March 2024 Reading

Travel does strange things to my reading.  Sometimes I read a bunch more, and sometimes a bunch less.  This month was on the less end.  I read or listened to eight books this month.

Listening first.  I continue to enjoy getting audiobooks from the library.  I listened to Strong Poison by Dorothy Sayers, which I liked.  I’ve read it many times before.  Audio is a great way to deal with airplanes.

 

Again while I was traveling, I didn’t want to schlepp a ton of books, so I got Charles Dickens’s The Pickwick Papers from the library in e-book form.  I just don’t like reading e-books that much.  I got about halfway through while traveling and finished the book in hard copy.  I read it a long time ago, when I was about ten or eleven.  The book is funnier and also more serious to my grown-up self.  The writing is a bit uneven and the story shows its serial origins.  Every once in a while, a character would stumble across a manuscript or a person with a story to tell that had no real relation to the ongoing story, but made up a chapter.  By the end, however, I found myself attached to the characters.

 

Amadis of Gaul, Books III and IV, however, was not much fun.  I was committed to finish this second volume, but it was a slog.  (For those who don’t remember when I read the first volume, this is the novel that drove Don Quijote mad.)  I have read more medieval and courtly romance than the average person, I think.  Amadis is dead boring compared to the Arthurian cycle (in English or French) and Orlando Furioso.  It turns out that what I want in my knightly tales is one or both of the following:  an overarching purpose to the narrative, like the Grail quest, and/or a sense of humor.  Amadis is just a bunch of guys whacking each other with swords when they could sit down and sort their differences like grown-ups.  All the knights and ladies are virtually interchangeable.  Even the bad guys are boring and predictable.  I’m glad I’ve read it and now I don’t have to ever again.

 

On my travels, I acquired and read five picture books.  In a haphazard sort of way, I collect alphabet books from the places I go, so I was happy to find A to Z of Aotearoa in New Zealand.  It’s an alphabet book with a Kiwi flavor (gumboots, hangi, jandals, etc.).  It’s very cute.

 

At the Christchurch Art Gallery/Te Puna o Waiwhetū, I bought both an alphabet book and a numbers book.  A is for Art features artworks from their collection and words in both English and Maori.   (Aa is for animals; hōiho/horse, with an image from Lucy Kemp-Welch’s painting In the Orchard.)

 

123 What Will We See? similarly pairs images from the collection with numbers in both English and Maori in a lift-the-flap format.  Again, charming.

 

There are some picture books that simply have to come home with me, maybe so I don’t embarrass myself too much laughing in public.  The Book That Did Not Want to Be Read by David Sundin is one of those books.  It’s silly and beautiful and my stomach hurt from laughing.  A sure cure for a bad day.

 

Finally, at the MOTAT in Aukland, I got Sky High:  Jean Batten’s Incredible Flying Adventures by David Hill.  I love a girl-power book and Jean Batten was definitely a power in early aviation.  The illustrations are great, too.

 

March total:  8

Spring total to date:  34

Year to date:  34

NZ and AUS day 15: in which I find labels

I had some last-minute shopping to do today.  Among other things, I replaced my Uggs with new ones.  The history of ugg boots is complicated, the upshot being that my first pair were made in Australia, my second, inferior pair, in the US, and I now have another authentically Australian pair.  I may never be particularly stylish, but I will damn well be comfy.

Other than that, I didn’t have a lot of energy.  I strolled down to The Rocks, which is the now-rehabilitated former rough quarter from the olden days.  The worst neighborhood dangers at present seem to be getting run over by cruise ship passengers and getting overwhelmed with souvenir shops.

 

There is a little museum there, the Rocks Discovery Museum, which traces the history of Sydney through various objects in a charming old building.  Some of the artifacts on view there were recovered from a former well in the area where, after the water got polluted, folks dumped their garbage.

 

They have some re-created aboriginal artifacts made with modern materials that look cool:

 

During the colonial period, the colonizers did something between persuading and forcing to get the indigenous people to wear brass labels around their necks.  Here is one from a woman who made a living explaining her culture and stories of her people:

 

I liked this stair waterfall in the neighborhood.

 

And here’s one last view of the harbor bridge:

 

This afternoon is all about packing because tomorrow is airplane day.

NZ and AUS day 14: Art!

One of today’s goal’s was to stay cool.  After breakfast with Brent, who feels much better today, I headed for the Museum of Sydney.  Unfortunately, there is a major exhibition opening at the end of the month, so most of it was closed right now.  There is a really interesting artwork out front that is about the first contact between the indigenous people and the invaders.  I liked looking up through it at the surrounding buildings:

 

In the museum, I saw models of the First Fleet, the ships in which European explorers first came here.  There were some interesting films playing.  One was about the challenging relationships between the colonists and the people who were already here.  Spoiler alert:  things don’t tend to go well when you start with kidnapping.  A couple of the others were vintage films from the 1950s and 1960s about the development of Sydney; they definitely had the flavor of their time.

 

Then I was absolutely forced to walk through the Botanic Gardens again on my way to the Art Museum of NSW .  Here is a flower:

 

The museum has two buildings.  I explored one of them, which was full of fascinating stuff.  Outside, I saw these sculptures:

 

I liked this sculpture of an indigenous person:

 

Puck on a toadstool appealed to me, too:

 

If I ever get tired of taking photos of flowers, I supposed I could take up drawing them.  But other people do it so beautifully already:

 

I found Alice (in Down Under Land!):

 

Ned Kelly is an outlaw folk hero criminal guy and I like art with him in it:

 

I adore aboriginal art:

 

And, finally, I just thought this was amazing:

 

I had a late-ish lunch and headed back to the air conditioned hotel!

NZ and AUS day 13, in which there are dragons

Brent, poor soul, spent last night sick.  He felt enough better to work this morning, but gave up at noon.

We had breakfast together.  (OK:  I had a lovely breakfast of menemen, which is a traditional Turkish breakfast of eggs scrambled with peppers and feta with toast and Brent ate toast.  We also got him some crackers and some ginger ale.)  He went to work and I went off to the Chinese Garden of Friendship.  I got there before it opened and spent some time taking photos in the area.  Here is a rare photo of me:

This one is kind of arty:

 

The garden is absolutely gorgeous.  One portion of it is being renovated, so it is not very gorgeous and smells like manure at the moment, but that’s just a blip.  Everywhere I looked, I saw bearded dragons:

 

Here is one of the entrance statues:

 

I took about a zillion photos.  Here is a leaf:

Some plumeria:

 

Bamboo against a wall:

 

It was hot and humid, which began to make me feel less than fabulous, so I left the garden in search of something cool to drink.

 

Before I got that cold drink, I happened into a Banksy exhibit at the Town Hall.  Travel magic, or something.  Here are a few photos I liked from the show:

 

Then I picked up some sushi and a soda and came into the blessed air conditioning.  Brent came in shortly after and went to rest.  I had a vacation nap, too.

NZ and AUS day 12: In which I have a Manly adventure

Today’s adventure requires a little context.  Back in 2011 when Brent worked for Google, we spent six weeks here in Sydney.  T. spent the whole time with us and Syd came over for a week.  It happened that 2011’s summer was the coldest and rainiest in 51 years.  My plans to spend days lounging at the beach were dashed.  There was, however, one sunny day that has gone down in family lore.  It was the day the kids and I went to the beach in Manly and took the Manly Scenic Walkway.

The short version of the story is this:  the walkway was, in fact, in Manly, and it was also scenic.  Walkway, though, implies a certain amount of casual ease that we did not find.  Plus, we got lost.  So it was, for us, the Long Manly Scenic Death March.

 

I went back to Manly today.  I took the ferry to get there:

 

For a while, I lounged on the beach.  I read a bit.  I got harassed by a beach turkey.  No, I’m not kidding.  The wild bush turkeys know that people on beaches usually have snacks.  Any bag left unattended for long is likely to get pecked at by a turkey.  My ability to lounge indefinitely has faded since my salad days of extreme tanning.  I wanted to move.

 

The nice lady at the information center near the ferry had given me a map and a second map of the area near Shelly Beach, where there was a less-grueling but still interesting alternative to the Manly Scenic Walkway.  I set off.  Here are some of the lovely views I saw:

 

The thing is, Manly seems to be some kind of portal or something.  Despite the clearly-marked map, I got lost.  Again.  I kept thinking it was going to be fine if I kept walking.  But it was hot and I was tired.  I eventually caved and looked to Google Maps to save me and get me back to the ferry terminal.

 

About that time, I saw what I think is a kookaburra.  It did not laugh at me:

 

When I got off the trail I was on and found the road (thanks, Google!), I also found the hike I had been looking for.  I considered taking it, but then I remembered that I was still about a mile from the ferry terminal and I had a walk back from Circular Quay to the hotel still to go.  I may take that hike another day.

 

The new and improved route back to the ferry had this sign:

 

It also went through a residential area and I saw this flower:

 

When I reached the Manly Wharf, I bought ice cream, but I only ate about half of it:

 

It was a good day.

NZ and AUS day 11: in which I take photos of flowers

After breakfast (today I learned that pumpkin spinach frittata is a thing, and a good one, too!), I walked Brent to work and then headed out on adventures.

Last time I was in Sydney, in 2011, I was with people the whole time:  T. and/or Syd and/or Brent.  None of those people at that time were as interested as I was in taking pictures of flowers, so they kept rushing me along as I went through the Botanic Gardens.  (Both kids now take their own photos of flowers, so I won, eventually!)  Today I had as much time as I was willing to spend to take as many photos as I wanted.

 

I like this one a lot:

 

I saw one cockatiel land on this tree.  I waited a bit, and a friend came, too.  Later I saw a whole flock flying, but didn’t get that photo:

 

I like this flower, too:

 

The interplay of the plant with the pot pleases me:

 

I took hundreds more, but that’s enough for one post.

 

Then I went to the State Library of New South Wales.  

It is a book church.  They have a Shakespeare Room with a folio:

 

At the moment, they have a great exhibit of photography from the 1840s to the present.  Here are a couple of photos I liked a lot:

 

I had some lunch in their very nice café before heading back outside to walk to the Australian Museum.  I really loved it last time I was in Sydney.  They’ve done a major renovation since then.  While I like what they did, I also liked it before when there was a whole big room full of skeletons of different creatures.  The present focus is on treasures from their collection, organized in a more contextual way.  The big extra exhibit was about Ramses, but I had seen it when it was in San Francisco, so I skipped it and looked at the other things.

 

Here are some butterflies:

 

Here is a fossil:

Here is some aboriginal art, which I deeply love:

 

I learned a bunch of stuff about how indigenous people in the Pacific were enslaved after the collapse of the Triangle Trade. By the time I got to the Australian birds, I was tired and maybe a little crabby (I have walked more than 18,000 steps today).  I headed back to the hotel and will shortly take a nap before Brent gets done with work.

NZ and AUS day 10, in which I shop

It was a bad news/good news kind of day.  Sadly, it was time to leave New Zealand.  Fortunately, we got to go on to Sydney.  I even scored a window seat on the plane:

I almost never buy or read magazines, but since I was feeling like a bear of very little brain this morning, I treated myself to a couple.  Every once in a while, I like to see what fitness magazines have to say.  Turns out, I know what I’m doing.  At least in that respect.  The fashion magazine was a whole different ballgame.  I probably should not be allowed to dress myself.

 

Here is the view from our new hotel room.  The room itself is also spiffy, but I really need to understand what the heck people are supposed to do with their stuff in these stylish hotel rooms with no drawers.  (Note:  I am that person who unpacks all my clothes from my suitcase when I arrive, so other people might not mind the lack of storage.)

 

After sitting all day, I wanted to get out into the world a little, so Brent and I took a walk around the block and looked in the shops.  My favorite Australian critter is the bilby.  Bilbys (bilbies?) have long ears and so are often Easter bunny stand-ins, like these ones in the candy store window.

 

Then I did some reckless shopping.  I wanted Australian boots and I now own them and they are wonderful.  (How to tell you’ve just bought something flipping expensive:  they throw in the care stuff.)  We went in to the bookstore twenty minutes before it closed and I managed not to buy any books, but I did get a cool new pouch for all my cords to replace the one that self-destructed in my backpack.  My former tube of sunscreen also decided that it no longer wanted to have tubular integrity, so I got a new one.

 

There’s an Irish pub downstairs at the hotel.  Brent picked it for dinner because it was convenient and because he will never pass up an opportunity for beef and Guinness pie.  There was live music, too.  The guys playing alternated what seemed to be classic Irish dance music with covers.  I have now heard Hotel California with fiddle.

 

Brent’s vacation is over tomorrow, but mine is not.  More adventures ahead!