Well it seems like it has been a long time since I blogged last. I think it has actually only been a few days but since we have stayed in a different place almost every night it seems like very long ago. I am writing this in the bar below our current hostel because there is no internet above floor 0 (the first floor here is the American second floor, the thought of floor zero baffles me, also I have seen a floor ‘+’which was between 0 and 1, WTF?) Anyways I am also writing this in a noisy bar, with cricket and pop/rock in the background because our room SMELLS. It smells like onions and dirty, dirty boy. Mostly because there is a dirty boy sleeping there, ALL THE TIME. He almost never leaves and he is sleeping at least 16 hours a day, which makes our room smell worse and means that it is always dark, ugh; thank goodness we are leaving in the morning because he doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. I think people that are somehow inconveniencing/ disturbing in one way just are in every other way because he is also loud (getting in and out of be, packing, snoring) and messy.
Anyways, our recent adventures:
The end of our southern Ireland tour
Courtney and I both kissed the blarney stone, which required a spotter as you had to lay backwards and upside down over a ledge, but I haven’t notice either of us becoming more eager to speak or more eloquent than we were before. Perhaps the gift of gab takes a while to set in?
We also went to the Mitchelstown caves which had a lot of amazing rock formations and were also not touristy so we got the cave to ourselves pretty much. There was one large cavern with great acoustics that they apparently use for concerts, and we staged our own private concert of the two bus clowns (Australians, I am having the hardest time convincing Courtney that ALL Aussies are not loud and obnoxious because Aussie tourists like American tourists ARE for the large part loud and obnoxious) singing ‘A Whole New World’ from Aladdin. Complete with prancing movements and duets, these guys knew ALL of the lyrics and it was awesome.
Northern Ireland Tour
The tour itself was a much different group of people and different material than our first. The first was geared to budget travel under 25s and we had one bus to one group and it was mostly cheerful scenery and partying, and our guide was very young and basically a big kid. The second had mostly families and couples, a few people like Courtney and I, and then two other tour groups that were going in the same direction to ‘minimize their carbon footprint.’ Because of this we had to stay in multiple hotels and hostels and everything was very disorganized. Our guide was a small irish woman whose sentences almost always trailed off into laughter a la Kitty from That 70's Show. She is the person I've quoted in the title of the post because she was quite funny on most occasions, but did tend to talk a lot. but she was Irish, so I forgave her. It was nice in a way, because we got a whole new group of people to people watch with though. We had alone guy, alone girl, Canadian annoying girls, Canadian family with Loud wife, Italian woman and a few others. Alone guy and alone girl got together in the end, happy ending for all of us, except apparently there were bedbugs in his bed and he had a poor end to his trip
Northern Ireland was, amazing, and Heavy. With a capitol H (or ‘haetch’ as they would pronounce that letter here) it was a war zone until the 90s and only recently has settled down. First we went to Derry/Londonderry, a town right on the border of Ireland and Northern Ireland. People from Ireland call it Derry and people from UK and Northern Ireland ‘loyalists’ as they are called call it Londonderry. We were very careful with this name as it defines which side of this conflict you are on. Conflict aside, it was a cute town with interesting city walls and has seen less open conflict than Belfast because it has a river separating the Catholics and the Protestants so that there is very little interaction between them. I say this trip was heavy because there is SO much history in this conflict. Both sides have been hurt by each other in different ways for so long it is all a gray area and very difficult to ‘pick a side’ from the outside anyways.
Belfast, though by no means Peaceful it is for the moment stable because of a huge peace wall separating the two warring constituents from each other. The gates between the wall close in the evenings to keep everyone off of one another,’ but in city center where we were staying there was a mall and movie theater and pizza hut and kids sneaking around hard cider to get drunk just like any other city in Ireland.
We toured the city in a black taxi, this taxi/bus system was the only public transportation that still ran during the period of the Troubles and by and large was respected as honorable and necessary by both sides of the conflict once the bus system was discontinued because of too many attacks. The drivers that do the tours were mostly drivers during the troubles too and so are both very knowledgeable and local heroes to a point. They took us into housing project like areas of both Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods which were interesting because of all of the murals and memorials to people that fought for each side, usually in terrorist groups such as the IRA and the UFF that died in action. We also got to sign the peace wall between the two communities which was interesting and a loaded thing to do because as our driver said it isn’t to celebrate peace between the two groups, it keeps the peace by keeping them separated.
Edinburgh
We took ryanair back to Edinburgh from Dublin, a very unusual discount airline with BRIGHT yellow and navy furnishings and hit the ground running with activities. In two days, we saw the Royal Yacht Britannia (the queens old yacht, very huge and well furnished, they still make fudge in the kitchens which is very tasty), the hall of Scottish Freemasons (two very cute old Scottish men for tour guides, although I swear one of them did not speak English), hiked a mountain (it was steep), saw a Georgian house furnished as if in that period, went to the Surgeon’s Hall Museum (very cool, Arthur Conan Doyle and other notables studied and worked there, also there were a lot of pathological specimens), and shopped.
In addition to all of these activities we ate a lot of important foods like Haggis, which was actually pretty tasty if about as photogenic and appetizing looking as taco bell’s ground beef. We also ate a steak pie, chips and brown sauce, onion rings, AND a battered and fried mars bar. The mars bar was interesting in that it had all of the qualities of chewy melted chocolate while staying not messy AND having crispy batter on it, I approve of this fried delicacy at least if not the fried slice of pizza or the fried cheeseburger that the shop was also selling.
This will seem like a lot more once I post pictures I am sure, but for now we are off to London to relax. Our goals are to see the Tate modern art museum, have high tea and a full English breakfast, and sleep. A lot. If you are wondering why we are going to London to relax, this is why. We live in LA, a big city, and after running around for two weeks, we don’t want to tackle it as it is busy and big, and full of busy frustrated people that I do not want to deal with. I would rather drink tea and have a buttered scone.
Anyways, that it our trip to date, I’ll keep you posted. Monday Courtney leaves Europe for South Jersey and I go to Switzerland to meet up with Lena and Gaby, hooray!
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