Dwayne Hodgson

A Portfolio

The work and adventures of Dwayne Hodgson,
+ Learning Designer & Facilitator at learningcycle.ca
+ Storyteller & Photographer @ thataway.ca

Travel by Map #8: France

June 1 to July 15 2015 /
France + two short séjours in Switzerland & Spain

We followed a rather eclectic itinerary in France, but covered over 3,300 km by TGV (high speed train), regular train, metro subway, rental car, funicular (up Mont Blanc!), ferry boat, bus, chairlifts, bicycle, surfboards, and in the end unfortunately, by skateboard.....and then ambulance....

The latter necessitated a slight change of itinerary: instead of leaving from Madrid, we headed north to Bordeaux to catch a flight home, courtesy of our travel insurance company.

Les adventures françaises

June 30 to July 9 / Cauterets, Lourdes & Capbreton, France

The last few weeks in France were spent doing a few more typical touristy past-times, including:

Hiking in the Pyrénees

We stayed in Cauterets, a winter ski resort and site of a recent Tour de France stage. From there we hiked in the Pyrenees National Park at the Pont d'Espagne, and the Cirque de Gavarnie.


Pilgrimaging to Lourdes

While making a one-night stop at Lourdes, we visited the Our Lady of Lourdes pilgrimage site. Although we are not Catholic, it was still very moving to see the thousands of people coming there with their prayers and ailments and to hear the prayers spoken in so many languages.

 

Surfing in Capbreton

Our friend in Paris recommended staying in Capbreton at her friends' surf hostel. Although we are not surfers, we were game to try and signed up for some lessons. It was surprisingly  hard, although the waves there were great.

Full disclosure: these pictures below of pro surfers are not us! But rather, they represent what we were aspiring to do. To be honest, after an hour of lessons, we had all just managed to stand up on the board, if only for a few seconds.

So I thought that I should practice a bit on a skateboard before our next lesson.....

 

Navigating the French Healthcare System

Not a good idea, as it turned out.

Once I saw the second elbow on my right wrist, I realized that my trip was over. The paramedic gave me some ice during the 24 km ride to a clinic in Bayonne, but it was 4 hours until the doctors put me under to reduce the fracture. I woke up with this splint and a sinking feeling.

Three nights, some new French vocabulary, and miles of red tape later, we were medivaced via Bordeaux, Amsterdam and Toronto to Ottawa.

Now i am experiencing the thrills and chills of the Ontario healthcare system, both as I await my own surgery and because Isaac also fell and broke his wrist once we were back in Ottawa!

Quite the crash landing, indeed! Still i am glad that this only happened during our last week of our trip, and that we only ended up missing the last 6 days of our planned itinerary. 

Une petit séjour en Suisse

June 8 to 13, 2015 / Near Geneva and therabouts

After a week in Paris, we decided to accept an invitation from our friends, Ralph & Louise, to visit them near Geneva, Switzerland. Geneva is in the southwest corner of Switzerland that juts out into France, and by rights it probably should have been French were it not for the Swiss have a somewhat stubborn, independent mindset.  

The Swiss have consented, however, to be included in the European Union's Schengen Area , so there is no official passport control or border crossing post. In fact, the only thing that told us that we had entered Switzerland was a sudden set of speed bumps and a traffic attendant asking us for 50 Euros (about 40 Swiss Francs)  for the annual highway tolls sticker. Sigh. Not an expense that we had planned on for a 5-day visit. But then again, the roads were excellent. 

Geneva was the temporal home of John Calvin, and it now hosts the headquarters of a number of well-respected international organizations -- although not FIFA, that's in Zurich. The city is also so perfectly laid out and orderly that you'd be afraid to cast a shadow in the wrong place.  I think that they may have a law against that, come to think of it. 

Given our short stay, we only really saw a small area near Lac Léman (more commonly known as Lake Geneva due to its Smoke on the Water cameo). We made a pilgrimage to Gruyère, did a few short day hikes, and visited Mont Blanc Chamonix to see what's left of the ever-shrinking Mer de Glace. 

The little that we saw of Switzerland was stunning, so I'd definitely like to go back some day, Inch'Allah / D.V to do some more hiking and skiing. Time for a new bucket list, I guess. And maybe time for me to get hired by FIFA (and open a Swiss bank account) so I can afford to visit there again. 

 

 

Des photos

Here are a few pictures that I took in Switzerland. As always, please click on the thumbnails to see them in a larger format.  

Une semaine parisienne

 

June 1 to 8, 2015 / Paris, France

After our visit to the Moederland, we made our way down to the City of Lights.

Like London, Paris is a city that you think that you know because at every turn there is either a massive monument or an iconic building that you' swear that you've seen before -- now If only there was a French expression for that... 

Of course to find art galleries on every corner, view scenic vistas down the river, or to just try and look chic with a cup of coffee on a sidewalk cafe, this is where you want to be.

While here, we managed to visit:

We also managed to stroll down the Champs-Élysées, take a walk through the Tulleries Gardens, command a toy sail boat in the Luxembourg Gardens, and take a sunset cruise on the Seine. All pretty touristy stuff, I know, but it was amazing to see it finally. 

We also enjoyed a nice visit with Jennifer, a schoolmate of mine, and her family in Jointville-le-Pont, a suburb just outside Paris proper. It was so lovely to have a quiet place to retreat to at the end of the day, and our kids enjoyed hanging out with her two children, Theo and Dominique. Thanks again. 
 

Des Photos, SVP!

Voici des photos de notre visite à Paris. Cliquez sur chaque thumbnail à voir un plus grand image. 

Travel by Map #7: The Netherlands

May 11 to June 1, 2015

We did a lot of to-ing and fro-ing by bike, train, bicycle, hand-cranked ferry boat, car, bicycles, bus, tram, canal boat, and in Zoe's case, by horse. It's a bit hard to guesstimate, but we probably covered something like 1,200 km once you add in the side trips.

And this being the Netherlands, a good portion of our time was spent below sea level. 

Winding Our Way Through the Netherlands

 

May 22- 30, 2015 / Vianen, & Hoogeven, The Netherlands & Sneek, Friesland.

Our kids are ¾ Dutch,* so one goal of this trip was for them to see where their people come from in the Netherlands. 

We started by meeting up with Dwayne’s family, who all came over from Canada.  What a joy to see family after months away from home.  We biked around the little villages in Gelderland where my mother-in-law grew up, and we even had coffee with the people who are living in the house where she was born.  Lovely.  

After a brief stop in Amsterdam, we visited my father's side of the family. We first stayed with my cousins, Frank & Elly, Henk, Lisanne, and Gerwin, and then my Aunt Jannie & Uncle Henk.  Our kids fell in easily with their second cousins – skipping, playing with a remote control mini-drone, and doing some more cycling.  And then we met up with my dad in Sneek, ("Snake") Friesland and he showed us around where he grew up.

My dad, Frederick Wind, was born to a family with 13 children, but he was the only one to move to Canada.  So I grew up knowing that I had a dozen uncles and aunts in the NL, umpteen cousins and various other relations.  I used to think I must be related to at least a quarter of the population of Friesland.  So it was not surprising that the neighbours living next door to our Air BnB in Friesland turned out to be "Wind's".  Sounds like our grandfathers were cousins.  Ha!

We also saw all my aunts and uncles at the 100th birthday party for my dad’s oldest sister, Nellie.  I loved watching my 97-year-old shuffle forward with her walker, and bend over every so slowly to give her big sister a kiss.  Zoe did a great job at the mouthful that is “happy birthday” in Dutch – “hartelijk gefeliciteerd met uw verjaardag”.  And Isaac declared that "Dutch 100th birthday soup" was as good as Tim Horton’s Italian wedding soup. High praise for him. 

During our recent travels in Turkey and Africa, we’ve often stuck out.  For example, when our WWOOFing host in Turkey met us at the train station, he immediately picked us out in the crowd.  We didn't look Turkish, apparently!  Nor did we look particularly Moroccan or Spanish.  But in the Netherlands, we could blend right in.  And that was kind of fun.

Here are a few photos of our last two weeks there. Please click on an image to enlarge it. 


* And 1/18th Irish (Editor)

Amsterdam, the Vélo-City

 

May 19 - 23, 2015 / Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Although I may not be "much Dutch" culturally,  I think my mother's genes may have expressed themselves through my life-long love of cycling.

Riding a bike has always been my favourite means of transportation, recreation and thinking -- the best ideas always shake out of my brain when I'm out for a ride. And I've gamely taken my life in my hands by cycling in Kitchener, Hamilton, Ottawa, Barcelona, Izmir and even Dar-es-Salaam. 

But I have always wanted to ride a bike in the Netherlands, arguably the best country for cycling in the world -- although the Danes may disagree. So one day during our stay here, Tricia & Isaac, Zoe and I set out on three bikes (including a tandem) for a day's riding. 

From what I've read, cycling wasn't always so popular here. In fact, by the 1960s and 1970s many cities in the Netherlands had started to follow the North American model of auto-centric, suburban development. But after a few years where over 500 children were killed by cars and the OPEC oil shortage, the Dutch introduced a combination of bike-friendly policies, infrastructure, and training which have made it safe for everyone to ride. Having a mostly flat country with little snow also probably helps; as does the Dutch penchant for saving money. 

Most people ride upright bikes with just a few gears, and flopping panniers, and most just wear their normal clothes. Oh! and because it is so safe, only racers wear helmets here. In fact, the Dutch argue that mandatory helmet laws actually discourage people from cycling. Go figure.  

Cycling is just so well established, safe, and mainstream here, but yet still very cool. It seems like everyone from ages 4 to 94 rides a bike. It is fascinating to sit on a street corner and watch the parade of cyclists whiz by (click to see the video -->)

Here are just a few shots from Amsterdam, many of which include a bicycle, even when I didn't mean to! There are just that many bikes here. As always, please click on the thumbnails to see the picture in full screen mode. 



Moederland

May 11 - 18, 2015 / Laren, Gelderland, the Netherlands 

 

We arrived in the Netherlands on Mother's Day --  à propos given that we were going to meet my Mom near her hometown. 

Before we set off on this trip last August, I had found an Air BnB rental for a large farmhouse in Laren, Gelderland -- just 4 kilometres from my Mom’s old house in Harfsen. After a bit of lobbying, my parents agreed that we would book the house for a week and invite my brother and sister’s to join us if they could. 

The four of us then went on our way, visiting Turkey, Tanzania, Spain, Morocco and the United Kingdom in turn, but we were always looking forward to seeing everyone here in May. 

But in typical Hodgson family planning mode, it all came together in a last-minute flurry of detailed planning, independent re-planning, a bit of miscommunication, and a glass of something soothing once we finally converged at the farmhouse.

The house, fortunately, turned out to be perfect for our group of 7 adults and 4 kids. It had:

  • 6 bedrooms (including a woodshed for my brother to saw logs in),
  • 4 bathrooms;
  • a fully-equipped kitchen,
  • a couple of sitting areas with quirky antiques and large (very clean!) windows,  
  • a huge garden and yard to play in -- even with a trampoline
  • friendly horses next door and a community pool down the street
  • bikes, bocci balls and other toys in the shed
  • groceries, a bakery and three restaurants just down the road in town;
  • bike paths everywhere we wanted to go;
  • clean, dry and WIFI! 

Although the house was a bit far from the main tourist sites in Amsterdam, some of our group managed to see quite a bit of my mother's neighbourhood by bike, train and car, including:

It was also fantastic for the kids to have some cousin time to hang out and do cartwheels with Paige and Jackson.  Paige also made great progress on her bicycle riding; no doubt because cycling is in the air here. 

My brother, Brent, did a thorough job of photographing every square metre of the places that he saw; I'll ask to post some of his pictures another time. But for now, here are a few of mine from that week. (Please click on them to see them in a larger" light-box" format). 

 

A Welcoming Home

A highlight of our week was cycling down tree-shaded lanes to the my mother’s old farmhouse. There, we had a lovely afternoon koffie kletz with the current owners, who offered to show me the bedroom where my Mom was born. Despite my Canadian curiosity, I politely declined.

My mother grew up there during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. This was the house where my grandparents sheltered the Krukzeiners, a family of four Jewish refugees who hid under the chicken coop during the last winter of the war (November 1944 to May 1945). This would have been extremely dangerous for everyone involved; had the Germans found out, they may well have shot everyone on the spot. As a result, not even the neighbours were told in case they were Nazi collaborators. 

For his bravery, my Opa, Frederick Kabbes, was later given the "Righteous Among Nations Award", and I understand that there is a tree planted in his honour in the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial.  Goed gedaan , meneer.

 

Off To Canada

My mother’s family would later billet Canadian soldiers after the Liberation of the Netherlands, and my mother cites this experience as influencing their later decision to emigrate to Canada in 1953.

As new immigrants, my mother, then just 14, and her sister started cleaning houses to help pay for the family farm. A few years later, she took a job at a local bank in Arthur, Ontario where she interpreted for all of the incoming Dutch farmers who wanted bank loans. It was there that she met my father.*

My mother was the only one in her family who had "married a Canadian”, and she later left the Dutch Reformed vlok to become an Anglican. And because my father didn't speak Dutch, and because she felt that her Low Dutch dialect wouldn't be much use to us in the modern-day Netherlands, she never taught us how to speak it.

 

And If You Ain't Dutch...

So in the end, my knowledge of my Dutch heritage consisted of New Year's Day olibalen, monthly visits to my Opa on the farm near Arthur, and listening to my uncles’ annual Christmas argument about the finer points of Calvinist theology and social democracy (in Dutch, of course).

And while I've had a bit of refresher course in Dutch-Canadian / Reformed culture these past 20 years with Trish, I'm a bit of slow learner. Until today, my sole phrase in Dutch is "Een kopje koffie met melk en suiker". Not a bad one to know, of course, but only useful three times a day. 

Coming here to the Netherlands, however, I find it odd that everyone speaks Dutch to me. Apparently I look like a local.   But of course, having only one not-so-useful-phrase in that language, I then have to admit that, “I'm afraid that I don’t speak Dutch.”  

They then respond in perfect English, “Oh, sorry! So what part of America are you from?

Sigh.

My search for my motherland continues. Maybe we should go to Portugal....I hear that my Godmother owns property in the Azores.....


* I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall during the first time that my Dad met my mother's family! I can imagine this shy Canadian sitting in a smoke-filled room with heavy-rugged tables and dark Rembrandt curtains while they talked about him in Dutch. It's a testament to his bravery that he didn't run away! 

Travel by Map #6: United Kindgom

United Kingdom:
England & Scotland

During our nearly five weeks in the United Kingdom, we travelled close to 2,500 km by train in southwest England, car in Scotland, and punt in Oxford, not including several hundred kilometres around London on the Underground

Here is an interactive map of our journey. 

The London Underground

Here is a map of the subway system in London

Our London Scenes - Part 2

 
 

Discovering My English Bits

As anyone who has bought me a beer has undoubtedly heard, I am one-ninth Irish. 

Half of the rest of me (i.e. 4/9ths) is Dutch, and the other half consists of vestigial bits of English colonial baggage filtered through five generations of Southern Ontario WASPness. (This probably explains how I can manage to be charming, stubborn and anal retentive all at the same time...but hey, what can I do? It's my heritage). 

Years ago, I explored my Celtic soul on a hitch-hiking trip around the coast of Eire with my friend, Mike. But this Schagen Zone holiday in the United Kingdom has been my first real chance to get in touch with my inner-Englishman. 

Here are a few pictures of our last few weeks in London. Click on any image to enlarge it. 

The UK is a place that you think that you know. Indeed, you can't turn a corner in London without a sense of déjà-vu; it all looks so familiar from all the movies and TV shows that are set here. And after travelling in four countries where English is not the first language, it was a relief to suddenly be able to understand everyone and read all the signs, maps and headlines.*

But I quickly realized that despite my patrimony and linguistic proficiency, I really am a foreigner here too. It's subtle, but there is a lot more going on here in the social interactions and mannerisms than I had understood.

I mean, it's like going to another country. :-) 

 

Watching the English

Sensing my culture shock, our hosts, Heather and Isabel, very kindly lent me a copy of Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour by Kate Fox (2005). As a social anthropologist, the author tried to take an objective look at her own culture to decode the unwritten codes of conversation, class and well, just about everything.

Through this lens she observed that, in general, the English:

  • value their privacy very highly -- to the point that no one talks to strangers on the tube, or even in a museum when your kids are playing together;
  • take queueing very seriously -- for the Tube, for a pint at the pub, for pretty much everything -- and jumping the queue is a very serious offence;
  • are often socially awkward, and thus have very strict practices about small talk (the weather), banter and introductions -- it's like a nation of Hugh Grant characters;
  • have a propensity for saying "sorry" all the time, but not always in ways that imply an apology (that sounds somewhat Canadian);
  • interject a layer of ironic humour into any conversation, no matter how serious the topic and/or engage in "moaning" about almost any topic;
  • tend to be self-deprecating, as it is considered crass to brag about one's accomplishments (e.g. "I work at a hospital" may actually mean "I'm the leading brain surgeon in the UK"-- which of course, is not exactly "rocket science")
  • are obsessed with social class, but never talk about it openly --- that wouldn't be proper. But apparently everyone is immediately aware of each other's social class based on their accent, vocabulary, clothing, food and drink, the kind of car they drive, etc. Moreover, unlike in Canada, your class is not necessarily connected to your actual wealth or income, and it is virtually impossible to move up the class ladder no matter how much money you make.  
     

Suddenly, so much of what I was observing here made perfect sense :the silent Tube cars, the polite line-ups for everything, the strange pub etiquette.....And for the first time I kind of understood that the formality and verbosity of my childhoood Anglican church maybe wasn't so much a theological matter as just vestigial Englishness. 

And also with you. 

 

Watching England Change

Of course, England (and the wider UK) is changing. Since joining the European Union, millions of East Europeans have moved here to work, to the extent that Polish is now the second most common language here in London (albeit at 2% of the population and 98% of the plumbers).

The urban areas of the country are now a veritable curry of cultures and languages, and you're just as likely to find a Turkish, Nigerian or Polish restaurant in many parts of town as a pub advertising "proper British Food" -- lovely with mushy peas

Not everyone is happy about this, however. Some of the support for the English nationalist party in the recent national elections reflects a backlash against this recent wave of immigration, as well as the "English" asserting their own nationalism in the face of Irish, Welsh and now resurgent Scottish nationalism. But I would say that this cultural diversity gives London a great cosmopolitan vibe, and it is one of the world's truly "global"cities. It will also be interesting to observe how much of the "English" culture is adapted by newcomers, and how much they change it. 

Hmm...perhaps I should have been an anthropologist. Maybe next career. 

But for now, I will just say a quick "Cheerio" to the UK as we head off to my other mother-land tomorrow. 

Cheers! / Tot ziens!...

p.s. A MASSIVE THANKS again to our friends, Colin, Kyle & Jane, Michael & Suzanne, and Heather & Isabelle for hosting us here. 


Isaac, in particular, was keen to let out 8 months of pent up small talk. He positively gushed as he talked to Heather about all things Star Wars, Marvel vs. D.C. and Premier League. 

Lessons Learned on the Road - Episode 3

As we've written before (Episode 1 & Episode 2), Zoe and Isaac have been  "Road Scholars" this year.  This has included:

  • tonnes of independent reading -- Isaac has really hit his stride on this trip;

  • some math practice using Jumpmath and IXL (" 'cause it's good for ya! that's why!");

  • journal and blog post writing, as well as some practice with cursive and printing; 

  • some other online learning (big shout out to Crash Course educational videos!); and

Our recent visits to Morocco and the United Kingdom have also included  a heap of "world-class," experiential learning in history, geography, social studies, ecology, and cross-cultural communication. Here are some highlights: 

Zoe at the Jardin Marjorelle, Marrakesh

Zoe at the Jardin Marjorelle, Marrakesh

Morocco

  • the Old Medina in Fez, a 30-square-kilometre, largely covered, medieval market-place -- the largest car-free space in the world -- although there are plenty of donkeys; 
  • Volubulis, the best-preserved, ancient Roman city in North Africa;
  • the Islamic pilgrimmage site at Moulay Idriss, where Muslims who can't afford to make the Haj to Mecca can apparently visit five times instead;
  • the Bab Mansour gate and the nearby Mausoleum of Moulay Ismail in Meknes
  • Tromping around the town of Chefchaouen, with its very walkable and very blue medina, from which we did a couple of great day hikes; 
  • La Maison de la Photographie in Marrakesh -- a great collection of large-format black and white photos from historic Morocco;
  • Jamaa el-Fnaa, the main square of Marrakesh, where we saw snake charmers, drummers and vendors
  • the Saadian Tombs,  Marrakesh;
  • hiking in the Atlas Mountains (near Imlil) to mountain passes covered in snow.
  • zip-lining and high ropes near Marrakech; 
  • Jardin Majorelle, a botanical garden / art museum in Marrakesh; 
  • a trek on dromedaries into the Sahara Desert, where we slept overnight at a Berber camp;
  • a walk by the Hassan II Mosque in Casablanca -- unfortunately, we missed the visiting hours, but the outside sure was impressive; one of the largest mosques in the world, Isaac tells me.

 

Zoe and Isaac put their money down on Canada -- Trafalgar Square

Zoe and Isaac put their money down on Canada -- Trafalgar Square

United Kingdom

We're looking forward to learning more in the next legs of our trip. Stay tuned. 

In England's Green and Pleasant Land

Greetings from across the pond. Here are a few pictures of our brief visit to Oxford and Bath the week before last.   

 

Oxford

I finally made it to Oxford, albeit not via the Rhodes I had less travelled.

The place looks a lot like Hogwarts.

Thanks to John for the personal tour of Christchurch College and leading us on the pilgrimage to the Eagle and Child to see where Hobbits And Wardrobes were brewed up.  We even tried punting on the river. Much harder than it looks! 

 

Bath

After a night visiting Kyle and Jane and their now grown up boys in Bourton On The Water (the "Venice of the Cotswalds"), we took the train to Bath.

This is where the Romans, the Georgians, and now the Ottawans, came to "take the waters" -- and a few pictures. We really enjoyed the excellent museum documenting the Roman baths. But I found the Georgian architecture of the town a bit Austen-tatious. :-)

Thanks very kindly to Michael, Suzanne, Annalee and Nicholas for hosting us and for the great tour of Bath. 

Our London Scenes - Part 1

London....where do you even start?

 

Two thousand years of near continuous habitation, notwithstanding wars, plagues and great fires. It is now home to over 8 million people, as well as the Queen, Dickens, Sherlock Holmes, the Underground, Diana, one-quarter of the Premier League, Henry VIII (and presumably Henries 1 through 7), Big Ben, the Thames, the London Eye..... 

And although it is not the biggest city that we've visited, it is certainly the best-documented (e.g. see the Mapping London site for a great selection of infographics and maps).  And of course, all the signs are in English, so we really have no excuse for getting lost.

London is also and chock-a-block full of museums, galleries, parks, historical sites, restaurants, pubs and coffee shops.....There is so much to see and do here. To quote the ever-quotable Samuel Johnson, 

"Why, Sir, you find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford."

(Which is rather odd, because in our short experience, London is anything but affordable! But who am I to argue with the second most-quoted person in the English language?). 
 

Some Rooms of Our Own

We got off to a great start thanks to our hosts, Isabel and Heather, who met us at London Bridge and gave us a crash course in navigating the Underground and Light Rail network. They then graciously allowed us to sit on their house in Lewisham, where we enjoyed their extensive library of books about all things Londonesque, as well as the complete Harry Potter collection (again!).

We're now flat-sitting for another friend, Colin, in the North-West postal code.  It's been great to have a place to cook, do laundry and plot out our next expedition. (Thanks again, everyone!).
 

You Are "Now"

As a recovering INTJ, I always like getting the "big picture" of a city's geography and history before we start exploring. So one of our first visits was to the Museum of London to learn the story of how a small town grew, faded, grew, grew, got infested, burnt, was fought over, grew, grew, got bombed, grew, got bombed even worse this time, never surrendered, prevailed, declined, swung, rioted, recovered, became the capital of late capitalism, grew again and hosted the Olympics. That pretty much sums up all you need to know, but if you'd like a visual, check out this timeline of London's more "recent" (i.e. post-1000) history

We're happy to add a small part to that story. Below is a first instalment of pictures so far. Please click on each thumbnail to see it in the full screen mode. More to come another day. Cheers! dh

Notes from The Underground

I've never been to a city where I've spent so much time underground. Or more precisely, on THE UNDERGROUND,  London's famous network of subways and trains. 

The Tube opened in 1863 and was the world's first underground train system. Over the years it has electrified and expanded and currently it boasts: 

  • 270 stations;
  • 11 lines with 402 kilometres of track,  52% of which are actually above ground; 
  • 1.23 billion passenger rides in 2012/13, making it the 12th busiest transit system in the world) (Source: Wikipedia)

"The Tube" takes its nick-name from the cylindrical shape of tunnels, many of which were constructed by cutting in to the earth, laying the tracks and then building a round roof over top -- the so-called "cut and cover" method.  

Travelling by Tube is a bit like being a gopher:  you burrow this way and that way without having any sense of which direction you're going and then you pop out in a strange new place, dazed and blinking in the bright light of day. Or perhaps more accurately, it's like being an ant that queues up with all the other ants running hither and yon through the various tunnels, each grasping a crumb of something important to bring to the Queen. Of course, ants are more social than most English people because they greet each other.... But I digress. My point is that getting around this way gives you a somewhat disjointed experience of the city. 
 

Finding Our 'Way Out' & About

This disorientation is not necessarily improved by the pile-of-spaghetti that passes for a map of the Underground: 

Exhibit A: The Map of the Underground. You are here....or there. Beats me. 

The current Tube Map is based on the iconic, topological or schematic map by Harry Beck (1931),  The map, as we've found out the hard way, is not to scale; it only shows each station's position relative to the next. Whether the stops are 200 m apart or 1 km, the spacing on the map doesn't change. I guess like any map, it needs to compromise some accuracy in order to show the important details

Each Tube station is indicated by either a "tick" for standalone stops or an open circle if it is a junction. Their names echo the classic English names you've likely heard in school and in movies: London Bridge, Charring Cross, Piccadilly Circus, Baker Street (!), Waterloo... They also include:

  • Canada Water, Canary Wharf, East India Quay, West India Quay-- ports on the Thames where goods from different British colonies or trading partners were unloaded;
  • three stations with the name "Stratford": Stratford, Stratford International, and Stratford High Street -- but all of them, we learned were nowhere near the Stratford;
  • four stops called "Clapham" -- Clapham North, Clapham South, Clapham High Street, & Clapham Common 
  • five stops with "Ruslip" -- Ruslip, Ruslip Manor, West Ruslip, South Ruslip, Ruslip Gardens
  • six stops with "Acton"....well, you get the point. But you have to be very precise with your directions. 
  • Finchley Road and Frognal ... "Frognal": I just like that name. Not to be confused with Frognal House....."
  • Tooting Bec and Tooting Broadway...not sure what goes on there. 

Combining track and station names can lead to some amusing directions, for example, "Take the Northern Line west until you get to Clapham South." No wonder we get lost! 

Fortunately, we've been able to use a combination of Google Maps and a few dedicated Tube apps to navigate our way, at least until we go, er, underground where there is no cell service. Then you have to fall back on Beck's map or one of its many detailed-excerpts that are posted in the train cars, albeit reoriented into a neat horizontal strip that will fit above the windows. A polite, recorded message will then tell you what the next stop is, what other lines you can transfer to, and of course, to be sure to "Please mind the gap". 

Tube stations themselves are full of advertising -- London is the place where all musicals go to die, but instead keep playing forever -- and instructions, constant instructions everywhere you look: "Mind the Gap", "Keep Left", "Keep Right" "Keep Clear of the Doors", or "Way Out" (exit). The elevator, sorry "lift", at our local station even includes a recording for how to ascend correctly. The voice reading the instructions has a very posh Bri-tish accent that sounds suspiciously like Her Royal Majesty. Maybe she needed the pocket change? Dunno. 

The Tube is quintessentially English and clearly an integral part of the lives of Londoners. Indeed, this city of 8 million+ wouldn't be possible without it. (I'm not sure that they can all fit above ground, come to think of it). Life underground precedes with typical English order and politeness. Queueing etiquette is strictly observed, as is the norm of not looking at, never mind speaking with, strangers at all costs. Personal privacy is apparently highly valued here.

Contrast this with our experience of riding in dala-dalas (mini-buses) in Tanzania: 18 adults squashed into a mini-van, cheek-to-cheek in the heat and humidity of Dar es Salaam. It would be awkward not to talk with someone whom you're on such intimate terms. 
 

This is London...Next Stop: The World

The iconic Tube Map has inspired other transit systems around the world to copy its style and methods. Here are some maps from a few places that we have visited (or we're hoping to visit) on this trip: 

Travel by Map: Adventures Lost & Found

 

I've always enjoyed maps. As a kid, I pored over the charts of Middle Earth in the Lord of the Rings paperbacks, tracing the adventures of Frodo and company. I spent hours lying on the living room floor flipping through the large-format, 1971 World Book Atlas sounding out the names.  Later, I made my own maps for Dungeon and Dragons' adventures, coining faux Elvish names that probably were closer to Welsh, come to think of it. 

My son, Isaac, has apparently inherited this interest from me. In the year leading up to this trip, we had posted a whiteboard map of the world in our dining room on which we drew xylene-inspired, desire lines of where we might go, Aeroplan willing. This prompted Isaac to draw upon his formidable knowledge of countries, flags and football teams to contribute his own itineraries:

 "On Monday, we could go to China. Then on Tuesday we'd go to Grandma and Grandpas, and then on Wednesday, we could go see Chelsea play...".

Apparently eight-year-olds are not constrained by the space-time continuum. 
 

Mapmaker, Mapmaker, Make Me a Map

As we've been travelling, I've been perusing Jeremy Brotton's book, A History of the World in 12 Maps, a reflection on how cartographers from Ptolemy to Mercator to Google Earth have tried to visualize the world. Its a fascinating review of how each mapmaker saw their own geography and even their cosmology, as well as how imperfect and subjective any depiction of the world is. 

"A map," Brotton writes, "always manages the reality it tries to show". And as one reviewer noted, "cartographers cannot help but betray their own centre of gravity". The way that we see, interpret and explain the world in a map, globe or online atlas invariably reflects our own perspectives, biases and ultimately our worldview

As such, their maps centred on their own political and economic interests, and they portrayed the new world to their own advantage, even going so far as re-allo-locating entire islands to suit their land claims. The world was still big then, mysterious and dangerous: so they adorned often the known-world's edges with monsters most foul and curious: There, be dragons!

Of course, the same applies to the pictures and the stories that we share when travelling: we tend to share the exotic images from any place: sunburnt men in djellaba's riding donkeys in Morocco, or busy market places in Tanzania.  I'm far less likely to take a photo of a bunch of teens wearing Puma trainers talking on their iPhones. It's too much like home.... even if it that would be a truer depiction of contemporary life in an increasingly global hip-hop, youth culture. 

Similarly, I dare not bore my dear readers telling quotidien tales of the many hours spent on buses, standing in queues or doing laundry in a hotel room sink (Oh my! They've mixed the colours with the whites in the cold wash!).  

No! Our intrepid readers to hear the good stuff: terrifying tales of turbulence, legends of luggage lost, camels spitting me in the eye.....these are the adventures that they pay me the big bucks to write. 

Well, okay, nobody actually pays me anything to write about our adventures. (If you don't like them, they're free). But take it from the one travel writer who apparently is able to make a living through travel writing:  

"An adventure is never an adventure when its happening," writes Tim Cahill in Hold the Enlightenment. "Challenging experiences need time to ferment, and adventure is simply physical and emotional discomfort recollected in tranquillity." 

That certainly resonates with our experience.  It usually takes weeks and a glass of something tranquilizing before we can safely deem it an adventure. But invariably these are the travel stories that we tell for years.

("And then her tied-dyed pyjamas bled all over the merino..."The horror! The horror!").
 

All Those Who Wander, Probably Are Lost In Our Case

For us, adventures usually start when Trish and I can't agree on where we are, never mind where we need to go. We have, how shall I say, different approaches to navigation, perhaps reflecting our divergent approaches to life: optimist vs. pessimist, improvisor vs. planner, fearless vs. cautious, never wrong vs. ....  

Both are valid, he hastened to add, but given that we're both usually about 50% correct, finding our way home often requires some impartial triangulation. 

Thankfully, we've often been able to fall back on the Google Maps app to adjudicate. When it has worked, it has rescued us from the labyrinths of Beyoglu,or at least provided a trail of digital crumbs for us to trace our steps back home in Dar es Salaam. 

But other times, Dr. Google has just been plain wrong, for example:

  • the restaurant we had just walked 2 km to find apparently had long ago closed its doors; 
  • our Air BnB location in Marrakesh appeared in two different places depending where I pointed the phone;
  • the "map" for Stonetown turned out to be a static JPEG and the you-are-here dot never moved;

I also learned that somehow the bright folks at Mountainview never bothered to put the Marrakesh train station on Google maps -- it's there now, thanks to my feedback! 

Yet from this side of tranquility, I wonder if using Google Maps to find our way is kind of cheating.  Sure, it helps us get "Unlost" in that we then find where we wanted to go. But sometimes the more exciting resolution to Being Lost is Being Found (i.e. finding ourselves in a cool place, or suddenly having an experience that we never could have expected). That is the real pathway to adventure, although you may not appreciate it until weeks later. 

 

Our Travels, By Map

But no matter how good Google Maps is, it will never be as cool as the map that the Muppets used to travel to Paris. 

We haven't mastered that app yet. But usually when I travel anywhere, I make sure to pick up a good, large-format road map and then I trace my route with a highlighter as we go. I've kept many of these road-weary, dog-earred maps with the photo albums as another way of telling the story of where we've been.

This trip, I've also been geeking out with Google's My Maps feature to plan and document our travels. Below are some links to a few retrospective, blogposts with maps of where we've been so far. If you click on the Destination Pins on each map, you should see a hyperlink to any corresponding blog posts.

Happy trails! 


Zoe's Top Ten Tips for Tweens Travelling in Morocco

Hello, from 30,000 feet above France.

As we are leaving Morocco, I wanted to share my...

Top Ten Tips for Tweens Travelling in Morocco 

1. Don’t touch carpets unless you want to end up in the basement of a carpet seller’s shop, drinking tea and haggling over a carpet that you did not even want in the first place. Also, never believe the ‘just for looking, just for looking’  line; it is always a lie.

2. Tagine is good, but try to eat other foods when you can. Because once you get out of town you will eat nothing but Tagine.

3. When shopping for souvenirs in the medina, if the shop your at does not have exactly what your looking for, go somewhere else. If you are in the Fez or Marrakech medina, or any other big medina for that matter, there will be a shop selling exactly what you want. You just have to look for it. :)

4. If you go to a local Hammam  keep in mind that its not a spa, it’s a bath house. So, people are dressed as you would be if you were taking a bath, and any idea you had of keeping your towel on will disappear the moment you enter the main room. ; )

5. In Morocco there are two kinds of taxis, Grand Taxi et Petit Taxi. Petit Taxis can hold three people, no more. It is illegal to have more than three people in a petit taxi.

6. When haggling about taxi fare, if the guy you’re talking to won’t give you a fair price, walk away. He’ll either give you a fair price or you can easily find someone who will.                               

7. Go to Fez last, if possible. It’s called the arts and craft capital of Morocco with good reason, you can find any souvenir you want with a better price and quality in Fez.  Because we are trying to travel light, we would rather carry souvenirs for the shortest time possible. So it makes more sense to go to the place with good souvenirs last.

8. Camels are much more comfortable for long periods when ridden side-saddle, just hold on VERY tightly when going up sand dunes. (trust me, I almost fell off)

9. It’s necessary to bring a varied wardrobe when your travelling in Morocco. You’ll be freezing in the mountains one day and sweltering in the desert the next.

10. Take lots of pictures, there are tons of interesting things to see in Morocco and even more things to take pictures of. From little shops in the souks, to stunning panoramas, Morocco is an extremely picturesque country.

 

The Roads To & From Marrakesh

March 13 to 30, 2015 / Marrakesh, Imlil & Merzouga

 

We never planned on spending so much time in Marrakesh, but given some unsettled, late-winter/early-spring weather, it proved to be a good hub for seeing some cool parts of Central Morocco. 

Below are a few highlights and pictures. Please click on any of the thumbnails to see them in a larger, Lightbox format. 


Snakes on a Dwayne

From Chefchaouen, we travelled by bus to Rabat for a two-day stopover, before hopping the train down to Marrakesh.

Marrakesh's main square, Jeema el-Fnaa is where all the action is: story tellers, snake charmers, water sellers, monkey-con-artists, henna/con-artists who apply the black dye to your hands unbidden and then ask for money, amateur boxers....you name it. It felt like a North African version of Time Square minus the giant flashing billboards and the fat Spiderman.

There is a constant noise of drums and oboes, and when you can't stand the din any longer, you can duck into the medina alleyways for a bit of respite -- that is, until you happen to be accosted by a carpet dealer..."Looking is free." Yeah, right, but once you've drunken the mint tea, there is no going back...

Every town in Morocco has its own colour for the petite taxis (local trips / maximum: 3 passengers) and grande taxis (further afield / max: 4). In Marrakesh, the petite taxi's are  "ochre" (a dull-brown-red that I think was popular in suburban Canada in the 1980s, or was that "dusty rose"? but I digress..). 95% of the buildings in Marrakesh were also the same colour of ochre, which made navigation kind of tricky. 

We had a welcome break from all this medina-ochre-ity at the Jardin Majorelle, the botanical gardens designed by Jacques Majorelle and later bought by Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé, who in turn gave it back to the city of Marrakesh. I'm really liking that blue, and think we'll paint the house that colour when we get home. 


Atlas(t), Mountains

From Marrakesh, it was is only a 2-hour grand taxi ride to the Atlas Mountain hiking haven of Imlil. Originally, we had thought about going on a 1 or 2 night trek with a donkey and a guide.

But when it snowed on the second day, we decided to just do some day-hikes and enjoy returning to a warm-ish guest house each night. We hiked up to 2,500 m at one pass, and enjoyed some amazing vistas every morning. But by 2 pm, the clouds would roll in and it would rain and/or snow again. 

The valleys around Imlil have a network of well-maintained terraces where farmers grow barley, wheat and vegetables. The town itself is full of guest houses, second-hand-mountaineering gear-shops, and local restaurants with exactly four items on the menu: tajines (stews cooked in a clay dish), couscous, skewers of meat, and Spaghetti Bolognese (only made with cumin, much to Isaac's delight...). It was all fine, but after a month of this, we were hankering for something else to mix up the menu. 


Been There, Dune That.

Some more unsettled weather meant we hung out in Marrakesh for a few more days before taking a guided tour out to the Sahara Desert. It was awesome to cross the Atlas Mountains with someone else driving so I could snap pictures) and to see a kasbah (fortresses) where they had filmed a number of Hollywood films. And we even enjoyed a nice French-Moroccan dinner (i.e. small amounts of artisanal couscous artfully arranged on empty plates). But our main objective was to ride.....camels.

Well, technically, dromedaries, the kids would pipe in. Only one hump, don't you know. Camels have two, I was told. Repeatedly. 

We set out from Erg Chebbi at the northern edge of the Sahara, just before sunset. It was an epic journey of, well, maybe an hour, but that was probably enough for (our) posterity. 

The hardest part of riding a camel, apart from the hump that makes an indelible impression upon your posterity, is getting up. To ride a camel you must: 

  1. Climb on its back as it lies down on the sand; 
  2. Sit on on a blanket-saddle,
  3. Grab on to the metal saddle-horn with a white-knuckled grip,
  4. Watch as the handler tssks, cajoles and slaps the camel urging it to rise up;
  5. Watch as the camel hisses back, indicating that it has no intention of doing so
  6. Watch as the handler repeats Step 4 and the camel grudgingly complies
  7. Lurch forward until you're parallel to the ground as the camel rises part way up; 
  8. Hold on tighter to the saddle-horn so that you don't fall on to its neck,
  9. Lurch backwards 180 degrees in reverse when the camel, sorry, dromedary stands up. 
  10. Look around gleefully when you realize that you haven't taken flight and that you're now 8 feet off the ground on a camel in the middle of the desert. How cool is that?

The actual sitting on the back of a walking camel part is not so hard, apart from the excruciating discomfort, but you eventually get the feel for it.  It was easy to imagine myself starting out on a 52-day caravan trip to Timbuktu...apart from the excruciating discomfort that made it impossible to think about much else. 

After a 45-minute, arduous journey, we finally arrived at a Berber-styled camp where I got reacquainted with my leg muscles. After a meal of, you guessed it: tajine, we slept for a few hours in a tent and got up early to ride back at sunset.

The whole experience felt a bit touristy and rushed, but it was something that we couldn't do on our own -- not having our own camels, after all.