a permanent museum in Escher's home country, I took my time to visit it, but eventually got to it. It is in a very small, 4-story building, which is a former Palace of one of the Dutch Royal family members. The first two stories contain most of Escher's work in a slightly chronological order. Some of the works are really replicas because of the sensitivity of the original.

It is very exciting to see some of his famous works with your own eyes, and it makes you appreciate the genius of the man. Some of the works have (almost) an infinite number of similar (or different) patterns reducing to infinity, and it is inconceivable how Escher has done these (without a computer, with which it would be quite easy).

The top level of the building has some interactive displays, a movie room which continuously runs a film that brings some of Escher's work to reality (in film, of course), computer rooms where you try to build some of Escher's impossible shapes on the screen (I managed to do one, but failed in a few others. One of the museum guards was very friendly and he showed me how to do one of the shapes!)

There is also a very funny room where you lose touch with the dimensions. I will not spoil the fun, but it involves getting pictures of a group of people and seeing how what you thought the relative heights and sizes of these people were getting very distorted. You can keep the photo afterwards as a memento of your visit to the Museum.

Escher has died in 1972, and his country has recognized him as a great artist and is now paying tribute to his works. (He has lived abroad in a great part of his life and his art was not initially recognized well).

If you are interested in his works, as well as the concept of impossible worlds, I would recommend the book Impossible Worlds which is actually 4 books in one.

Melbourne impressions

Reaching Melbourne

I traveled to Melbourne, Australia to arrive on the day Maria Sharapova lost to Serena Williams in the final match of Australian Open Women's Championship. This was the last straw, really.

I was flying to Melbourne for a conference, and had to set aside two additional days just for travel. I started around noon time in Amsterdam. I flew on Malaysia Airlines to Kuala Lumpur. The flight was quite okay, and the service and features on the plane was better than average. Malaysia Airlines had an in-flight entertainment system in place, which allowed me to watch as many movies as I wanted, and also allowed playing simple Atari games and watch TV series.

I stayed at Kuala Lumpur airport for about 3 hours. It looks very modern, it is spacious and has free wireless internet all over the place. I certainly took note of it, although staying at an airport for 3 hours does not really give you an idea about the country.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls...

This was the announcement the pilot made while I was starting the next leg of the journey. I would find out that this was the standard greeting in Australia.

After Kuala Lumpur, I had a direct flight to Melbourne, which took about 7 hours. The total trip, including transfers and some minor delays due to luggage delivery, took about 23 hours.
I found that a lot of my colleagues taking part at the conference spent even more than one day on the road, especiall those coming from the U.S. East cost were stuck since most airports had a lot of snow.

The airport is about 20 kilometers from the city, and a taxi drive takes less than 30 minutes to reach the center.

1 Australian dollar is about 80 U.S. cents, and 63 Euro-cents. In general prices seem to be competitive, in contrast with European countries.

I stayed at the Seasons Botanic Gardens Apartments., in the vicinity of the Royal Botanic Gardens. This is a U.S.-style suite apartment-hotel, with two towers having the apartments, each with one or more bedrooms, a spacious living room, and all the equipment you would need for a long stay. The prices are cheap compared to Europe, slightly more expensive than their U.S. counterparts.

Strolling through the city

After having a sound sleep I needed after the 23+ hour trip, I had a quick stroll through the city to find out some of the interesting places. Of course this was the day for the Mens' final on the Australian Open '07, and all the activities around were centered around this event.

The first place I saw when I walked through St. Kilda Road, a wide street leading to the city center, was the Shrine of Remembrance. This is a shrine to commemorate all the Australian soldiers lost in the various wars they have been involved. It is an impressive structure with Greek columns inside a very beautiful park.

Walking further, I crossed the bridge over the Yarra river into the city center of Melbourne. One of the important places to see here is the Federation Square. It is the center of cultural activities in Melbourne and usually very lively. In this case the activities were unavoidably about Australian Open. American Express had several booths and activities around, including the setting up of giant screens and also running interviews with some of the players.


While I was there, I saw the interview with the boys' juniors champion, an Australian kid of 16 named Brydan Klein. Apparently he is the first Australian to win this for a while (and probably the first one to win any of the Australian Open categories for a while, seeing how Lleyton Hewitt got kicked out early this year). Looks like a promising player, mate!

Since I did not know I was going to travel to Melbourne for sure, I did not attempt to find any Open tickets beforehand. Seeing that it was impossible, I at least decided to have a look at the Rod Laver Arena where the tennis games are held. Since it was early in the morning there were not many people and they were preparing for the Federer-Gonzalez final to be held early evening.

I then proceeded to the shopping district of city center. The most notable street for shopping is Bourke Street. Apart from the shops on the main street, it is advisable to check the little streets for alternative restaurants and bars, since the main street only seems to have fast food.

Later that evening, Federer decimated Gonzalez, as expected, in three sets and I had to sit through it in front of the TV. A weird feeling, knowing that with enough early information and preparation, I could have been in the Arena...

Ballarat and the Wildlife

We were invited by our hosts to visit the Ballarat Wildlife Park, which is about an hour and a half's drive from Melbourne. After a short lunch, we were able to pet a koala named Elliott and have our picture taken with it. The tour guide assigned to us gave really interesting information. I learned that koalas only eat eucalyptus leaves and they did not drink any water, getting all the necessary moisture out of the leaves. They usually spend 20+ hours sleeping, since they need all the energy to sustain their life. The birth rate is quite low and lately their population is rapidly diminishing.

Later we were able to feed kangaroos. The park is basically full of kangaroos which are freely roaming and approaching people. They eat the food off your hand if you keep your hands horizontal. Once they are full enough, they just lie down lazily.

There were also a couple of emus around. They also eat out of your hand, but with less enthusiasm.

We could not see the Tasmanian Devil, since it was his feeding time. We were also told that there was a serious sickness afflicting a lot of the devils and the only way they could stop it was to segregate the sick animals from the healthy ones. Once afflicted with this sickness, the devil has inflammations in the jaws, and not being able to feed itself, just starves to death. I also learned that the jaw of the devil can exert a pressure that is 10 times stronger than a dog.

There were also giant turtles which could live around 200 years, and these were very young, being around 70....

The next step was to see a lot of crocodiles, snakes and other creeping creatures. This was not the most interesting part of the trip.

After this sort of long tour of the park, we had some tea and had the opportunity to watch an aboriginal dance. As they explained it to us, they first performed a dance that symbolized the creation of a kangaroo, an emu and finally a warrior. Then they performed another dance which they use with children, which involves imitating some of the typical animals we could see within the wild park. Finally they asked some of us to join them for the dance, so we had some funny moments.

We finished with these dances. It was an interesting trip for me, since I saw a lot of Australia's original animals from a very short distance and even was able to pet them. Most of these animals I had seen in books when I was a child, and it was a change to see them close-up.

Australian Delights

I have tasted one of the uniquely Australian tastes, namely Vegemite. When I saw it on the breakfast table, I did not know what it was and I briefly thought it was a cheese product, mainly because the brand was a famous cream cheese brand. I found out that this is a yeast extract and you are supposed to put a very tiny amount of this on a piece of bread and spread it very thin. The taste is... very dificult to describe, but it is not very similar to anything you have tasted. Very salty and strangely tasting, it still seems to have a strange attraction. It was certainly the source of a couple of jokes for foreigners.

The Journey Back

The journey back was similar, taking about 24 hours. Normally going west should be easier, since you gain some hours. However, a full day's journey had its toll on me, and the next 2 days I was only able to go to bed early morning, since my metabolism had more or less got used to the Australian time (GMT+10).

In this trip I probably saw less than 5% of all interesting things in Australia. I hope I do not need 20 trips to complete it!

Trains

I have always been fascinated by trains.... For some reason, when I think about trains, I always have the vision of a semi-dark train station and the hazy lighting that gives the station a nostalgic, maybe somewhat scary atmosphere.

I checked my records the other day and calculated that I have made about 60 train trips in the last 10 years, that adds up to 120 one-way trips. Of course I do not count any subway or similar short trips. These were all longer than an hour, sometimes up to 6 hours. Lately I have started preferring the train to any form of driving, since I can sit down and do some work, and maybe enjoy a cup of coffee or a sandwich, maybe listen to some music on my laptop....

I always feel an affinity to the electronic or mechanical signs showing the next few trains to depart. A delay of 15 minutes, sometimes more, seems like a set of innocent signs that do not reflect their possible problematic nature.

Each train station has a life in its own, and it raises different feelings when I think about it. Brussels Central always gives me a feeling of being in a godforsaken, dejected place. Getting out of the station around midnight always gives me the creeps, but also looking around at the bland, abject walls and the generally dejected surroundings makes me leave as soon as possible. In contrast, Brussels North and Brussels Midi (South) have lately been renovated and present themselves as modern hubs.

Dutch train stations can be orderly but dull. Still they take on a different life at night time and seem to "grow" in a sense. This must be a result of all the movies that had trains and train stations in them... (One of my favorites is Cassandra Crossing).

I have lately started using THALYS frequently between The Hague and Brussels, and sometimes Paris. Being a science-fiction fan, I have always been fascinated by technology, and fast trains are included in this area of interest. Of course it does not have the romantic associations of older trains (and nowehere near the charm of the Orient Express), but still being on a train providing a plane-like experience is somewhat refreshing.


(I must admit I was listening to Elfonia, who have Gothic albums arousing feelings of nostalgia and nighttime calm. This must be the reason I was thinking of trains at this time of night!)

Above the Arctic Circle : Fast-track Norway

A few years ago (in 1997) I had a fast-track trip through Norway and saw a couple of locations in this vast and interesting country. Having a Norwegian boss, I had not yet had the chance to visit this Nordic country.

My trip was for business and I had to visit a lot of cities in the space of 10 days. I had to fly part of the journey since it was not possible to cover these cities otherwise, but I would also be travel by bus with a big group of people.

It was May 1997 and I took a flight from Amsterdam to Evenes Airport, transferring at Oslo on the way. (At that time the main airport in Oslo was Fornebu, which was closed in 1998 when the new Gardermoen airport was opened)

My plane landed around 11:30 at night and I saw the famous Midnight Sun for the first time. It was an eerie sight since the sun was up, but it was not really too bright outside. Almost like a different planet. Since I had the trip in May, I could not observe the Northern Lights or Aurora Borealis, which can be seen in winter. I had to remind myself that I was at 68 degrees and about 30 minutes North, namely about 2 degrees above the Arctic Circle.

Since it was almost midnight the only thing I could do was go to my hotel in Narvik and immediately go to sleep.
The next day started with a visit to Narvik harbour and a lot of information gathering about the harbour. Apparently the harbour is used to ship a lot of iron ore and there are specialized quays to do this. We ended the day with a trip to Finnsnes, a small town in the Troms region.

After a few bus trips, I was not really looking for more, but I had to go through a few others, first to Sorreisa, then to Harstad.

When I found myself in the Quality Arcticus Hotel in Harstad, I was really tired. After checking in, I was given a room in one of the higher floors. Picking my bags, I took the elevator and pressed the right floor (I thought) and stepped out when the elevator stopped. To my surprise, I found myself in a ..... library! Later I learned that this hotel is in a complex called the Harstad Kulturhus and as such has access to the town library. Hotel guests could also borrow books from the library. I found a couple of English books, but since I was going to stay for a night only, I did not bother to take out anything.

Another thing I quickly noticed was how expensive the prices were. A beer would cost about 5-8 euros (Norwegian kronor equivalent at the time).

While we were doing all these bus trips, our hosts suggested to have lunch at a restaurant and taste some Norwegian specialties. What they had in mind was to eat reindeer meat. Unfortunately the restaurant did not have any fresh reindeer meat and we had to stick with more conventional food. (Lately I found out that Norwegians did a lot of studies on the effect of the Chernobyl on the Norwegian reindeer population, so maybe it was good that we did not find any)

The next day we went to the Harstad harbour and also had a chance to cross the Tjelsund Bridge, which is the only connection of Harstad to the mainland.

One other thing I learned during this trip was that Norwegians called the sea "Highway Number 1" since it is in general much easier to travel by sea as compared to travelling by land. The delicately ornamented fjord structure makes Norwegian coastal roads so long and winding and multiplies the distances by a factor so that a lot of people prefer to take a cruise and go via the sea.

After 5 days of long trips and many towns in the North, I took a plane from Evenes airport to fly to the biggest city in the middle region of Norway, to Trondheim. Trondheim can be reached through Vaernes Airport. After a couple of trips to the nearby ports of Orkanger and Verdal and 4 days later, I flew to Oslo this time.

Oslo is a very enjoyable city, with a lot of attractions. The first thing I saw when I started walking through the city was a South American music group, playing the authentic Andean flutes and other interesting musical instruments reflecting the rich culture that persists out in that region of the world. It is interesting that you see these type of groups everywhere in the world.

I was able to visit the National Gallery, which has, among other things, the famous painting by Edvard Munch, namely The Scream. The painting was not yet stolen, which happened in 2004.

My fast-track Norway trick ended in Oslo, where I took a flight to Amsterdam. Later on I visited Oslo one more time, but with little time to spare, I could not do more.

One area I would like to see in Norway is Bergen in the West. Maybe in a future trip....

Seattle Impressions

In my second ever trip to the U.S. West Coast, I took a direct flight from Amsterdam to Seattle via KLM. It took about 10 hours and the only reason I really did not understand how time passed, but only because it was a new Airbus 330 with a personal in-flight entertainment system for each passenger (even economy - or cattle - class passengers) it is interesting to note that some time around the 7th hour the system crashed, and I noticed that each small device (which had a game controller/remote controller you used to view movies or played games) was actually a Linux box!

Seattle is the home of Boeing and Microsoft. This probably explains why there is a direct KLM flight to Seattle. I guess Amsterdam must be an important European hub for these two companies. I was struck by how much greneery there was in the city.

Although it was far away, the sight of Mount Rainier looming in the horizon over Seattle was very awe-inspiring. Apparently it is an active - sort of - volcano and there is always a small probability of eruption. It looked close enough to the city to do potential damage.

I had a Sunday off before my meeting, so one of my colleagues suggested we go to a baseball game. Although I don't know baseball from a hole in the ground, I accepted, with the added incentive that I would learn the rules of the game. Seattle's home team is Seattle Mariners. They are playing in the American League, Western Division. (There is also a National League. My colleague explained why there were two leagues with similar teams, mostly because of two separate commercial sports organisations)

I found out that they are not really one of the best teams in the league, but their fans did not think so. We arrived early enough to SAFECO field, home stadium of the Mariners. The atmosphere was good, the sun was - sort of - shining. I was impressed by the enthusiasm the fans rushed to the game, in most cases with family and children. You can understand why baseball is popular in the U.S. It is a leisurely game with a lot of stops giving the whole family the opportunity to go out and get another drink or a jumbo sausage or whatever variety of unhealthy food that they want to consume.

The Mariners were playing against the Detroit Tigers. One thing I quickly found out was that they had two Japanese players. Japan seems to be quite good in baseball and they have started to provide some good baseball players to American teams. It is also good for the fans, since Seattle has a large Asian-American community, some from Japan. There were a couple of Japanese tourists in the stadium asking people to take their picture, especially when the Mariners' Japanese stars were in action.

My colleague explained the rules as the game rolled on. Unfortunately this was not a good game. Pitchers kept striking out the batters and nothing much happened in the first 5 innings, apart from Detroit scoring an easy home run. Mariners tried to catch up late in the game, but it did not work out.

The Major League Baseball Association (MLB) has a very good web site explaining the official rules of Major League Baseball, which you can find here.

While we were heading out to the baseball stadum, we passed in front of the first Starbucks that opened in Seattle's Pike Place Market in 1971. The building it was in said 1914, but I guess that was just the building's construction year.

I saw Seattle's major landmark, the Space Needle, from a distance. It looks like a nice Observation Tower and on a good day the panorama must be amazing. However, I had no time to visit it during this trip.

One of the important local towns in the Seattle area is ~Redmond, where the Corporate HQ of Microsoft resides. It is a small town, but in the morning, about 30,000 Microsoft employees rush to the area, blocking all major roads around it. I attended several meetings in Redmond, and we could only manage by sharing the car with 2 or 3 of my colleagues, thus convering the car into a HOV (High-Occupancy Vehicle) that can drive on the leftmost (or sometimes rightmost) lane.

It was a relatively short trip and I did not really see most of the landmarks, but it was a good variation to my frequent East Coast trips.

Warsaw impressions

We went to Warsaw between 18 and 25 February to enjoy the capital city of this once Communist country that is trying to adapt and benefit from the changing times. It was the first time I was in Poland, and although I like to prepare my trips in advance, this time I did not really check what to do there.

The flight took about an hour and a half (vs. the two hours advertised on the KLM flight schedule). Frederik Chopin Airport is a small airport by any means, but the advantage is that it is not really crowded. I was surprised to see that the airport is really close to the city (about 8 kms). Most big hotels have shuttles going to the city, but if you have a crowded family, it's best to take a taxi. I had heard interesting stories about taxi drivers, but in this trip we did not encounter any of these interesting situations. However, be aware that taxis do not have a standard rate and it changes from company to company.

Poland still uses the zloty (pl. zlote) as the currency. Although they have joined the EU last year, they have not yet adopted the Euro and they are also not part of the Schengen agreement (thus you have to go through passport control even though you may start your trip from he Schengen zone).

We stayed at the Marriott Warsaw. There is not much to say about the hotel other than it's one of the best we ever stayed on a holiday trip. The staff were very friendly and they always tried to do their best to provide for our stream of requests. The breakfast and brunch (on Sundays) are really marvellous, but not cheap. Similarly, you can use the many restaurants in the hotel to get magnificent meals, but they are costly. If you stay there, I have a couple of recommendations:

• It may be a good idea to buy a package deal which may include breakfast, Internet access in room, Movie Channels and minibar use or any combination of these. Internet line is via Ethernet cable (cable provided) and quite fast. There is WiFi in public areas of the hotel but not in the rooms. Movie Channels have about 5 movies, which change monthly (we ended up seeing all on the first night) Minibar is replenished every day if you have the package deal, you may need it, since the hotel is expensive otherwise.
  
• Do not use the taxis outside the hotel. Their rate is 2 to 3 times more expensive. You can ask the staff to call you a taxi from another company, e.g. EuroTaxi.
• The hotel is very central, so you can discover other culinary delights close by.
  

I had not known that there were so many skyscrapers and high-rise buildings being developed in Warsaw. The malls are getting to the U.S. size (almost) and the shopping attitudes seem to be American as well. Arkadia is probably the best and it is in a very central part of the city. Blue City Mall is another good one, but at the outskirts of the city. Do not try to walk there!

As for places to visit, I must say I was slightly disappointed. Although the Old City is mildly interesting, and there are some museums and the Royal Palace, Warsaw does not offer the type of historical heritage similar to what cities like Prague and Budapest offer. This is of course partially due to the fact that Warsaw has been destroyed and rebuilt several times, especially in the 2nd World War. The Soviet era buildings are dull and ugly. Palace of Culture and Science is an interesting building. Being built for the Communist Party as headquarters, it was not used for that purpose. Apparently some Poles hate it, since being a gift rom Russia at the time of Stalin, it reminds them of their previous occupation by Russia.



At the top of the building is a newly built clock tower and you can get a panorama of the city from a viewing platform at the top.



You will find many English-speaking people in hotels, restaurants, malls but older people tend to speak Russian.

All in all we had an enjoyable week in Warsaw, but probably it is not in our list for "Places to Return to". I have been told that Krakow is more interesting for tourists, but we did not have time to visit Krakow, which is 2.5 hours from Warsaw.