Tag Archives: Cityscape

Day 1 – getting there; a towering achievement

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Friday 8 May 2026 – Happy 100th Birthday, Sir David!

Sir David Attenborough may have been overwhelmed by the (perfectly justified) outpouring of love, affection and respect on the day of his 100th birthday, but this was as nothing compared to the overwhelm we felt in the face of having to set an alarm clock for 0230 in the sodding morning in order to take an 0330 taxi ride to the sodding airport to catch a sodding 0605 flight. This is the earliest alarm call for a holiday travels in living memory and I fervently wish never to have to do it again. It was so early that even our taxi driver, Saeed, who regularly takes on the early morning shift for Woking Taxis, was grumbling. Being decent citizens, we got to the airport for 0400, two hours before our flight was due to take off, to discover that

they don’t open the sodding luggage belts until 0430. Not that having an extra half an hour in bed worrying about missing the alarm would have been any less unsatisfactory a start to the day; it’s just the sodding principal of the thing. 

The morning crew in Heathrow T5 did start the luggage reception process promptly, so we were well up in the line to hand over our bags, and accordingly

had to wait whilst they started up the sodding security process. It wasn’t a long wait, but it’s the principle of the thing.

We got through security pretty quickly. It would have been even quicker had not Jane’s backpack got flagged up for investigation. It turned out that she had the most suspicious of items in her hand luggage – a book! You know, real paper and that. The combination of outrage and dulled senses meant that we’d taken a seat and ordered coffee before we realised that we were, horror of horrors, in a Starbuck’s. Fortunately, our dulled senses prevented us from being further outraged by the coffee itself, and at least our departure gate was actually by the coffee stop, so there were some compensations.

The flight actually pulled back early and arrived before schedule in Istanbul. We managed, of course, to pick the passport queue with the most diligent, thorough and slow check of people’s paperwork, but the upside of this was that the wait for our bags at the carousel was minimal – once we’d found our way to the carousels, that is.  We discovered that Istanbul Airport is huge. It’s the larger of two international airports serving Istanbul (the other being Sabiha Gokcen), the largest privately-owned airport operation in the world, and the second busiest airport in Europe, behind Heathrow. Who knew? The practical upshot was a long walk to the passport desks, another long walk to the baggage hall and an utterly mind-bogglingly large arrivals duty free area. I reckon it’s bigger than any other duty-free retail area I’ve seen in Europe. And around this vast duty free area are at least two dozen carousels (ours was Belt 21) and – somewhere – an exit, although signs to it were noticeable more by their absence than their ubiquity.  I wondered if the idea is to trap foreigners in there forever, existing solely on duty free chocolate and booze and using the perfumes to overcome the inevitable bodily odour resulting from that diet.

We eventually found the (I think) only sign to the exit and thence to Gate 9 where a chap with a Peter Sommer board awaited us and the other couple from our flight, Jackie and Andrew, who were part of this junket. We were then whisked into the heart of Istanbul to our hotel.

Well, not quite.

Istanbul Airport is some 40km outside the city, and the whisking got us through probably 35 of them at a reasonable clip on motorway, before we got into the inevitable sprawl that surrounds what is the largest city in Europe

and then progress slowed rather dramatically.  It gave us the chance to take a couple of pictures of passing scenes, 

including one schoolboy giggle for me,

and, at one particularly slow point, I was able to start wondering philosophically about the influence of English language 

The white P in the blue square has clearly influenced the development of the Turkish language, in which I’m sure “Auto” and “Park” are not indigenous words. Architecturally, on the journey from the airport, we’d obviously noted the prevalence of mosques as being an important visual cue that we were bordering the Middle East, so seeing this building

was not something I’d expected, which just goes to show I should have paid more attention to the information provided by Peter Sommer, because it’s a significant landmark in Istanbul called the Galata Tower, it takes its name from the area of the city it’s in and our hotel was the Galata Hotel.

Unsurprisingly, our room was not ready for us when we arrived at the hotel, so we took ourselves off to its second-floor restaurant for lunch. It was not overly busy

and the Caesar Salad, whilst very welcome, was slightly divergent from what one might expect in a UK restaurant, but it passed the time until we could get into our room, which was comfortable but a little on the compact side. It’s nice and modern, though, with international plug sockets and multiple USB points around the room, which is something I’m in favour of.

Unsurprisingly, we were somewhat knackered by this point in the day, so we took the opportunity for a bit of a rest, but then our usual instinct clicked in and we decided that we needed to go for a walk. Obviously. Jane had spotted that the Galata Tower was (a) A Thing that tourists could visit and (b) only minutes away from the hotel, so we headed thither, to discover that we weren’t the only people with this idea.

We really weren’t.

Really, really not.

However, overriding my normal instinct on seeing a queue like this, which is to say “fuck it” and walk away, we realised that today was probably going to be our only opportunity to go up the tower, so we stuck with it.  I wandered off to take a few photos in the area whilst Jane guarded our spot in the queue.

On my return to the queue, we realised the first thing that we’d forgotten to pack – we had none of Twinings finest Earl Grey with us! Shock! Horror! What were we to do?

In the short term, the answer was “nothing”. We inched our way forwards for some 45 minutes until we got to the front, where a chap was on hand to make sure there was no trouble from people trying to push in.

Going up the tower is quite easy, as a lift takes one to the sixth floor, whence a couple of flights of stairs lead to the outside balcony which goes right round the tower. And the views are pretty spectacular.

Blue Mosque
Hagia Sofia
Galata Bridge

One is directed to take the steps (rather than the lift) as the way down from the tower.  On the various levels there were things on display, such as a rather engaging model of the city

and a traditional Turkish vessel.

There was also an interactive sort of display/video game on the topic of the first recorded base jump from the tower. This was (reportedly) done by one Hezârfen Ahmed Çelebi, in 1632, who constructed a large wing and then flew across the Bosporus to land safely on the other side, aided by a south-westerly wind – thus predating the (scientifically verified) work of Otto Lilienthal, conventionally regarded as the first man to successful execute heavier-than-air flight. In theory, one can stand in front of a screen and do a Microsoft Flight Simulator with body and arm motion to steer, though it looked a little clunky when we watched.

Frankly, I think the story is bollocks. The altitude at the top of the tower is maybe 115m above sea level, and to create something in the 17th century that would glide 3,385m? I don’t think so. 

Some of the stairways down were OK for people up to about 5′ 9″, 

but a bit cramped for me, as I’m over 6′ tall. But we made it down successfully with no cranial contusions and made our way back to the hotel.

At 7pm we went down to the lobby to meet our guides, Professor Jim Crow and Seçkin Demirok, and our fellow travellers. Our group is 18 strong, and we chatted to Penelope and Chantelle whilst we waited for the others to come along and to get the initial briefing about our time in Istanbul. It took a little while, but eventually we had a few introductory words from Jim and Seçkin before we strolled out for some dinner. The route to our restaurant led past a lot of shuttered entrances, many of which had been decorated with painted figures, some well-known

and some less so.

The restaurant we went to, Mahkeme Lokantası, had a private room for us (confusingly accessed through a different front door), where we came face to face with what I suspect are typical realities of eating out in Istanbul – many, many starters with bread, followed at a leisurely pace by main course, then dessert and tea or coffee. It was around 8pm when we started eating, a time which is uncomfortably late for us, and especially bearing in mind that it was by this stage some 18 hours after we’d been roused from our slumbers. The food was lovely, but the quantities far too generous, and so Jane and I took our leave before the end of the meal to give us a chance to catch up with some much needed sleep.

Thus ended our first day. The morrow promises to be content-rich, with visits to mosques, museums, carpet shops and, excitingly, cisterns! Stay tuned to find out how that all went!

 

 

 

Christchurch: I – the city centre

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Thursday 5 March 2026 – Guess what? The drive down to Christchurch from Kaikoura is quite scenic.

It’s reassuring to note that they take some precautions against falling boulders in places,

but then we were heading into a place with quite a record of geological instability.

We arrived in Christchurch in good time check in to our hotel, the very well-organised George. Whilst Jane settled in to our room, I went to hand back our hire car; the nice manager at Budget was good enough to waive the charge for the extra day we incurred through the mix-up back in Auckland. On the way back I got some milk in for the inevitable cups of Twinings finest Earl Grey and also discovered a significant characteristic of Christchurch – the street art,

which is sprinkled liberally throughout the city, quite often on walls surrounding car parks. There are a lot of car parks on the open spaces throughout Christchurch that arise courtesy, one suspects, of the massive earthquakes that devastated the city in September 2010 and, more tragically, in February 2011, more of which later. I also passed the Victoria Jubilee Clock

built in celebration of Queen Victoria’s jubilee in 1897 (and rebuilt in 1930, presumably after an earthquake in 1929). I also noted that they have problems with the English language here similar to the ones we have in England.

The hotel room carried a reminder of the earthquake, too.

Anyway, we had some time to ourselves, both during this afternoon and tomorrow morning. So we went for walks. Obviously. These are photographs from our peregrinations, not necessarily in the order in which we saw things.

Street Art

We took a lot of photos of the street art, because there’s a lot of street art. There are some huge installations across the city centre

Trompe l’oeuil frontage for something

and many, many smaller examples.

It seems that any space is game for being covered.

A standby generator in Mona Vale

Other Art

As well as the murals, there are plenty of other installations around the city,  both old and new.

James Cook
Queen Victoria

Not sure if this is an art installation or a working phone box

Architecture

Obviously, since much of the city was destroyed in 2010 and 2011, there are many, many new buildings. Accommodation has sprung up all over the city with an agenda to attract people back to living there.

One famous post-earthquake construction, a container mall (similar in concept to the Tin Town that sprang up after the Napier earthquake), has since been demolished, and replaced with a very modern shopping centre

and the city’s restored tramline runs a tourist hop-on, hop-off service through it and round the other sights of the central area.

The city itself feels a little….odd. I suppose the lack of skyscrapers (there’s unsurprisingly a moratorium on tall buildings except under exceptional circumstances) and the ubiquity of modern constructions have a bearing on this. It’s a very pleasant city to walk around in. Parts of it have been restored to their previous glory, like New Regent Street,

along which the tram runs.

There’s been plenty of construction of new buildings, of course. The river Avon runs through the city, giving it a pleasant, green, focus

(the statue in the river there is, yes, an Anthony Gormley).

This greenness is not normal, by the way. Apparently, by this time of the year, all of the green spaces have usually been burnt brown; but it’s been such a wet summer that the grass is still green. As we walked around, the weather was delightful – 25°C and sunshine – so Christchurch folk’s bad luck was our good fortune.

Some modern buildings are just Deloitteful

but all the time the spectre of such a recent upheaval (literal and figurative) hangs over the city.

There are also several handsome old buildings which were damaged in the earthquake and which haven’t been restored (yet, one hopes),

including this teacher training college, which is a very striking building.

There is a museum, Quake City, dedicated to the earthquake, which is a very intense education about the impact it had. One thing I hadn’t appreciated was the constant barrage of quakes that has hit the city since its inception. Since 1844 there have been over 20 earthquakes in the area – they’re almost routine. What marks the 2010/2011 earthquakes out is the timing: September 2010 was a larger upheaval (7.1), but it happened in the middle of the night when the city was quiet. The one that followed, in February 2011, was “only” 6.1 but it was in the middle of the day, many of the buildings were weakened from September and so foundered, and many lives were lost in the collapsing buildings. The devastation was huge and widespread, as shown in photographs in Quake City.

Some buildings survived,

Was a Church, is now a microbrewery!

and, particularly, wooden ones tended to be able to withstand the shaking.

But, of course, many didn’t, notably the cathedral and the basilica.

Political wrangling has put a stop to restoration work of this cathedral, which seems an outrage until one considers that there’s not enough taxpayer money to go around and there are many more important calls on what money there is than, frankly, restoring churches. In that context, it’s a bit strange to note that there was money to build a brand new sports stadium

(seating capacity 30,000 but without its own car parking) but not to construct a mass transit rail system which would go a long way to relieve the city’s chronic rush hour traffic gridlock. There’s clearly been a lot of building, many examples of which could possibly have been funded entirely from the private sector.

An example, though, of what can be done is shown by the Cardboard Cathedral, formally called the Transitional Cathedral of the city, which is a truly remarkable (a) building and (b) piece of thinking.

There really is a huge amount of cardboard in its construction.

In a move that should surprise no-one, the building regs were changed somewhat after the earthquake, and ever since, all buildings have to have a minimum 50 years of expected life; the cardboard cathedral is expected to last well over a century. We learned this from a conversation with a lovely chap called Richard Parker, a volunteer at the cathedral and also a man involved with the city’s building programmes.

The Cardboard Cathedral is quite an inspiring construction, both for what it represents – rebuilding after a major setback – and how it’s done – with vision and imagination. Our visit to it and to Quake City were probably the most significant segments of our wanderings around in this very pleasant city; and we weren’t quite done. We had our fourth and final meeting with old friends, and were able to explore a few other aspects of the place. I’ll detail them in the next entry.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wending our way to Windy Wellington

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Wednesday 25 February 2026 – Our next stop would be Wellington, the capital city of New Zealand, which is some four hours’ drive from Napier. Because they’d been such excellent hosts and made our stay at 415 Marine Parade so comfortable and convivial, it was almost a shame to be leaving; but we had to move on. Because we’d drunk quite a lot of theirs, we gave them a bottle of one of our favourite gins, Drumshanbo Gunpowder Irish Gin. Perhaps it might be enough to get Esther back on the gin….

It was a long drive, but a pleasant one.  Since the weather continued to be wonderful, the scenery was, of course, lovely, as is typical of the North Island, particularly as we approached Wellington.

Napier is in Hawkes bay, which is world famous for its wines. We passed several vineyards, which, unlike those seen in Europe, are level, rather than being on a slope. The plants also seem to have a much denser leafiness than is familiar in Europe. Some of the vines were in their nappies (Nappy Valley…?)

actually netting to keep the birds off the ripened grapes. Hawkes Bay is also, according to Pete the gannet driver, the fruit bowl of New Zealand. We passed lots of apple orchards, for example, and some kiwi, fig and olive plantations, too.

We also passed the first wind farm that we’d seen on our travels here. Our road wended its way between the turbines, which was a bit surreal.

We had a serendipitous encounter with a charming village not too far south of Napier, in our quest for a coffee stop. Jane noticed that there was a cafe in Norsewood, just off State Highway 2. I thought that the name might just be, well, just this name, you know? But I was wrong – the village is actually the site of a Norwegian settlement from 1872. We parked up in front of a very quirky building

 

and Jane went into the Information Centre

where a couple of ladies were on duty. She asked them what the story was about Norsewood and they both started to tell her, each interrupting and correcting the other, which was a comedy moment. Long story short, that period in New Zealand’s history saw a decline in people from Britain immigrating and so the government turned to the Scandinavian countries for a source of hardy people who were familiar with forest management – the area was called the “Seventy Mile Bush” but was actually dense forest. So it was that Norsewood came into being on the back of Norwegian immigrants. About 20 years ago a heritage museum was set up to celebrate the history of the place, and the village itself retains some Scandinavian quirks.

There’s also a replica of a Nordic Stave Church. Those of you who followed our Arctic trip will know of the delight with which we discovered these gorgeous churches as we travelled in the Norwegian midlands, and, indeed back in Oslo. This replica was tiny, and not actually constructed at all like a real stave church, but it looked the part from the outside.

It was part of a garden called “Johanna’s World” which is also dedicated to the memory of these early Norwegian settlers. After taking a coffee in the very pleasant cafe, we exited Norsewood (via Odin Street and Hengist Street, incidentally) and continued towards Wellington.

We had chosen our route to Wellington because it took us near the Hutt Valley. Living there is someone whom I last saw in 2006, when we both attended the same music summer school, played in the same orchestra and drank with the same disreputable members of the brass section. Through the tendrils of Facebook we had stayed in the sort of light contact that platform is actually extremely good for, and Andy had got in touch when he saw on FB that we’d be visiting New Zealand; so we arranged to meet. One is never quite certain how these things will turn out, but it was a pleasure to meet him again and find out what had led him from the UK to become a resident on the other side of the globe. He and his partner, Teressa, suggested that we take lunch in Petone, on the outskirts of Wellington, and so we had a great time over a meal in Speight’s and a subsequent drink in the Sprig and Fern. Like our encounter with Jess and Ian, this social aspect was an excellent leavening of the travelling routine.

And so we came to Wellington, where we’re staying at the (very posh) Bolton Hotel. Our accommodation has some kitchen facilities, including a sight to gladden my heart.

These things are important, you know.

The hotel had included some clear, unambiguous and easy-to-follow instructions as to how to use the washing machine, with pictures an’ everyfink, the result of which was nevertheless that we failed satisfactorily to complete our laundry before it was time for bed, so we left it, in the hope that it would have unlocked itself by morning, and got our heads down.

Thursday 26 – The machine had not unlocked itself by morning, but switching it off showed it who was boss and we were able to get our clean and really quite nearly dry laundry out, thank goodness.

Our only scheduled activity for the day wasn’t due until the evening (and you’ll have to wait until the next entry in these pages to find out more about it), so, the ironing done (because our seeking of enjoyment is relentless) we had the bulk of the day to our own devices. Yesterday’s fine weather had rather deserted us,

so we donned rain jackets and we went for a walk. Obviously.

We hadn’t got a huge amount of time to spare, so Jane had mapped out a route that took us round local sights – the government buildings, cathedrals, the waterfront. In general, the area we were in was what you might call typical capital city architecture.

The main parliament building is quite an impressive edifice

faced with a rather fine grey marble. Next to it is another government building, called “the Beehive” whose form is reminiscent of a skep, a traditional woven form of beehive. The building houses the offices of the Prime Minister and other government ministers.

 

Opposite the Beehive is a lawn with sculptures which look like a banana, a mushroom and a carrot

but which are, apparently, supposed to represent a bird’s head, an altar and a canoe. No, really. There is symbolism in this choice: the location is near where the original (Polynesian) canoes landed, where an altar of stones was built. Birds are seen as messengers or links between heaven and earth. So, moving swiftly on….

The next building we passed looked somewhat churchy

but is the government library. Just beyond it is a real church

the Roman Catholic Cathedral. Its interior is rather restrained for a Catholic church

and in a side chapel there was one of those Adorations going on

so we left quietly so as not to get told off again.

Not too far from the Catholic Cathedral is the Anglican one, the new St. Paul’s, which is a vast edifice with rather Art Deco overtones.

 

The interior is light

and has several impressive features:  the mosaic at the far end;

some lovely stained glass;

and a very nice bit of carving in the marble, a tribute to the building industry of New Zealand.

Also, up a side corridor, is the Lady Chapel, which is very handsome, with a magnificent scent of the wood it’s made from.

It was originally built in 1905 as St. Paul’s church in Paraparaumu (more of this town later in an entirely unrelated way), and moved here in 1990.

Having seen the new St. Paul’s we then walked around the corner to the old St. Pauls, which has definite overtones of stave church in its overall appearance.

A board outside makes quite the claim

which is

absolutely justified. It’s not huge, but it is magnificent. The stained glass here is lovely, too

Our next target was the waterfront, to get to which one passes the railway station.

The walk took us past what was very clearly the working part of the waterfront towards the more gentrified part, with some attractive buildings

and water-based sculptures.

Some kids were disporting themselves in kayaks, playing a game which appeared to involve them shouting aggressively at each other and the tops of their voices

and several of them had taken to pedal carts and appeared to be racing each other.

There’s a decent view over the harbour towards Petone, where we’d been the day before, and Lowry Bay.

There’s a lagoon called Whairepo Lagoon, where the Wellington rowing club has its HQ. It’s encompassed by two bridges, the Love Lock bridge

and, rather more interestingly on the other side, the “City to Sea” Bridge

which we went to investigate, but not before having a spot of lunch, at a decent eatery called St. Johns. There’s a rather intriguing entry to the bridge on the left hand side as you see above,

and the whole thing is the basis for 1993 artwork by Para Matchitt. There’s a lot of it, and it’s difficult to capture photographically, but I hope this gives you the idea.

Our walk back to the hotel took us past the Wellington Central Library, with its striking supporting pillars. There’s a lot of work going on around there, but I bet it’ll be lovely when it’s finished.

Back at the hotel we had time for a cup of Twinings Finest Earl Grey before we had to strike out again, and I’ll tell you all about that…..some other time.