Hangin' in Milwaukee

THURSDAY 22nd
Thanksgiving Day in the USA. We drove west about an an hour and a half to Mt Horeb with Kev and Kathy to Kathy's family's traditional Thanksgiving lunch. It was fantastic to be in the USA for such an American tradition. We had turkey, pumpkin pie and pecan pie which is all as American as Uncle Sam and apple pie - we had apple pie too!
We packed up in the evening and got ready to go to Las Vegas in the wee small hours of tomorrow morning.

WEDNESDAY 21st
Milwaukee is the training centre for the US Winter Olympic skating squad. They have an amazing skating rink with a 400m speed skating track and two hockey rinks. They do public skating sessions twice a day. We took the kids along for an ice-skate and a bit of exercise. Reid just jumped on and away he went – after his season of roller hockey he found the ice skating relatively easy. Adam hadn’t done it before so was a bit shaky to start with but got the hang of it quite quickly and was doing well when the incredibly uncomfortable skates just got too much. It was a good couple of hours though – Shari is a bit of a whiz!
We ventured downtown to the Grand Avenue Mall after skating and bought a few warm clothes and had a late lunch.
In the evening we went along to the Milwaukee Bucks vs Los Angeles Lakers pro basketball game. 2008 is the 40th year of the Bucks franchise and to help celebrate they invited Kareem Abdul Jabaar to the game and retired his jersey. He was with the Bucks for his first six years in the league and helped them to win their only Championship in 1971. It was a great honour to see Kareem in the flesh and also good to see Phil Jackson and Kobe Bryant for the Lakers. The Bucks won however and Aussie Andrew Bogut played an integral part especially toward the end.
The kids loved the game and all the razzmatazz and they got given a free tee-shirt as well.

TUESDAY 20th
The City of Milwaukee has recently built a large interactive science discovery world and an art gallery down on its re-developed lake-front. We spent most of Tuesday at the Discovery World exploring all sorts of hands-on exhibits that demonstrated everything from the great lakes hydrology to lying on a bed of nails. It was pretty interesting although as with a lot of these things they really suffer when stuff is “out of order”. The things that were working though were very well done and interesting. There was also a small aquarium which was very well done too. It managed to occupy the kids for a bout four ours so it must have been reasonably well put together.
The art gallery is a very interesting building with a large winged roof that opens and closes to flood the atrium with natural light. We went over and had a look through the public part but didn’t venture into the galleries.
We had an excellent dinner at a Mexican restaurant in the evening.

First day in the USA

After a bit of a slow start we decided to go into town to the Museum and Imax Theatre. Both were excellent and we spent all afternoon there. I also managed to find a spare battery for my camera which should save me running out at awkward times as has been happening up till now. We went to a mall in the evening because the shops don’t close till about 10pm.

Moving on to the USA

Our flight was delayed by an hour but that was no problem – we arrived in Chicago after a bumpy flight across the Atlantic at about 4.30pm local time. We picked up the rental car and drove North to Milwaukee to be at Kev and Kath’s by 6.30.

Last day in Paris

Sauturday was slightly warmer as we wandered the streets toward Notre Dame. We walked around inside and also down a side street and around the back. Notre Dame is far more intriguing architecturally on its “back” side than the front where the crowds gather. We then too a boat ride on the Batobus downstream to he Eiffel Tower and back up to the Louvre before walking back to our Hotel. We had the taxi ride from hell back to Gare du Nord to catch the train – I’m sure the Beijing and Paris taxi drivers go to the same taxi driving school!
The train trip back to the UK was seamless and quite pretty as we travelled through another perfect sunset. Wayne was there to greet us at Slough station and he took us back to their house for a wonderful home cooked meal and New Zealand wine – superb! We staggered back to our hotel quite late excited to be about to start the USA leg of our big adventure the next day.

First day of Paris.

We all slept in this morning, then took advantage of the Hotel breakfast before venturing out to take in the sites of Paris. We managed to catch the weather forecast first which was for a beautiful blue sky with a low of 1 and a high of 3 degrees. So we wandered of to the Eiffel Tower via the riverside walk and arrived at the Tower with the crowds about 11am. The que was about an hour long as we waited for elevator tickets to the top. It probably took about 2 hours to check out each level and then have a snack at level 1 before we walked down the steps to ground level again and then made our way toward the Arc de Triomphe. We battled the traffic into the centre of the Arc and then headed back down the Champs Elysees to the Louvre. It was really busy because the tube strike was still on and it was rush hour by now too. We managed to get inside the Louvre and see the Mona Lisa as well as catch fleeting glimpses of lots of other amazing artworks as we sped through the place at “Reid” pace.
We covered a lot today and it was very rewarding despite the bitter temperature. We’re finding the French people extremely friendly and helpful and a delight to deal with.

Bye, bye campervan.

Last night was our coldest yet – a minus 3 degree frost! We got the campervan back on time – as I turned off the engine, Shari said “thank God for that” – I couldn’t have summed it up better myself!
Paris here we come… We got dropped at Harpenden Station by a young South African bloke who works for “JustGo”. He was a nice bloke who resisted the temptation to skite about the Springboks and proceeded to knock England. He described living here as like being in prison and he couldn’t wait to get back to the wide open spaces of SA but a single Pound buys 19 Rand at the moment so he was busy saving his money.
St Pancras Station was still being worked on but we managed to get away on time at 2:05pm. There’s an hour time difference between the UK and France so we lost an hour but the trip was only 2.5 hours and smooth and seamless. Unfortunately there was a Metropolitain (tube) strike on so we had to wait in a que for an hour and a half in the freezing cold for a taxi to our hotel. It then took another 45 minutes to negotiate the traffic – it was worse than Beijing! We finally arrived at the hotel and then went down the road to dinner.

Last full campervan day

We faced a day of mainly driving today to get us back near to our campervan drop-off point. We had about 150 miles to cover, mostly on dual carriageway road and motorway thank goodness. The M25 was chocka but moving well – I can’t imagine what it would be like on a summer weekend or during rush hours? We got back to our original campground about 2pm and immediately started doing laundry! About 4, we headed into London to see the Christmas lights on Oxford Street and also look at Leicester Square, Piccadilly Circus and Oxford Circus. It was incredibly crowded and very cold but the lights were very nice.Today was our last full day in the UK, tomorrow we’re off to Paris on the Eurostar at 189mph under the English Channel. Today was its first day of operation from St. Pancras Station which has completed the new high speed connection to Europe.

The day we went to geevor

Juliet had recommended that we visit the Geevor Tin Mine just over on the Atlantic coast from Penzance. It’s a mine that has been operated for about 300 years, for copper originally, then tin. It closed in the early eighties when the (controlled) tin price dropped from 10,000 pounds/ton to 3,000. Prior to that supply exceeded demand. With the boom in China at the moment, world demand has increased by about 50% and the price is apparently at about 8,000 pounds/ton and a nearby closed tin mine is about to re-open at a cost of about 50 million pounds.
A group of ex-miners have formed a trust and raised money to restore the old mill and mine buildings. They’ve converted the offices into museum space. They also do an underground tour which was reasonably interesting. To be honest, it was good to see from a research point of view but wasn’t particularly interesting and the kids got bored pretty quickly.
There are lots of Pumphouse-like buildings along the coast in various states of repair which would make an interesting place to walk and explore in the summer.
We did a runner back toward London in the afternoon and made it about half way back before dark. The roads are really crowded and narrow and difficult to drive in the daylight – and they’re just downright dangerous in a camper after dark.

Eden Project Day 2

I met with Georgina and Juliet from the Eden Project in the morning to discuss the Post Mining Alliance and the case study they are drafting about Waihi and the closure of Martha. We also discussed the development of tourism projects as an alternative economic driver for a mining region.
We finally got a good wifi connection at Eden so spent a chunk of the afternoon in the café catching up with banking and emails. We then headed south to Penzance to look for a place to stay. We were all feeling pretty weary and cold so decided to indulge ourselves in a room at the nearest hotel. We all had hot baths and Shari got a weeks worth of washing done.