Tag: travel

I managed to get proper grown-up food today

July 23, 2007 admin 1 Comment

I had a lovely piece of fish with grilled peppers today. This makes a large improvement over yesterday, where I ate nothing. Well, a kit kat and a squished sausage roll don't count.

Dinner didn't fare any better, which *really* pissed me off. I'll get to that in a bit. The longer I'm at this conference, the less I like it. The venue is horribly organized. I had to stand in front of my poster for 1.5 hours last night during the reception. Imagine a three-sided building. There are posters on all 3 sides. There are three bars. Only one is open, where there is booze and copious amounts of free food. Guess where most of the crowd hung out. Now imagine that my poster is diametrically opposite the bar. Yeah. I was thrilled that I actually had a few people who were genuinely interested in the poster. It's been the only good thing about the conference so far.

The plan was to go to the hotel and drop our bags off, then head into town go to eat at a cafe near the cathedral. Unfortunately, the plan morphed along the way and we ended up going to an outdoor markt near the Rathaus that serves ethnic food. By this, I mean paella, kebabs, curries, greek food, spanish tapas and burgers. You know, all the sort of food that'll kill me. People were going “we're sure you'll be able to find something you can eat”. Yeah. Like I came all the way to Vienna to eat a fucking burger (no offence to burger lovers).

One guy was actually really good about it, going to stand to stand with me, but I just didn't feel comfortable with the whole concept of street food. I'm sure it's really good, but when it can cause you severe discomfort to say the least… I just didn't want to trust it. Call me paranoid, call me silly. In the end, I told them I'd go eat something at a sit-down place I'd try to find near the cathedral and get back to them for drinks.

Unfortunately, I managed to get myself hopelessly lost (my map was in my bag, which had been left at the hotel). I know I have all the navigational aptitudes of a drunken carrier pigeon. I've never claimed otherwise. Walking in a new city at night? Not my bestest idea. In the end, I managed to get myself at the right place, but I was so stressed out about the whole thing that I wasn't really hungry anymore. Also, it was now 10pm, and the concept of a meal was no longer so appealing. I just headed back to the hotel and spent a while talking to Katy. I tried texting the guys to let them know, but on top of everything else, my phone ran out of credit.

Another sign that my hotel is shit: when I got there, I wanted nothing better than a pot of hot water to make myself some tea in my room while talking to Katy. They had no teapots. I had to pay 3 euro to get a sodding cup of bad tea and burnt myself bringing it to the room.

Today is a better day. I made myself a few ham and cheese sandwiches from the breakfast buffet and snuck them in my bag in case lunch went pear-shaped. Turns out they were not needed, which is a nice plus. Later on today, I will go walking in Vienna on my own, in daylight, with maps to go see the sights *I* want to see and do the things *I* want to do. Antisocial much? At this point, I don't give a damn.

Edit: I've already made reservations to a lovely-sounding Italian restaurant tonight. Can't wait :)

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I'm meeeeeeeelting!

July 22, 2007 admin 1 Comment

I'm not build for this weather and I'm not a happy camper. Heck, I'm just not a happy camper in general at the minute. Let's recap.

I got up at 2:45am Saturday morning to get ready for my 3:30 pick up to get to Stansted. I was running on automatic, because what little sleep I got was broken up by waking every 30 minutes or so cause I didn't want to sleep through my alarm. At 2am, I gave up and spent a half hour petting the cat that had climbed up on my chest and was purring away quite contently (he's been getting more affectionate since we put a collar on him, go figure).

The flight was perfectly normal by Ryanair standards and, aside from a bit of drama when my poster tube fell off the luggage belt on the wrong side of the luggage pick-up area, the bus trip to Vienna from Bratislava was uneventful. We took the tube to the hotel and that's when we knew we were going to be in for a bumpy ride.

The rooms were a sauna. There was no AC and no wind circulation. My room faces the afternoon sun and is just above a busy street. Joy. The heat was so bad that I had to open a few windows. People who know me will realize just how bad it was. To make matters worse, although there is wireless internet at the hotel, apparently my room is one of the few that gets no reception. Oy.

Anyway. We got some euro and some sunscreen to protect my pasty white skin and headed out on walkabout. It was a good pootle, but it was just too warm. The best bit of that afternoon was having an ice cream cone (in a proper cone, that disintegrates in your mouth as soon as you bite on it). The heat got the better of me though, cause I started getting a bit woozy. Went back to the hotel and had a cool shower and a nap, but I elected not to go out to the opening reception. I didn't feel all that grand by then so I had Katy call me and then went to bed. From what I hear though, it was nice and then people went out to drink afterwards. There are a few places that I want to go see for myself when it's cooler, so I'll keep note and play hookie at some point during the conference.

We're there now. I don't like the layout of the place – it's on 3 levels of the venue and it's a real maze to get from point A to point B. The posters are on 2 levels, which means that since I'm in a back corner, I don't expect to get a lot of visitors…

I'm also pissed off about lunch and will be putting in a formal complaint with the organizers. When I registered, there was a specific form entry for dietary requirements and food allergies. I though to myself, yay, I might be able to finally have a proper lunch at one of these things. Of course not, silly boy. I just asked the catering staff to make sure (I had to use my multi-lingual “I'm going to die if I eat any of the following… ” card) and they said that there was garlic in everything. So yeah. NO SOUP FOR YOU! Bastards.

It's not so bad. I can have a good breakfast at the hotel and I can have nibbles during the coffee breaks (that marbled cake is nice! but you can't live on cake alone – no matter what some people might think). I also came prepared a bit and have some nibbles of my own. It's always the case though. My diet goes to shit when I'm on conferences… I'll go back living off salads when I get back home.

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Geneva pictures are finally up

June 20, 2007 admin 13 Comments

http://www.flubu.com/various_pics/geneva_jun_2007/

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Peeeectures!

May 29, 2007 admin

Katy bullied me into taking two days off last week so we went on a pair of day trips, one to Cadbury World and another to Hunstanton seaside.

Cadbury world was a childhood fantasy for Katy and was actually more fun than I thought it would be – once we managed to lose the 5 busload of hyped-up ADHD kids. We came back with a bit more than a kilo of chocolate and a stuffed parrot for Katy. I almost bought a 5kg bar of dairy milk, but I couldn't justify it. It would have gone bad before we'd have been able to eat it all without getting sick. Figure that one square of the bar is the equivalent of 3 normal dairy milk bars…

Our second trip was to the seaside, via Norfolk Lavender, a huuuuuge lavender farm. Hunstanton isn't the nicest of seasides. It looks a bit old. It probably didn't help that it wasn't completely open when we got there, but the bits that were were less than impressive. Southwold is nicer for a non-commercial seaside and Yarmouth is nicer for a commercial one. Still, we saw otters being fed and the beach itself was nice. The sea was completely calm and the sky was the same colour as the water, so both were indistinguisheable from each other.

The cliffs were also very cool. Apparently, they're a great source for fossils. As we were walking along the beach, we came across a rather unusual sight. An old dude was working at the base of the cliffs, apparently sorting out the fallen rocks into colour-coded piles. We didn't ask why; we figured he was probably bored and it took him out of the house.

The tide as out and had left tons of boulders covered in seaweed. Very funky indeed. The day itself was a bit overcast, but the sun was trying to shine through. I still managed to get a bit of a sunburn on my arms.

It was nice to spend some quiet time with the girl though :)

More pictures online at:

http://www.flubu.com/various_pics/hunstanton_may_2007/
http://www.flubu.com/various_pics/cadbury_world_may_2007/

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I did it myyyyyyyyyyy waaaaaaaaaayyyyyy

December 13, 2006 admin

It's just past midnight and I have finally made it back to the hotel. The good news is that I finally found a cashpoint that gave me euro. The bad news is that I have been properly chastised for being late by getting pissed on. It's raining again and my coat is now hanging up to dry. So much for nice weather for the rest of the week. More good news is that I have successfully made it to the center of Antwerp and have scoped out a few shops to investigate for chocolate products.

We had dinner at a restaurant near the square close to the old cathedral. The meal was good, but we were in this outdoorsy terrace place with heating lamps and disco balls. Two of them, even. Belgians are weird people. I had an interesting evening talking with two guys from Warrick who are here for the conference. They kinda sorta just latched onto our group. They were weird as well, especially one of the two. The sort of person I'd not normally hang out with: bit brash, bit full of himself. Still, the other one was really nice and I spent part of the evening talking about the fun problems of bioinformatics and biology in general. It was fun, really, cause his last foray into biology was a-level stuff (and he's in his late 30s right now) so delving into the complexities of combinatorial interactions, protein families, sequence variations, mixed in with a good dose of IT problems made for lively conversation. The look of abject horror on his face at the state of the problems and the lack of solutions was fun :) It reminded me just how much I love science and talking about it and vulgarizing it to people who are interested but never had a clue of the beautiful, elegant complexities of the system.

I would have been ready to head home after dinner, but being without money, map and not relishing having to ask for directions in pseudo-flemish meant that I had to stay with them while they went for a drink. That part was less fun. They went to an outdoor bar that served mulled wine (yetch) and was full of drunken Belgians (who I think i have mentioned are weird) meant that I got really bored really fast (especially when the other dude started talking about his hobby as a pop psychologist and how that helped him pull birds for random shags – a topic he went into with great gusto). That's when I went exploring the square for cash points and chocolate shops. We're going to go there after breakfast tomorrow and then head directly to the conference.

Now that i have a vague idea where I'm going and have funds to get there by myself, I think I'll have a night on my own tomorrow and come back for an early night at the hotel tomorrow night. As much as I like the guys I'm traveling with, I want some quiet time with to call Katy and then I'll read my book and chill at the hotel for a while.

(PS the title of the post was one of the songs that was playing at the outside mulled wine bar. even more yetch…)

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Javapolis, day 2

December 13, 2006 admin

For some reason, I keep waking up really early in the morning. I sleep ok, but I just wake up early. Meh, no biggie. Today was good.

I wasn't able to smuggle out pastries for Katy yet cause we didn't find any shops that were open and sold tupperware on our ramblings last night. We might play hookie tomorrow morning, so I might be able to do a spot of shopping and get her some frorm thursday or friday :) I have however, liberated some waffles for her cause they're individually packaged and won't cream the inside of my bag.

The day's sessions were really good. The morning one was all about tips and tricks on how to optimize java for performance and how to investigate bottlenecks. The afternoon session was about Adobe Flex, which is a codebase that lets you write flash applications that are uber sexay. I'm thinking of adding that to my arsenal. I think it might have marketing potential for my CV for future use.

The amount of stuff they give away in the exhibitor hall is truly shocking. Without trying really hard, I walked away with 6 tshirts, a mug, a tuque, a deck of cards and a pair of boxers. I'll see what sort of goodies I can plunder tomorrow :)

The plan for tonight is pretty much like last night, except with better weather. We're all meeting in the hotel lobby at 7 to go for dinner. I'm still euro-less because of the crap banking of last night, but hopefully a guy here will lend me some and I'll pay him back in pounds when we're back in the UK. It's just more annoying than anything else – I have money, I just can't get at it… Note to self for future travel plans, I guess.

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The weekend, and then Belgium!

December 12, 2006 admin

Saturday was a good day, and it wasn't. The rover was booked for its yearly MOT so we drove in to Saffron Walden and, after a few turn arounds, found the garage. The mechanic had been recommended by someone at work and he was going to have a look at the brakes, which had been mentioned at the last MOT, and then test the car. While that was going on, we went window shopping in town and had breakfast at a decent little greasy spoon called Mocha.

The MOT didn't go according to plan at all. when we called the dude to see if he was done, he told us that the car needed work done. a lot of it. It needs a complete new exhaust, two back tires, break pads in the front and possibly shoes in the back. Parts and labour in upwards of 500 quid. That's the bad news. The good news is that he's going to try and give us a good price for all the work that needs to be done, as well as a full service and have it all done by next monday. [In retrospect, that was optimistic as hell as it turned out to cost upwards of 850 quid, which is probably more than the car is worth at this point in its life. Still, according to Katy, it's like driving a new car right now, so at least some good came out of it]

We had plans to have dinner with Phil and Caroline, but it was now rather difficult to get to their place. Being cheeky, I asked Phil for a lift so we were still on for dinner. It was a nice evening, with lots of food and lots (and lots!) of wine.

Another bit of bad news was that we found that it's physically impossible to get a taxi at midnight on a saturday night in the middle of nowhere, unless you've pre-booked it. We hadn't, so after a dozen futile calls, we resigned ourselves to sleep on an inflatable mattress in the middle of the sitting room and Phil would drive us home tomorrow morning in time for me to get my cab to Heathrow and for Katy to go to work.

The morning was rough. I did something incredibly stupid which was to go to bed drunk without rehydrating myself and my head let me know just how silly that was at 5am. Lots of water later and a few advil, my headache cleared and the trip to Heathrow and subsequent flight to Brussels was routine. Once we'd landed, we got our kit and took the train to Antwerp. Hotel check in went surprisingly smoothly and we went to get some food. We found an italian restaurant close by that had good food but a truly weird italian landlord that was just… well weird.

The food was good and plentiful and reasonably priced, so I'm willing to put up with eccentricities. We chilled at the hotel for a bit then went to the conference center to pick up our conference packs and get dinner. We actually skipped dinner cause we were too full from our late lunch, so we only had hot chocolates at a little cafe near the venue.

I'm looking forward to the conference as it promises to be really, really interesting. at the same time though, I wish I was back home giving comfort to the katylady. She's feeling rough physically and low mentally. Her job is stressing her our and putting her in a bad place. A hangover and a dodgy stomach really aren't helping today either. as much as I'm looking forward to the conference, I'm looking back to being back in cambs to be with her :(

The first day of the conference went well. I had a decent night's sleep, given the fact that the bed is smallish, and the duvet doesn't cover me completely. Still, it was ok. Had breakfast at the hotel and we decided to walk to the conference center. We thought it would only take about 10 minutes, but that turned out to be closer to 25. It was a miserable, grey day too. Fun fun fun. The good news though is that the pastries they serve for breakfast at the conf center are simply sinful. I mean… I had 3. I'm a bad bad man, but I couldn't help myself.

In my defence though, it was a good thing because I had to skip lunch because they only served pre-packaged sandwiches with no ingredient labels on them. With all the sugar I had in the morning, I have to say that I really wasn't very hungry by lunchtime.

I managed to snag a Duke stress ball and a raffle ticket from Sun (it's a classic gimmick, they throw the stress balls in the crowd and the people who catch them can enter a prize draw – except that the speakers forgot to throw the thingies during their talks, so I just walked to one of the speakers at the end of the session and simply asked for one :D)

We got back to the hotel and chilled again before going to dinner. With my lack of lunch, I was feeling ravenous. The evening was a bit disappointing. Our guide was a typical man, who was convinced he was leading us to the promised land of good restaurants. After 20 minutes of walking in the rain, we settled for the first one we could find where we could all eat. It was ok. Decent food, but pricey and it took a solid hour for us to get the food after we ordered. When it was time to go back to the hotel, we decided to go for the cab option. It took another 20 minutes for the cabs to arrive. Sometimes, I really, really miss Taxi Co-Op…

Then there's the bank saga… I didn't have time to get any euro before I left the UK so I've been bumming off people here as I only have pounds on me. The night manager told me that there's an ING cash machine “nearby”. It took 15 minutes to walk there in the pouring rain for me to realize that it won't accept either of my cards. I was not a happy camper walking back to the hotel. My coat and jeans are currently hanging up to dry. They should be fine by tomorrow and I'll try again at other banks if I can find any.

I also found out that the hotel wireless network is extremely wonky. For some asinine reason, I can log on correctly the first time I get a new daily access code from the lobby, but if I hibernate my computer, I need to stop the DHCP and DNS client services on my laptop, flush my DNS cache and then turn everything back on before I can connect properly ^*. Still, it works – which is more than I can say for the wireless at the conference center, which was abysmal. It's almost pitiful, given the fact that this is an IT conference…

Ah well, off to bed now.

^* Having said that, it might honestly be my laptop. It seriously need a complete reinstall. It's starting to act truly bizarrely at times…

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Are we there yet?

October 29, 2006 admin 2 Comments

My day started very early and ended very, very late. My cab picked me up at 8am and that's where the travel hassles started. We had to go pick up a colleague 40 minutes away, but he didn't have either of us down as going to Heathrow, so that got sorted out and we were on our way.

The real fun started at Heathrow, where our direct flight to LAX had been cancelled because of mechanical failure of the plane so we were rerouted via Chicago with a 3 hour lay-over. That flight was 2 hours late taking off and was 30 minutes late arriving. I got selected for an enhanced security screen, which meant going through all my carry-on luggage and getting my boots and laptop wiped down and screened.

The flight itself was generally ok. I was able to watch 2 movies (Cars and X-Men 3) and a documentary about crossword puzzles. I'd made myself some grilled turkey breast wraps for lunch and dinner and I had a ton of junk food, so I had enough grub for all the flights (and as a side note, I found out there's a deli and grocery shop close to our hotel, so I should be ok for the flight back, yay!)

At Chicago, we had to pick up all our luggage from O'Hare arrivals and lug it across to the domestic departure terminal where we checked everything back in and went through yet another security check. I have to say, airport security is a big fucking joke. They're just going through the motions to make the sheep feel safer and in the process, waste everybody's time. When I arrived at O'Hare, there were signs everywhere that the department of homeland security would fingerprint and photograph everybody who comes from Europe. Apparently, that doesn't include me (probably because I have a canuck passport) cause they just grunted me through the checkpoint.

That flight was also one and a half hour late getting off the ground. I paid for a seat upgrade to premium economy cause at that point, my back was starting to kill me and those extra 4 inches make the world of difference. It was only 20 quid, so I didn't feel bad doing it..

A sign of the times: the seat I was in had been previously used by somebody that was so fat as to require a seatbelt extension. I'm not a small person by any measure, but with most airline seatbelts, I have about a foot or so belt that is still available to use. That person required a whole extra bit of belt…

When we landed at LAX, we picked up our bags (again). The poster tube I was carrying got broken (they didn't screw the cap back on when they opened it to inspect it so it got lost) and my coworker's bag got inspected by homeland security (they left a note saying they'd done it as a random spot check).

Getting to Long Beach was… interesting. I strongly believe our cab driver was hopped up on coke, weaving through 4 lanes of traffic in the freeway like a fucking maniac while trying to light his cigarette and playing bongo drums on his steering wheel to the beat of the (actually quite good but too loud) cubano jazz that was playing on the radio. When he got to Long Beach, he didn't know where the hotel was so he was driving around like he was using the force.

At one point, he asked another cabby for directions. The dialogue went something like this (and I am NOT exaggerating):

cab1: Hey, son of a gun! Where's the courtyard marriot?
cab2: fuck you!
cab1: fuck you too! courtyard marriot?
cab2: fuck you!
cab1: fuck you too! haha! courtyard marriot?
cab2: fuck you!

And it went like that until the light changed, where the other cab just peeled off and our cab driver starting complaining that nobody liked him in Long Beach.

By pure stupid luck, we found the hotel and checked in. Of course, something went wrong. The room was supposed to be pre-paid with the EBI credit card. Of course, no mention of that is on file. We'll figure that out in the next few days.

By that point, it was 11pm local time, 7am UK time. I'd been on the move for 23 hours and I was braindead. I gave Katy a quick skype call and went to bed.

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So lets recap, shall we? [Part 2]

October 24, 2006 admin 3 Comments

More on Quebec

I really recommend the hotel we stayed at: le Chateau de Pierre. It was just above the Terrasses Dufferin, with a great view on the old city and the river. We got settled in and then had a good wander around the old town. Our goal was to do as much walking as possible on the first day because they were forecasting rain for the following day. We took in the Petit Champlain (where both great restaurants were located), then went to the farmer's market and then got lost trying to find the old port museum, but feh, we scared tourists with the pie-ton! stick. The colours were in full bloom around town, which was really nice.

The next day saw us back in the old city, doing a bit of window shopping and general exploring. We saw a roman-catholic squiggle that day and a canon ball lodged in a tree. All good stuff :) It was Katy's mom's birthday, so she spent a looooong time on the phone while I entertained myself by bugging her with my camera, hehe. We were too late that day to go see the citadel, but we did sneak in a visit to the Governor General's house, which undoubtedly has the best view in all of Quebec. By that point, I think Katy was getting fed up with me being as avid a shutterbug as I am, so we packed it in and went for dinner. The place we wanted to go for dinner was booked solid (note to potential tourists: reservations are usually a Very Good Thing), so we ended up in this little bar & grill which, while ok, was definitely sub par compared to all the other meals we had in Quebec.

Our last full day saw us to and from the museums. Blergh. Kiddy school trip nightmares! When I went with my high school class, we were never that bad. Those were not kids, those were large feral weasels that trashed everything that wasn't tied down or behind glass. We managed to eat at both places that were packed the day before (yay, reservations) and ate really delicious rabbit at one place and I had caribou/wapiti/beef/pork meat pie. Hmmmm, pie! I've never had tourtiere du Lac St-Jean before, but that thing was wonderful.

The following day was our last in Quebec, so we indulged ourselves with one last sinful brunch at the Cochon Dingue, by far our fav restaurant for this trip, then we were off to the bus station. We missed the bus to Montreal by 5 minutes so we had to wait an hour for the next one. Then more waiting in Montreal, followed by wrist-slitting traffic out of the city to finally make it to Ottawa around 8:30. It took us almost as long to cross the Atlantic as it did to get from Quebec to Ottawa. Nice work, boys.

So lets recap, shall we? [Part 1]

October 24, 2006 admin 4 Comments

I've been wanting to blog stuff since the wedding, but generally, the last 3 weeks have been, in a word, chaotic. We're flying back to London as I'm writing this out at 35k feet. I've now lost all sense of time. It's the 21st. We got married on the 2nd. It seems that everything since then has been one big blur. I've been keeping little bits and pieces and notes on random scraps of paper, so I figure that now is a good time to try and sort through all of them.

The weekend before the wedding

Things started to get a bit nuts from the time Michel arrived, with his B&B not being ready for his arrival (in fact, being closed). We got him settled in to our place, but the plan of going to do a final suit fitting and go to the Cambs wine merchants went out the window. Instead, Katy and I went to run some errands. Here beginneth the dress saga.

Just over two month prior to this day, we'd bought Katy's wedding dress from Monsoon. At the time, she couldn't fit in it but the plan was to start a diet/exercise regime to get in shape. Now I'm really proud to say that Katy lost over two stone (24 pounds for people in North America) but we found out the hard way that Monsoon bridal dresses are cut really, really small. (We later found out that we should have gotten the dress a full size larger than the size she normally wears, but we didn't know this little tidbit at the time).As the wedding date drew nearer and Katy was still one critical zipper inch from fitting in the dress so we decided to get one that would fit nicely. We found a really nice one, which we actually ended up liking more than the original one. We were now however stuck with an unwanted wedding dress and since we were past the 30-day return period, we were kinda at the mercy of Monsoon's return policy.

We ended up being really lucky though because the dress was still in the system at the full price (which was probably an oversight on their part because it was last year's collection and no longer on the website). Because of this, we were able to get a store credit for the full price (250 quid), so Katy had a bit of a shopping spree at Monsoon that afternoon :) She got a nice skirt (shocking, I know!), a belt, two bags (one which was a gift for my sister), a pair of dress trousers, some Monsoon jeans (that she'd been lusting for since forever) and a baby top and some lion-headed mittens for Gabriel. A good haul, indeed!

We got back home and, after the cat crap incident which has been previously mentioned, had a nice evening at the Red Lion with Michel and then dropped him off at his B&B.

On Saturday, I went to Heathrow to pick up the 'rents and while they were recuperating at our house, we drove to town to do the suit fitting. That turned out to be another unplanned adventure because neither dress shirt would fit us and they didn't have any more in stock. After about 46 minutes of faffing around waiting for people at the other branch of Moss Bros to call back to see if they had our sizes available, we decided to just go to Debenhams and buy some. In the end, we found some really nice ones for a decent price, so that's not too bad. Besides, since I now have a pair of cuff links, it makes sense that I have the shirt to go with them. However, seeing that we spent an extra hour at Moss Bros and another hour in the Grafton centre, we ran out of time to go to the Wine Merchants again. That ended up being the running gag of the whole week – we never got to go while Michel was in town. We did manage to stop at M&S to get some grub, so we introduced my parents and Michel to not-just-food-but-M&S-food (meat pie and dripping-roasted spuds).

On Sunday morning, we took my parents to see the city centre and to hopefully get to the Wine Merchants – which turned out to be closed on Sundays. It had been sternly suggested by Michel's better half that he go and take pictures, so we just had a nice pootle in town but had to cut it short because Rita, Tim and Katy's parents arrived at our place in the meantime. We made it back to Hinxton just in time to go to lunch at the pub. Everybody seemed to have a nice time getting to know each other. I was surprised to see just how well my dad and Katy's uncle caught on. We all went back to ours for tea and small talk. Katy made a quick batch of gloop and sausages for dinner and people went on their merry way to their hotels while Katy and I went to pick up Anna at the train station. Poor thing, it took her more time to get from Manchester to Cambridge than it took us to cross the Atlantic and get to Canada. What should have been a 4-hour train ride mushroomed to an 8-hour ordeal because of missed connections, delays, cancellations and general train madness.

The wedding day

Things started out ok but went downhill fast. Mel, Stu and I were supposed to go to Chilford hall to drop off the wedding album and the music CDs to make sure that everything would work on the sound system. We also needed to go to a chemist to pick up some supplies for Katy's mom. Chilford was ok, but we got hopelessly lost in Saffron Walden and couldn't find the chemist. We found what we needed in a little hole-in-the-wall shop, but then got caught in morning deliveries and the traffic they spawned. When we finally made it out of town, we got caught behind a tractor going 10 miles an hour on the only road back home. I was going rather nuts by that time. When we finally got home, Katy and I realized that we had put her stocking suspenders in such a safe place that we could no longer find them now. I still think that the cat ate them, but I can't prove it. I hate to admit it, but I was sort of running around like a headless chicken for a while that morning. Finally, it was time for Michel and I to get dressed and for most of us to get to Chilford. We needed to get to the hall for 12:30 and Katy for 12:45, so we hired a minivan to get everybody except Katy, Rita, Anna and Mel to take us there. Another cab would come a bit later for Katy and her party.

That's when the biggest (and honestly, the only) hiccup of the day happened. Stephane was supposed to come up from London that morning with the lighting equipment that he'd hired for the day. He'd called earlier that morning to say that he should arrive around 11:30. However, because of train delays, he made it to Whittlesford after we'd all arrived at Chilford. We hadn't had any news, so I checked my voice mail (my phone was not on me and was also on vibrate, so I hadn't head it). Poor guy was stuck in Whittlesford, didn't know the place where we were getting married (he'd forgotten his invitation that had all those mundane details, like name and address of the hall), couldn't call a cab and even then, only had euro on him and no pounds :)

Things got sorted out in the end. I called him on his mom's France-registered cell phone, gave him directions and the number of a cab company and gave some money to the people at Chilford to pay for the cab. All and all, he was only 30 minutes late and that time was actually useful to settle my nerves a bit because I was becoming a bit of a wreck. He finally arrived and we all got a good chuckle because he was wearing ripped jeans and a skull-and-crossed-bones tshirt, hehe. He got changed and took on his duties and official photographer and we things got back on track.

The ceremony itself was, well, honestly, I don't really remember a lot of it. Mostly flashes. I did not expect to get so emotional, but I think that it was the release of months of preparation stress and just happiness at finally being at the moment. As soon as the opening notes of Pachelbel's canon (Katy's entrance music) started playing, I choked up. Even though we wrote our own vows, I don't remember a word of them. Thank god that the registrar led us through them. I know that I had a bit of trouble getting them out past the lump in my throat and I think I was whispering them at some point. I happily did not faint, nor did I drop the ring (though I had a bit of trouble figuring out which finger it was supposed to go on, even with the subtle prodding from Katy “it's the finger with the engagement ring, you big sap”) Katy says that I snotted all over her when I kissed her. I maintain that it was not that bad, though I know that my cheeks were… humid. I will say in my defence though that I was not the only one that shed a few tears or had trouble saying his/her lines.

We signed the registry and that was that. We were married.

We walked down the aisle and were out in a glorious sunshine. We were really lucky with the weather. It had drizzled a bit in the morning and it was forecast to rain all afternoon, but we had a lovely sunny break to take all the pictures outside and have canapes and champagne. The menfolk had cigars outside. When people sat down and started eating the buffet, it started pissing it down with rain.

We ended up having waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much food, but it was YUMMY! The buffet menu was posted previously and it was all that it promised. We need to send thank you cards to the people at Chilford because they gave us wonderful service, above and beyond what we expected. We spent the whole afternoon and most of the night eating and drinking and being merry. It was a really, really nice day; one that I will cherish forever. It was nice to meet a lot of Katy's friends – many of which I only knew from stories and I can now assign a face to. Michel had to make a speech, but emotions got the better of him in the middle of it. The same thing happened to Katy's dad during the toast.

We started taking pictures of everybody who was there and had a bit of fun with them. I was wearing a top hat that day and Katy a tiara, so all the people who posed had to wear either item, but it wasn't gender-specific :) To maintain tradition, there's also a picture of Stephane and I that will surely come back and bite me in the ass, but hey, some things you just gotta do.

I was really happy that my dad made it overseas. I think he had a good time overall there. I was really worried about his back, but he made it without too many problems. It was good having them there, and I think I made him cry that day :) Being a bit sensitive and emotional runs in the family after all :D

At 7:30, even more food was brought out, including a plate of scones that didn't last all that long. By the end of the evening, too much food had been eaten, just enough drink had been consumed, as well as some really nice cigars for the menfolk. People were just chilling and chatting in groups. That's one thing we were really happy about. People didn't seem to have too much trouble mingling together. My parents and Katy's got along really well, which didn't surprise us, but with more ease that we'd expected, to be honest.

People stared leaving around 9:30 and we were all home at ten-ish.

The days prior to leaving for Canada

You'd think that the following days would have been relaxing. You'd have been wrong. We were in town bright and early the following morning to return the suits and drive Michel, Stephane and Anna to the train station. We introduced my mom to the Early Learning Centre, which I think was a costly thing to do, but she loved it and bought tons of stuff for the kidlet. Things got a bit hairy for a while when we couldn't get in touch with the cattery to confirm Tolstoy's booking, but that got sorted out in the end. We dropped him off on Wednesday morning just before we went to Whittlesford to head off to London.

We got my folks on the Picadilly line to Heathrow and we headed to Victoria station to get to Gatwick to take a shuttle that would take us to our hotel . After being surrounded by a mad rush of people that intensely for a few days, it did us a lot of good to be on our own for a while. We were starting to get people'd out. The night we spend at the hotel in Gatwick was uneventful really. Nothing spectacular about it. The hotel was clean, the food was ok, but the service was crap and snooty. No kudos to it, so I won't even mention it anymore. We took off for Canada the next day.

The Christening

Katy and I are the godparents of Gabriel, my sister's son. We landed on Thursday and spend the next 4 days at my parents'. The christening went well, and it was a nice ceremony as these things go. I think that most of it was lost on Katy who is not catholic and doesn't really understand the rapid-fire french that was spoken during the ceremony. Still, I nudged her to sign on the right line, so all is well. My mom was in manic-mode that weekend, making sure that everything got done. She'd organized a wine & cheese with my extended family so that they could come and meet us, the newlyweds. It went well and though most of them aren't fluent in english, we still managed to get some nice conversations going and showed the wedding pictures a lot. I wasn't expecting them to be so generous, but we got quite a bit of unexpected money for our vacation, which was all well spent in the next two weeks

Montreal

We left for Montreal on Monday morning and went to get the keys of the crash pad we'd rented for the week. It was good to be on our own. Don't get me wrong, I love my family but after all the stresses of the previous week, we needed us time. We hadn't really had the occasion to just be on our own since prior to Michel's arrival. We needed this time. We had a good time in Montreal, even if it was a bit rushed at times and we didn't get to do all we wanted to do. We didn't get to see the biodome or the planetarium, poo, but those can be targets for next time we're in town.

We did manage to hit all the high notes: having sushi three days running, seeing Michel and Isabelle, Sara and Em, going to the old port, walking on the mountain, finding a really lovely tea shop in the old port, discovering a french pastry shop on St-Denis that makes mille-feuilles to die for, going to Eggspectations, seeing the lanterns at the Botanical Gardens. On Thursday night, while having drinks at Hurleys, Michel told us that Isabelle had to drive to Quebec early the following morning for work and we could have a lift if we got to their place for 7:30 am. That involved us going to bed at 1:30am because of all the packing we needed to do and getting up at 5:30 so as to not be late. Harsh, but we managed to sleep a bit in the car on the way to Quebec

Quebec

Quebec was wonderful. I did not expect to have that much fun in Quebec. I hadn't been there since a high school trip in 1991, but I still managed to remember some of the spots from that trip, like where we sang Christmas carols in june at the foot of Champlain's statue and the fountain where I chased Khaled with a trash can because he wouldn't give back my hat…

Anyway, I digress. The hotel we were in was really nice with lovely people running it. We ate like kings, we ate like pigs! Two really nice restaurants had been recommended to us by our hotel: le Cochon Dingue and le Lapin Saute. Both were NUMMAY!!! Steak frites, french onion soup, rabbit in mustard sauce, porc loin in maple syrup, hot chocolate galore! We would a little crepe shop that was overcrowded but really, really satisfying if you know what I mean :) That was also the night she scared some locals by saying “lets go to the hotel. you can rub cream on my shoulder and we can have sex with bad tv in the background” as a way to end a bit of a not-argument :)

We ate so well and so much that at one point, Katy started saying things like “yay, salad!” and “I'm looking forward to going back home and not eating”.

We mostly stayed in the old town, because that's where most of the sights are when you're a tourist without a car. Even then though, we had more things to see than we had time, so we did the major bits and took lots of pictures.

We decided to head back to Ottawa directly and not stop over in Montreal, mostly because we didn't have anywhere to crash.

Ottawa

We spent one night at my parents' before going to the Casino Hilton in Hull, our last major treat to ourselves. We'd booked two night in the executive-level rooms with the king-size beds. Finally, we had room to sleep!!!!!!! All of the beds we'd been in so far had been doubles, if not smaller, except for the hotel in Quebec which had a queen. We had room to spare in that bed. It felt wonderful :)

We'd gotten lucky weather-wise so far, because while it had rained non-stop in Ottawa, Montreal was mostly fine (except for some patches of drizzle here and there) and same for Quebec (we got moist one afternoon, that's about it). Ottawa was a bit grey, but we still had nice weather to walk in the Byward market and around Lemay lake.

[At this point, my laptop battery died so I'll finish it later]

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