The run-up to Christmas this year felt very normal: stressing about buying presents, trying to close down projects at work and going to at least one end-of-year office social event: thanks to Steve, Kira, Tomas, Lee, James and Paul for coming out to the pub! As an intriguing side plot, I slipped out the next morning to visit the German Embassy and submit my naturalisation paperwork, following the path which most of my family has already completed. Hats-off to the embassy’s lovely (and efficient) legal staff! And no, I’m not planning on moving anywhere, but it’s always good to have post-Brexit options. Anyway, having done my bit, this process will now trundle on through the bureaucracy for another year, so fingers crossed I didn’t mess anything up.
This last-minute dash to the Embassy was a little surreal, but things really started feeling different the next morning when Randi, Kira and I arrived at Paddington and boarded a train bound for Exeter. As I said to my sisters, ‘leaving London to go see your parents’ feels like one of those quintessential festive traditions which we’ve never experienced before. Thankfully, despite some worrying moments just outside of Paddington, everything ran relatively smoothly and we made it to Exmouth as planned to join mum, Katie and James for a Christmas by the sea.
As you might expect, we played a lot of games.
The first game worth mentioning is Don’t Get Got, Kira’s extended party game in which we each collected secret missions to be carried out against other players over the entire Christmas. Naturally I felt very paranoid and conspiracy-minded by the end. With this continuing background threat we also played many, many shorter games including Spaceteam (an absurdist app-based challenge to collectively pilot a spaceship while yelling instructions at each other), Codenames (some of the funniest/most stressful Christmas moments at once), and Terraforming Mars (a deeply enjoyable Eurogame which I managed to win – albeit with a heavy helping hand for starter players!)
We also struggled to interpret the confusing rules of Connecting London – but had a lot of fun while doing so – and got very animated playing Cobra Paw (of which Randi is now a very proud owner of) with Katie’s friend Caitlin, who popped over on our last morning and shared some valuable local knowledge. Finally, it made me very happy to introduce more people to the joys of Worms Blast, while Katie was overcome with joy to get the Toy Story 2 action game running on her laptop again after all these years. (If anyone from the extended family is reading this and worried that we’ve abandoned all traditions, don’t worry: we did find time for the odd moment of charades too.)
Other highlights included:
- A ranked-choice voting mechanism to decide on our Christmas Eve activity (after which Kira confessed that she had no idea what she voted for as she had no expectation that it would make any difference)
- The winner of said ranked-choice vote: The Muppet’s Christmas Carol! (still the best Christmas film)
- Calling Tash and Cormac on Christmas Day itself, during which they enjoyed a James Cameronesque dive into the depths of the oven itself
- Doctor Who back on Christmas Day (finally!) with The Church on Ruby Road: a magnificent, rollicking, goblin-filled introduction for Ncuti Gatwa and argh I’m so excited for more
- The traditional Boxing Day family walk… but now along clifftops!
- A post-Christmas visit from the wonderful Fox family
- Watching some unexpected boat races from mum’s balcony
- The nostalgic whirr of Kira’s polaroid camera
- A triumphant return to Aby’s, the local café I staked out on my first visit to Exmouth
- A triumphant introduction to one of mum’s new local pubs (and their sticky toffee puddings)
But, let’s face it, Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without an abundance of food at home. Massive thanks to mum for her incredible Christmas Day spread – the crowning glory of a packed menu including Katie and James’s tacos, Randi’s shakshuka and Kira introducing us all to the delicious Azerbaijani qutab. Oh, and we all built a gingerbread train too 😀
Merry Christmas!
A few weekends back I made my final trip to Scotland in 2023 for a festive one-two punch of the Midlothian Labour Christmas party (featuring a tricky Midlothian quiz and a brava bagpipe performance!) and then a Hannukah celebration at Kirsty and Roger’s with Katie and James (featuring Randi’s delicious latkes and an improvised solution to a shortage of candles). In-between, Randi and I went over to Katie and James’s flat for the Doctor Who special which I’ve been most looking forward to – The Giggle, with Neil Patrick Harris as a perfectly-cast Toymaker – and it was amazing.
The following week I enjoyed a really lovely end-of-year virtual boardgaming night with my team at work, at which we all learnt that Zirak is absolutely fearless when playing Incan Gold and there’s no competing with him. Randi and I also said goodbye to Alex and finally made it to The Perry Hill pub for dinner and drinks. This is somewhere which should qualify as ‘one of our locals’ but just isn’t in the direction we’d normally think to walk – but I’m glad we did, because it was very cosy!
However, in truth we were merely warming up the cosiness level because our real Christmas treat was a long weekend to the German town of Bad Wimpfen for the authentic German Christmas market experience. This trip was masterminded by Randi as a way both of seeing a different side to the country than Berlin (which we’d both visited already) but also exploring how far we can comfortably get across Europe without flying.
To that end we started our journey on Thursday night with the Eurostar to Paris, and then checked-in to a private room in a hostel a short walk from the station. The next morning we had time to enjoy a long breakfast with Reema, followed by a brief wander around the banks of the Seine, before hopping back up to Gare de l’Est (much nicer than Gare du Nord) for our train to Mannheim. Our *sniff* high-speed *sniff* train, on a network which France has been developing for decades… and perhaps the less said about this the better.
In contrast, Germany’s Deutsche Bahn has been in ‘permanent crisis’ (the words of Germany’s public auditor, not mine) for years, with record delays and cancellations, so we were a bit sceptical that our change of trains at Mannheim would go smoothly. And it did not! But since we were on holiday we secretly enjoyed the chaos (is this train going to the destination displayed on the outside or the inside?) plus the cheer which went up when it finally started moving. This delay also meant we were inspired to break for dinner at our final changeover station (a.k.a. schnitzel at Sinsheim!) which was delightful. And, in fairness, the rest of our DB experience ran smoothly on this trip. It’s important that the German railways stumble every so often, in order to provide hope to the others.
Bad Wimpfen itself was truly magical. I had imagined a cute German town with a fenced-off Christmas market somewhere in the middle, but in fact the market stetches out to cover the entire historic centre. The crowds (almost all domestic German tourists) circulate gently around the hilly, cobblestoned streets – glühwein or bratwurst or both in hand – pausing to appreciate the brass band playing from the balcony at city hall, the stalls selling homemade wooden toys or the merry-go-round at the entrance.
We were particularly impressed by the Feuerzangenbowle – or ‘fire tong punch’ – a mulled wine variant which is served alight, although for ourselves we stuck with the safer, less fiery variant. (Full disclosure: if you looked through our entire set of photos from this holiday I think we’re holding glasses of glühwein in at least half of them.) We were also delighted to re-encounter langos, last seen during our Austrian Christmas market adventure of 2017, which came in a smaller, denser variant here but were no less delicious. I persuaded the German man behind us in the queue to help me practice saying all of the fillings (sauerrahm, knoblauch, schinken and käse) so that I could buy the one with everything.
During the days we explored a little further afield, beginning with a beautiful countryside walk to the neighbouring town of Bad Rappenau for lunch. Along the way we admired Germany’s well-signposted rural walking paths, admired the extent of the railway system (because of course Bad Rappenau has its own station for a quick journey back) and – in Randi’s mind at least – decided that Germany was much more reminiscent of “the American Midwest, but with trains” than anywhere in the UK. Which makes sense, given the German influence on the Midwest!
The next day we went on a longer journey to Stuttgart. This was less successful as a destination, since by the time we finally got there Randi was starting to feel a bit sick (for legitimate reasons) and I soon joined her (because I foolishly experimented with the glühwein + gin combination at the Stuttgart Christmas market). As a result we didn’t see a great deal of the city, aside from the main shopping street (bland, post-war architecture), aforementioned Christmas market (fine, but not a patch on Bad Wimpfen) and a legitimately nice park. With all that said, what did make the trip legitimately worthwhile was our initial train from Bad Wimpfen, which opted to become a tram halfway through and took us on a street-level tour of all of the local factories. Since it was a Sunday they were all closed, and it all felt a bit like a movie set, but it was a very very evocative German ambience of “look at all the industry we have”.
I’ll save Christmas itself for my next post rather than cramming it into this one too – but suffice to say we both brought back bits of Bad Wimpfen for our Secret Santas!
It’s December already? Wow, OK. I guess I should have known this was coming once I reached 2023’s ‘first mulled wine of the season’ moment (this classic phrase thrown in especially for the dom.blog bingo players) at Beckenham Place Park a few weeks ago. Randi and I were admiring the autumnal scenes (as they then were) together with her brother Alex, who is staying with us in London for a few weeks and is giving us the inside track on what actually happens in the city after we’ve gone to sleep.
If you are playing dom.blog bingo (and if you’re looking for an excellent stocking filler there’s still time to order from the merch store) another phrase you’ll be wanting is ‘trip to Scotland’, so I’ll oblige: a few weekends ago I made another trip to Scotland where political activities included a very well-attended canvassing session in Penicuik followed by a warming round of hot chocolates with some of the other volunteers, an awful lot of handwritten envelope addressing and a group rewatch of David Olusoga’s excellent first episode of Union.
On Sunday, before catching the train home, I popped in on Katie and James’s brand new flat (so much space!) and enjoyed another classic Doctor Who screening: 1967’s The Moonbase. Knowing that Patrick Troughton was my dad’s favourite Doctor growing up always makes these stories particularly special, which was in no way diminished by the fact that two of the four episodes are animated recreations paired with the original soundtracks. (However, the archival-loving tendencies of the original fans who made audio tape recordings from the original broadcasts have my eternal gratitude.) Anyway, The Moonbase was the second Cyberman adventure featuring an attack on an international weather-control base on the moon. In a nice show of slowly putting the continuity together in my head, companions Ben and Polly (along with Jamie) are the same Ben and Polly introduced in The War Machines which Katie and I watched back in 2021. Polly remains very smart. Ben remains infuriatingly stupid.
A few weeks later I went to Amsterdam on a work trip for a couple of days, for which I managed to swing Eurostar tickets rather than flying. This is obviously the superior experience for many reasons, and – as Randi ruefully notes – is actually faster than the train to Edinburgh. The Booking.com event I was there for was really great, although I’m slightly embarrassed to admit that I didn’t even notice the potentially historic (and not in a good way) election day going on around me. If future generations ask me what it was like to be there on that day, I’ll have to tell them I was too busy ordering a large portion of chips (with house sauce ) from Manneken Pis…
And now with Christmas fast approaching it’s time for the usual festive preparations, including this year’s Christmas tree which is an absolute triumph if I do say so myself. Ever since moving to Forest Hill we’ve always bought our tree and then carried it home from the same Christmas tree seller behind the station, and he says that we’re the only couple who ever arrive where both people look enthusiastic for the task. Purists might note that we got a bit over-ambitious with the height and that it doesn’t actually fit the dimensions of our flat, but we regret nothing.
Other wintery adventures this month have included pizza and homemade gingerbread at Matt and Laura’s – during which we spent many happy hours playing “escape the monster” games with Cress, and I feel like Matt deserves a lot of credit for nobly agreeing to be typecast as the monster each time – plus a really lovely evening of drinks and catch-up with Jill at The Island (which always brings back memories itself) and, of course, the first two Doctor Who anniversary specials featuring the return of David Tennant and Catherine Tate. I count myself firmly in the “this is awesome” camp, and I am beyond excited to have Russell T Davies’s vision for the show back on screens again. My only complaint – and here is a mild spoiler for the first special – is that Donna’s daughter Rose, who had literally just saved Donna’s life and is totally old enough to be a companion in her own right, made a polite request at the end of the episode to see inside the TARDIS which was totally rebuffed! The #justiceforrose campaign starts here.
Finally, this weekend Randi and I were invited to Caroline and Josh’s housewarming party in Streatham. As per usual we arrived slightly aggressively on time (3pm on the dot) but redeemed ourselves by joining the speedy chair assembly team. We had a great time, but it was particularly nice to be reunited with the Whitstable group from last year including Hilda the dog! And talking of wonderful groups: on Friday night we assembled Oliver, Abi, Sarah and Kira for a Georgian evening at Kartuli. I was so happy we managed to get everyone together to share several bottles of sweet, sweet Georgian wine and lots of general deliciousness, but I also appreciated the educational value after discovering that Kira and Sarah share an uncanny affinity for obscure animal facts.
I realise these blog posts have fallen into a monthly cycle, which was never the intention! Last time I included a photo of us all at my mum’s house enjoying a farewell meal before she packed up and left for Exmouth… but as it turns out, there have been quite a few bonus farewells at my mum’s since then too. So, a roll call: The One With Beth & Stewart (plus Tash & Cormac as they were just about ready to leave on their amazing world travels), The Brunch One With Sharon (my beloved American adopted-godmother who was treated to lots of arguments over the US constitution plus a trip to the dump Brent Re-Use & Recycling Centre, which are two things everyone wants from their holiday) and last night’s The One With The Neighbours, at which we learnt simultaneously terrifying yet impressive things about how one of us (not me) once caught a rat using a safety pin and some blu tack.
Back in early October, Randi and I were also very excited to celebrate Cora’s third birthday at a rainbow/unicorn/cat-themed party, at which at one point I became the object of a hunt across the garden by an ever-increasing band of young children. That afternoon, Randi and I meandered back home via Brockwell Park (we miss you, Brockwell Park) in order to go back to the Turkish restaurant Saray (we miss you too, Saray) for dinner with Randi’s parents.
A weekend later, after Beth and Stu had jetted off to Spain and Portugal, I spent the Saturday visiting Exmouth with my mum to see her fancy new seaside home with my own eyes. Not only is it a lovely place – with amazing views! – but I also got a chance to chat to the current owner about the oh-so-casual fact that she was part of a world-record beating rowing team which rowed across the Atlantic.
Last month I also caught up with Matt and Clark at a pub in Hackney, where together we solved all manner of global problems before I managed to catapult a halloumi wrap into myself. I was also very excited to stay overnight in Chelmsford with Abbi (with whom I will always share wine and product manager woes), Rob (who cooked us all a delicious curry dinner and then breakfast the next morning) and Jack (who was super-fun to be around as well as patiently answering all of my Pokémon-related questions).
As a surprise one evening, Randi also took me to Immersive 1984, an immersive theatre experience based (obviously) on Orwell’s novel. There are many, many things to say about this. Firstly: it’s set in Hackney Town Hall and a large chunk of the performance took place with us sitting inside the actual council chamber itself, which was a great deal more majestic and impressive than I typically picture English local government to be. Secondly, it really sharpened my concerns that in a totalitarian state Randi is going to get us both killed with her stubborn truth-telling tendencies. And thirdly – without being too spoilery – there was an incredible moment of accidental hilarity near the end where the audience were all asked to volunteer to carry out a brutal and obviously immoral act. Most people sat uncomfortably, looking around at each other, but one guy stuck his hand high in the air with a self-knowing grin, prompting the woman he was with to put her head in her hands with embarrassed mirth. Thanks for taking one for the team!
But the highlight of October was definitely last weekend’s three day triathlon (© Robyn) of family events, kicking off with a big celebratory lunch for my aunt Carolyn’s very well-deserved CBE. It was especially wonderful to see the Canadian branch of the family (Josh, Cindy and Isaac) in town again, plus I enjoyed some great conversations over lunch with Advia, Tessa, Jackie, Sharon and others. Afterwards, Katie joined me and Randi’s family for an elongated wander around Kensal Green Cemetery (elongated only because one of the gates was unexpectedly locked!) before the four of us walked down to Shepherd’s Bush to see Elephant. This is a semi-autobiographical one-woman show about race, class and Empire, written and performed by an extraordinarily talented Anoushka Lucas who sings, plays the piano and gives a powerfully physical performance throughout.
Then it was back home to rest in preparation for the big event on Saturday: Alix and Adam’s long-awaited wedding! All of the people above – plus many more – were there in Hammersmith to cheer and dance and celebrate together – so hats-off to Alix and Adam for providing a ‘menu of people’ cheat sheet over dinner as a quick-reference to everyone else in the room. Everyone had so much fun together, and many of the people who couldn’t make this last-minute wedding (12 years in the making but only 12 weeks in the planning!) were represented in spirit in a big-screen video montage. Particular highlights for me included: the spectacular brass brand, the beautiful speeches, the saxophonist accompanying the DJ on the dancefloor and the very tasty Victoria sponge wedding cake.
As you can see, I hung around in North London for a bit after the wedding, staying overnight at my mum’s (really making good use out of it while I still can) along with Katie and our American cousin Sharon (but not the American adopted-godmother Sharon from earlier). This meant that Katie and I got to engage in some classic Worms Blast action in the morning – which I miraculously got running again on my laptop – before heading over to Carolyn’s official post-wedding Sunday lunch, where there was quite some variation in hangoverness.
I wasn’t hungover, but I was tired – and yet it was important to muster some energy for the afternoon because Randi, Beth and I had an important date in the diary: The Gunpowder Plot. This is another immersive experience running in London, which was a birthday gift from Tash & Cormac and takes place in the vaults beneath the Tower of London. I was both excited and a little nervous (there is such a thing as too immersive) so was relieved when our group included a boisterous set of kids who could take the lead on deciding whether or not to assist Guy Fawkes with his treasonous plot. Quite a lot of the script – which takes place across a mixture of VR and real-world actors while moving from room to room – aims to ignite an ethnical debate about ‘terrorism vs. freedom fighting’. Rest assured that none of the 8-year old boys with us had even a glancing interest in this question, and just wanted to blow stuff up as quickly as possible. Fair enough!
The VR stuff was fine – especially at the end, when there was a brief amount of full 360° immersion – but the in-person interaction with the actors was better. Also, I was very amused at the mum who suddenly realised during the ‘intermission’ at a seventeenth century tavern (contactless cards still accepted) that there probably wasn’t any minimum drinking age in 1605, but sensibly resisted trying to put this to the test. For me, the most daring piece of immersion was being forced to hide in a priest hole at a Catholic safe house – alone, and in the dark – while the King’s agents raided the place. For a piece of touristy entertainment with lots of families involved, they didn’t pull their punches.
Finally – this week, Randi and I enjoyed a celebratory Georgian dinner at Kartuli, while the night afterwards Randi cooked up a batch of cheesy pasta for Reema and Sam while we all drank wine and argued about the ‘right’ way to do trick or treating. (This year, as every year, I refused to give out treats until at least one child in the group was brave enough to ring the spooky doorbell with the dropdown spider and deep bellowing laugh. Those are just the rules.)
See you next month…? [Editor’s Note: Yes, of course there are more photos from the wedding. But if I waited to get my hands on them it’d be 2024 before I could post anything.]
Hello from the 17.34 service from Glasgow Central to London Euston. It’s a long journey, but I’m taking advantage of my seat with an odd little work table (room for a laptop, but slotted in snugly behind the luggage rack) to try and clear out my extensive backlog of September blogging material.
From our long list of possible anniversary dates, Randi and I have two to choose from this month. Early on in September we celebrated the anniversary of our very first date by going to Babur, while 24th September marked one whole year since we dragged everyone up to Hereford for our big, beautifully sunny (second) wedding day.
The weather was similarly sunny when we journeyed up to Josh and Anna’s one Saturday for a back garden brunch, followed by a lot of playtime in the paddling pool and (most importantly) a chance to teach Cora to chant “Naughty Aunty Randi!” whenever she did anything objectionable and/or I needed to deflect blame from the consequences of my own actions. So, to summarise for anyone who has (presumably jokingly?) asked how married life is going… it’s going great 😀
As my mum will soon be moving out of London, we hung around North West London for the rest of that weekend to spend time with her, help a little with the clearout and do some panicking at the lack of spare storage space in our own flat to house the things I now needed to bring back from my childhood bedroom. On Sunday we were joined by Tash, Cormac, Katie and James for a ‘farewell to the house’ Sunday lunch, with chicken pie and mash to honour one of the staple weekend lunches of our childhoods.
To be clear, I wasn’t joking when I said that this weekend had thrown me into a furniture-related panic. Fortunately, Randi and I had already been planning to do something to turn our joint office into a real guest bedroom, so this gave us the impetus we needed to start ordering more furniture. As a result the following weekend, while Randi was safely away in Edinburgh, turned into a madly productive spree of furniture assembly… most of which was done relatively correctly, even though there was a moment around 1am when I was trying to manoeuvre a giant bookcase into place and wondered if I would get crushed in the process. Sam, who has been staying with us off-and-on this month, graciously became the first guest to try sleeping in the guest bedroom and check whether the bed would collapse overnight or not. It did not. Hurray!
This month I also visited my Grandma, started watching State of Chaos with Randi (a recap of the last seven years of disaster and disarray in British politics, in which the relatively recent past feels like a lifetime ago), bade a very sad farewell to Jill at work and enjoyed a wonderful dinner with my mum, Randi and Melissa at a delicious Malaysian restaurant in Queen’s Park which is apparently run by a former QPCS student.
Last week, Randi’s parents also arrived in London. Sadly they picked the worst possible moment to attempt the 10 minute walk from Forest Hill station to our house, and so were welcomed back to the city with a hailstorm, but once they dried they were cheerful once more. On Friday night the three of us met up with Andrew and Bonnie for some excellent tapas, while on Sunday we met up with the rest of the family for an afternoon of tea and cakes hosted by Alix and Adam.
We’ve reached Penrith and I’m close to wrapping up the London section of this post, but first I also need to summarise the rather eclectic collection of shows I’ve seen in the last month:
- Guys & Dolls at the Bridge theatre. This was a last-minute invite from mum to see a new production of the classic Broadway musical, of which I knew literally nothing about a vivid memory of that scene in The Simpsons about a song which (spoiler alert) “isn’t even in the show!”. Anyway, the Bridge Theatre version featured an immersive central stage in which all of the audiencegoers with standing tickets stood and mingled with the cast in a replica New York. I loved this, albeit I loved this from the comfort of our front-row seated tickets which I would not have wanted to sacrifice to contribute to the immersive effect in any way. The musical itself was an entertaining curiosity. Clearly it’s from a very different time and place, with joyously unbelievable characters and a strange ending which seems to skip a couple of crucial scenes in the interests of time… but a good night out nonetheless. Even if they didn’t sing that song from The Simpsons.
- Unbelievable, a new magic show created by Derren Brown for which – in order to buy tickets – you must tick multiple boxes to reaffirm your understanding and agreement that Derren Brown himself does not actually appear onstage in the show. We get it! Who does appear is a troupe of actor-musician-magicians with a series of tricks and illusions. Some are definitely more successful than others but the overall evening is quirky and fun, with lots of audience participation, a Prohibition-era musical routine and a go-for-the-heart ending. I saw this with Tash and Cormac (after some great pizza sharing at Pizza Pilgrims) as a London farewell before they go travelling, and it was a really lovely night – even if we were all slightly paranoid that our every move was being monitored by the theatre for pseudo mind-control routines.
- Finally, we saw Red Pitch at the Bush with Randi’s parents after lunching at Shepherd’s Bush Market. This is the story of three teenage boys whose friendship has been forged on their local football pitch in South London, and is remarkable for the fact that the actors are also kicking the ball basically nonstop throughout the entire 90 minute performance. It’s also super naturalistic – probably too naturalistic, in fact, for my personal preference as, just like in real life, you only get hints about wider themes and character arcs. On the other hand, after the play I described it as “the boy version of Sleepova” (the first thing we ever saw at the Bush) and, just like that show, the acting is perfect.
OK, onto Scotland where I joined Randi and her parents this weekend for a day in Edinburgh and my long-awaited first visit to Glasgow. Originally I was supposed to get the train up on Friday evening, but thanks to my stubborn determination to see a work thing through I made an impulsive last-minute switch to (gulp) a nine hour overnight coach to Edinburgh, leaving at midnight from Victoria Coach Station.
The journey was… fine, I guess? It’s true that I barely slept, arriving the next morning in Edinburgh looking like a zombie, barely coherent and in desperate need of a nap. But on the other hand, it was kinda reassuring to know that I’m not so old to have lost the ability to do this yet.
It was also well worth the sacrifice because we all had a great weekend together. Saturday in Edinburgh was a more relaxed rest/walk/recover/eat/sleep kinda day, but having come all this way I did want to experience a decent chunk of Glasgow before my train home on Sunday, and I wasn’t disappointed. We arrived out of the station into George Square on the day of the city’s half-marathon, which immediately gave everything a buzzy, lively air. From there, Randi had wisely booked us on a walking tour so we could quickly cover some ground, and our guide did a great job in orientating us with some of the basic history and culture of a place which prior to now I’ve known basically nothing about.
Of course, one thing I did know about Glasgow is that it’s one of the three cities in the UK with a subway. So, naturally we had to make a point of riding it. The Glasgow Subway consists of a single circular loop around the inner city, which Glaswegians will try to tell you is “two lines” (one in each direction) even though, obviously, any subway line in the world can be ridden in either direction and by this logic London has 22 lines on the Underground. Nit-picking aside, the subway is delightful. It’s actually the most Tube-like thing I’ve ever ridden (other than the Tube, of course) with small, tube-shaped carriages shuttling along. It’s just a shame there isn’t more of it!
We got off near Kelvingrove Park and walked around the park and the area by the University of Glasgow, admiring the beautiful views on this surprisingly sunny day (given it’s now October) and retrospectively approving of where Katie used to live before she left Glasgow. We also took Katie’s recommendation to share a box of doughnuts from Tantrum Doughnuts before heading back into the city centre and going our separate ways. While it was only a brief visit, I was very impressed by Glasgow overall and would definitely be up for a return trip. But, for now, I will sign off with (*checks timetable*) a dispiriting 100 minutes left to go on this train. Next week, I will try and get more sleep…
Jeff DuBowe on Haarlem globetrotters: “One of our favorite spots. Super walking city. I think we were the ones who told your In-Laws about it…” Oct 14, 15:15
