Ireland/Netherlands (Eurotrip-2012)

            Margot and I were waiting in Holyhead for the ferry that would bring us across the creek to Ireland the last time I spoke with you. Boarding the ferry was a fairly simple process involving a long line, a bus ride, and reluctantly handing our bags over to some men whose shirts claimed they worked for Stena Lines although they stated that they worked for Irish Ferries. When we stepped on board I was a little surprised, this wasn’t so much a ferry as it was a cruise ship. Equipped with a casino, movie theatre and food court we began to navigate our way through this floating city in search of the observation deck. While on board this hunk of floating metal we finally found our way to the top of the ship and out onto the observation deck. It was a really cool experience, I felt like I was on the Titanic as the slowly fading coast line was engulfed by the never-ending sea. After gazing around and taking in the beauty of the ocean we completed the Titanic image with a couple pictures leaning over the railing of the ship and then stepped inside to relax for the rest of the ride. We ended up playing Bananagrams and while I wish I could say otherwise, Margot whooped my ass. After we docked in the Dublin harbor we stepped of the boat and I felt Dublin under my feet for the very first time.

Dublin:
 

At the present moment I still consider Ireland to be my favorite country of the trip thus far and it’ll be a tough task for any future countries to top its splendor. We got into Dublin about mid-day on Tuesday the 14^th but it took us a fair deal of time to take a bus into town and then find our way to the hostel, which included befriending a man named Jared who was from Belfast, really into skiing, and staying at the same hostel as us. Once he lead us to the Times Hostel we checked in and inquired about a meal deal for the pub around the corner that involved a pint of Guinness and a Beef Guinness Pie for just 10 Euro. We threw our stuff in the rooms and skipped down to the pub to enjoy a nice hot meal and a fresh brew. After inhaling the delicious food we decided to take advantage of the free wifi at our hostel and have a nice relaxing night catching up on our emails and Skyping friends. So we proceeded to stay up until about 2 AM engulfed in the land of free internet.  

                The following day we grabbed our free daily breakfast of stale bread and butter before venturing into the city. Unfortunately the weather was pretty poor so we decided to visit some of Dublin’s indoor sights while it was raining. First, we went to the National Library where they had exhibits on the writer James Joyce and the poet WBY (William Yeats). On Joyce they had copies of all of his drafts so you could see how the books progressed as he worked on them. Just looking at the pages was incredibly confusing and to the untrained eye appeared to be very unorganized. There were random sentences all over the pages that were scribbled out with crayon. According to the library Joyce would copy all of these sentences one by one into his next draft, crossing out the ones he had transferred with whatever writing utensil was available and would correct and add more as he went along. Another interesting part of his developmental process was that he never eliminated anything he already had in one of his drafts, he only added more. It was a really interesting exhibit that helped spark some ideas about catching up on my foreign literature, which shouldn’t be too hard based on the amount of time Margot and I will spend on trains during the next 4 months. In fact I’m just about done re-reading Anne Frank’s Diary and Joyce’s Ulysses and The Dubliners are on my travel literature list as well. The WBY exhibit was a bit more elaborate and I found it to be very informative and interesting even though I’ve never been able to get myself very excited about poetry and can’t recall specifically reading any of Yeats’ poems before. It was really cool to learn how famous and talented Yeats and all three of his siblings became during their lives but what I found most interesting was his love life and political influence. He fell in love with his cousin Maude early in life and while he had other love interests throughout the rest of his life, such as his wife George and an author named Margot Ruddock, it seemed that he never curbed the feelings he had for his one true love, Maude. Maude broke Yeats’ heart when she got married in 1904 to a man that Yeats openly expressed discomfort with and Maude apparently came to her senses when she got divorced after only a couple years of marriage. While Yeats and Maude never did end up marrying she was a very influential figure in his writing and his life. Yeats’ wife George on the other hand did something called Automatic Writing, which I understand to be a form of writing where you’re not in control of your body and some other invisible being is controlling your writing. It sounds interesting but I think I would opt for the much more plausible explanation, which is that George may have been a little crazy. Yeats was also an important political figure, using his writing to encourage the Irish people to stand up against Britain and fight for Ireland’s freedom. He was really upset when he missed the Easter rebellion in 1916 because he was working in America. He played a major part in the Abbey Theatre and thought of himself as not only a poet but also as a novelist and screen writer.

                From there Margot and I took a short walk to the National Museum, which had exhibits on the Romans in Ireland, Vikings, and Ancient Irish artifacts. The Irish used to hoard all of their belongings and bury them near lakes or rivers. Historians don’t know exactly why they did this but we’re lucky that they did because this helped preserve their belongings over huge periods of time so we can enjoy and learn from them today. After the museum we walked over to St. Patrick’s Cathedral which was very similar to the cathedrals that we found in England except not as large. Inside the Cathedral they had this old oak door with a hole in it which used to be the door used to block an entrance to a safe-hold within some Irish city. Well one day there was a huge battle and one side felt defeat quickly approaching and ran for the safe-hold, locking the door behind them. The general of the opposing side proceeded to watch the battle get way out of hand as soldiers from both sides were dropping everywhere. So he approached this door and informed the general hidden inside that he desired a truce and asked him to open the door so they could negotiate one. The hidden General thought that this was might be some sort of trickery and decided that he would not risk everybody’s life within the safe-hold by opening the door. So the General screaming for a truce took out his war axe and chopped a hole in the door, then stuck his arm through it as a sign of good faith to all those inside. Appeased, the hidden General opened the door and a truce was created and signed. I thought it was a pretty cool story of heroism from an Irish General.

                Margot and I then walked back to our hostel for a free dinner before we decided to go out for the first time during our Eurotrip and enjoy Dublin’s night life. We went to a bar called The Auld Dubliner in a nightlife area call Temple Bar and met these three girls who turned out to be a ton of fun. Kate and her friend Bec were both from Australia and last year they met this Irish girl named Christy when she was on vacation in Australia. Well both Kate and Bec are in the middle of Eurotrips themselves right now and decided to meet up with Christy in Dublin so all three of them could hang out together again. They had a ton of energy, especially Kate and we had a great time dancing and enjoying each other’s company. After exchanging numbers and Facebook names we stumbled back home and I immediately passed out. The following day was not wasted to a hangover though as we spent it on a six hour bus ride from Dublin to Doolin through Limerick. 

 

Doolin:

When we finally made it to Doolin on the west coast of Ireland we were exhausted, I’ve found it incredible during this trip how exhausting simply sitting on a bus or train for umpteen hours can be. In Doolin we stayed at this great hostel named Flannigan’s, the owner of which gave free Irish dancing lessons to all his guests and was incredibly friendly. We decided to go into town and grab some food before we collapsed and I had a delicious meal of Lamb Roast while Margot had one of the eight Shepard’s pies that she’d eaten in the past week in a half. We met this bar tender at the bar named Cathal, pronounced ka-hil, who grew up in the area and was incredibly friendly. In fact I think the general consensus among Margot and I about the Irish people is that they’re all incredibly friendly. After dinner we went back to the hostel to take a nap before going back into town to see some live traditional Irish music and then get some Irish dancing lessons. Unfortunately, we never woke from our nap and missed all of these awesome Irish events. After waking up the following morning and vouching not to miss both of these things later that night we started our walk out to the Cliffs of Moher. It was about an hour in a half walk to get to the cliffs and then we spent a couple hours exploring them. They were absolutely amazing! The cliffs are by far the coolest thing I’ve seen on this trip so far and might be the most impressive thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life. They were about 600 feet tall and the cliff wall was a sheer drop, allowing you to peek your head over the edge of the cliff and get a hearty feeling of vertigo. The cliffs went on for miles along the west coast of Ireland and we caught beautiful weather while we were on top of the cliffs. I totally recommend visiting the cliffs to anyone who’s still reading this blog post and would be more than happy to go back and re-visit them with you in the future.

After taking in this amazing product of nature we turned around and made the trek back into town to grab some food and rest at Flannigan’s. Then we went back into town to get Margot’s ninth Shepard’s Pie while I had some amazing Irish Stew. The band started up about halfway through dinner so we enjoyed some nice Irish music while we chatted with our friend Cathal. Then we saw Shawn, a man in his mid-twenties from Australia who is working at the Flannigan’s, and he invited us to grab some drinks with some of the other hostel occupants at the bar down the road. We met up with them there a little later in the night and I met a kid named Con who is a little younger then Margot and I, from Germany, and also working at the hostel, as well as a kid named Mathew who is from just outside Paris and gave us some great tips on what to see when we’re in France in December. We didn’t stay out too late because we wanted to do Irish dancing back at the hostel but unfortunately discovered that it wasn’t happening that night after all.

               

Inis Mor:

The next day we caught a ferry to Inis Mor, the largest of the Aran Islands. It took us awhile to get out there so we didn’t arrive at the Kilmurvey house B&B until about 6 PM. The bus we took to the hostel from the ferry gave us some really interesting information on this island with a population of just 900 people though. The island is 11 miles long and 3 miles wide at its longest points and in 1790 the island had its largest population in history at about 2,500 people. Due to TB a lot of the islands families were completely wiped out just after this and the population has never been able to build up to its former glory. The island is divided into 14 counties, has two secondary schools, one primary school and a college where students all learn Gaelic. There are also twelve houses on the island that still have traditional thatch roofs made out of hay. This is different from the thatch roofs that you see on the Irish main land which are made out of reed and only need to be re-thatched about every 15 years. The hay roofs on Insi Mor need to be re-thatched every 2-3 years and therefore are a lot harder to maintain. The whole island is also covered by stone walls, separating everything into little subdivisions which makes the whole island look like one giant maze. It was really cool.

After storing our stuff in our rooms at the B&B we caught a ride with owner of the house we were staying at named Bernte. He wasn’t much into conversation during this ride as Margot discovered when she inquired about how his day was going and only heard the cool ocean wind pass over the car as she waited for a response. I falsely assumed this was because he had something against American or non-Irish travelers but figured out a little later in the night that he didn’t respond because Margot had called him Bernie instead of Bernte. So giving up on the conversation with Bernte during this first drive we turned to the couple next to us in the van and discovered that Peter and Sarah were both originally from Georgia but were in the middle of a two year foreign business adventure in Milan, Italy. Peter was working at PWC in Milan as an Accounting Transaction Consultant while Sarah was working part time as an Accountant. We ended up getting dinner with them at a pub in town and I couldn’t help but discuss Accounting topics with them until the conversation moved on to their humorous wedding circumstances. They had gotten married just a year before in order for Sarah to be included on Peter’s work visa, otherwise she would have been left behind in America. They were already engaged so it wasn’t as huge a deal as it could have been when Peter called her up and asked if she was busy this Friday because they kind of needed to get hitched. So they ended up getting married with fifty strangers in a mass wedding, of which there were only two Caucasians in the entire court hall and they just happened to be named Peter and Sarah. One of the other fifty people sitting next to them engaged in some conversation during the heart wrenching ceremony and they discovered that he was a pimp marrying one of his working girls. They couldn’t help but chuckle when the pimp brought his soon to be wife, wearing Nike Air Jordan High Heel Pumps, up to say, “I do” and the judge informed him that he was still married to his second wife. He then reached into his pocket and produced a death certificate of his late wife so that the ceremony could proceed. The whole story was very amusing and the good times continued to roll as our three hour dinner with Peter and Sarah flew by in what seemed only a matter of minutes. After we noticed the time and ran to the meeting spot to catch Bernte before he left without us we had a lively discussion with Bernte about the island and his family during our ride back to the B&B.

The following morning Margot and I had planned on waking up at five to catch the sunrise at the fort just up the hill but after staring blankly at each other and struggling to keep our eyes opened we decided to catch a couple more hours of sleep before venturing up to the old fortress. We still managed to get up there to experience the dawn and also beat all of the tourists, so we had the whole place to ourselves. It was a really cool fortress that looked very similar to the castle that was at Old Sarum since both no longer had any walls and appeared to be made out of similar stone. During its hay day the ancient fortress only had three outer walls, leaving the fourth wall open on the west side which gave a direct view over the Atlantic and to the crashing waves directly underneath the fortress. The fortress was built on top of a 100 foot cliff that mirrored the ones we had seen at the Cliffs of Moher the day before but on a much smaller scale. I can only imagine how many drunk Irish soldiers accidentally fell over the cliffs and were lost to the sea over the years.

After taking some fun pictures on the edge of the cliff we made our way back down the old fortress pathway to our B&B for a glorious breakfast of eggs, yogurt, scones, sausage, bacon, bread, and to my dismay some blood sausage. You see the day before when our ferry docked at Inis Oirr for a couple hours Margot and I got some lunch at a cheap lunch stand sitting on the beach. Margot got a cheeseburger but as I’m constantly trying to eat the local fare wherever we go I got some blood sausage. Unfortunately a cheap rusty lunch stand on the beach was probably not the best place to eat my first few links of blood sausage. It was fucking disgusting, but I couldn’t bring myself to waste the money I had spent on the sausage and throw it away so I stomached the sausage and fought a queezy feeling for the rest of the day. So when I ate what should have been a delicious piece of blood sausage the next morning I was immediately reminded of the previous days’ sausage and it just ruined the whole experience.

                After the sausage, Bernte took us by the islands seal colony on our way back into town to catch the ferry to Doolin. The tide was still too far in however so we could only see the seals swimming around and none of them were out sun-bathing yet. It was still pretty cool and Bernte said at least a hundred seals lived in the cove there. After reaching town we geared up for a long day of traveling and with a bit of luck it went off without a hitch. First we took the ferry back to Doolin, making stops at Inis Meain and Inis Oirr. The previous day Margot had befriended a couple from New Jersey on the ferry into Inis Mor and they happened to be on our same ferry going back to Doolin. So Margot struck up another conversation with them and by the time we were cruising into Doolin they had offered to give us a ride into town to the bus stop. By the time our ferry got to Doolin the tide was all the way out and so we had to anchor the ferry about 1,000 yards from the dock and get relayed onto shore on a little boat that only held about 10 people per trip. Luckily we got on the second boat while the man from Jersey had gotten on the first and was running to get the car for us. We found him when we reached shore and he dropped us off at the bus station literally one minute before our bus arrived to take us into Galway. If we had missed this bus we would have had to wait another 3 ½ hours for the next bus so thank god we caught it. Then we had to endure the 6 hour bus ride back to Dublin and ended up staying at the same hostel as we had earlier in the week. After another low key night we got up early to catch a flight to Amsterdam.

Amsterdam:

            When we arrived in Amsterdam we started walking through the airport to find the metro and noticed a couple young security guards armed to the teeth with an AK, two hand guns, a couple tazer guns and a bunch of other handy gadgets. It didn’t bother me but was a bit of a reality check as to where I was and how things were different here from back in Colorado. When we got off the metro at Centraal Station I was amazed at how huge it was, I’d never been in a train station that large before. After visiting Copenhagen I’m beginning to realize how common these huge train stations are but at the time it blew me away. From Centraal Station we had a short ten minute walk to our B&B, which happened to be just 5 minutes down the canal from the Anne Frank house. After getting situated we spent this first night just walking around exploring the area, grabbing some dinner and eventually venturing over to the Red Light District. We didn’t stay out too late this first night and got a good night rest instead. The following day we went to the Westerkerk which translates to Western Church and is located right next to the Anne Frank House. Frank frequently referred to the church in her diary, saying that its bell tower gave her comfort when it chimed and that she became disgruntled when the Nazi’s melted it down to use its metal to make bullets. The church was very different from those we saw in England and Ireland. It had no stained glass, which may have been due to the destruction of WWII, but was also completely white and gold inside. It was bright and picturesque whereas the cathedrals in England where decked out in stained glass and the interiors were decorated in very dark colors. The contrast between them was very dramatic but I found both of the styles to be beautiful in their own ways.

 

           After the church we grabbed these awesome sandwiches at a local sandwich shop and Margot couldn't help but laugh at the size of my sandwich compared to hers. During the course of the trip up to this point my main goals when ordering food have been to experience the local fare and to get large portions. However, exhibited by my consistent answer of, "I'm starving!" whenever Margot asks if I'm hungry, I've failed to the point of hilarity in achieving large meal portions. Somehow whenever we order food Margot always ends up with a larger portion of food than I do, no matter how hard I try to combat these disproportionate meal sizes. My stomach finds it torturous but I can't help but laugh at the consistency of my meal failures. From the sandwich shop we went to the famous Rijksmuseum and spent several hours admiring all of the artwork. The trademark Dutch delftware was all over the place and incredibly beautiful. They also did a great job of telling the Dutch history through the artwork which I must admit I didn’t know a whole lot about beforehand. There was this one painting that stuck out to me during my visit because it was so different from the rest of the art. While some of the art in the museum was somber or displayed warzones from afar, only one picture was actually gruesome. It was a painting of the De Witt brothers after they had been lynched in the late 17^th century by an angry mob. Johan De Witt was an important Dutch political figure during the Franco-Dutch war and was supposedly in charge of keeping the Amsterdam safe during this time, which he failed to do when the French and English attacked the city. As retribution when another political party took power, Johan and his brother Cornelis were taken from their jail cells and lynched by a large mob that mutilated their bodies and even ate some of their body parts. This was a painting displaying the aftermath of the events. The museum also contained the original painting of the Night Watch by Rembrandt which was pretty cool. So far during this trip I’ve been much more fascinated by sculpting’s though and I really enjoyed one they had at the Rijksmuseum of Cupid. He had this mischievous look on his face and was reaching into his quiver for another arrow while holding his finger to his lips telling someone to be quiet.

                After the museum we walked over to the van Loon museum which Margot obviously found an interest in since her last name is van Loon. Unfortunately, the museum was closed on Tuesdays so we couldn’t go inside but we still managed to snap a couple pictures of Margot in front of it. We continued to move on down the road to the Tulip Fair which was huge since Amsterdam is famous for Tulips after all. Then we went home to get some rest before going back out later that night. Margot really wanted to go to an Indonesian restaurant for dinner since the Netherlands colonized Indonesia but instead we kept running into Argentinean restaurants. They infested every street corner and we couldn’t figure why there were so many in Amsterdam but we finally found an Indonesian restaurant and ended up having some great food. After dinner we took another stroll through the Red Light District and decided that the Monday night girls were much better looking than the Tuesday night girls for some reason. And laughed about how well the prostitution fit in with the surrounding people and business establishments; there were families and high class restaurants sharing walls with many of these places. After enjoying a lengthy night stroll we found our way back to our B&B and got up early the next morning to go to the Anne Frank House. This was a really interesting and emotional experience and my favorite part of our time in Amsterdam. I hadn’t read Anne Frank’s Diary since middle school so I was a little fuzzy on the details but the exhibit did a great way of introducing and feeding you information about her experience. At the end you got to see footage of Auschwitz after it had been freed from the Nazi’s and heard from Anne’s father Otto. This was probably the saddest part of the tour since it really hit home what happened to all of these people and what Anne eventually went through. Especially after getting to know Anne through her diary, seeing how human she was and noticing the similarities between herself and you, seeing what went on in these concentration camps became incredibly disheartening. But it’s also something that I would definitely recommend seeing and experiencing yourself. One thing that I’m disappointed not to be seeing during this trip is Auschwitz, because even though it’s a really sad and depressing place I feel that it would be amazing to see since it is such a huge part of human history.

                After the Anne Frank house Margot wanted to go to the Tulip and Cheese museum, which she did while I went shopping for delftware. Afterwards we got an amazing lunch at the Pancake Factory, grabbed our stuff and had a couple beers by one of the canals while we waited for our overnight train to Copenhagen.  

               

Great Britain (Eurotrip-2012)

      
        Humps for the next 200 yards. Not only is this a humorous street sign that Margot and I keep running into but it also seems to be a recurring headline for our trip. While the trip has been absolutely brilliant so far, there have been minor bumps in the road. In fact this morning I got the time for the train from Salisbury to Holyhead mixed up and we found ourselves running across town to get to the train station with only 15 minutes till our trains departure time. We luckily hailed a cab and the driver was so friendly he waived the cab fee when we arrived at the station. We rushed into the station to find Platform 2 and had just enough time for both of us to use the restroom before Margot suddenly realized that we were on the wrong platform, we needed to be on Platform 4. So we ran down and under the tunnel in order to reach our platform across the tracks only to be informed that indeed our train was actually on Platform 2. So we started running back in the direction that we’d come until we were told that no no Platform 4 WAS for our train. Sweating and painting we finally managed to get onto our train and speed off towards Holyhead. However, thinking all the excitement for the day was over, Margot just lost her ticket to Holyhead and we are now anxiously awaiting the conductor to come ask for our tickets so we can explain our situation and hopefully not get tossed from the train. During today’s course of events I think a little sign exclaiming “humps for the next 500 yards” would be more than appropriate.

            In regards to the title of this post, I assure you we did not find jobs paying a dismal rate, although we could definitely use the money. This is actually how much it cost us to enjoy England. We spent $5.42 for each hour we spent in England. So while the past week has been absolutely incredible and I wouldn’t change a thing about it, it has also been outrageously pricey. But before you write Engalnd off as a money vacuum, let me give you a run through of everything we’ve done in just the 5 days we’ve spent in the country. (Also, I realize this post is a bit long so if you skim it I won’t at all be offended. But it’d be nice if you let me know that you’re listening and leave me a little comment or something.)

London:

            We flew into London Heathrow at 11:45 A.M. on Thursday Aug. 9^th. At this point in time we had been up for almost 20 hours straight and hadn’t had anything to eat (excluding peanuts and cliff bars) for 16 hours. Exhausted, we navigated the Tube system like London natives and enjoyed the British accents of our fellow passengers along the way. Our Hostel didn’t start check-in until two in the afternoon so we stored our bags in the luggage room and set off to find some much needed food. We found a great Indian Restaurant just down the street off Belgrave and had some chicken and kashmir curry.

        Refueled we set off to explore the city and through a thick forest of pubs and Brits we managed to arrive at Westminster Abbey. We had missed visiting hours but just seeing the outside of the building was amazing and really snapped me into the realization that I was actually in fucking London. It was a great moment that only got better when we stumbled upon Big Ben and Parliament. We crossed over the River Thames and took a stroll down the side of the river, passing Kings College and exploring an old church along the way while also examining MI6 and its intense security systems.

       We found our way back to our hostel at about five in the afternoon and proceeded pass out. I was awoken by Margot a couple hours later exclaiming that we would mess up our sleep schedules if we continued to sleep. With so much sleep deprivation and only a two hour nap under my belt it took me a little while to get a real grasp on where I was and what the hell this woman was talking about. But after crawling out of bed and shaking my head awake we managed to make our way to the local pub for some bangers & mash and ale. It was so great to finally eat a real English meal and I went to bed a very happy man that night.

        We met our roommates for the night when we got back to the hostel, a brother and sister from Alberta, Canada. They were a tad bit older than us and the boy was a dancer who performed traditional Ukrainian dance and was in town for a show. They were very friendly and we were happy to share a room with them. Unfortunately they left the following day and you’ll hear about our new bunk mates a little while later.

            We got a good eight hours of sleep that night and had big plans for our Friday in London. Our first stop was the kitchen for our free breakfast of toast and … toast, it was just toast. With bellies rumbling we made our way to Buckingham Palace. Luckily we happen to be visiting during only a short period each year when they open up the State Rooms. Pictures were not allowed inside but I can tell you that it was absolutely incredible. Throne rooms, Dining rooms, Picture rooms, and Music rooms. Grand Staircases, Drawing rooms, Waiting rooms, and the Quadrangle. The whole building blew me away, not only was the building extremely old but it was all still in use by the Queen today. The way that the entire country of Britain has managed to intertwine the old and the new is something I personally found amazing. There were a couple pictures and statues that I found especially interesting in the Palace, but for the sake of boring my audience and making this post even longer I’ll exclude these parts and you can ask me about them personally if you feel inclined. Unfortunately we missed the changing of the guards because we were inside the palace when it occurred, but we gained the privilege to say that we were being guarded by twice the amount of guards as most of the tourists that pass through the palace. There is a funny story to go along with our trip to the Palace though. During the first half of our exploration through the Palace I was lagging behind, but as we went through the picture room Margot somehow ended up behind me. So when I exited into the Royal Gardens an hour later I was surprised not to see her anywhere waiting for me. Confused, I kept walking and eventually found my way to the exit. But as I left the gates I noticed that there was absolutely nobody out here and also no re-entry back into the Palace. As I was exiting I noticed a path leading deeper into the gardens but assumed that it was off limits, but while waiting outside I became unsure of myself and started following the brick walls around the Palace grounds in the direction of the path searching for another exit. I found none and ended up circling the entire grounds of the Palace only to find Margot waiting at the exact spot that I had exited at.

        After this stressful event and a much deserved lunch we were only a couple hours behind schedule heading to The Tower of London. The castle was magnificent and amazing to look upon, but being behind schedule and spending way too much on lunch we decided to skip the tour. This is a perfect example of something that would’ve been amazing to see but because we spent such a short time in London we were unable to experience. We’re working on minimizing these events from our trip. We circled the tower and then snapped some pictures near Tower Bridge.

      We walked a short distance over to the Monument which was erected in remembrance of the great fire of London, which burned half the city down in 1666.

     We walked the 311 steps to the top of the world’s tallest isolated stone building and then walked across London Bridge (which was not falling down) to find Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. We found its original location as well as its current location. It was also a really cool building that would’ve been great to see a show at if we were in town for a longer period. After visiting the Theatre we walked across the Millennium Bridge which talked to us. Yeah, the bridge had these speakers playing melodramatic music and soft voices explained to us what the bridge was. I would give you an example but I’ve been told by some of my audiences that you must’ve had to be there so I’m not going to embarrass myself on my blog post as well. All I can say is that it was very corny and hilarious. On the other side we came up on St. Paul’s Cathedral, which was amazing. It was so expansive I couldn’t help but be impressed. And while Margot informed me that there were huge cathedrals like this all over Europe, this was the first one I’d ever experienced and thus it blew me away. We made plans to visit Camden Town after this but halfway through our walk there we saw a Nando’s and really wanted to eat some food. Unfortunately, the oven broke down literally as we entered the building and we were forced to walk to another Nando’s in Brunswick. The chicken was delicious all the same and it was pleasant to have a full belly once again. From here we took the Tube to Trafalger Square and then walked over to the London Eye to see the whole area lit up at night.

       It was a great way to end our short stay in London, however this unfortunately wasn’t the absolute end of our stay. We went home and got to bed early for our 5 AM train the next day, but at about 11:30 I was awoken by some hooligans on the street below hollering and drunkenly singing to each other. I decided to go to the bathroom since I was now up and noticed that the hollering was getting closer and closer until eventually it was right outside my door. I came out of the bathroom and found out that these hooligans were indeed our roommates for the night. Fortunately they decided to go out for a drink and didn’t come back until 3:45 in the morning, precisely the same time we were walking up to go to the train station. We had a nice conversation though and discovered that they were from the Netherlands. One worked for the Welfare division of the Netherlands and the other one was still a part time student. They turned out to be pretty cool guys and we had a nice lively conversation about our separate governments.

Windsor:

            After a short ride on the train we found ourselves in Windsor at an alarmingly early hour. As we walked along the streets I was wondering how the hell all of these shops were surviving, I hadn’t seen another soul since we’d left the station.

I would find my answer later in the day...

           But for now we ventured on and eventually got worn down to a point that found us on a park bench in the middle of town with Margot sleeping on the bench while I updated my journal and watched our stuff.

         After a quick rest Margot woke up and we started searching again for our B&B, which we found but decided it was still too early to come knocking on their door. So we found a local coffee shop and had a full English breakfast to revamp for the day ahead. It was delicious, I fully approve of the way the English do breakfast. After a couple hours here we found it suitable to finally go to the B&B and did so, dropped our stuff off, and set out for Windsor Castle. The castle was awesome and very beautiful, which is probably why the Queen considers it her home and visits here almost every weekend.

         There was a beautiful garden in the middle of the castle and there was this story of a Scottish prisoner watching an English Princess from his prison cell in the castle and falling in love. After being released years later he came back and married her. I could imagine how easily it would be to fall in love with a woman in that garden, even the fat tourist from Bulgaria with a plumber’s crack looked gorgeous next to those flowers.

      After the Castle we wanted to go to Runnymede, which was supposedly only a couple miles up the river. This was false and we found ourselves in Datchet an hour later with Nettle stings and sore legs.

         Giving in to our exhaustion we took the train back to Windsor, walked to the local pub and gulped down a couple beers and some fish and chips, and passed out in our hostel at nine PM. Eleven hours later we woke up and talked to Franco and Karen who ran the B&B we were staying at as they made us breakfast. Franco was an Italian who had been living in Britain for way too long according to him. He was really friendly though and while I couldn’t really understand him too well with his accent Margot somehow did and had a conversation with him about unions and paying athletes to participate in the Olympics. After waving goodbye we walked around town exploring until it was time to take the train.

Salisbury:

          We took 2 o’clock train to Salisbury with only 4 transfers along the way, which all went incredibly smoothly. We later heard that trains were often late in the UK but from our experience they were extremely timely, so I guess we just got lucky. We then walked to our hostel and threw our stuff in our room and took a bus out to the Stonehenge with a stop at Old Sarum along the way. These two locations blew me away not only because they were just plain incredible but also because Old Sarum was a fortress created by Romans all the way back in the 4^th century and Stonehenge was created in 1300 B.C. How these structures can still be around today is amazing. And it seems that history is everywhere in this country. Every town we go into has some old cathedral or fortress. Even the place we stayed in last night in llangaffo, Wales used to be a blacksmiths shop from the 13^th century. The history is so rich and abundant. Margot and I have decided that we blew through Britain much too fast and would definitely like to come back and thoroughly explore the entire country sometime later in life.

        Finding food in Salisbury after visiting Stonehenge was like a scene from Mission Impossible. We walked around the entire city, which took about thirty minutes, and there were 3 shops open. One wasn’t able to serve food for another 45 minutes, on didn’t serve food on Sundays, and the final one was still serving food but half the menu was already gone because they had a heavy lunch period. But we did manage to find a couple menu items that were still available and enjoyed a nice dinner in another English pub before heading back to bed.

            The following day was an unexpected joy. We expected to have a very slow and relaxed day in Salisbury before heading up to Holyhead later in the day but ended up meeting some amazing people and having an exciting day. We went to see the Salisbury Cathedral, which only survived all of the bombing during WWII because it was such an identifiable structure to the German pilots bombing the country. They would fly until they found the Cathedral puncturing the clouds in the sky, then follow the river Avon to all of the towns nearby and bomb them instead. They considered the Cathedral too important of a landmark to the success of these missions that they ordered it not to be destroyed. We thought we would only spend a couple hours there but ended up running into an English couple named Pat and Graham outside the cathedral. Their daughter works as a tour guide at a Cathedral elsewhere in the country and so Pat spent the tour pointing out really awesome stuff to us. We saw ancient graffiti on the walls and learned about misericords which are the seats for those listening to long sermons. They are little ledges on the back of a seat that are slanted downwards so that if anyone fell asleep during the sermon they would slide right off the misericord. Supposedly a lot of them have really humorous carvings underneath them, like a wife beating her husband with a rolling pin or something. Graham talked with me a whole bunch about the idea of war, criminal acts, and the remembrance of soldiers who dies fighting battles long ago. They were incredibly friendly people and I’m so thankful we ran into them.

          We also ran into a man named Fred while at the Cathedral when we went to view one of only 4 original copies of the Magna Carta. He served in the Royal Air Force for 27 years, including WWII. He met and became friends with many of the U.S. soldiers that were building the ships that they would later use to storm the beach of Normandy on D-Day. Once again an incredibly friendly man that we took several pictures with. All in all, we spent about 5 hours at the Cathedral instead of 2. After this is when we discovered the discrepancy in the tickets and my memory of our train’s departure time.

     

Wales:

          After that whole mix up, we finally found ourselves in Wales at the Holyhead station. We got picked up and spent the night with a really nice lady named Wendy in Llangaffo, which is a very rural town on the western coast. We realized when we got there that everything was closed since there were no restaurants in the town to begin with and Wendy made us a nice dinner herself. She made us a great breakfast in the morning as well and drove us back into town. She was an incredibly nice lady and we vowed to come back again sometime in the future. We ventured around Holyhead for an hour waiting for our ferry, exploring an ancient fortress and spending the last of our Pounds on some Welsh bread and pastries. We then walked over to the ferry station to begin our journey to Ireland, which is where I’ll leave this blog post and pick it up again on the next one.

Sorry for the outrageous length. I’m planning on doing one blog post per country and any feedback you have would be greatly appreciated. I hope you enjoyed it and feel a little more included in my adventure across Europe. See you next time.