Pick-A-Day

October 2004
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My trip, in brief.

Weimar-Erfurt on the train, bus to the airport. Check-in, boarding pass #13, wait. Ryanair to London, operated by Buzz! StanstedExpress to London Liverpool, Tube to Paddington, Walk to hotel. Bed.

Up early, HeathrowExpress, Terminal 3 for United, Flight 50 minutes late, wait. Meet Father, return to hotel, eat breakfast-breakfast room hot, food boring. Shower.

Specific sequence forgotten:

Tour city– Tate Britain, Maxwell’s for lunch, nap, British Museum dinner, bed. Day two, only bus (less expensive more sightseeing), Churchhill War Rooms, Samuel Pepy’s room, China Town, National Gallery, hotel, dinner, V&A evening, bed. Three: London Transport Museum, Covent Gardens, not sure? Four: V&A daytime, City of London Museum.

In evenings whilst Father relaxed, saw two movies: Ae Fond Kiss (go see it!), and Kontroll (Hungarian with subtitles, very interesting).

Movie review of the week: “Hard to decide which aspect of Kim’s fourth film is hardest to stomach. The trite sexual politics? The longueurs, the pat symbolism? The ugly violence its inhabitants show each other? The drip-drip of unfaked, often fatal cruelty to animals…….”

Hotel: Bad-never tried to fix broken television, a personal David Sedaris moment in the toilet (seriously!), indifferent staff. Will not return to that place

Monday: Tubed to Canning Town, local bus to London City Airport, VLM to Brussels, train to Brugge. Belgian train employees do bare minimum.

Brugge: Beautiful! Excellent hotel location a block from the Market and the Burg. Took canal cruise first day, brief walk, excellent dinner. Second day: Folklore Museum (forgettable), Chocolate Museum (fun), walked around city, dinner.

Wednesday: Train to Amsterdam, tram to hotel. 4th floor. European counting (5th in American terms). Walk-Up. Two flights with landings, two flights with the fabulous stairs that turn as you climb. Once we climbed up, we stayed up. Evening: tour of the red light district, dinner.

Thursday: Anne Frank, Reichsmuseum, and another museum. Friday, Den Haag-three museums including the greats and Escher. Saturday: side trip to Einkehausen with Claudi-?good thing too, for there was a protest in Amsterdam: over 200,000 people, many of them coming in on trains. It was the second largest protest in The Netherlands since the end of the war.

Sunday: homeward bound. Took father to airport, took self on earlier train. Good thing, due to track work, my train was, at one point, 45 minutes late. Got to Frankfurt 25 minutes late, just missing my connecting train. Had I been on my scheduled train, I probably wouldn’t have been able to get home the same day.

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