Just in time for Easter eggs… we’re back!
We’ve spent the last two weeks enjoying an amazing time in China. As you might expect, I took copious notes for this blog, starting with our first stop in Beijing. But before starting with our day-by-day itinerary, I wanted to try and capture my overall impressions of China as a tourist: some things I was expecting, and some things which surprised me.
- WeChat & Alipay are a way of life. I knew this already, but it’s hard to capture just how much China exists in its own technological world. It’s not just about payment – almost all of our restaurant meals began by scanning a QR code with one of these apps and using the restaurant’s mini program to translate the menu and submit our order. Public transport is almost completely tied to these apps too: I was able to use Apple Pay for the Beijing Subway, but not for the buses and not in Chengdu or Chongqing.
Thankfully it’s pretty seamless as long as you get fully set-up – including mobile number verification – before you arrive in China. Our only hiccough was that occasionally my Natwest Mastercard card couldn’t be used through these apps, but thankfully Randi’s HSBC Visa was always accepted. We also relied heavily on the English version of Gaode Maps, known as ‘Amap’ for navigation. Although we had no problem bypassing the Great Firewall through our eSIMs, the reality is that Google Maps is functionally useless in China. You just have to switch your habits entirely.
- You’ll see very few Western tourists, and you’re not special. To be clear, I mean that in a good way. We’ve been to lots of places where the local economy is geared around international tourists, but China is not that place. While there’s a surprising amount of English signage (plus voice announcements on all the metros we used) you only had to look around to see that even the big tourist attractions are geared for domestic tourism first, and anything else is a nice bonus. And while people were kind and patient if we needed help, with very few exceptions nobody gave us a second glance, although Randi wondered if things might be a bit different if we were blonde!
A lovely side-effect here is that we felt very unhassled. Nobody is trying to rip you off. There was no equivalent of the mysteriously broken taxi meter, or gouge pricing at tourist sites. I typed 30¥ rather than 3¥ into Alipay by mistake to buy a bottle of water once (divide by 10 to get pounds – everything was very cheap) and the guy looked horrified.
- The vibe is surprisingly quiet and relaxed. I had expected a lot of noise and bustle, but actually things felt pretty chilled and calm even when there were crowds of people. Chengdu is known for being laidback, but I felt this in Beijing too: a city which I found unexpectedly low-rise (at least by Chinese standards!). We learnt on our food tour that cars are forbidden to use their horns in central Beijing, and we also wondered whether not speaking any of the language caused us to tune more background noise out. Sure, compared to any European city the roads are much wider and everything is at a much bigger scale. But it’s nothing like Thailand or Vietnam for making simple things like ‘crossing the road’ feel slightly perilous at times.
- Things just work. Yes, we were wealthy tourists in big cities. But it’s a very easy place to be a tourist, because things just work. The trains all run. Everything is digitised. Streets are clean. There are free public toilets everywhere, which you really start taking for granted. And because the scale is so vast, there were times where it felt like I was strolling through an Asimov city from the future. At the same time, it also felt very insular. Beijing is nothing like London or Paris or New York: there’s very obviously no culture of immigration from overseas. The same forces which allow this vast country to power ahead with incredible momentum also make it feel a little remote from the rest of us. But perhaps that’s less true for its nearer neighbours.
OK, on with our trip!
Day 1: Arrival
After much deliberation, we had chosen a boutique hotel in one of Beijing’s hutongs. The hutongs are the narrow lanes, alleyways and courtyards found in the older, more historic areas of the city, as opposed to the modernised areas. Our hotel was in the Nanluoguxiang area, and it was obvious just from the walk from the subway that we’d made a great decision! The narrower streets had so much character, the main pedestrianised road was jam-packed with food and people in a market-like atmosphere.
Amusingly, the only way to reach our first floor room – which had its own locked door – was to walk through someone else’s room on the ground floor first. As it happened, nobody occupied it while we were there, but we always opened the door with some trepidation. After crashing a little bit, we had the huge thrill and relief of successfully paying for our first meal over WeChat, followed by a celebratory peanut-butter flavoured soft serve ice cream from the market.
Day 2: Summer Palace & Food Tour
The next day we got up early and headed off to the meeting point for our pre-booked Tiananmen Square and Forbidden City walking tour. Only problem: the tour didn’t exist. (In case you’re wondering how I can square this with the ‘nobody is trying to rip you off’ statement above – the company were extremely apologetic when Randi contacted them, and refunded us immediately.) So, we punted this for another day and headed instead to the Summer Palace. This is a large imperial site from the Qing dynasty, but unfortunately the only history which really stuck with me was the repetition of the phrase “…until it was burnt down by British and French forces” at every information board.
Afterwards, we walked to an outdoor food mall by a nearby transport hub for lunch, and Randi felt a little pang of suburban delight.
In the evening we took a superb Lost Plate food tour with Zoey, who guided our group through hot pot, traditional Beijing noodles, giant meatball dumplings (one of Randi’s favourites from our trip!) and a final feast of many dishes which left us all stuffed. (We were pretty smug that our hotel was on the same street as where the food tour ended, so we could just roll into bed.)
One very sweet moment was Zoey’s genuine incomprehension about why so many of her foreign tourists are so excited to bring up the Chinese high-speed trains they’ve booked as part of their travels in the country. “It’s because we’re jealous and we all want them!” we told her, in a chorus of pain.
Day 3: Olympic Forest Park & Wangfujing Street
Talking of trains: yes, Beijing’s subway is as good as you would expect, although (in common with Chengdu and Chongqing) you do have to pass through security when entering any station. (“This wasn’t built by rival Victorian railway companies, was it?” asked Randi pointedly, after we felt how smooth the rides were.)
One especially nice touch is the unique artwork and design at each station, and my favourite was the station closest to the Olympic Forest Park which we visited on our third day. Built specifically for the 2008 Olympic Games, the park is beautifully landscaped and provides a great view of the Olympic Tower and Bird’s Nest stadium from the top of a hill. (Well, I say ‘a great view’ – the elephant in the room are the pollution levels, which did not massively affect me but Randi felt more viceraly off-and-on during our trip. You certainly could see further with less pollution, in any case.)
Afterwards we strolled down towards the Olympic buildings themselves, and I persuaded Randi that we should definitely pay to enter the lonely looking ‘flying cinema’ tent for a 10 minute virtual ride over China. In my defence, this was actually quite fun (even if we were the only customers!) and did help to orient me with major Chinese cities and landmarks. Even if the the detour over Taiwan was a little awkward *cough*.
That evening we visited Wangfujing Street, Beijing’s main shopping street (and Oxford Street equivalent) near the centre of town. I don’t have much to say about this. It was fine, but since we didn’t have any interest in going shopping it absolutely reinforced our decision to have booked a hotel in the hutongs instead!
Day 4: Great Wall & Livehouse
I was fully expecting the Great Wall of China to be one of the absolute highlights of our trip, and it didn’t disappoint. Following advice we chose to visit the Mutianyu section of the wall in a tour bus, which handled all of the entry logistics but then left us alone to tackle both the East and West sections in our own time. The East section is shorter, reached by chairlift and notable for having the option to toboggan down again once you’re done! Meanwhile, the West section concludes with a steep ascent which provides breathtaking views over the whole area. Do them both!
I don’t think I’m going to be able to write anything original about the Great Wall, but it was a great experience and felt like a great time of year to be doing it. The toboggan was a lot of fun (even if we ended up forming a queue behind a very slow rider!) and we very much appreciated the giant buffet lunch afterwards. (Side-note: I have to imagine that the Oba-Mao mashup t-shirts which are still on sale in the tourist areas did double duty at Republican conventions in the US, back in the day.)
Back in Beijing, we found a Peking duck restaurant for dinner. Despite being on the fancy side (at least compared to most of our meals) the owner turned out to be a delightfully chatty guy from Singapore who spent his time wandering between tables talking about everything from his music selection (“music should be fun!” he cried, as Boney M’s Rasputin played in the background) to his haul of medals from cooking competitions (“in my younger days”) to how nervous he was for a potential job interview tomorrow morning with a big hotel chain. We wished him luck, although naturally he was doubly nervous as Trump’s idiotic tariff war was reaching full market meltdown as we ate. (And yes, it wasn’t lost on us that we were living through a world historical attempted severing between the US and China while we were there.)
Oh, and the duck was delicious too!
Before heading home for the night we decided to walk around the nearby Houhai Lakes, and quite by chance we ended up rounding the day by discovering an incredibly fun music scene! We think – but are open to correction – that these qualify as ‘livehouse’ venues, since they’re definitely more public venues than private KTV karaoke. We had a lot of fun sampling the competing performers along the stretch, before plumping for our chosen venue and waving our foam accessories in the air with enthusuiasm.
Our band (unclear if they are actually a band or a random assemblage of people) was particularly notable for featuring one girl who put in absolutely zero effort unless it was her solo (to the point of yawning or staring at her phone while on stage) being perfectly balanced at the other end by someone dancing in a fascinator hat who was game for anything that came on. We loved them.
Other livehouse notes:
- While I was drinking by far the most expensive beer of the entire trip, this wasn’t an alcohol-soaked atmosphere by any means. In fact, the unimpressed-looking guys which can be seen sitting next to Randi in the second video were drinking tea out of a fancy tea set.
- The banger in the last video is 化蝶飞 (The Flowers). Yes, part of it is a shameless rip-off from Dragostea Din Tei. I know this because I messaged my tour guide for Chongqing on WeChat with the video asking him to identify it for me…
Day 5: Tiananmen Square & Forbidden City
And so, with catchy livehouse tunes still running through our heads, we spent our final day in Beijing seeing the tourist hotspots we’d been thwarted from seeing on our first day: Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City.
The main thing to say about Tiananmen Square is that it’s absolutely huge. As in, it’s just much, much bigger than anything I’ve ever seen in any other country. Our guide gave us 10 minutes to explore and I used most of this time just walking over to the ‘parliament’ building on the other side. (The National People’s Congress is the largest legislature in the world, but it only meets once a year for about two weeks.)
Of course, as you go through three separate passport checks to enter it (!) it’s also impossible not to be thinking about the 1989 Tiananmen Square protest, although I was a little surprised that our Chinese guide chose to bring this up of his own volition while pointing out the sights. Then again, this was very much in keeping with the self-confidence which we found everywhere in China. Who cares, I suppose, what English-speaking tourists think?
As for the Forbidden City: I confess I didn’t really know what this was beforehand, but was surprised to find that this old centre of Imperial governance – which backs onto another side of Tiananmen Square – is almost entirely open-air. There’s such an obvious continuity between these vast spaces, from where China’s emperors once ruled, and Mao’s own expansion of Tiananmen Square itself: made all the more obvious by the giant portrait of Mao which now sits forbiddingly over the entrance.
Our guide took us on a potted tour through imperial Chinese history (including the plot of the Last Emperor) before we emerged at the Forbidden City’s north exit, grabbed lunch and then enjoyed a “Hawthorne in the alley”-flavoured ice cream, at least per Google Translate. (Make of that what you will, but it was the clear winner from Beijing!) Finally, we climbed the hill in nearby Jingshan Park for the panoramic views over the Forbidden City – and the rest of Beijing – before collapsing home after all of this patient sightseeing.
That just about wraps it up for our Beijing section, although I’m sure I’ve forgotten things, and I kinda missed having my laptop (as I had on our world travels) and being able to blog each destination as I went.
I should confess that on our final night we did venture into Pizza Hut – one of the big Western brands which you see dotted around – for a quick break from Chinese meals. But this was a bit of a letdown, as Pizza Hut in China has strayed pretty far from its pizza-based roots!
This aside, Beijing was an incredible city and a perfect start to our holiday in China.
Happy 2025!
We had always planned to spend Christmas with Randi’s family this year, so it was both good and bad timing for us to land in Vegas barely a day after her uncle died. “We managed to take the shortest day of the year and make it the longest”, noted Randi sometime during the flight, which I was touched to see included Christmas cracker hats as part of the onboard meal.
The night before we got a chance to hang out with Tash, Cormac and Katie at our place – which was really lovely – and play dual variants of the “secret rating out of 10” game. We also ate a lot of cheese and exchanged our Secret Santas, wrapping up our final night with this year’s beloved Christmas tree.
Back in Vegas, the closest we got to the Strip was spotting the giant illuminated Sphere as we landed. In fairness this is not exactly hard to spot, and while it’s a cool thing to exist in Vegas, I’m sure the residents of Stratford are grateful for Sadiq Khan blocking a London version descending in the middle of Stratford. To be clear, neither of us had any desire for tourist Vegas. Instead, we were very happy to be able to (finally!) redeem our last wedding gift voucher from Toggolyn – don’t worry, $25 still goes very far at In-N-Out – and then taking it back to Randi’s uncle Ron and aunt Stacy for some much-needed family time.
Finally, before our drive back to California, Randi led me on an early morning walk at the edge of the city, where we could look back just as the sun was coming up and see a much more beautiful place than I typically imagine Vegas to be.
Christmas in California might lack a Dickensian winter atmosphere, but Randi and I went on a lot of local walks on this trip and we still appreciated everyone who made an effort with their lights. (Partly we just needed the walks to offset the effects of Yorba Linda’s finest eateries: Wise Guys Pizzeria, Burrito Brothers and the majestic YLS Bakery & Cafe, whose croissants alone could be wrapped for a stocking filler.) The festive spirit really ramped up on Christmas Eve when Alex and Randi rescued a stray husky from having to spend the night alone on the streets, and at the mercy of the local coyotes.
Thankfully, Dakota was reunited with her owners on Christmas Day, which also featured a Trader Joe’s cinnamon bake, Randi’s incredible strata, mimosas, a sunny walk with a view, unnecessary fear of hibernating snakes, Beth and Stewart’s legendary chicken dish, a trip to East Lake to see the seriously impressive Christmas lights, some all-important hot tub time and, of course, Doctor Who!
For Boxing Day, the traditional rainy walk was swapped for Laguna Beach, one of Randi’s favourite places and boasting a chilled linear park alongside the beach. Over the next few days we also spent some time with the Shelanksys, Elana and Alex’s friend Brian before Jeff’s funeral was arranged for New Year’s Eve. I also used this time to help digitise a bunch of old family videos, which (a) is basically my dream project, and (b) taught me that at least some families made sure to set the time and date stamp on their cameras correctly.
In all seriousness – this had actually been on my mind for a little while since Randi mentioned that she knew there was some video footage of her childhood lying around somewhere, and the subsequent wildfires in LA have been a sad reminder of how vulnerable these things can be. PSA: Backups are great.
As 2025 approached, we repeated our trick from several years ago by using London’s fireworks as a convenient 4pm midnight. In our defence, we had a rescheduled 8am flight to Chicago the next day. And then hello again, Chicago! Happily, we made it to Catherine and AJ’s in time for a timeshifted New Year’s Eve celebration featuring 100% perfectly made dumplings and lots of toddler playtime.
At times when said toddler was in bed – or at least supposed to be – Catherine and AJ introduced us to the first season of Severance, which (as promised) is excellent and I’m excited to finish with Randi when she’s back from her bonus week in Chicago. We didn’t venture out very much, but we did enjoy a wonderful afternoon with Jason and Carrie followed by a delicious dinner at Mano a Mano (it’s not a restaurant, it’s a “neighborhood pasta project”) with Toggolyn.
Finally, just before leaving for my flight home, it was really nice to see Catherine’s cousins again, even if I did feel under some pressure when I was made to place all of the US state names into the correct boxes on the giant floor mat. (Honestly? I’m pleased with my performance, and perhaps some of those states would be happier in their new locations anyhow.)
After a week back at work, many thanks to Andrew and Bonnie for plying me with wine last night for a fun Friday unwinding, and then staying up to 3am to comb through our own family’s tapes! For tonight – my last night before Randi returns from Chicago – I am reminded of Catherine’s young cousin suggesting thoughtfully that maybe I could “host a boys’ night” in her absence. I’m sorry to say that I did not do this. For partial credit, though, I did watch Katie’s latest “break glass in case of Randi absence” film: Beyond The Infinite Two Minutes, an hour-long Japanese comedy from 2020 about some very limited (and not particularly useful!) time travelling hijinks, which was short and sweet. (Probably short enough for Randi, in fact…)
Happy Christmas Eve! Since I’m in the US until New Year, I thought I’d post this ‘lost blog’ from 25 years ago. It was my second-ever visit to the States, and the first time I kept a diary…
Day 1. Wednesday 31st March 1999.
My mum and I were given a lift to Paddington Station by my dad and my two sisters. We caught a very nice train with a T.V. in it to Heathrow airport. Then we caught a Virgin plane to Washington DC. On the plane it was wonderful, there was a T.V. and games console on the back of every seat! I watched the Rugrats movie and played a lot of games. It took a while to be immigrated but when we had got all our luggage we saw our friend Sharon and drove home. I watched The Simpsons then went to bed.
Day 2. Thursday 1st April 1999.
Today we went to the Smithsonian ‘Air and Space Museum’. We saw lots of planes and space rockets and we saw two movies called ‘To Fly’ and ‘Cosmic Voyage’. These are special movies because the screen is so big you feel you are actually there, as you can’t see anything else. These are called IMAX films. The Smithsonian is actually a block of 16 museums and a zoo, but 2 of these are in New York. The museums range from the ‘Air and Space’ to the ‘Portrait Gallery’, the ‘Natural History’ to ‘American History’. After that we went home, watched The Simpsons, had tea and went to bed.
Day 3. Friday 2nd April 1999.
Today we woke up at 6:30 so we could go to the White House, where all the presidents of America live. The current one is William Jefferson Clinton, the forty-second president. You get free tickets for the White House, mine is stuck in the yellow section of this book. We got a guided tour and I bought a book all about the different presidents. After that we went to have lunch in an ice-cream parlor in the museum of American history. As entrance to museums is free, we didn’t look at the exhibits, we went straight on to the Natural History Museum\Museum of Man. We saw dinosaur bones and a real life tarantula eat a beetle. After that we went home, watched The Simpsons (one of them was a Treehouse of Horror!) and went into the car again at 7:00. This was so we could see America’s famous buildings in the dark. We saw Abraham Lincoln’s (the sixteenth president) memorial. It’s like a temple with a statue of him in. Then we saw the Vietnam memorial, which is a big wall with the names of the people who died in the Vietnam war inscribed on it. Then we drove back home and went to bed.
Day 4. Saturday 3rd April 1999.
This morning we woke up at about 7:30. I had breakfast, an egg and a roll, and then at 10:00 we went to the zoo. I saw lots of things, like giraffes sitting down, kangaroos with babies in their pouches, a gorilla family and birds. But, my favourite animal was definitely the panda bear who was eating bamboo. I also saw an exhibit about teaching chimpanzees a language, and I spotted a mistake. They were teaching it numbers and they had written down: 0 1 2 3 4 5 5 6 8 9 instead of: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9. When I told the man in charge of the exhibit about it he said he knew but he said I was the only one to spot it in 3 years and he gave me two free magazines. When we got back we were quite busy because Sharon had invited her mum (Pat,) her dad (Leo,) and her brother (Paul) to dinner. We talked about alot of interesting things, and they left at 9:30. If they came at 6:00, that’s 3 and a half hours. Luckily The Simpsons wasn’t on on the weekend so I went straight to bed.
Day 5. Sunday 4th April 1999.
On Sunday I woke up at about 6:30, but because they had moved the clocks forward it was now 7:30. My mum gave me an easter egg and then we drove to the train station. It was very big and fancy and we got on a train to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It took about 2 hours to get there. When we got there we met Roger and Lily-Ann, my grandmas cousins. We drove to downtown Philadelphia and had lunch in a fairly posh restaurant. Then we went to the Franklin Institute, which is like a science museum. It’s really fun, I saw another IMAX film, mysteries of Egypt. I also had my picture drawn by a robot, I saw a robot playing basketball and I went inside a huge heart, which is quite dark. In Philadelphia, I also saw Independence hall and Liberty bell. When the train arrived back in Washington D.C., I had supper in a pizza restaurant, drove back to Sharon’s flat then went to sleep.
Day 6. Monday 5th April 1999.
I woke up at about half-past 7 on Monday, the first thing we did was to get tickets for the Bureau of Printing and Engraving, then we walked around the tidal basin a big man-made lake. We saw the cherry blossoms in full bloom, and we also went to the Jefferson memorial. Thomas Jefferson, third president of the U.S.A., was the one who gained independence from Britain. After that, we went to the Bureau of Printing and Engraving, where they make all of the money in the U.S.A. and most of the stamps. I actually saw the old $10,000 note! After that we had lunch at the Holocaust museum and then we saw a very moving exhibit about German Jewish children. After that Sharon and I rented a paddle boat while my mum went to an art gallery. We had alot of fun and when mum had paddled for an hour, we went home, watched The Simpsons and went to bed for a wonderful night’s sleep!
Day 7. Tuesday 6th April 1999.
This morning we got on the train to go to Capitol Hill. Sharon wasn’t with us because she had to go to work. We queued for 4 hours because the line moved ever so slowly, l……….. i…….. k…….. e……. t……… h…. i……….s! When we finally got in the tour guide showed us lots of things including the whispering chamber, where you whisper into the floor and people hear you across the room. We also saw the place where President Clinton was on trial. After that we had lunch in a restaurant near the capital. I had a cheeseburger and french fries. We went home, I saw most of The Simpsons, (but I missed a bit of the first one,) then we went to the Queen Bee, a Vietnamese restaurant. I didn’t have any food, but my mum and Sharon did. Then we went home and I went to bed.
Picture the scene. It’s Wednesday evening. Randi and I are sitting on the sofa together under the warm glow of the Christmas tree lights. The night before we were both out at work-related Christmas parties; in my case, a big bash at Freemasons’ Hall organised by Fora (our shared office space provider) and DJed by Annie Mac. Surreptitiously, I’m trying to organise a surprise weekend break for January as a Christmas gift, but I can see in Randi’s eyes that she’s hungry for one thing… a Christmas market, ASAP.
Soon, I’m accelerating my plans into an emergency Christmas trip that very weekend to… *rolls European getaway dice*… Gdańsk!
I’ve always been very curious to visit Gdańsk. Today it’s part of Poland – as it has been many times before in history – but after being invaded by Prussia in 1793, and subsequently becoming part of Germany, Gdańsk (or ‘Danzig’, in German) later spent a remarkable period between 1920 and 1939 as a rare remaining example of a European city state: the Free City of Danzig. My family has a lot of connection with Gdańsk during this period; my great-grandmother was born there. Of course, the reason this independence ended in 1939 was thanks to Nazi invasion, and the entire Jewish population – including my family – either escaped in time or were wiped out. The same is true of many non-Jewish Polish families, and as a result the modern city of Gdańsk, which was almost entirely physically destroyed by 1945, is very much a post-war reconstruction in terms of both its buildings and its people. Still, even though all this means I was never going to find a plaque commemorating my great-grandmother on a wall, you can see how I was primed for a lot of historical resonances.
Our late-night flight from Luton airport was trouble-free, despite being a bit of a trek to get there, but since the moment of booking I’d harboured doubts about whether we really had a room at the Hotel Gdańsk Boutique and when we finally arrived at 1.30am, the subsequent ten minutes of the receptionist’s hardcore keyboard tapping (interrupted only by “can I see your reservation again?”) only confounded my suspicions. Nevertheless, we waited patiently and were eventually rewarded when he finally looked up and handed over the room keys to a much, much bigger room than the one I had booked. Relieved, we hurried to bed before he could change his mind.
Randi also has Polish ancestry, and the next morning she began to experience a growing love for her long-lost motherland when she discovered that the breakfast buffet included both pickles and fish. Having both stuffed ourselves, we walked off our breakfasts on a nature path along one of the branches of the river before turning towards the Old Town for our first foray into the Christmas Fair. Gdańsk is very proud of winning the Best Christmas Market in Europe award for 2025, and if it was ever a ‘hidden gem’ type of place it’s certainly not now! The market is absolutely packed with people, but there are also tons of stalls and we barely had to queue for our latke lunch. (They had a different name, but same thing.) We also tried the delicious little Oscypek dumplings served with cranberry sauce which – I later learnt from Klaudia! – are filled with sheep cheese. Another win for Gdańsk.
You’ll be glad to hear that we took a break from eating in exchange for a two-hour afternoon walking tour, which did get a little chilly as the sun went down. I could have done with a little more historical context from the guide as he was pointing things out, but he redeemed himself at the end with a useful overview of Gdańsk’s history combined with an impassioned defence of Polish democracy against both Putin and the native Law and Justice party. It packs a punch when you’re standing in a courtyard where one of the first battles of the Second World War took place (the Defence of the Post Office); afterwards, the captured Polish prisoners were executed by firing squad.
It is worth saying that, just as in Warsaw, the architecture of the Old Town is truly extraordinary. You’re walking around a medieval city – cobbled streets, protected from cars, flanked on either side by beautiful painted buildings – and yet almost the entire thing has been resurrected from rubble in the 1950s and 60s. As a British person, Poland’s success at recapturing the beauty of its pre-war architecture makes me so envious in comparison to some of the ‘modernisation’ which took place in the UK around the same time. Why?!
Also – fun bonus Gdańsk fact – the physicist Daniel Fahrenheit was also born here, inventor of the historic also-ran Fahrenheit temperature scale, and to commemorate him they still broadcast the weather forecast in Farenheit here… for one day a year. (Note to the US: this is an appropriately limited usage of the Fahrenheit scale.)
After nipping back to our hotel to warm up, we dined on pierogi and salmon (although it turns out that lard is a step too far for Randi) before returning to the Christmas market for a spot of Secret Santering, dessert and a spin on the ‘Spinning Barrels’ fairground ride on which (a) we were definitely the oldest people not accompanied by any children, (b) Randi wasn’t certain if she was going to make it without throwing up or not. (But she didn’t!) Finally, we returned to our hotel to redeem our free beers from the inhouse brewery (see, there’s a reason they were actually fully booked) and enjoyed the live music before bed.
If I claimed we didn’t spend a hearty chunk of Sunday morning down at the breakfast buffet, I’d be lying. (I mean, c’mon, they had honey from the honeycomb.) But then we marched up to the Góra Gradowa hilltop lookout, through the gorgeous Gdańsk Główny railway station and onto the museum which made it to the top of the museum wishlist: the European Solidarity Centre. This was a close call – yes, the other museums were very tempting! – but here you’re spoiled for choice, as on top of everything else Gdańsk was also the birthplace of the Solidarity trade union in the 1980s. This movement led civil resistance against the Soviet-aligned state, precipitating the imposition of martial law in 1981 in Poland and ultimately contributing to the remarkably peaceful downfall of Communist rule. So, of course we had to see this.
Plus, on the walk there we stumbled across a near-infinite stream of motorised Santas to boot…
I won’t recap the entire history of the Polish trade union movement (stifle your disappointment, please) but suffice to say the exhibition was very immersive, and you could really feel the pride not just in the movement’s ultimate success but in how the transition to democracy unfolded in Poland. As Randi noted, it gave us both a new perspective on how painful the democratic backsliding of the last few years must have been for those who opposed the Law and Justice government. The 1980s was never the period of history I had in mind when visiting Gdańsk – my family were long gone by then – but learning more about this era was an unexpected bonus of our trip.
With our emergency Christmas Market mission achieved, we flew home on Sunday night feeling very satisfied and festive. Over the following week, Randi treated me to dinner in Strangers’ Dining Room at the Houses of Parliament (while the abolition of the last hereditary peers was debated down the hallway). The following night we hopped over to Queen’s Park to see Randi’s colleague Dan play a gig at Worldly Wicked & Wise, which in my day (!) was a trinket-filled gift shop but is now a minimalist art gallery with space for a band to play. This was a super-fun night, my favourite song being the adorably silly cover In Spite of Ourselves, which gives you a sense of the vibe.
Finally – and to complete the circle of my last post being drafted on the Friday night train to Edinburgh – this weekend we were back in Scotland! Many thanks to Katie and James for hosting us and also for Katie’s stellar gingerbread men, which were quickly devoured when we all made it over to Kirsty and Roger’s on Saturday night for a really wonderful evening together. We also met Katie and James’s friend Dan over brunch, who patiently answered my dumb gardening questions without rolling his eyes, and later shared some great growing facts with us at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital’s Community Gardens.
In addition, Katie and I completed not one but two classic Doctor Who stories on this trip: 1987’s Paradise Towers and 1964’s Planet of Giants. The former is the first classic story I’ve ever seen with Mel as the companion – a gap I was keen to fill after her triumphant return in the most recent series. It’s safe to say the writing of this character has improved. Poor Mel: back in the day, more than half of respondents to a BBC audience research survey wished she’d been eaten by the cannibalistic couple in this story! Cannibals aside, Paradise Towers is partly a satire about brutalist housing block disasters. I really should love it, but it made me somewhat depressed, especially since I can all too vividly imagine the Twentieth Century Society fundraising to support the Great Architect Kroagnon’s legal defence fund. In contrast, Planet of Giants is more whimsical and fun: the Doctor and his (original) companions are accidentally shrunk down to be very small, and have to escape terrors such as ‘cat’, ‘matchbox’ and ‘plughole’. What more could you ask for?
Spoiler alert for anyone who’s still saving the US election night for a streaming binge over Christmas: Trump won. And, as Randi says, if Trump was going to win then we should be glad it was clear and decisive, because it’s always unhealthy when the losing side can sooth itself into passivity because it “won the argument” or wasn’t “really” beaten. There are a million arguments about why the Democrats lost – and I have my favourites! – reasonable people can disagree. What irks me is when people start from the question “…but how could people vote for Trump?”.
The answer to that question is really simple: Donald Trump was the Republican candidate. His voters pulled lever A rather than lever B, and that’s it. It doesn’t work to claim that you’re not allowed to vote for one of the two candidates on the ballot, or that you’re guilty of pathological character flaws if you do. It’s not just that blaming the electorate is a bad idea. It’s also absurd to claim that you’re defending democracy by leaving the voter with only one valid choice. That’s not a vote, it’s a threat.
I know this is disempowering because none of the Democrats chose Donald Trump to be their opponent. So what can they do? Well, one answer is to keep trying to win elections. Political parties which keep getting beaten have a strong incentive to change. But the Democrats do try to win elections, of course. Everyone’s entitled to their own pet theories about how to increase the odds. Here’s my list: Biden announces he won’t seek re-election after the 2022 midterms. An open primary selects a candidate with outsider energy and a popular theme. Internal coalitional groups stop being so self-destructive and weird. You can pick your own list, and it may be completely different to mine. Bernie would have won! Michelle Obama would have won! Taylor Swift would have won!
The point is, believing that Democrats could have done things differently is not the same as believing that victory can ever be guaranteed, especially in a world where all incumbents are losing. ‘Sometimes losing elections’ is really, really normal. I’m not writing this to be sanguine. Trump winning is very bad. But the alternate universe hovering most closely to ours is the one where Democrats lose to someone else, not the one where Democrats always win every election. If you care about a democracy in a two party system, you have to care about the health of both parties, not just your own side. To use an overly British metaphor, they are the neighbouring flat in your terraced house. You should not expect to share their taste in music. A good neighbour is not the same as a good friend! But if they have rising damp, or a leaky roof, it’s going to get you both in the end.
Ranty introduction over! If you made it through all that, I promise I’ll move on to other things too, just after recording how strange my actual 5th November turned out to be. After a day on a stationary boat – for an unrelated work event! – I ended up at a watch party with Randi’s colleagues featuring not just the usual CNN (gotta love John King’s magic wall) but also a dedicated desk of hardcore election analysts just for us. So while CNN cut to commercials, we could just wander over to the number crunchers to get the real story. Sadly, of course, none of this did anything to change the outcome and by the time we got into an Uber home at around 1.30am the trends were starting to become clear. By the end of our ride, it was obvious. Still, I’m grateful for the invite and it was certainly a memorable election-watching experience.
In between all of this Randi and I also did some emergency kitten-sitting for Za’atar at Tash and Cormac’s place in Leyton, where we also enjoyed a very tasty Italian dinner with mum later in the week. That Friday night I was also very excited for a catch-up with Jill at The Island (where I feel like she had to endure an early draft of the opening to this post) and we somehow managed to drag out our last half-pint for nearly two hours.
But, fun things aside, by the end of that week Randi and I were itching to get away somewhere and so we settled on… Bath!
The honest reason why we ended choosing Bath is because at Matt and Rachael’s wedding, several weeks earlier, I had been reunited with ex-Groupon colleague Ben and his wife Steph. When I learnt that Steph runs her own bakery and brunch place – Good Day Cafe in Bath – I sent the menu to Randi as a note for the future, and this seemed like a good time to be sharing some delicious French toast and loaded hash browns. Which we did, for brunch on Sunday, and it was great!
We also arrived with enough time for a long Saturday afternoon walk, which we both found invigorating even when Randi made a rare slip-up in her directions and we had to climb under some barbed wire to avoid a 25 minute walk through a long, dark tunnel. (Which, to be fair, looked really cool. It just wasn’t the outside-in-nature experience we were looking for.)
That evening, we met up with Randi’s friends Will and Zoë for dinner at an excellent pizza place, followed by drinks elsewhere, followed by an oh-my-god-we-can’t-get-rid-of-them walk back to their house for even more drinks around the kitchen counter. They’re both super fun to hang out with, and when we eventually took ourselves back to our BnB (by phone torchlight) we were both suitably uplifted about the world.
After brunch at Steph’s café we thought it would be silly not to visit the Roman Baths of Bath, which (I later learnt) I apparently visited as a child but have no memory of. There have been no swimmers here since a child was killed by a waterborne infection in 1978, but there is a decent audio guide which guides you through the Roman development of this hot spring into a full-blown leisure complex featuring hot baths, cold baths, gyms, wine and poolside snack vendors.
The best part are the curse tablets: bitchy notes inscribed into metal by ordinary people asking the goddess Sulis Minerva to curse someone else, usually after a theft. For example: Docimedis has lost two gloves and asks that the thief responsible should lose their minds and eyes in the goddess’ temple. (Very level-headed, Docimedis.) Our absolute favourite author wasn’t actually sure who had stolen his property, but named about eight potential suspects like a stressed-out supply teacher. It’s wild to still have access to this bottled-up rage nearly 2000 years later.
On the way home on Sunday night we had some engineering works on our Overground and did what any normal couple would do: split up to race home via two completely different routes. Sadly, I don’t think this record will last 2000 years, but here’s a teaser in case I can somehow fool the far future into thinking that everyone did this:
Finally, while Randi is in Wales for the weekend, I met up with Josh, Anna and Cora for lunch and a stomp around Golders Hill Park . A perfect way to spend a Saturday afternoon, even after being magically transformed into a rabbit-frog-tree.
Linda Moffitt on Colombia: “Such a sweet memory of the four of you meeting up in Colombia!” Dec 2, 07:42
