This post also got wiped. I promise I’ll go back through and add some piccies, although Gavin says most of my registered subscribers are probably spam.
I must say I couldn’t understand why I had such a big following in China.
……
Still no news from Gavin – should I be worried? Here are some notes about yesterday, also stored elsewhere in the event of data related cataclysm. I promised I wouldn’t post anything new but what the hell.
Our last day in Europe. Our flight was midafternoon but it was Ryanair, and Kirsten had watched enough airline reality shows to know we’d better aim to get to the airport early. It still gave us the morning free, so we decided to go to a famous local art gallery the Belvedere, that is housed in yet another palace. It’s most famous for its collection of Gustav Klimt paintings, including “The kiss” but not including “the woman in gold” since a famous war reparations court case in 2008. It currently lives in New York. His work overlaps with Art Nouveau which is a style I love much more than Art Deco.
We stored our luggage with Kirsten and David’s very accommodating hotel and then ubered to the gallery. It would have taken 45 minutes to walk and it was raining. We bought tickets just to the permanent collections in the upper floors but that was enough for us. I enjoyed everything up to early/mid twentieth century. Yes, I am a philistine. Anything from the 1920s onwards leaves me cold. I was surprised how much I enjoyed all of Klimt’s work, and also to see the famous propaganda portrait of Napoleon. Apparently it’s one of four versions. Also, the noble stallion he’s pictured on was actually a mule. Fake news indeed. We actually saw a mural of this picture in Fontainebleau. I guess he is still a hero to many in France.
David was very keen to have a Viennese coffee in Vienna, and a sacher torte. I’ve had a coffee that was called Viennese before, in Japan, which was like a flat white but small and with cream. Delicious. That is apparently not a thing over here unfortunately. What David wanted was coffee with whipped cream, and that’s what he got at The Golden Egg. I had one and didn’t enjoy it but the bite of sacher torte I had was fabulous. The magical ingredient is apricot jam. The Sun had come out by the time we’d had a fight with the waiter about whether we were going to tip or not (we didn’t), and having plenty of time on our hands, we walked back to the hotel.
We passed a number of young people walking into a building and were able to work out it was a group of university students starting the new year after the long summer holidays.
We got a Bolt van to the airport, after the Uber XL version kept giving us a Tesla model Y or a Prius, laughable with the amount of luggage we had. Still much cheaper than a taxi van.
We got to the airport in plenty of time, dropped off our luggage, got through security uneventfully and had lunch in the Vienna lounge, the highest rated lounge in Europe this year according to the posters, which seemed generous to me. We were all nervous about delays with passport checks, so went through that area early rather than take a risk. More than one person was having loud exchanges with the police officer in the booths and having excited conversations with third parties on their phones. However, luckily we all got through without any holdups.
Priority boarding with Ryanair is a joke. Yes, we got to the front of the queue, but that only got us onto the cramped hot bus earlier. When we reached the plane, it was only just starting to disembark the arriving passengers. While we were waiting, the next bus arrived and those passengers ended up boarding ahead of us. I was in 1A which I thought would be a good spot, but not only did it mean I had to put all my carry on into the overhead compartments, my seat was also wet and I got rained on while the rest of the passengers were boarding.
Manchester airport was busy but passport control was a doddle with E gates. There was chaos earlier in the week at Heathrow with some air traffic control glitch so we were happy to get off so lightly. While we waited for the luggage Simon went through to get the hire car. We discovered that getting out of the airport is where the trouble really begins. You have to take a heaving shuttle full of people desperately clutching their luggage, which stops at every terminal on the way to the car rental village, trying to cram on more people at each stop but inevitably leaving baffled and frustrated looking travellers behind because they won’t fit. There were also big queues of traffic trying to get into the airport. Intimidating and something to be wary of come departure day.
We managed to fit all our luggage into the big Volvo Simon had hired and drove into Liverpool which took around 75 minutes. David was on navigation assistance, I was glad to be in the back as the drive was stressful, Simon having to remember to drive on the left on top of everything else. Luckily he excels in this sort of situation.
We’re staying at the Hilton which is way less glamorous than I was expecting. In fact it’s positively tired looking inside. The parking is limited to around ten spots out side reception, which cost £30 a day if you can find one.
Went to a late dinner at one of the many restaurants at the nearby renovated docklands which was more than adequate, then to bed.