roycemleev3.50

I was kinda sad getting up today, we had 1 full day to explore LA before heading back home. There was a fair bit we wanted to cover today, so we picked up some coffees from our favourite coffee shop and headed off bright and early.

First stop was to be the Schindler House, which Matthew new to be in North Kings Road in West Hollywood, but sadly not much else. Our Hertz map only really covered the very main roads so I knew we had our work cut out for us. We made a littany of mistakes that in no time had us weaving through the Hollywood Hills. The roads were very narrow, very steep and very winding. How Matthew was able to keep our left-hand drive SUV on the road was a minor miracle. Keeping it on the road with one hand on the wheel, the other clutching a camera, leaning out the window and snapping pictures as hurtled along, well that was a major miracle.

We got down from the hills safely, and drove along some of those famous LA streets and boulevards. It was a fascinating landscape of really big signs, lotsa cars, telegraph poles and some really weird tacky joints (like "Quality Headshot Reproductions").

I was pretty keen to get a photo of the Hollywood sign, but with Matt's rapid driving, our distance from the landmark, and "June gloom", it was looking somewhat unlikely. I gave it a go anyway, hanging out the window and trying to time my shutter opening to coincide with the gaps in the buildings, whilst holding the camera completely still as it was on full zoom. If you look very carefully halfway up the picture, right on the left-hand edge, you should be able to (just) make out "WOOD".

Now that was out of the way I got back to the serious job of taking photos of most everything that caught my eye. It's important to point out that in bringing you this collection of dozens of meaningless pictures, there were hundreds of equally meaningless photos left behind on the cutting-room floor.

Having driven around in circles for hours, we were ready to give up on the Schindler House when quite unexpectedly I spotted the street we had been looking for - we were going to see it after all! Unfortunately we were only allowed to take photos of the outside, which you can see in the last picture of the set below.

Oh mercy! That's not the Schindler House, it's some beaten up, unloved, and otherwise unremarkable (though demonstrably old) house next door. I tried this same switch when I showed these pics to my colleagues (ie, talk up this Schindler House as being something of a marvel, then show them a picture of the rat-infested hell-hole next door) but strangely no-one laughed or found it very amusing.....

Anyhoo, so this is the real Schindler House. It was pretty cool (gee, with intelligent descriptions like "cool" no wonder this guy failed Architecture) although I don't think his ceiling heights were up to code. I also think it would have been nice had they been able to keep more of the original furniture, I think that would have helped drop-outs like me understand the spaces a lot better.

Back on the road, this time heading into central LA and the Walt Disney Concert Hall (or WDCH for short), we came across some more nutty sights on the road. The last pic of the carwash looked a lot like a carwash on the Flinstones would look, only my photo really doesn't do it justice.

So driving into downtown LA, I was checking our progress on finding the WDCH with the map we had, though I needn't have worried - you really couldn't miss it. Thankfully the June Gloom had cleared enough that I'd be able to take some photos of the exterior with a somewhat blue sky.

As a piece of urban sculpture the WDCH was amazing, poetic, very appealing (compare with the Museum of Contemporary Art across the road, photo third from end in the previous set). There were a number of disappointments though. We'd been led to believe that the only way to build this with the incredibly tight tolerances was a computer fabrication process that made everything more accurate. The truth was there was enormous tolerance built into the design - all of the panels were connected to very long cleats. I imagine the panels were positioned loosely, then pushed into place, and then the bolts (exposed at the back) tightened.

I also felt that the human spaces around the building were impersonal - you really felt like (despite it being a public area) you shouldn't be walking around the building. The narrow and oddly winding thoroughfares, the heat and glare refleting off the panels, the lack of seating, all made it quite uncomfortable, like we really didn't belong there.

We only made it inside as far as the lobby and the gift shop (still no watch, though I was tempted to buy a Frank Gehry watch but they were just too ugly) and I found the interior spaces to be unnecessary dark. There was certainly some interesting shapes going on, but my overall impression of this building was fairly negative.

After finishing our visit to the WDCH, we stepped across the road to check out the MOCA. Well we made it as far as the MOCA shop - still no watch for me but Matthew picked up an urban bag and I managed to get a few more pressies for people.

Being in the city centre we thought we should also check out the new CALTRANS (California Transport Department) building that Morphosis had designed. After snapping a few pics of the inner city we reached CALTRANS - and found it slightly ironic that the Transport Department building had 14,000 car spaces. The building had been designed using a very small team, something that probabaly woundn't have been possible without that firm's use of BIMs technology.

The last image in the previous set isn't CALTRANS, it was a building across the road that they had presumably used to test the facade panels. We decided not to stick around - the area was deserted except for lots of homeless people and looked kind of scary. Driving through south central LA reminded me a lot of Pulp Fiction - I was expecting to see Zed's shop at any moment.

Heading west back toward Santa Monica we saw some more interesting sights - a building with a mural depicting the control tower at LAX, and a sign on a bus stop seat that, well, really speaks for itself.

Our final tourist stop today was the J. Paul Getty Centre in the hills of the Topanga State Park. Driving up it was an impressive sight high up on the hills, but having never really understood Richard Meier's work I wasn't as keen as Matthew to see this building. We got off the highway at Mulholland Drive (sadly Naomi Watts was nowhere to be seen) and parked our car at the parking station at the base of the mountain. From there it was a short monorail ride up the mountain to the Centre.

It takes a big man to admit he's wrong, and I'm a big, big man. Richard Meier is a genius! The careful thought, the humane spaces he created, the resolution of his ideas, just spectacular. When you walked around the Centre, and saw a view or a vista or something else notable, and thought "wouldn't this be a nice place to sit for a moment" invariably there was a seat or two to do just that. It was a place people could enjoy, and many, many people were.

The highlights were numerous; the beautiful travertine that had been used for both the hard landscaping and the building's main cladding (there was a seperate tour guide that mapped out the best fossils), the views over Los Angeles and out to the Pacific, and not forgetting the art, the value of which I imagine made the cost of the Centre itself seem insignificant.

After spending the afternoon at the Getty Centre it was time to head back to the hotel, pick up our stuff, and head out to the airport. Our flight was after midnight, but we needed to get the car back before 7:00pm. Fortunately that left us time for some farewell ales where else but the Library Alehouse, and then quickly to Hurtz before we started incurring late fees.

As a result we were at the airport several hours before our 15 hour flight home, so we camped out in the lounge until take-off time. We had a few drinks, did some stuff on the laptops, freshened up in the bathroom, and when the time came took our business class seats for the ride home. 15 hours of total darkness, a few movies, broken sleep and some tasty eats and drinks, and before we knew it (despite this being the longest flight of our lives) we were back in Sydney. We landed around 7:00am, a little sad that there was no one to greet us. Matt and I grabbed a taxi back to our respective homes, the final stop of this awesome trip. I got to say hi to Laura before she went into work, but for myself, well, I felt I deserved a day off. Matt (who I'm told just loves the drama) went more or less straight into the office.

The trip was an amazing, life-changing experience, and there are a great many people I would like to thank. Firstly to James Peet, who turned down the opportunity to go on this trip and suggested that I take his place. Next, to the Principals at Bligh Voller Nield, and in particular James Grose, who thought that someone from our office should learn what others were doing in design technology and agreed with James Peet that one of those people should be me.

A thanks also to all of our new friends who helped made the trip a success; Jochen Glemser, Billy Prendergast, Jens Meyer, Joe Robson, Stephen Miller, Will McLardy, Lars Hesselgren, Gamma Basra, Tim Makower, Ken Shuttleworth, Andrew Hartness, Jean, Eric Anton, Mike Loynd, Willy Feuerman, James Brogan, Rob Brown, Connie Ricer, Carrie Byles, Reg Prentice, Marty Doscher and Emil Mertzel.

An extra special thankyou to Tony Day and to Volker Mueller, whose contributions to us both during the organising and execution of our trip were of immense value. And Volker, despite only an hour's notice, was able to give us 4 hours of his valuable time.

Thanks to Imogen, and Dua and Ben, who made me feel very welcome during our stay in London, and Imogen again for all her help in Paris. A thank you to Laura, who was patient with me taking my first overseas trip without her, and made me feel loved when I got home.

And finally to Matt, who, when all is said and done, was a great travel companion, and made the trip all the more enjoyable. His travel experience, particularly in London, definitely saved me from some terrible mistakes. Thanks Matt.

Today was the last day of meetings on our awesome trip (see, I've been here one day and I'm already saying California surfer words like awesome). Our first meeting was with Morphosis, who sometimes spell their name m0rphosis, and always pronounce it more-fer-sis. I always thought it was pronounced more-foe-sis, maybe that's why I was so bad at uni.

Anyhow, we decided to drive along Main Street to get some breakfast and some coffee, which in hindsight was foolish because all of our prior coffee experiences in the US had been indescribably bad (a horror I can never fully tell any of you about). As it turned out, the coffee was - for me at least - the best on trip. Better than Paris, better than Soho in London, hell even better than on QF1. It was a real hallelujah moment.

Ok, so onto Morphosis, where we met Marty Doscher. He was a pretty clever guy, reminded me quite a lot Matt, and he gave us a great tour. It was here that we got our best look at a rapid-prototyping machine, that was able to "print" 3D models of buildings or details. All in all they had some pretty impressive stuff.

After meeting for a few hours we went with Marty to lunch at a nearby restaurant. Walking the half-mile or so in the stinking California heat certainly wasn't my idea, but I was very grateful that where we had lunch was air-conditioned. Our waiter was a dead ringer for Oliver Platt, only with a half British, half Californian surfer dude accent.

We went back to Morphosis and picked up our wheels and left for our final meeting. Eric Owen Moss' office was really hard to find as it was nestled in amongst houses and traffic calming devices, and street numbers oddly seemed to jump by thousands. It was looking bad for us - after travelling 28000km in around 15 days it was starting to appear like we might be seriously late for a meeting.

Luckily we stumbled upon Moss's office and we were only an hour or so late. Emil (pronounced ay-mill, I was really having a hard time getting pronunciation right today) was cool about it and gave us another fantastic and thorough tour. As the pictures would suggest, these offices in LA weren't adverse to making a physical model or two.

Prolly the oddest thing about this office was the door handle, I mean there is no delicate way to put this, it was fashioned to look like a penis. A piece of reinforcing steel about the right size and cut and filed to roughly the right shape sticking out erect from the door. To go in or out you had to grab this handle with a tennis grip and pull. I was looking around for the Candid Camera cameras but it was only Matthew who was laughing.

After that somewhat light end to our schedule of meetings, we decided to follow Emil's suggestion and drive around a bit to look at some of the work the office had done - we needn't have gone far! The entire next street was full of Eric Owen Moss buildings. We were perhaps most interested in "the stealth" (it was quite new and Emil had discussed it at length) and the "bombed ICT building" (ICT is one of Matthew's projects in Newcastle, and EOM's version looked similar though slightly blown up).

So our meetings were over - we were now on our own time, so we decided to pack up and go get drunk. We drove back to the hotel, my watch that I had left behind in Columbus had by now arrived by courier, I changed to a new room that had internet, and took some pics.

Now these photos should have been spectacular. Sadly, at this time of year, LA experiences this strange atmospheric condition the locals call "June Gloom", where the sky becomes hazy, and although you should be able to easily see the ocean from my hotel window, instead all you can see is this cruel joke that mother nature pulls on this beautiful city.

Bullshit! June Gloom is nothing more than garden-variety smog, because everyone drives gas-guzzling, air-polluting, road-destroying, pedestrian-eating, animal-killing cars with almost reckless abandon. Cruel atmospheric conditions indeed!

So, for our last meal on trip (well not really, but nevertheless it felt somehow momentous) we again headed to the Library Alehouse. On the way we went past the coffee shop we bought our breakky from, and the strangest thing - the place was packed to the rafters! This was a hot Friday evening in June, the working week was over, it was clearly Miller Time, so what were the locals doing? Sucking on coffees that's what. Very, very odd.

When you fall off a bike, the first thing you do is hide the evidence get back on. After my "ribs" disaster in Columbus, it was time to again partake of the evil meal. With beer. Tonight I didn't go whole hog (pardon the pun) and only ordered the regular rack, which I put away quite successfully thank-you very much.

Matt and I ate and drank and yakked well into the night, our work was done, our trip was almost over, and this time tomorrow night we were heading home.

Our second last flight was to be a short one down the West Coast - San Fran to LA. Amazing the contrast in topography really.....

Matt had been on my case a bit about hiring a car in LA - how else would we get around he'd say - it won't cost all that much he'd say. I was concerned that we hadn't really got it approved beforehand, and there might be some trouble when we got home. Flying into LA though, and seeing the huge roads it was obvious that this wasn't like London or Paris where walking everywhere made a lot sense. There were cars everywhere, ashphalt everywhere (you could see the heat rising off it, even from the plane), and definitely not a lot of pedestrians. Matt was right, we really needed a car.

After picking up our bags we got the courtesy bus to the Hertz lot (must've been six whole acres of cars, with this small kiosk like building in the middle). The rates looked ok until the nice lady behind the counter started working her money-maker on Matt. Before I knew it we'd agreed to super-size to an SUV, paid for insurance, speedy return, and a few other "value-additions" and before we knew it we were paying somewhere around $100 per day. Thinking back to home, with Baywater "No Chicks" Rental at $18 for a compact, I felt a bit ill - that must be why they call it Hurtz.

The map that came with the car seemed to have very little detail, so neither of us were really suprised when, after getting directions from Kenny the Hertz guy when we left the lot, we headed in the complete wrong direction. Fortunately all roads lead to West Pico Boulevard, and we easily recovered from our error.

Our hotel was in Santa Monica, and I have to say that I was super-pleased when we got there - it was superb! I reckon it was the best hotel we had been to - high on a hill a few blocks from the ocean. We dropped our bags off, I called the hotel in Columbus about my watch, and we headed to our meetings.

Frank O. Gehry's office was a 20 or so minute drive from the hotel, in an industrial estate just down the road from some of the large LA computer game companies. We drove past the office a few times before accidentally spotting the sign telling us we were at the right place.

We were just getting out when James Grose (our boss) called from Sydney. Matthew fessed up about the hire car and we sort of got in trouble but not really (James was just concerned we hadn't asked, though as Matt pointed out if we had the answer would have been "no"). The entrance wasn't particularly well marked, so we almost did a whole lap before finding the way in.

Our man on the inside was Reg Prentice, a Kiwi who had stumbled into Frank's office nearly 10 years before. He had been in Santa Monica for the sun and the surf but had stayed much longer. The office had around 100 people, and models (scale models of buildings, not fashion models - this was California after all - it's important to make the distinction) everywhere. There was one fishbowl office, Frank's, and he was in it. He was the first truly famous architect we had seen all trip.

Reg's tour of the office had placed us very close to Frank's office, I turned to head in that direction and Reg grabbed my shoulder and pulled me the other way. "Frank doesn't like vistors" Reg said, and suggested that if he saw us we would have been sent on our way.

We met with Roger and the Team from Gehry Technologies, the company that was starting to sell the CAD package that they use in that office. While we were waiting for our meeting, I noticed the kitchenette had a box of non-dairy creamer sitting on the bench. Was this stuff following me?

We picked up a fair bit from Gehry's before heading off with Reg for lunch at a nearby Italian restaurant. The food was really nice, and it was good to hear Reg's stories of working with Frank. Apparently in the 9 and a bit years he's worked there, he's spoken personally with the big man only a handful of times.

After dropping Reg back at the office, we were free for the rest of the arvo. Reg had suggested that we meet him for dinner and drinks later, so we decided to head off in that direction. First thing first though - drop the car back at the hotel - and so I took that opportunity to take a quick snap of the view from the room.

Where we were meeting was the appropriately named main drag in Santa Monica, Main Street. After walking the few short blocks to Main Street we were a just a block from the beach and in the main shopping district in the area. As luck would have it there was a MOMA store (no watch for me, but I came very close to choosing one), the Library Alehouse.

Beers were great and dinner was nice (though I made an awful menu choice and ended up with raw beef) - I was glad that Reg had suggested it. We drank well into the night before saying our farewells and heading back to the hotel for some much needed shuteye. I think that exhaustion was finally starting to get the better of me.

You've caught me again - I'm still in Columbus. Using yesterday's logic though, the early morning departure means that today is considered San Francisco day. Another flight at sparrow's, the same rigmarole at the airport, a similar little tacker plane, this was getting all too familiar. The big difference today was domestic travel the American way. Todays flight was a relay job - one hour or so to Chicago, disembark, get to new gate and board new plane, then several hours to SF.

Landing at O'Hare I'll be honest and say that I wasn't quite ready for the sprint required to get to the new gate on time. Apparently O'Hare is the largest airport in the world, we disembarked our first plane at one end, and had to board our new plane at the other. We power-walked, and even jogged, for much of the transfer and arrived at the gate just as everyone was boarding. Another 5 minutes and we could well have been in trouble.

So far most of our flights were business class. The flights on the little tackers were economy (single class planes) but being only an hour or so that was ok. This was our first First Class flight, and man, what a stinker. Obviously American were spending all of their money on security and none of it on plane cabins or food. When offered coffee just say no - I foolishly said "white with one" and swear I was nearly poisoned. The fact that the coffee is crap notwithstanding, they have this stuff (presumably made by DuPont) called non-dairy creamer. This powder goes into your hot beverage instead of milk, gives it this slightly murky brown appearance, but offers no appreciable flavour difference over black coffee. What it does do is have a chemical reaction with the lining of your mouth, giving you this wax-like coating, such that scalding hot black coffee *feels* like a creamy milky beverage. This stuff should be illegal.

The landscape as viewed from the plane window was pretty spectacular - so many patterns changing all the time - Matt had the window seat and shot off a thousand photos. If you ever download NASA World Wind then follow a course from Chicago to San Francisco and you'll see what I mean.

The airport was quite a way from San Francisco proper, so we opted to get an airport bus to the hotel. This took absolute ages, I think we were the very last to be dropped off. Our hotel was in the "fun" part of town - Fisherman's Wharf - not too far from that other fun part of town, Alcatraz Island. Speaking of fun, the directions to our rooms were pretty special - something along the lines of "walk a long way that way, then go out the fire exit, cross the street and go into the Denny's, walk all the way through, go to the lifts the other side, then follow the directions on the back of this piece of paper". Sheesh. Why bother with Alcatraz, why not just put your worst crims in the Holiday Inn instead. If they ever managed to get out, man they'd deserve their freedom.

Sadly didn't have any real time for sight-seeing, so we went down to the wharf to get public transport into town. Went past a lot of shops selling junk, a Ripley's Believe it or Nottorium or whatever it's called, past all of the fish and chips shops (man I was getting hungry) and finally to where it looked like public transport was at.

Ok, I'm in San Francisco, so I'm looking for a tram right? Wrong! There were cable cars, buses, trolley cars and the Muni (which is a bus with wheels but powered by overhead powerlines). And from what I could figure out from the maps we had, we didn't want to get our definitions wrong because if we'd say hopped on a cable car but really needed to be on a trolley, we would have gone in the complete wrong direction and missed our fast approaching meeting.

We ended up on the Muni, which, had I not panicked, would have got us to a very short distance from our meeting. Instead I freaked and got us off a stop too soon, then proceded to walk in the complete wrong direction. Fortunately Matt still had his bearings, corrected my error, agreed that I'd follow him from now on, and took of in search of a very quick lunch. The only thing that looked half decent was this Mexican joint, but sadly half decent was an overstatement. Now I was also banned from picking food places.

Today's meeting was at Skidmore Owings and Merrill, or S.O.M. for short. These guys have probably the best reputation of all of the super-firms. Our host here was Carrie (a friend of Burnsie from work) who was the managing partner of this office. She was amazing, and gave us heaps of her time even though she was incredibly, incredibly busy.

After our meeting at S.O.M., we had a little bit of time to see some sights before dinner and bed (another flight at sparrows tomorrow). First stop was the SFMOMA Shop, again looking for a watch (and again coming up short). Next to the SFMOMA Shop was SFMOMA - it was shut but I could get a little way into the foyer to take some pics.

Now I have to confess, I never really got Mario Botta, and seeing this licorice allsort in the flesh nothing has changed that. I sent my friend Tim, the only person I know who gets Botta, these photos - he was pleased.

After that we were heading up into the main part of town (where I was planning to continue my watch hunt) when we came across this sizeable commotion. There were police, there were black SUVs (big ones with tinted windows) and an awful lot of people. Matt and I staked out a bit of turf (a streetlamp in fact) to get a better look at what was going on.

At pretty much that moment, this tall, grey-haired skinny weird guy that looked a lot like Presedential candidate Senator John Kerry (DEM) was within a few feet of us. He waved, before being hustled over to the other side of the road to continue his meet and greet. After a very short time he was hustled again though this time into one of the vehicles and the whole motorcade was off. Matt and I both commented that it was great to see the new Prez before his inauguration later in the year?!

After that kerfuffle most of the shops in town were closing and being a hottish day and all it was again Miller time. We walked for a while through the streets and shops of Chinatown and onto the Italian quarter, giving me time to lament not finding a watch. It was then that I realised AYE YAI YAI! Where was my current watch? All that trying to find a new watch and I hadn't even looked after my old one. I started coming over all (strangely) sentimental. I was missing my old watch - I needed my old watch. I MUST have my old watch.

Then I passed this poster:

I'm a big fan of They Might Be Giants, and it kind of takes me by surprise anytime I see evidence that there may be other fans. Hence the photograph. I started to remember all the concerts I went to wearing my old watch, how it had faithfully told me what time it was even in the dark. I needed a beer, and I needed it now.

We had a number of drinks and some fine pasta - I forget much of what happened after that but it must have ended up ok because here I am writing this.

Ok, so technically today started off in New York - but we were now getting into the "early morning flights" part of our itinerary, and spent most of the day in Columbus, so today is given as a "Columbus" day.

Managed to wake myself up at 5:30am (again rising early - again beating the alarm) just beating the call from the Taxi guy reminding me about the 6:30am pickup. Met Matt downstairs and we were on our way to the airport.

Upon reaching the airport we were introduced to a number of the considerably tighter security procedures that had been put in place for domestic travel. First was the checked-in luggage procedure - after weighing your checked-in luggage your bags are returned to you to take around to the large MRI-looking massive colour x-ray scanning device that sits out in the passenger lobby. After that was the normal carry-on bag inspection/metal detector walk though. Due to some code printed on our boarding passes, we were further directed to the body frisk area. First, our carry-on stuff was brought over to us and after we had identified it as our own, it was opened and all of the contents were taken out and thoroughly examined. Even our laptops were opened up and dusted for explosives residue. Then for the frisking a same-sex security person with a wand would give you a right going over, including under your arms and between your legs, but obviously still preferable to a cavity search.

We got onto our plane which was quite a little tacker, single seat on one side of the aisle and two seats on the other, but it was only a 1 hr flight so I wasn't too concerned. The only worry was the guy we were meeting at the other end - this whole trip had been arranged around his availability and he was due back from 4 weeks leave only the day before. I had sent him several emails but hadn't received responses in some time, and had called him the night before in New York and left a (reportedly) unintelligible message on his voicemail. Boy I hoped he knew we were coming.

Landing in Columbus was like landing at Archerfield (or for those of you not from Brisbane think Badgeries Creek, or maybe Avalon (I've not been to either, but imagine they are quite small and low-tech. I called our man Volker who couldn't make sense of any of my messages (not his fault) and was wondering when I would be in town. I told him I was there, right now, and could he meet us at some point today. Not only could he clear his day to meet us, but he could pick us up from our hotel, drive us to the restaurant, have lunch, take us on a tour of his office, then drop us back to the hotel when we were done. What a great guy!

So Volker picks us up and takes us to this strange restaurant for lunch. Think hi-tech park complete with squat recently constructed towers clad in glass and alpolic sitting in oversized cul-de-sacs, well that's where we were. Don't get me wrong, it was a nice, fancyish, tableclothy sort of restaurant with nice food and drink, just the location (on the ground floor of said squat building) was odd is all.

After lunch Volker drove us the 15 minutes or so to the offices of NBBJ. Like nothing I'd seen before, they were located in some sort of thickish bush, right on this largish river, I could sort of imagine Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer floating past on a raft, wagging school and slacking off. Volker treated us to four hours of chat, presentation, office tour, before finally dropping us off at the hotel - what a great guy!

Columbus was a strange place - think Canberra, only even more weird. Must've seen 50 people and even less cars in our whole time there. In fairness we were near the uni and it was summer break, but still we were also in the heart of the public service sector. Depite the lack of population, what I figured to be the world's largest parking structure was visible straight out my window. Must've had space for a billion cars, though I don't recall seeing a single one parked there. The hotel though was brilliant, free broadband internet, no checkout (receipt under the door, leave the key in your room), really big beds, a nice desk, a useful shop in the lobby. Totally pro (designed for business travellers by business travellers the motto went) and so completely unexpected.

Columbus has a German quarter, which had me worried. In Australia, this would mean lots of beer and sausage, but here it could easily mean families of highly-efficient, BMW-wagon-driving, public-service-working, serious Europeans. I needn't have worried, because after setting off for the fun food district The Short North (it's really called that - there's even a wrought iron sign spanning across the street), it was obvious that for such a small town there was an awful number of boutique beers available.

Matt and I tuckered in to a number of lagers and ales before ordering dinner, perhaps the biggest mistake I made all trip. I though I was really hungry, and so ordered the large BBQ beef ribs (2 racks) instead of the more sensible regular size (1 rack). I think I was one bite into the second rack before I gave up, defeated. It was a short hike back to the hotel, but an uncomfortable one - I was just so completely stuffed. Definitely slept well that night....

This whole getting up early thing was now coming quite naturally - I must have woken up close to 5:30am. Started off by watching a telemovie about the baseball major leagues, followed by some story about the murder of some girl in Central Park in the 80's. Then, on the Today Show or whatever it was, David Byrne from Talking Heads was interviewed and performed a song from his new album - I was completely chuffed.

After yesterday's breakfast ripoff I decided to forgo the buffet and instead get something out on the street. It was also laundry day, so using the yellow pages I sourced (what I thought to be) a local laundromat. Isn't funny how, when you're not looking for something you see a million of them, but you can never find one when you want it? Well I eventually got to where I thought the laundromat was and guess what? No laundromat. I wasn't too worried, because a block or so further east looked to be an area plum full of laundromats.

Oh dear, I couldn't have been more wrong. Another 30 minutes or so in the hot morning sun and I was no closer to... wait a minute.... finally, somewhere to leave my clothes. I dropped them off and went searching for somewhere suitable for breakfast. I had a delicious omlette in a breakfast diner, forwent the awful american coffee and instead had a breakfast Coke, and I was then on my way to the first meeting.

It was a fair hike so (chafed badly remember) I decided to battle the traffic in a taxi. My driver appeared of Indian decent (subcontinent, not native American) so I asked him about the cricket. We chatted happily before he took my phone number so that he could have tomorrow morning's airport run.

I met Matt outside the offices of Bernard Tschumi before our morning meeting. I remembered learning a bit about Bernard at uni, he had published these "Advertisements for Architecture" - a series of posters with witty slogans. On of the ads compared the practice of Architecture with performing bondage, something about the more the constraints the greater the pleasure.... it was the 70s after all!

Bernard (pronounced burr-nard, and not burn-id) was away, so his relatively young staff of a dozen or so was running itself. Billy was our host, an interesting and articulate guy, and we got a good look into how their office designed stuff. Apologies to any Alan Turing afficionados out there, but I understood that one of his methods of codebreaking was rather that trying to come up with the correct answer, come up with all of the incorrect ones and thereby eliminate them. The Tschumi office worked a similar way - explore a myriad of possible solutions and eliminate the ones that don't work.

After Tschumi's office we had a short bit of time before our next meeting. We'd decided on the bus, but strangely I had to purchase my ticket at the subway station. Being downtown this was actually kinda scary, and I was sure I had eyes in the back of my head when I pulled out my credit card at the vending machine.

Nothing untoward happened and after a longish wait for the bus we were on our way to lunch. Lunch was a disgrace, lets never speak of it again. After a brief stop at Macy's (think Super KMart) we were off to meeting number 2. KPF's offices were just near the Ed Sullivan Theatre (home of David Letterman), and only a short walk from Central Park. James Brogan (the guy I met at KPF's office in London) had invited us to visit and here we were. Their design technology manager Thomas Brown gave us a good tour and talked a bit about how they were using 3D. I think he provided on of the more memorable quotes, that "Design Technology means less time is spent documenting, giving more time to do more design".

I know I've mentioned the heat a few times already, but just incase you had forgotten it was still bloody hot. First I had to go back to the laundromat and pick up my laundered clothes. Strewth could I possibly have gone any further away from the hotel? Finally we made it back to the hotel where it was time to freshen up before dinner and ales.

I forget the name of the pub we went to in Times Square (could it have been TGI McFriday's?) but we went upstairs to the bar/restaurant and got onto the Buds. The buds next to us were also on Buds - they made a few jokes at our expense but seemed like nice enough chaps - and we had our dinners right there at the bar. I felt like Norm from Cheers (and yes the unkind amongst you, I may have even resembled him a bit too) only that night I didn't handle my liquor too well, and went home rather wobbly.

Again I managed to wake up fairly early - and what a beautiful Sunday morning it was too. First thing was to complain about the room (smoking floor) and I was asked if level 10 overlooking Times Square would do. Um yes, that will do nicely. Old view........ new view.....

After sorting that out I headed down to the dining room for breakky. Having not had a proper dinner the night before, I was quite peckish, so started hooking in before checking whether or not breakfast was included in the room rate. My question was answered quickly though, with a waiter dropping a bill on the table for US$19.95 for the 1 person buffet (ouch).

Matt decided he wanted to do his own thing today, so I mapped out what I was hoping to do.

• find a watch
• see some tall buildings
• visit ground zero
• see the Statue
• photograph the Guggenheim
• checkout SoHo, NoHo, Tribeca
• see some sites
• pick up a present for Laura

First thing first, I knew the MOMA store was only a block or so away in West 53rd, so I was very hopeful of locating a watch. I have to say that the store was a lot smaller than I had anticipated, possibly excusable as they were building a new museum across the road. While there was definitely some interesting watches, nothing really caught my eye.

Back out onto the streets and wasn't long before I started to see some quite familiar buildings; Philip Johnson's PoMo AT&T building, William Van Alen's Chrysler Building - ahh I was starting to enjoy this.

I stumbled onto 5th Ave, and so visited the famous Saks (of 5th Ave) - really makes DJs look kind of hokey. There I bought some shaving cream but sadly no watch. Across the road from Saks was a massive Barne's and Noble, where I spent at least 30 minutes trying to choose the best map. I finally chose this pop-out expandable thingy and was on my way.

I had only bought a couple of things so far in the States but was noticing a few intersting things. One, the ticketed price is without tax, and the percentage isn't a nice round number like 10% either - they go in for 8.625% so work that one out in your head. Second thing was that they love shrapnel there - very quickly you end up with a brick-like lump of shrapnel in your pocket which was kind of odd because if something cost $12.97 and you tendered $15.00, the clerk would always ask "do you have the 97c". But no, despite logic saying that this would result in less loose change in your pocket, the opposite was the case. The other thing is their love of the one dollar bill - every time someone needed to make up less than $10 change it invariably involved a wad of ones [I still have 13 of them after the trip].

Okay, so onto the pics of my sightseeing..... The first batch are more midtown, featuring Van Alen's Chrysler, Grand Central Station, and a curious one showing a skywriting technique they use over there (I was mildly suprised that planes are allowed anywhere near the CBD but oh well). Forget about flying in loops forming the delicate shapes of letters, the yanks have come up with a way of pixelating skywriting with controlled smoke releases making it possible to form whole sentences in a single pass. Gotta love that American know-how.

The last few above pics were from the set of a new Corvette ad being filmed. The stunt involved this dude driving the red 'Vette in reverse down an offramp at speed. The lights at the bottom of the hill turn red, and in one high-speed slick move he spins the car 180 degrees and comes to a halt, presumably right on the line and with the car facing perfectly forward. Took the stunt driver a few goes but he nailed it on the 4th attempt - there was much rejoicing.

So looking at my map, the plan was to keep heading south, picking up the Empire State Building, Flatiron, Greenwich Village, SoHo, NoHo, the Woolworth Building, WTC site, and finally Madam Liberty. A beautiful day - the map showed it as quite a small walk so I was feeling pretty good.

First stop - Empire State Building. I have to say it was a considerably longer walk than the map would otherwise have suggested. I had heard that a lot of the more touristy attractions like Empire State, Stock Exchange etc had been closed after 9.11 (or as we say in this part of the world 11.9), so I was pleased that the observation deck was still open to the public. I was considerably less pleased by the advertised wait-time of 3 hours. So I resigned myself to taking in the lobby and some piccies of the exterior.

Next on my tour was Flatiron, one of my favourite buildings from Architecture school and considered Manhattan's oldest skyscraper (though only 87 metres tall). Built in 1902, it was used recently in the movies Spiderman 1 and 2 as the offices of the Daily Bugle. I was also really disappointed at all of the scaffolding around the awning, but then I was starting to notice that almost all midtown buildings had the same thing.

Not far from here the scale of the surrounds dipped considerably. There were a lot more of the "West-Side-Story-styled" external fire exits and mid-rise apartment buildings in this part of town. As an aside, that poster was designed by Saul Bass, a genius of graphic design - you should look him up. The area also had some really great stores - like Sam Flax - which on the outside looked kinda crappy, but on the inside was still kinda crappy, but boy did they have some good stuff. Herman Miller furniture (my Mirra Chair arrives next week), Lamy pens, and designer portfolios as far as the eye could see.

The other thing that you notice about the Greenwich Village area (and SoHo and NoHo for that matter) are these water towers that are on the roof of buildings everywhere. It looks particularly weird when you look back towards midtown high-rise with these rusty, odd looking water towers in the foreground.

Looking from here to the south there were some interesting vistas showing my beloved Woolworth building what looks to be an awfully long way away in the distance. Did I mention the heat? By this stage it was mid-arvo, middle of summer, and no large buildings to protect me with their shade. I zig-zagged a bit through the streets of SoHo, coming across some of the famed designer stores and artsy warehouses.

One such store, Moss was brilliant - full to the brim of designer goods. I made a bee-line for the watches and YES, THIS OLE MATHIESEN WATCH THAT I HAD BEEN LOOKING FOR FOR YEARS WAS THERE ON SALE!!! My globe travelling adventure to find the perfect watch was over, and I could move on with life. Sadly, I was a little stung by the US$660.00 price tag, and the fact that the strap was blue and not black. Still I procrastinated for an hour or so before deciding that this was not the watch for me.

My stop in SoHo was all too brief, but I knew I had to keep moving and get to more sights before it got dark. Next it was onto one of my other favourite buildings, the Woolworth. One of the things I liked about it was it's playfulness, the gargoyles in the lobby were caricatures of the Woolworths Board members of the day. One such gargoyle was Frank Woolworth himself, counting dimes. Another was the architect Cass Gilbert cradling a "baby" Woolworth building. Ahh the good old days. Sadly the building was closed so I couldn't get any pics of my own.

Next stop was Ground Zero, and I have to say I had this awful sensation in the pit of my stomach. This glumness, this melancholy just suddenly came over me. The streets seemed very dusty, and a lot of the buildings in the area were damaged around the ground level. None of the landmarks were familiar, even though I'd seen a lot of the 9.11 footage.

The area where the buildings stood was enormous, but still I really didn't have a sense of the scale of the buildings that used to stand there. The memorial was pretty crappy, you'd have thought they would have done a lot better. Standing on the edge of the site nearly 4 years on, it was quite amazing to see the damaged buildings that were still standing - all scaffolded up and (presumably) unused since that dreaded day.

One of the other buildings that caught my eye was One Battery Park Plaza. The afternoon sun catching the white (or was it bright silver) window frames against the black facade jst looked brilliant. None of the photos I took do it justice though....

And from here it was only a short stroll to Battery Park. There was a lot going on, art projects etc, but I somehow didn't see any of it. Matt was there at about the same time and got all of these photos, but I must have been in the wrong bit. I did manage to see the Statue though, and I did manage to see some squirrels.

I sat down at the halfway mark of my walk-a-thon for a breather, and that's when I realised I was in quite a lot of pain. Chafing. Completely chafed. Red raw. I got back up to keep going and found I was in so much pain I could hardly walk. About that time I decided to take the most direct route home (somehow stupidly neglecting to consider public transport).

There were some more great vistas heading north, with some great glimpses of the Empire State from amongst the much smaller buildings in Greenwich Village. The clothes shopping district was still doing brisk trade, and I continued my watch search in Bloomingdales without success. My walk took me past Union Square (more squirrels, past the eastern side of Flatiron (another photo op) and back along Broadway to midtown. I stopped off at one of hundreds of thousands of Duane Reade drugstores that seem to be on every corner in NYC, and picked up some refreshments and something for the chafing.

The sun had now completely gone down, and we were well into dusk. It must have been around 8pm and I had just gone on a 10hr walk! My last stop was Toys'r'us in Times Square. I took a few pictures of Geoffrey (look at how proud he is) and bought Laura a little Geoffrey doo-dad. I would have stayed and played longer but the pain was now quite intense. Once I'd finished the shopping I hobbled past the Hershey factory, and crawled the final block or so to the hotel. That night I slept like a baby.

After an 8, maybe 9 hour flight, we commenced our descent into New York. We'd kind of followed the sun, leaving Paris in the late afternoon and arriving in the US in the early evening. Sadly I was on the wrong side of the plane to see anything much, but I still was pretty excited coming into NYC anyway.

Landing at JFK it wasn't long before we were introduced to some of the new security measures that have resulted from 9/11. American passports (very short queue) and foreign passports (very, very, very long queue) were separated inside the terminal. After a very long wait, we were finally reunited with our luggage, and on our way to look for a taxi.

When we got our taxi - what a relief! Huge, heaps of trunk room, heaps of leg room, heaps of shoulder room. Immaculately clean too - I was very impressed. I don't recall too much of the drive from the airport, except that we went past Flushing Meadows and Shea Stadium. We all know from tv that traffic in Manhattan is awful, and I was just starting to think it was a complete furphy when we hit bumpa-t-bumpa traffic once we reached the city proper. Our driver swore that this was unusual - something about the Olympic flame passing through or something - and many of the roads were blocked off creating the chaos we were in the middle of.

By the time we reached our hotel - the Novotel on East 52nd Street, it was well and truly dark and there were quite some people out. After checking in and freshening up, I went downstairs to check out our surrounds for the next 3 days. It was now 10pm - my day was nearing 24 hours old - but my theory about me already having a jetlagged lifestyle meant I was immune to the effects was proving true - I was feeling pretty good. Matt called it a night so I was left to explore on my own.

Turning the corner from the entrance to the hotel, I was all-of-a-sudden smack-bang in the middle of Time Square. Brilliant! Apparently the Olympic torch was coming through here, there was a billion people out, the place was all lit up, it was just going off.

As it turned out it took a few hours for the torch to arrive. There was huge fanfare, speeches by the lady from the movie My Great Big Fat Greek Wedding, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, I think P Diddy, Gianni "the lady in charge of ATHOC, who has a really long Greek surname", and others. The torch itself was brought into the square by Nadia Comaneci, who, standing atop one of the towers in central Times Square, "flew down" to the presentation area on wires - quite a spectacular stunt. It all went pear-shaped after that, with some awful homage to Broadway theatre, an ill-conceived fireworks display (or was I the only one who dived for cover at the first bang), and an explosion of confetti that blanketed the entire area with even more rubbish.

I went for the briefest of wanders around the immediate area, picked up a hotdog from a street vendor (as you do), and went back to the hotel for some much needed shut-eye.

Earlier that same day.....

I only really had one job to do today - get Laura a present (well that, and get to the airport) - but sadly I failed. Let me say though that it wasn't for a lack of trying.

Pussycats - the last refuge of the scoundrel. Realising that I was in Paris, and that there was every possibility I would be leaving here without a present for Laura, I thought the only way I might be able to get away with it was to come back with heaps of photos of pussycats. First ones I saw were on telly - some French cartoon about something with some cute animated cats so I took a picture of that.

After breakky Matt and Imo went for more sight-seeing, but I made a bee-line for the Galleries shopping disctrict. I ran from major store to major store, but the time was evaporating quickly (we needed to head to the airport around 2pm) and I was getting desperate. So desperate that I even called Laura to ask what she wanted (a green handbag - yeah thanks for that - like I'd know of all the green handbags in the store which one was the right style/shade of green, or a t-shirt with a pussycat smoking).

Having come up with squat, I ran out of time and then some, and needed to make something of a mercy-dash back to the hotel. That's when I saw him - this old guy with what looked like a pianola, standing on a corner, under some green unbrellas, surrounded by birds, and with this little doll's bed. Nothing too unusual there, until I noticed in the bed a doll, a puppy-dog, and a PUSSYCAT!! All tucked in the bed and cute and everything. Was I off the hook? I couldn't be sure, but I flipped the guy a few euros nevertheless.

After a very quick packing job we were cabbing it back to Charles de Gaulle. On arriving at our terminal there were several serious armed looking SWAT-type dudes just hanging around next to our taxi. We checked in while Matthew went to see Imo off (she was going back to London) I went through passport control. lt was really crowded, and to be honest a truly awful experience. There was the huge group of African's in front of me, wearing more bling than attendees at a Rap music awards ceremony, and wondering why every time they went through the metal detector the alarms would go crazy. Sheesh.

After finally making it through, I tried to find where to hand in my VAT claim-back form. Apparently, I had missed the booth on the other side of passport control. I went back to the guys near the metal detectors and they indicated that there was no way through, to try over by the police station - pointing me in the rough direction. All of the doors were labelled in French, and both the stairs going up and going down looked clearly like areas I wasn't allowed to go.

After a while a policeman came out one of the doors near where I was, I explained my predicament, he rolled his eyes and I'm sure was abusing me in French, then escorted me into the Police Station. Walking past the interview rooms (where I'm sure drug dealers and terrorists were being interrogated) I was somewhat anxious, but eventually he led me out to the main area of the airport.

I found the booth and handed my forms to the surly looking guy in customs. "Where are the goods" he asked. In my checked in luggage I answered. He muttered some french expletives, held out my form pointing to the section "have goods ready to present to customs staff" and grunted "read the form next time". I apologised for being stupid and beneath him, for being of British descent, for always saying "si" instead of "oui", for Yoplait, Le Specs and Le Tan. Remarkably, the guy stamped my form and sent me on my way.

Another big wait at passport control, before finally making it to American Airline's business class lounge. Space, quiet, free drink and free food. Now that's more like it!

It'd been a tough slog to date; really hectic, stressful, tiring - we really needed a day off... so we took one! We hadn't finalised the arrangements for our one Friday meeting, so we didn't bother and went sight-seeing instead.

We set off on foot from our Holiday Inn rooms at the Rue de Lyon, crossing the Seine before getting to one of my favourite buildings from my uni days, Jean Nouvel's L'Institut du Monde Arabe.

From there we kept on heading along the Seine toward the Notre Dame Cathedral, stopping in "the Rocks" (well it was old and a bit touristy so reminded me of the Rocks in Sydney) for perhaps the worst coffee ever. I got through it by putting in 3 (I don't usually have any) sugars and holding my nose as I drank it.

I took a fair few photos of Notre Dame and surrounds, including a funny one of some scaffolding that had been clad to make it look like - well take a look at the last pic below.

We found our way into a shopping district so briefly checked out th couture before searching for some red wine, gooey brie and a french stick (what else - except they just call it "a stick") for lunch. Grabbing our supplies from the grocery store (wine in a grocery store, brilliant!) we realised that we didn't have a corkscrew. Sacre bleu! Again it was Imogen to the rescue - the manager of the grocery store took our bottle to a nearby cafe, borrowed said corkscrew, pulled the cork, and returned it to us with a smile and his best wishes.

There was this really beautiful park across the road (whose name now escapes me, and like many other people, we settled down for lunch. It wasn't that we couldn't see the signs saying "no alcohol", it was more that as tourists who had walked a long way, we felt that we could break the rules. The gendarmes of the park move around in packs, quitely, stealthily, and we saw some guys not far from us get in quite a bit of trouble, for presumably ignoring the alcohol ban. We finished up quickly and started moving. Not far from where we had been sitting we came across another group of gendarmes, only these ones were way more menacing. Wearing their "SWAT" style trousers, army boots (yet strangely prissy short-sleeved blue shirts) they were really going over this group of youths. Padding them down, searching their bags, it all seemed a bit intense. We kept walking, careful not to turn around. Thinking we'd seen the end of the fuzz, we made it back out onto the road just in time to see some cozzers on rollerblades skate off looking for crime.

Next stop was the Louvre - we didn't have time to go to the galleries but we were at very least going to take some photos of I. M. Pei's pyramids. By this stage the clouds had all turned a very dark grey which provided an excellent backdrop to my photos. Keeping on our epic walk we headed along the Champs Elysées toward the Arc de Triomphe, snapping as I went. We reached the Arc (just like I had done previously in so many "winning the Tour de France" fantasies) and paused for a short break to and to take more pics. Although I never made it to La Defense, I did manage to get a very long telephoto shot of the more modern arch.

Time for daytime touristy things was starting to run out - it was getting on in the afternoon and we all agreed to see the Eiffel Tower. A short Metro ride later and we were more of less there. Queueing at the base (as you do) in somewhat long lines, we got the tragic news that the top of the tower was closed, and that we would only be able to go up to the second platform. Having waited for so long in the queue once we finally got to the platform we stayed for quite some time looking all around Paris, though I was still struggling with bearings. The queues to get the lifts back down were as long as the ones to get up, so this time we decided to take the stairs instead - a great workout for the knees.

We got the Metro back to Gare de Lyon (not far from the hotel) but felt that all that walking we deserved a beer. Stopping for a few Amstels and frites (there's a funny story there but this is already the longest blog entry ever) I left the others to pick up some blister cream for my feet. Our hotel was surrounded by pharmacies and sex shops, so I didn't have to go far.

I'd made it back to the hotel and applied the foot jam cream a couple of times when Diane rang. She was in our neck of the woods and invited us out for a drink with her work buds. We ended up having dinner near Place de Voges (Korean BBQ if you please) with all Aussies and an American (Diane's boss Mike, who has a habit of hiring Aussies). After dinner we went looking for a bar and almost got run over on the main road as (must've been) 10 thousand roller-bladers came skating through. Never seen anything like it before - actually thats not true - think of Critical Mass with 50 times the people and on skates not bikes, and at night, and in French.

We hopped the Metro back to the Champs-Elysées looking for a suitable nightspot. I was still in walking shorts and was unlikely to get in - not that we didn't try however. Realising it was useless, I decided to let the others enjoy their night, and I would figure my way back to the hotel. Getting off the train at the Gare de Lyon again I suddenly realised I was in a slightly scary part of town dressed like a tourist at 1:00am and all by myself. Not really knowing my way around and not speaking any French whatsoever, I power walked the short distance back to the hotel.

I have a few books in my library on the French architect Jean Nouvel. I once worked on a project that was described as "very reminiscent" of his Cartier building. And after breaksfast today, we'd be heading to his office.

While getting ready I jumped online to check my email, and my boss who was working in the Sydney office that week started messaging me. A colleague of ours, Diane, had recently taken up a post with the Paris 2012 Olympic Bid team, and was having some technical problems. She'd called me in the Sydney office, got James instead, and he said "hang on Diane, I'm just chatting to Royce through messenger, I'll see if he can help". Diane had no idea I was also in Paris, and was completely blown away when I said I could see her after our meetings to give her a hand.

So with smallish hotel map in hand we headed on foot in the general direction of Nouvel's office. Only our map missed a lot of the streets, and the walk (once again in 30+ degree heat) was considerably longer than expected. The description I got of how to get to the office from the guy we were meeting was also cause for concern - something about find some narrow hidden alley and we're at the end of it. This part of Paris was full of narrow hidden alleys, and all looked the way he described.

On the way, a charity collector started regaling me in French, presumably to cough up some euros. I thought I had him - In the best French I could muster, I responded "Je ne parle pas Francais" (I don't speak French). He responded in very clear English "No worries mate". It just goes to show, you can take the boy out of Oz.... I was suprised that even in Paris my accent was obvious.

Lost, but very near to where we needed to be, we went into a tailors, and Imogen's smattering of French and the shopkeep's smattering of English got us a little closer. Finally the sign we had been looking for - cité d'angoulême - we'd found our alley.

After our meeting we took the two guys we spoke with to lunch at a local restaurant. In the liner notes to "Sand in the Vaseline", Talking Heads' David Byrne said something about when they were in Paris (recording the song "Nothin But Flowers") for the first time in their lives they really felt part of world culture. I now know exactly what he was talking about. Our host, an American who spoke 5 languages, his colleague a Frenchman who spoke no English, and us two buffoons who struggle with English were able to share a joke and a meal.

After lunch we went for our second meeting - we had much more luck finding this guy, only getting lost for 10 minutes or so this time. Eric generously invited us to his apartment (right next door to his office) to talk where it was cooler, and to rip into some mineral water.

After leaving Eric's place it was time to go and visit Diane and help with her problem. Exhausted and dripping with sweat I found the Metro and promptly forgot her navigation instructions. I couldn't for the life of me read any of the maps, and went to the information counter hoping to get someone who spoke English. "Parlez vous Anglais" I asked. A little (not spoken, but indicated by holding up the hand up in front with the thumb and forefinger a small distance apart) was the standard response I got from most people, and the info booth was no different. The directions I got involved changing trains once, then a short walk to Diane's office.

To cut a long story short, I got the changing trains bit right, but it all went pear shaped after that. I got nervous and got out of the train one stop too soon, then walked a few kms even further in the wrong direction. The afternoon sun was beating down, I was dehydrated and lost, so tried to simplify my movements by relying on visible landmarks. I made it to the Arc before I was finally on the right road. Thirty or so minutes walk later I rendezvoused with Diane, gave her a hand, then went back to the hotel to cool down.

That night Matt, Imogen and myself went to a really nice restaurant near our hotel in the Bastille, ate some of the cuisine (too much in fact), and resolved to not coordinate our meeting for the following day and go sight-seeing instead. Hope the day is a little cooler........

Landing at Charles de Gaulle I think for the first time I realised I was on an overseas trip. When I landed there were guys in uniform with machine guns, the PA announcements weren't in English, I couldn't read the signs, and so had to smile and nod a lot. After grabbing our luggage and meeting up with Imogen we forwent out advice to get the train and instead got on a shuttle bus.

This proved a very bad decision - Charles de Gaulle has 4000 terminal buildings - no exaggeration - and we went to every one of them picking up people. I was immediately taken by the signage I saw everywhere, the word "Roissy" seemed very prominent. I also saw some signs for "Roissypol", and in a decision that I would later come to regret, tried to explain the derivation of the word. So I told my travel partners that "Roi" means king, "pol" short for Polis or town, and therefore Roissypol in English would probably be "Kingston". I ended with the statement that as "Royce" means "son of the king" that Roissypol must be my town. If I had realised then what I know now (that my nickname in the office is now "Royceypole", or just "the pole" for short), I would have kept my mouth shut.

So after driving terminal to terminal for 4 hours - no exaggeration - we finally started heading into town. First thing I noticed was that everyone drove on the wrong side of the road. The next thing I noticed was everyone drove european cars (well duh). And finally, I noticed that taxis were all small luxury cars.

We went passed the Stade de France (I studied it at uni several years ago) before we got stuck in this awful traffic jam. Going through this long tunnel at a snail's pace, the smell of vehicle fumes started to make me sick. Only it wasn't fumes, it was smoke - a car had caught fire near the tunnel exit, as we went past it was engulfed with flames and billowing white smoke. There was no obvious accident and appeared to be the result of spontaneous combustion. When we got out of the tunnel we saw a safety worker running towards the inferno with a very small fire extinguisher. Even if he had got there in time I doubt his puny extinguisher would have done anything.

It wasn't too much later we started getting into more dense areas of Paris. My powers of navigation had left me so once again I was in Matthew and Imogen's hands. The bus dropped us at the Opera, around 10 minutes from our hotel near the Bastille. With 3 of us getting into a small european luxury car, our luggage barely fitted into the boot. This was only exacerbated by the fact that when I went to get into the front passenger seat the driver gesticulated "no", making all of us get into the really small back seat. The driver asked "where to", only in French, which neither Matthew nor I spoke. Fortunately Imogen knew a little bit and was able to exchange a couple of words. She said he wanted to know the street number - that's easy, "11" I said. The driver looked blank. I looked pleadingly at Imo but she too looked blank, then remembered. "Ontse" (ignore the spelling, phonetic effect is what I'm after here) she said and we were on our way.

Earlier that same day.....

Getting up on our final day in London made me kind of sad. I had really enjoyed my time in Ol' Blighty, and could have easily stayed quite a bit longer. I didn't have too long to be sad though - we had a very busy day ahead of us. Fisrtly we had a 9am meeting (their idea not mine) at Allies and Morrison who were near Southbank but a fair hike from Waterloo Station. Next, I had to find a pub showing the 2nd State of Origin Game which was due to kick off around 11am. After that, we needed to get back to Fitzroy Square to briefly meet Ken Shuttleworth. Finally, we needed to get back to Heathrow to get our BA flight to Paris. How could 1 guy fit all this in?

We got to our first meeting a little late, and left it late because Damien (a guy that worked at BVN for a long time and only left recently) gave us a grand tour of the office.

I got back to the hotel to drop off my stuff, and still wasn't sure where to go to see the footy. I knew the Walkabout Hotel is where the Aussies hang out, and knew one was in Angel, but realised there wasn't time to get there, and even less time to get back. Again my mate Tony came to the rescue, and told me over the phone that in fact there was a Walkabout in Leicester Square, a short 5 minute walk away. I got down to the pub at the end of the first half, and was immediately amazed at all of the Aussie accents in one place.

History will show that Queensland one that game (woohoo), but went on to lose the series 2-1. There was no time to celebrate the win as I had to motor to get to our final London meeting. After that (and still motoring) it was back to the hotel, pack and change, back to the Underground and then back to Heathrow. Imogen had decided to go to Paris with us, but was on a different plane so we went our seperate ways and Matt and I got ready for some more business class pampering.

The flight from London to Paris is a little over 1 hour, but in that time I had a full entre, dinner and desert - a simply amazing amount of food for such a short journey. The trolley must have had good brakes, because I'm sure that service continued while the plane was ascending/descending.

Today was going to involve a fair bit of walking, so I was quietly hoping for a cooler day. God didn't oblige, and gave me another stinker. Our first meeting was with a firm called KPF in Covent Garden, so we walked from the hotel sticking as near to the shady bits as possible.

After the first meeting we had to haul it to get to Lord Norman Foster's office in Chelsea in time for lunch. Unlike the previous offices which were all a short walk/short tube ride away, this office was a long tube and long walk away. By the time I got there I was hot, sweaty and very dehydrated. In most of the places we'd visited so far security was pretty high, but Norm's office took it to a new extreme. Amazingly we actually got invited inside to talk to our guy, but I have to admit being very nervous when I pulled out my camera to take a photo.

After a chat we headed to a nearby pub for lunch and a few beers, before thanking Gamma (what a great name for a guy who does visualization) and heading off. We reached the bus stop when I realised that I had left my Amex Card behind the bar. I hot-footed it back to the pub (the Aussie behind the bar hadn't even noticed that I had left without paying 20 minutes earlier), settled my account, then went back and took some piccies of the blobby apartment building that Norm had designed just next to his office.

After going home to have a much needed shower, I went back out to meet the KPF guys for drinks. While there Tony Day called me for a beer, so told him where we were in Covent Garden, and 1 pint later he was there. We had a few there before the last three of us (An American, a Brit and an Aussie walk into a bar....) decided to go and get some dinner. As Tony was a local, he took us to a restaurant in Soho which (oddly, considering Tony was familiar with the area) was right in the middle of a red-light district.

Somehow tricked myself into rising early again (before the alarm went off) and packed my last several days of clothes into a bag to take to the laundromat. I didn't expect to be doing this - my generous per diem was to cover expenses like laundry and I'd assumed I'd just put all my clothes in those little hotel bags, no mess no fuss. That was until I read the prices - 7 quid ($AUD18) to dry-clean trousers, and 2 quid 50p (say around $AUD6) to launder each shirt. After ringing around I got a deal from a laundrymat that would do all my dirty clothes for less than a quarter the hotel's price.

After breakfast we had to get back to our meetings - the morning meeting was at bureau Miller Hare, who were not far from Nicholas Grimshaw's office. I popped my clothes in nearby, met Matt, then did our thing. We had some lunch before our second meeting (also at Fitzroy Square) at Arup Associates where my friend Tony Day worked.

After our meetings we met - where else - at the pub. It was another stinking hot day, so I was drinking pints in "pot time", meaning that I got drunk before my thirst was quenched. Tony and I kept going long into the night until the pub turfed us at midnight (another 8hr drinking session - ouch). As a testament to my (newly discovered) strong powers of navigation, I was able to find my way home somewhat directly and in a somewhat timely fashion without the aid of the A to Z.

Ok, now things are starting to get a little hazy. We got up again at quite a reasonable hour and walked around Soho and Piccadilly Circus. Saw some amazing sights architecturally (heritage stuff etc) and I think I was just now starting to feel particularly comfortable navigating around the place. Went back to Selfridges and bought my Mandarina Duck laptop bag (my major purchase of the trip) and some more Muji stuff.

After lunch and dropping my stuff back at the hotel I decided to do a big walk to see as much and take as many photos as I could. I decided to forgo all public transport, as I really want to take in as much of the sights, sounds and smells as I could. I started from Bloomsbury, walked down to The Strand, along Fleet Street, past Australia House (the one with the gargoyle of a naked chick - how Aussie is that?) and onto Somerset House. From there I crossed the Waterloo Bridge to Southbank (the London one not the Brisbane or Melbourne ones), then followed the Thames past the Oxo Tower Wharf and to the Tate Modern.

After a brief stop at the Tate to take in a gallery or two and check out the shop, I crossed the Millennium Bridge (took pics of London Bridge) and headed up to St Pauls. I was hoping to make the Swiss Re building (otherwise known as the gherkin erotique) by Lord Norman Foster, but Matt called to say we'd be watching the England v France fixture in Euro 2004 at Smiths of Smithfield. I changed course - walking past London Wall, Barbican (a massive public housing scheme or so I thought till I looked it up when I got home - definitely no "schemies" in here) and the Central Markets before finding the pub (finding a pub in London is easy - finding a specific pub in London much tougher).

Well the game was a classic. I was (quite secretly) going for France, but really didn't care strongly one way of the other. The Poms went 1 - nil up and with 10 minutes left to be played, it was all over red-rover. Except of course nobody told the French - who duly banged in 2 last gasp goals to silence a pub full of drunk Englishmen.

Things started just a little bit slower today - another really odd night's sleep though I felt OK. All things being equal I was still probably getting more sleep than I would at home. I was taking my time rising when all hell broke loose - fire alarms started ringing, sirens could be heard down the road, it was all happening. In the disaffected way that only a person who lives in Kings Cross could, I continued dressing, packed my laptop, and grabbed my bag before leaving the hotel. It always cracks me up to see those do-gooders who follow the rules to the letter of the law, evacuate immediately, and end up dressed only in pyjamas and bath robes.

Once the commotion died down, we were allowed back inside and to continue on with our day. Breakky was good (scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns, juice, tea and yoghurt), before we headed up to Oxford Circus for a spot of shopping.

I really didn't know what to expect but I have to say that Selfridges completely blew me away. There was so much cool stuff, so many levels, so much consumption. I bought some Muji items, Matt bought several pairs of shoes, and I salivated over a Mandarina Duck laptop bag. For those of you who have never been to Selfridges (and I suspect that I was the only one) think of DJs, only 50 times bigger, without the awful "David Jones" homebrand, and with Space Furniture inside. It really was my kind of shop.

I got separated from my guardian angels, and so had to try and find my way home by myself. It was then that I realised just how brilliant the signage in London is. I was definitely starting to build up some confidence about navigating my way around.

Dua and Ben had picked this ultra-modern (Richard Rogers?) designed yum cha place for us to have lunch. The food was sensational, as was the company, as was the bill (sensational in a bad way that is - but worth it). After lunch I met up with Tony for a pint or 11 around the corner. Staggered out about 8pm and Tony gave me direction to home via the Muji shop - I spent over 40 pounds there (note - when in London, don't go anywhere near shops when you are drunk) before staggering all the way home. I remember reaching the hotel, picking up my laptop from the concierge, going into my room and, well, thats about all I remember really.

After a strange sleep in a strange bed, I got up early-ish (for me at any rate) and had breakfast (scrambled eggs, bacon, sausages, hash browns, juice, tea, yoghurt). Our first meeting was at 10:00am and looked (on the map at least) to be a short walk from the hotel.

It wasn't. In the near 30 degree heat with no shade the walk seemed like miles and miles, and man was I hot and bothered. This morning's meeting was at Nicholas Grimshaw's office - their office was pretty schmick (though we didn't get very far inside) and the guys we met were really nice.

After the meeting we whipped home to drop off the laptops, then went for our second meeting not far from Paddington. This meeting was with Hayes Davidson, a bureau that does some of the best photo-realistic architectural stuff in London. It was another great meeting with more nice people, and when it wrapped up it was time to enjoy the weekend in London. First stop was a pub in Soho - where we met up with Dua and Ben, and later by my mate Tony who I hadn't seen in at least 4 years.

After we'd had a couple of pints it was time to move on to dinner, so after going home to shower and change we headed back out to Angel. The place we went was big on organic food and beer and was quite nice (though when you convert pounds to dollars really expensive).

The heat and travel had taken it out of us, so we called it a night sometime after dinner. The sky was an amazing colour - even though the street was dark and the streetlights were on the sky was this strange rich blue. We walked back up to the main drag to catch the bus home, though on arriving there I headed out again straight away in search of bottled water. The copious drinking and hot days was just now starting to catch up with me, and I was getting very dehydrated.

Sometime in May the most amazing thing happened - someone at work thought that our office needed to look at how international firms use 3D in architecture. Even more amazing was the fact that someone thought I should go, meaning that I had ahead of me 18 days to see 18 companies, in 6 cities and 3 countries. My first major overseas trip. Paid for by work. Business class to boot. Amazing!

I boarded the plane with my travel buddy Matthew, took one look at our seats, turned to him and said 'Mark Newson, I could kiss you.' I think it was at this point that we both realised that we didn't actually belong in business class. We were still getting the overhead lockers organised when a flight attendant came and took my coat and helped me with the luggage. In no time we were seated, and we were being plied with quality liquor while the main cabin (politically correct for the cattle in economy class) filed on.

Let me just tell you how brilliant those Newson chairs are - there's 2 main sections to the chairs: the pod back and the floating seat front. The seat moves inside that pod, giving you in the fully reclined position 2m of fully-flat sleeping space. The seat can be adjusted in about 30 places (all electronically), and even has a 5 minute massage cycle. This seat was so comfortable I'm thinking of getting a couple for home.

So back to the alcohol - our flight left late afternoon Wednesday, and was due to arrive around 6:30am Thursday London time. Our one stop would be Bangkok 9 or so hours into the flight. My previous longest flight was 3 hrs to Christchurch when I was 14, and I don't usually enjoy flying, so this was going to be something of a challenge.

Dinner on the plane was great - as was the desert and as was the Chivas, and I had plenty of each. I slept quite a bit on that first leg - at least 3 hours, before we landed in Bangkok sometime around midnight local time. With 1 hour to stretch our legs while the plane refuelled, we couldn't really venture past the terminal.

One thing that blew me away was the number of Thai Airways planes and staff around. Laura of course works for Thai, so we make a big deal whenever we see a Thai Airways plane, and to see everyone wearing Laura's uniform (we're talking about hundreds of people) it certainly made me think of home.

The rest of the flight was fairly uneventful - I slept for another few hours on the next leg, and woke up around 4am London time (still a few hours out) feeling pretty good. When we finally opened our blinds and saw London, I have to admit I was pretty excited.

Being Aussies we were able to rip through immigration and get to our bags - Matthew's Mandarina Duck "Frog" was upside-down and lying on its soft face (not the last time this would happen) - and made our way to the Heathrow Express.

Matthew was an expert with a plan; he put us on the express train, we changed at Paddington for the Underground, and before I knew it we were getting off at Holborn Station, a short walk from our hotel. His memory served well, and in no time we found the Thistle Bloomsbury and were ready to check in. Only they weren't ready for us.

Our first meeting was scheduled for 2:00pm that day, it was now 8:00am in the morning, we'd been in the same clothes travelling for 25 odd hours, and the temperature was already in the mid-twenties. We kicked up enough stink (proverbially and literally) to get given some rooms that were ready so that we could freshen up.

The first job of the morning was to meet Matthew's ex (now living in London) at the nearby British Museum. Only Matthew took us a very long way, dressed up, in 29 degree heat. We met up with Imogen in the forecourt, had some lunch, then spent a short amount of time checking out the museum.

After that we made our first of many trips into Soho, where there was just so many small pubs with quaint names, that it seemed unusual to go for a coffee. But that we did, before leaving to get on with work.

This first meeting for the trip was at David Chipperfield's office out Camden way. Imo came out with us to see where the office was, so we all hopped the tube and got out at the nearest stop. Only from there, we went completely the wrong direction and (again in the heat) spent 40 odd minutes walking around.

After the meeting it was time to head home, freshen up, then head back out to meet up with some of Matthew's architect buddies. Dua and Ben met us at Angel(as in Islington) and we a had a few Red Stripes before going for pizza up the road at this great Italian joint. More beer and wine and I found myself quite tuckered out so it was a relief when we all called time and went home. It had certainly been quite a first day.

Our friend Jimmy writes for TV shows - his latest being for host Luke Jacobs on Popstars. I'd given him a bit of stick about it (mostly about the inane comments from some of the judges, and the lack of talent of some of the competitors), so he got some tickets for Laura and I to see the final show.

Even though I wasn't a fan of the show watching it on telly, seeing it live was quite an enjoyable experience. In the end the Kiwi guy beat the girl who was dating the host, which was actually the right result. Once filming had ended there were lots of tears and group hugs that (from all reports - we left shortly after the finish) went on well into the night.