Travels, Musings and Pictures
Another clear morning and another breakfast at Nellies, as per yesterday. Well, why change a good thing? After a leisurely bag packing session to allow the rush hour traffic to calm down, we checked out and dug the car out of the bowels of the hotel and set off for Banff, about 125km away. Getting out of Calgary was a doddle. It’s easy to follow the SatNav, sorry GPS as it’s called here, when you have a) an idea how to work it and b) an idea where you’re actually going.
We awoke in to find the morning was bright, clear and quickly warming up. The evening before we’d been placed high up on the 13th floor of the Sandman Hotel in Calgary but sadly the view from the room was mostly of other tall buildings. The hotel location though turned out to be a brilliant as it was on 7th Avenue and just across the road from the 8th Street CTrain stop. The CTrain light rail system services all of the downtown area of Calgary, (as well as the suburbs), but even more happily was free to ride in the central district that we’d need it for. But more on that later; breakfast first! Continue reading “Out and about in Calgary”
One of my great unfulfilled ambitions has been to travel to the Canadian Rockies. There have been two near misses in the past; way back in 1987 we took a family vacation to Vancouver, and from there we drove and sailed still further west over to Vancouver Island and Victoria, then took the ferry south down the Puget Sound to the USA and Seattle. In many ways this was an epic trip but it wasn’t the Rocky Mountains. A couple of years later an even larger family contingent flew to Denver, Colorado, where we hired two R’s and headed towards Estes Park and from there into the American Rockies. That was an adventure and a half too, but whilst the American version was spectacular (I still recall waking in the campground at dawn to a silent and mist covered Shadow Mountain Lake) it still wasn’t the Canadian Rockies. Well this year, exactly thirty years after the original Vancouver trip, I get to see them at last. This is the story of that trip Continue reading “Away to Canada!”
So today, the reason my job is paying for me to be here began. There’s not a deal you can say about the conference – one line summary is, I went, it was OK. Most of this year’s conference, the ‘theme’ if you like, is about a technology known as containerization, which is something we don’t do at all as yet. I find it quite interesting, brilliant even, but I struggle to figure out how we might deploy it in our current setup. I did manage to score a free mini-tankard from the HP stand in the dinner break though!
Continue reading “After work highlights (high-lights, geddit?)”
Down in the breakfast area this morning there were suspiciously more men in the 30-50 age bracket than there had been all weekend. Sure enough it wasn’t long before I spotted a LinuxCon Dublin tee shirt from last year, so it looks like my ‘business’ crowd are all arriving, with many of them choosing the Ibis hotel instead of the super expensive conference one. I had no idea what plans some of them may have had, but I knew what I was hoping to be doing.
Continue reading “Things to do in Berlin on Reunification Day”
I started my travels today by riding out to the Berlin Wall memorial, which is the longest bit of surviving wall. Getting slightly cocky with the transport system now, I took the U1 from in front of the hotel, swapped to the U6 heading north at Halleschers Tor, then off at Naturkundemuseum for the start of a 10 minute walk to the wall. I then messed this up by walking entirely the wrong way from the U-bahn for 5 minutes, which is about the time it take google maps to re-orient itself when exiting from underground.
It has been a funny day today, I think mostly because I’ve felt a bit off colour like I am starting with a cold or something. I didn’t feel ill, just not right and very, very tired. The weather didn’t help by being that persistent sort of spitting rain, on and off all day, and you’re never quite sure whether to have your brolly up or down. The tiredness wasn’t due to lack of sleep ‘cos the bed was very, very comfy. Breakfast was included in the room rate and was the usual continental mixture of rolls and cheese and cold meats and stuff like that (and yes, there was Nutella).
I do like flying from Doncaster-Sheffield Robin Hood Airport at Finningley; it’s small, human and efficient in a way that is totally belied by its polysyllabic name. That morning I had left my home in Sheffield at the scary hour of 4.30am, but somehow ended up airside in the departure lounge sat eating a bacon butty at 5.30am and wondering what I was going to do with the all spare time until the flight. In that first hour I’d managed to drive the 30-odd miles to the airport, park, walk to the terminal, check in a suitcase, clear both immigration and security and order, pay for and receive said bacon butty. Not a bad start to the trip.
240 miles
3 great sights seen
The last day dawns bright and clear but cold. Breakfast at the Cumbria Park is fine standard English fare and we’re relieved to discover the car has remained unmolested in the slightly cramped car park. Our first port of call is Hadrian’s Wall and happily Birdoswald Fort is just 15 miles distant, but we have to go there and nearly back to Carlisle again as it’s a spur off our main route. It’s a nice run though and we’re soon off the main road and looping through the countryside catching glimpses of sections of the wall in various states of disrepair, most notably at the village of Gilsand where the wall lies alongside the River Irthing. Continue reading “Round Britain – Final Day”
330 miles
3 great sights seen
The Britannia Leeds Hotel is our first ‘chain’ hotel and the first hotel that is close to our £50/night budget. It seems to be pitched primarily as an overnight stop for coach passengers, (there are three in the car park), and is clean and basic if a little jaded. Although we tried to take the room + breakfast deal when we checked in, it seems that the night man didn’t manage that and we’re not on the list, requiring a quick trip back to reception and some cash in exchange for a voucher. During breakfast Stu takes exception to Eamon Holmes’ interviewing technique on Sky News and tweets a mildly derogatory comment. This gets picked up and refuted by one of Eamon/Sky’s minions and Stu is quickly embroiled in a multi-person twitter flamefest, which we find highly amusing.
Continue reading “Round Britain – Day 4”