I was just in an indie bookstore that specialized in SF/F books with $50 in gift cards. I thumbed through Fire and Blood and immediately thought "Nope. Nope. Nope." I was like a kid in a candy store and that book was like Milk Duds to me: something I'd eat if that's all they had but the last thing I'd eat otherwise.

yeah, it was a constant grind to even read 250 pages...and I just had to put it down to read something else

Started The Culture Series and have not looked back

I hear it's more of an encyclopedia versus a typical 'story'

I literally just heard about the Culture Series in an article discussing the all-time greatest SFF series. Unfortunately, the bookstore I was at didn't carry any books from the series. It's definitely on my list.

Yup, that's exactly how it reads...and its pretty repetitive with the history...

Coming from something like ASOIF or The Expanse series....its definitely a different read as the stories are not really interconnected. And the stories are very different from one and another...still a great read

Yeah me too. I'm jealous (not in a bad way). One gorgeous landscape after another. GOT or not, it's beautiful.

Keep in mind that at this time of the year it isn't as green, but the cloudy weather/rain the last few days really sucked. That said, the landscape is really great.

Sigh! Here I am back in Holywood (north of Belfast, south of Bangor). The trip is coming to a close. Today's location, in order, were Castle Black, Shanes Castle and Toome Canal.

Well, Castle Black was a bust. The road that goes to the quarry has a gate, and it was closed. Also, big red on white signs about no standing or parking as well.

Shanes Castle didn't yield much as well. I drove in to the estate office, but it was closed. On the way out, I stopped to take a photo of the wide open field and ran into the gate keeper. He is a fan as well, having read the books. He saw a bunch of the production and said that the used the estate a lot. They were not very friendly. He asked the producers if they would have the actors sign something for him and they said nope. They weren't going to bother the actors. Good grief. On the road leading in to the estate, past the gate, the crew had pulled all of the fence posts out. They are back in now. He let me go back down to the junction and get some shots down the tree lined road that was used in the series. There was a lot of stuff done at the castle, down in the guts of the place. He might have let me go to the castle, but a pheasant hunt was currently taking place, so not safe. It was why the gate was open in the first place. There are zero visitors allowed. Events can be booked, but no general tourists. I asked about making it a tourist attraction, but he said there was very little interest. It also explains why I had a hard time finding it, i.e., no signs pointing it out. I would have loved to have been able to walk over to the castle and explore all of the areas where shooting took place. Oh well!

The last stop, Toome Canal, was a location I didn't know about until I looked at one of the official tourist pamphlets that pointed it out. The shooting took place at the canal entrance at Toome. It is a 500m walk down to the lough. It wasn't raining!!!

Oh, the pamphlet points out that shooting was also done at Lough Neagh, but where they show the location is on the Shane Estate. Needless to say, don't put Shanes Castle on your list of places to visit.

I have door #10 to get to yet and I hope to do all 6 Glass of Thrones locations. It is a very long walk to get to them. We'll see how the weather holds tomorrow.

Oh, there was also a quick photo stop along the A2 just north of Carnlough. There is a GoT placard there that I initially forgot about. We found it. Even though it was raining a little bit, I was going to get the shot.

Have I visited all of the locations? Nope. Places like Cairncastle (which isn't a castle) would require a lot of hiking to get to the areas. 1) it was raining and 2) I don't hike.

I will be scanning a lot of the brochures and making them available for downloading.

I will close with the words that were on a Dark Hedges field sign: Entrance to the field is free. The bull will charge later.

True .. each is really a stand-a-lone book .. and, how Banks was able to liberally change his general style of writing here and there was either amazing or confusing, depending on how you look at it .. as Space Opera, it's good stuff, especially if you lean toward a Socialist agenda ..

The Dark Horse, which contains the 10th door, is not open on Sundays. Totally screws up my plans for easy, simple, and most importantly, free parking. It is not a bar, it is a tea room place. That part of the web page slipped by me. I never expected them nolt to be open on Sunday. Before you ask, the hours are not listed on the web site. Now we have to go on Monday, taking the train because there won't be parking. Sigh!

GoT also filmed on Malta, which gets a lot more sun than Ireland.

I don't think they had any GoT tours though.

Iceland, Croatia and Spain were also major filming locations

Yes, GoT recorded in many other locations around the world, but Ireland is the home base and where I am currently. I have no plans to visit other locations. I'll leave that to others to do and report.

Leaked S08E06 commentary (apparently from BluRay release as it is definitely recorded after the airing of the series finale) - https://soundcloud.com/robbiesdane/got-8x06-commentary

I honestly can't listen to those two idiots talk about how much they didn't want to work on the show anymore...reading the recap, its pretty bad though - just adding insult to injury for D&D

Well you were complaining about the lack of sun.

On Malta, there is the medieval walled city of Rabat, which was used for many Kings Landing locations. The stones used for the architecture looks brilliant in the Mediterranean sun.

Well, here I am on a Sunday night with the details on what happened today. First off, the weather cooperated, i.e., while it was cloudy, it wasn't raining, wasn't windy and it was pleasant @ ~10 degrees. The rain didn't start until later in the afternoon (after the sun went down). Today was Glass of Thrones days. I actually thought that we weren't going to get to them all, because we had to meet up with my friend's friend and his family.

We were told that it being Sunday that parking wouldn't be a problem. Well, not so much. Every available free parking location near city hall, i.e., glass #1 , was taken. After going 'round in circles to find a location, we cheated. There is an area right in front of city hall that was being used by a vehicle to unload goods to the market that was going on. So, if he could park there to unload, we could park there to take a few photos. My friend stayed in the car while I went and took some shots of the glass sculpture.

One sculpture down, five to go. Finding the next one, which is near the ICC building, was not easy. But, after finding it, it was easily seen from the street that we used a couple of times looking for it. We found another place to cheat park while I looked for the sculpture. I found it and took the photos. I ran it a couple of women who were also doing the walk to the sculptures. I didn't know at that time that they were going to go to all off them.

Off to find #3 . Easily found and there was an open parking spot right near. Another one done. #4 was not that far away. At that point, since there wasn't going to be any free parking, we decided to park in the lot across from the Odyssey. Shot #4 and ran into the two women again.

Off to #5 . At that location the two women (no, we didn't walk with them), one of which thought it was last. I said nope and showed them the brochure. #5 down, one to go. On the way to #6 , there was some other photos to take.

On the way to #6 , one does get to see the big Titanic Studios building. Plus, in another lot across the street from them was semi truck trailers trying to hide sets. You can see the tops of the sets. I took photos and will stitch the panorama together later. We could see the two women ahead of us. We finally got to #6 and I got my photos after the women were done. I got a shot of one of them sitting on the throne. I too sat on the throne and had my friend take my photo, in my "Not Today" tee. Yes, I took off my coat. Like I said, a nice day. We noticed some more sets, of which I got as good a shot as possible.

Before we left the area, we drove into the area, passing the spot where the trailers were doing the blocking thing. I should have stopped the car and tried to take some shots under the trailers. Oh well.

We all met up at the Ulster Transportation Museum (they were really late, having to deal with three 8 year old boys). One really learns about the early railroad history of Northern Ireland. They even had a fairly large Titanic exhibit. I got lots of photos of that as well.

Then my friend and I were off to Portaferry in order for me to get the GoT passport stamped. Nine stamps down, one to go. That I will take care of tomorrow.

Then it will be time to catch the flight back to England.

We just happened to be in Spain and touring Real Alcazar and they were talking about how they just got done filiming for this GoT TV Show. I'd never seen any of the show and didn't think much of it.

A year or so later I finally get into GoT. And then some time in see Dorne. And it all 'clicked' for me

I lied. Here is another report. I'm back in Chichester. Heading on home tomorrow, Triple sigh!. Yesterday we took the train downtown to go on over to the Dark Horse in order to finish off photographing the doors and get the last stamp in the passport. After we got to the street that the Dark Horse is on, my friend said that he was there on Saturday. His friend took him there to see the red umbrella overhead Xmas lights. He never paid any attention as to what establishments he was next too.

The Dark Horse even has their own special stamp that they place on their page of the Passport. One of the barkeeps even congratulated me on getting all 10 stamps. After eating a late lunch there, we headed back to the lodging in order to get ready to leave.

Overall it was a great trip.

While I am here I get Club orange and mint biscuits, which I bought after first arriving here. Problem is that I'm not going to be able to take back all that I purchased, as I will be overweight. Gone are the days where one gets two suitcases when traveling overseas. I'm not going to purchase another just to bring back the biscuits. Oh well.

You can get them from Amazon. Kinda pricey.

https://www.amazon.com/Jacobs-McViti.../dp/B004AVAXPC

https://www.amazon.com/Jacobs-Club-B.../dp/B004AVAXNO

True, Clubs are available via Amazon, but as you said more expensive. Cheaper when purchased here. Just the dumb suitcase rule and its price. Icelandair wants $76 for an extra suitcase.

My wife did Northern Ireland locations, while I golfed. Next year, we'll both enjoy Dubrovnik. Spain in two years, combined with a Portugal visit. Iceland's a no-go.

Any word on a complete 4K UHD box?

I've been following it and no mention of anything yet ..

Somewhere, Tony Soprano is laughing.

Deleted Scene from S8 Blu-ray...

they should have left that scene in...would have provided a better continuation as far as the attack on Winterfell...

https://ew.com/tv/2019/11/27/game-of...deleted-scene/

I can only imagine all the deleted scenes which may have added much needed context and understanding to Season 8 - I'm sure D&D cut important and critical exposition so Tyrion could have some more c**k jokes (because that's what people who watch football wanted!)

Cogman does GoT well

This is Why Streaming SUCKS! | GAME OF THRONES SEASON 8 4K ULTRAHD BLU-RAY REVIEW

not surprisingly there's a huge difference especially with Episode 3's Battle of Winterfell...cable/streaming had poor black levels, banding, compression etc while the physical 4K disc is a night/day improvement

But... the the uber display snobs and show apologists told us it was all our fault, and that it was great as is? Now this? Oh my.

@Ralph Potts has the 4K UHD set of S8. Will be interesting to read his thoughts on the Battle of Winterfell. See if we can , well, see anything.