Los Angeles, California. June 30

Tijuana, Mexico. June 29.

Update:Damn, I forgot to rotate the picture. I shall do this when I next have access to a good internet connection with my laptop. For now I fear that the Mexican roaming charges are even more horrendous than the American ones.

Further Update:. Now fixed. Yay. I am now taking a rest stop in a McDonald's just off the I5. Heading back to LA.

Joshua Tree National Park, California. June 28

Palm Springs, California. June 27

The City of Pasadena is evil, evil, EVIL.

Not the city itself, which is actually very pleasant. (I particularly like the fact that if you go into Starbucks and order a coffee, the people who serve you look like really nerdy graduate students of a variety of different ethnicities. I suspect one could start truly scary conversations with them about condensed matter physics if one really tried).

However, the City of Pasadena (ie the city government) is evil. This morning I parked a car there, and put money in the parking meter. The meter ran out at 11.02am. I arrived back at the car at 11.04am. Under my windscreen wiper was a parking ticket timed at 11.03am. The parking inspector was nowhere to be seen. (I am not exaggerating for effect - those were really the times). Either the parking inspectors in Pasadena are really efficient - perhaps someone at Caltech has invented teleportation and/or time travel - or they do the nasty trick of waiting beside a car with a meter about to run out and issue a ticket the moment it does. (This practice is illegal in England, where traffic wardens may not issue a ticket if there is time on the meter when they first reach the car).

If the mayor of Pasadena is reading this, I would just like him to know that after this I very deliberately drove to a different city before buying lunch, having decided I was not going to put any more money into the Pasadena economy. (This is a shame, as the city has some nice restaurants). This made me feel slightly better, although it is perhaps hard on the poor restauranteurs of Pasadena, who probably don't enjoy giving the city money any more than I do.

Venice, California. June 26

I really should stop contributing to my phone bill with these roaming data charges, but this is just too much fun.

Westwood, june 25

Demonstrating moblogging

I'd like to thank my agent, and the Knights of St John, and Roger Bacon, and Aristarchus of Samos.

Los Angeles, California, June 25

San Francisco, California. June 24

My entirely unintentional trip to the San Francisco gay pride parade is one me my more amusing recent travel stories.

San Francisco Bay. June 23

American Airlines have found and delivered my luggage. Well done them.

On the car

Driving the PT Cruiser around for a day or two is quite fun, although it is not the sort of car I would probably buy myself. I don't presently own a car at the moment, but I am generally into reliable and functional with respect to cars. The Cruiser is just ultimately a little too silly for me, although there doesn't actually seem to be anything wrong with it in terms of functionality, and it is quite a pleasant car to drive. (Where is the clutch though? Surely that should be part of the "retro" quality too. Of course, Americans then wouldn't be able to drive it).

In this instance I just ordered the cheapest class of car (as I usually do), and this is what I received. This sort of thing happens a lot when I rent cars in the US. From ordering the cheapest class of car, I once got a Pontiac Grand Prix (with a 3.5 litre engine) and on my most ludicrous occasion a full size Sports Utility Vehicle. (A Chevrolet TrailBlazer). I had never driven such a car before, and so my first experience of doing so was in Manhattan. At rush hour. I discovered this is one of the few ways of getting those yellow taxis to show you respect. Last time I was in California I got a Subaru Forester, which I thought was a lovely car, and was really nice for the relatively long drive from San Francisco to Crater Lake in Oregon and then down Highway 1 back to San Francisco that I took it on.

In Germany last month I did something I rarely do, and paid more money for a more expensive car. I thought that an "Audi A3 or similar" sounded like it would be fun on the German autobahns, and as it was only £20 more for the weekend, I paid the extra money. What I was actually given was a Skoda Octavia. Although it could be argued that an Octavia is very similar to an Audi A3 as both are based on the Volkswagon A4 platform and are at a certain gut level the same car, I wasn't really impressed. In the event that I had met a supermodel in the nightclubs of Hamburg who felt like coming for a drive to Rostock with me the next day, I don't think she would have been impressed either. Thus I am back to always ordering the cheapest car and perhaps being pleasantly surprised.

I am in the Bay Area now (although I think my luggage is in Los Angeles - it is not with me) and I am returning to the Los Angeles on Monday so I shall sample another rental car then.

Update: Actually come to think of it, the Pontiac might have had a 3.8 litre engine. It wasn't short on power, anyway. It almost made me feel at home. Australians do love cars with ludicrously overpowered engines. They are like the Germans that way. How they are not like the Germans is that speed limits on Australian motorways are no higher than 110km/h and are generally enforced, so what exactly you do with a car like this is something of a mystery.

Piedmont, California. June 22.

For some reason I always get really ludicrous rental cars when I am in America.

London, June 20.

Update: That was in the pub after my talk on China at Christian Michel's last night. I was very happy with how the talk went.

Brick Lane, London. June 17

Spitalfields, London, June 16

East London, June 16

Yes, I am sure the police sit in the station in the morning, and the PCs are told just how many badge thieves they are expected to catch today.

Regional Variations

As I have mentioned in pieces, I did enjoy Granada at the weekend. Most of my experience of Spain is of further North. I have been to Barcelona several times, to the Basque country several times, and to Galicia once. (I also went to Madrid once in 1993). Andalucia is relatively new to me, although I did go to Almeria for a weekend in January this year.

Given the loveliness of the place and the fact that Granada is a tourist destination, for one thing I was struck by just how cheap it was. One of the big factors in this is the free food. In Granada you go into a bar and order a drink, and you get free tapas. Generally it isn't just a bowl of olives, either. You order one beer, pay €1.50 to €2 for it, and you get quite a nice little item of food with it. Have three or four beers and you will have also had a good lunch. It took me a while to figure this out. For the first bar I went into, I pointed at the tapas that one of the other customers was having and suggested I would like one of those, and I was immediately asked it I wanted a beer. I said yes, but what I did not understand at the time was that ordering the beer made the food free. A few minutes later I ordered another beer, and a (different) plate of food arrived. I pointed out to the barman that I hadn't ordered it, but he laughed and explained the situation to me.

Still, though, I didn't appreciate yet how ubiquitous this situation was. On Saturday evening, after walking around the Alhambra and other parts of the city, I was tired, and I sat in a restaurant and had a large meal. I then thought I would go bar hopping for a bit, but when I did so, I found I was being given lots and lots more food with my drinks, to the extent that the restaurant meal had almost been rendered unnecessary. In the evening, the bars were big on the toasted cheese and ham sandwiches.

Long term readers of this blog (assuming I have any) will remember that I have encountered this tradition before, but it is not really a northern Spain thing. In the Basque country the bar food (pintxos) is elaborate and delicious, but you do have to pay for it. Similarly, I have never received free tapas in Barcelona. I think I did encounter it in Almeria, but it did not seem as ubiquitous as in Granada. It does make for very cheap meals though - you can have three beers and a substantial amount of food for €5.

The other thing that was different in Granada from what I was used to was the set menus in restaurants. In Spain, you go in and order the menu del dia, and you get a three course meal for about €10. Normally, this includes drinks. Quite often you get three courses, bread, and a whole bottle of wine for that €10. Oddly, though, in Granada the menu generally doesn't include the wine. You have to order drinks separately. On Sunday I had a three course meal for €7, but I had to order my vino tinto separately. I think I was charged about €1.20 for a glass of wine. I ordered and consumed a second glass of wine half way through the meal, but I was only charged for one. So it didn't exactly break the bank.

However, when you order drinks in Granada, free food.
When you order food in other parts of Spain, free drinks.

Neither of these things are reversed.

It is all complicated. I am sure I would figure it out more quickly if I knew the language.

Update: When I listed the parts of Spain I had been to, I forgot the little trip to Valencia I made in January last year. Another nice city, culturally close to Barcelona. I don't recall getting any free toasted cheese and ham sandwiches there.

Granada, June 9, again.

I seem to be managing to write or post something about every second day on this blog. This seems to indicate that I am serious about bringing this blog back, so I think I shall keep it up. If I am going to make it permanent I need either a redesign or I need to thoroughly hack the template. I think the blog looks a bit generic right now.

Moblogging is certainly fun, although it does lead to a lowering in the quality of pictures on the blog a little. It is not the same as taking 100 pictures, looking at them all carefully on a laptop screen, and then posting the best. If you blog from a mobile directly, you pretty much end up posting whatever you were lucky to get.

I think this is an example of a general conflict that occurs when you post photographs. One possibility is to post the best photograps in terms of the quality of the picture itself. The other is to post the most interesting photographs in terms of making some sort of point, or pointing out some irony between foreground and background, or something like that. Although I am a reasonably serious photographer and I care about taking the best possible photographs and succeeding in terms of the first category, the second almost always wins when I decide what to blog. (For instance, I thought that seeing the EU flag flying in the exact spot where once flew the banner of Ferdinand and Isabella was quite delicious, although nobody commented on it). I think this makes the blog slightly less striking on first glance, although hopefully it makes it more interesting if you settle down and read.

Redirection

I have been waving red rags at bulls over at Samizdata.

By the way, the Alhambra at Granada is one of the most stunning sites to visit in all of Europe. I will post some more pictures over the next few days.