Category Archives: Around the World 94

Canterbury, 1994

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I took lousy notes during our four weeks in London in December 1994, so I can’t remember exactly when it was we took a day trip to Canterbury. It wasn’t December 1, because that day I saw a revival of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie somewhere in the West End, and after the show the lead actress made an appeal for donations to fund AIDS research, since it was World AIDS Day.

We went to Canterbury sometime early in the month, and we had a pleasant walk around the town and a long look at the cathedral, which is off in the distance in this picture — one of the few I took there.

I think the closer ruins are what’s left of St. Augustine’s Abbey, which Henry VIII put on the road to ruin. The grass looks strangely green for December, but I remember that December in southern England wasn’t very cold at all, to the wonder of people who lived there year-round.

Better pictures of the cathedral and the ruins and other places nearby can be found at the fine Saints and Stones web site.

Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood

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October became more October-like today, at least the way that month is usually felt in these Northern Hemisphere latitudes. Cool and clear, in other words. A fine day to take the dog for a long walk around one of the small lakes at the Poplar Creek Forest Preserve, in fact the lake in the third picture here (and we wandered under that vast old willow in the picture, too).

My experience of early October in St. Petersburg, Russia, was a lot colder. The place felt positively Decemberish. That didn’t stop Russians, or us, from strolling down Nevsky Prospekt, though it did persuade us not to buy any frozen treats from vendors. Ordinary Russians, on the other hand, seemed quite fond of eating ice cream on the street when the temperatures were barely above freezing.

At the meeting of Nevsky Prospekt and the Griboyedov Canal, the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood appears, just a few blocks away.

Naturally, we had to take a closer look at the church. Its exterior is splendid up close, but I’m sorry to report that it was still closed in 1994. According to the church’s Wiki article in English, the building didn’t reopen until about three years later, following significant restoration. I’m not sure I knew it at the time — even though the information must have been my guidebook — that it was built on the site where Tsar Alexander II was assassinated in 1881.

Lombok

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Not long ago I saw the first 15 minutes or so of Hercules in New York, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s first movie. I soon decided that I didn’t need to see any more, for the usual reasons (life’s too short, who’s going to give me those 91 minutes back?, etc.) In the age of YouTube, watching all of a bad movie isn’t necessary anyway, because you can watch the likes of this.

If you’re interested in a fittingly puerile review of the movie, there’s always this.

According to the imdb, the movie was made in 1969, released in early 1970. I wonder if anyone watching the movie in the theater had any inkling that the muscleman on the screen would ever be, say, the governor of a major U.S. state. Of course they didn’t.

Lombok was an interesting place. Drier than Bali, but still fairly green. This view near the town of Kuta, on the south coast of the island, shows the greenery.

We arrived on July 31, 1994, and stayed a few days. One of the persistent clichés about the island was that it’s “not as spoiled” as Bali, which wasn’t remotely spoiled, as in ruined by its popularity. Bali shrugs her lovely shoulders and the visitors pass through.

Still, that sentiment was in guidebook print, and I heard people talk that way, including one woman who was persuaded that the further east you traveled in the Lesser Sunda – Lombok, Sumbawa, Flores, and so on. — the better. I couldn’t say for sure, since we didn’t make it any further east than Lombok. But maybe she was just romanticizing poverty.

Tiger Hill, Suzhou

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We visited Tiger Hill in Suzhou in April 1994. I took no notes about it, only a few pictures (to the right is the pagoda on the hill). But through the magic of the Internet — very low-grade magic, these days — I can pull up a description that’s a good stab at English by someone who’s first language is something else (some brand of Chinese, no doubt), but ultimately awkward.

The writer’s also probably fond enough of Tiger Hill to write about it in Wiki for the English-speaking world see read about it.

All text is sic: “According to the Historical Records, the Wu King Helu was buried on the hill, called then ‘the Hill Emerging from the Sea’. The legend goes that three days after his burial a white tiger appeared squatting on the hill. Hence the name. It has an elevation of over 30 m. and covers about 49.41ac. Tiger Hill boasts impressive rocks, deep dales, 3 matchless scenes, 9 suitable occasions for enjoyment, 18 scenic spots, and changing scenery at all times. No wonder it has been an awe-inspiring sight in the area south of the Lower Yangtze.

“The Yunyan Temple Pagoda and the Sword Pool are well-known features of the hill. With a history going back more than 1,000 years, the simple, archaic and imposing Yunyan Temple Pagoda, also known as the Second Leaning Tower on earth, stands aloft at the top of the hill, serving as a symbol of ancient Suzhou for years.

“The Tomb of the Wu King Helu under the Sword Pool has remained an unsolved mystery for two and a half millennia. The story goes that the great Jin master Wang Xizhi traded his calligraphy for lovable geese from the Taoist Abbot. And the windy vale and cloudy spring make the visitor reluctant to leave.”

Skyfall

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Cold days, cold nights. I’d say winter’s just about here, but I haven’t managed to spot Orion in the sky just yet. Then again, skies were mostly overcast when I took out the trash last night, except for a hazy, nearly full moon.

I looked at the imdb entry for Skyfall today and under the subsection “External Reviews” there were 440 links. Under the category “News stories,” there are 5,010 listed. So I doubt that I can add anything about the movie. Yuriko and I saw it on Saturday, while Lilly and Ann saw Wreck-It Ralph at roughly the same time. That was at Ann’s request, and Lilly went along with her at our request. I had little interest in Wreck-It Ralph, since I’m content to leave arcade video games in the past.

Skyfall is a deft piece of entertainment, everything a Bond movie needs to be and then some. Not only that, some of it is flat-out gorgeous, such as the title sequence, and when Bond and an assassin are fighting to the death in a Shanghai skyscraper.

Speaking of Shanghai: the establishing spots drove home the point that there’s been a lot of development since we were there in 1994. Of course, establishing shots can distort the reality of a place, but I think in this case Shanghai has been practically re-created since then. (But I’m glad to see that the storied Astor House Hotel, where we stayed, has been renovated rather than destroyed.)

I recognized Hashima Island, which is actually Japanese territory, but passed off in the movie as somewhere not too far from Macao. Not because I’ve been there, but because I’d read about it some years after I left Japan. It’s a ghost town that happens to be on a small island.