See all my movie reviews.
Dunkirk - This is a fantastic Christopher Nolan movie, but not one I want to see multiple times. Okay, maybe one more time, but that's it.
The story is a slice of the evacuation at Dunkirk, the famous retreat of British (and French and Belgian) soldiers from France at the opening of WWII. While French soldiers held Germany at bay, Britain evacuated over 300,000 soldiers after expecting to only be able to rescue 30,000 or so. The evacuation was assisted by some air cover and by owners of small crafts, such as motor boats and so forth, taking the 25 mile sea trip to France and back. The beach was under attack a lot of the time.
The movie presents one week of the story of a foot soldier making several attempts to gain safety on a ship, interspersed with one day of the story of a civilian motorboat owner who travels to France to pick up some of the soldiers, interspersed with one hour of a pilot providing air cover. All stories converge by the end.
The interspersing of the stories was good in theory, but a little confusing due to the shifting time frames. There is no sensationalizing the war, either for or against. The stories are about fear, desperation, heroism and tragedy and survival, and how these are instantiated in humans. It's a war movie with little in the way of fighting; mostly it's about ducking and covering and running. But it's also about bravery and morality. It is not presented as a traditional story.
The acting and directing are sensational, and so is the cinematography. Most sensational is the sound, which heightens the gripping visuals and makes them either pathetic or harrowing. Very beautiful, often educational, and a real demonstration of what movies can be. I can't remember if there are any women in the movie.
The Big Sick - The best rom-com I've seen in quite a while, this was very funny and quite heartwarming. Written by and starring Kumail Nanjiani (Silicon Valley), it tells a fictionalized version of how Kumail met his American wife (played by Zoe Kazan) and the difficulty he/they endured from his parents (played byAnupam Kher and Zenobia Shroff) and (to a lesser degree) her parents (played by Holly Hunter and Roy Romano). The central part of the movie is a) the fact that his parents reject her because she is not Pakistani and b) that he spends a lot of time in the hospital with her parents when she suddenly falls into a coma ... after he had allegedly already broken up with her.
It's funny and it's touching. It's well acted and directed. But mostly, the script is great. It's funny. Worth seeing, especially on a date.
Frantz - A reworking of a very old movie, this tells a story set just after WWI. A German woman goes every day to the cemetery to put flowers on the grave of her fiance Frantz who was killed in the war, and one day she meets a man ... a French man .. who also starts putting flowers on the grave. She is living with her former fiance's parents, and they are all grief-stricken. The Frenchman shows up, but anger and intolerance runs high. Until he says how he was great friends with Frantz and can't get over his death. This is kind of believable, since Frantz was a humanist, pacifist, and Francophile before the war. But ... what kind of relationship did this guy really have with Frantz?
As a modern viewer, our immediate suspicion is that the guy was Frantz's lover, something not even considered or asked by the protagonists in the movie. The movie confirms some things and then goes in other directions, and then in yet other directions. Intolerance runs on both sides of the border, lies are condemned but met with other lies, and who knows where it will all end up. Will they get together?
The movie is beautifully shot, costumed, and acted. The direction is lovely. It was enjoyable. However, it suffers from a few flaws that are the result of heavy handedness by the director. I will give a teeny example.
One of the scenes in Germany has this young Frenchman, all alone, while the German patrons, who have previously expressed their contempt for all people French, stand in a bar and sing their national anthem out of respect for Germany's soldiers. The Frenchman looks lost and even frightened. In the hands of a more competent director, we would expect to see the young lady at some future time in the movie, say, pass by a sports stadium or train station where French people are singing the national anthem. That would display the dichotomy without descending into heavy handedness. Instead, we see a scene where she is all alone, while the French patrons, who have previously expressed their contempt for all people German, stand in a bar and sing their national anthem out of respect for France's soldiers. Come on. I actually laughed out loud at this and said "Come on!" in the movie theater. And this kind of thing happens again and again. The Frenchman knocks on her (fiance's) parents door, and then later we see her knock at his family's door in an eerily similar shot. And on and on like this.
The director also shoots mostly in black and white but fades into color during certain scenes, which had the potential to be lovely (as it was in Pleasantville, Wizard of Oz, and other movies), but ended up also feeling heavy handed and obvious, essentially adding nothing to the movie that wasn't already patently obvious from the settings and story.
Honestly, I would have thought this was the director's second or third film, but it seems he has been making movies since the late 1980s. So he should know better.
Despite these misfires - and the fact that no blame is assigned to anyone for the war, it just kind of happened - the movie is otherwise lovely and sweet, with a story that really picks up and captivates you (especially after the first major reveal).
Blade Runner 2049 - It's good, although maybe not as good as it could have been. It fits seamlessly in with the first movie, without being a retelling of that movie, which is about as well as one could hope for.
The first Blade Runner had its faults - a little too much staring at visuals, a little undeveloped romance (even a little rape-y), a few plot-holes and inconsistencies - but it was beautifully filmed and acted, had an intellectual script unlike any other science fiction movie since 2001, and created a genre and look for many other movies to copy. This one doesn't really break any new ground; if anything, it feels like it inhabits the same space as Ghost in the Shell 2017. However, it has a few unique twists on the hero/destiny journey which make it rather brave in some ways. I suspect that its ending is a reason that it didn't perform overly well in the box office, but actually its ending is just right when you think about it.
As for its acting, visuals, plot, and directing, they're all good. I was confused about certain elements of the movie - how can androids have babies / grow up from being babies? What kind of biological functions do they have? Do their cells wear out? Do they go through teething, adolescence, and puberty? What do they eat, do they eliminate, and how do they metabolize? None of that makes any real sense.
I have to see it again to really get some of the confusion cleared up. In any case, it's certainly worth going to see.
Stranger Things (season 2) - Well, I just saw it and it blew me away, much like the first season did. There is really not much to say about it. It's a great story, starts off a little slowly for the first few episodes like last season, and then gets rip roaring. There are a few new characters and they are all fantastic.
The show is now part Andromeda Strain, part Aliens, and part Harry Potter. If it has any fault, it feels so neatly wrapped up that I can hardly imagine a need for another season. These two were just perfect.
Sunday, October 29, 2017
Thursday, October 26, 2017
Bulls & Bears Board Game on Kickstarter
Bulls and Bears is a financial board game from 1988. The first version of the game sold over 10,000 copies. I have talked with the designer on a few occasions and I may be helping him to turn the game into something more Euro-style. In the meantime, they are kickstarting a new version of the original game, called Trumponomics vs. Bernienomics (yeah, okay).
It has the usual roll-and-move mechanics, with a few clever additions that make it better than other games of its type.
For one thing, trivia questions are informative about stock market topics, but rather than simply answer them, you react to events by putting your money down or taking actions, after which the result of the event (what went up or down in the world as a result of the event) is revealed, and you gain or lose by it. As such, the mechanics of learning about the stock market are integrated right into the play, which makes for both better learning and a better play experience.
Unlike Monopoly, the game ends and is won when someone reaches $200k, which means less direct competition and a game that doesn't drag on. There is already a Euroish feel in that you are building a kind of economic engine through your investments.
Topics include financial markets, commodities, insurance, housing, mortgage, retirement, and so forth. The designer has a PhD and worked at the world bank for many years. Their website includes online play and guidebooks for educators.
This new edition is a roll and move game, like the original, which is what it is. But if you like non-gamer games, and you actually want to learn real financial information with a game that's actually fun to play, this may be your thing.
Sunday, September 03, 2017
Scotland with Friends and Family
I just returned from my second trip to Scotland (see my posts from my previous trip ten years ago here, here, here, here, and here). This time I went with my kids and my friends Nadine, Bill, and Shirley, none of whom had been to Scotland.
Like my last trip, as well as my trip to Ireland five years ago (starting here), I spent most or all the trip sick in varying degrees. A night flight, exposure to new pathogens, and incessant cold and wet weather has a deleterious effect on my constitution, although I was never seriously deteriorated and started to get well by the end of it.
AUG 15 (Tues)
Our flight was at 1 am, arriving in Edinburgh by 10 am. Turkish Airlines, which gave me a quibble of concern but was actually not a big deal. Personal screens only from Istanbul to Glasgow. There was a small kosher snack box on the flight to Istanbul and a larger meal on the flight to Glasgow, both were dairy and simple.
Europcar had a vast line of people waiting. It took nearly two hours to get through the line, and then I was convinced (correctly) to upgrade my car size since it was not nearly big enough for my purposes. Unfortunately, doing this at the airport was much more expensive. Then I found out that my car had no insurance at all - I'm not talking CDW or secondary insurance, I mean none, I had to buy some, also at a higher rate that having done so earlier. I really thought that one of my credit cards would provide basic insurance, but apparently my Discover Card only provides secondary insurance, my other American card is only a debit card, and my "business" Israeli card doesn't provide insurance. I was given 24 hours to verify if I needed the extra insurance. That meant several more hours on the phone the next day trying to resolve it, and then, when I could not, more hours trying to get through to Europcar to ensure that I was covered.
The car was perfect, at least: a brand new Citroen with great pickup and lots of room, and we managed to fill that room so much that we could not always see out the back.
Driving on the left side of the road is hard enough, but we got a stick shift. I drive an automatic in Israel, and I enjoy driving a stick shift normally, but the stick in a UK car is on the left, which makes it doubly hard. Many roads in Scotland, once you get out of the city, are single suddenly appears, coming the other direction around a blind curve or over a hill. While the sights in Scotland are breathtaking enough, the tension from gripping the steering wheel somewhat detracts from the relaxation.
The next problem was getting SIM cards to work for our phones, another endeavor that took some 2.5 hours of wrangling. All in all, the bureaucracy of car and phones made me frustrated and anxious, which made all of us in a foul mood off and on for a few days.
Otherwise, most of the rest of the trip went well. All of the places we stayed at were comfortable, beautiful, and suitable, although some were rather further off of the main path than I had expected.
Our first meal was at the synagogue in Edinburgh, which was running a small popup restaurant that very afternoon. Most other kosher food we picked up from any supermarket or even convenience store (vegan products are essentially kosher in the UK, as far as I am concerned) or, when required, from specific supermarkets in Edinburgh or Glasgow.
We saw very little of Edinburgh and instead drove up to our place we stayed in Abernethy, a teeny town in Perthshire. Saarya kashered the place and we settled in.
AUG 16 (Wed)
My plan was to spend all day in towns around Perthshire, but after a first hike around the area (possibly the most beautiful one we walked, in my opinion) and a small look through town, the kids decided to go back to Edinburgh for the festival. We heard some street musicians and some bar musicians, drank some beer and stuff, and eventually went back late at night.
AUG 17 (Thu)
Nearly the same experience as Wed, this time we split up more. Tal and I unexpectedly saw some theater, I watched some musicians, Saarya saw the outside of Edinburgh Castle, and we didn't see an improv performance later because it ended up being in a church. Tal wanted to go to a particular performance later that night, but it was just too late for us to stay.
AUG 18 (Fri)
We drove to Glasgow. Along the way, Saarya saw Stirling Castle while Tal and I sampled some ginger beers at the nearby pub.
Our B&B was the Orchard Park, which is a few houses down from the synagogue. It hosts a bar that has patrons well into the night, but the rooms were surprisingly quiet for all that.
Here was waiting for us some items that I shipped in advance: a Crokinole game, copies of Splendor and Tichu (to replace my worn out deck), and the novels Jane Eyre and Anna Karenina (cheap books which I wanted to read and could just leave in the UK if I was overweight). Taking Crokinole back to Israel I thought might be a challenge, but it worked out: Turkish Airlines' policy is not based on the number of suitcases or their size, it is purely weight based. So I ended up taking back the game in a box (8.5 KG), and a suitcase (11.5 KG) which was 20 KG, and the Crokinole board went on oversized luggage and managed not to break or warp by the time I got it home.
Bill and Shirley also took rooms in the hotel for shabbat so we saw them on and off over the course of shabbat. For example, Bill ordered beers for himself at the bar and then decided that he couldn't finish them and gave them to Tal and Saarya. :-)
The Griffnock and Newlands synagogue is a large complex of buildings that includes Chabad something and school something. Davening was in the little beit midrash with a hastily set up mechitzah for Tal (and another woman who joined later). My hosts were the same lovely couple that hosted Rachel and me ten years ago, and they were just as lovely as last time. I brought gifts for them, but realized that I could not bring them along on shabbat since there is no erev. So I dopped them off on their door on Sunday morning.
AUG 19 (Sat)
Davening was in the main sanctuary, and there was some scotch at the kiddush after (although you had to search for it, since the first wave was scooped up very quickly).
Later in the afternoon a BGGer (Michael Ross) and his wife joined us for games at the hotel. He taught me how to play Sushi Go, which is like 7 Wonders lite but so much easier. And Tal and I taught them how to play Tichu, an entire game of which took around 12 rounds or more. We had to play in the noisy bar, for lack of a better, quieter space. Michael also ordered one too many ciders, one of which Tal was happy to drink. Thank you so much Michael, and I'm sorry we couldn't reciprocate (it being shabbat). Eventually we decided to end the game session after if became even noisier.
Bill, Shirley, and Tal made an attempt to pop over to Edinburgh to see the show she missed on Thurs, but it was not to be (too late).
AUG 20 (Sun)
First stop was the kosher shopping we needed for the week.
We headed out toward the Crieff Highland Games. The Highland Games are a series of days of sport, music, and dance events held in different towns in Scotland throughout the summer. This is the one which was most accessible to us at this point in out trip. The sporting events were not interesting to us (yes, that's really a guy in a kilt throwing a large ball at the end of a rope). The bagpipe regimens were usually a ways off in the middle of the arena, although sometimes that came close enough to snap a picture. Meantimes, there were various craft booths around the edges which were fun to look at, some dancing competitions going on, and a different stage with other musicians, one of which was a nice band playing Scottish influenced pop/rock music hoping to have a hit record (so it would seem).
Saarya used his portable stove to cook and make tea during some of our longer drives.
We slept at a beautiful place on the shore of Loch Rannoch, the downstairs of a couple that lived upstairs. It was a pity that we could not stay longer.
AUG 21 (Mon)
We started the day with a little rowing in the couple's rowboat. Then we headed leisurely up to Inverness though Pitlochry, somehow taking the entire day to get there. We were not impressed with Pitlochry, as all of the stores were basically chain stores with tourist goods. The best of these is Mountain Warehouse, which at least has very pleasant store personnel and numerous items on sale.
Tal ran into the parents of a friend of hers, also on vacation. We took a tour of the Blair Athol distillery, a brand of Bell's. Their single malt is pretty good.
We wandered Inverness and saw a young, talented street performer who was playing (at about 8 pm) to an empty street. Tal sang a duet with him (of an Ed Sheeran song). We picked up Nadine at the Inverness airport and drove to arrive very late to our cottage on a farm north of Inverness. It was also a lovely place, and another at which we were sadly staying only one night.
AUG 22 (Tue)
The four of us drove across Scotland from Inverness to Skye, which has lovely scenery, although not as nice as the scenery on Skye or on the way from Skye to Glasgow (such as you find in Glencoe).
Our place was in Eglol, which is one of the nicest places on Skye with a view of the Cuillins mountain range and close to the sea. It is also 15 miles and a tense 30 minute drive south of the main road along a twisting single lane track.
After the exhausting drive, I was too tired to go back up that road and down another promontory (and then back again) to hear music at the Skye festival, which was in our plan. Instead we kashered the place and looked at the sheep that kept wandering around our house.
We played Crokinole.
AUG 23 (Wed)
In the morning Nadine and I took the five minute drive to the harbor, which was also pretty and next to a small store with local crafts and various goods. It is also the community hall which holds meetings, weddings, and funerals. There were lines of cars are the harbor, with cows standing between them (parked at the harbor, I guessed).
Nadine and Saarya wanted to see the Talisker distillery. I strongly considered staying put, but in the end I went while only Tal stayed behind. There were no tours available at the distillery (you had to book in advance), but we saw some of the island.
AUG 24 (Thu)
We all drove to Portree. Portree caters to tourists, but the stores were not chain stores like the ones in Pitlochry but stores selling local Skye goods mostly, which was nice. One particularly nice store sells batiks, and gave me a free cup of tea. The woman comes from Sri Lanka and I bought some of her curry spice mixtures.
We then drove north and looped around the island. I wanted to see Quiraing, hearing it was beautiful, and it was, but I couldn't find the place to walk so we just looked around a bit. In the end, we saw much of the island (just not the Cuillins). We also shopped for the next few days in Broadford.
AUG 25 (Fri)
We took the ferry from Armadale to Mallaig, a trip that you have to book in advance (and I had done so already back in February). First we saw some lovely paintings by a talented artist Pam Carter, right near a little store that sells its own whiskey blends (not sure if it was the Torabhaig, doesn't look like the right place).
We drove down through Acharacle, a promontory of Argyle, south of Skye and east of Mull, to the self-catering house we rented for the six of us for the week. It was right on the beach, again pretty far away from civilization, nestled among a few other houses. Gorgeous house, suitable for us. Kashered everything again. A pine marten came to visit us the moment we arrived.
Bill and Shirley arrived with the next week of kosher food. Since they arrived later than they had hoped to, and knew they would, some of the food was pre-cooked. We still cooked some of our own food and has a pretty little shabbat on the coast, watching the tide go in and out (which was very visible, hiding or exposing a good thirty or forty feet of shoreline.
AUG 26 (Sat)
Shabbat on the shore. I read a lot of Jane Eyre.
AUG 27 (Sun)
Bill, Shirley, and Nadine went to see seals (through a telescope) and do some hiking a little south. I stayed home with the kids until around 3, ad then we drove to Arisaig to find a small hotel that had live music (usually from 2 on Sundays, but today it was from 4. Then I had to wait a while for the beer to filter out before I could drive back.
AUG 28 (Mon)
We drove to Fort William. Bill, Shirley, and Nadine again took one car. We met up with them in FW. Some of them went to another distillery. Then they went on to drive to Glencoe to hike, but it was raining, so they ended up just driving there and returning. I knew we were going to pass through Glencoe on the way back, so I skipped it. We did some final shopping for the rest of the week and anything else that we wanted to bring home with us and returned to our house.
AUG 29 (Tue)
We drove west. First we stopped at the Ardnamurchan distillery to peek around. It's a new distillery still making their first batches, but they sold whiskey from their sister distillery, Adelphi. Then we stopped to traipse around a high point of the area, wandering around the heather and tall grass for a while. Then we stopped in Kilchoan and nearby, and finally went to the Ardnamirchan lighthouse, the most Westerly spot on the Scotland mainland. Bill and Shirley managed to get two flat tires from sharp rocks when pulling over to the side of the road at one point. We had to use various phone and Internet tricks to get service from their rental company, but he showed up soon enough.
AUG 30 (Wed)
I refused to drive anywhere for one day. Bill and Shirley left early for the rest of their trip (Skye), leaving the four of us. The three of them went out to look at seals again while I tried unsuccessfully to check in to our flights.
AUG 31 (Thu)
We spent most of the day traveling, taking over 4 hours to get to Edinburgh. Stopped briefly in Glencoe to take pictures, and then we had to return the car, check in and fly out. My headphones never worked well enough to watch any movies on the flights, so I didn't see anything new.
We arrived in Israel at 4:00 am. Yay!
Pictures to follow.
Like my last trip, as well as my trip to Ireland five years ago (starting here), I spent most or all the trip sick in varying degrees. A night flight, exposure to new pathogens, and incessant cold and wet weather has a deleterious effect on my constitution, although I was never seriously deteriorated and started to get well by the end of it.
AUG 15 (Tues)
Our flight was at 1 am, arriving in Edinburgh by 10 am. Turkish Airlines, which gave me a quibble of concern but was actually not a big deal. Personal screens only from Istanbul to Glasgow. There was a small kosher snack box on the flight to Istanbul and a larger meal on the flight to Glasgow, both were dairy and simple.
Europcar had a vast line of people waiting. It took nearly two hours to get through the line, and then I was convinced (correctly) to upgrade my car size since it was not nearly big enough for my purposes. Unfortunately, doing this at the airport was much more expensive. Then I found out that my car had no insurance at all - I'm not talking CDW or secondary insurance, I mean none, I had to buy some, also at a higher rate that having done so earlier. I really thought that one of my credit cards would provide basic insurance, but apparently my Discover Card only provides secondary insurance, my other American card is only a debit card, and my "business" Israeli card doesn't provide insurance. I was given 24 hours to verify if I needed the extra insurance. That meant several more hours on the phone the next day trying to resolve it, and then, when I could not, more hours trying to get through to Europcar to ensure that I was covered.
The car was perfect, at least: a brand new Citroen with great pickup and lots of room, and we managed to fill that room so much that we could not always see out the back.
Driving on the left side of the road is hard enough, but we got a stick shift. I drive an automatic in Israel, and I enjoy driving a stick shift normally, but the stick in a UK car is on the left, which makes it doubly hard. Many roads in Scotland, once you get out of the city, are single suddenly appears, coming the other direction around a blind curve or over a hill. While the sights in Scotland are breathtaking enough, the tension from gripping the steering wheel somewhat detracts from the relaxation.
The next problem was getting SIM cards to work for our phones, another endeavor that took some 2.5 hours of wrangling. All in all, the bureaucracy of car and phones made me frustrated and anxious, which made all of us in a foul mood off and on for a few days.
Otherwise, most of the rest of the trip went well. All of the places we stayed at were comfortable, beautiful, and suitable, although some were rather further off of the main path than I had expected.
Our first meal was at the synagogue in Edinburgh, which was running a small popup restaurant that very afternoon. Most other kosher food we picked up from any supermarket or even convenience store (vegan products are essentially kosher in the UK, as far as I am concerned) or, when required, from specific supermarkets in Edinburgh or Glasgow.
We saw very little of Edinburgh and instead drove up to our place we stayed in Abernethy, a teeny town in Perthshire. Saarya kashered the place and we settled in.
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| Welcome to Edinburgh |
AUG 16 (Wed)
My plan was to spend all day in towns around Perthshire, but after a first hike around the area (possibly the most beautiful one we walked, in my opinion) and a small look through town, the kids decided to go back to Edinburgh for the festival. We heard some street musicians and some bar musicians, drank some beer and stuff, and eventually went back late at night.
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| On a hike outside Abernethy |
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| Somewhere in Perthshire |
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| The Edinburgh Fringe Festival |
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| The Royal Oak in Edinburgh |
AUG 17 (Thu)
Nearly the same experience as Wed, this time we split up more. Tal and I unexpectedly saw some theater, I watched some musicians, Saarya saw the outside of Edinburgh Castle, and we didn't see an improv performance later because it ended up being in a church. Tal wanted to go to a particular performance later that night, but it was just too late for us to stay.
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| At the Edinburgh Fringe Festival |
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| At the Edinburgh Fringe Festival |
AUG 18 (Fri)
We drove to Glasgow. Along the way, Saarya saw Stirling Castle while Tal and I sampled some ginger beers at the nearby pub.
Our B&B was the Orchard Park, which is a few houses down from the synagogue. It hosts a bar that has patrons well into the night, but the rooms were surprisingly quiet for all that.
Here was waiting for us some items that I shipped in advance: a Crokinole game, copies of Splendor and Tichu (to replace my worn out deck), and the novels Jane Eyre and Anna Karenina (cheap books which I wanted to read and could just leave in the UK if I was overweight). Taking Crokinole back to Israel I thought might be a challenge, but it worked out: Turkish Airlines' policy is not based on the number of suitcases or their size, it is purely weight based. So I ended up taking back the game in a box (8.5 KG), and a suitcase (11.5 KG) which was 20 KG, and the Crokinole board went on oversized luggage and managed not to break or warp by the time I got it home.
Bill and Shirley also took rooms in the hotel for shabbat so we saw them on and off over the course of shabbat. For example, Bill ordered beers for himself at the bar and then decided that he couldn't finish them and gave them to Tal and Saarya. :-)
The Griffnock and Newlands synagogue is a large complex of buildings that includes Chabad something and school something. Davening was in the little beit midrash with a hastily set up mechitzah for Tal (and another woman who joined later). My hosts were the same lovely couple that hosted Rachel and me ten years ago, and they were just as lovely as last time. I brought gifts for them, but realized that I could not bring them along on shabbat since there is no erev. So I dopped them off on their door on Sunday morning.
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| Sampling ginger beers |
AUG 19 (Sat)
Davening was in the main sanctuary, and there was some scotch at the kiddush after (although you had to search for it, since the first wave was scooped up very quickly).
Later in the afternoon a BGGer (Michael Ross) and his wife joined us for games at the hotel. He taught me how to play Sushi Go, which is like 7 Wonders lite but so much easier. And Tal and I taught them how to play Tichu, an entire game of which took around 12 rounds or more. We had to play in the noisy bar, for lack of a better, quieter space. Michael also ordered one too many ciders, one of which Tal was happy to drink. Thank you so much Michael, and I'm sorry we couldn't reciprocate (it being shabbat). Eventually we decided to end the game session after if became even noisier.
Bill, Shirley, and Tal made an attempt to pop over to Edinburgh to see the show she missed on Thurs, but it was not to be (too late).
AUG 20 (Sun)
First stop was the kosher shopping we needed for the week.
We headed out toward the Crieff Highland Games. The Highland Games are a series of days of sport, music, and dance events held in different towns in Scotland throughout the summer. This is the one which was most accessible to us at this point in out trip. The sporting events were not interesting to us (yes, that's really a guy in a kilt throwing a large ball at the end of a rope). The bagpipe regimens were usually a ways off in the middle of the arena, although sometimes that came close enough to snap a picture. Meantimes, there were various craft booths around the edges which were fun to look at, some dancing competitions going on, and a different stage with other musicians, one of which was a nice band playing Scottish influenced pop/rock music hoping to have a hit record (so it would seem).
Saarya used his portable stove to cook and make tea during some of our longer drives.
We slept at a beautiful place on the shore of Loch Rannoch, the downstairs of a couple that lived upstairs. It was a pity that we could not stay longer.
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| Bagpipes at the Crieff Highland Games |
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| Bagpipes at the Crieff Highland Games |
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| Music at the Crieff Highland Games |
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| Audience dancing at the Highland Games |
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| Saarya makes tea |
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| Outside our Rannoch lodge |
AUG 21 (Mon)
We started the day with a little rowing in the couple's rowboat. Then we headed leisurely up to Inverness though Pitlochry, somehow taking the entire day to get there. We were not impressed with Pitlochry, as all of the stores were basically chain stores with tourist goods. The best of these is Mountain Warehouse, which at least has very pleasant store personnel and numerous items on sale.
Tal ran into the parents of a friend of hers, also on vacation. We took a tour of the Blair Athol distillery, a brand of Bell's. Their single malt is pretty good.
We wandered Inverness and saw a young, talented street performer who was playing (at about 8 pm) to an empty street. Tal sang a duet with him (of an Ed Sheeran song). We picked up Nadine at the Inverness airport and drove to arrive very late to our cottage on a farm north of Inverness. It was also a lovely place, and another at which we were sadly staying only one night.
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| Tal and Saarya in a boat |
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| Birches in Scotland |
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| Saarya makes omelets |
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| Busker in Inverness |
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| Tal sings in Inverness |
AUG 22 (Tue)
The four of us drove across Scotland from Inverness to Skye, which has lovely scenery, although not as nice as the scenery on Skye or on the way from Skye to Glasgow (such as you find in Glencoe).
Our place was in Eglol, which is one of the nicest places on Skye with a view of the Cuillins mountain range and close to the sea. It is also 15 miles and a tense 30 minute drive south of the main road along a twisting single lane track.
After the exhausting drive, I was too tired to go back up that road and down another promontory (and then back again) to hear music at the Skye festival, which was in our plan. Instead we kashered the place and looked at the sheep that kept wandering around our house.
We played Crokinole.
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| Residents of Skye |
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| The Cuillins from our house in Elgol |
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| Crokinole and whiskey |
AUG 23 (Wed)
In the morning Nadine and I took the five minute drive to the harbor, which was also pretty and next to a small store with local crafts and various goods. It is also the community hall which holds meetings, weddings, and funerals. There were lines of cars are the harbor, with cows standing between them (parked at the harbor, I guessed).
Nadine and Saarya wanted to see the Talisker distillery. I strongly considered staying put, but in the end I went while only Tal stayed behind. There were no tours available at the distillery (you had to book in advance), but we saw some of the island.
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| Sunset over Elgol harbor |
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| Elgol harbor that morning |
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| Falls on Skye |
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| Somewhere in Skye |
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| What's your damage, heather? |
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| Heather |
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| Heather |
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| Heather |
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| Stream on Skye |
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| Sunset over Elgol harbor |
AUG 24 (Thu)
We all drove to Portree. Portree caters to tourists, but the stores were not chain stores like the ones in Pitlochry but stores selling local Skye goods mostly, which was nice. One particularly nice store sells batiks, and gave me a free cup of tea. The woman comes from Sri Lanka and I bought some of her curry spice mixtures.
We then drove north and looped around the island. I wanted to see Quiraing, hearing it was beautiful, and it was, but I couldn't find the place to walk so we just looked around a bit. In the end, we saw much of the island (just not the Cuillins). We also shopped for the next few days in Broadford.
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| British boy's magazines from the 1960s |
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| Portree harbor |
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| Quiraing |
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| Flower on Skye |
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| Heather |
AUG 25 (Fri)
We took the ferry from Armadale to Mallaig, a trip that you have to book in advance (and I had done so already back in February). First we saw some lovely paintings by a talented artist Pam Carter, right near a little store that sells its own whiskey blends (not sure if it was the Torabhaig, doesn't look like the right place).
We drove down through Acharacle, a promontory of Argyle, south of Skye and east of Mull, to the self-catering house we rented for the six of us for the week. It was right on the beach, again pretty far away from civilization, nestled among a few other houses. Gorgeous house, suitable for us. Kashered everything again. A pine marten came to visit us the moment we arrived.
Bill and Shirley arrived with the next week of kosher food. Since they arrived later than they had hoped to, and knew they would, some of the food was pre-cooked. We still cooked some of our own food and has a pretty little shabbat on the coast, watching the tide go in and out (which was very visible, hiding or exposing a good thirty or forty feet of shoreline.
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| Morning loch |
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| Tal on a ferry |
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| Sunart loch |
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| At Sunart loch |
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| Sunart loch |
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| Somewhere in Acharacle |
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| Pine martin outside our window |
AUG 26 (Sat)
Shabbat on the shore. I read a lot of Jane Eyre.
AUG 27 (Sun)
Bill, Shirley, and Nadine went to see seals (through a telescope) and do some hiking a little south. I stayed home with the kids until around 3, ad then we drove to Arisaig to find a small hotel that had live music (usually from 2 on Sundays, but today it was from 4. Then I had to wait a while for the beer to filter out before I could drive back.
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| Bill and Shirley on a hike |
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| Bill and Shirley contemplate their hike |
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| Quartz on our beach |
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| Saarya fishing |
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| Music in Hotel Arisaig |
AUG 28 (Mon)
We drove to Fort William. Bill, Shirley, and Nadine again took one car. We met up with them in FW. Some of them went to another distillery. Then they went on to drive to Glencoe to hike, but it was raining, so they ended up just driving there and returning. I knew we were going to pass through Glencoe on the way back, so I skipped it. We did some final shopping for the rest of the week and anything else that we wanted to bring home with us and returned to our house.
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| On Acharacle |
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| In a store display in Fort William |
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| A monument to someone |
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| Saarya in front of a bridge apparently seen in Harry Potter movies |
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| When the tide goes out, the snails wait for it to come back |
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| Rocks and moss on the shore |
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| Fairy tower on the shore |
AUG 29 (Tue)
We drove west. First we stopped at the Ardnamurchan distillery to peek around. It's a new distillery still making their first batches, but they sold whiskey from their sister distillery, Adelphi. Then we stopped to traipse around a high point of the area, wandering around the heather and tall grass for a while. Then we stopped in Kilchoan and nearby, and finally went to the Ardnamirchan lighthouse, the most Westerly spot on the Scotland mainland. Bill and Shirley managed to get two flat tires from sharp rocks when pulling over to the side of the road at one point. We had to use various phone and Internet tricks to get service from their rental company, but he showed up soon enough.
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| Morning in our cottage |
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| Hiking up a hill |
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| Lunch |
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| Hiking up a hill |
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| View from the hill |
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| The Ardamurchan lighthouse |
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| The Ardamurchan lighthouse foghorn |
AUG 30 (Wed)
I refused to drive anywhere for one day. Bill and Shirley left early for the rest of their trip (Skye), leaving the four of us. The three of them went out to look at seals again while I tried unsuccessfully to check in to our flights.
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| Tal in the driveway |
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| There were endless hours of coverage about the 5 and then 19 people who died in the Houston storms, but I found the text on the bottom of the screen, and its total lack of news coverage, kind of unsettling. |
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| Fog over our loch |
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| Fog over our loch |
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| Single track roads |
AUG 31 (Thu)
We spent most of the day traveling, taking over 4 hours to get to Edinburgh. Stopped briefly in Glencoe to take pictures, and then we had to return the car, check in and fly out. My headphones never worked well enough to watch any movies on the flights, so I didn't see anything new.
We arrived in Israel at 4:00 am. Yay!
Pictures to follow.
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