Tenor Takes AWinter Journey Coast-to-Coast This is so cool! Tenor David Pisaro is walking across northern England on the classic Coast to Coast footpath right now, planning on ending his journey at Robin Hood’s Bay on about the 31st of January. The catch is that he is performing Schubert’s “Die Winterreise” each night – sometimes to audiences as small as 3 people (in a farmhouse that had the only piano for miles around). He’s attempting to meld “method” acting with classical music by literally experiencing a long, cold winter’s journey and then singing his heart out about just such a…
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London Underground Tube Diary – Going Underground’s Blog Right, this site needs to win a Bloggie – I wish I’d seen it before our trip. And note please – it’s written by a woman, not a bloke. She’s evidently chapped by being mistaken for a chap online. Must tell David that his “Mind the Gap” T-shirt might mean something like “Mind the Pinch” in Dutch. Interesting – several of the blogs I stumbled into reading as a side effect of thrashing about helplessly are up for a-wards. Everybody links to the same few top blogs. It’ll be interesting participating in…
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Speaking of travel, which we weren’t except for Amazing Race, so there nyahhh… The first entry from my travel journal of last fall’s trip to Britain has been posted, and basically the journal will be the entire month of September. There are a lot of photos and links to add for each entry, and it will take a bit of time getting photos cropped and saved in the proper format and positioned and whatnot. I hope to get the all-important “first day in London” entry up this weekend. In the meantime, why don’t you slip down to the local and…
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Isn’t this beautiful? Hunkabutta: Tokyo photos, a stranger’s life in pictures I ran across it when browsing mediatinker’s helpful and attractive site. And also in the same search came across it again via the great Tokyo Shoes blog tutorial. I’m impressed by the design aesthetics of the pages and blown away by the gorgeous images. I spent two weeks in Japan, and no picture of mine comes close to these in quality. Man, I wish I could take pictures like these. And I hope I remembered right that “Utsukushii” means “beautiful.”
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Our buddy Steve called about the time we were wondering what to do about dinner with only frozen chicken and some green beans in the fridge. “Hell, yes, we’ll meet you and your friends for pizza at Gino’s East!” We didn’t know everyone there that well, but several pitchers of Coke and a black olive-pepperoni-garlic deep dish pizza later, it was much more betta. Oh. My. God. That extra garlic with the olives totally MADE that pizza work. Golf claps were awarded to the person who chose the ingredients. It was a fine time and it was nice seeing some…
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“This channel is not available. Please select another channel” Phew, so to continue — the most likeley and safe food choices turn out to be both odd and unsettling. I had a BLT one day — a safe and likely bet — and it turned out to be untoasted bread, butter, no mayo, almost no lettuce and it was limp, and great hot greasy slabs of ham. May have mentioned this, but it will probably haunt my memory and dog me in my dreams. David had curry one night that was almost all right except that all the ingredients were…
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September 25th, Grassington. “…That day was a Saturday, which wasn’t the best day to arrive, since all the local buses that serve walkers only run on the weekends, and we didn’t walk on Saturday or Sunday; we explored Grassington (up a steep hill from the B and B) and got some lunch at the Dales Kitchen, then returned for some relax time. As David wasn’t feeling great, I went out later to the “supermarket,” which we would call a small neighborhood convenience market, and foraged for some stuff for sandwiches and stay-in comfort food.
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On the Train to Skipton, September 20th I added notes on the stations on the Settle-Carlisle line because they compete for prettiest railway station, and are also part of the “Most-Charming-Stile” award for stations used by English footpath walkers — heh, not really, but almost. Armathwaite Station: lovely red sandstone. Lazonby/Kirkoswald Station: more Victoriana Langwathby Station: “Brief Encounter” cafe! Appleby Station: Red brick Victorian. Yet another film set. Kirkby Stephen Station: buff stone Victorian Garsdale Station: grey stone Victorian (with chimney pots) Dent Station: high lonesome gritstone Ribblehead Station: gritstone – emerald green dales and long, black tunnels. Horton-in-Ribblesdale Station:…
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On to Scotland: 15SEP-19SEP The next day, we had a long, boring travel day. It was either 6 hours on a train and getting in really late in the day, far from a rental car location, or 5 hours waiting around for a flight to Glasgow, picking up a car, and driving no more than an hour to our first night’s B&B near Loch Lomond. In retrospect, we should have spent more time around York and fewer hours at Leeds/Bradford (LBA) airport (we went earlier in the day in the hopes of getting an earlier flight, but no such beast).…
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On the Train from Carlisle, Northumbria, September 20th Once again, not enough time there to do more than a quick look round, but its a pretty city and our hotel was a Best Western affiliate, the Cumbria Park. Very comfortable old antique four-poster in the honeymoon suite — disturbingly, all the framed art in the HONEYMOON SUITE was of newborn babies or young children! Eeeeyaaagh. However, it had a full sized tub/shower and room to swing a very small and cooperative cat in the bathroom… and also the biggest one on the trip thus far (the Tower Thistle bathroom remains…