The BELFAST and the Furious

On Wednesday I took a (surprisingly expensive) fifteen-minute Ryanair flight from Glasgow to Belfast. There, lo and behold, I met my family! They had decided that my travels in Ireland would be a good excuse for them to take a vacation to come and visit me. So from that point to the time they take me to the next WWOOF farm, I’m staying with them (a) in much nicer accommodations, (b) not paying for the accommodations, (c) eating much nicer food, and (d) not paying for the food. And they get to come to Ireland. Everyone wins, really.

So we spent a few days in Belfast. Not a bad city, all-in-all, but there’s not a whole lot of tourist-pleasing things to see. The first evening we hiked up a hill to Belfast Castle – I say hiked, but that’s misleading, as it was simply an asphalt-paved road leading up a relatively shallow incline. The castle was nice, but not what I expected. It was rebuilt entirely in the late 1800s, which means it doesn’t look “ancient” at all. More like a stone mansion, I guess. However, the grounds are very nice, and you’re allowed to wander pretty much anywhere inside the castle itself and enjoy the high-society décor. That night I had my first restaurant meal since June 10, and boy did I enjoy it.

The next day we had the breakfast part of our bed-and-breakfast. I should stop here and mention that Silke (Sill-kuh), the owner of the B&B, is German rather than Irish. Accordingly, instead of an Irish breakfast, we had a German breakfast. Lots of cold cuts in many different varieties of meat (apparently this is the big German thing), a bit of cheese, yogurt with mueslis and fruit, toast with jam and butter, and eggs. Not what I expected, but delicious nonetheless, especially after approximately four weeks of pinhead oatmeal for breakfast.

Afterward, we set out for the city. We explored the city center for a while, at one point stopping in a gallery and meeting Isabella, a Peruvian artist who had lived in Detroit for six years. More on her later. Around lunchtime, we stopped into a pub where I had my first real drink with my parents. My sister, being eighteen and of legal drinking age in the UK, joined us as well. During my time here I’ve been enjoying the occasional Jameson Irish whiskey at pubs, ordering the 12-year-old variety (around £3 for a single). Since my parents were buying me a birthday drink, I decided to splurge and order the 18-year-old Jameson – without asking the price first. My dad pointed out that this could have gone terribly wrong and resulted in spending totally unreasonable amounts of money, but it ended up only costing £8. When I ordered it, I asked for it on ice, which is how I’d been having the Jameson 12. The barkeep gave me a surprised and disappointed look, and informed me that you NEVER want to ruin an 18-year-old whiskey by putting ice in it. I decided to follow his advice and I did not regret it. Good stuff.

We also checked out Queen’s University Belfast, which was a lovely little campus with an impressive, Hogwarts-esque Great Hall. While we were in the university restaurant district, we stopped and got some curry fries. I have mentioned these before, but I would like to re-iterate that they are a great idea and should exist in the United States. I also tried a chocolate stout, which sounded delicious but didn’t do anything for me. Then we popped over to the nearby botanical gardens. By the time we got there all the greenhouses were closed, so we could only walk around the footpath and check out the open-air rose garden. Quite nice, anyway.

After that, we went back over to the gallery to see Isabella’s exhibition opening. It was a single room that was treated as a “large-scale collage” with all kinds of found objects, many of them painted or leafed gold. It was an exploration, she said, of the mixing of her identities – native Peruvian with North American and Irish. As I mentioned, she lived in Detroit for six years, working at the Detroit Institute of Arts, so we had plenty to talk about with regards to Michigan. While we were there, a Northern Irish fellow overheard us mention Michigan and approached us. He introduced himself to us as Ian Fleming – “easy to remember”. Apparently he’d been traveling in the States not too long ago and was trying to make it up to Ann Arbor, but couldn’t. He’s an artist/art professor at the University of Ulster, and over the course of the next hour and a half he told us about his philosophy (labels are bad, among other things) and his magnum opus, wherein he has twelve distinct “characters”, each of whom has very different characteristics, lives in a different place, creates art in a different medium, and concentrates on a different single-word subject. Very interesting stuff – though it was hard to get a word in edgewise! We invited him to join us at dinner, so we went to a highly-recommended Indian place in the university district and got some food. There the conversation became a bit more two-sided, and we talked about all kinds of stuff: cooperative living, travel, more philosophy, differences between Irish and American culture, etc.

I'm gonna start delaying entries now, so that I have interesting things to tell you for a while once I'm on the new farm (two days from now!). So 'til next time!

Pie in the SKYE

I couldn't fit this picture in anywhere else, but I just thought it was really neat. It's also an entirely accurate representation of how dark this forest was (it was sunny on the rest of the trail).

So what have I been up to, you ask?

Whoop-dee-doo. (Bussing through the Highlands.)

How is the Isle of Skye, you ask?

*yawn* (View of Storr Mountain.)

Gosh, I dunno. It’s pretty okay, I guess. I GUESS.

Ho-hum. (View from the Old Man of Storr.)

I spent most of my time on Skye at the Skyewalkers Hostel, which was appropriately decorated with cardboard standees of your favorite Star Wars figures adorned with bits of tartan and humorous speech bubbles. I was excited to come here because it was the highest-rated hostel I had yet seen on Hostelworld.com, and it did not disappoint. The night I arrived, I was told there would be a jam session. Sounds good, thought I. As I prepared dinner, I met a group of language-school students (five from Switzerland and one from France) and we shared our stories. One of the Swiss guys looked exactly like a young Ralph Fiennes. In any event, after the meal we went outside to the geodesic dome (!) greenhouse/lounge because the Swiss kids thought that’s where the jam session would be. I gave them a personal ukulele concert before we eventually decided we should go back into the main common area to see what was up.

The players (not visible: Patrick).

Inside, we found this: Brian and Lisa (the hostel owners) playing harmonica/mandolin/banjo and guitar, respectively, along with a friend of theirs who had brought an Irish flute, a set of tin whistles, and a cittern. A cittern, before you ask, is somewhat like a bazouki in appearance, but it is said to be the closest modern equivalent to the original Scottish guitar. Everyone else from the hostel was sitting around these folks listening as they played primarily Scottish folk tunes, but between every song or two the musicians eagerly prompted guests to pipe up with traditional songs from their own countries of origin. Of course, I played along with my uke, mostly doing background strumming and stuff, but I got a few solos. It was the best hostel experience I’ve had yet.

The first thing you should know before I continue is that the hostel is located in Portnalong, which barely qualifies as a city. There is approximately one regular bus per day – maybe two, if you’re lucky – running between Portnalong and the main city of Portree. So the next day, I left the hostel intending to walk 3 km to the nearby Talisker whisky distillery, take the tour, then hitch around the island. Instead, moments after I stepped outside, a bus rolled by, and I decided to hop in and buy a day pass (6 pounds, which paid for itself after two uses). The bus driver was a friendly and very chatty mid-fifties English guy who, upon hearing my previous plans, decided to tell me everything he could about the Talisker distillery so that I wouldn’t need to worry about having missed it. We also had a long talk about the United States, American Football, technology, etc. That is, he would ask me a question, I would get halfway through a response, and he would interrupt to counter it with his own interesting anecdote. Good times.

The Old Man of Storr. It's deceptively enormous, considering it's a freestanding pinnacle 3/4 of the way up a proper mountain. You may notice a tiny, tiny man standing on a stone to the right of it with his arms outstretched.

Anyway, I managed to bus to the Old Man of Storr, a landmark stone outcropping that requires about an hour and a half hike to reach. It was a very satisfying walk, and rewarded me with one of the best views I’d had yet. After making my way back down and getting back on the bus, I just stayed on as it looped around the northern part of the island and enjoyed the scenery. Unfortunately I did not have time to make another stop, because that would have caused me to miss the only bus back into Portnalong. Don’t worry, though – the bus stories get even worse!

It's a cow, you dolt.

The next day, which was Sunday, there were no buses. Anywhere on the island.

So in the morning I met a German girl named Julianne and we left the hostel to do a coastal circuit. We walked to one nearby bay, then along the coast to another nearby bay, then back into Portnalong. The views along this walk were also fantastic. Varied, too! Cliffs, waterfalls, hills, plateaus, fields, etc. The best part of this walk, though, was that we met up with a pair of older guys, brothers named Paul and Frank. They were EXTREMELY London; they frequently said things like "cor" and "daft". Their primary purpose for visiting Skye? Catching, documenting, and photographing all varieties of local insects, the holy grail of which being the elusive Talisker Moth. Awesome, right? They taught us all kinds of stuff about local flora as well as identifying a great number of interesting insects caught between the four of us. The hike lasted a leisurely six hours, and we were with the guys for five of them.

Talisker Bay in the mist.

That evening, I learned just how poorly I had been planning this leg of my trip! I had been intending to take a bus from Portnalong to Portree the next morning, then Portree to Mallaig (on the mainland), then take a 4 PM ferry to the Isle of Eigg. Then it turned out I’d been misreading the ferry schedule, and there was only one per day. At 10 AM. However, this too was doable – there was a bus from somewhat-closer Sligachan to the Armadale pier at 7:40, at which point I could take a cheap ferry to Mallaig then to Eigg! The only risk was that I’d have to hitchhike the eight miles or so from Portnalong to Sligachan. I decided I didn’t have much option, so I decided to go for it.

Now believe it or not, I actually DID hitch a ride from the hostel to Sligachan with about fifteen minutes to spare. Thank you, Peter McKinley, wherever you are. Then the bus didn’t come. Hmm…I flipped open my Skye bus schedule and read it more thoroughly to discover that the bus I’d been counting on only runs on school holidays. Trust me, it was REALLY poorly marked, and not separated from the regular schedule at all. So basically, there was no way whatsoever for me to go to the isle of Eigg. What a sad occurrence…

So, I spent one night longer than I had planned on Skye. This time, I chose a hostel right in Portree which was not particularly impressive but at least was a stone’s throw away from Skye’s central bus terminal. I explored the town, did some walking in the hills, and took a much-needed nap. Not as interesting as walking around the sparsely-populated home of my forefathers, but I guess some things just weren’t meant to happen.

Anyhoo, tomorrow I fly into Belfast to meet up with my family! Hooray! Til next time!

GLASGOWing, Going, Gone

DERP.

Glasgow: really not that fascinating, I’m afraid. It’s much more city-like than Edinburgh and – to me – lacks that essentially Scottish charm. I had very fond memories of the Glasgow Gallery of Modern art from when my family visited when I was 14, so I made a beeline there. Disappointingly, it seems that none of the stuff I had found so cool was part of any permanent collection. There was, however, a very interesting and well-organized exhibition of LGBTQetc art called SH[OUT]. No photos allowed, though.

I...kind of want one of these things.

My next destination was the Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery, which was much more satisfying because I had no particular expectations. It had an area with animals (and you should know by now that I’m a sucker for skeletons and taxidermy), lots of historical armor and weapons, Norse stuff, various paintings (meh, probably the thing I’m most burnt-out on at this point), and a very cool room about Scottish identity in art through the ages. Oh, and these guys.

Jesus Christ, this is an unnecessarily unnerving art exhibit.

I had a serious temptation to buy a new camera from a second-hand camera shop, but it was $120 more than I could be paying for the same vintage model on eBay. Thus, here is my new photo equipment:

Fifteen pounds for two of these bad boys.

Anyway, after a beautiful but long and stressfully-delayed bus ride, I’m on the Isle of Skye! ‘Til next time.

Better Off EDINBURGH

Whiskey and terriers. Welcome to Scotland.

“Oh, it's good Scottish weather, madam. The rain is falling straight down. Well, slightly to the side like.” - William Wallace, Braveheart.

FOR FREED-hey, wait a second.

On my first night in Scotland, I watched Braveheart – for the first time – with my hostel-mates. Appropriate? Absolutely. So is the above quote, with regards to the weather once I got here. I had almost completely 50/50 between beautiful sun and sogginess-inducing rain. Not that there’s anything terribly wrong with that, you know? I just had to make sure I carried my raincoat at all times, no matter how nice it may have looked when I left the hostel.

This hostel, by the way, is really cool. Bus Station Backpackers’ Hostel, it’s called. It has the distinct feel of “a dude’s house that he happens to let travelers stay in for money”. The walls are covered in art and artifacts, each accompanied by a little typed label telling where they’re from and what their stories are. The common room features an enormous HDTV connected to (a) cable, and (b) a public PC with lots of DVD-ripped movies on it. Noice! Plus there’s free breakfast (with fresh bread-machine bread every day). Get this: when I arrived, I told the owner, Steve, that I had done some WWOOFing earlier. A couple hours later he came into my room and said “Hey…would you be interested in doing an afternoon of WWOOFing while you’re here?” Turns out he had commitments the next day and his regular employee was completely out of contact. Sooo…the next day from 9-12 and 5-7 I hung around the hostel, did a load of laundry, and welcomed two new tenants. In exchange, I got my three days of accommodation for free! Wow!

However, this had a dangerous side-effect. I thought to myself, “Well, I saved money on the hostel. Now I can spend more for fun!” Ohhhh goodness, the floodgates opened.

Check out my first (probably only) big souvenir:

Expensive sharp things.

Well, really it’s two things, but I consider it a set, I suppose. The small one is a sgian dubh (gaelic for “black knife”), and it’s part of traditional highland dress, visibly tucked into the sock below the kilt. That’s a roe deer antler. The larger one was described by the seller as a sgian knorkle (Google turns up nothing, so I think it may be bastardized), also known as a sgian achlais (which Google and Wikipedia both recognize, so I'll settle on that one). In any case, it’s a smallish dirk (Scots for “dagger”) that was worn in the armpit area so that if a man lost his sword in a battle, he could reach in behind his shield and wield it until he could kill someone with a sword he could take. That one is antler from a red deer. They’re both handmade by a local weaponsmith from local materials – he forges the steel (and you can TELL it's hand-forged), he carves the Scottish deer antlers, he tans the Scottish deerskin leather.

Actually, that brings me to the first “story” I have from Scotland. In Edinburgh, the main drag is a street known as the Royal Mile, along which are countless pubs, churches, museums, and shops. Of the shops, a solid 70% of them are cheesy touristy stores with names like Pride Of Scotland or Thistle Do Nicely. Now, I’ve been wanting a sgian dubh to complement my kilt for some time now, and I figured Scotland would be the place to get it, natch. But as I walked up and down the Royal Mile on my first evening in Edinburgh, all I saw in the way of sgian dubh were (a) cheap plastic-handled or (b) expensive but still mass-produced, neither of which appealed to me. So when I passed a store whose display showed a bunch of stag-handled sgian dubh and dirks with a sign next to them saying “local weaponsmith”, I had to go in and check them out. Surprisingly, the sgian dubhs were roughly the same price as the plastic-handled ones I’d seen – lucky me! I got to talking with the store owner, Katherine, who was extremely friendly. She told me that the weaponsmith, John, had designed some swords and daggers that had been made on a large scale and become extremely popular in tourist shops all over Scotland. But since she’s a family friend of his, her store is the only one that carries the stuff he makes by hand himself.

John the weaponsmith introducing me to Scottish culture.

As if on cue, the dude actually walked into the shop while I was examining the daggers. He was carrying a halberd and a lance, both antiques that had been dug up and restored by him. I happily stood and listened/watched while John eagerly explained to Katherine that is an anachronistic but still legally present law on in Scotland saying that shopkeepers are entitled to have a halberd so that they may defend from robbers. I chatted at great length with him about his weapons, he showed me how the dirks (as well as the halberd, an axe, and some of his swords) would have been used in highland combat. Very cool dude. His enthusiasm was so infectious that instead of just buying the sgian dubh I’d come in for, I splurged on the (significantly more expensive) dirk as well because it just felt so damn good in my hand. Plus, I was thinking of my old roommate Drew and how he carried a pocketknife and how convenient it seemed. I don’t know how feasible it is for me to carry what is essentially a parallel universe bowie knife, but we’ll see.

And then it rained.

While in Edinburgh, I also visited several museums, and while they were all enjoyable enough, none were really awesome and comment-worthy. I think if I hadn’t been to so many damn museums lately the Scottish National Gallery would have been fascinating; it’s all about the history and pre-history of Scotland with artifacts-a-plenty, but I just wasn’t into it. Burned out, maybe.

Mary King's Close. Not my picture.

Have you heard of Mary King’s Close? Apparently Edinburgh’s topography was once much hillier than it is today, but at some point in the late 1800s it was decided to build new buildings on top of existing ones and raise the ground level accordingly. So basically beneath the streets of Edinburgh there are a number of closes – little shop- and house-lined alleys – that haven’t seen the sun for years. Mary King’s Close is the most well-preserved (many others have simply been filled up with rubble for stability), and they run historically-themed tours through it. Pretty damn cool. Sadly it’s located under a government building, so we weren’t allowed to take photos.

Speaking of photos, my $12 flea-market-found film camera finally gave up the ghost. I wish it had held on at least until I made it to my second WWOOF farm. :( New birthday list:

- film camera that works

Edinburgh!

Edinburgh is actually a really cool place. It’s got awesome historical architecture, it’s a bustling city, and somehow all the tourist-geared stores aren’t as annoying as they were in Killarney. It manages to be busy without being overwhelming, and most of the city can be walked with no trouble at all. A nice change of pace after sprawling London. Actually, Edinburgh reminds me a lot of Ann Arbor (on account of its many independent and quirky shops, which you find if you dig a bit deeper than the tourist stores), simply with more history, more museums, and more Scots.

It was also pretty cool to walk around the city and remember having been there with my family when I was 14 years old. I would be walking around and not feel anything, then I would turn a corner and suddenly I would have a burst of memories about walking up this particular hill or going into that particular kiltmaker’s shop.

Arthur's Seat.

This morning before I left Edinburgh I decided to climb Arthur’s Seat, the dormant volcanic mountain that lies just on the outskirts of the city. It’s supposed to be a relatively quick climb, so I figured I could do it then come back for a noonish bus to Glasgow. Well, I made it about halfway up when I started to regret having brought a coat that I didn’t need, a shopping bag containing my new knives (I wanted to say goodbye and thanks to Katherine and ask her a couple of questions), and no water. The view was nice enough, so I snapped a picture and headed back down. Fine by me!


View of Edinburgh from...uh, somewhere on Arthur's Seat.

Now I’m in Glasgow. Woo?

The ELEPHANT AND CASTLE In The Room

I couldn't think of a good pun for London itself, so you'll have to settle for the area of the city that my hostel was located in (Elephant and Castle). SO BE IT.

Aah, I knew I would like this city.

London! I spent Saturday to Friday in London. As I mentioned, upon arrival I learned that my booking had been mis-recorded, and I was transferred to the sister hostel ten minutes down the street. “It’s a better hostel, really – you won’t be disappointed,” they told me. Well, I got there and things seemed alright. Free-to-use washers and dryers, nice kitchen, plenty of space in the rooms. Minor complaint: you need a lighter to ignite the burners on the stove, and matches weren’t provided. So I used a regular cigarette lighter that I’d been lucky enough to find sitting on the sidewalk a week earlier. I have singed the hairs from my left hand as a result. Also, there was no actual reception – the only staff were cleaners. Major complaint that arose on day 2: I was making dinner and there was a guy passed out in a lawn chair on the terrace. As I finished cooking he stumbled into the kitchen, clearly under several illicit influences, and demanded my food. I let him have a couple bites, then tried to take it back, which resulted in him grabbing my arm and threatening to break my teeth. The staff member who was in the kitchen at the time laughed and said it was all an act. I…don’t believe that. I was pretty pissed off at how he handled it. Weirdly enough, when I saw the drug-addled guy a couple days later, he was stone sober and really friendly and seemed to have no memory of the altercation. Weird.

But the rest of London was really nice! Don’t worry!

When I woke up on my first full day, I had absolutely no idea what to do with myself. I was hoping that my London friend Sally would show me around, but I had arrived several days before I’d told her I would, meaning she was busy for those several days. No fault of hers, of course! Well, I left the hostel with the intention of going to the original hostel. This took me approximately an hour and a half. Navigation in London is HARD.

WHAT THE HELL DOES THAT MEAN. YOU ARE NOT HELPFUL FOR TRAVEL.

But I got there eventually! And the girl at the counter gave me a map of the city and highlighted a bunch of the important/interesting sights as well as the locations of the two hostels. This map was my life-blood. I managed to fold it up in such a way that the stuff most pertinent to me was on the outside, then got it down to roughly wallet size and stuck it where my wallet would usually go. Perfect!

Gosh, I don’t even remember which things I did on which days, so I’ll kind of talk about them indiscriminately. However, first I will say that I hardly used the tube/bus system while I was here. Would you believe that, for the six days I was in London, there was a strike of the tube employees for two of those days? Partially as a result of that, but mostly because I didn’t want to spend the money, I spent the week walking around like CRAZY. My feet are shouting at me.

Let’s think, what have I seen? OH! Also worth mentioning is that all the museums in London have free admission to the main collections, and sometimes free admission to the exhibitions too!

Roy Lichtenstein's comic-appropriation art is pretty neat. This is on two canvases that stretch like twelve feet by five feet.

Tate Modern: Very cool stuff. Housed in a defunct hydroelectric power station, if I understood the map correctly. Its free-admission things when I visited were centered around Surrealism, Cubism, Futurism, Pop Art, and some other stuff for which I don’t know the proper genres. I really like Roy Lichtenstein’s stuff, and I’m slowly becoming more and more a fan of Andy Warhol. Coolest stuff I saw there: there was a mini-exhibition devoted to works that take scale into account, and one room was entirely filled with a giant (maybe 20ft tall) table & chairs. Oh, and my personal favorite was an exploration of the relationship between nature and industry. I…don’t know if my explanation will be sufficient for this one, but I’ll try. So the guy got two logs that had been sawn down to have square sides instead of round, perhaps 15ft long, 2ft per side. Then, using carving equipment and carefully following the knots still visible in the sawn logs, he RE-exposed the shape of the tree’s core, complete with “branches” going out from the center to where the knots had been. So, it looks like two trees with no bark sprouting out of square wood blocks, but the blocks are actually the remnants of the original un-carved sawn logs, and they’re each one continuous piece of wood. Oh, and there was one other super-cool room. When you step into it, it looks like a work-in-progress, like you've stepped into the middle of an exhibition being created. There are dirty paintbrushes, pizza boxes, power drills, gloves, boots, orange peel, cigarettes, everything strewn about willy-nilly. However, upon closer inspection, every single thing in this room is carved from polystyrene and meticulously painted to look realistic. You seriously can't tell until you get within a foot of the objects.

The aforementioned "work-in-progress" room. You totally can't tell that everything there is painted plastic and completely non-functional. Not my picture.


The aforementioned "trees". Not my photo.

Tate British: Not too bad! Specializes in art produced by British artists, divided into 1700-1900 and 1900-present. There was a pretty cool “judgement day” series in the former, though I can’t recall the artist of that one. I’m…pretty bad at recalling artists. Oh, and there was a separate room devoted to sculpture that had some very cool stuff – my favorite was Pandora contemplating her eponymous box, about to open it.

Some Greek stuff. I don't know, damn it.

British Museum: I WANT EVERYTHING FOR SALE IN THIS GIFT SHOP. Good lord. Replicas of any historical piece you can think of: Rosetta Stone, Lewis chessmen, Mesopotamian cuneiform cylinders, Hermes’ foot, true-to-scale eye, ear, nose, or lips of Michaelangelo’s David. Curse my independent loves of replicas and archaeology. Anyway, this was by far my favorite museum in London. It was very cool to see the Rosetta Stone in person. They even had a life-size stone casting of it that you could touch! They also have the vast majority of the Parthenon’s surviving statuary – apparently the statues that are still in the actual Parthenon are all well-made copies. That was pretty cool, considering what I learned about Greek art from Cindy Sowers’ class last year. Notably: 95% of the “Greek” marble statues that people are familiar with are actually Roman copies, and the Greek originals have been lost to time. However, the statues from the Parthenon’s metope (the long triangular area above the columns) are all genuine Greek, and they are visibly more detailed and naturalistic. The Lewis Chessmen are also very neat; they’re a big pile of chessmen carved from walrus ivory, mixed together from several different sets but all of very similar aesthetic style. They were discovered buried in a chamber on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland, but they appear to be of Norse make. Very ancient and very neat, stylistically. I took so many pictures here that most of them will be relegated to the separate London Photo Dump entry.

St. Paul’s Cathedral: Lovely to look at on the outside, and I’m sure it’s lovely on the inside, too, but I wasn’t about to pay £12 to tour the thing.

West End: I wandered through the theater district one day, and there were SO many shows that I wanted to see. If I had less self-control, I could have let them totally clean out my bank account and spend my entire week watching theatrical performances. Les Miserables, Avenue Q, Wicked, The Lion King, Stomp…I would have loved to watch any of these.

Picadilly Circus: This was actually…pretty disappointing. I don’t see what the hype is all about; it was like 1/8 of Times Square, and with less-interesting shops around it.

Beaks a-plenty.

National History Museum: This is divided into an “animals” section and a “geology” section. There was one day when I thought I had seen the entire museum, but it turned out I’d only seen the geology stuff, so I had to come back! The geology part had lots of things about volcanoes, earthquakes, formation of rocks, composition of the earth – and an extremely extensive exhibition on gemstones. I walked through a hall containing gemstones worth more money than I would earn in three lifetimes. It was a bit humbling, to think about it like that. Animal section: very nice collection of nearly-full dinosaur skeletons, and a buttload of taxidermied stuff. Including extinct animals! I want a pet thylacine. Now it’s too late. :(

Trafalgar Square: Pretty cool – Nelson’s Column, and the pigeons, and the National Gallery (which I didn’t explore), all make for a cool scene. But very very busy…

Westminster Abbey: See entry for St. Paul’s Cathedral.

Remember, remember, the fifth of November; the gunpowder treason and plot. I know of no reason why gunpowder treason should ever be forgot.

Big Ben & Houses of Parliament: What is there to say about these guys? Very cool architecture. Awesome to see them up-close and in person, catch all the minute details and such. This...this sounds weird, but for some reason I am fascinated by the texture of these buildings. I feel like I want a tiny model of them just to see what they would feel like.

Shakespeare’s Globe Theater: OH MAN. Totally made up for not seeing a show in West End. Probably the coolest attraction I saw in London. On my first full day in London, I made myself lunch and then wandered down to the Globe, which is a very neat open-air theater (think Coliseum-shaped) that specializes in Shakespeare productions. It’s supposed to be his original theater (rebuilt once or twice over the centuries), if memory serves. Anyway, I went to the box office around lunchtime and asked about the advertised “700 £5 tickets for each performance!” Apparently those £5 tickets are for the standing section immediately surrounding the stage. I don’t care if I didn’t get to sit down for that, it’s super cool being right down next to the actors. I bought a ticket for As You Like It, which was the play showing that evening, on account of I didn’t want to plan too far ahead in advance. I had no idea what to expect, as I knew nothing about the play except that it was a comedy, and I’d never seen a Shakespearean comedy before. Guys: Shakespeare’s comedy is apparently still fucking hilarious. It was very well-presented, all the actors were good and clearly very much into their parts (well, the guy who gave the “all the world’s a stage…” soliloquy was a bit disappointing compared to the rest). There was a court jester character, The Fool, and the actor playing him gave me a very intense young-John-Cleese-vibe, and I’ve got no complaints about that. I also enjoyed the fact that nobody died at the end! After the play finished, I walked back to the hostel feeling as good as I can recall feeling in recent times. Totally an uplifting light-hearted thing.

Meta-photography with Sally on the South Bank.

On top of all this, I finally got to meet my internet friend/snail-mail pen-pal Sally! It was very cool (though kind of odd) to actually see her face-to-face and hear her voice and stuff. She…she has an English accent! I had no idea from our text-based interactions! The day after my birthday, we met up – with the expected hugs and “oh my gosh, we’re hanging out!” exclamations – and went out for dinner at Pizza Express, which is a surprisingly high-class joint for having a name like that, and I had one of the best pizzas I’d ever had. Hot salami, sweet/hot pickled peppers, and something else spicy. Quite a zinger, but well-balanced! Then we got (FREE!) ice cream from the very generous manager. Then we went to a nearby bar/pub on the Thames’ south bank which had good music choices and a surprisingly nice atmosphere. She got a Guinness, and I am a bit tired of stout by now, so I went for a Jameson on the rocks. I think Sally thought I was an alcoholic. C’est la vie!

Sally at Young's Bar.

The next day I kind of sat around my hostel getting my accommodations sorted out for the Scotland leg of my journey, and in the evening Sally unexpectedly got in touch with me again and invited me to have dinner with her and her family! Wow! Of course, this was literally minutes after the strike had officially ended, and the tube was a real shitshow, so it ended up taking me thrice as long as it should have to reach her house. By the way, having sent many, many letters and packages to her house over the past four-to-five years, it was also kind of surreal to actually visit it. In any case, I made it eventually – her family had already eaten, but Sally had waited for me, aww. So I got a delicious, home-made, authentic Vietnamese dinner! She said I "ate like a pro" - apparently some people have trouble with Vietnamese?

For the record, here is the current list of things that I’ve consumed on this trip that I have not liked in the past:

- Ketchup

- Seaweed (highly flavored by other things – still can’t handle it straight-up, like in sushi rolls)

- Scrambled eggs, Spanish omelet (similar to the seaweed - lots of other flavors around it)

- Lamb (I didn’t hate it, but used to be pretty “meh”, now I totally enjoy it)

- Cola

- Beer

- Squid! Thanks to Sally’s aunt’s Vietnamese cuisine. I did not expect to enjoy it, based on my general distaste for seafood, but it actually had no fishy taste whatsoever, so it was great, especially along with everything else!

Oh, and I was absolutely about to get a haircut on Fleet Street, but the barbershop was closed. Ah well. At least I got a Fleet Street meat pie! Delicious. How do they do it?!

Well, last night I slept – or rather, tried to sleep – on the bus from London to Edinburgh. Regardless, I’m in Scotland now!

OKAY so I have like eighty photos from London, and I don't want to have to add them all to Blogger (it's kind of an annoying process) so here is a link to my Photobucket account - you ought to be able to view them without signing in or anything!

http://s13.photobucket.com/albums/a259/MrPaco2/Abroad/?start=all

Please check it out! There is a lot of cool museum stuff that I photographed. And many of them are dedicated to friends who I thought would be particularly interested in one artifact or another!