Ireland, Scotland, and England.
Well, I'm back from my fall break trip to the UK. It was stressful at times, but I really enjoyed visiting the different countries, and especially spending over a week in a country where I didn't have to think about how to speak or what to say. It was a beautiful thing being in English-speaking countries again. I traveled with my roommate Sofia, and two girls who live across the hall from us, Ashley and Eileen.
Ireland was probably my favorite of the three places we visited. It was also our first destination. We arrived in Dublin around 8 pm on Saturday. The flight wasn't too bad, but the turbulence toward the end of it made for a rough landing. We took a bus (a double-decker) from the airport to Dublin, and found our hostel without much trouble. We checked into our hostel, dropped our stuff off, and then went on a search for some food, as we were all starving and hadn't eaten in 9 hours. We decided to go to a pub near our hostel. It was very cute inside and although the wait for our food was a little on the longer side, it was very good. I ordered half a baked chicken. On the side were potato wedges, green beans, and stuffing. The chicken also had a honey barbecue sauce over it. After we had finished our dinner, we decided to make a trip up to the beer hall that was above the restaurant. We sat at a picnic-like table and drank some cider. After a while some Irish guys asked if they could share the table with us since there were no other tables available. By the end of the night we had made some new friends, and had long conversations about breakfast, and what was strange about American culture. They found it strange that we get free refills on drinks when we go out to eat. They also found it disgusting that we eat waffles and pancakes for breakfast. "A heart-attack waiting to happen" as they had phrased it. Sorry boys, but I will keep my waffles and bacon and eggs. You can have your beans and whatever else it is that you eat for breakfast.
The second day in Ireland, Sunday, we took a free walking tour of Dublin. We saw all of the major city sites, and learned a little about Irish history. Our tour guide was really entertaining and knowledgeable, and it was fun to listen to him talk, mostly because of his accent. I was exhausted so I didn't go out that night, and it was probably a good thing, as I was starting to get sick. I did, however, participate in the Irish dancing lessons the hostel was giving. I think I'll leave the reels and the jigs to Sarah though, and stick with pointe.
On Sunday we all took a day trip to Galway. We took a bus, and the ride was two to three hours. I fell asleep for most of the ride, but would wake up randomly to see heavy fog, and fields with sheep (typical, right?), horses, and cows. Galway was one of my favorite parts of Ireland. It kind of reminded me of New England. It was right on the water, and although the weather kind of sucked, I really enjoyed it. We ate at a little restaurant that reminded me of Long John Silvers (I got fried chicken). After that we took a walk out on a pier toward a lighthouse, but couldn't walk all of the way to the lighthouse because it was blocked off by a chainlink fence. I took some pictures of the land and seascape, and they sort of reminded me of pictures you would see on a calendar about Ireland. I found my claddaugh ring in Galway, and am very excited about it. I also found some wool socks, which I am currently wearing, since the weather in Italy decided to be cold and rainy today. They're doing a good job at keeping my tootsies toasty. There was also a cute little market on one of the side streets in Galway, and that is where I bought and consumed one of the tastiest donuts I have ever had. It was like funnel cake, and it melted in my mouth. SO GOOD! I want another one :(
Monday we broke off into groups. Sofia and Eileen went shopping, and Ashley and I went to visit the Book of Kells at Trinity College, and also the archaeological museum. The Book of Kells was cool to see, but a bit overpriced. The only thing I found fascinating in the archaeological museum was the preserved bodies of people that had been found in bogs throughout Ireland (and maybe the rest of the UK, I'm not sure). Our group reconvened at 2, and we made a trip out to the Guinness Storehouse. It was about a 15 to 20 minute walk from our hostel, but it was well worth it. It was way cooler than the archaeological museum, that's for sure. The Guinness Storehouse is also home to the world's biggest pint. At the storehouse we learned how Guinness was made, saw advertisements for Guinness dating back to the '50's, saw actual artwork produced for advertisements, tasted samples of Guinness, and at the end we all had a pint at the end of the self-guided tour up in the Gravity Bar. After the visit to the storehouse, we split up again. Ashley and I went on a musical pub crawl, and I'm not sure what Sofia and Eileen ended up doing. On the musical pub crawl we followed around two musicians to three different bars in Dublin, and watched them play traditional Irish music, and learned some history about the bars we went to. The fiddle player was really fun to watch, and it was a good ending to our last night in Ireland.
Sadly, by Tuesday it was time to leave Dublin and head to Glasgow. The flight was a mere 35 minutes, making the train ride into the city actually longer than the flight to get from Ireland to Scotland. Glasgow was my least favorite of all of the places we visited. It was very industrial, and reminded me of Pittsburgh almost, which was kind of a shame, because who wants to go to Scotland to visit Pittsburgh? Glasgow was very industrial. The countryside of Scotland was beautiful, however. On the train ride to Glasgow we rode through the countryside and I saw a woman with not one, not two, but THREE Border Collies. Chloe was a handful as it was, so I can't imagine having three of her. When we got to Glasgow we dropped our stuff off at the hostel, and went out for breakfast. We got pretty cheap traditional breakfasts. There were eggs, hashbrowns, bacon (which was really more like country ham) half of a grilled tomato, a huge mushroom, baked beans, tea, and toast. The traditional Scottish breakfasts also included black pudding (gross), sausages, and potato bread. After breakfast we walked around and found a park with a very neat looking greenhouse attached to a museum. Little did we know that the museum would be very depressing and made Glasgow seem even worse than we already thought it was. The museum blamed all of Glasgow's problems on drinking, and until very recently 5% of Glasgow's population didn't even have indoor plumbing. After the museum we walked around and looked for an art museum, which we never did find. While we were walking I think we walked through the less nice part of Glasgow, and it actually reminded me of High Point (which is not a good thing). It made me think about the time Mom and I had driven to visit HPU for the first time, and as we were driving through the ghetto, we both kind of just looked at each other like "we just drove 6 hours for this?" So yeah, not so pleasant. We abandoned any hope of finding the art museum, and instead took a shopping detour, where everybody in the group bought clothes except for me. Later that night we had dinner at some really cute restaurant. I had a hamburger and it was actually really good. We also decided to take a break from all of the travelling and walking around constantly to go see the movie The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. It was a very trippy movie, and kind of reminded me of Across the Universe, so if you like that movie, you should go see it. You should also go see it because it was Heath Ledger's last film before he died, and also includes Johnny Depp, Collin Farrell, and Jude Law in the cast.
By Thursday I think we were all happy to be leaving Glasgow and heading to London. On the way to the airport, Sofia thought we needed to switch trains, so we got off the train we were on, and ended up finding out that we shouldn't have gotten off at all. We then had to take a 60 pound cab ride to the airport, where we just narrowly made our flight. Once we arrived at the airport we then had to take a bus to London, and then the Tube to our hostel. After that we checked into our hostel and then went to find some food (this sounds like a routine we followed, now that I think about it). Ashley sort of went off on her own, so Sofia, Eileen, and I wandered around London. Our very first stop was to visit Harrods, where I saw the most beautiful straightener known to man kind. After that we went around Hyde Park, walked past Westminster Abbey, past Big Ben and the houses of Parliament, and walked over toward the London Eye. We looked around a souvenir shop that was across from the London Eye, and I was surprised to find they were selling Harry Potter wands. They were actually modeled after the different wands the characters used in the movies. You could buy Harry's wand, Lord Voldemort's wand, or Hermione's wand. I'm sure there used to be Ron's wand and Dumbledore's wand, but I didn't see those. We walked back after that and went to bed. Just that day alone we had walked over 8 miles!
On Friday Ashely went off by herself again, and Sofia, Eileen, and I bought day passes for the Tube. We all met up in the morning to go on a free walking tour of London. We saw all of the major sites in London on the walking tour, including Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, the place where the princes live when they're in London, and some other places. We learned a funny story about somebody breaking into Buckingham Palace. Apparently it was like 4 in the morning one night and this Irish man was drunk and decided he wanted to see Buckingham Palace, so he climbed over the fence and broke into the Palace. The guards at the Palace decided nobody could set all of the alarms off at once, so they figured it was a glitch in the security system and turned it off. Meanwhile drunk Irish guy is walking around the Palace and decides he's hungry. So he goes to the kitchen and drinks half a bottle of wine from the queen's personal collection, and eats some of her dog food, too drunk to realize it's not people food. He then decides to give himself a 4 am tour of the Palace, and stumbles upon the queen's bedroom. Instead of freaking out that there is a drunk Irish guy standing in her bedroom at 4 in the morning, she sits up and has a conversation with him. Eventually he asks her for a cigarette, and she tells him she doesn't have one, but that one of her doormen probably does. So she calls down and has somebody come up to get rid of drunky. They come up and have to sit on the drunk guy for half an hour, because that is how long it takes London's finest police force to get from the end of the road into Buckingham Palace to arrest the drunk. Because the laws are different in Buckingham Palace, the only thing the guy could be charged for was stealing half a bottle of wine and some dog food. He spent about a week in jail, and that was that. It was funnier when our tour guide told it, but I just find it funny that something like that actually happened. After the walking tour on Friday we used our day passes and went around the Underground to different places. We stopped at Kings Cross so we could get our pictures at Platform 9 and 3/4. We actually walked toward Platforms 9, 10, and 11, thinking hey, Platform 9 and 3/4 will be over there. Wrong. We actually had to ask for directions to a platform that doesn't exist. After finding out where it actually was (down past platform 8), we were stopped by one of the workers at the station and asked where we were heading. Eileen responded "Platform 9 and 3/4" and the worker wasn't even phased. It was very funny. After getting our pictures with the fake platform, we headed out in search for food. We eventually happened upon a little deli that sold fish and chips, and that's what we had.
Saturday morning, Ashley and I went to visit the Aquarium. It was pretty fun, but definitely overpriced. The Baltimore aquarium was way better than the London aquarium, which made me sad, because I don't really find the Baltimore aquarium that spectacular, even though I like it. In the London aquarium they had plates of glass covering the shark tank, and you could actually stand on them and see the sharks swimming under you. It was a pretty freaky experience, but cool at the same time. After the aquarium Ashley abandoned me to do her own thing, so I was stuck for the majority of the day alone. It was okay though because it gave me time to find an outfit for the ballet we saw later that evening. Our group met back up at 6 and we headed to the Royal Opera House to see Sleeping Beauty. It was a three hour long ballet, with two 20 minute intermissions. Our "seats" were actually places in which we had to stand because there were no seats. We could also only see half of the stage, but I guess when you pay 6 pounds to see a ballet at the Royal Opera House, you can't exactly expect top of the line seats. It was still really fun, and made me miss pointe a lot. After that we went back to the hostel and Ashley went to bed and Eileen, Sofia, and I hung out with some people in our hostel and celebrated Halloween at the little Halloween party our hostel was throwing.
Sunday morning we woke up late (nobody's alarm seemed to go off), and missed the bus we were supposed to take back to the airport, so we ended up having to take another taxi to the airport. This time it was twice as much as the first one, and I don't think anybody was a very happy camper about that one. The trip back to Florence was uneventful (which I'm glad for), and once we got home I did a little grocery shopping, made some french toast for dinner, unpacked, did some laundry, and read a little. I still feel exhausted from the trip, but I'm glad I got to experience everything. I really want to go back to Ireland later in life, maybe other parts of England and Scotland as well. Anyway, I'd say that about sums up my vacation.
Ciao,
Emily
Ireland was probably my favorite of the three places we visited. It was also our first destination. We arrived in Dublin around 8 pm on Saturday. The flight wasn't too bad, but the turbulence toward the end of it made for a rough landing. We took a bus (a double-decker) from the airport to Dublin, and found our hostel without much trouble. We checked into our hostel, dropped our stuff off, and then went on a search for some food, as we were all starving and hadn't eaten in 9 hours. We decided to go to a pub near our hostel. It was very cute inside and although the wait for our food was a little on the longer side, it was very good. I ordered half a baked chicken. On the side were potato wedges, green beans, and stuffing. The chicken also had a honey barbecue sauce over it. After we had finished our dinner, we decided to make a trip up to the beer hall that was above the restaurant. We sat at a picnic-like table and drank some cider. After a while some Irish guys asked if they could share the table with us since there were no other tables available. By the end of the night we had made some new friends, and had long conversations about breakfast, and what was strange about American culture. They found it strange that we get free refills on drinks when we go out to eat. They also found it disgusting that we eat waffles and pancakes for breakfast. "A heart-attack waiting to happen" as they had phrased it. Sorry boys, but I will keep my waffles and bacon and eggs. You can have your beans and whatever else it is that you eat for breakfast.
The second day in Ireland, Sunday, we took a free walking tour of Dublin. We saw all of the major city sites, and learned a little about Irish history. Our tour guide was really entertaining and knowledgeable, and it was fun to listen to him talk, mostly because of his accent. I was exhausted so I didn't go out that night, and it was probably a good thing, as I was starting to get sick. I did, however, participate in the Irish dancing lessons the hostel was giving. I think I'll leave the reels and the jigs to Sarah though, and stick with pointe.
On Sunday we all took a day trip to Galway. We took a bus, and the ride was two to three hours. I fell asleep for most of the ride, but would wake up randomly to see heavy fog, and fields with sheep (typical, right?), horses, and cows. Galway was one of my favorite parts of Ireland. It kind of reminded me of New England. It was right on the water, and although the weather kind of sucked, I really enjoyed it. We ate at a little restaurant that reminded me of Long John Silvers (I got fried chicken). After that we took a walk out on a pier toward a lighthouse, but couldn't walk all of the way to the lighthouse because it was blocked off by a chainlink fence. I took some pictures of the land and seascape, and they sort of reminded me of pictures you would see on a calendar about Ireland. I found my claddaugh ring in Galway, and am very excited about it. I also found some wool socks, which I am currently wearing, since the weather in Italy decided to be cold and rainy today. They're doing a good job at keeping my tootsies toasty. There was also a cute little market on one of the side streets in Galway, and that is where I bought and consumed one of the tastiest donuts I have ever had. It was like funnel cake, and it melted in my mouth. SO GOOD! I want another one :(
Monday we broke off into groups. Sofia and Eileen went shopping, and Ashley and I went to visit the Book of Kells at Trinity College, and also the archaeological museum. The Book of Kells was cool to see, but a bit overpriced. The only thing I found fascinating in the archaeological museum was the preserved bodies of people that had been found in bogs throughout Ireland (and maybe the rest of the UK, I'm not sure). Our group reconvened at 2, and we made a trip out to the Guinness Storehouse. It was about a 15 to 20 minute walk from our hostel, but it was well worth it. It was way cooler than the archaeological museum, that's for sure. The Guinness Storehouse is also home to the world's biggest pint. At the storehouse we learned how Guinness was made, saw advertisements for Guinness dating back to the '50's, saw actual artwork produced for advertisements, tasted samples of Guinness, and at the end we all had a pint at the end of the self-guided tour up in the Gravity Bar. After the visit to the storehouse, we split up again. Ashley and I went on a musical pub crawl, and I'm not sure what Sofia and Eileen ended up doing. On the musical pub crawl we followed around two musicians to three different bars in Dublin, and watched them play traditional Irish music, and learned some history about the bars we went to. The fiddle player was really fun to watch, and it was a good ending to our last night in Ireland.
Sadly, by Tuesday it was time to leave Dublin and head to Glasgow. The flight was a mere 35 minutes, making the train ride into the city actually longer than the flight to get from Ireland to Scotland. Glasgow was my least favorite of all of the places we visited. It was very industrial, and reminded me of Pittsburgh almost, which was kind of a shame, because who wants to go to Scotland to visit Pittsburgh? Glasgow was very industrial. The countryside of Scotland was beautiful, however. On the train ride to Glasgow we rode through the countryside and I saw a woman with not one, not two, but THREE Border Collies. Chloe was a handful as it was, so I can't imagine having three of her. When we got to Glasgow we dropped our stuff off at the hostel, and went out for breakfast. We got pretty cheap traditional breakfasts. There were eggs, hashbrowns, bacon (which was really more like country ham) half of a grilled tomato, a huge mushroom, baked beans, tea, and toast. The traditional Scottish breakfasts also included black pudding (gross), sausages, and potato bread. After breakfast we walked around and found a park with a very neat looking greenhouse attached to a museum. Little did we know that the museum would be very depressing and made Glasgow seem even worse than we already thought it was. The museum blamed all of Glasgow's problems on drinking, and until very recently 5% of Glasgow's population didn't even have indoor plumbing. After the museum we walked around and looked for an art museum, which we never did find. While we were walking I think we walked through the less nice part of Glasgow, and it actually reminded me of High Point (which is not a good thing). It made me think about the time Mom and I had driven to visit HPU for the first time, and as we were driving through the ghetto, we both kind of just looked at each other like "we just drove 6 hours for this?" So yeah, not so pleasant. We abandoned any hope of finding the art museum, and instead took a shopping detour, where everybody in the group bought clothes except for me. Later that night we had dinner at some really cute restaurant. I had a hamburger and it was actually really good. We also decided to take a break from all of the travelling and walking around constantly to go see the movie The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. It was a very trippy movie, and kind of reminded me of Across the Universe, so if you like that movie, you should go see it. You should also go see it because it was Heath Ledger's last film before he died, and also includes Johnny Depp, Collin Farrell, and Jude Law in the cast.
By Thursday I think we were all happy to be leaving Glasgow and heading to London. On the way to the airport, Sofia thought we needed to switch trains, so we got off the train we were on, and ended up finding out that we shouldn't have gotten off at all. We then had to take a 60 pound cab ride to the airport, where we just narrowly made our flight. Once we arrived at the airport we then had to take a bus to London, and then the Tube to our hostel. After that we checked into our hostel and then went to find some food (this sounds like a routine we followed, now that I think about it). Ashley sort of went off on her own, so Sofia, Eileen, and I wandered around London. Our very first stop was to visit Harrods, where I saw the most beautiful straightener known to man kind. After that we went around Hyde Park, walked past Westminster Abbey, past Big Ben and the houses of Parliament, and walked over toward the London Eye. We looked around a souvenir shop that was across from the London Eye, and I was surprised to find they were selling Harry Potter wands. They were actually modeled after the different wands the characters used in the movies. You could buy Harry's wand, Lord Voldemort's wand, or Hermione's wand. I'm sure there used to be Ron's wand and Dumbledore's wand, but I didn't see those. We walked back after that and went to bed. Just that day alone we had walked over 8 miles!
On Friday Ashely went off by herself again, and Sofia, Eileen, and I bought day passes for the Tube. We all met up in the morning to go on a free walking tour of London. We saw all of the major sites in London on the walking tour, including Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, the place where the princes live when they're in London, and some other places. We learned a funny story about somebody breaking into Buckingham Palace. Apparently it was like 4 in the morning one night and this Irish man was drunk and decided he wanted to see Buckingham Palace, so he climbed over the fence and broke into the Palace. The guards at the Palace decided nobody could set all of the alarms off at once, so they figured it was a glitch in the security system and turned it off. Meanwhile drunk Irish guy is walking around the Palace and decides he's hungry. So he goes to the kitchen and drinks half a bottle of wine from the queen's personal collection, and eats some of her dog food, too drunk to realize it's not people food. He then decides to give himself a 4 am tour of the Palace, and stumbles upon the queen's bedroom. Instead of freaking out that there is a drunk Irish guy standing in her bedroom at 4 in the morning, she sits up and has a conversation with him. Eventually he asks her for a cigarette, and she tells him she doesn't have one, but that one of her doormen probably does. So she calls down and has somebody come up to get rid of drunky. They come up and have to sit on the drunk guy for half an hour, because that is how long it takes London's finest police force to get from the end of the road into Buckingham Palace to arrest the drunk. Because the laws are different in Buckingham Palace, the only thing the guy could be charged for was stealing half a bottle of wine and some dog food. He spent about a week in jail, and that was that. It was funnier when our tour guide told it, but I just find it funny that something like that actually happened. After the walking tour on Friday we used our day passes and went around the Underground to different places. We stopped at Kings Cross so we could get our pictures at Platform 9 and 3/4. We actually walked toward Platforms 9, 10, and 11, thinking hey, Platform 9 and 3/4 will be over there. Wrong. We actually had to ask for directions to a platform that doesn't exist. After finding out where it actually was (down past platform 8), we were stopped by one of the workers at the station and asked where we were heading. Eileen responded "Platform 9 and 3/4" and the worker wasn't even phased. It was very funny. After getting our pictures with the fake platform, we headed out in search for food. We eventually happened upon a little deli that sold fish and chips, and that's what we had.
Saturday morning, Ashley and I went to visit the Aquarium. It was pretty fun, but definitely overpriced. The Baltimore aquarium was way better than the London aquarium, which made me sad, because I don't really find the Baltimore aquarium that spectacular, even though I like it. In the London aquarium they had plates of glass covering the shark tank, and you could actually stand on them and see the sharks swimming under you. It was a pretty freaky experience, but cool at the same time. After the aquarium Ashley abandoned me to do her own thing, so I was stuck for the majority of the day alone. It was okay though because it gave me time to find an outfit for the ballet we saw later that evening. Our group met back up at 6 and we headed to the Royal Opera House to see Sleeping Beauty. It was a three hour long ballet, with two 20 minute intermissions. Our "seats" were actually places in which we had to stand because there were no seats. We could also only see half of the stage, but I guess when you pay 6 pounds to see a ballet at the Royal Opera House, you can't exactly expect top of the line seats. It was still really fun, and made me miss pointe a lot. After that we went back to the hostel and Ashley went to bed and Eileen, Sofia, and I hung out with some people in our hostel and celebrated Halloween at the little Halloween party our hostel was throwing.
Sunday morning we woke up late (nobody's alarm seemed to go off), and missed the bus we were supposed to take back to the airport, so we ended up having to take another taxi to the airport. This time it was twice as much as the first one, and I don't think anybody was a very happy camper about that one. The trip back to Florence was uneventful (which I'm glad for), and once we got home I did a little grocery shopping, made some french toast for dinner, unpacked, did some laundry, and read a little. I still feel exhausted from the trip, but I'm glad I got to experience everything. I really want to go back to Ireland later in life, maybe other parts of England and Scotland as well. Anyway, I'd say that about sums up my vacation.
Ciao,
Emily