Edinburgh has squirrels; I feel that it’s important that you know this.

This one was helpful enough to pose dynamically on a tree for maximum photogenicness & drama, and had a nice eye for appropriate backlighting. It’s really refreshing to see such dedication to the tourist experience.

Squirrel in Grass (pixel on memory chip, 2016)

They’re not exactly scared of people, though they are a little wary. There’s a safe distance, and they’ll be paying attention.
They’ll move if you’re too close for comfort, and they’ll watch you if they’re not sure what you’re up to.

The best approach, assuming you could see them at all, seemed to be to just stand there and wait while they got used to you. They’d not ignore you, but they would go back to an approximation of what they were doing.

It’s the spotting them that took some luck, because a squirrel in forage mode who’s not moving much is indistinguishable from a chunk of tree-bark, as demonstrated below.

First time I saw the adorable little buggers was in a park by the University, George Square.
Tamsin spotted them through the railings, and we saw them a number of times as we wandered by, up in trees or raiding rubbish bins, or just generally mooching about. Got within a metre of one once, as there was a sturdy iron fence in between us; It was using the stone footing of the fence as a path.

The pictures above were taken in The Meadows, just off the Meadows Walk, which was also a good spot for general people watching.

Here. for example, we have some folks playing cricket.
In kilts.
Because why not?

On a good day, and there were a number of them, the portable & disposable barbeques come out, and it looks like people are relaxing in a volcanic field.
Actually, given the ancient geological history of the place, that’s almost accurate.

And then there are the crows, attempting murder. And in this image, succeeding.

The Edinburgh Internation Festival & the Edindurgh Festival Fringe were in the warming-up stage while I was in Edinburgh, which meant that there was almost always a busker at the main crossroads in The Meadows during the day.
Once it was someone in casual-Goth attire playing what was probably a long-neck ukulele, and they were … bloody fantastic. Just sitting there, filling the area with music. We stopped to listen on a few occasions; Once I’m pretty sure they started with Pachelbel’s Canon in D, then started working around it until you could just hear it there, in the background.

I’m not sure that I ever saw the Meadows empty.
Even in the evening, which happened at 10pm or so when the sun finally went down, there’d still be people out there, doing their thing.

You’d see people setting up slack lines in the trees lining the walk, either to practice, and in some cases what looked like lessons were going on, in the less-formal ‘give it a go’ style.

This made me feel much more relaxed about trying to re-learn the Diablo.
Tamsin had taken me to Cascade Juggling, just to show me the place, and after thinking about it, I picked up a travel-friendly diabolo set. I left the purple monster I’ve had for years back in NZ, as it is not travel friendly – This one’s smaller & lighter, and the sticks are shorter & made from aluminium, so they weigh bugger-all.
Initial practicing is positive, though I do need to re-learn how long the sticks are, as I keep missing the catch when wrapping the strings around. Also, because it’s lighter, there’s less momentum available, so I have to pay more attention.

It flies high though.

Once the lights came on, and the crowds thinned out a lot, you’d get sights like this one, which was quite nice when walking back from wherever the hell I’d ended up that day.

I’ll close out with an odd thing I wasn’t fast enough to photograph.
In the evening, having reached the end of the Meadows Walk on my way back to The Argyle, I’d stopped at the lights, because a fire engine was on the way.
It got to the lights, slowed, and then pulled into the walk, driving down between the trees, lights still flashing, and drove into the park & out of sight.

There was probably a fire in one of the big-ass bins for the disposal of BBQ coals & dog waste, because that’s a combination of smells we all need, but I like to imagine they were heading for the Starbucks up the way, or maybe had decided to do spot of BBQ for dinner, and wanted to keep the engine close in case of a callout.

I was getting steadily better, the cough having … well, ‘vanished’ is the wrong word.
‘Diminished’ doesn’t really cut it either.
Let’s say that the bouts of horrifying coughing which left my sides hurting and did odd things to my voice were less frequent?

Anyway, we caught a bus out to Cramond Island, or more accurately to a bus stop near there, then walked the rest.

It’s an odd place.
There’s little indication as to why prehistoric folks found the need to construct a line of standing stones out to the island.
I mean, you could use it as a procession guide, I suppose, and it came in handy when people in more modern times wanted to build a walkway, because they had this line of bloody great stones letting them know where the shortest and shallowest path was.

They’ve lasted well; Apparently the encrustations of marine life have helped there, though I’d not be surprised to find that those notches, whatever the hell they’re for, have been tidied up from time to time.

Probably the oddest thing is the trick of perspective with the very occasional ‘gate’ in the line of stones; A simple side-step by the person taking the picture, and someone standing in the gate vanishes.
It’s honestly pretty creepy from the viewer’s point of view; As the viewed, no big deal.

And that thing is dead straight.
That’s tricky enough to do on land, but in an area that floods every 12 hours or so? With simple hand tools?

Of course, in later years someone built a more modern structure on it, and there are some indications that the Romans used it; That said, the building in the picture I took looked like it’d fall down if you gave it a hard look, unlike the line of stones.

I’m counting a thing that happened the night before as happening on π Approximation Day, because of time zones.
Or something.

Tamsin had asked about how the Gen Con events registration system worked, so we had a play with it, using the keyword “Pirate”, because why not?
This came up;

It would have been morally wrong not to get a ticket, and of the three sessions, one was in a gap in my schedule.
So we filled that gap.

The GM’s name was familiar, and after some checking, it turned out to be the Mikey Mason I’d heard of; Geek Rock Comedian, Gamer, and I think the first person to welcome me to the Fear The Boot Forums when I signed up & made an introductory post.
I should point out that not all of his stuff is Geek or Gamer related, nor is all of it intended to be funny.

From what I can tell from his website posts about his games, we must have found the game soon after it went up on the Gen Con site. Certainly my one ticket was taken into account when he mentioned seats available, so I must have only just bought it, based on post timings and some frankly suspect conversions between time zones.

Breakfast, as is appropriate for π Approximation Day, was pancakes.
With chocolate and bananana.
From a Himalayan cafe.
Because it’s Edinburgh.

I’d had a filthy cough the previous few days, to the extent that planning seemed sort of pointless, and on the day the prospect of renting a car to go and see castles didn’t really appeal; I was uncertain as to how my stamina would last.
Thus, we went to the Scottish Parliament, to see those bits they’ll let you wander around.

There are the outlines of people worked into the debating chamber, to remind the MSPs that they are being watched, and that they’re here to do a job. I rather like the sentiment.
There’s also the poem “Open The Doors“, by Edwin Morgan, written for the opening of said Parliament, which is worth a read.
You can buy postcards with bits of it, or the whole thing, in the wee shop, because of course there’s a Gift Shop.

Next we went to the Scottish Storytelling Centre, which includes the Knox House, which is a preserved chunk of mostly-1500’s Edinburgh, preserved because of a fairly fleeting historical association with John Knox.

To finish up, we toured the Writer’s Museum, with floors dedicated to Burns, Scott, & Stevenson.

I’ll be honest, I’m not certain that I’ve real all of anything by Stevenson, but I’m damn sure I’ve read nothing by Burns or Scott. Unless that Haggis thing counts?

Then, on the way back, we saw this.

Ahhh, students, …

It was a great day.
Can’t really say much more than that.

The bus left Edinburgh at 8-ish.
I get the idea that they’d have liked to have left earlier, but some people had been told to go to the wrong place for pick-up, which complicated things.

There were also a couple who had misread the date on the ticket, but they managed to fit them on anyway.

This image, I think, illustrates why I didn’t take many pictures from the window of the bus, despite having a window seat.
And also why I didn’t need sunblock.
I was hoping it’d be doing this while the Loch Ness part of the trip, for maximum spooky, but that didn’t happen.

First stop of actual significance, because a roadside cafe with a gift shop doesn’t qualify, was Glencoe, site of some of the worst manners shown by a guest in recorded history.

Nowadays it’s the site of some skilled, daring, and at times ambitious tour bus parking.
Also a piper, who might be in that scrum behind me.
This probably counts as a ‘photographing photographers’ selfie, if I’m keeping track; Not sure if that’s better or worse than the non-selfie version, to be honest.

There were a lot of tour buses, plus regular tourists in regular vehicles.
As such, taking a photo without a bus or selfie stick in it took some doing.

Early attempt.
Looks like I’m trying to product-place the tour company, but I’m pretty happy with how the landscape came out.
(this is, incidentally, the bus I was on, or at least part of it)

Foreboding clouds, impressive hills.
Still kind of looks like a car ad.

OK, so I just zoomed in on the phone before taking this one.
I like the clouds though.

A sea of clouds, above a sea of tourists.
I mean, I could crop it, but I find the cluster of people, cameras, cars, and cameras on sticks to be sort of funny.

The tour guide, I should mention, did talk about why we were stopping here, why it was important, and so on.
I’d love to claim that it felt sort of dark and foreboding, but … that’s just the landscape and the weather.
Sorry.

Looks a lot like chunks of the South Island though, doesn’t it?

Possibly the best themed WiFi symbol ever, with added Man-In-Kilt in the background. 

Next was Loch Ness.
More accurately, due to a slightly delayed start and some time spent stuck behind a truck or two, next up was an accelerator & brake mad dash, along very winding roads carved into hills, in a very large bus, to make the Loch Ness Ferry sailing.
It was a lurchy experience.

Some folk were dropped off at Urquart Castle, to explore the ruins & be collected later, while the rest of us went on ahead to catch the ferry which went back up the loch to said castle.
I’d opted for the boat ride option when the weather was frankly a bit shitter, back at Glencoe.

There was a substantial covered & enclosed area on the boat, with obligatory coffee vending setup.
It was also very loud; Engines + Tourist Commentary + Multiple Small Children Who Were, Frankly, Over This.
I ran away to the upper deck, where there was rain of a sparse but stingingly cold nature, and much fewer sources of noise.
Also people who were a bit more interested in seeing the Loch itself.

I should note that I do not put much faith in the argument that an insurance company wouldn’t have covered a bunch of triathletes competing in Loch Ness for a million pounds against ‘monster attacks’ unless they believed there was something there. Rather, I think they could barely keep the grins from their faces as they took the premiums, and were maybe wondering about offering Sasquatch coverage too.

Eventually, we made it to the castle, or the remains thereof, and picked up the folks we’d dropped off.
(It’d have been much more atmospheric if the mist & cloud had hung around at low level, but such is life)

Yes, I took a lot of pictures of a castle, and yes, I’ve subjected you to most of them.
Trust me, I deleted the really crap ones.

I didn’t notice it at the time, but I’m finding it interesting that in some of the pictures it’s obvious that this is a ruin, and in others, really not.

And that’s it for the photos.

There was a lot of time spent on a bus, passing through scenery of a spectacular, or at least pretty nature, but cellphones don’t do well at landscapes, particularly from a moving vehicle. Thus, no pictures.
The Highlands are well worth a visit though.

In that it is actually colder, thus more chill, and this allowed me to relax more.

I left myself with plenty of time to get to the train station (King’s Cross), so I had time to kill, which I spent sitting at a table on a balcony level, watching the huge train schedule board update & the 1300h Edinburgh creep steadily closer.
(The most immediate departure is on the left-most board, so they slowly work their way right-to-left)
Password-Not-Required WiFi from one of the food places helped while away the time, by which I guess I mean “give me access to the final episode of Season 6 of Game Of Thrones”, though I did make a tactical blue by zipping away the straps on Big Red before getting to the platform.
The train, you see, was a billion carriages long, and I was at the one at the far end.

Train wasn’t crowded, and I got a window seat, so that I could do my usual trick of falling asleep, but with a nice view!
Briefly considered taking the trip down-train to get a coffee, but as it was 8 carriages away, I decided that I didn’t need one that badly.

Getting to the hostel in Edinburgh wasn’t without complication; The GPS Navigation Thing on my phone, which I’d decided to test out, was getting confused by tall buildings and the fact that Edinburgh Waverly Station is several stories below old Edinburgh, so it was having a tough time figuring out a route, and kept directing me up & down the same road.
I just went with climbing a lot of steps (The Scotsman Steps, in fact) while ignoring the GPS until it started giving me directions which weren’t flatly contradicted by observable reality, then followed those.
GPS, and assisted navigation technologies in general, are tools for navigation, not replacements for it. Can’t stress that one enough.

My first three nights were in a 4-bed dorm. Once again, I got a top bunk, which is no big deal.
Room-mates this time included a German chap who I don’t think I ever talked to, who had carefully arranged his stuff at night to create, unintentionally I’m thinking, a barrier for me to get to the ladder to my bunk, someone in the other top bunk who left absolutely no impression on me at all, and … D.

D. was an older lady, who started off the afternoon seeming OK, came across as a bit … off … by early evening, and was bitterly ranting and smelling of booze by nightfall. Frankly, I was glad of the window being open, because the booze-fumes were strong with this one.
Fortunately there was no vomiting, bed-wetting, or other obnoxious hostel-drunk behaviour, and the bitter ranting was confined to that one incident. Or my demeanor of  “Frankly, I don’t give a crap” paid off?
She eventually left, to go teach somewhere else in the UK, but not before she upset another resident by eavesdropping on a phone call and going into a racist/nationalistic bigotry diatribe about the subject in question; One of the staff told her where to put her opinions.

The hostel itself, which I’m not naming because of reasons, is architecturally … interesting.
It’s two terraced housed knocked together into one space by putting doors through on the Ground & First floor landings, and because the floor plans are mirror images, there are two spiraling staircases on either side of a wall, one counter-clockwise & one clockwise. Also, there are two kitchens, so you can pick which one suits your mood better.
Reminds me a little of Tamson House, from Charles de Lint’s Moonheart & Spiritwalk.

And, Edinburgh.
Well, there’s a castle, which we visited, as you do, and learned various historical things from tour guides.
There was a chap who was in character as the Earl of Moray, talking about the re-capture of the castle from the English, and demonstrating on a willing volunteer the armour & weapons of the day.

It took me a little while to work out that he was in character, and not some miscellaneous title-holder who happened to be interested in re-enactment; The references to being captured by the English sort of gave it away.

On the way back from the Castle we stopped in at a bar Gulo T. used to work at, mostly because it was open, to see how it was going. Ended up staying a while, for a very nice evening of sitting at the bar, chatting to the barman & the other patrons, and watching him curse at the register for not having the actual stock listed, and for being vastly too expensive when it did.
They’d only recently re-opened, and there were issues, like a couple of the keg lines which were just producing foam, and a coffee machine he had no clue how to work.
(I was tempted to offer to take a look, based on having played with the one at AECOM, but wasn’t quite sure how to make the offer)
In any case, probably one of the best pub evenings I’ve had; Gives me an idea of what having a local must be like.

Getting to & from Edinburgh’s centre involves going through the Meadows, and there’s often something entertaining happening, such as people playing cricket while wearing kilts, presumably because they can.
There have also been people practicing slack-line walking, and recently some very committed Mormons, given how long they’re out there.

Other Things, …

We climbed Arthur’s Seat, which has some spectacular views of Edinburgh, and where I took no photographs because it started lightly raining and the rocks get really slippery.
We also climbed, some days later, Salisbury Crags, where the weather was less trying-to-kill-you, and where I took these.

They’re setting up for the festival, or more accurately for many festivals, so there’s an enormous cantilevered seating structure outside Edinburgh Castle.

Over the course of the week-and-a-bit I’ve been here, I’ve noticed a lot of general-purpose Scottishness going on.
There are people wearing kilts & the like who are obviously dressed up for an important event of some sort, stores selling miscellaneous Tartan things, and the odd Piper in public places where tourists might spot them and comment favorably.

There are also people just wearing the things because, apparently, they want to, and bands who’ve included a piper … Well, it’s distinctive as all hell.

I’m not sure where the haggis-flavoured crisps come in.

Went to a Tai Chi class, which was a lot of fun, and a new thing for me.
Granted, I had no clue what was happening during the run-through of the form at the start, and only noticed the bit of said form that had been taught at the class once it was already gone, having been too focused on trying to face the right way, not collide with either of the other students, and at least be standing on the correct leg with my limbs in roughly the right directions.
The process of learning one move, and one move only, on the other hand, was rather relaxing & quite fun, as it turns out.

By pure fluke, I managed to be paying attention at the right time to (I think) get a picture of Southend Pier.

Unlike last time, I actually remember getting through Heathrow.
(checking back to my diary of a couple of years ago, it looks like the memory loss happened after the fact)
I did spot an escalator/ramp combo running down from Passport Control to Baggage Claim which seemed familiar, and a Biosecurity Check room which matched up to a memory which had come adrift from any context.
Things went smoothly; The only thing they wanted to know was where I’d come in from, and biosecurity/customs appears to work on the honour system, as the only person in the bag-scanning hall seemed to be taking a shortcut to somewhere else.

Rather than navigate the Underground at 6pm, I’d booked in for a night at an airport hotel one terminal over, so a short train trip got me there. (The Heathrow Express to Paddington wasn’t running, so I was even more glad to not be heading into London)
Yotel Heathrow is convenient, small, and oddly purple.
Even had a violet light in the room.

It was small enough that you had to plan a move or two ahead in terms of making space to do things in.
Comfy enough for a night’s sleep though, and they have ‘free’ coffee/hot chocolate.

I stayed at an AirBnB for the next few days, working on the theory that I really just needed somewhere to be jetlagged in for a while.
Turns out that when you don’t have a convention to go to, and thus an external schedule to keep, jetlag can last a whole lot longer. The humid weather didn’t help.

The AirBnB experience was, I think, a lot like living in a haunted house.
There were other people living in other rooms in the place, but as they were mostly out, I never saw them, or only saw them once before they moved on. Essentially, it was an empty house where things moved when I wasn’t looking & there were noises in the night.
Not sure on the whole AirBnB experience; This place was clearly being run as a hostel/hotel/BnB by the owner, who didn’t live on-site, and who I’m guessing didn’t visit that often. A lot of minor maintenance issues, like a student flat on it’s way out where nobody can be bothered fixing things & the landlord isn’t contactable.
That said, the bed worked, the WiFi worked, the system for getting in worked (combination lock-box on the front door with the key in it, key to the room left in the door to said room, and a message from the owner telling you the combination & the room name – Mine was Piccadilly Circus, with a replica of the official street sign on the door), and it was close to the DLR.

The other thing it was close to was Greenwich, right across the Thames, and accessible by a walking tunnel dating back to 1902.

There’s a dome to the right of the ship, which is the roof of the access stairway/lift for the Greenwich side.
Just behind me is the Old Royal Naval College, which you can see they’ve just finished repairing after that spaceship crashed into it in the movie Thor: The Dark World.

And this is the view from the other side.
Near as I can tell, based on the road layouts & house designs, where I was staying used to be a wharf complex (the road is named Empire Wharf), with warehouses & all that, and got redeveloped into residential. All of the houses around were done in roughly the same style, even if they weren’t part of the same building, and when you crossed one of the roads running around the perimeter of the Isle of Dogs, that suddenly changes, and there’s a lot more variety in age & design.
I need, or at least want, to do some more digging into this, to see how the area developed over the years.

So, stuff I did?

For the first while, “had a bad time due to jetlag, with maybe a minor lurgh of some sort” would cover it.
Did do some tourist things, like the Museum of London Docklands (which was fascinating until they got to an entire wing dedicated to the wranglings of committees for development from the 70’s onward) and the British Museum (which I’ll be going back to, as it was just too humid a day to be in a crowded place).

After a few days I moved to a hostel in Greenwich, St. Christopher’s, which is over a pub.
This becomes important later.
This was my first ‘bed in a dormitory’ stay of the trip, and indeed my first of that type of stay in a very long time.
I’ve stayed in hostels before, but had gone with private rooms. This wasn’t an option here.
The setup at St. Christopher’s was pretty good; You enter through the bar, but there’s a prox-card door to get into the hostel proper, another to open the door to the room, a specifically assigned bed, and a locker big enough that I could have fitted Big Red in there twice over without issue, in the form of a rolling metal cage which took up half of the under-bed space, with the other half being the locker for the other bunk. I got the top bunk, and it was pretty comfy, and also under a window, which was a useful thing, because holy crapballs  did that place get hot. Even with a pedestal fan going and the windows open it was still too hot to need the provided duvet most nights, and I only closed the window when absolutely needed, such as heavy rain.
On the subject of that window … Yeah, the pub was loud. To the extent that there was a jar of earplugs in each room, provided for free, and on Friday & Saturday nights they were really needed, as the loud music didn’t stop until 2am. Rest of the time it only ran 10pm to Midnight.
This place had piped music running constantly, not at ear-splitting volume, but at a noticeable level, even at 7am during breakfast.

With no particular demands on my time, I just sort of relaxed into being in the UK.
Got a cellphone number, wandered semi-aimlessly around using the Underground, and the River Buses, and my own two feet, and didn’t really do much of great consequence or importance.

Also, there was a crow mooching about at one of the River Bus stop.

The dorm experience did mean that I met people, which was kind of nice.

• There was the Indian IT Guy in the bed below mine, who’d only just arrived and was plowing straight into work & getting himself set up
• The woman from New Zealand in one of the other top bunks, who was transitioning between holiday & working holiday
• The English guy below her, who seemed to sleep most of the day & go out at night. Maybe he was working; It’s unclear, and he was hardly ever there & awake to be asked
• The South African chef in the last lower bunk, who really did sleep all day.
• The automotive mechanic in the bed above him, who … was very confident in the things he was demonstrably wrong about, such as which showers worked, or how the complicated skylight windows were operated. This made his pronouncements on Brexit somewhat harder to take seriously.

The UK’s vote to Stay in the EU or not happened while I was at St. Christopher’s, and … I didn’t see that result coming.
Also didn’t see the four main promises of the ‘Leave’ campaign vanishing within the next day coming; It was obvious that some of them were total bollocks, but the speed with which the clawbacks & technicalities & so on happened was impressive.
No idea what the end result of that will be.

I’m keeping my eye on the Scottish Independence Movement. Having only just started to make use of being an EU Citizen, I’d like to keep making use of it, and I can’t do that if the UK exits. If Scotland goes independent & stays in the EU, however, and if I can put myself in a place to become a Scottish Citizen when that happens, it seems worth doing. 

On the weekend, Gulo T. came to town, so we did Tourist Things!
Specifically, the London Eye.

There was a festival of sorts going on, called ‘Udderbelly’ ‘Underbelly’, and in the background here is an inflatable purple cow, lying on it’s back, containing a stage. {edit: the Festival is Underbelly, the purple cow stage is Udderbelly}

There was also a festival happening in Greenwich, the Greenwich Docklands International Festival,

… and we saw part of one act; A thing called Block, which had people doing dance & circus acrobatics using big movable blocks to make & re-make their stage space. They were doing things like building walls, or getting people walking on top of blocks which were being put in place to make a path as they moved.

For this one, I’m going to start at the end, then double back to explain how I got there.

At the end of day one in Dubai, I wanted nothing to do with the place; Too chaotic, too noisy, too strange, felt like everyone was staring at me, and I really just wanted to hide in my hotel until it was time to go back to the airport.

By the end of day two? Complete reversal; I can’t claim to understand the place, or have a handle on it, or even that it makes sense, but it’s no longer scary, and I’d like to come back.

The flight was the 17½ hour direct from Auckland to Dubai.
I’d booked the aisle seat, and I’m not regretting that choice;  Being able to get up and go for a bit of a wander, even if only to the bathroom, is a good thing on such a flight.
So is free onboard WiFi, which I took blatant advantage of by feeding different email addresses into to extend the window of free access; There are certain advantages to knowing every email address on a domain, so that you don’t use one that someone else has.
Having to get up to let Middle & Window seats out is a small price to pay, though the times that Window chose left something to be desired; Such as when the food or beverage cart was in the aisle and there was no physical way to get out of my seat which didn’t involve bouldering skills I don’t have. Or when the cart was a bit further back, so that he couldn’t get to the bathrooms anyway, the way forward being forbidden, blocked by the Curtain Of Affluence*.

(* That which prevents the viewing of Business Class. It is … Forbidden … to my people)

Slept more than I expected to, but less than I’d like.

There was a lot of walking involved once I got to to Dubai International.
To the extent that I was worried that I’d missed a sign, not turned when I should have, and was heading to the Arrivals Hall in the next Terminal, or possibly the next city. The concourse, which seemed to look down into the departure & gates area, just kept going in a mostly-straight line, punctuated with the occasional annex for toilets and baby-stroller storage.

The arrivals hall, …
OK, have you seen Fellowship of the Ring?
The bit in Moria, outside Balin’s tomb, with the enormous hall with the pillars?
It looks like that, but with better lighting, more terrazzo, and a Costa Coffee kiosk.
Oh, and a bunch of baggage conveyors.

Getting to the hotel was easy enough; I bought a travel card for the Dubai Metro, as my hotel was specifically chosen to be on a transport link, and an airport worker mistook my “reading the signs and figuring it out” for “lost tourist”, was heading in that direction anyway, so guided me.
(I was a little suspicious, so paid attention to what was going on, and while the “I’ll carry your bag for you” when transferring between trains was probably well-meant, there was no way in hell I was letting go of that handle)
I probably would have figured out the change in trains at Union Station, and the change in platforms required, but it sure was easier to just follow someone who was heading that way anyway.

Finding the hotel was easy; You can see it from the station.
Note paranoid screenshotting of local map, just in case I got lost.

Despite turning up six hours early, the nice folks at Hyatt Place Dubai/Baniyas Square found me a room right away, a nice VIP one no less, possibly to get my stinky self out of their nice clean lobby.

The View, of Baniyas Square, at around 7am.
Note almost total non-squareness of the space.

The hotel were also very apologetic that they couldn’t do free breakfast today, explained that because it’s a closed-off space it’s OK to eat there during sensible hours during Ramadan, and warned me not to eat or drink outside of the hotel.
They said I’d get a fine; Makes me wonder what it’d be like if I wasn’t white.

I showered, and I slept for a few hours.

Then I took a wander around the square, felt as though I stood out like a sore thumb, and went back to sleep for the afternoon.
My t-shirt selection, which I’m realising is entirely nerd stuff and con shirts … felt misplaced here.
Woke up for a bit at dusk, found that the idea of venturing out into the noise & chaos filled me with dread, and went back to sleep.

Day two was completely different.
I’m going to assume that sleep deprivation was not my friend when dropped into a new & very different environment, and I guess I’ll be trying to plan for that in future.

My best non-jarring option for shirts was my warm flannel shirt, which didn’t seem like the best option in a desert environment, so I went for a walk to the edge of Dubai Creek, to see how it would work.
Surprisingly well, as it turns out. The low humidity meant that the heavy fabric really didn’t matter, so I was able to wander along the quayside for a couple of kilometres without issue, though I did take the metro back. It was right there, and was airconditioned.

I’d not realised that the creek was a commercial port, if a small one.
Wooden boats which were clearly motor-driven, but also obviously built with more traditional designs in mind, are pulled up there, and the cargo get stacked & loaded & unloaded right onto the quayside. Kind of a different approach to, say, Auckland, where it’s all locked away behind fences & in containers.
The loading system here seemed to be “If you crouch down, we’ll lift it onto your back, and then steady it while you stand … OK, now go”.

With the shirt situation sorted, I went out to do Tourist Things!
Well, one tourist thing in particular – The Burj Khalifa, with an observation deck 555.7m up.

There’s a lot of view.

Also, there’s a outside deck, admittedly with very tall safely barriers, but it is open topped.

In other news, I need a beard-trim.

The haze was too great, but I’m told that somewhere out there is “The World”, still under construction.
And still looking for enormously wealthy people who want to own their own geographically representative island which they’ll only be able to access by boat, and which will be really difficult to build on because you can only access it by boat.

Pretty happy with this next one, as a picture.
The building, by the way, is Dubai Mall. All of the building, because it’s ridiculously large.

Getting to the Burj Khailifa involved a Metro ride, then a walk down a very long twisty … concourse? hallway?
I couldn’t tell at the time, but it’s an enclosed air-conditioned structure, with windows & travellators, which winds between buildings & across streets to deposit you at Dubai Mall. It’s over a kilometre long, from the look of it on Google Maps.

The mall itself is enormous. Ridiculous.
It has a waterfall.

A bit lower down on the building, there are another couple of floors of observation deck & souvenir store, with another external platform. Oddly, there’s a better sense of the building from down there, but much like Olympus Mons, you’re not really aware of the object while you’re on it. It can only be seen from a distance.

Self-portrait in mirrored window.
My combination of boots, jeans, flannel shirt & hat made me look like I was cosplaying a 2000’s Rap video.

And then there’s this.
My first … involuntary souvenir of the trip, a free gift with the elevator ticket.
I have no idea what to do with a plushy building.

In the evening, I caught up with Craig O., who I worked near at AECOM.
His desk was diagonally behind mine.
He’s living & working in Daubai, and is, from the look of it, having a fantastic time.

We had dinner over at Dubai Marina, which is rather more modern & high-end than where my hotel was.
And a great deal more expensive, I’m guessing.

And that’s it for Dubai.
Like I said, I had a complete change of heart concerning the place over the course of 48 hours, and I’m thinking that a lot of the negative impression was just being dead tired; It’s hard to be positive about anything in that state.

I think I’ll be back.
Maybe to work, because they have money, and I do like money.
And maybe to tourist, because they have a ski slope in a mall.

That said, there are clearly some downsides to the place; It’s a good idea not to get into unpayable debt, for example.
Not sure what worker health & safety is like, but I’d not be laying good odds on a robust system being in place.

Baniyas Square at probably a bit before midnight. It was less blurry in real life.

And in the morning.

Downlighting in the closet gives a certain undeserved grandeur to my hoodie.

This is probably the first hotel room I’ve ever stayed in that didn’t have Gideons Bible.
Some of them also had a Book of Mormon.
This one … Takes another path.

This interested me, from a civic point of view.

Whereas it’s the disclaimer on this one I was drawn to.
“Bears no accurate perspective to anything” is something I’d have dearly loved to tag some work with over the years.

Complimentary in the sense of no charge, not in the says nice things sense.

Checking out was mostly done the night before, so it was really only handing over my key cards that needed to happen.
Naturally, I slept crappily, so my biggest challenge was to not fall asleep at the Bus Station before the bus got there.
The Christchurch Bus Station has been designed with weather in mind. Buses pull into glassed-in little bays, automatic doors open, and the whole thing is intended to limit your exposure to the outside world.
Unless you’re on an InterCity bus; Then it’s a standard pavement & roadside loading for you, so you stay in the waiting room until you see the driver open up the big luggage hatches, and scuttle across at that point.

I’ve had better bus trips, to be honest.
Also worse.
The piped music was very loud for a while, then it was turned down, and finally off. Sadly, this allowed the two elderly ladies directly behind me to natter pretty much constantly, mostly on a theme of Anything different to how I’d do it is wrong, with a slight foray into how a person’s preference for floral shirts over solid colour, combined with his encyclopedic knowledge of female celebrities, meant that he was Trans but hadn’t admitted it yet.

I spent a lot of time sleeping & listening to podcasts.

They quietened down after Kaikoura, when one of them fell asleep, gives chance for the guy at the back with what looked like a partially completed Mongrel Mob tattoo to talk himself up a bit.
Back to napping & podcasts.

The bus damn near emptied at Blenheim, and was wonderfully quiet for the run into Picton.

Tombstone Backpackers was pretty much where I left it, which was a relief.

The Complimentary Cat greeted me with a Mra! when I opened the door, which could have been “You disturbed my nap”, “Oh, it’s you again”, or Poing’s suggestion, “I ordered a petting and lap-providing monkey hours ago! Why does room service take so long in this place?”.

And that’s pretty much how my afternoon went; Providing lap services to the Cat, until the room got cold with the windows open, and I got hungry, at which point the cat was offered an exit option & I went to ‘cook’ the can of chilli I’d been carrying around since Greymouth.
At one stage I temporarily relocated the Cat, in order to put my feet under a blanket, because it was getting cold. The Cat interpreted this as “Ooooh! A Cave!”, and this was the result.

I would be interested in finding out whether anyone has done work on, for want of a better phrase, the micro-geography of social spaces.
The kitchen at Tombstone (that was an odd thing to type) is OK in the social sense; People talk, though mostly about food, access to kitchen equipment, what on earth they did to their rice to give it the consistency of bricklayer’s cement, that sort of thing.
The dining area? Dead. Those folks who were traveling together talked, the rest … nothing.
I’m wondering whether a setup of many small round tables leads to people sitting in groups with their backs to the rest of the room, because that’s how round tables work, and the smallness of the table leads to people not sharing because they’d be right in someone’s face.

It’s just a thought, but I did notice a big difference between the Picton & Greymouth hostels in terms of dining room socialness.

I woke overly early, as one does, or at least as this one does, though I did sleep pretty well once I ditched the blanket (I’d needed it the previous time, but there were maybe more covers on the bed this time? it certainly felt heavier) , so I was showered and somewhat ready to go when the alarm went off.

I was even more ready, super extra double-plus ready, when the text from Interislander Ferries saying “Yeah, we’re running about 45 minutes late” arrived, or, as I interpreted it,”Go ahead and have a second coffee with breakfast; You’ve got time”.

The Tombstone does a complimentary breakfast, which I was never awake early enough to take advantage of last time, but was determined to have this time.
As it was, at 7:45ish, it was Me & Gary the owner/sconemaker, for this breakfast included fresh-baked scones, so we chatted a bit about where I’d been in my travels, and how the hostel was going, and which other hostels I’d been to.
It was a good chat.
And a good scone.

Could have nabbed a lift to the ferry. but I chose to walk, mostly because I get bored easily.
And it’s not like Picton is very big, or my bag is that heavy, despite how it feels.
Thus, I ambled via the Awesome Playground,

saw misc boats from the ferry terminal deck,

and got increasing suspicious about the ferry setup; There’s nowhere you can be which will let you watch the ferry dock up-close (the Aratere, at least), and the Bluebridge folks make sure you’re buttoned up before docking.
What don’t they want you to see?
What was added to the Aratere when they lengthened it?
And why are there clawmarks on the pier?

Much like Arthur’s Pass Railway Station, there was a creepy moment on the ferry.

Because there’s a gangway tube thing at the Interislander terminal, foot passengers get on board well before the vehicular ones (It was the other way around on Bluebridge), and because I was sitting close to the entryway, I was the first one on, and walked into the enormous empty lounge, which lead to empty aircraft-style seating, connecting to an empty foodcourt & an equally empty bar.
It filled up quickly … actually, it never got full, even when the group of teenagers going to the/a Stage Challenge arrived & spread themselves out over the couches … but for a while I was having thoughts of the Sapphire & Steel episode with the empty station hotel all over again. “Report On An Unidentified Space Station” would also apply, I think.

Unlike the other ferry, this one had a viewing deck up at the bow, which was kind of nice.

Within Queen Charlotte Sound, and indeed Wellington harbour, things were pretty calm; Out in Cook Strait there was an interesting pitch/roll combo going on, which mostly seemed to be there to amuse small children when the ship hit a decent roller & sent spray everywhere.

Also, there was a scone trolley.

And so, in the primitive conditions of scone trolleys, foodcourts, a bar, a movie theatre showing Batman vs. Superman, (which I skipped), and a playground for the kids, (who I think were playing at shipwrecks, which seems … fate-tempting), we made it to Wellington.

Well, not the centre of Wellington, but there’s a wee bus which took me to a somewhat familiar location.

Getting to Arthur’s Pass involved a trip through the now-standard South Island scenic grandeur, which my cellphone is not really capable of capturing, as demonstrated here;

Got in as darkness happened, which is why the other backpacker getting off at AP & I missed the wee sign saying which way to turn once you’d left the station access underpass to get to the hostel.
Robert from Germany guessed right, based on having seen some buildings that way, and turned out to be correct.

I’d booked a double room, which in the context of the YHA Arthur’s Pass apparently means a separate building, which the owner didn’t want to put me in because “it doesn’t work out”, so I ended up with a four-bed dorm to myself.
I’m assuming they have a zombie problem, and one person in an isolated building cannot maintain a proper defense.
Or it’s a Kea problem; That seems possible too.

Finding this on the notices inside the door adds further weight to my Zombie theory, though it maybe could be Kea in a Zombie suit; That can happen.

Haven’t seen a Kea, but I’m pretty sure I’ve heard them, and there was a suspiciously parrot-ish shape against the night sky.
Also, the hostel owner approved, in a loud & amused way, of my ‘food that doesn’t squish’ dinner choices.

I got overenthusiastic on the heating, it turns out.
This place has in-floor heating, and if you’re a little bit patient, it’s plenty warm enough.
The toilets & showers also have in-floor heating, though the portion of the outside world you have to pass through to get to them does not. It’s covered, so there’s no risk of being rained on, and it did rain, but it does add a certain swiftness & motivation to the walk, particularly if you forgot to put socks on.

YHA Arthur’s Pass

DOC Visitor’s Centre, with train station in the background

I got to a place of breakfast too late, and had poorly-chosen bar nachos for breakfast.
I say poorly chosen because nacho hiccups while climbing eleventy-billion steps are less than fun.
Nice scenery though.

First up was a little waterfall, the name of which entirely escapes me, but which was probably the Avalanche Creek Waterfall.
Because that’s not a portentous and doom-filled name at all.

Then there was the Devil’s Punchbowl.
The guidebook says that it’s 150 vertical metres; They don’t mention, and I think that it’s important, that this figure is what you get when you add all of the up & subtract all of the down. There were a lot of steps.

So, that happened, and I lived, though regretted the nachos.

It’s worth pointing out that, while there are “Don’t Feed The Kea” signs up, some of them, in the places closest to food-vending areas, have been vandalised in very specific ways;

It got cold at night.
Snowfall cold.

Here’s the area outside my room/the bathrooms for the outside-access rooms/the kitchen. (there’s a bit of a lawn area)

My room was the left orange door in the centre of the shot, and yes, that concrete got REALLY cold in the snow.

Though not as cold as this “Nope” picture was to take.

Naturally, I was not going to just sit there and look at the snow; If nothing else, I had the warm hat Poing Critter made me to test out. Also my merino base layer (not pictured).

This was supposed to be a picture of my Indianapolis Colts hat being artfully covered with snow. Not Sure If Working.

Looks like it’s raining.
Isn’t.

Tourists from probably Malaysia making a very little snowman.

There were a number of them, from Malaysia & Taiwan, in what looked to be multiple independent groups, out there playing in the snow. To be fair, it was the first time they’d seen it.
My excuse? Not sure; Mind of a child?

One group did ask me how to drive on snow.
They had no chains, because nobody thought they’d need them.
“Slowly and Carefully” was about the best I could do. I did advise that they talk to the folks at the DOC Visitor’s Centre, and tried to warn them about black ice, but I’m not sure they really understood.

Very warm hat is indeed very warm,

and snow-resistant!

And here’s what it looked like in the morning.

I ate breakfast outside, on the off chance that Kea would turn up, but none did.
Heard them a lot though; They sounded unimpressed with the cold.

“You’re an alpine parrot, Barry; Harden up!”
“Easy for you to say, Trev.; You haven’t got a poo frozen halfway out.”
~ long pause ~
“Barry, do you know that when you fly like that, you look like a feather duster?”

Once the sun got over the mountains, the snow more or less vanished.

And so I walked through a mostly snow-free, though still pretty damn cold, Arthur’s Pass on my way to the train.

To wait in an empty train station, clearly designed for more people than were currently using it.

With a locked & disused ticket office opposite the waiting room, with lights showing over the top of the boarded-up windows.

The only lights on inside the whole place.

‘Cause that wasn’t creepy at all.

And I certainly wasn’t thinking of that Sapphire & Steel episode with the station hotel.

Nope nope nope.