Adventuring in the Aran Islands and Kicking around Killarney (and Discovering Dingle!)

I peeled myself out of bed early on Thursday (the 2nd of September) and got myself down to the shuttle bus for a 45-minute ride to the ferry dock. From there, it was onto the ferry for another 45-minute crossing to Inis Mor, the largest of the three Aran Islands.

I debated getting on a minibus for a tour, but eventually pride and adventure won out, and I rented a bike instead. In retrospect, this was rather stupid. I haven't ridden a bike in at least two years, and I've never been very good at it. But I couldn't stomach the idea of being squished into a minibus and just staring out the window for three hours, and the lady at the TI said I could probably handle it, so off I went.

After a stop at a Spar for a picnic, I set off in earnest. It quickly became apparent, in the form of a series of gentle uphills, that I was not well-prepared for what I'd gotten myself into. I was soon getting quite tired, but I pushed on, and only had to walk my bike once. Finally, I came to the turn-off for the steep track leading up to my first destination, the lighthouse, so I left my bike there and continued on foot.

A short but intense hike later, I was standing at the highest point of the island. The sun was shining in a watery sort of way through the screen of swiftly-blown clouds high above. This might explain part of why the landscape looked so washed out. The bleak hills went rolling away in all directions down toward the sea, scruffy short grass and thistles, crisscrossed by chest-high stone walls with, apparently, no rhyme or reason to their paths. The lighthouse itself sat boarded up and silent, a cylinder of grey stone, beside some kind of house of similar material that had long since begun the process of decay. What with the powerful wind sweeping over everything and, beside its wailing, the vast, empty, open-sky silence, there was a sort of forlorn sadness about the whole place.

I followed a path down to a circle of grey stone, across and over the walls that crossed the way, and talked with a Canadian couple going the same way. At the circle, I climbed up on the precariously loose rocks and looked back and the unsympathetic lighthouse, and across over the fields again, and decided it was time to get going.

Back at my bike, I found to my delight that all of the uphill had been taken care of. I cruised down the gently sloping road until I passed a crescent-shaped beach of white sand and turquoise water, which looked oddly out of place, like someone had transported an entire Caribbean beach to this gritty, tough, windswept island in Ireland. A short bit later, and I was at the Dún Aonghasa visitor's center and hiking up yet another path toward the sea.

This is the main attraction on the island: a semicircular stone-age fort on the edge of a 300-foot cliff over the ocean. There are no railings and no warning signs; the stony ground simply ends in a straight drop to the turbulent seas below. The fort itself, while I'm sure it's very historically significant, isn't much except for its incredible age. The really awe-inspiring bit is that spectacular cliff.

As I am my mother's daughter, I found a nice spot on the edge and dangled my feet over, much to the surprise of other visitors. The thing is, though, that if you're careful, you're no more likely to fall off a cliff than you are to fall off a sidewalk, and sitting on the side of the ledge isn't any more likely to pitch you into the sea than a stool is likely to spontaneously throw you to the floor. The key is to move slowly and deliberately, with no sudden movements to throw you off balance, and to have respect for the death that lurks around those edges. But there's no reason to panic.

I ate my lunch there on the edge of the cliff and looked out over the endless ocean until my fingers started to go numb from the wind. Then I got up carefully and made my way back to where I'd left my bike. I still had some time before I really needed to head back to the ferry, but I decided that given my physical condition and the distance involved, it would probably be wiser just to head straight back.

This turned out to be a very good idea. I had to pedal constantly most of the way back, and I was already tired. I rolled back into town with about 20 minutes to spare, which was just enough time to buy some Fanta at the Spar, return my bike, and stagger onto the ferry, where I promptly fell asleep for the entire journey back.

Back in Galway, I was powerwalking through the shopping area to try to get to the jewelry store I'd decided on, which was closing in just a few minutes. I made it in time and picked out the ring I wanted, which I'm now very happily wearing. I hope it'll last longer than the last one!

Dinner, a cappuccino, and a shower later, I finally crawled gratefully into bed.

The next morning, I again got up early (what is the deal?! Augh!) to catch the bus out of Galway. I arrived in Limerick (what a fantastic name for a city, eh?) with two hours of layover waiting for the bus to Killarney, so I spent it looking for a new book to read--I'm an addict, so sue me--and having a nice lunch in the sun. I got a bed in a nice hostel upon arriving in Killarney and set off again toward the national park that abuts the town, forgetting two things: 1) I'd biked like 4 or 5 miles the day before and 2) 6 miles is a long way to walk.

By the time I made it to the park, I was already tired, but I explored the ruined abbey, partially restored and partially dilapidated and nestled amid a small forest of cockeyed Celtic crosses. From there, I had the choice to turn around or go on, and that was how I ended up another mile down the road at Muckross House, a beautiful old manor house on the lake. I poked around a bit, but the day was ending and almost everyone had already gone. Leaving the park, I began the long trek back to town, stopping on the way at a pub for some water. It was close to 9pm when I finally made it back, but I stopped in a bookstore anyway. I can't help it.

On the 4th, I went on a bus tour to Dingle. Now, I'd planned on actually going to Dingle and staying there for the two nights preceding my flight, but it turned out that 1) Dingle's really far away and 2) my flight leaves at 9am, so I have to be close by. This is how I ended up in Killarney instead, which is near the airport, taking a bus day trip out to Dingle instead.

Turns out it was a really good thing I did. Although I'm not, in general, a huge fan of minibus tours, this one was more than worth it because of the absolutely spectacular scenery and a wonderful guide. We drove across rolling green pastures first to Inch Strand, another little stretch of soft sand and gentle waves, that looks into the long inlet between Kerry and Dingle peninsulas. I took off my shoes and padded down the beach, looking for shells and wave-smoothed stones, soaking up the sunlight for as long as possible before I had to dash back to the bus.

We dove through twee little Dingle Town, perched on the side of a wide harbor and packed with runners in a marathon around the peninsula. We drove on out to the very end of the peninsula and looked out towards the Blasket Islands and, over the edge of the glittering horizon, America. Circling back around, stopping now and then to take pictures of the fantastically vibrant emerald landscape against the glimmering sea, we came back to Dingle Town for a late lunch and a quick look around the town before we headed back to Killarney.

The hilarious part of all this was our guide, John. He laughed and joked with me every time we pulled over for pictures, and invited me out to a drink at a pub after we got back. I agreed, but first he let me borrow his bicycle to ride for a bit through the national park near Killarney. I cruised out to the old castle on the lakeshore and back, then headed out to find the pub.

It took me a few tries, but I eventually found the right one and found myself in an Irish pub, in Ireland, drinking cider and trying in vain to understand most of what was being said to me. When they spoke to me directly, I could usually understand what the denizens of the pub said, but when they spoke to each other, they might as well (and could have been) speaking Gaelic. After a couple pints of cider, John, a friend of his, and I went up to a 21-year-old's birthday party, then to a couple other pubs to hear different types of music, ending in a real Irish pub with real Irish music, drinking Bailey's Irish creme with an Irishman. I felt, as you can imagine, quite Irish.

I should mention at this point that John is old enough to be my father, and it was fun and relaxing to hang out with him as he showed me around the town. We got to talk about life and the future, and I returned to my hostel tired and happy.

I got up at (what felt like) the crack of dawn to take a taxi to the airport and, regretfully and reluctantly, got on the plane to leave the British Isles. I'd gladly move there and I didn't really want to leave, but duty called me across the Channel back to the Continent. With a mixture of sadness and excitement I watched the green hills of Ireland drop away below me and looked forward to the upcoming orientation.

Galway! Hooray!

Sorry, lame title, moving on.

So I've got to get back in the habit of writing regularly so that I don't end up two weeks behind, as has happened all too frequently. Also, I need the writing practice so I don't forget how to turn a phrase intelligently. If I ever knew.

SO! The train left me right smack in the middle of lovely little Galway. Now, when people said Galway was a small town, I thought they meant that it was like...small. And a town. Like, I don't know, Wells, or Keswick. Galway is not small. It's small compared to, say, Everett, but not compared to Snohomish. But no matter, because it's cute, and as any new pet owner can tell you, being cute makes up for a lot.

I hung out in the hostel for a bit, waiting to check in, but eventually got fed up by the long line and was lured away by the warm sunlight. I wandered through the town to the cobblestone pedestrian shopping area to actually do some shopping. I'm looking for a Claddagh ring, since my last one broke and the ring originated in this area. I spent some time perusing the shops and getting an idea of the price range before heading off to see more of the town. I walked up the canalside promenade to the impressively huge stone cathedral, and from there dropped by the local university's lovely old quadrangle before heading back to the hostel.

I finally got checked in and met some of my roommates, who told me that they weren't expecting to come back from partying until about 3am--eurgh. Getting hungry, I headed back into town and ended up at a small coffeehouse near the quays, where I had a wonderful salmon quesadilla for dinner. I got a cappuccino to go and headed out to walk along the beach as the sun set. A ways along, I found a causeway leading out to a lighthouse perched on an island. The island was off-limits, but I stopped to chat with an older Irish gentleman who was fishing off the causeway about his catch of mackerel. When I could hardly see him anymore, I headed back through town to the hostel.

Looks like the plan for tomorrow is to visit the Aran Islands. Hopefully the weather will be tolerable. I'll let you know what I think. So far, this seems to be a lovely corner of the world.

Dublin Revisited

Hello again!

Missed me? I hope so. I haven't posted anything in a long while, mostly--okay, entirely--because I've been stuck on writing the post about Edinburgh, and my OCD won't let me post anything out of order. But as you can see, that's now been fixed. Hooray!

So. Today is the first day of September, if you can believe it. September! What happened to the summer? I seem to recall something about cow bells and cream tea, but beyond that...

(I have a theory about the "time flies" phenomenon in memory. Ask me someday when you get tired of living.)

I'm on yet another train, looking about the window at...well, an embankment covered in blackberry bushes, so I could be just about anywhere, but I'm not; I'm heading across the middle of Ireland from Dublin to Galway. Galway is the second-to-last stop on this long venture of mine before the pull of Germany becomes inescapable. I'm also hoping to buy a new claddagh here, as my last one is fairly thoroughly dead.

I arrived in Dublin two days ago and managed to find Heather with a minimum of trouble. I went out to dinner with her and her friend Anya (that name may not be right, sorry) at a Mexican restaurant, then we headed back to Heather's house. I met her family, who are very lovely and welcoming people, and their utterly adorable puppy (AHHHH PUPPY SQUEEEEE!). Heather and I stayed up watching telly and chatting for a while, making plans for our day of sightseeing.

We headed into town the next day and got one of those open-top tour buses around the city. It's something of a comeuppance for me; I always see those things go by and laugh at the tourists, and there I was, avoiding eye contact with the people on the sidewalk laughing at me. Somewhat surprisingly, the bus was rather convenient; I mean, clearly people use them for a reason. They do connect all of the important tourist sights, provide commentary, and make sure you don't get lost.

Our first stop off was Trinity College. Oh, let me explain something first:

This is not my first time in Dublin. Two Februarys ago, I was in Germany and my friend Jewell and I decided that, since it had been over a month since our last epic adventure, we were overdue for another. We called up the Ryanair website and hey, they had a special fare round-trip to Dublin! So, Dublin it was. We had a fantastic time, despite almost everything with our accommodations going wrong, and I totally fell in love with the city of Dublin. Ask me sometime about Andrew and Diego and the burnt pizza and being drunk on fail if you want to hear the whole story.

Anyway, Jewell and I had come to Trinity two years before, but the Book of Kells had been off display for restoration. Despite the steep admission price, I couldn't pass up a second chance to see it, so I left Heather outside and went in. It was totally worth it, not least because I know an (admittedly tiny) bit more about the subject now that I've taken some book arts classes, so the bookbinding displays were even better than last time. And the book is simply astounding--gorgeous penmanship, with some letters enlarged and embellished with stylized drawings of men and beasts, their limbs wound into Celtic knots and their faces suitably bemused. The illuminated pages are simply breathtaking, not only in the richness of color, fineness of detail, and exquisiteness of design, but simply in the knowledge that just as you lean over those velum pages in awe, an artist leaned over them hundreds of years ago, painstakingly planning every line. The book is a window into the creativity, dedication, and genius of people long gone. Plus, it's just gorgeous.

The exhibit leads up from the book's display room to the Long Room of the old library. I've talked about this with my friends before, but they really should bottle and sell the smell of that room, because it's one of the best smells in the world: the soft mustiness of old books and leather, the sweetness of wood and the golden warmth of sunlight. Like the main room in the Rylands Library, the Long Room is a vaulted two-story space packed with old books and display cases and busts of famous thinkers. You feel older and wiser just standing in a room like that and breathing. Except for the other visitors, everything in there is perfect--that fantastic smell, the glow of the sun dimmed to protect the books, the dark brown wood, green and red and brown leather with glints of dusky gold on the spines of innumerable volumes.

I don't know how I tore myself away, but I met up with Heather again and we got back on the bus to Temple Bar, where we stopped for lunch at the Elephant and Castle. If you're in Dublin, it's worth going just to try the chicken wings. We grabbed some ice cream and got back on the bus, this time to St. Patrick's Cathedral, where we wandered in the cool dimness, admiring the stained glass windows and the tattered flags of battalions honored in the cathedral. I particularly enjoyed reading the memorial plaques on the walls; it's easy to pass these by, but some of them tell amazing stories of valor and love. One told the story of a young officer--a lieutenant, I think--and his eleven or so men, who had held back the advances of the enemy to protect their retreating army and had all fallen.

From the cathedral, we headed to our final stop: Kilmainham Gaol. Much of the Dublin tour revolves around the Easter Rising of 1916, the fifth and final rebellion against British rule in Ireland, which eventually turned the tide of public opinion against the British and led to the War for Independence, followed shortly by the Irish Civil War. Some of the statues on the main boulevard, O'Connell Street, have bullet holes in them, as does the post office, which was right in the center of the fighting. Anyway, after six days the leaders of the uprising surrendered and were taken to this jail, where they were held awaiting execution. Their treatment and execution, not their uprising, was what eventually inspired the Irish to revolt. We visited the cells of the leaders, where they sat and waited for dawn to break: innocuous little rooms, whitewashed and featureless. In these rooms the men wrote their last letters and said final goodbyes to their families. It's strange to be standing in a place like that, that seems so clean and guileless, that has been the spot of so much anguish.

After we left the jail, Heather and I returned to her house, since she had a date to go to a concert that night. I had dinner with her family and considered going out to a movie, but eventually decided against it in favor of planning the last few days of the trip and getting to bed early. I also got to talk with Heather's family, who are very wonderful people, and got a good night's sleep.

I left quietly this morning and took the bus into town, got some breakfast, and got on the train, where I find myself now. I have to say that I'm really touched by Heather's family, who took me in, basically as a complete stranger, and gave me my own bed, fed me, and took great care of me. I had a lovely time with Heather as well, being tourists together in her hometown.

Now I'm on my own again, although not for long. I have two nights in Galway, two nights in Dingle, and then a flight to Frankfurt Hahn and a bus to Cologne, where the orientation will start. It's less that a week away now...

Being Boring in Belfast and Pottering around Portrush

I trundled into the city of Belfast from the airport on the bus and made my way to the hostel to drop my stuff off, then headed straight back to wander around a bit. My first stop was the St. George Street Market, a huge, crowded, noisy event filled with families munching crepes and little booths selling overpriced jewelry. I loved it and looked around for a while, but the market closed just an hour after I got there. I therefore headed out into the city and tried to maintain interest in what I was seeing, but my sight was getting bleary and I couldn't breathe through my nose. I made it to the Victoria St. shopping center (the first proper mall I've seen in Britain), went up to the observation tower for a good view  over the city, and took a look at City Hall, but by the time I finally staggered into the TI, my body was in full mutiny. My ears were so stuffed with cotton that I couldn't hear either myself nor the information guy, who took one look at me and suggested that I just get some rest. This sounded pretty good to me, so home I went.

It was still mid-afternoon, but 1) there was nothing in particular that I had my heart set on doing and 2) I felt awful. I know I said that I wouldn't complain anymore, but I'm trying to faithfully record the events as they transpired. I decided that it would be a better idea to just take it easy, so I watched some videos on the iPlayer and chatted with my mother until dinnertime. I bundled up for the cool evening wind and tottled down to the Tesco, which did not stock any real fruit juice (!) so I got fruit instead. Oh, and chicken soup; my Portuguese, Canadian, and Australian roommates agreed that this is the best food for a cold, so maybe it's a universal cure. I ate my dinner and chatted with the aforementioned roommates as they primped to go out for the night, then I just Internetted until I finally fell asleep.

As a side note: What is so wonderful about "going out"? I cannot understand it for the life of me. First, since you're traveling, you have to bring extra clothes, shoes, jewelry, makeup, etc., which all translates to more weight to lug around. Second, then you have to take the time and energy to get dressed up. Third, you then have to go out through the cold to a too-warm, too-loud pub/bar where you have to shout to be heard, where everyone around you immediately sets about getting themselves thoroughly besoffen, and all chance of intelligible and even vaguely interesting conversation goes out the window to find a nice cafe where people are less drunk. I wouldn't be interested in doing this even with my own friends (although they probably wouldn't be too interested in it either; we're kind of "drink Mike's Hard Lemonade, watch movies, play board games, have interesting conversations" kind of people), much less with people I'd never met before.

And yet, sometimes I wish that this sort of thing appealed to me. I wish occasionally that I had the desire, much less the self-confidence, to do something with my hair, wear a stupidly uncomfortable dress, and drink beer. (Eugh.) The problem is, I simply, genuinely, don't. Everything I say to the sort of people who do comes out tied in knots. It's ridiculous. I've been lucky enough to find friends in my life who like to do other, more fun and less alcohol-focussed things with their evenings, and I hope I can find more, but wherever those wonderful people, they don't go backpacking through Britain in August.

Anyway.

Feeling significantly better in the morning, I packed up, checked out, and headed to the Botanic Gardens and Ulster Museum. I gave the museum a quick once-over, lingering for a few extra minutes in the exhibits about Ireland, and then took myself off to the Mela, a big festival being put on by the Indian community. I had a train to catch, so I only saw the very beginning of it, but it looked epic--Rama, , and  were there on stilts and everything. I got myself a bowl of stew and headed reluctantly to the train station.

Since I had a day to spare and Belfast wasn't keeping my attention, I'd decided to spend the extra night somewhere more up my alley, and I have a soft spot for oceans. With a bit of guidance from Rick Steves, I found myself gasping and gwaping out the window like a four-year-old as my train pulled into the gorgeous seaside town of Portrush.

Portrush is...well, it reminded me quite a bit of Cannon Beach in Oregon. It's pretty cute, but almost everything there is holiday-oriented, and since it's getting cold (September comes in just a few days!), most of the summer crowds are gone, so the whole town feels a bit abandoned and deflated. This suited me just fine; I dumped my stuff off at the hostel and caught the next bus up the coast to the Giant's Causeway for a bit of nature therapy.

The Giant's Causeway is, essentially, some oddly-shaped rock formations that the ancient Irish decided must have been made by giants. ("Obviously." -Sherlock Holmes) It's actually not too hard to see why; the Causeway is made up of hundreds of hexagonal stone pillars, all interlocking but separate, that extend out into the sea towards Scotland. It's the bizzare regularity that's striking, really, because the whole structure isn't very big. Although, being American, maybe I'm biased, because "big" in my book is like Bryce Canyon or something, and we're not talking f****** huge until we get to the Grand Canyon. THe scale here is a bit different. Anyway, although the Causeway was interesting, the best bit was just walking around the cliffs, hearing the crash of the waves, enjoying the sea air and the dramatic ocean views.

You know how they say that people tend to resemble their dogs? On the way back up from the Causeway, I inadvertantly started to talk to an older gentleman that--and I mean this in the nicest possible way--resembled his bloodhound in every respect except for the giant floppy years. Despite moving at a snail's pace as he huffed up the hill, in the time it took to get to the top he told me that he and his wife had been breeding champion bloodhounds for years, that they were going to a wedding in Scotland, that some relative's son had killed himself, and that people who persecute homosexuals are usually closeted gays themselves. Imagine hearing all of this in a North Irish accent, with no warning or connection between topics  whatsoever. I did a lot of nodding and smiling.

I had dinner back in Portrush at a cute little cafe and then took a walk to the end of the spit of land upon which Portrush is perched. The wind howled and shoved me all over the place, but I watched the sun go down in a somewhat unimpressive splutter of pinkish orange before heading to bed.

I dragged myself out of bed this morning much later than I'd hoped, but I still had a couple of hours for a leisurely walk on the beach before my train left. I padded down the soft sand, admiring the wind and the waves, all the way down to where the beach encounters some imposing white cliffs strongly reminiscent of Dover's. It was such a relaxing treat to just meander and look out over the waters, but eventually I had to get back to the train.

Which gets me to where I am now: on a train. I'm heading to Dublin to meet Heather, a relative of some sort of one of my mother's patients. It'll be nice to have someone to talk to!

Hello Glasgow

First of all, I'm going to take a couple of paragraphs to complain for a bit. This will get it out of my system and then, if everything goes according to plan, you won't have to hear about it ever again. If you don't want to hear about it the first time, feel free to skip down until the whinging stops.

I woke up yesterday morning with a sore throat and a headache, and my excursion into Glasgow was cut short around dinnertime because I just couldn't muster up the energy to want to tour a museum, an art school, or a 20th century tenement house. (Although really, can you blame me much?) Also, my eyes and nose had begun to leak alarmingly. By the evening it was clear that I had caught the plague, which is bad for a number of reasons. The chief of these is that today, I'm flying to Belfast. This meant I was hoping for a good night's sleep, an uneventful trip to the airport, a quick-as-possible flight, and a whirlwind day of sightseeing in Belfast.

What happened was that between being too warm, coughing, having an excruciatingly squeaky bed, and my nose leaking like a faucet, I can't have gotten more than 20 minutes' real sleep, mixed in with spats of half-conscious, bizarrely lucid dreams. I was so worried about getting to the airport on time that I finally gave up trying to sleep at 6am and started the packing process.

Turns out I shouldn't have worried so much. I caught a train to the airport, got checked in, and waltzed through a nonexistant security line to find myself in a just-slightly-too-cold lounge with aching eyes, stuffed sinuses, a very tempting WH Smith, and two hours of waiting stretching out before me. I am both anxious to get on the plane and go so this whole obnoxious travel business can be over, and dreading it, because the moment we leave the runway, the pressure behind my ears will be unable to equalize and my head will explode. Also, it's a lot less fun to do a one-day whirlwind tour of the city when your nose starts dripping spontaneously and you can't hear anything not pronounced through a megaphone.

I am taking steps to combat this disease, like drinking enough water to drown a mackerel and taking some vitamin C/Zinc tablets from Boots, but although I've been carefully warned to only take one pill a day, they are so tiny and I'm accustomed to measuring my vitamin doses by the handful so I've broken that rule already. Not that it matters, since soon, between flogging microwaved sandwiches and lottery tickets, the Ryanair staff will have to scrape my brain matter off the cabin walls.

Alright, I said I'd complain for a couple of paragraphs and I've already taken four, so I'm going to stop. Hopefully this will have successfully and subliminally communicated my desperate plea for sympathy and we can all get on with our lives. Assuming my head doesn't explode.

Anyway, let me tell you about Glasgow.

The train ride from Edinburgh to Glasgow was only 50 minutes, but that made a huge difference. I felt like a weight had been lifted from me; here I had a new city, all shiny and ready for me to explore, with no preconcieved notions of grandeur burdening it. I felt vaguely apprehensive about Glasgow, actually, having some indistinct impression that it was the metropolitan, slightly skeezy cousin of cultural, funky Edinburgh. In fact, Glasgow feels, to me, a whole lot like Liverpool. That is, in both cities I had been expecting dark back alleys and seedy pubs, and found them, but also found clean, spacious pedestrian areas, nice shops, beautiful architecture, and not a whole lot to do outside of shopping and admiring the architecture.

My hostel was somewhat out of the city, so I had to take the bus from the train station. Two different people noticed my age and my enormous backpack and drew the not-unlikely conclusion that I was heading to the youth hostel, and volunteered helpful directions--which helped soothe my ruffled feathers after the surly glare the bus driver had treated me to. I located the hostel easily and found in my room a very friendly and completely jet-lagged new arrival from San Francisco to talk to. I finally made it out to find some food and wander around the city a bit but got completely sidetracked by the spectacular sunset unfolding directly before me. Unfortunately, there was no convenient open high point from which to view the light show, so I had to peer at the rays of magenta and gold between the branches of the nearby park's interfering trees.

I finally began my trek into the city, but actually didn't make it very far. It was quickly getting dark, and I had no real interest in venturing into a bar, so I bought a sandwich at Tesco and made my way back. Upon returning to the hostel, I stopped at the reception desk to ask a couple questions and ended up talking to the receptionist and manager for what must have been an hour at least. This astounded me; in trendy, cultural Edinburgh, I could hardly find someone to talk to me, and in Glasgow I couldn't get them to stop--not that I wanted them to, anyway.

The next morning, I was determined to do RFS's self-guided city walk, so I trekked out to the starting point and made it to the city viewpoints, pigeon-filled squares, and various museums with only a few detours. I took a break for tea in an apparently famous teahouse (the Willow Tea Rooms, for anyone who cares), and from there RFS was trying to direct me to tour an art school and a preserved 19th-century tenement house. As I said above, I was feeling ill already and couldn't be bothered, so I wandered around the pedestrian shopping areas, poking my head into bookstores, until I just gave up, bought some dinner, and headed back to the hostel.

The rest you know. You'll be glad to hear that my head didn't explode after all, much to my surprise, and this is because we had barely cleared the rooftops in Glasgow before we began our descent into Belfast. And to my utter shock, the Belfast City airport is actually within reasonable distance of Belfast itself. Ryanair being convenient...who would've thought?

The Fringe Diaries

Edinburgh. Scotland. Land of bagpipes, kilts, thistles, haggis, the Picts, William Wallace, Robert the Bruce, and all manner of absurd stereotypes. And also, incidentally, of an enormous festival (several, actually) that takes over the city every summer. The original International Festival has been overshadowed by the Fringe Festival, mostly composed of theater and comedy, that grew up on the fringe (hence the name) of the original.

I was expecting something like a perpetual Cologne during Karneval: ankle-deep drifts of broken beer bottles, drunk people dressed up in inexplicable clothing staggering down the streets at midday, loud singing, and total chaos.

Hmm, well, not exactly...

Day 1: True to one particular stereotype, it was drizzling as I arrived in Edinburgh. I dumped my stuff at the hostel, checked my email (free WiFi, w00t!) and headed out to explore. Shannon had told me to look for the Walter Scott monument, which I promptly found: it's an enormous black Gothic spire in the middle of Princes Street Park. The Scottish really love this guy.

I wandered past the half-price booth and watched a Polish fire juggler's show before continuing up the hill to the Royal Mile. The center of the city is this stretch of road, actually a bit longer than a mile, defined by the castle on its volcanic-rock cliff at the top and Holyroodhouse Palace at the bottom. In between are pubs, bars, cafes, restaurants, historic buildings, theaters, houses, museums, and far too many tourist shops. Despite the overdose of national stereotypes spewing out of stores all too eager to sell you a kilt in "your family's" colors or salt and pepper shakers shaped like bagpipers (I seriously saw people buy these), a walk down the Mile is truly delightful--especially during the Festival, when parts of it are pedestrianized to allow for craft sellers' booths, flyerers, and street performers.

Just trying to take in the scenery and the feel of this place, I was nevertheless stopped by a street performance. The guy's entire routine consisted of interacting with his audience: mocking them, imitating people going by, digging through women's bags, and pretending to be in love. After his show, I wandered a bit more, but felt somewhat aimless; I didn't have anywhere to be, and in a busy city and busy festival where everyone else was going somewhere, it was a bit depressing. I ended up in a cafe run by a local church, which was offering free tea. Mm, tea. Coffee makes me confident and ready to go; tea makes me comfortable and calm. After I had drunk my tea and chatted with the staff a bit, I went back to the hostel to use my computer. I ended up in a conversation with two drunk Brits and two Canadians who were trying to play chess in the hostel bar. They were all very nice, but when they left to play pool, I headed off to bed.

Day 2: I started the day off with a "free" walking tour around the city, which took a staggering 3 1/2 hours--usually such tours are about 2 hours long. It was worth it, though, and very thorough. If you would like to know what I know about Edinburgh now, I suggest you go there and take the tour, because I'm not going to take the time to repeat what little of the tour I've retained. We talked about the castle, Greyfriar's Bobby, Harry Potter, and the Queen. It was great.

Afterward, our guide offered to take us to a pub where we could try fairly good haggis. A group of us from the tour decided to give it a shot, and I ordered the first plate of it, which all of us tried. To my utter astonishment, it was delicious. We hung out in the pub chatting for a while, then dispersed to go our separate ways; I stuck with a German girl who'd offered to show me where the university's offices were, and after getting lost a couple times, we finally found them. I got far more information about the university than I'll ever need and found out that there's a campus tour--something to file away.

I split up with the nice German girl and went to check out St. Giles' Cathedral on the Mile. The cathedral (which isn't technically a cathedral, but whatever, right?) sports some lovely stained glass and a very macho organ, but the best bit is the Thistle Chapel, where the Knights of the Thistle are inducted (or whatever they do to knights). For example, Sean Connery was knighted here. The chapel's itty bitty but very beautifully decorated, and there is a cherub playing the bagpipes. I love Scotland.

I got some dinner and headed to my first "real" show: a drama called 2020 vision, which turned out to be in the basement of a church. The play revolved around the idea of a future where everyone is microchipped and dependent upon technology for everything when a huge natural disaster strikes. It was very interestingly done and I was still packing up and thinking when the actors came back out to clean up and ask me what I thought. This is the thing that I love most about the Fringe--the opportunity, not just to see interesting shows, but to talk to the people who made them.

Day 3: I'd intended to spend the morning at the castle, but it took me too long to get going in the morning, and then the lure of the festival was too strong. I saw a free stand-up show in a somewhat dodgy bar and then headed back to the hostel to reserve tickets for the castle the next day and a show the day after. I'd intended to go to another show at 4, but I didn't have enough time, so I went to an improv musical at 5:30 instead.

If you haven't seen an improv musical, you should. The audience supplies the title of the musical, and with no opportunity to discuss anything, the actors improvise an entire hour-long musical from that single suggestion. Ours was entitled, "There's an Owl in the Shower," and started out as a story about shampoo coming alive and ended up with a ghost siccing a homicidal owl on a witch. Epic, to say the least.

The wet and drizzly weather had turned into a right downpour by the time the show let out, but I wasn't ready to go home, so I got a pizza for dinner from a takeout place and trundled off to the back room of another bar for another free comedy show by three guys I had talked to in the street earlier. It was getting dark when they finished, so I went back to the hostel to make some calls on Skype and eventually sleep.

Day 4: I finally managed to get myself going at a reasonable time and took myself up to the castle. Edinburgh Castle dominates the town's skyline and layout, even though it is (to be quite honest) not as imposing or impressive as other castles I've seen. It seems to important because it's perched on an extinct volcano, high up on sheer black cliffs on three sides, the fourth leading down the Royal Mile. Anyway, in the castle I saw the Honors of Scotland, a big-ass cannon, an interesting museum about Scots in war, and a demonstration about Scottish swordfighting, among other things. I managed to get myself some cream tea at about 4pm, after which I decided that it was high time I walk the whole length of the Royal Mile, since up till then I'd only seen about half of it.

At the bottom of the Mile I found the new Scottish Parliament building, which, while very significant politically and culturally, is kind of ridiculous to look at, all modern-art-y and covered in wooden accents. From there, some jutting hills frown down at the town, so I decided to climb up. A short, steep hike later and I had 360 degree views from Arthur's Seat: the rolling mountains in the distance, the Mile, the Castle, and all of Edinburgh looking very tiny, and the enormous expanse of water all the way to the horizon. It was gorgeous but very cold and windy, so I headed back down and began the trudge back up the Mile. Now, it was Sunday, and while this isn't usually a problem in big cities, that day every pub and restaurant that I poked my head into was either 1) shut or 2) full. Desperate for food--I hadn't eaten since tea, and that had been my whole lunch--I finally relented and got a sandwich at Subway. I watched part of a street show and then staggered back to the hostel.

Day 5: I started off in the National Museum of Scotland, which had a surprisingly interesting collection of artifacts from Scottish history, from ancient magical talismans and jewelry to harps, traditional garb, and some big-ass swords. I sadly only got through the first two floors (of six!) before I had to leave to go to another show.

This time it was more improv with a group called the Oxford Imps; they did many of the games that I've seen the Dead Parrots do at WWU, so it was quite fun, although I think the Parrots are better. (Uni loyalty and all that...) The best bit that they did was an improvised Shakespearean play about a foot doctor. After the show, I was right near the university, so I went on a walking tour around the university grounds. Although largely unhelpful in itself, the tour did give me a chance to talk to a U of Edinburgh graduate about life at the university and get some ideas with how to proceed. Accordingly, after the tour, I hunted down a linguistics professor to ask some more questions about applying. I also found Professor Pullum's office to take a picture (since he wasn't there...sadface), which was my one concession to my linguistic geekiness.

After some dinner, I had another show to go to. This was the only big-name show I'd chosen to see, mostly because it'd been recommended to be by the receptionist at the hostel, who said this guy was brilliant. It was a one-man stand-up show by a guy named Danny Bhoy, and his show was wonderfully hilarious and far too short. He's cute, too. All told, very good.

Day 6: I decided that I needed something a little different, so instead of heading straight for the Mile like usual, I went the other way and wandered into Edinburgh's Georgian New Town. The New Town is street after street of dignified, bay-windowed, grey-brown Georgian buildings, pretty but monotonous, but soon I came across a beautiful church to look around, so then I was happy. From there I headed back to the Mile and ended up seeing a half-price show called "Of People and Not Things", which, while touching, was essentially two half-hour monologues about losing the one you love being the end of the world. From there, I went on to a free show that had been recommended to me, but it ended up being so raunchy that I left early and went instead to another show that I'd been wanting to see: a showcase of comedians who were required to give a completely clean show. After what I'd just seen, that sounded very good to me.

The clean show was a big improvement, and I left feeling much better. Outside the door, I got into a conversation with a girl doing flyering for a show by Kev Orkian. We chatted for a while and she invited me to go to the show with her and a friend, so I agreed--why not? On our way to get tickets, I took some of the flyers and tried my hand at flyering, something I'd wanted to try ever since I'd started talking to flyerers on the street.

Kev's show was one of the best I'd seen. He impersonated Elton John and made jokes about being an immigrant from Armenia, complete with linguistic jokes (hooray!). I even got a hug from him after the show. I walked around for a bit with my new acquaintance, Naomi, and her friend, then I split off to get a late dinner at a pub before bed.

Day 7: Whew, last day. Through chatting with a flyerer, I ended up at an American's stand-up show that was just short of painfully bad, so after I escaped I decided to take a break and enjoy the sunshine a bit. I therefore headed to Calton Park to have a picnic lunch and enjoy the view of the city center and Arthur's Seat. Wandering back into the city, I stopped to watch a street magician and got selected as the "volunteer" assistant to help the magician in his death-defying stunts. That's never happened to me before, so I'm still smiling about it.

I'd been wanting to go to a show called "I bought Richard Hammond's underpants on eBay", which is how I found myself sitting in the dark in a musty cellar with about ten other people, singing along and playing a paper drum with a plastic spoon. The show was very cute, and I got some pin badges with the show's name on them that I shall wear proudly. I'd heard about another free show that happened to be just up the street, so I popped in just in time. The pirate-themed show, entitled "Jollyboat", was definitely the best free show I'd seen and included a Darren-Brown-type act by a kid bearing a remarkable resemblance to Ron Weasley. I thought that I should just go home after than and end on a high note, but it felt too early to go home, so I got a ginger beer at a bar and saw a final free show that was mediocre at best. I trundled back to the hostel and watched White Collar until a ridiculous time in the morning.

Day 8: I left my stuff at the hostel and headed back to the National Museum to see some of the stuff I'd missed, but I couldn't really make myself concentrate. After lingering on the Mile for a while, I finally picked up my bags on hopped on the train to Glasgow.

Now I know that was detail-less and boring, so if you're still reading, congrats and here's why. Edinburgh was something of a turbulent and weird week for me. Everyone I'd talked to about Edinburgh was rapturous about how wonderful it is, so my expectations were already sky-high. Besides that, every day I was there I was in a constant state of agonizing indecision: should I stay the full week? Could my time be better spent somewhere else? How many shows did I want to see? Whenever I was in a show, I felt guilty for spending the money to see another show, and whenever I didn't go to a show, I felt guilty for wasting time that I could've spent doing something more fun. No matter what I did, I simply couldn't get myself to relax. Add to this that two months of travel are starting to wear on me and the whole thing felt like going to a beautiful venue for a concert of Beethoven's 9th by a master musician playing the kazoo. Almost all the ingredients were right, but there was always something buzzing in the back of my head.

That said, I really did like Edinburgh. Well...at least, I've thoroughly convinced myself that I did, and there's no reason not to. First of all, the idea of city with a castle right smack in the middle always makes me smile, and Edinburgh is kind of shockingly beautiful, with the imposing buildings of the Mile, the New Town, and all the monuments and parks and such. I met many nice people there, and I do quite love Scotland. But because of everything I said in the last paragraph, I don't love it as much as I might've under other circumstances. There's something standoffish about it, something a little bit off. I can't describe it, but having visited a few different cities this summer, I have a pretty good sense of which cities I like--Dublin, London, Venice, and Salzburg, for instance--and which I don't. And Edinburgh is somewhere in the no man's land in the middle.

So, if you ask me whether I had a good time in Edinburgh, whether I liked it there, I honestly don't know. It's weird, I know. Sorry.

Anyway, by far the most interesting thing I did during my week in Edinburgh was talk to the flyerers. The top half of the Mile during the day is a guantlet of people--either the performers themselves or people paid a pittance to stand in the street for five hours--handing out flyers for shows of all kinds. I took every flyer offered to me and requested quite a few as well--for some reason, I often wasn't offered one--and ended up throwing away a stack of paper several inches tall when I left. The great thing is, though, that the flyerers are there to talk to passersby and convince them to come to the show. They have to be friendly or they risk you walking away. This means you can have some really interesting conversations with flyerers, especially paid ones, since they don't have the vested interested in getting as many people as possible to come. The performers doing their own flyering were also very interesting, too--you really just get to chat with them about their show, why they've come to the festival, where they're from, etc. I had some really nice conversation with some very interesting flyerers and ended up going to a lot of the shows when the flyerer took the time to talk to me. Since I was so interested in this, it was really cool that I got to try flyering myself with Naomi.

So, come time to apply for grad schools, I will definitely be applying in Edinburgh. It seems like a great place to live and a very good university. There're tons of the things to do and the people tend to be fantastic, as well as having a perfectly delightful dialect. In my head, Edinburgh was everything it should've been, for some unfathomable reason, it didn't capture my heart.

Keswick.

Originally written August 19th

One thing I discovered on my way to Keswick is that I'm a horrible liar. I don't have a story prepared, so if anyone asks me where I'm from, where I'm going, or what I'm doing, I automatically tell them the truth. In an age where my full name (or maybe even just first), the name of the scholarship, and the name of the country it's in is probably enough to find me in a Google search, I need to be more careful what information I give out.

This was driven home to me when I was killing a half hour waiting for a bus by exploring the ruins of a castle in Penrith. While I was sitting on a ruined wall, marvelling at the effects of the passage of time, two guys approached me, clearly foreigners. One asked to take a picture with me, and when, bemused, I assented, he sat right next to me, put his arm around me, and grinned at his friend with the camera. After the third or fourth picture, I was starting to get freaked out, and that was before he asked if I was married or had a boyfriend, and if not, if he could be my boyfriend.

I gave him my best, "Nice try but leave me alone" look, smiled tolerantly, and in my head started thinking unpleasant things like Soft spots: eyes, nose, throat, groin and How quickly can I get my walking stick unbuckled from my backpack? This was all totally unnecessary, as soon enough he got the message and backed off, although he and his friend stuck around to chat with me, inquiring repeatedly where I was going and where I was staying. I was as vague as I could be, but I simply can't come up with convincing lies under pressure.

(I should note that it was still late afternoon and we were within easy view and earshot of a major, busy road and bus stop, so at no point was I really in danger, just a bit weirded out.)

So. I've decided that I'm a university student from Canada (around the Vancouver area) named Jennifer Cumberbatch (after this guy). I'm heading from Edinburgh south towards London, and I'm going to be studying for a year in Austria. The details are sufficiently similar to the truth for me to recover easily if I slip up, and could be faked easily.

Of course, this is only the story for people that make me uncomfortable, like my two over-inquisitive new friends from Bangladesh. Oh, I forgot to mention that they invited me to go to Bangladesh, and as I made good my escape back to the bus stop, they asked for my e-mail or Facebook. I almost laughed out loud but got away without giving them, hopefully, enough information to find me.

Anyway. Penrith's only significance to me is that it's the nearest train station to Keswick, my next destination. The bus ride to Keswick was simply astounding: this is the first time I've seen anything in Britain that could be even remotely considered a mountain. Of course, in contrast to the Swiss Alps, they're basically greenish-brown, slightly pathetic foothills. But we're not in the Alps anymore, and everything has to be taken in conext; here, they're peaks, looming with a majestic, ancient, dignified air over the rolling, sheep-dotted countryside and placid lakes below. The Alps are the sort of mountains that you'd go bungee jumping with. The peaks here you'd be much more likely to invite round for tea and cakes.

In a variation on the FDR (First Day Rule, remember), I arrived around sunset and set off on a quest to find the lake. I was, after all, in the Lake District, and Derwentwater, by which Keswick nestles, is supposed to be one of the most beautiful. But I could not, for the life of me, locate it, and had to ask several people before I was pointed in the right direction. As it turns out, Keswick (pronounced KEZ-ick, by the way) sits back from the lake's edge, separated from the water by a sheep-covered hill known as Hope Park. I arrived on the hill, picking my way through a minefield of droppings and cooing soothingly at the wild-eyed sheep, just as the sun set. The lake spread out before me, flanked by those graceful green peaks, as pale gold and salmon pink light melted all over the purple-grey clouds.

I wended my way down to the shore, where the wavelets lapped and splashed calmly on the gravel, and struck up a conversation with a mother sitting on the beach as her two teenagers and their father threw rocks into the water. What began as a laugh about accidentally getting hit by a badly aimed pebble somehow turned into a wonderful conversation that only ended when darkness was falling and I realized that I hadn't eaten dinner yet. I walked back into town with this lovely family, said farewell, and ate fish and chips in the town square before trundling back to the hostel to bed.

This hostel, by the way, is the jankiest I've stayed in yet. (I'm not actually sure that "janky" is a word in common use yet. Sketchy? Spartan? Something like that.) I was given no key, and led through a warren of a long hallway to a small room filled with bunks in the back. The whole place was eerily silent, and remained so through my entire stay. Despite the slight creepiness, the place was actually very comfortable. They even had free tea and coffee out all the time, which I made good use off. I'm quickly becoming a tea addict--given the choice between tea and coffee in a coffee shop, I'll take coffee, because they know how to make it properly. But when it's tea or the powdered sand they call "instant coffee", it's tea all the way. Tea is nice.

I woke up the next morning to rain on the corrugated plastic skylights. (And you think I'm kidding...) I got a trail recommendation from the info center, a picnic from the supermarket, and then I set off into the hills. And let me tell you: anyone who claims that England is danky, dreary, and dull has clearly never been in Keswick on a sunny day. The path climbed up past babbling brooks and baleful-eyed sheep to a lookout atop a crag. From there, the azure Derwentwater, sporting tree-covered islands like emerald jewelry, spread out at my feet; to the right, crowned by a rainbow, the grey and white houses of Keswick sat swathed in rich green. Ahead, a valley led to another lake in the distance, while on all other sides rose green-brown slopes, like sentinels bathed in sunlight. I was reluctant to leave, but the wind was quite strong, and eventually my cold fingers convinced me to move again.

I continued along the top of the hills through vast patches of pale purple heather to Ashness Bridge, a cute little stone bridge over another sparkling stream, and from there down to the lakeside. I took my time on the walk back to Keswick, stopping to enjoy the view and admire the sunlight sparkling off the waves. By the time I returned to town, it was after 6pm. Now I'd promised myself afternoon tea when I got back, but at this hour, all the tea houses and cafes were closed. Hungry, tired, and with a headache coming on, I did the only sensible thing: went back to the supermarket and bought everything I needed to make afternoon tea in my hostel. And that's what I had for dinner. I made myself go to bed early, because I knew the next day--today--would be a big one.

And it is. Why? Because I'm going to Edinburgh. I've been thinking and talking about Edinburgh for, oh, almost the entire trip, and just about everyone I've mentioned it to has nothing but good things to say. I have a week booked there, but I'm not sure I'll stay the whole time; it depends on whether I'm enjoying the Fringe Festival, how much of the city I want to see, and how much time I want to spend in Ireland. Because as much as I try to ignore it, each day brings me closer to the moment that I'll have to leave the Sceptered Isle and return to Germany.

But enough of that. For the moment, I'm on my way to Edinburgh, the sun is (intermittently) shining, and all is well.