Where in the World is Rebecca Today?

Over the weekend, Tim and I went to the Trolleybus museum at Sandtoft with Mark and Helen, and I spotted this:

Baby TARDIS, anyone? After all, we’re told they are grown!!

[LJ readers reading this on the LJ RSS feed: Please click on the link at the top of the entry to go directly to my blog to leave a comment, as comments left on the LJ RSS do not get seen by me. Facebook users can comment directly on Facebook.]

I wanted to go to Blackpool. It’s famous for being “The Atlantic City of Britain” and is pretty touristy, so I really wanted to go. What cinched it for us was finding out there was a Doctor Who Exhibit featuring Classic Doctor Who….only, the exhibit wasn’t open :(.

Our train trip was pretty confusing with all the delays and canceled trains, but we made it to Blackpool South and dashed over to the tram stop to get to the tourist section. Everything seemed to be deserted, which really wasn’t surprising considering we were going not only mid-week, but in the middle of Winter! I’ve been to Atlantic City in the winter though, and because of all the casinos there’s always something going on….I’m not sure if all the people were inside the game places or if it was just empty, but we crossed the street and headed towards the Doctor Who exhibit.

We got waylaid by a bloke running a dart game, and he somehow convinced Tim to play to “win his lady a stuffed animal”. £10 later and we quit after Tim won me a small stuffed Pterodactyl I’ve named Myfanwy.

The gates were down at the Doctor Who exhibit, but the Sea Life aquarium next door was open, so we thought maybe there was a way into the exhibit through there since they seemed to be attached, but no luck. We decided not to waste the trip to Blackpool, and visited the aquarium…where I think we were the only people in it for quite a while! We had a good time with the fish, but it wasn’t nearly as thrilling as it would have been if the Doctor Who thing had been open. Ah, well.

We decided to ride the tram all the way to the end of the line, and we were glad we did, because on the way back we got to ride on one of the few surviving double decker trams! We stopped at the same fish and chip chain we ate at in Cardiff because we recognized the name and it was one of the few places still open…and I tried spotted dick for the first time ever. It really wasn’t as bad as some people say it is, but it’s really sweet. I only could eat half of it!

We were just a short walk back to the Blackpool North train station, so we headed over and took the train back to Rainhill once again.

For more photos: http://photos.beccajanestclair.com/uk-trip-2008/blackpool/

[note to LJ feed readers: please click on the link at the top of this entry on LJ to leave comments, as I do not see comments left on LJ!]

We took the train from Rainhill to Liverpool, and then through Liverpool on the light rail until we got over towards the waterfront. At our hotel, we saw brochures for a doctor who exhibition called from Script to Screen, and we decided to check that out. The exhibit was part of the Spaceport on the other side of the Mersey River, and we found a combination ticket for the Spaceport and the ferry tour of the river, so we picked up tickets for that and we were right in time to catch the next ferry!

Over at the Spaceport we walked through exhibits about the solar system and watched a planetarium-style movie about space’s affect on astronauts. Then, we headed up to the Doctor Who exhibit. One thing we noticed was that a lot of the items were similar to items we saw at Earl’s Court, but we still saw loads of costumes, props, and monster masks we hadn’t seen before. This exhibit had several items from the classic/old series, too, whereas the exhibit in London focused on the recent series only.

After a quick snack in the ferry terminal, we headed back onto the ferry which took us on a small tour of the waterfront before dropping us off back on the other side where we originally borded. (see my video log previously posted for boat-stuff).

The other “must do” item on our list for Liverpool was going to The Beatles Story. The Beatles Story was located in Albert Docks, a place we had visited on our first trip to meet up with my friends, but we didn’t have time to do any of the attractions. Fortunately, we arrived with plenty of time to go through the exhibit at our own pace, and at any given time there was only one or two other people in each section with Tim and I! We had really started psyching ourselves up for our trip to the Beatles Story. In the car on the way we listened exclusively to the Beatles songs I had on my iPod, and then as I mentioned earlier, his uncle played some original 45s for us when we visited him, so both Tim and I were really excited for the exhibit.

Some of the stuff we already were familiar with from other documentaries and stories about the band, but I still found it fascinating. At the end of the exhibit they have a section where they show what each member did post-Beatles, and we were quite surprised at some of the projects former-Beatles had been involved with that we hadn’t been aware of before!

Of course, you get dumped out into a gift shop, and Tim purchased a few CDs he didn’t have before we needed to think about dinner.

When we went out with my friends, we met up at the Pump House. Since we liked the food and atmosphere (and it was close by!) we headed over there for a meal, where once again we were one of the few tables occupied. The food and cider was good, and after spending some time relaxing and warming up, we headed back out into the cold to get back to the station and took the train back to Rainhill, then walked the half mile or so back to our hotel, where we promptly made some tea, changed into pajamas, and relaxed for the rest of the evening watching the DVDs of Eureka I brought with me on my laptop.

Reflections on the Water

(previously posted Liverpool vlog)

For more photos: http://photos.beccajanestclair.com/uk-trip-2008/liverpool/

[note to LJ feed readers: please click on the link at the top of this entry on LJ to leave comments, as I do not see comments left on LJ!]

Tim’s dad had been in the Leicestser hospital, and while his mum was driving back and forth visiting him she heard on the radio about an event at the National Space Centre called “Exterminate 45“. Since she knew we are both big Doctor Who fans (okay, I’m probably a bigger fan than Tim), she made sure she told us about it.

Unfortunately, Tim had to work that day from 2-10, so we originally planned to head out in the morning, and then he’d leave for work and I’d make my way back on the train. I posted on a Doctor Who community to see if I could find anyone to hang out with, and I met C of the Leicester Doctor Who Club, who invited me to spend the afternoon with her and the rest of the club. Unfortunately, Tim and I had to alter our plans again, as a neighbourhood kid who looks to Tim as a mentor needed his help Saturday morning, so Tim and I decided I was going to make the trip by myself by rail and bus!

The trip really wasn’t too bad, and the train was a straight journey from Lincoln to Leicester. The trip took two hours because of all the little station stops, but I’m used to that with SEPTA!

My problems began when I got to Leicester. The Space Centre’s website tells you you can take two busses from the rail station and mentions the street names where the stops are….which was fine, but they didn’t give you any directions on how to find the streets. I had foolishly assumed the two streets were streets bordering the train station (I was sort of picturing 30th Street Station in Philadelphia, where you can get to 4 different streets from within the station)…they didn’t, but I did see a sign that said “bus station”, so I started walking towards it, pulling out Tim’s copy of the Leicester A-Z map to see if I could figure out where to go.

I got lost in the marketplace area. Many city centers have a pedestrian-only section of town where all the shops are, and there are loads of side streets and alleys with shops. I’ve gotten pretty good at navigating Lincoln, but Leicester confused me. There were streets that weren’t on my map, and streets that had two different names at an intersection. Confusing, right? I finally saw a bus, and I walked up to it and asked the driver if he knew where I could find bus 54, and he directed me to the correct stop. I finally made it to the bus and paid my £1.80 for a return (US: round trip) ticket.

I was expecting to get dropped off right outside the Space Centre, but the bus actually drops you off about a half mile away. I asked the driver how to get there and he told me to “cross the street and you can’t miss it”. Well, I crossed the street and couldn’t see the Space Centre through the fog, but I DID see the top of the Abby Pumping House Tim and I had gone to in October. The Pumping House is next door to the Space Centre, so I headed in that direction.

I got in line to pay my admission, £12. The person behind the counter wasn’t quite prepared for my American debit card, so I wound up with a complimentary ticket. Not bad at all. I walked around a little bit, and then shortly after met up with C and she and I wandered around until we found the rest of the Leicester Doctor Who Club.

We had a great time goofing off and checking out all the Doctor Who stuff AND the Space Centre. About half of us rode on the “Europa Simulator”, which was a small 3-D ride to “prepare” you for being an astronaut sent to Jupiter. The ride had one of those lap bars they pull down and the guy doing it just kept slamming it down. We had to have it done several times because one of the bars wasn’t going down fully, so I kept having this bar jammed into me over and over. At one point I told C if he slammed the bar down again I might have thrown up on him, it was that jarring.

At Exterminate 45 they wanted to try to beat the world record for people dressed as Daleks, one of the monsters of Doctor Who. None of us were in costume, but we headed outside to look at all the costumes and things ranged from the incredibly accurate to small children wearing cardboard boxes carrying a whisk and a plunger (the two “arms” of a Dalek look similar to those items). We even saw a child dressed as “The Empty Child” with another kid dressed as Captain Jack!

We wandered back inside and started making our way through the exhibits – both the Space Centre exhibits and the Exterminate 45 exhibits – and kept “running into” assorted Daleks, and I even shook hands with one of them!

There was loads of other Doctor Who related things there, too. Several people had brought along versions of the TARDIS, there was at least 2 versions of K-9 (aka “the tin dog”), one that was super accurate, and a club member dressed as an Ood!

When things started to wind down, the group I was with decided to head to a pub in town for a few drinks and asked me to tag along. We boarded bus #54 and I went to hand over my return….but what’s this? It seems I rode OUT on one bus line and was riding IN on another, and they don’t take each other’s tickets….but BOTH buses were Bus #54 and went to the Space Centre and even stopped at the same place. *shakes head* So I had to hold up the line while I dug out an additional £1.50.

I forget the name of the pub we had gone to, but we found a table in a corner and chatted. One of the guys in the club, N, and I started discussing words that mean different things in the UK vs. US. I’ll have to write up a blog entry about that at some time, because it was a really fun conversation.

I left the group around 6 to get back to the station. I was told it was really easy to get back – and it was! I boarded the 1830 train, and headed back to Lincoln.

Tim kept texting me telling me where I was (on the route) and I was really confused until I realized that he could monitor my train from his signal box, though I didn’t pass the box he was working at.

We got into Lincoln at 8:30, where Tim’s mum (and dog!) picked me up since the bus to the village stops running at 6.

The Leicester Doctor Who club invited me to come out for their December meeting, and if the train schedule can be coordinated, I just might, I had such a great time with them!

view overlooking most of the displays

(Photo taken by C) Members of the Leicester Doctor Who Club (and me!)

More photos: http://photos.beccajanestclair.com/uk-trip-2008/exterminate-45/

[note to LJ feed readers: please click on the link at the top of this entry on LJ to leave comments, as I do not see comments left on LJ!]

The next day, we took the train back into London to meet up with our Assistant Admin for burn-gorman.com, Xenutia. Xenutia and I dragged her dad and Tim to the Doctor Who Exhibition at Earl’s Court. We both were afraid the men would be bored, but they seemed to get along well and even enjoyed the exhibition! I was quite excited to get to go, as the Cardiff Doctor Who Exhibition was closed the day Tim and I were in Cardiff.

When Tim and I exited the Earl’s Court tube station, we immediately spotted the exhibition hall…with the front entrance roped off and a gaggle of young teenage girls wearing spanky pants and sparkles. Turns out, auditions for “Britain’s Got Talent” were also taking place at the hall. We had a funny moment when Tim and I walked up to someone “official looking” to ask them if they knew how to get into the Doctor Who exhibit and they asked Tim if he was there to audition! We were directed to go down the side of the building, and along the way we spotted a very sullen-looking 8 or 9-yr-old boy all dressed up in his Sunday best, flanked by his parents. We were taking bets that he was being forced to audition. Rumor had it (and Xenutia’s dad said he saw him) that Simon Cowel was present! Glad we didn’t run into him!

It started to rain, so we decided to go inside to wait for Xenutia. It was fairly empty, not surprising for a Sunday. The people at the box office almost were unable to process my US credit card (since I was dragging Tim along, I decided to pay for out admission), but it finally went through, and tickets in hand, we headed into the exhibit!

The exhibit was a bit jumbled, to be quite honest. It starts with Ten (David Tennant), and we see the costumes worn by Donna (Catherine Tate) and Martha (Freema Agyman), then we go into a section about Series One and Rose (Billie Piper). Very little about Nine (Christopher Eccleston) or Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman). Fortunately we rectified the lack of Jack by making sure we took photos of my mini-Jack with everything.

Both Xenutia and I enjoyed the costume section more than the other sections – They even showed the mock-up drawings and fabric swatches used for costumes. Quite useful for cosplayers!

The other section we had the most fun in was the Dalek section. They had a dalek you could crawl into set up with a similar microphone to the one Nick Briggs uses to distort his voice. Tim got into it and started making random train station announcements with the dalek voice. Sadly, my video of this picked up all the background noise in the exhibit and you couldn’t hear him on it :(.

The exhibit empties out into – what else? – the gift shop. Surprisingly I used lots of restraint and only purchased some stickers. I was disappointed with the lack of Torchwood merchandise, but I assume had we been able to go to the exhibit in Cardiff, we would have found Torchwood items. Oh well. Tim picked up a handful of the old Doctor Who books, and he and I have been reading them the past few days.

After the exhibition, I had agreed to go with Tim to a garden railway show at the Kew Pump House. Tim has his own garden railway and it’s one of his main hobbies, so we figured it was a nice trade-off. I actually enjoyed myself. The show itself was actually inside the pumping house museum, so while you were looking at the trains you also could see the exhibits..and possibly the largest steam powered water pump I have ever seen. I’m still working on getting those videos up on YouTube. We decided to take the train back into London to get our connection back to Shoreham instead of the tube, and had dinner in a small restaurant in Waterloo station before heading back to N’s house for sleep.

Xenutia, Tim, and me outside the exhibtion

Xenutia, Captain Jack, and I pose with a Dalek.

More photos: http://photos.beccajanestclair.com/uk-trip-2008/doctor-who-exhibition/