A Trip of a Lifetime!

    Oki and I have just come back from a fantastic trip overseas, a trip that lasted a whole two months. We escaped the Australian summer to enjoy the lovely, cool, Northern Hemisphere winter.

Korea   

    Korean Air offers free stopovers on the way to Europe, so we took advantage of this luxury and spent a mere ten hours flying from Sydney to Seoul, (instead of the usual twenty-two hours to London), being looked after by wonderful Korean hostesses and stewards on a very comfortable plane with plenty of leg room and the ability to put our seats back into a relaxing position.

    We tried a “bibimbap” for lunch, a delicious mix of kim chi, rice, meat and vegetables with chilli paste and sesame oil. I read the Korea Times, the most balanced and intelligently written newspaper I have ever read, and we both enjoyed the fantastic short films that Korean Air includes in its entertainment selection.

    There were the usual Hollywood films, but I couldn’t resist the short films on such subjects as the history of mathematics through civilisation, the annual cycle of nature in the tundra, a voyage through the universe, the argument between Newton and Leibniz over calculus, biographies of the great men and women of science, architecture through the ages, the life stories of various artists and writers, and the neuroscience of pessimism! I don’t think you would ever see a choice such as this on Qantas or most other Western airlines. The Orientals value knowledge and treat the public as though they are interested, intelligent beings that want to know about the world too.  

    When we arrived in Korea, a shuttle bus collected us and took us to Incheon, a city between the airport and Seoul, and we spent the night at the Ramada Hotel. Dinner and breakfast were included, and we had enough time, the next morning, to have a good stroll around the local area and get a feel for the place before being taken back to the airport to catch our onward flight.

A View of Incheon From Our Hotel

    The beautiful manners of the Korean people and their neat and tidy dress really impressed Oki and me. It’s a pity that we in the West have lost so much of this dignified form of behaviour that we once did have in the past. Being able to stop and sleep in a bed, have a shower and a meal and walk around to stretch the legs – all free of charge – makes me think that from now on, I will choose to take all long distance flights this way.

Oki at Dinnertime at the Ramada in Incheon

Prague

    The second stage of the journey was an eleven-hour flight to Prague.  We have been to Prague before and have already enjoyed the Christmas stalls, the Christmas trees, the beautiful mediaeval buildings and cobbled streets in the cold, snowy crispness of winter, but the place is so wonderful that we wanted to do it all again. Prague was as lovely as I had remembered it – an absolute treasure of Europe. We revisited the Old Town Square with the Tyn Church and the Astronomical Clock, we walked over King Charles Bridge which stretches across the Vltava River to the Lesser Quarter and went up the hill to St. Vitas’ Cathedral and the Castle, we visited the Jewish Quarter and saw the Dancing Buildings, two modern constructions nicknamed Fred and Ginger, that amazingly blend in so well with the old architecture that surrounds them.

Beautiful Prague

Cesky Krumlov

    From Prague, we caught a bus and made a three-hour trip through snowy weather down towards the Austrian border, spending two days in the beautifully preserved, mediaeval town of Cesky Krumlov.  This little town has the very same Vltava River snaking around it in an S-bend, and has a dramatic castle and viaduct towering on a hill above the cobbled streets, pretty shops and houses of the town. We climbed up to the castle for a wonderful view of the surroundings and must have walked along every street and passageway in this little gem of a place.

Cesky Krumlov

Venice

    The next stop was Venice.  We flew across the Alps at night-time and could see the little towns and villages all lit up in the darkness, lying deep in the valleys beneath the mountains. We arrived late in Venice and caught a boat to the wharf near our hotel, right in the heart of the city. The next morning saw cold, wintertime Venice in a thick fog, which made the place look all the more beautiful. I have been to Venice in the summer, so it was good to see it in winter. For Oki, it was his first time in Venice, and for the photographer that he is, he was in paradise. We did a guided tour of the Doge’s Palace, walked around St. Mark’s Square, and then ventured into the interior, taking a million photos of every little bridge, canal and cute stretch of buildings that we could, but in the process, got hopelessly lost and finally found our way out of the maze at the Rialto Bridge.

The Grand Canal, Venice

Siena

    The following morning, we got up before dawn and caught a vaporetto (water bus) through the rising dawn and along the Grand Canal to the railway station, from which we would catch the train to Siena.  This lovely, old Italian town was new to us both and I found it a little like Venice but with taller, darker buildings and without the water. Siena is famous for its amazing cathedral and its central circular “square” where a big horse race called the Palio di Siena is held each year, and has been for centuries. A Christmas fair was being held on the night of our arrival and Italian families were out in droves, buying sweets, glacéd and dried fruits, and nuts for their Christmas feasts. The next day, we walked and walked the streets of the town to get a feel for the place.  We also visited the cathedral and were amazed at the beauty not only of the church, but also of the library attached to it, with its magnificent paintings of Biblical scenes, its illuminated manuscripts and its beautifully painted ceiling.

Siena

Rome

    From Siena, we caught the bus to Rome, enjoying the very attractive scenery along the way. At first, I didn’t like Rome very much, but after walking the streets for a while, I got used to it. The Roman ruins, from many different periods, were all there to see, just staring you in the face.  To see the Colosseum, Circus Maximus and the Pantheon in real life, after hearing about them for so long, was quite something. There’s nothing quite like being there. Our favourite was the Pantheon, with its lovely, gentle circular form and its amazing ceiling – the first self-supporting dome in the world, all made of concrete, the mechanism of which is still not understood today. The technical knowledge of the ancient Roman architects was lost in the Dark Ages and remains a mystery to this day. The Pantheon is the oldest, continuously-used building in the world, constructed in 120 A. D.

Roman Ruins

The Vatican City

    While in Rome, we ventured over to the Vatican City. We took an organised tour, which was excellent, and wandered through the great halls of treasures in the Vatican Museum, viewing the beautifully tiled floors, the paintings, sculptures, tapestries and painted ceilings. The highlight of our tour was seeing the painted ceiling inside the Sistine Chapel. What an absolute genius Michelangelo was! We then moved around to St. Peter's, the largest cathedral in the world and the site of the Apostle Peter's tomb. In every corner of this great church were altars, sarcophagi, sculptures by Michelangelo, replica paintings by the great Renaissance artists and beautiful architecture. 

A Section of One of the Vatican Museum's Ceilings

London

    From Rome, we flew to London to enjoy Christmas with Benn and Nicola (my son and daughter-in-law) before the birth of their first child, and my first grandchild! The plan was to have Christmas together, then go off for a little trip around Ireland and Scotland and return in time for the baby’s birth.  Well, it didn’t quite happen in that order. Baby Victoria decided that her mum didn’t have any more room left for her to grow and decided that it was time to enter the world three and a half weeks early! She arrived on 21^st December, after a very short labour, so short in fact, that Victoria didn’t seem to realise that she’d been born. For the next three and a half weeks, she just wanted to sleep as she had done in-utero. She didn’t want to feed or open her eyes, just to sleep an unborn sleep until her due date in mid-January! She was a very healthy weight of 6lbs 10oz with a length of 17” (3kg and 48cm). Jaundice had her under the ultraviolet light for a few days before she left the hospital on Christmas morning, and she had the unusual pleasure for a newborn baby of heading straight to the pub for her first Christmas lunch! There we caught up with my sister-in-law, Allison, and nephew, Charlie, and it was so nice to share Christmas Day with them both. A few days later, we visited other members of the family, Sheila, Geoffrey, Charlotte and Henry, and Benn and Nicola had the chance to show off their new little bundle of joy. Many thanks, Sheila, for a delicious lunch and a lovely day with you all.

Baby Victoria

    Benn, now aged 30, and Nicola, are over-the-moon to be parents of their very own little human, and both have been very attentive and proud new mums and dads. Luckily, Benn was able to have a few weeks off work to help settle the baby into her new life, an essential thing in an age when Western hospitals throw mothers and newborns out of hospital so quickly, even when premature and jaundiced. Nicola’s mum, Jenny, arrived soon after the birth to enjoy her little grandchild and to spend time with Nicola.

Liverpool

    Once Benn, Nicola and the new baby were settling into a routine, and we had spent time with Oki's ninety year old father, John, and his lovely wife, Adela, Oki and I decided to continue with our plans to see Ireland and some of Scotland, so we hired a car and headed to Liverpool, where we would catch a ferry to Dublin. Now, of course, unless you are totally uncultured, you can’t go to Liverpool without thinking of the Beatles so we took a Magical Mystery Tour. We saw Penny Lane and Strawberry Field, we were shown the homes where Ringo, George, John and Paul grew up, we had a glimpse of the Liverpool Institute where George and Paul went to school and the Liverpool Art College where John attempted to study art, and finally visited the Cavern, which still has a full programme of musical groups playing from morning till late at night. The commentary on this tour was excellent, all done to the background of Beatles’ music. The city of Liverpool has had a clean-up and a facelift, and is quite a pleasant city to walk around, with several lovely parks, a good pedestrian mall and a well-renovated dock area. It is no longer the depressed, grimy has-been town that it once was.

Jellybean Mosaic of the Beatles

Ireland

    From Liverpool, we had a lovely, smooth crossing of the Irish Sea, despite the fact that there had been strong gales the day before. We arrived in Dublin in the evening. Being winter, our days were short, with the sun starting to rise at 9 a.m. and beginning to set at 3 p.m., so we only had about six hours each day to see the sights. We moved quickly on our trip, especially as it was raining most of the time in Ireland, which is normal for an Irish winter. Although it was raining, we could see the beautiful, green grass and the gently sloping hills of the Irish countryside, and to see it in summer in sunny weather would be very beautiful. The Irish are very friendly people and we felt very at-home in the place. We passed through the towns of Wexford, Waterford, Cork and Limerick, where we stopped in a hotel on the banks of the River Shannon for the night. Oki tasted his first Irish-brewed Guinness in the bar at our hotel and I had a very pretty, orange and red cocktail. The next morning, when we were paying the bill, Oki was surprised to see that I had had Sex on the Beach! A whole £6 worth! We carried on up through Dublin and Belfast, both nice cities with some lovely architecture, to Larne, where we would catch the ferry to Scotland the next morning. It is a pity that we didn’t travel further north to see The Giant’s Causeway, but time and the weather were against us.

Ireland Greenery

Scotland

    With luck on our side again, we enjoyed another smooth ferry crossing, between further gales, and arrived at Cairnryan on the south-west coast of Scotland early in the day. Travelling north, we drove through the centre of Glasgow for a quick look before heading north.  They say that Glasgow, like Liverpool, has been cleaned up in recent years and is not the drab, dirty place that it used to be. Well, we found Glasgow to be perfectly fine. There are many British cities, in my opinion, that really are truly disgusting places to live, but Glasgow is certainly not one of them. I think Bradford would be at the top of my list of horrible British cities. So we passed through Glasgow and quickly moved north towards the beauty of the “Scottish Outback”!

    The following day, we drove along the west side of the beautiful Loch Lomond, where the boys and I had swum during a summer school holiday when they were young. From the top of Loch Lomond, it didn’t take us long before we were entering the spectacular Scottish Highlands with their wild and beautiful mountains and lochs. We were heading for Glencoe, scene of the tragic slaughter of the MacDonalds during the reign of the Dutchman, William of Orange.  The glen was cold and the mountains snow-capped and beautiful. We travelled further north and spent the rest of the day enjoying part of “The Scottish Outback”, so far removed from the rest of the population that we felt the way you do when you are in the remote deserts of Australia.

Morning Mist in Glencoe

    The next day, we drove back out of Glencoe towards Stirling and Edinburgh, but not before we passed through the frosty mists of the morning, amongst the ice-age carved hills and dales of one of the most beautiful parts of Scotland. We reached Stirling around midday - a lovely old town, once you escape from the big roads and parking stations of the more modern section of the city. And then to Edinburgh – one of my favourite places in Britain, with its extinct volcanoes, one of which hosts Edinburgh Castle and another, called Arthur’s Seat, which sits bang in the middle of Holyrood Park, close to the city centre. We walked along the famous Royal Mile and down Princes Street, and I bought a tartan raincoat!

Edinburgh

England

    From Edinburgh, we headed south through Jedburgh and crossed the border into Northumberland. We had a quick look at part of Hadrian’s Wall and continued south to the north Yorkshire seaside town and traditional holiday spot of Scarborough. In Sydney, in the early 1900’s, before most people owned a car, it was all the fashion to catch a train up to the Blue Mountains for a weekend of hikes and picnics. The Sydney visitors stayed in guesthouses and grand hotels such as the Carrington Hotel in Katoomba and the Hydro Majestic in Medlow Bath. These grand hotels were beautifully furnished and decorated and served grand dinners in chandeliered dining rooms, with music and dancing at night in the ballroom. Well, in Scarborough, it used to be the same, with the English coming by train in the summer months to enjoy a seaside holiday with all the delights of donkey rides along the beach and funfairs along the pier. They would stay in guesthouses and grand hotels just as the Australians did, and Oki and I managed to stumble upon just such a grand hotel, trapped in a time warp, still with its old grandeur preserved, although now a little tatty. The hotel we stayed in was, in fact, called the Grand Hotel, and it was chandeliered and decorated in a similar style to the grand hotels in the Blue Mountains, with a big dining hall looking out over the beach, and live entertainment at night. Victorian era paintings still hung on the walls and the clientele were mainly working class English folk from places like Hull and Leeds, come to have a jolly good time for a few days. There wasn’t a foreigner in sight – this place was strictly British in style, and very traditional style at that. Just as the car and changing fashions slowed the flow of people to the Blue Mountains, so did the introduction of cheap air travel slow the flow of holidaymakers to seaside towns like Scarborough. The English decided to fly to Spain instead, and these grand hotels became neglected, but luckily, not completely. The Carrington and Hydro Majestic have both had tasteful facelifts over the past few years as Sydneysiders again want to escape the hustle and bustle of Sydney life, and hopefully the same will happen to the Grand Hotel in Scarborough before too long.  It is a hotel and a tradition worth saving.

The Grand Hotel, Scarborough

Friends and Family

    We carried on further south to visit Oki’s long-time friends, Al, Jenny, Ern and Sue in Suffolk. We stayed the night in Ipswich at Al and Jenny’s house, and had a lovely dinner and chat, before heading off the next morning to spend the day with Ern and Sue, seeing their lovely home and having a beautiful lunch at the local pub. We had such a great time with them all, and it would be lovely if, one day, they could venture south to see us.

     Finally, we returned to London and our little flat in North Sheen. By this time, Victoria had decided to open her eyes and take a little more notice of the world. She was feeding better, enjoying her bath and learning how to keep her parents awake most of the night! She is a very pretty, little girl and a very good baby. 

Nicola and Baby Victoria

    Back home in London, we also saw our friends, Tina and Trefor Jones, who live in a riverside flat in Teddington. A more beautiful location in London than beside the Thames at Teddington there just couldn’t be. We had lunch and enjoyed good conversation together, walked beside the river and caught up on old times. I had met Tina twenty-one years before, when we lived in London for a few years. My boys and hers had gone to the same primary school at Sheen, and Tina’s Richard was in the same class as my Adam. Robert, their younger son, was also a Cub Scout in my Cub Pack in Richmond, and Adam was in the Cubs at Mortlake with Richard. On this visit to Teddington, what had once been their little daughter, Bethan, reappeared as a young woman who was about to depart for Melbourne to continue her teaching career. 
    In the early "noughties" (2000's), Tina had visited me in Sydney when she turned fifty, and I had promised her that I would come back and visit her as well. Now that I am a grandmother with a granddaughter in England, I hope I will be able to afford to visit England more often, hopefully once every two years.  It will be lovely to see my English friends more often, along with my family, when I come over to visit.

London Profile

    During our last weekend in England, our long-time friend, Petra, made a special trip from Germany with her partner, Thomas, to come and see us in London. We hadn't seen Petra for many years, although I had kept in touch by mail. We had a lovely time together and it was so good to catch up on the news and views that we share in common. Thank you so much, Petra, for making such a big effort to see us, and Thomas, it was great to meet you. 

    I am also friends with Lindy Shaw, Vanessa MacCallum, Tina Turpin and Simon and Linda Howell, and I apologise that I didn’t get around to seeing you on this visit. I promise to get in touch next time, when my travelling schedule is not so hectic. This time, there just wasn’t enough time to see everyone. Thank you for your Christmas cards and letters. You will know why I didn’t send you one this year, as I was busy travelling and trying to be a helpful grandmother.  I feel guilty that I didn’t contact you, so please forgive me.

The British Library

    There were three things Oki and I wanted to do while in London. We wanted to visit the British Library, the Museum of Childhood and Arnold Circus in Shoreditch. The British Library was just fantastic. Here you could see such things as the Magna Carta, the Gutenberg and Caxton Bibles, ancient Hindu, Buddhist and Muslim manuscripts, the handwritten musical scores of Mozart and Beethoven, the original jottings of Beatles lyrics, a letter written by Newton, beautifully illuminated manuscripts by mediaeval scribes, and the writing of authors such as Lewis Carroll, Thomas Hardy and Jane Austen. There was also the Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels, a work that led to the deaths of over 300 million people and the brutal treatment of millions of others in the Communist world. There was also a death warrant signed by Elizabeth I for the execution of the traitor, Essex. The most ancient sample was an English document written in 670 A. D. This whole day was an absolutely wonderful experience.

Painting in the British Library

The Museum of Childhood

    One day, we headed to Bethnal Green to see the Victoria and Albert Museum of Childhood. I had taken my boys here when they were at school, but Oki had never been to this museum. It is very traditionally laid out, with three storeys of exhibition cabinets, housing toys from all eras, bringing back wonderful memories of childhood. There were a few school outings happening while we were there, and children were playing on old rocking horses and trying to put hair and beards on faces using magnetic pens and iron filings – all the good, old stuff that we used to do that modern, electronic children miss out on these days.

Hair, Eyebrows, Beards and Moustaches

Arnold Circus, Shoreditch

    Being close to Shoreditch, we also ventured into Arnold Circus to see it with our own eyes. Recently, I watched a documentary series in Australia on “The History of London Streets”, which I found so interesting. One week on the show they gave the history of the streets of Shoreditch. In the late 1800’s, Shoreditch was the worst slum in London. Night soil was piled in heaps in the streets, rubbish, rats and filth were everywhere, hunger, disease and poverty were rife and the average lifespan in these dreadful conditions was a mere sixteen years! Some politicians decided that something had to be done, and so town planners set about demolishing the dilapidated houses, piled the rubble into a giant heap in the middle of the area and set about building state-of-the-art, attractive housing for the people. Onto the rubble, dirt was piled and then trees and grass were planted and a picnic shed was put up to become the heart of the community. Arnold Circus is the circular road that surrounds this pile of rubble that was turned into a picnic area. The buildings became the first council flats in the world and the people who moved back into Shoreditch lived far happier and longer lives. Although politicians usually cause harm to society, in this case, they had actually done something good. How could Oki and I resist seeing this interesting piece of Nineteenth Century town planning while we were in the area? The council flats that were built are still there, just as they had been in the late 1800’s. Nothing has changed except that cars now surround the Circus. Such an interesting piece of modern history.

Arnold Circus, Shoreditch

"The Land of the Midday Twilight" and Other Interesting Sights

    Our homeward flight involved heading back over the Arctic to Seoul, this time to stay for two days in Seoul to see my Korean friends who had been my former students in Sydney. We flew again with Korean Air, had another “bibimbap”, watched some more brilliant short films and relaxed through the long night and ten-and-a-half-hour flight. While Oki and most of the other passengers slept, I experienced something very exciting! After a few hours, I wound up my window blind and looked out. Below me was a twilight of frozen ground. We were travelling over the vast distances of Siberia. Then the sun began to rise in the east, and as it rose, the day came up in the south, the far south, away from this Arctic twilight of Siberia. I could see the day, but it was someone else’s day, not ours. We were too far north in this Northern Hemisphere winter, and as I watched below, frozen, white rivers twisted and snaked and writhed across the dark, white landscape, frigid roads stretched across the plains, and tiny little grids of villages lay here and there in the Gulag.  Forests and plains eventually transformed into beautiful, snowy mountains, and as we moved further south, we flew into the daylight. At one stage, we flew across the southern end of Lake Baikal, the deepest lake in the world, with its cracked and frozen icy surface, and as time passed, the snow turned into the flat, dry grasslands of Mongolia, and then into the rippled mountains of north-eastern China. This flight back to Korea became one of the highlights of my trip, a highlight I was never expecting. For those who slept through it, they don’t know what a wonderful experience they missed. Sitting next to a window in an aeroplane is one giant geography lesson.

Siberia

Seoul

    The final stage of our trip was about to begin as we landed in Korea, a country that has managed to pull itself up from being an undeveloped, war-torn country just sixty years ago to being one of the richest, most highly educated and developed countries in the world, all through the intelligence and hard work of its own people.  They are a people that deserve to be admired. 
   My Korean friend, whose English name is Theresa, and her lovely husband, Mr. Lee, took us everywhere and were very generous to us! We visited a Korean history and folk museum, went around a traditional Hanok village with its beautiful architecture, looked through the grounds of one of the five grand palaces that are situated in Seoul and saw the Changing of the Guard. We walked down the main street of the CBD to see the statue of Korea’s most loved king, King Sejong, who reigned between 1418 and 1450. He wanted his people to be well educated, so he scrapped the use of Chinese characters and invented his own system of Korean script called Hangul, a script that was totally regular and would make it easy for all his people to learn to read and write.  After this, we visited the old market areas of Insa Dong and Namdaemun, and the young people’s favourite, Myeong-dong. We had bulgogi (Korean BBQ), visited the Myeong-dong Cathedral, went on a boat cruise on the River Nam for a view of this enormous, high-rise city, and met up with two of my former students, John and Kai. All of this we did in an action-packed two days! The twin cities of Seoul/Incheon have a greater population than the whole of Australia – twenty three million people in all - occupying about the same area as Sydney or London. I have never seen such a huge, jam-packed city – it made Manhattan look like a village. Thank you so much Theresa and Mr. Lee for all your kindness. You gave Oki and me an experience we will never forget. I hope I can do the same for you one day when you come to visit me in Tasmania.

Korean Guards Protecting the Palace

Back Home

Our ten-hour flight from Seoul took us back to summertime Sydney, and although I was dreading the possible heatwaves and humidity, the temperatures were pleasantly mild. My poor son, Adam, who lives inland, on the border of New South Wales and Victoria, had been enduring long stretches of over 40*C (110*F) weather, so I was very relieved that our weeks in the Northern Hemisphere winter didn't collide head-on with the worst that the Southern Hemisphere summer can sometimes throw at us. As I come to the end of this recount, I am back in my little home in cool and gentle Hobart with its small population, its relaxed friendliness and its beautiful scenery. The trip was great, but it's always nice to come back home.

Kathi and Victoria