travels abroad: a summary

So all up Rob and I spent just under two weeks taking in NYC, World Fantasy Convention and a little bit of London. The chronology went something like this: Long plane flight to NYC accompanied by Alisa, party at Scott and Justine’s apartment, sightseeing, Aussie embassy party, dinner with Ellen Datlow & others, a few drinks out on the town. Big hangover & grazed knees the following morning [see previous blog post for details], more sightseeing, Amtrak train to Saratoga Springs with the rest of the Aussie writers. World Fantasy Convention. Awesome people everywhere, books, books and more books. Four of us squashed into a hotel room, lots of parties including the official Aussie one organised by Trevor, Deb, Jonathan & Garth. The launch of Paper Cities in which Kaaron, Ben and I had stories. Catching up with my WOTF buddies Ken, Eric, Matt and Lon [but not Sidra, unfortunately], being reunited with honorary Wollongongian David Coe, meeting favourite writers Peter Straub and Kim Newman for the first time as well as hundreds of other fabulous folks.

Saturday night was the Orbit party with special surprise guest appearance by 

nick_kaufmann

& gf Kelly. Many Seabreezes downed. Later that evening, ‘A Pleasing Terror, Two ghost stories by M R James, performed by candlelight by RM Lloyd Parry. Awesome. 

Sunday, last day of the con. The World Fantasy Awards banquet. Shaun Tan wins! More hanging out in the bar. More Seabreezes. More hellos and even more goodbyes. We take a cab to the station then board the Amtrak train back to NYC. Shiela Williams helps us find our way out of the maze of tunnels that is Penn station. We drag our overstuffed luggage four blocks to our hotel.

I muse on the fact that this trip has featured better cuisine than expected – last time I was in the US all I seemed to eat was crap. Ongoing sleep deprivation, not just from raging, but from my body’s inability to synch up with the US and UK time zones. I don’t recall ever getting jetlagged so badly for so long before.

Monday night we ran into Kim Newman in the Virgin megastore, then saw Duran Duran live in concert. Details in the previous blog post.

Tuesday we did the last of our wandering round, met up with Alisa’s friend for a coffee, ran into Deb in the subway, which was one of those coincidences that somehow doesn’t seem quite possible. Flew to London that night, tubed it to Kings Cross where we had a hotel booked. Possibly the crappiest hotel room I’ve ever stayed in, but we were allowed to check in early & have breakfast. Also, it turned out to have free WiFi. What it didn’t have was room enough for three people and three suitcases. Rob, Alisa and I went out to do the tourist thing: The London Eye, Big Ben & houses of parliament, Westminster abbey. I made some calls and sorted out hooking up with a few folks. Alisa crashed early that night. Rob and I caught up with my former flatmate Guthrie. The next morning we had coffee at the station and then went to the British museum with writer Pat Cadigan and her hubby Chris. In the evening my old school friend Alison took us out for Indian. We had planned to do the Jack the Ripper walk but it was raining and just too damned cold for that, so we just did food. 

On our last day in London we zipped out to Camden markets for a brief look around. Rob and I parted ways with Alisa then caught an overland train to Broxbourne to visit my cousin Ricky and his wife Michelle. I haven’t seen Ricky in 20 years! They took us to lunch in a charming pub and then we trained it back to Kings Cross just in time to meet my sister Rachael at 4pm back at the hotel where our bags were stowed. We went with her to … man, I can’t remember the name of the suburb… where her hubby Graham picked us up from the station & we drove back to their new house. We were all planning to go out to dinner but I decided to check my Qantas email, seeing as I couldn’t find the printout anywhere. Good thing I did because our flight was leaving at 9.45 rather than at 11.45pm as I thought. Oops. So we just drank tea, hung out with them and then we caught the tube to Heathrow. I would have seen Rachael earlier only she had an exhibition opening the night before – we couldn’t have come at a worse time. It was pretty crazy attempting to do anything much with such a brief amount of time I guess, but I saw a few folks and some landscape. Better than nothing I guess.

The tube to Heathrow got bogged down due to signal problems. I thought we might miss our flight but the departure area was not crowded so we made it just in time. And now, as I type this, we’re approaching Wollongong Station. It’s very sunny and bright outside. London was grey and gloomy. And pretty bloody cold on that last day, which may well be part of this same day. I’ve lost track.