Category: Travel

Airports

I always get anxious about air travel. It’s not the flying so much, it’s everything else. Getting to the airport, killing time while there, the unintelligible announcements. The whole kit and kaboodle.

That said, I also find it impossible to be less than two hours early if I’m traveling alone.

I’m writing this sitting in the sun at Chopin airport in Warsaw a good three hours before my flight leaves.

The museum I had planned to visit to kill some time was mostly closed, a fact that Google maps was unaware of.

Time for some Tea.

 

The night sky

Spending the weekend on lake Pokegama (Po- Keg-Ama, not Pokey-Gamma) in  Grand Rapids gave a nice opportunity to get some really dark skies for astronomy and astrophotography. The first evening was overcast until well past my bed-time. The second evening was pretty special.

Around 10pm, the milky way was glowing overhead,  the constellations were hard to pick out as there were many more background stars than a London based sky-watcher normally sees.

Ursa Major & Minor
Ursa Major & Minor

I took some photographs, of course. The settings were 18mm focal length, infinity focus, 20sec exposure time, and remote control shutter release (to avoid camera shake).

Continue reading The night sky

Amsterdam.

The flight from Southend Airport to Amsterdam Schiphol is surprisingly quick. Barely have you got comfortable in the seat with your book open, and easyjet have given up trying to sell you bacon rolls, and you’re about to land again.

We stayed in an Airbnb place in the Emmastraat area of Amsterdam, a 4th floor single room flat alongside a canal and a couple of very nice bars, the city centre being a 20 min tram ride, or a 45 min stroll though Vondlepark, away.

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The Rijksmuseum was still closed when we visited, and the Van Gogh Museum had relocated the paintings to the Hermitage instead. There is a 2-4h queue for tickets at the Hermitage in the day time, but you can buy tickets at the at the Van Gogh Museum with next to no queue and walk right in to the exhibition at the Hermitage. It’s well worth the 15 euros or so for entry.
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The flower market is a bit subdued at the moment because of the cold. Blubs and seeds are available to buy, but there were very few fresh flowers.

The public library is excellent, really really excellent. It has a very nice restaurant on the top floor too. Good freshly cooked food and wonderful cakes. They can make a half-decent cup of Tea too.
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Also worth seeing at the botanic gardens, a well welcome warm stop on a cold snowy day and the Van Loon canal house museum – the coach house in the garden makes for a very impressive shed.

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Three days wasn’t enough time to really see as much as we wanted, will definitely go back when the weather improves and the other museums are open again.