I love living in London and I think the tube is marvelously convenient most of the time, but gah it's awful on weekends.  Weekends are when they do engineering work, and of course I understand why they do weekends -- it'd be even more disruptive during the work week -- but doing anything on weekends can be a real hassle.  There was my Easter adventure, and this weekend is another Bank Holiday (for May Day), and there are closures on almost all the lines in my area.  I'm going to Brighton tomorrow and figuring out rail replacement buses and what exactly are the lines I can use is being a bit of a headache.

Anyway!  The semester is winding down, and all of my assignments but the final papers/final exams are done.  I have two weeks left in London.  Two weeks!  How did that happen?  I can't believe how quickly this semester has gone by.

So I'm trying to finish up the touristy stuff I want to do.  Yesterday morning we went to the Imperial War Museum for a class, and after that I had about four hours of free time before my next class so I went to the National Gallery and National Portrait Gallery.  I went to art museums of my own free will!  Honestly, it was mostly because I thought I should, but I did see some Leonardo da Vinci, Michaelangelo, Monet, Rembrandt, and Van Gogh (for people I've actually heard of), and some of those famous paintings of Queen Elizabeth I and Henry VIII and Queen Victoria and so on, so that was pretty cool.  Next week, probably Tuesday, I'm going to watch the changing of the guard, and I think Thursday will be the Natural History Museum.

On Tuesday my history class went to do a tour of Lord's Cricket Grounds and to see part of a cricket match.  So now I know a bit of the history of the game, and I got to see the Ashes, and I watched some cricket, but I still don't understand it very well.  Pretty much the entire time we were watching the game, we had to ask our teacher what was going on.  Now there are a few things I can get by myself, but for the most part I still need an interpreter.

My plans for this weekend had originally been Dover and Canterbury today, Brighton tomorrow, and Oxford again on Sunday.  But then the friend I'd been going to Oxford with couldn't go anymore, and other people said they were going to Oxford today, so I decided to skip Dover and Canterbury and do Oxford today and have Sunday free.  Though it's just as well, because Sunday will be not so much free as spent getting some final essays out of the way so I don't have to worry about them during the week or when I'm in Norway.

I very much enjoyed Oxford, especially because I got to do what I wanted to do, rather than what had been scheduled as a school trip.  I caved in and bought an Oxford sweatshirt, and we went back to lunch at the Eagle and Child, and we went to Blackwell's Bookshop, which sold a lot of rare books I could not afford no matter how much I wanted some of them (1851 Emma for two hundred pounds!).

Part of my reason for going back to Oxford was because I really wanted to take a boat on the river, and happily the friends I was with also wanted it.  Originally we got a punt, because it seems like punting in Oxford is rather traditional, but, um, we failed.  Well, mostly I failed.  I volunteered to actually punt the boat, but wow is it harder than it seemed.  I just couldn't figure out how to get the boat to move forward.  And then we couldn't really try to change punters because we thought all that moving around would make at least one of us fall out.  I did get a picture of me attempting to punt, though.

We ended up using the paddle to get back to the dock, after only twenty minutes of our allotted hour.  We didn't want to waste our money, though (since we paid for the hour), and we still wanted to go on the river, so we used a paddle boat instead.  Much easier.  One friend steered while the other friend and I paddled, and I think we got our money's worth there.  Great scenery, a boat we were actually able to handle, and a good time all around.  And when we got back to the dock, the boat handler told us we hadn't failed with the punt as badly as some other people have -- we at least managed to get ourselves back to dock, rather than him having to go rescue us.  So despite the blip at the beginning, I had a good time in a boat on the Cherwell, and I am pleased.

After that we went to see Magdalen College, which is where C.S. Lewis taught, and we were supposed to pay three pound fifty but we actually only paid one pound because it was a rainy day and the porter gave us a discount for weather, which was really nice of him.  Then we went to Merton College, which is one of the colleges where Tolkien taught, and we were supposed to pay two pounds but the porter there said we could just go in.  Right after lunch I'd gone to see St. John's College, because it was free to visitors, so I got to see three of Oxford's colleges for only a pound, which was awesome.

There were no specifically Tolkien-related things for us to see at Merton, but it was still pretty awesome to walk the same ground he walked, and though it was very rainy, it was also very pretty.  We also saw some students playing croquet, so that was pretty cool.  I don't think I've ever seen people actually playing croquet before.

My friends had to get back for dinner with their host family, so we left after Merton.  I loved Oxford, though.  Beautiful sights, and such history -- it would have been so cool to have gone to school at Oxford.  Maybe if I decide to continue my education later I'll try for a doctorate or something at Oxford.  Heh.  We'll see how that goes. :p

Brighton tomorrow!  It's supposed to rain even worse than it did today, but there's going to be a festival and parade for May Day, so I'm still really looking forward to it!

Happy St. George's Day!

The past week or so has not been excessively interesting, except for weekends and the volcano in Iceland.  

The Iceland volcano, which I'm not even going to try to spell or pronounce, has been more applicable than just reading about it in the papers.  Martin, our program director and teacher of one of our classes, had to go to Portland, OR two weeks ago for some AHA conference.  He was supposed to be back this past week, but...volcano.  So he got stuck in Portland, we had no class on Monday, and had to get a substitute in on Wednesday to talk to us about Britain's political parties and the leaders' debate from last week.  We're not sure when Martin will be back, but it should be by Tuesday, at least.

Last Thursday I saw Wicked!  That was one of the shows I'd really been wanting to see, and it was really good.  I did like Billy Elliot better, but I'm definitely glad I got the chance to see Wicked as well.  It also made me want to watch The Wizard of Oz again, and maybe read the book at some point.

Last weekend I met two friends from the internet, one for dinner on Friday, and one, a closer friend, I met in London on Saturday and then went to Southampton, where she lives, on Sunday.  She'd warned me that Southampton wasn't very interesting, and it really wasn't, but I saw bits of Southampton castle scattered around (it's in ruins and the town grew up around it), and she showed me her university, and it was just really nice to get out of London and visit a friend in a nice, non-touristy English seaside town.  I found it very enjoyable, even if we did spend a lot of time sprawled on grass talking.

On Thursday I watched the second leaders' debate with my host mum.  These debates are between the leaders of the three main political parties, Labour, Conservative, and Liberal Democrats, the men who would be Prime Minister if their party gets the majority.  Gordon Brown of Labour is PM now, but what's sort of funny is that his main rival, David Cameron of the Conservatives, pushed for televised debates because he's young, photogenic, and speaks well; he thought he'd do especially well compared to Gordon Brown.  Well, he did -- but I reckon he didn't account for Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats, who have been a minority party for the past century and are unexpectedly being a force in this election.  Nick Clegg is also young and photogenic, and he speaks even better than David Cameron, so the general consensus is that he's won the past two debates (there's one more), giving his party a big boost.  I guess that one backfired in David Cameron's face. :p  I'm really loving being here for the British election.  It's so interesting!

Anyway, this weekend was, of course, Stratford-upon-Avon, for Shakespeare's birthday weekend and also St. George's Day (St. George is England's patron saint, so it's a bit of a holiday).  We got into Stratford yesterday, which was Shakespeare's actual birthday, and checked into our B&Bs, which were so much better than hostels.  Too bad I can't afford to do B&Bs for the rest of my time in Europe, but oh well, hostels are fine.

First we went to Holy Trinity Church to see Shakespeare's grave, and then we went to see Shakespeare's Birthplace.  Normally people are not allowed to take pictures inside the house, but because it was his birthday, we were allowed to, so I got some pictures of the house.  They were also giving out free samples of mead in the garden, and that was pretty good.  I'd never had mead before.

Stratford was, by the way, particularly gorgeous.  Friday was warm and completely cloudless, and all the Shakespeare houses we visited had big gardens, and wow the flowers were beautiful.  Tulips and daffodils and lavender and sweet pea and more flowers I couldn't even begin to name.  Spring in England is gorgeous, and Stratford is particularly picturesque.  Absolutely wonderful.

After Shakespeare's birthdplace, we went to New Place, which is the last house he bought and the one in which he died, so we went from his birth to his death in about half an hour.  But apparently the original house he bought was demolished around a century later and another house built very close to it, so when we were there they'd actually dug up half the garden as an archeological site.

We had free time after that until our play that evening, so we went for dinner at The Dirty Duck, which is the pub where the RSC likes to eat.  Which reminds me, we passed that pub on our way to Shakespeare's birthplace, and right as we were passing, actors playing Helena and Demetrius from Midsummer Night's Dream burst out the door to do their first scene in the woods together.  Random unexpected Shakespeare for the win!  We stayed until they finished their scene.

After dinner, we walked by the Avon for a bit, then went to the theatre.  It had a gift shop, so I browsed a bit, then saw the most perfect tote bag.  It's Shakespeare as a tube map.  There are different lines of, for instance, lovers, and villains, and fathers and daughters, with character names as different stops, and there are different intersections and clever services.  Like Ophelia offers riverboat services and Richard III has disabled access.  Such an awesome tote bag, and very much a souvenir of both Stratford and London, so I got it.

The play we saw was King Lear, which was really good.  We had front row seats, so we could see very well (even at some of the points I didn't necessarily want to see so well, like when Lear stripped down to almost his underwear).  Great play.  I've heard random bits of the story but had never actually seen it or read it before, so I'm glad I finally have.

This morning we really only had one thing on the schedule, visiting Anne Hathaway's cottage.  That is one play with another set of absolutely beautiful gardens.  In the garden they also had a gigantic birthday card for Shakespeare, which I both signed and got a picture of.  Inside the cottage we were sadly not allowed to take pictures, even though it was still the birthday weekend, but it was still quite interesting.  Tour guides gave us little lectures about what life would have been like for the Hathaways in Tudor England.

We had free time after Anne Hathaway's cottage, so most of us went to see the birthday parade.  That was pretty awesome.  We got a good spot near the end at the Holy Trinity Church, and saw a very long line of schoolboys carrying flowers for the grave, and a marching band, lots of random groups dressed in period clothing, and this group of middle-aged men dancing with bells strapped around their shins and waving handkerchiefs in their hands.  Really great stuff.

It was another gorgeous day, so after the parade we just sprawled on the grass in a park by the Avon and caught some sun.  Got a cheap lunch at Sainsbury's and just drowsed in the park, because Stratford is really quite small and we'd already done what there really was to do.  I stopped by the church again to get some pictures of Shakespeare's grave covered in flowers, but no one else in my group came with me.  I'm not sure why.  You can go to Stratford any day of the year and get a picture of Shakespeare's grave, but only on one weekend can you get it covered in flowers, so I'm pleased about having that.

Now I'm back in London.  I'd been going to go back to Oxford tomorrow, but the person I was going with said she can't afford it right now, and we made tentative plans for next Sunday, when we hope she can afford it.  And I don't want to go by myself, since I want to get a punt on the Isis or the Cherwell and that's not really something I can do by myself, so I hope she will be able to go or there's not much more point in me going back unless I can find someone else to go with me who wants to punt down the river.

I've made some tentative plans for next weekend.  Friday I want to do Dover and Canterbury, to see the white cliffs of Dover and Dover beach (mostly because of the poem) and I think it would be awesome to catch an Evensong in the Canterbury Cathedral.  Saturday I'm going to go to Brighton, because there's a festival starting there and also one of my teachers lives there and said she'll give us a little tour.  Sunday is either Oxford or free.

Tomorrow is unexpectedly free and my weekends from now on are going to be pretty busy, so I think tomorrow I'm going to try and get ahead on schoolwork.  With the added bonus of not spending any money!  Always a good thing.

Playing Catch-Up

Now for the rest of the past week and a half, which, though interesting, has not been quite as eventful as spring break.

Got all my midterm grades -- As and A-s on everything, which makes me feel a lot better about my unrevised papers.  Unless my teachers get ridiculously stricter for subsequent assignments, I think this semester will continue my straight-A streak.

On Wednesday one of my classmates got a care package from home that included a box of Cheez-Its.  There were only a few of us in the room at the time, and she let us have some, and oh, Cheez-Its.  God, I miss American snack food.  I found something generally cheeto-like to munch on, but I really miss goldfish.  If anyone wants to, you know, send me a care package, then I will love you forever if you send me some goldfish.

On Friday we had a group excursion to Oxford.  I enjoyed it, but I would have enjoyed it more had I been on my own and able to do the things I was most interested in doing, so a friend and I will be going back next Sunday, after Stratford-on-Avon and Warwick.  Anyway, we took the coach there, which was only about an hour (God, this is such a small country), and first we went to the University Museums, where I saw dinosaur skeletons and shrunken heads.  After that we did an audio tour of the Bodleian Library, and then we had about an hour for lunch.  About half of us went to the Eagle and Child pub, which is the pub where JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis and the rest of the Inklings would meet, so that was pretty awesome.

After lunch we went for a tour of Christ Church College and Cathedral, including the dining hall and other bits where parts of Harry Potter were filmed, then finished the trip off with the Ashmolean Museum, where I saw King Alfred's Jewel.  (Which was the only thing I was really interested in.  I've been getting rather burned out on museums, I've seen so many this semester.)

There were several things I wanted to do but didn't get a chance to, like touring Tolkien's colleges and getting a punt down the Isis or the Cherwell, but that's why I'll be coming back.  I'm also debating getting an Oxford sweatshirt.  It would be awesome to have, but I generally don't like wearing memorabilia of colleges I don't attend.  Well, I'll think about it before I go back.

I've been missing a lot of the books I had to leave at home, so on Saturday I went to the big Waterstone's on Piccadilly and spent half the day there just reading, and it was wonderful.  Then I came back to my homestay and watched Doctor Who as it aired on BBC1, for the first and possibly the only time.  I've never seen Doctor Who as it aired before (well, it's only possible in Britain), so I was very happy to be able to do that.

Sunday I went with a friend to see Alice in Wonderland in 3D IMAX.  It was more expensive than I like for a movie (though I think I've been spoiled by working at a theater and seeing movies for free), but it was so worth it because my friend actually invited me.  In the beginning of the program I always had to invite myself to things or just go alone, but now people have finally started inviting me, and it's great not being the one to have to make the first move all the time.  Definitely worth a movie ticket.

Though speaking of invitations, another friend told me last week that she was going to Norway in May because she found a ten pound round trip plane ticket.  She asked me if I might be interested, and I said I'll think about it, just send me the information.  So she did, and though the ticket prices went up a bit since she got her tickets, I found that I can go to Norway for $40.  I can't even go from Reno to Tacoma for $40 (flying or driving, considering how much gas it takes), and that's in the same country!

So I decided I'm going with her to Norway in May.  It's the week before the program ends, the 7th through the 9th, and I'm getting pretty excited about it.  I mean, I'm really looking forward to traveling after the program ends (really looking forward), but I'm just going to Western Europe.  And because I did my spring break in Ireland, I'm spending pretty much my whole time abroad in Western Europe.  Which is awesome, of course, but Scandinavia is a different region, with different history and traditions.  I really couldn't pass this chance up, so in May I'll be spending a couple days in Norway.

Today I had a history presentation on Canada in World War I, and I think it went pretty well.  My teacher said I went into a bit too much detail on the battles but that I was very thorough, and he was nodding through most of the presentation, so I think I'll get an A or A- on that.  Next week I have a paper due for that class, but I need to find some more research on my topic, so I think I'm going to do that tomorrow, because I'm going to have a busy weekend.

Tonight I'd been intending to see Wicked with some friends, but a couple said tomorrow night would be better, so I guess I'll be seeing Wicked tomorrow.  Instead, the friend I'm doing Norway with and I decided to see a movie tonight since her phone service gives her 2-for-1 movie tickets on Wednesdays and student prices made it even cheaper -- I paid about three pounds for a movie ticket, which is probably the cheapest I've ever had, not counting the free ones.  We saw Kick Ass, which I very much enjoyed, though it certainly earned its R rating (for violence).

This weekend I'll be meeting two different internet friends.  I'm meeting a more casual one for drinks on Friday, and then I'm spending the weekend with my close friend from Southampton.  On Saturday she'll be coming to London, and then on Sunday I'm going to Southampton.  I can't wait!

Murphy's Law

I'm almost all caught up from spring break.  The final leg is one big long story of Murphy's Law in action.

The initial error was definitely mine, but the consequences gave me a sharp lesson.  See, my train from London to Holyhead had been one train doing the whole trip, but on the way back from Holyhead to London I had to change trains twice, once in Chester and once in Crewe.  The train from Chester got into Crewe about half an hour before my next train was set to leave, so I found out what platform I needed and went there.  At about 8:30, still fifteen minutes before my train is supposed to leave, a train arrives at my platform.  It's Virgin Trains, which was the train I needed, and it was at the right platform -- the only issue was that it was too early, but I've seen trains arrive at a platform and just wait for twenty minutes before.

What I should have done is look at the departures board, because then I would have seen that this particular Virgin train was going to Manchester, not London.  I didn't, though.  I just assumed that the train was going to wait a bit, and got on.  I realized my mistake moments later when the train started moving, but by then it was too late.  I didn't even know where this train was supposed to be going.  I hoped it was the same general direction, so that I could just get off at the next station and still catch my proper train, but that hope was dashed when I did get to the next station, Wilmslow.

At Wilmslow, I went to the security station and told the guard I think I got on the wrong train; I needed to get to London.  He informed me that I had indeed gotten on the wrong train, because I was now halfway to Manchester.  Furthermore, by this time the train I should have been on was already gone, and it was the last train of the night going to London.  There I was, stuck overnight in a place I couldn't have pointed to on a map.

This would have been bad enough, but what was worse was that I had plans the next day.  I had my ticket for Star Wars in Concert, which I really wanted to get to.  It was at three, but getting there would have been complicated because the Jubilee line, which would have taken me right there with only one change, was down for planned engineering work over the holiday weekend.  The route I had mapped out involved different lines and replacement buses and would have taken nearly two hours, but that wouldn't have been a problem if I'd been home on Sunday and could have left early enough.

Instead, I had to spend my Sunday getting back to London, getting from the train station back to my homestay to drop off my stuff and get my ticket for the concert, and then getting there in time.  The security guard in Wilmslow said that I could stay the night in Manchester and get a train that would get in around 1:30, which would not have given me enough time, so that was out.  My other option was to go back to Crewe and get a train that would get me in around 12:30, which would be cutting it close but would still probably be all right.

I bought a train ticket for the next morning, and went back to Crewe.  Once there, I asked the station personnel for overnight options.  They did say I could stay the night in the station, but I'd have to sleep in the waiting room, and when I got back to London my host mum said that's what she would have done, just to save money, but I couldn't.  Stay the night alone in a train station in a foreign country?  I wouldn't have been able to sleep, and not just because all I had was the floor, short benches, or chairs.  And I seriously can't function when I don't get enough sleep -- I probably would have bungled getting home even worse than I already had.

Crewe, being in the middle of nowhere, didn't have any hostels, and I hadn't meant to be there so I didn't have any research on places to stay, and had to rely on the station people for recommendations.  The place they directed me to was fairly close, but one night was fifty pounds (at which I winced, but what other options did I really have? I didn't know where else to go), and they did not have any internet access.  No business computers, no wifi, and no open internet cafe anywhere nearby.

This just made things even worse, because my host mum was expecting me home that night.  I'd accidentally left my paper with her phone number in my room in London, so I thought the only thing I could do was get into my email account and fish out my roommate's number, call her, and have her explain to my host mum what happened.  Unfortunately, though, no internet.  I made it clear to the receptionist that I really needed this (all the while thinking, what kind of hotel doesn't have any internet access at all in this day and age?), so he sent me one of their employees with an iphone he was willing to let me try.  No dice, though -- couldn't get into my email.  I was basically stuck hoping my host mum would call me so I could explain, but I didn't know when.  I wasn't supposed to get home until around midnight, so it would have to be after that, but I just wanted to go to bed.

I waited for a bit, but finally decided to just take my shower and go to bed, and just answer if it woke me up.  But then I couldn't figure out how to turn the shower on.  There was a bathtub I could turn on, but I couldn't find anything for the shower.  So I had to go to bed without taking a shower, which always makes me feel uncomfortable.

My host mum did text me in the middle of the night, waking me up, but I did feel relieved at being able to explain a bit of what happened and that I'd be home the next day.  I did not sleep as well as I would have at home, but I did get enough sleep to function, and far more than I would have gotten had I stayed at the train station.

I got to the station bright and early, and this time made sure of the train's destination before boarding.  Unfortunately, the train encountered delays along the route.  It left Crewe at 9:17 and was supposed to get in to London at 12:32, but it managed to get there at about one instead, and I was almost despairing.  I could have made it to my concert on time if I'd left my house around one, but I was still at the train station and needed to get home, and had to take circuitous public transportation back.

I made it home at 1:40, where my host mum was a marvel.  After wanting to cry at finding out there was no way for me to get there by public transportation that wouldn't get me at least an hour late (and the show was only two hours, so I would have missed at least half of it), she found me a cab that could get me there in an hour.  It was more expensive than I would have liked, but I'd been looking forward to this concert for weeks, and really wanted to get there, so I paid it, and I got there only fifteen minutes late.

It was Easter, so the show wasn't full, and I got my seat upgraded so I could sit closer.  The concert was basically music from the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra set to a theme montages from the films, narrated by the actor who played C-3PO.  It was so awesome listening to the Imperial March played live, and the theme music, and so much more that I recognized and loved.  Live!  Exactly what I'd been waiting for.  I did not regret rushing to get there.

I especially did not regret it after seeing how long it took to get back home.  Had the Jubilee line been working, it would have taken me forty-five minutes.  Instead, it took two hours and fifteen minutes, which really emphasized that I could not have taken public transportation to the show without missing two-thirds of it.

But I got back, and ate dinner, and spent time online, and went to bed, peaceful in the knowledge that Monday was a bank holiday and therefore I could spend it doing absolutely nothing.

The Craic Was Mighty

Thursday morning we left Galway for a tour of Connemara, which had some really awesome scenery.  For such a small country, Ireland is a lot more variable than I was expecting.  The beautiful coast and the rolling green hills I was expecting, but then there was the Burren National Park, and Connemara, which had stretches I could have mistaken for the Nevada desert if I weren't looking too closely.  The plants were different -- I didn't see sage, and saw a lot of this grayish-green thing I'm not sure what it was -- but the hills and the dirt and the general landscape just looked so much like Nevada.

I...wasn't really all that homesick on seeing it, though.  This was about an hour, hour and a half away from Galway, so some people had been taking naps, and when we got to the most Nevada-looking part, Sean was all "Wake up and look at the landscape!  Isn't it beautiful?"  I looked at the landscape and was thinking less of "I miss Nevada" and more "I've seen enough of this at home.  What happened to all that funny green stuff?  I want more of that." :p

We stopped at a town called Killary, which was home to the only Irish fjord, so I got some pictures of the fjord.  That village was also where the movie "The Field" was filmed, apparently, and we went to the pub where all the pub scenes were filmed, which seemed to be very proud of that because it had "The Field" paraphernalia all over.  That pub also apparently made really good Irish Coffees (coffee with whiskey) and Bailey's Coffees (coffee with Bailey's), but I didn't have any because I don't like coffee, and it's just as well because some people said later that having alcohol that early upset their stomachs.

We had lunch in Westport, then went to Croagh Patrick, the mountain from which St. Patrick is said to have banished all the snakes from Ireland.  (Heh.  Our first day, Sean told us that story, then said that Ireland never had any snakes in the first place.  Banishing the snakes is supposed to have been Patrick's miracle, and you need a miracle to be a saint, but since Patrick didn't actually banish the snakes, he was never actually made a saint, which I did not know.  The Irish took him for their patron saint because he's the one who converted them to Christianity, but he's not actually a saint.)  Anyway, the mountain is a pilgrimate site now, and on some day in August is basically the official time to make the pilgrimage so tens of thousands of people climb the mountain on that day.

Sean wanted us to climb at least partly up the mountain, but I only climbed to the pilgrimage base, where there's a statue of the Virgin Mary.  I wasn't the only one not really interested in climbing, though, so several of us hung around the base for awhile and took pictures of the bay, since it really had an awesome view.  It wasn't really much of a hike, though, since Sean really only allotted about half an hour to it, so we were on our way soon enough.

We also stopped at the Famine Memorial by Croagh Patrick, which was depressing.  Well, of course it was, since it had to do with the Famine, but it was this metal statue of a ship crawling with skeletons.  And Sean told us about the Famine, and how people died not just of starvation in Ireland but of conditions on the ships they were emigrating in, which is why the memorial is a ship with skeletons, and it was just...depressing.  Apparently when he was Prime Minister, Tony Blair acknowledged to the Irish that the Famine was preventable, which is so sad.  Two million Irish died or emigrated, and it could have been prevented.  That's just horrible.

It also really makes me want to know the British side of things, what a Brit would say to the version of history Sean told.  I mean, I don't think Sean was lying or exaggerating, but I want to know how the British would tell the story.  I think I'm going to corner my history teacher at some point and ask him.

We stopped at this lake where the waters looked black, which is Sean's favorite place in Ireland because he said he's never seen it look the same twice.  The landscape was very impressive.  There were also sheep wandering across the road.  I am so amused at how many sheep I saw in Ireland -- probably more than I saw people, really.  

Our last stop of the day was at Kylemore Abbey, a huge mansion across a lake.  Very picturesque.  After that, we headed back towards Galway, getting in around six.  Sean told us about this restaurant on Quay Street famous for its mussels, so we went there for dinner, and they really did have very good mussels.  Mmmm.  I love shellfish.

After dinner we went across the street to a pub playing live music, where I got my last half-pint of Guinness in Ireland, plus some sort of blackcurrant cordial to offset the bitterness.  I liked the Guinness with blackcurrant much better than regular Guinness, so I'll have to see if that's just an Irish thing or if I can get it that way at home.  The music was not Celtic, sadly, but the band on when I was there was basically playing covers to classic rock songs from CCR, Johnny Cash, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and more like that, so I still enjoyed it.

In Ireland, there are two days out of the year where alcohol is not allowed to be sold.  I think one of them is Christmas (could be wrong about that though), but the other is Good Friday, and the prohibition started at midnight.  Technically, at least.  We were still in the pub at midnight, but the bartender said they were just closing the downstairs bar and keeping the upstairs one open until they closed for the night.  I wasn't interested in drinking more, though, and I was getting pretty tired, so we just went back to the hostel.

Friday was our last and easiest day of the tour.  We had free time in Galway until 2:30, and then we were just going straight back to Dublin.  Sean mentioned a museum in Galway, but it turns out that was also closed for Good Friday, so oh well.  Mostly I just spent my morning shopping.  I got a hat made from good Irish wool, because I've seen so many sheep in Ireland that I couldn't resist getting something made from them.  I also got a really pretty necklace and earrings in Celtic designs made of silver and inset with Connemara marble, so I was very pleased with that.

I met up with my friends at this crepe place for lunch, and oh, crepes.  It's been so long since I had a crepe.  They were so good.  I definitely need to get crepes in France.

Mid-afternoon we left for Dublin, and just went straight there.  We got in at about five, and thus ended the tour.  But even given things like my mud mishap at Blarney Castle and me getting sick, I'd had such a great time.  I'm so glad I decided to book a tour, because it was exactly what I'd hoped for and more.  I wanted to see more of Ireland than what I thought I'd be able to find on my own, which I think I did, and I learned so much Irish history and mythology, and I made some great friends.  That was so wonderful.  I fell pretty much immediately into a group of friends and we just stuck together the entire time, even getting dinner together that last night in Dublin because we weren't quite ready to be done yet.  I just started using my Facebook a bit more, and this tour is exactly why.  I want to keep in touch with these people.

Anyway, I checked into my hostel, and of all random things, met two people from my program there.  I hadn't even known they were going to be in Ireland for midterm break.  Apparently they spent a few days in Wales and then went to Dublin, and they were checking out just as I was checking in so we didn't do much more than say hi, but it was still a very amusing coincidence.

The next day I wanted to sleep in a bit, since my ferry wasn't leaving until 2:30, but I still woke up around eight.  I decided to spend a bit of time online before going out into Dublin, but I should have spent less time online, because I ended up not having as much time to do things as I'd hoped.  My plan was to start the furthest from my hostel and then work my way back towards it (since I left my luggage there), so I'd wanted to do the Old Jameson's Distillery, Dublin Castle, and Trinity College, but I ended up actually only having time for the Old Jameson's Distillery, where I volunteered to be a whiskey taster and got a certificate for my troubles. :p  I did enjoy that, but I would have liked a bit longer in Dublin.

Two of my fellow whiskey tasters were this couple from Sweden, and we got to chatting.  We hit it off pretty well, and they invited me to lunch with them, so that's what I did.  I liked them.  The husband had studied abroad in America when he was a student, so it was really interesting, discussing what it was like being American and studying in Europe, and vice versa.

Around 1:30 I caught a taxi to Dublin Port.  I technically could have walked, but I'm rather glad I didn't, because my map showed the route to be deceptively short and easy, and I might well have gotten lost and taken forever had I decided to walk it, but a cab was only five euro.  So I was in Dublin Port, and from there I left Ireland.  Already I missed it.

In case my subject line is confusing, "craic" is pronounced like "crack", and it amuses me (and Sean, and my tour) to use it.  Craic is Irish slang for basically something like fun/enthusiasm/great times.  "Having great craic" or "the craic was mighty" is basically saying that awesome things are happening and you're having a great time, which is really my trip to Ireland in a nutshell.

This post is long enough and I'm getting tired, so for next time will be the travails of my trip back to London and what's been happening the rest of this week.  But there was Ireland, and though it was expensive, I would so love to go back some day.

One Day in Ireland

The story of spring break, continued.

Wednesday I woke up feeling better, thankfully.  I continued better the rest of the trip, with nothing worse than my normal minor queasiness on moving things.  We left Ennis and moved into County Clare, which Sean told us is the most superstitious and supernatural of Ireland's counties.

Our first stop was in Burren National Park, which is a very rocky area that's apparently a botanist's dream in the summer because plants from all over grow together in this one area.  But we stopped at a dolmen (I forget the name at the moment), which is over 5000 years old, from somewhere between 3800 and 3200 BCE, meaning it's older than Stonehenge and therefore probably the oldest man-made thing I've ever seen.  It looks sort of like a stone table but is actually a doorway through which ancient people put some of their dead.  Sean also told us another Fionn mac Cumhail story about this dolmen.

Our day got more supernatural/superstitious from there, because our next stop was at a fairy ring.  Sean warned us at the beginning not to go into the center of the fairy ring or else bad luck would follow us, if we were even able to leave the ring at all.  He also told us to walk clockwise around the perimeter of the ring and thank the fairies (in Irish, which we learned especially for this), for which they might grant us a wish.  It actually was this pretty amazing place, because the ring was this perfectly natural cluster of intertwined branches in a complete circle, with a clearing with a few trees in the middle.

One of the girls actually walked backwards around the fairy ring, though.  She walked partly clockwise, like she's supposed to, took a few pictures, and then turned around and started back, even though Sean was telling her to walk around the entire thing clockwise.  She laughed and ignored him and he was sort of groaning as we got back on the bus that bad luck was going to follow her now.  And it sort of did, because it struck not her but people around her.  This particular girl was one of my roommates and new friends, and as it turned out, I was not the only person to get sick on this tour because two of our other roommates also spent time throwing up.  Three people, on one eighteen-person tour, all rooming together -- I mean, one of the girls threw up because of motion sickness and the other for a combination of motion sickness and maybe the 24-hour flu I seem to have had, and okay, maybe it's not a huge coincidence that sickness would pass to the people one spends the most time with, but it is still undeniably Bad Luck.  And I blame Karen. :p

After the fairy ring, we stopped at a wishing well.  It was like a miniature stone castle on the side of the road, barely taller than I am, with an open doorway leading to a small well.  The was also a stone in front, and the tradition behind this particular well was to stand facing the road and toss your coin over your shoulder towards the well, and if it made it into the water without striking stone, your wish would come true.  I was the first one to try it, and I did manage it, but I actually forgot to wish for anything, so oh well.  This particular wishing well also has a rather sad story, because originally it didn't have the mini-castle.  That was built during the Famine, when there was a British program putting the starving Irish to work doing all sorts of useless things just so they wouldn't be getting food for free.

Wednesday morning was a very full morning, because our last stop before lunch was at the Cliffs of Moher.  I got lots of pictures from several different vantage points, so I am quite pleased with that, but I was actually more impressed with the Giant's Causeway as a geological marvel and scene of beauty.  What was hilarious, though, is that one of our group didn't even bother going to see the Cliffs at all -- she spent the entire time in the shop!  She said she got a picture of the screen of the Cliffs in the visitor center, and then just spent the entire time in the gift shop.

We had lunch in this little village on the coast called Lahinch, where they had a pub with excellent seafood chowder.  From there we took the coastal route up to Galway, including a stop in the Burren to climb around on the rocks a bit, and more for plain photo stops.  We got into Galway at about five, and my friends decided we wanted to save money so we would cook some pasta.  There were about eight of us who wanted to go the cheap route, and the hostel had a fairly small kitchen, so I didn't do any actual cooking, but I did very much appreciate paying only one euro for my share of the food, rather than the ten to fifteen euro a meal out would have cost.  I am definitely going to try to do more of my own cooking when I'm in Europe, because it's really striking how much I can save.

For that night, Sean advised us to go to this particular pub to listen to a band that played a combination of Irish and Spanish music that worked together really well.  I went, but the band didn't go on until almost ten, and I was getting really tired by that point (still getting over being sick), so I only listened to about five songs before I went back to the hostel.  I was impressed with what I heard, though, since it wasn't just Irish and Spanish -- they played Indian music, and Greek, and I'm sure more that I didn't get to hear.  I was very tired, though, because I ended up going to bed around eleven that night and falling asleep so deeply I didn't even hear five other girls come in and get ready for bed.

I have had a very long day today, so I am very tired and will finish talking about spring break tomorrow.  Easter Monday is a bank holiday in Britain, so I will have one day to just sit back and relax.  Thankfully.

Sláinte!

I feel like I've had a very long week that has gone by very quickly, however odd that sounds.  I've done so much, but how was that only five days?

Sláinte, by the way, is a toast in Irish.  It basically means "Cheers!".  I'm quite pleased to have learned a bit (a very little bit) of Irish this week.  But anyway, it'll be easiest to go chronologically.

I met my tour at 8:15 Monday morning, and we were on the road about half an hour later.  There were eighteen of us, ages ranging from early twenties to late thirties, mostly from America, Australia, and New Zealand, with the odd people from England, Germany, and Peru.  Our tour guide's name was Sean, and he was great.  Very knowledgeable and very funny.  He told us that Monday would be our most travel-heavy day for most time on the bus, and he joked that it'd only be ten or twelve hours until we reached our first stop, and one of the Aussies was like "Really?"  I laughed, because I'd be surprised if it took twelve hours to cross the whole country.

Most of our stops were photo stops, with longer breaks for lunch and then dinner in our overnight town.  I don't really remember all the names of the places we stopped, because there were a lot of them.  Our first stop, though, was the Rock of Cashel, which was an old castle and monastery.  On our way there, Sean told us about the basic histories of monasteries in Ireland, which is mostly: built in the fifth or sixth centuries, attacked by Vikings a lot because people would keep their valuables there.

From there we went to Blarney, to visit Blarney Castle and the Blarney Stone, and Sean told us both history and myths about the Blarney Stone.  This was where I had my first piece of bad luck on this trip, because it was sort of drizzling and in front of me on the path to the castle was a big puddle that stretched across the whole width of the path.  I decided to go on the grass around the puddle, but the grass was slippery enough that I got my hands and jeans all muddy.  That sucked.  I could wash my hands in the bathroom, but I couldn't really do much for my jeans, so I had to wear my muddy jeans until we got to the hostel that night.

Regardless of that, though, I did make it to the castle, and I did climb to the top, and I did kiss the Blarney Stone.  I'd had no idea that thing was placed so awkwardly.  Before coming to Ireland I'd though oh, you climb to the top of the castle and kiss a rock up there, okay.  Except it was on the outside wall and sort of underneath the battlements so I had to lay down and lean back and grip the safety poles to actually kiss the stone, and there was an attendant there to make sure we stayed safe.  I wasn't allowed to wear my glasses in case they fell, so I did get a picture of me kissing the stone, but no glasses.

We also stopped at the Mitchelstown Caves, into which we did a bit of climbing, and which were pretty awesome.  They had these calcite ribbons that were really amazing.  We went about a kilometer into the caves, where our guide said they held an annual concert for charity, because in that particular cave was a sort of natural stage.  To show off the acoustics in the cave, the guide decided a group of people should sing, and he picked the Americans.  There were six or seven of us, but we couldn't think of anything we all would know except the national anthem, so we ended up singing The Star-Spangled Banner in a cave in Ireland.  Very odd experience.

Our final stop on Monday was in Killarney, where pretty much the first thing I did was a bit of laundry.  More importantly, though, one of the best things about this tour was that I pretty much immediately fell into a group of friends, so the six of us (four Americans, one Aussie, one New Zealander) roomed together the entire time and spent most of our free time together or in some variation of the group.  It was really awesome.

Sean suggested things for us to do in all the towns we stopped in, and we pretty much always took his suggestions because we didn't know anything else to do.  In Killarney, he suggested going to this pub to listen to this storyteller, who told hilarious and poignant stories about this fictional bar.  That was a pretty great time.

Tuesday we left Killarney at 8:30 and started up the Dingle peninsula.  We started in Dingle for a bathroom stop, then basically made a circle along the coast road, ending in Dingle again for lunch.  We saw some great scenery along the coast road, including the beach of Inch, which is actually about a mile (Sean making a joke about this being the only place where an Inch is literally a mile), and we stopped at another particularly awesome beach at the bottom of a short cliff, which we actually climbed down so we could walk on the beach for a bit and write our names in the sand.  The tide would soon wash that away, of course, because apparently this particular beach is under water most of the time and Sean said he'd never seen as much of it before as he did when we were there, so that was nice.

Which reminds me, the weather was actually pretty great most of the trip.  It did rain on me a bit, but not that much -- most of the time when it rained was when we were on the bus anyway, and even then it wasn't as much as I was expecting.  We actually saw a lot of sun.  It was great.

Anyway, we continued along the coast road, Sean telling us stories about Fionn mac Cumhaill, a big-time Irish mythological hero.  I was so pleased to be getting Celtic mythology stories on my tour.  Awesome stuff.  We had lunch in Dingle, and then started heading north, because we were going to be crossing the Shannon River on a ferry and spending the night in Ennis.

On the way to the Shannon I started feeling worse than my normal mild motion sickness, so once I the ferry I bought a 7Up and that settled my stomach a bit.  By the time we got to Ennis, though, I really wasn't feeling well or up to much at all, which made me sad, because Sean told us that Ennis and County Clare were well known for their traditional music and we should go listen to that that night.  Also, at the hostel, they were going to give us a lesson in Irish set dancing.

I wanted to listen to the traditional music and learn the dances, but I was not feeling well.  When we got there around five, I took a nap.  The dance lesson was at six, so I woke up and went down there to watch, but I didn't feel well enough to participate.  It was over after an hour, and everyone else went to dinner, but I wasn't hungry and I just wanted to sleep more, so I went back to bed.

I woke up again when people started coming in around midnight, and initially I felt better, because I decided to take my shower.  I made it through the brushing my teeth part of my nightly routine when I became very grateful that I hadn't had dinner, because my lunch decided to revisit me.  At least I was already in the bathroom, so I made it to the toilet with minimal mess, but that was very unpleasant.  I did feel much better after my stomach was empty, though, so I took my shower, drank from the water bottle one of my roommates and new friends was kind enough to fill for me, and went back to bed.  All in all I slept about thirteen hours.

I'll stop it there for now, because it's almost midnight here and I'm zonked.  Tomorrow I'm going to see more of Dublin and then I'll be getting back to London, so I'll probably finish the story of my tour on Sunday.