19 August

Edinburgh

In mid-morning we made our way to the castle, having booked tickets on the internet a few days earlier. This turned out to be a good idea because the queues at the ticket office were very long!
The castle grounds were quite interesting and once again the views were great. The insides of the buildings had been done up and it was hard to get a feel for how things might have been – very different to the Tower of London, for instance, where a lot of the original interiors had been retained. But still well worth a visit; you can’t go to Edinburgh and not go to the castle.
After that we had some lunch and made our way to Camera Obscura, which was also quite interesting. They also had a bunch of optical illusions, holograms, etc.

18 August

Edinburgh

We decided to go for the hop on/hop off Edinburgh bus tour to get a feel for the city before going anywhere in particular. We got off near the castle to check where we needed to go for the Tattoo performance, then did a bit of souvenir shopping and got the bus down to Holyroodhouse. The weather was clearing so I went for a walk up the Salisbury Crags (while Mum stayed down the bottom). The views were well worth the climb!



After dinner back at the apartment we made our way back to the castle for the Tattoo – the principal reason for the trip. We both really enjoyed it – hard to say what my favourite parts were, but definitely the Swiss army drum band setting their sticks on fire was a highlight!

17 August

London - Edinburgh
We made our way to Kings Cross and got there about 2 hours early, which was just as well. We were supposed to pick up the tickets with the credit card used to book them. But since Mum had lost her wallet, we didn’t have it – so had to ring up some call centre where they told us we would have to buy new tickets at over 200 pounds!! (the originals cost 40.) While I was on the phone we arranged for the other tickets to be couriered to us in Edinburgh, so that would save some hassle later. At hearing 200 pounds we went to the counter where the woman helped us, made some calls and somehow got our original tickets out of the system.
The train took about 4 hours to get to Edinburgh and gave us quite a different view of the countryside. When we arrived the streets were full of people there for the Festival, so navigating our way to the apartment we were staying at was a bit of a challenge! We managed to find it ok and it was nice to have a bigger area to occupy than the small hotel rooms we had been staying in previously.
After that we had a wander back to Princes Street to look around and suss out what we were going to do on the next few days.

16 August

London

Sunday in London, with the plan before the trip being to be able to go along to a service at Calvary Chapel Westminster. Despite the long day preceding, we woke up early enough to be able to get to the 9 am service at the normal venue – only to find when we got there that it had become a building site. We wandered along to Buckingham Palace (just around the corner) to decide what to do, while I tried texting the only person from church whose number was in my phone’s contact list. She replied to say where they were meeting, which was up near Kings Cross at 11 am. So we made our way up there and managed to find it. We just couldn’t help but get the impression that ‘somebody’ didn’t want us to go! (wallet, hospital, traipsing around)
In the afternoon we went to St Paul’s to have a look around (since we didn’t manage to fit it in during our last holiday in London in 2005).

15 August

Hong Kong - London

Another early start as we were on a 7:30 am flight to London. The flight was pretty uneventful, and so was getting from Heathrow to our hotel – where Mum found that she didn’t have her wallet any more. (Last seen buying a ticket at Heathrow terminal 4 tube station.) Naturally this triggered a number of phone calls to Heathrow lost property, the bank back home, insurance company, and after about 3 hours we decided nothing more could be done so we went to find someplace to get dinner. On the way I started feeling really dizzy, sat down for a while but that didn’t seem to help, decided to try to walk a bit further and ended up just giving in and lying on the ground inside Victoria Station. Some other people passing by came to help, called the paramedics who came and checked me (blood pressure, blood sugars etc.) and couldn’t determine anything so we went to the hospital. 4 hours later after more tests, having something to eat, and feeling like we were being ignored a lot of the time, I was feeling much steadier and so we got a taxi back to the hotel. The fare was 10 pounds, and we only had 7 pounds in cash due to the aforementioned loss of wallet, and me collapsing before we could get to a money machine. Thankfully the taxi driver took pity on us. So most of the day had been relying on the kindness of strangers. It is good to know there is still some humanity left in the world.

14 August

Hong Kong

Day 3 in Hong Kong was noticeably hotter than the previous two days, and it was this day that we went to Ocean Park – with what felt like half of Hong Kong. Clearly the heat was affecting locals and tourists alike! It was here that we really noticed the presence of our ‘invisible shields’, in every queue we stood in we managed to get pushed in front of. Maybe the military would be interested in developing this as a cloaking device!? The dolphin show was ok, the rollercoaster I went on was rather lame... the highlight of the day was watching a panda forage around in his enclosure for treats the keepers had put out.
In the evening we made our way to the promenade by the Cultural Centre to watch the Symphony of Lights.

13 August

Hong Kong

On day 2 we awoke to rain, but decided to stick with our original plan and just take umbrellas. We got the MTR to the island and then the ferry to Park Island, which is where the ‘Noah’s Ark’ family attraction is. Figuring it would be good for us to patronise the Christian effort, we were disappointed to find that the references to the rainbow were a sign of peace and harmony between all people (contrast Genesis 9:11-15) and what we can learn from the Flood story is that we should try our best to save the planet. Hmm.



From there we got a ferry to Tsuen Wan and MTR to the Ngong Ping gondola. This took about 30 minutes each way and gave us a very different perspective of the landscape.
In the evening we went to the Temple Street night markets which was very close to where we were staying, and managed to bargain some very reasonable prices. Not something I particularly enjoy though!

12 August

Hong Kong

Our first day in Hong Kong and we thought it best to start at the National Museum, which was quite interesting. In between the rain showers we tried some dim sum for lunch and made our way to the Star Ferry terminal for the ride across to Hong Kong island. The view from the harbour of the skyscrapers was just as amazing as the view we had from the air on the previous day.
From the ferry terminal we caught the bus up to Victoria Peak. When the cloud lifted on occasion, it offered us yet another spectacular view over the city. We had dinner and stayed until it started to get dark for more photos. Then we got the peak tram down, which was a bit of a harrowing experience (especially compared to, say, the Wellington cable car). Upon seeing the queues for the bus back to the ferry terminal, we decided to walk back. But in Hong Kong, the pedestrian routes and the roads do not necessarily correlate and long story short we ended up going in the wrong direction. It was easiest to just get a taxi back, which was an experience just in itself...

11 August

Wellington - Hong Kong

Mum and I left Wellington airport for Sydney at 6 am, then on to Hong Kong, arriving about 6 pm local time. We had some amazing views coming in over the city. Followed the directions to our accommodation and found it without any trouble at all. We went for a wander around the few blocks closest to us to get something to eat and then called it a night.

This time next week...

... Mum and I will be in Hong Kong.

It's the first stop on our month-long trip to Scotland and Ireland and a few places in between. In the planning since November last year or so, and I haven't really thought about it seriously until I got back from Melbourne a little over a week ago.

I have a cold at the moment but am feeling better today than yesterday, so it should be well and truly gone by the time we fly out. Don't want anybody thinking I might have swine flu.

To follow up on the Melbourne experiments, we did manage to figure out what the problem was (parasitic reaction from the sides of the samples) and a stop-gap solution to fix it (coat the sides and change the experiment) and overall things worked very well indeed. The last few days (while I've been sick) have been spent on the most mind-numbing of all analysis: peak fitting of time series data. But that's fine because it's not like my brain has really been working anyway.

The broccoli experiments were very cushy by comparison: set up samples, define scan area, hit go, come back 12 or 24 hours later to repeat the process.

-- While we're away I'll try to put pictures up as often as I can, so stay tuned! --