10.29.13 Harry Potter Day

Well those of you who know me would probably never have expected me to say this, but my day has gone a little too Harry Potter. I'll explain in a bit.

I climbed to what is called King Arthur's Seat today and got some gorgeous views of Edinburgh. I hadn't planned on going on a "hike" and kind of wish I had worn my sneakers instead of my leather boots, but I survived and more importantly, so did my boots! They're going to need a good shining after this trip.

I did a little more wandering today. This is St. Giles Cathedral.

One of the many "closes" in Old Town. A close is a narrow street that could literally be closed off by a door. Some of them are still closed off by gates so that local businesses can use them as storage.

Most of the closes lead to another street via staircases like this one. Back in the day these pathways were cesspools of human waste, but today they are ridiculously picturesque and fun to explore.

Palace where the Queen stays when she visits Scotland.

I'll take one set of wrought iron gates for my dream home, please.

Path up to King Arthur's Seat

The view from King Arthur's Seat

Looking out across the bay.

The palace from above.

I then achieved one of the most important things on my to-do list for this trip, and that is to visit Elephant House! For those of you who aren't quite as obsessed as I am with Harry Potter, this is a shop that JK Rowling is particularly fond of, and she wrote most of the first books here. I swear that, as I was drinking tea, my nose finally cleared up and my ears unclogged. Some of you will attribute that to modern medicine and chai tea, but us believers know the truth: it was the Harry Potter magic (Thanks, Madam Pomfrey!).

Notice the Ravenclaw scarf. Thanks, Lauren!

Stood in the middle of the street to get this picture. NBD.

Now for why my day has gone a little too Harry Potter: I missed my train! I must've been looking at arrivals instead of departures on the screen, because I was at the wrong platform, and by the time I realized my mistake it was too late. Unfortunately, unlike Harry and Ron, I do not have access to a flying car. BUT, today is probably the best day to miss a train. Thanks to St Jude Storm, a lot of trains in and out of London have been cancelled. Normally this would be kind of disastrous, but in my case it means that all tickets are valid for any service both today and tomorrow - I can use my pre-paid ticket any way I like to get to London. I decided to take my chances and take the next train as far as Peterborough, and the train guard informed me that there might be a shuttle from Peterborough to London. If that doesn't work out, I'll either find a place to stay in Peterborough or doze in the train station. Either way, I'll get to London sooner than if I had stayed in Edinburgh until tomorrow, and at no extra fee!

And, because they feel guilty for the delay, I now have free WiFi. Score! It's all about the silver lining, folks.

10.28.13 Edin-brrr-a!

Teehee more puns for you! My first impression of Edinburgh: it is BEAUTIFUL and COLD. But, unlike Belfast, its beauty is strong enough to make me overlook both my cold and the cold. The old town, right around the castle, is just a labyrinth of alleys and staircases and courtyards and old shops, and I think I could spend days just wandering around and getting lost. I'm sad that I only have 24 hours here, and I definitely need to come back. It is just breathtaking and fascinating.

The view to the South from the castle. My hostel is in that building on the left.

Looking down the Royal Mile. Only a small taste of Old Town.

A wider view of the Royal Mile.

Edinburgh Castle.

But first to backtrack:
I rode the ferry this morning! The last time I rode a ferry was 15 years ago, when my family went to Victoria Island off of British Columbia. I was expecting rows of forward-facing seats, not-so-great insulation, and kind of a grey interior for two hours. Not the case at all. Stena Line is super nice, almost like a fleet of miniature cruise ships. I just lounged on a couch with my feet up for two hours and thoroughly enjoyed myself. It was far more comfortable than all of the bus rides I've been taking lately. [Piece of advice to anyone ever wanting to travel to Ireland: Be aware if your plans include you traveling on a Sunday! Bus timetables especially become heavily restricted. I took a cab this morning. Also, Stena Line tickets are basically impossible to book with a credit card from the U.S. No idea why. I booked a package deal through a different company instead.]

Fancy, huh?

First sight of Scotland!

The Gangway. I was pretty excited.

My hostel here is called Castle Rock Hostel and I really recommend it! I'm in a 12-bed all female dorm, and it doesn't feel crowded at all, and I'm currently sitting in the great two-story lounge room, complete with a medieval-sized dining room, pool table, squishy leather couches, and a wrought-iron chandelier. Plus, it's very conveniently located. This is the view from the front door:

Comfy squishy sitting room that reminds me of Hogwarts. =)

I decided not to go to the castle today because it costs 16 pounds. 16 POUNDS! That's 25 dollars! No thanks. Not to worry though, because there is plenty to see for free. I only walked about halfway down "The Royal Mile" (aka the street stretching from the castle to the queen's palace), and I got plenty side-tracked along the way. A big part of my day was spent at the Scottish National Museum, which basically covers life in the country from the dark ages to the present day. It's free, it's warm, and this is the view from the top deck:

Those white globes are rain drops, because it is perpetually misty. Umbrellas don't do any good either, because the wind blows the rain every which way and turns the umbrella inside-out.

Because of falling back an hour (Europe does a week earlier than the U.S.), it was already pretty much dark by 5:15. I grabbed dinner and went in search of St. Gile's Cathedral, which Rick Steves had mentioned has a free concert on Sundays. To give you an idea of how beautiful the architecture is here: I couldn't find the cathedral!! Usually they stick out immediately because of ornate stonework or tall spires or something of that sort. Nope, I wandered the streets for a good twenty minutes, consulting my map several times, before I finally stumbled across it. I got there right at 6 PM and there was a free concert! An all-local, non-audition choir puts it on every Sunday. Let's see if this video loads...

(Sorry, no video just yet. I'll try to get it up another time)

The choir really was the icing on the cake of a good day. I'm taking it easy tonight in the hopes of kicking this cold. I'm SO excited to meet up with my best friend and travel partner, Miss Sarah Tegenfeldt, in London tomorrow! Traveling alone has been fun but it can get kind of lonely sometimes. Tomorrow is also all about Harry Potter: I'm going to wear my Ravenclaw scarf, eat breakfast at the Elephant House, take the train to Kings Cross, and maybe go on a walking Harry Potter tour of London.

PS - Clark might be Scottish? There is definitely a Clark clan, and I had to exercise a lot of control to not buy the 100% wool scarf in clan colors.

10.25.13-10.27.13 - Belfast means Titanic

Belfast was actually the first city that was kind of disappointing, but I think that was largely because I was sick and the weather was cold and windy.

My first impression of Belfast was that it reminds me of a mix of Chicago and Boston. Boston for the weather and Chicago for the buildings/body of water. It’s pretty hodge podge, with a good mix of ornate old buildings, modest brick construction, and modern buildings in between. They also are very proud of their shipping heritage. Everywhere you look there are poster podiums explaining some architecture or some shipping history. I never even saw much mention of the Troubles. But I suppose that’s not the sort of thing you want to advertise, is it?

Belfast and the River Lagan from the other bank, in the Titanic Quarter.

An example of Belfast's Georgian Architecture.

City Hall

Belfast also seems like it would be a really neat place to live, despite being sparse on tourist sites. It’s bustling, as a big city should be, but it has the river and just enough variety in the buildings that it doesn’t feel too industrial. And, like any good Irish town, it has tons of pubs. You can’t swing a cat without hitting a pub in Ireland. 

I got in on Thursday at 3 and power-walked to the Titanic Belfast because one of the staff at the hostel said it was only about half an hour away and I knew it closed at 5. Turns out it’s more like 45 minutes away power-walking and they let the last group go through at 3:20. I was SO. SAD. when I saw that I couldn’t get in. So I decided not to go to Giant's Causeway. I figured that, since I was in Belfast, I should focus on the city itself. And it was cheaper anyway.

So I went the next day (Saturday) to Titanic Belfast, and I think it's worth the 10 pound (again, yay student card!) entry fee and 45-minute walk. I took two and a half hours to walk all the way through, because it is very detailed. It begins with Belfast in the late 1800s, setting the stage for its large shipping industry. It then follows the construction of the infamous ship from its conception and designs all the way to its sinking, the investigation, and its graveyard at sea. I have to say that, in a way, it was almost too informative: it kind of took some of the aura of mystery away from it, you know? But it is also really well done. It presents everything factually and fairly and works hard to dispel certain myths associated with the story (J Bruce Ismay was actually not all terrible, and the stories of Captain Smith's final hours are varied and conflicting). 

Building that housed one of the drawing rooms for Harland and Wolff, the company that designed the Titanic, Olympic, and Britannic.

Memorial to the 1500 people who lost their lives.

Did you know there was actually a J. Dawson on board? Joseph, not Jack. And no, James Cameron did not base Leo DiCaprio's character after the real J. Dawson.

Original gates to Harland and Wolff.

A neat video of the launching situated so that when you looked through the windows you saw the original dry dock where the Titanic was launched.

The Titanic leaving Queenstown (now Cobh). This is the last picture of the ship ever taken.

The last distress call was never finished.

I won't list all the facts from the museum because it will probably bore you to death, but my favorite parts were 

1. the virtual walk-through of the ship and

2. the dark room that showed the Marconi transmissions from her last few hours and played actual eye-witness accounts over the speakers.

So yeah, Belfast wasn't as undeniably awesome as the other places I went to in Ireland, but one of my main reasons for going was to see Titanic Belfast, and that was definitely worth my time.

10.24.13 Galway and Cliffs of Moher

Sorry for the delay in posts; the WiFi at my hostel SUCKS and it wasn't uploading pictures. I finally just decided to go to a Starbucks, despite my general insistence on avoiding American companies while abroad, because I know they have reliable WiFi.

Anyway, on Thursday I just decided to do a tour to the Cliffs of Moher, because it was only a little bit more expensive than BusEireann and FAR less complicated. If I had taken BusEireann to the cliffs I would've had less than an hour at the cliffs and some very tight connections.The tour I took was called Galway Tours, and I went on it with a bunch of other people from my hostel, so that was cool. There was a general group of us that would go out and get meals and take the tours and explore the pubs together.

So here are some pictures from that tour:

Dunguaire Castle

An earthen ring from pre-historic people. For years the Irish believed they were Fairy Rings.

Being a fairy in the Fairy Ring

Some pretty landscape from the fairy ring

The tour included some stops along the way, including The Burren. The Burren is 25 square kilometers of limestone that are mostly barren because of early slash-and-burn techniques used by pre-historic people. It's really interesting for geologic and ecologic reasons, including:

1. It is only one of two such areas in Europe, the other being in Ukraine.
2. The limestone comes from when the configuration of the continents was very different: Ireland used to hang out around the Caribbean, and the limestone is from millenia of animals and plants slowing growing fossilized.
3. There are some flora in Ireland that grow only on the limestone, and as a result, the entire area is protected.
4. The region is arid by Irish standards because limestone is porous and allows all of the water to seep through.

A Neolithic Tomb

The Burren. Only a very small portion.

The Cliffs of Moher are definitely more impressive in person than in pictures. Pictures don't capture just how far they stretch, and the lack of reference points makes it difficult to grasp the actual height of the cliffs. It's pretty vertigo-inducing, largely because of the strong winds. Our bus driver warned us not to get too close to the edge because of the risk of being literally blown away by sudden gusts.

Cliffs of Moher!

Just a tad windy. Don't worry, I'm not nearly as close to the edge as it appears. I'm about 15 feet back.

After getting back from the trip I and a couple of other people from the hostel got some pizza and explored some pubs. I once again got a free drink for doing tap-dancing. I think this is going to have to be my go-to for free drinks in Ireland haha. Galway is certainly the place to go for the night life. I only recommend it if you either are traveling with someone else or if you have met people to go out with. Because really, Galway is pretty thin on sights and you would only want to spend multiple nights there for the night life. But most of the pubs have live music, and at night the entire shopping district becomes a pedestrian-only bar scene. We were there on graduation weekend, so it was crazy. There were probably thousands of people wandering the streets, and they stay out way later than we do. Some of the Europeans I met complained about how bars only stay open until 3 or 4 ("Ours stay open until 6 or 8 in the morning!"). Well that was plenty late for me. In fact, I was the one to call it a night at midnight. This grandma has to get to bed early!