Back From Vacation
Apr. 28th, 2015 06:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerIt's been longer since my last post than I usually try to be, but I might have a bit of an excuse. After my parents said they would be flying over to Scotland to go to a conference on wind turbine noise in Glasgow and my brother decided that was an opportunity to also get back to London, which he'd last visited very nearly twenty-five years ago on a previous family vacation, I decided I could go too. It hadn't been quite as long for me thanks to a one-day "shore excursion" on a cruise I was on just a few years ago (I went on a short Thames cruise from the Tower to Westminster, rode the London Eye, and stepped into Westminster Abbey), but I did think I could certainly stand to go back.
On other week-long vacations I've made posts along the way, but then I'd been travelling with a portable computer and loading pictures off my camera to provide some proof of it. This time, though, I decided I'd travel a little lighter with just my iPad. Although I'd managed to buy a really cheap Bluetooth keyboard at a local refurbished-goods store just days before (I can handle typing on the glass keyboard all right, but it does get sort of tedious to type apostrophes) after missing my chance to get an Apple wireless keyboard for a slight discount when the Target stores were closing down here, I didn't have any means to prove I was where I was saying, so I never did get around to making up a post on the road. Now, though, I have a small selection of pictures uploaded.
Along with certain regular tourist sights, my brother and I were interested in seeing some of the big museums in London, seeing in person some artifacts of humanity I'd only read about before. (Everyone else was also trying to see the Rosetta Stone, but I was also interested in happening on a replica set up the way the original first had been.) There were some surprises along the way, though. I'd known the Science Museum had the Difference Engine No. 1, but not an Apple 1, and on a similar note it was something to have gone just the right way to run across a particular wall plaque. I wasn't just looking at information technology, anyway. I suppose it was a tiring trip, but once I'd got over worries about "stepping out of the comfortable routine" it was a good one.
On other week-long vacations I've made posts along the way, but then I'd been travelling with a portable computer and loading pictures off my camera to provide some proof of it. This time, though, I decided I'd travel a little lighter with just my iPad. Although I'd managed to buy a really cheap Bluetooth keyboard at a local refurbished-goods store just days before (I can handle typing on the glass keyboard all right, but it does get sort of tedious to type apostrophes) after missing my chance to get an Apple wireless keyboard for a slight discount when the Target stores were closing down here, I didn't have any means to prove I was where I was saying, so I never did get around to making up a post on the road. Now, though, I have a small selection of pictures uploaded.
Along with certain regular tourist sights, my brother and I were interested in seeing some of the big museums in London, seeing in person some artifacts of humanity I'd only read about before. (Everyone else was also trying to see the Rosetta Stone, but I was also interested in happening on a replica set up the way the original first had been.) There were some surprises along the way, though. I'd known the Science Museum had the Difference Engine No. 1, but not an Apple 1, and on a similar note it was something to have gone just the right way to run across a particular wall plaque. I wasn't just looking at information technology, anyway. I suppose it was a tiring trip, but once I'd got over worries about "stepping out of the comfortable routine" it was a good one.
