What follows is my original blog entry, which consisted mostly of photo captions. Observations from my present self will be presented in green.

Cornwall is the southwestern peninsula of England, rich in history from prehistoric monoliths to legends of King Arthur’s Camelot. We drove most of the way on Thursday night, and found a hotel just outside of a city called Exeter. Our first stop on Friday morning was St. Michael’s Mount, a mountain/island/fortress/castle on the southern tip of Cornwall. So named because of a vision of the saint seen over the island a while back.

Marga on the large beach, uncovered at low tide. We walked all the way to the island on a causeway built in the 17th century. I think she still has and wears this sweater and jacket.

The harbor on the island. The boats have been beached by the low tide.

Marga halfway up the climb to the castle on top.

Looking for approaching warships

At last! The castle!

A tower from up in the castle

Looking down into the garden

Waves crashing on the rocks

Queen of the castle

Another view of the queen

Erik, admiring the view

Oh no! The tide has covered the causeway! Looks like the harbor’s full (of water)…I hope we have enough quid for the ferry!

Enjoying a little sun before leaving this majestic place.

Looking back at St. Michael’s Mount after the ferry ride

After leaving St. Michael’s, we headed to Lands End, the furthest western point in England. What better place to watch the sunset? This picture is a little boring, but there’s better to come! Scroll down!

Arms-length photography…perhaps I should invest in a tripod…

What a cute couple! …in their early twenties…

The first and last closed refreshment house. I was thirsty too!

Jeez, I was really working the black jeans and black sweater northern european look.

Prints for sale, $19.95.

What a terrible shame that this is the best resolution I have of these photos. The landscape was breathtaking!

Nice how the sun hits the cliffs…

This rock almost fell down. Good thing I was there! (Alternate title: ‘Atlas in Black’)

Apparently my sense of humor has shifted about as much as this rock in ten years.

No caption. I might have to encourage this hair color again. I like it!

Margarita on the rocks

A nice stone wall overgrown with heather and gorse

Sun on its way down

Living dangerously. Nora, don’t ever do this!

We spent all of Saturday in a little coastal town on the northern side of the peninsula called St. Ives. This was a little chapel amongst the many shops.

This is where we experienced our first Cornish Cream Tea. Yum! At the time, I was unfamiliar with the riddle of going to St. Ives. Bummer.

We took advantage of the low tide and had a nice walk on the extensive beach

Marga, barely able to stand the freezing water

Erik, barely able to stand the freezing water

Crossing the little mini-rivers running from the tide pools to the sea could be great fun. Looks like an ad for a clothing line.

More beached vessels. In a few hours they would be floating again.

On Sunday, we went to the biodomes known as the Eden Project. We were mistaken about what it was, as were many that entered. They were just big greenhouses with a million different plants and a million tourists stopped dead in a traffic jam on the narrow winding paths through the 90% humidity domes. Not a pleasant experience, nor interesting scientifically, nor educational. I do not recommend the Eden Project. So we got in the car and headed home, stopping for an hour to park on the highway in a traffic jam. You can see pictures of the Eden project on the panoramas page. Included below. These actually are high resolution.

Lands End panorama

St. Ives panorama

St. Ives surfers

St. Michael’s Beach

St. Michael’s Mount View

The Eden Project

Hi, it’s 2012 me again. Apparently I chose not to blog about one of the more memorable parts of this trip, driving around late at night trying to find a B&B to stay the night. We wanted to stay in Penzance, but all the hotels and B&Bs we checked were fully booked. We ended up driving south to a tiny harbor town with the adorable name of Mousehole, where we found a guy who was just starting a B&B and had just put his sign up on the road, but was not really ready for any guests yet, as the house was still being restored. We must have looked quite desperate because he relented and offered us a tiny room upstairs. We were delighted. We asked about local restaurants, and he recommended a seafood place “just down the road”, so we took off walking down the coast. After what felt like several miles later, we were just about to turn around and head back to the B&B when we came upon the restaurant overlooking the water. I don’t know if it was from the stress of finding lodging at the last minute, the walk down a dark winding road, or the romance of our first solo trip together, but there was something truly special about that meal that we will both remember forever.

Mousehole is an gorgeous little English village with stone houses and narrow winding streets. I recommend a virtual walk around the town via Google. It’s lovely. Finding gems like Mousehole is what makes travel so much fun. As Vonnegut put it, “Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.”

No doubt this tradition has very deep roots in power marriages across European kingdoms, but it hits my ears wrong every time I hear the Spanish news media speak of Carlos y Camila and their new daughter-in-law, Catalina Middleton.

I had to double check that I hadn’t pasted one jawbone over another because they look so identical, but I hadn’t. The shape of the jawbone on each belongs to the body.

A few thoughts about what you’re about to see… Wow, we look young! I still retain a little of this photo-caption-photo-caption style in my present day blogging. At the time, I was really preoccupied with the whole “driving on the left” novelty; the original post had another video that was just us speeding down the motorway with the cars going the other direction on our right. Ten years later, we still have some of these clothes…how embarrassing. And finally, this is why I blog: so I can look back at photos and thoughts like these. Okay, without further ado…

This past week I went to visit Marga in England. When I arrived, I was given an hour or two to sleep and then Marga and I went down to Oxford to meet up with some of her friends that had driven there earlier. We got there in time to search for the Bed & Breakfast and then go out dancing.

Oxford

Waiting outside the dance club. The guy at the door was keeping count of how many people were inside. Even with this precaution, it was pretty packed, but not uncomfortable. From left to right: a girl’s head who Aitziber had asked to take their photo, some English bloke that had helped us find the club and enjoyed practicing his Spanish, Rocio (her name means “dew” in Spanish), Aitziber (Marga’s roommate), Carlos, and Maria.

We tried again with the blonde out of the way and everyone looking at my camera. The English fellow would rather look at Rocio.

Dancing and drinking. From left to right: Marga, Maria, Aitziber, and Rocio.

Marga, Maria, me, Rocio, and Carlos.

Me and Marga…okay, so I had had a little to drink…

The next morning in the B&B. Aitziber wanted to try my camera.
Marga and I decided to spend Sunday in Oxford because we had arrived so late on Saturday. The others drove over to Cambridge. I knew from past experience that the cities are pretty much the same with Oxford possibly being better. Too bad about the overcast weather.

This might be my favorite picture from the whole week. This is Marga shopping for postcards.

We rented a rowboat and meandered along the canal. It had been a long time since I had rowed and it took me about 15 minutes to get the hang of it again. This is Marga enjoying the ride in the back of the boat and occasionally shouting “Cuidado!” (“Look out!”) when I got to close to a tree. The canal was quite tough to maneuver because of all the trees jutting out from the sides.

Marga charging ahead at ramming speed at some English (and I think Canadian) women.

What a European!!

The guard only let one person at a time walk 30 feet forward from here and photograph the inside of this college. I took full advantage (see panorama below).

The Head of the River. I guess it’s a restaurant and pub but I didn’t get to enter. I’d love to, though.

Camera at arms length

Walsall

For the rest of the week, Marga had to work, leaving the house at 5:30 every morning. On various days, I took trips from the house (easily using a nearby bus stop) into “the city” (Birmingham – the second biggest city in England) or into downtown Walsall, the suburb of Birmingham that Marga lives in.

A hedge shaped like Wallace and Grommit that I saw. I think this is in Solihull, another suburb of Birmingham that I ventured into.

The main room of Marga’s apartment (the dining room and the living room).

A look from the other side of the room.

A look out the living room window at a nearby sports field.

A look directly our the living room window. The sports field was on the left of what is shown here.

Marga on the phone in the living room, photo taken from the bedroom window.

Okay, maybe this one is my favorite… (er…I mean…”favourite”)

Marga preparing breakfast. Looks like a finger got in there…oops.

Marga consuming breakfast at a little table in the corner of the kitchen.

Marga leaving for work in her Fiat (the car in the middle).
Marga came home and we went out to walk around the Walsall City Centre.

Marga is an excellent driver, even on the left side of the road. She let me drive back from Walsall one evening when the traffic was light. Very difficult! In the round-a-bouts, I was simply going where Marga pointed and stopping when she said to. I still don’t really understand them, especially the double round-a-bout (“figure 8″?) near her house.

The Fiat interior

A photographically clever shot.

Driving on the wrong side of the road.

Getting into downtown Walsall.

An attractive building in downtown Walsall

We decided this picture would be entitled, “El Autobus y Otras Cosas” (“The Bus and Other Things”).

Marga’s building from the parking lot as I was leaving.

Panoramas

My new digital camera has a feature that lets you line up multiple shots so they can be easily be merged together into a panorama by the software that came with it. I like what I’ve seen. You really must click on each image to get the full effect. If you download IE6, it will size the images down to fit inside your window.

A little blurry, but this is one of the colleges at Oxford.

An Oxford street. “High Street”, I believe.

The college at Oxford where we had to take turns walking forward to take pictures.

This is Marga’s bedroom. Too bad about the lighting…

180 degrees of Marga’s kitchen. This one is really like turning your head from side to side as you scroll.

Videos

From my casual observations, which are probably riddled with confirmation bias, the cars that whiz past me in the fast lane are almost always, say nine times out of ten, either an Audi, a Mercedes, or a BMW. My theory on why this might be so goes something like this…

Car manufactured in Germany are designed with the speed limitless autobahn in mind and are thus more comfortable to drive at very high speeds than cars manufactured outside of Germany.

Not only is it that the ride is smoother at high speeds, but that the speedometer is designed to go higher. I recall my grandmother reporting some years back that after changing cars, she noticed that she drove faster on the motorway. Eventually she figured out that she had become used to keeping the speedometer needle exactly vertical, which was 100 kph in the old car and 120 kph in the new one. I think there’s definitely something to that.

Best black shoes ever.

Brown shoes bare their soles.

The yellowish-brown pair, I bought my last year in England from a shop in downtown Birmingham. They, too, have been worn just about every day since. They were so comfortable and easy to take on and off. Eventually, though, they were worn through one too many rainstorm and the suede became discolored and stiff. Not surprisingly, upon inspection, they also had the outside of their heels worn down.

So now I’m wondering if I have some orthopedic problem worth correcting. No doubt there are people in white lab coats willing to sell me things to put in or on my shoes to correct my problem. Personally I’m fine with my everyday shoes only lasting 1,500 days.

You can even see the grain of my desk.

I love the starburst pattern on the back.

This is a fairly mediocre tilt-shift, I think. It was tough getting the framing walls to blur with such a straight edge. I had to crop out the people from the original photo.

This one is pretty cool. The tricky part here, besides the nearby walls like on the previous photo, was the man standing at the cash register. His body was in focus, but his head was blurred, so I had to pull his head into focus, too.

This is a ferry in a Norwegian fjord. The cut-out of the boat was a little sloppy, and the featureless surface reduces the miniature effect a little bit.

Miniature Bergen Harbor. This photo is particularly lovely to me because it’s the harbor where my great-great-grandfather, Rasmus Rasmussen, set sail from on his way to the United States.

This is probably my most ambitious tilt-shift yet. The close-up nature of the subject and the wonky nature of the depth of field line made it particularly hard. I’m fairly satisfied with it, though.

As far as offices go, TUI was pretty nice. A huge open atrium housed a canteen that quickly taught us to bring our own lunches from home, as well as a Starbucks-certified machine and barista. As I recall, towards the end of my contract, we had worked out a system where Hubbers would just jingle some change together, causing me to Pavlovianly stand up and head towards the atrium. He followed shortly after. The coffee was overpriced, but the break from the monotonous work was priceless.

The main TUI building. I didn’t work in this building. We just had to go there for pointless corporate-wide meetings.

The front entrance to the building where I worked.

This was the entrance that we used to go into work every day. This is the little waterfall that Hubbers’ photo reminded me of. Notice the CCTV cameras in all of the first three photos. It was in the good old Orwellian UK, after all.

The landing in front of the elevators on the second floor, where I worked. On the other side of the railing is the atrium. See below.

The Starbucks machine was at the far end where the two customers are gathered. The bald guy is getting a drink from a refrigerator. None of it was free, in case you were wondering.

Looking back up from the Starbucks zone.

The common lounge area on the second floor. This is where people ate the lunches they brought from home.

And this is where the lunches got microwaved.

Looking down to the entrance and pond from the second floor lounge.

Looking back up from the bridge over the pond.

All these photos were taken on June 8, 2004. To give you some perspective on how long ago that was in internet time, I remember being so happy when one of my coworkers gave me an invitation to the beta version of a new email software that Google was releasing on an invitation-only basis. It’s hard to believe that it’s been four years since I left my last shirt-and-tie, drive-to-work, cubicle job. Even though the salary was they highest I’ve ever earned been paid, I’m so glad I quit.