Travel – Page 17 – Ian Louis Harris

China (Beijing, Yunnan and Sanya), Touring In Beijing Then On To Kunming, 5 April 2010

Both slept well.
Packed and took breakfast at DuGe – quirky & good in parts. Peppery sausages were nice.

Sophie met us and took us off to see the Olympic stadium (birds nest) and then on to Chinese medicine centre.

We met lecturer Doctor Hu (you couldn’t make it up) who told us all about it and insisted that Ged must be Shakespeare reincarnated.

Dr Hu also arranged for some trainees to massage our feet and for an aged professor to tell us what ails us & sell us some very expensive Chinese medicine cocktails, which we politely declined.

Hardly able to walk now (okay I made up that last bit) we wandered to back to the car and headed off to 798 district – art complex formally factories.

Some very interesting some not so interesting but all a great atmosphere.
Took some refreshments at an outdoor café, then off to the airport.
First class flight Kunming – service excellent, food terrible.

Met by Martin “Mr Fixit” who insists I look like a movie star he cannot name – Lucien from Underworld – that’s Michael Sheen.

Kind words, Martin – in my dreams I look like him – click the picture to see the fandom wiki

Took us to surprisingly splendid Green Lake Hotel and even hung around to help us order our dinner.
Ate some local style pork and Cantonese chicken, gai lan and rice washed down with a very palatable Montepulciano.

There is a placeholder and links piece for this trip, with links to all the photographs, the full itinerary and stuff – click here for that.

China (Beijing, Yunnan and Sanya), A First Class Journey & Arrival In Beijing, 3 & 4 April 2010

We were very keen to see a rural and scenic part of China; Yunnan Province seemed to fit the bill. We’d also seen little of Beijing on our first visit to China, which in any case had been so long ago.

Squeezing A Heck Of A Lot Into One Day In Beijing – Including Making The Holiday Inn Beijing Go Pop, 17 November 1993

The journey was a bit of a contrast too.

Got ready at leisure – the cab wasn’t due until 1400 in any case. But the cab didn’t show – blind panic!
Arranged a local cab and we set off 25 minutes later than intended – good job there was no traffic.
Got through procedures pretty quickly – fast track and all – went to Dixons where Ged splashed the cash on a new camera and accessories.
Then to club lounge where we learnt that we have been upgraded to 1st class. Snacked at smaller “club lounge” by gate. Then boarded.
Plane slightly delayed at this point but with three staff attending to the three first class passengers the journey passed remarkably quickly.
Ged watched Sex & Drugs & Rock’n’Roll. Daisy same plus several other movies.

Toni Friend, who worked for BA, had helped us to get a good price on Club Class tickets. She then went the extra distance for us and got us upgraded to first class – our only ever experience of flying first class. Extremely luxurious and pampering it was; quite unsettlingly so in fact. But a super kind treat and it is nice to have done it once.

Arrived in Beijing on time – huge airport. Much changed in 16/17 years.
Met by guide Sophie and taken to DuGe Courtyard Hotel [a beautiful Hutong]– very nice.
Go through mandatory room change/upgrade procedures followed by room safe failure procedures too. In the midst of all this go for a stroll around the Hutong district, in particular walk Nanluogu Xiang a few times, partly in vain search of recommended restaurant.

Return to enjoy new room (suite) and a beer on our stoop which looks out onto the lovely courtyard.

Slept plenty in the afternoon, then fiddle around with camera and water system. Bath and get recommendation from hotel for a local restaurant.
End up at home your roast duck restaurant. Unprepossessing to look at but superb meal for a tenner plus unexpected tip – certainly a local place! Very tired on return.

There is a placeholder and links piece for this trip, with links to all the photographs, the full itinerary and stuff – click here for that.

Tennis at hotel Moulin d’Hauterive – an aside, 1 to 5 September 2009

An aside about tennis during our short Burgundy break with Tony and Phillie – the main piece can be found here.

One of the reasons we booked the Moulin d’Hauterive was because it boasted a tennis court amongst its amenities.

Janie and I have travelled far and we have travelled wide. Our tennis rackets and balls have travelled long distances with us. Occasionally the tennis courts we find at the hotels are not quite up to the standards we are used to at home, not that we have always played on very high standards of surfaces at home either. We are leisure players.

For example, we enjoyed the tennis court at the Zenobia Cham Palace Hotel in Palmyra in 1997 despite its idiosyncrasies – I don’t suppose it is up to much any more of course – point is, we make allowances.

But the tennis court at Moulin d’Hauterive almost defies description. Had the Burgundy region recently suffered a major war or a series of natural disasters of the earthquake and hurricane variety, the cracked, moonscape-like surface and the intermittence of the perimeter netting might have been explicable.

But this didn’t look like the result of a recent disaster. It looked like decades of neglectful, distressed gentility.

On challenge, the rather haughty proprietor’s son (who had sniffly advised us, when I asked about choosing wine to go with the specific food we had ordered, simply that the more expensive bottles were always the better ones) mumbled indifferently that the court was indeed due for some repairs soon.

We played each day. It is difficult to describe the game we played as tennis in the modern sense, but it was some form of a game with rackets and balls, plus we used the tennis scoring system. But in truth it was more of a range hitting game, where we aimed for the smooth if we wanted to perpetuate a rally or aimed for the rough if we wanted a laugh.

Memorable is probably the best adjective for it.

I note that hotel Moulin d’Hauterive no longer boasts the tennis court amongst its amenities. What a pity.

A Few Days in Burgundy With Tony and Phillie, 1 to 5 September 2009

I had to do some serious detective and memory work on this short trip to Burgundy, as I didn’t keep a journal.

Here is an extract from an e-mail from “Auntie Janet” at Ultimate Travel:

I think you are best to fly to Lyon, which is about 2 hours/86 miles from the hotel.

The flights are as follows:

01 Sept. BA 360 Depart Heathrow 08.40 Arrive Lyon 11.15

05 Sept. BA 363 Depart Lyon 19.25 Arrive Heathrow 20.00

…small automatic hire car, Citroen C3 or similar…will be on request if you want to go ahead and they can be quite scarce.

Darn right about scarcity – we ended up needing to reacquaint ourselves with a stick shift for that trip.

We ended up booking this hotel, Moulin d’Hauterive. It boasted a pool and a tennis court. The tennis court was an interesting wreck, I remember, variable bounce, varying between “in yer face” and non-existent, like playing real tennis except without walls, galleries and roofs. I have written a short aside on the tennis – here.

Tony and Phillie were going to be on a driving all the way to South of France holiday late August. The idea was for us to join them in a nice spot mid-France as they wended their way back to Blighty. Once we’d booked, I wrote:

We fly in to Lyon late morning on the Tuesday, so should arrive at the hotel some time mid afternoon if all goes to plan. Suspect we might get there before you unless you leave early and put your foot down.

The hotel restaurant does not open on Wednesdays and the nearest alternative is some 15 kms away from the hotel. We might want to try that alternative place or we might want to arrange a picnic for the Wednesday! We can decide all that when we are there, but thought you ought to know this vital fact.

We did indeed arrive some time before them on the Tuesday, 1 September. Janie got busy making sure that we (and Tony/Phillie) had the best available rooms, which got us off to an interesting start with the son of the proprietor, whose name escapes me and is absent from the website. Sonny took pains to tell us that he had worked in advertising in Paris for many years, before reluctantly agreeing to retreat and help run the family business when it got a bit harder for his parents. The parents were noticeably absent throughout our stay.

I recall that we did indeed eat in the hotel with Tony and Phillie on the Tuesday and the Thursday evening. The food was very good there. The wine pricey but that’s Burgundy for you. I also recall us going into Beaune on the Wednesday evening and having a very pleasant meal in the town. Tony decided to drive in the end, after we toyed with the idea of getting taxis too and fro.

We mostly just all relaxed together for two-and-a-half to three days. Tony and Phillie set off for home Friday morning; we’d booked the extra night.

Tony and Phillie both looked at us quizzically before they headed off when the answer to their question, “what are you going to do after we leave today?” was, “we’re going to the Bresse service station for lunch”. Our culinary service station quest was largely a result of reading this article by aptronym extraordinaire Heston Blumenthal.

We did also want to see Beaune…

…and Bourg-en-Bresse, but the most important bit was to eat lunch at the Bresse service station, where they serve poulet-de-Bresse and yes indeed it was wonderful food.

After lunch, we strolled around and found a nice music shop (I think in Bourg, not Beaune) where I bought some very good CDs, not least Jean-Guihen Queyras’s Complete Bach Cello Suites (we have subsequently seen him perform at the Wigmore Hall – click here). We also bought some well-cool Paris Jazz CDs, which Janie still plays when she is feeling in a suitably continental mood.

When we got back, the weather had perked up, so we played tennis and relaxed around the pool. I was reading Life Beyond the Airing Cupboard by John Barclay – a seriously good book btw.

King Cricket published my book review of Life Beyond The Airing Cupboard in October 2017 – click here or the above photo.

If anything were ever to happen to the King Cricket site, a scrape of that review can be found here.

We didn’t take many photos on that trip; indeed I think none until after Tony and Phillie had gone. In truth, Phillie was not very well by then (it turned out to be Phillie’s last holiday) and I don’t think she much fancied being photographed. The few pictures we did take are of Beaune and of me and Janie relaxing when we got back from our poulet-de-Bresse quest – on this small album going forward from the starting point.

Dartmouth With the Worms, 17 to 20 April 2009

It seemed like a lovely idea for Janie, her sisters and the husbands/significant other to gather for a long weekend somewhere nice. We settled on The Dart Marina in Dartmouth. Very nice.

We gathered on the Friday as the afternoon went on. I think Janie and I got there first, obviously, as we had by far the furthest to travel. We all agreed/decided that the pub adjoining (part of, really) the hotel would be our best bet that first night. It was old-fashioned fish and chips type food, done very well.

On the Saturday, Phillie, Tony, Hils and Chris had planned a pootle around town while Janie and I went off to meet our friends Nigel and Viv (who then lived in Totnes) for lunch – more pub grub.

This time we took it easy a bit, though, as we knew we had a big meal planned for the evening in the hotel’s posh restaurant:

If it looks as though we spent most of the weekend eating and drinking…well you’re not entirely wrong. But that was about to change.

The Sunday plan was for Phillie and Tony to do a bit of gentle shopping while Chris, Hils, me and Janie did a proper walk. Chris and I planned the walk and off we set up the hill. Hils (no aptronym here) started protesting vigorously that we must be going the wrong way as we were walking far too much up hill. Now despite my spatial and directional challenges, I am quite good at plotting routes on maps. Moreover, Chris works for Ordnance Survey and is a specialist map guy.

In short, I think we were going in precisely the right direction, while Hils was barking up the wrong tree.

Still, once we explained the plan to her, which included descending to a lovely sounding village with a pub, she calmed down and cheered up.

By the time we got to the pub, Hils was a convert to this walking thing and has undertaken many walking holidays since. Must be to do with the pubs…I mean the exercise.

In the above photo, I’m sporting a West Indies ground staff tee-shirt from Nigel and Viv’s recent sortie to the Caribbean (was it Antigua or Barbados, I forget?) with Charlie and Dot. When I sported the tee-short again in front of Charlie later that summer, it had the desired effect (intense and voluble envy).

That evening we ate in the third of the Dart Marina’s restaurants – the bistro -style one, which we decided was possibly the nicest of the three for our purposes, not least because the weather smiled on us enough to enable us to eat outside under the patio heaters. There was some debate about meal timing and whether or not Chris and I could choose the wines we wanted to pay for rather than the house wine that Hils insists is always adequate. The photographic evidence (below) suggests that, for once, Hils didn’t get her way:

There are other photographs from that trip – click here for the Flickr set, but in truth they are for completists/connoisseurs – the ones that tell the tale are included in this posting.

Provence & St Tropez, 22 To 29 April 2008, placeholder and links

This was a bit of an unusual week away for us. Kim had been persistently asking us to join her and friends in St Tropez for her birthday for a few years. We’d insisted that we didn’t think that St Tropez would be “our thing”. She wondered how we could judge such a thing without giving it a try.

So, our cunning plan to please everyone including ourselves was to arrange a fly-drive week in the South of France, initially doing our own thing for a few days…

and then joining up with Kim, Micky and others in “San-trop”.

Auntie Janet at Ultimate Travel helped us to construct our itinerary but I cannot find any papers from her, only this quote from her e-mail/invoice:

French Expressions holidays including flights;

Automatic car hire throughout and three nights accommodation

in a Junior Suite at L’Auberge du Chateau de Berne on a bed

and breakfast basis

So, in brief, we flew to Nice and picked up a car for our week in France. We stayed three nights at the delightful Chateau de Berne Hotel and Spa.

We did a bit of touring…

…together with a lot of resting, wining and dining; three nights there. Lovely sun deck for reading; great to try their wines and we even played some ping pong (Daisy’s favourite, because she normally wins).

Then on to St Tropez for four nights at the Tahiti Beach Hotel…

…where Kim and Micky regularly stay. We arrived the day before the others, so played tennis and then ate at a Vietnamese restaurant named Bahn Hoi, recommended by Anthea. Very nice but also very pricey. That’s St Tropez for you.

Next day we have an early morning snoop around the market…

…then finally meet up with Kim and Micky for lunch at Tahiti that day.

We worked off the lunch on the tennis court. Dinner that evening is at Villa Romana, with Robert, Fiza and their son/girlfriend too. A very fashionable place but it is heaving and displeases me; food ordinary apart from the price:

Next day, we played tennis in the morning. Indeed, we played tennis at Tahiti on the tennis court there a few times. Not the best surface we have ever played on, but far from the worst. As our short stay went on, we found it harder and harder to play tennis for an hour; a cautionary tale for all of us.

Same gang as last night for lunch at Tahiti; then after siesta an evening at a St Tropez nightclub, Stefano Forever.

I was dreading this one but actually it was more fun. As it was pre-season, the show was a tryout and we were the only guests, so we got to have a lot of fun as audience participation could only be us…

…and we were the only possible invitees to the after show party…

…Janie even tried her hand at pole dancing…of sorts…

…she got a wee bit better at it remarkably quickly when she actually took up pole dancing some 10 years later:

…but I digress.

The final day was Kim’s actual birthday. Despite the excesses of the night before, lunch between the four of us (the Robert Anthony family, perhaps knowing the score, made themselves scarce that lunchtime) was a boozy and celebratory affair:

Indeed, after siesta Janie swore that she couldn’t make it to the arranged dinner for six of us (son and girlfriend were gone by now) at L’Auberge de Maures, but then changed her mind. In this photo, I look almost as rough as I felt.

In truth, our view that this sort of eating and drinking extravaganza is not really our thing was reinforced by this trip, but we made Kim happy for her birthday that year and at least we can now say we’ve tried it.

Lots more photos, including those above, in this Flickr album, but surely more for the cognoscenti (i.e. those who were there) than for general consumption. I probably can construct a few good tales from the trusty journal once I get around to it; for now here is the indecipherable scribblings: Provence and St Tropez April 2008 Journal Notes.

Barcelona, Northern Spain and Rioja, 10 to 19 March 2008, placeholder and links

This short break visiting several places in Spain emerged from a very simple idea; that it would nice to visit nephew Paul while he was temporarily living and working in Barcelona; a good excuse also to “take that town”.

Then we thought about our desire to see Santiago de Compostela after hearing the wonderful music in this concert…

…and our desire to see the Guggenheim in Bilbao…and we’d heard that Santander is nice…and also those wonderful reports we’d read about Rioja and the new boutique hotel and the Marquis de Riscal winery…

…the result was an out of character 10 day whistle-stop break. We wouldn’t do it at that pace any more, but we had a great time and there will be plenty of good individual pieces to dredge out from my trusty journal notes and brain, when I get around to it. Download/try to read my scrawl if you dare.

Barcelona, Northern Spain, Rioja March 2008 Journal Notes

Or if you are an itinerary-ista instead, here’s the itinerary, produced with care by Ultimate Travel/Kirker’s “Auntie Janet”: March 2008 Barcelona, Northern Spain and Rioja.

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On 15 March, we went to the Guggenheim in Bilbao before setting off for Santander. We saw an excellent surrealism exhibition and more besides (programme retained). We took some good pictures of outdoor exhibits too.

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Indeed we took a lot of photos for a 10 day break in Europe, divided into three mini Flickr albums

At Riscal in Rioja, we found this wonderful deli in the village…

…where we bought Iberico ham for our Easter gathering soon after our return. Not the most kosher idea we’ve ever had, but there you go.

Berlin, 26 to 30 October 2007, placeholder and links

Berlin had been on our list for some time and we hadn’t taken one of these short city breaks for a while, so a late October slot ahead of the pre-Christmas madness seemed like an excellent idea. It was.

This was another job for “Auntie Janet” of Ultimate Travel fame. All done by e-mail – how wonderfully modern.

Further to our telephone conversations today, I confirm that Kirker Holidays could arrange a four night holiday to Berlin for you staying at the Brandenburger Hof Hotel in a de luxe room for four nights on a bed and buffet breakfast basis. They can also book the following British Airways flights for you:

26 October BA 982 Depart Heathrow: 08.55 Arrive Berlin: 11.40
30 October BA 985 Depart Berlin: 16.25 Arrive Heathrow: 17.20

You will also be met at the airport and taken to the hotel and transferred from the hotel to the airport on 30th October.

Sounded good to me. Further correspondence booked a restaurant table and a chance to see a concert. Me to Janet:

Please confirm booking for hotel’s amazing restaurant 26 October as originally requested and please also book the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra concert for evening 27 October.

…but we’d left it too late for the Rattle/Berlin Phil. Me again:

Shame about the Rattle concert. Can you please instead book us for the Akademie fur Alte Musik Berlin concert at 16:00 on the Sunday, 28th October. Hopefully there’ll be good tickets remaining for that concert.

There were; it was wonderful to see them play at home. I’ll write up the concert when I get around to fleshing out my notes etc. from this short trip.

Interestingly, these phone calls and e-mail exchanges with Auntie Janet started about five weeks before dad’s demise (so indeed before we knew that anything was badly wrong with him) and concluded just a couple of weeks after he died. I don’t recall how I felt about this at the time, but Janie and I must have decided that we’d need the break by then and I’m sure that decision was the right one.

Here is the hand-written journal, with only some fairly duff scanning possible from that particular notebook, so good luck to you if you try to read this: Berlin October 2007 Journal Notes. There’ll be a few good yarns once I write these up.

Here is a link to photos on Flickr; some interesting, some wacky, some neither, some both.

Cuba and Jamaica, Placeholder and Links, 17 February to 9 March 2007

Janie and I took this great trip to the Caribbean in early 2007.

We used Abercrombie and Kent as the agent for this one – at that time it was hard to find an agency well geared up to do Cuba in an interesting way – A&K’s ideas were top notch – click here to see our itinerary.

I kept loads of notes and shall write up the events from those notes in the fullness of time. For now, here are links to the notes for those who can deal with exotic cyphers:

Lots of great photos split into five Flickr albums – click on the image for each album to view the pics:

Lunch At La Guarida, Havana, 1 March 2007

Janie was very keen to try the famous paladar, La Guarida, in Havana and had been much frustrated by our inability to get in, even for lunch, while we were in Havana in mid February.

So, before leaving Havana to tour other parts of Cuba, we booked ahead; a lunch at La Guarida for our action packed last day in Cuba before flying off to Jamaica that evening. Not the way we would have chosen to do it, perhaps, but as it turned out a very memorable and successful day.

Is that a happy face chowing down or what?

But when I say memorable, what I mean is that we both remember the event so well. The name, La Guarida, for some reason keeps evading us both whenever we try to remember the name. I can remember that it was in the film Fresa Y Chocolat – you’d have thought it was easier to remember the name of the restaurant…

…anyway, this is what I wrote about the first half of that day – the Havana/La Guarida half:

Despite the late night we both rise early so we take a pretty ordinary breakfast and then (after a short aborted attempt to get money and water) we head towards Old Town, buying water and changing money on the way.

We have a quick look at the Cathedral and then the Museum of Colonial Art. We try to see the Wilfred Lam Museum but it is closed for refurbishment, so we visit the Taller Experimental instead & see etching turned into print and buy the pressing from it (from Pedro Redonet).

Back to hotel for tepid, feeble shower (water problems) & then “checkout” & get cab to La Guarida paladar for the last and best meal of our holiday in Cuba.

Ged started with marinated fish in a subtle herb dressing with avocado & tomato. Daisy started with tuna in sweet pepper with a creamy, tomatoey sauce.

Mains of grouper (Daisy) and swordfish with seafood sauce (Ged). Dessert of Fresa Y Chocolat ice cream (naturally as that film was filmed here).

Lingered over coffee and looked around the tenement-like building before strolling back to hotel.

Tiny place, tiny kitchen back then:

Would you like the tenement roof view or the tenement roof view, sir?

Busman’s holiday for Daisy, this tenement, if she sticks around

If you want to see more pictures and or look up other parts of this holiday, there is a placeholder and links page – click here or below:

Cuba and Jamaica, Placeholder and Links, 17 February to 9 March 2007

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