Thursday, August 2, 2012 (Paris day 1)
We got up in the morning and caught the train to Paris. It was the first uneventful travel we've had while we've been here. When we got to Paris, Catherine was at the train station and we walked like an hour to catch a hop on, hop off bus that would take us to the Eiffel Tower, which was about a 5 minute walk to the hotel. Cherisse's suitcase caused problems and made me want to punch her again, but we got there. We learned in Dublin to use the hop on, hop off bus pretty much as a public bus, because it goes most places we want to go and you get a two-day pass, so it works great.
My first impression of Paris was that it's disgusting. It smells awful, like old pee and vomit and cigarettes and a hint of decomposing body. There is trash everywhere. I mean everywhere. And there are beggars all along the streets, plus these guys (most of them are just teenagers) who swarm you and shove mini Eiffel Tower key-chains in your face and try to sell them to you. I hated Paris immediately. There are so many tall buildings so tightly crammed together you can barely see the sky, so the whole city is claustrophobic. Everyone says Paris is romantic and beautiful. Um, what? How is that romantic? I guess it's romantic if your idea of romance is trash and cigarettes and a million people and concrete, but it doesn't really do it for me. I might just be a country bumpkin, but I'll take a wheat field and a fishing hole any day. Even Cherisse, who claims to love big cities, admitted that it was gross and really not enchanting at all.
We went and saw the Eiffel Tower. It's huge, but it's really not actually that pretty. And it's a TV satellite. Again, how is that romantic? There were SO MANY people there, too. I have issues with the general public, so this did not please me. We didn't go up, because the line was literally a mile long. At least. Plus it's really expensive, and even more money to use the elevator. So we took the obligatory pictures in front of it and tried to get the whole thing in it, which is really hard because, seriously, that tower is enormous. Then we went to the cathedral of Notre Dame. It was really pretty, but Dublin kind of Gothic-ed me out. It was free admission, so we were going to go in, but the line was really long and it was almost six by then (the hop on, hop off bus stops sometime around six, so we had to be on it by then so it would take us back to the Eiffel Tower so we weren't super far away from our hotel), so we decided we'd go in the morning. We walked around close to the Eiffel Tower and our hotel for a bit and found some food, then we went back to the hotel and watched the Olympics and got on the internet. Super interesting thing to do in Paris? Maybe not to some people, but it was fun and it was nice to have some down time, because we haven't really had a lot of that on this trip.
Friday, August 3, 2012 (Paris Day 2)
We got up in the morning and went to the Louvre. Now, I hate Paris, I'll admit that freely, but I LOVE THE LOUVRE. I love museums anyway, but this was amazing. I would love to spend like two days just in the Louvre! It's huge, so there would be plenty to see. And it's only 10 euro to get in—it's free if you're a citizen of an EU member country, so Catherine got in free. We looked at French sculptures first, and they are amazing. It's astonishing to me that they are SO detailed. I mean, they have muscles. I remember learning in history class about artists sneaking to graveyards and studying cadavers so they could get the muscles right, but I could never have imagined how detailed those sculptures are. And how can they do that with a chisel and do it out of a block of stone?? I was freaking out. I still kind of am. I wanted to touch them so badly but I'm a good museum goer and refrained. They just look so life-like! We also went through this part of the museum that's all set up in the style of Napoleon's palace. His palace was so ornate, and I remember thinking I didn't blame the poor for hating the rich during the revolution. It was almost appalling the amount of overkill in that place. So much gold everywhere! It was gorgeous, but so over the top. And we saw Hammurabi's code! I'm such a nerd that I was losing my mind. The first recorded set of laws! This is a big deal to me, obviously. It was so cool. I don't know if I've ever seen real hieroglyphics. I think every school needs to go on trips to museums all the time because kids would like history a lot more if they could see what they're learning about. It's so cool to make connections to what you're learning and it helps you learn. Plus you learn more and remember what you learn when you're excited about it.
Then we went to find the Mona Lisa—it took a long time to find because the Louvre is so giant, and I wanted to stop a lot and look at everything. I just wish the info cards had English. They were in French (obviously) and some of them had Spanish translations, so I could get the gist of the Spanish, but I just wanted to know everything about every exhibit and everything I was seeing. I wanted to stop and look at all the Renaissance art we were passing. I've never seen the real paintings—obviously I've seen pictures in history and humanities classes, but it's not the same. I could actually see the brush strokes and see the canvas underneath. Maybe I'm just hugely geeky (well, okay, no maybe about that—I know that for sure and I really am not ashamed of it), but I loved it. It makes it so much more real, so much easier to think of an actual person painting that, when you can see the brush strokes. I just think it's so amazing that people can do things like that, produce art. I can't do anything like that, so I'm completely in awe. I'm running out of adjectives to describe the things I saw, but that's because they're indescribable! I think the Mona Lisa was a bit overrated, though. Everyone in the whole museum was cramming into this tiny space to see one painting, but there were so many amazing paintings. And I know it's Da vinci and he's amazing, and I think he's super cool, from what I've learned in school, but I was more impressed with the sculptures than the paintings as a whole, plus there were other paintings I thought were more impressive. Plus I had to fight a crowd of like a million people to even see the Mona Lisa, and I could barely see over people's heads. I have a memo for Europe: there are things called air conditioning and deodorant. Please, if you won't employ both, at least pick one! Everyone would be happier.
I wanted to stay in the Louvre and look at every exhibit in the museum, but Cherisse and Catherine wanted to leave. I would almost be willing to go back to Paris just for the Louvre. It was really the only thing I'd go back for. We needed to go to the train station (about an hour away from all the touristy stuff) to print Cherisse's and my train tickets for the way back to Catherine's house, because it said to allow at least 45 minutes between printing the tickets and the train ride, and the train left at 7:45 am. We certainly didn't want to do it in the morning. We stopped and got food on the way, and stopped at a Starbucks to use the wifi, and I was excited about stopping at these shops along the river Seine. All along the river, they have these booths where people sell souvenirs and postcards and whatnot. I don't care about that, but they also sell second-hand books—that's what I wanted to check out. What I didn't think about: they were all in French. Bummer. If there were any in Spanish I would've considered that, because it would take me forever but I could read it (I'm still in like chapter 6 of 1 Nephi in my libro de mormon...it's taking me soooo long), but all I saw was French. I still like the idea of the used book shops though. I just love books in general. The bridge over the Seine has all these padlocks with people's names on them, and I guess it's supposed to be lovers or something? I don't really know what the deal is, but everyone says the locks on the bridge on romantic. Huh? I don't see the romance there. The bookshops are more romantic to me. I'd much rather have a guy take me to a used bookshop than write my name on a lock and lock it on a bridge, but maybe I'm weird (okay, again, no maybe about that, but whatever).
After we got our tickets, we got back on the tour bus and rode it for about an hour, going back to the Eiffel Tower to get to our hotel. We got dinner and went back to the hotel and watched Friends while we waited for it to get dark because Cherisse really wanted to see the Eiffel Tower lit up. You can tell we weren't in love with Paris, because we did a lot of TV watching. In Dublin we didn't stop at all, because we loved it. Paris? Meh. The Louvre was great and the bookshops were great, but I feel no pull to ever go back to Paris. I'm sure I'd love the countryside of France though. I pretty much love the countryside anywhere. When it was dark, we went out to the Eiffel Tower. As unimpressed as I was with the Eiffel Tower and Paris as a whole, I have to admit the Eiffel Tower was pretty all lit up. In the day, it's a brownish meta color, but all lit up at night it's gold. The beauty was ruined by all the people though—a million and a half people, and I'd say 80% of them were drunk or on their way there. They even managed to make the park at the foot of the Eiffel Tower unenjoyable (who knew a park could be unenjoyable?) by filling up every inch of it with either people or trash. So gross. And instead of little Eiffel Towers, the street kids were now shoving bottles of champagne, wine, and beer in my face. They swarm at you and like 4 of them will come at you at once. Besides being annoying, this is not a good business strategy. I felt like informing them they'd sell more if they spread out, but I don't think they really speak English. One guy saw us and said, “Lady Gaga, bling bling bling!” I'm not sure if he was calling me Lady Gaga or just saying whatever he associated with America, but I was not a fan either way. Anyway, the Eiffel Tower was really pretty but the people were not, and we hurry scurried out of there because people were drunk and getting rowdy and we don't even like crowds like that in our own country. We went back to the hotel and gathered up our stuff so the morning would be less hectic. We decided to leave by 6:30 so we'd have time to do stuff at the train station before the train left—we knew Cherisse and I would have to fill out immigration cards, since we're foreigners. We took a taxi to avoid trying to walk and catch buses and everything. It was hassle-free, but the taxi cost 10 cents per minute! I don't know if that's normal, but it sure seemed like a lot. But oh well, we got there.
It's good we got to the train station really early, because it turns out you have to go through security to get on a train. Who knew? We didn't have to from Germany to France, but apparently from France to London they're more antsy. It wasn't as strict as airport security, so it wasn't that bad, but the UK border control agent was grilling me and seemed pretty suspicious. I guess my 4'10” body, glasses, and 12-year-old boy outfit made him think I was a terrorist or something. Whatever, dude. Maybe he's just hyper-vigilant or maybe his shoes are too tight. Either way, I passed the test, he stamped my passport, and I'm now on a train to London, where I will catch another train to Doncaster, where we will walk to Catherine's house, where we will...I don't know what. Next week we're doing two days in Scotland and two days in London, but I don't know what we're doing Monday and Tuesday. We really want to go to Wales, but it might not be feasible. Catherine's dad got his car stolen Monday, so he obviously can't drive us, plus it's far. We might take a train, but that's pretty expensive, so we're not sure. I hope we do get to go, because I've always wanted to go to Wales. It's our ancestry! Plus we don't want to leave out Wales when we've hit the other three Celtic countries. But we'll see. Catherine was saying maybe we'd go to Cadbury World on Tuesday, which would be really cool—hello, real life Willy Wonka??--but that was before her dad's car got stolen, so...now we don't know. I'm sure we'll find plenty of fun things to do. Scotland is going to be awesome, and we're going to stand in line in London and hopefully get into the Olympics! We don't even care for what sport. I don't even care if we end up watching freaking table tennis—it's the Olympics! We're going to make USA shirts, because we didn't bring any and we can't go to the Olympics without proclaiming our patriotism!
Saturday, August 4, 2012
Monday, July 30, 2012 (Frankfurt)
The first problem was Cherisse decided to bring her entire suitcase for the Frankfurt/Paris trip. She couldn't fit enough clothes in her backpack for the whole week (we did Germany Monday through Thursday and Paris Thursday to Saturday), so she brought everything she brought to England on the plane with us to Frankfurt. This irritated me a whole lot, because then we had to stand in line for her to check her luggage when we could've just gone with carry-on. Plus her suitcase weighs thirty pounds and we had to walk to the train station from Catherine's in the morning, because we took a train to London and then flew out of Heathrow. It was kind of far, like probably a fifteen minute walk, and lugging that thing was not easy. Then, when we got to Frankfurt, we had no idea how to get to our hotel and oh yeah, we don't speak German. The directions she had said it was a walkable distance from the airport, but we couldn't even figure out how to really get out of the airport, and we were walking around, dragging her suitcase, for like twenty minutes. She kept wanting to split up, which I kept saying was the stupidest idea on Earth, and we almost had a fistfight in the middle of the street. There was much screaming (both of us), much frustration (both of us), teary eyes (her), and some cursing (me). Finally, we went back in the airport and asked the info desk, who pointed us to a free shuttle from the airport to our hotel. Once we got to the shuttle, the ride was literally a minute. We probably actually could've walked if we could've found it. We were not speaking to each other at this point.
We got up to our room and found it was super super nice, which was a big plus. It's not like we were staying in dumps before—the hotel in Dublin was really nice, too, minus the no wi-fi in the room thing—but this one was probably one of the nicest hotels I've ever stayed in, and it was super cheap. We sort of settled in, and I wrote a long, fuming Facebook message to Mom complaining about Cherisse and telling Mom she'd probably only get one daughter back from this trip. I just wanted to scream and cry and go home. I didn't even want to go to Germany in the first place and it was a total disaster. I didn't even really want to go on the trip as a whole, but Mom and Dad didn't want Cherisse to go alone, and they were paying, and it's the kind of trip everyone says is “once in a lifetime” and “a great experience” and I sort of felt obligated to go, so I was super frustrated that I was so miserable. I loved Dublin, and we only got to spend two days there, and we didn't even get to leave the city and see the pretty part of Ireland, so I was mad that we had to go to stupid Germany instead of spending more time in Ireland.
We had calmed down somewhat by this time and needed to get something to eat, so we decided to venture into Frankfurt. The boy at the reception bar thing didn't speak great English, but his broken English and pantomiming told us how to get to the bus stop. We got to the bus stop and realized we had no idea which way town was and no way how to find out because everything was in German. Remember how we don't speak German? Cue more annoyance and frustration. My thoughts were sort of like: THIS IS STUPID. WHY AM I HERE? I DON'T SPEAK THIS EFFING LANGUAGE. I HATE THIS COUNTRY. I may have been overreacting just a tad. We ended up just getting on the first bus that came and riding it until we saw stuff that looked like places to eat. That's probably not the most street-smart way to do things, but we didn't really have much choice. We tried asking the bus driver where we were going, but he either didn't speak English or just didn't want to talk to us, and he charged us 4 euro each for the ticket. We were annoyed because the bus tickets in Dublin were only 2, so we didn't exactly love Germany at that point.
We got off the bus and wandered down the street. There were no food places. We were starting to get very frustrated and annoyed again, but we finally found a square thing with a bunch of shops. But then we couldn't figure out what people were selling because of the whole WE DON'T SPEAK GERMAN thing. I don't remember super clearly, but I'm pretty sure I angrily screamed that at Cherisse at least once every five minutes. We found a Chinese guy who was selling hot dogs (yeah, I don't know either) and bubble tea and both got hot dogs. Cherisse also ordered bubble tea, but when the guy was asking her what kind she wanted, we discovered there was actual tea in this bubble tea, unlike what we were used to. But we couldn't really understand what he was saying (his broken English was split between a German accent and a Chinese accent...it was weird) and ended up just getting the tea anyway, even though we had no idea what was in it. Sorry, word of wisdom. We didn't know what to do! It tasted good, anyway, so hopefully it wasn't too horrible for our bodies. The hot dogs were pretty good—Renae had told me they put mayonnaise on their hot dogs, so I was prepared for that, but it turned out to taste pretty good. Then we went to this organic, all-natural grocery store across the street (we're pretty sure it was organic, anyway...WE DON'T SPEAK GERMAN. But I'm pretty good at spotting hippie food, since I eat that stuff now.) and bought some plums for breakfast in the morning. Then we traversed our way back to the hotel, which included finding a bus stop that said exactly what our earlier ticket said, asking the bus driver if he was going to the airport (he stared blankly for a minute and then nodded yes), getting off at the airport—he literally went to the terminal—and taking the shuttle back to the hotel. While we were waiting for the shuttle, we met a girl from Canada and a girl from Boston who were both staying at our hotel. We talked to them for like five minutes, and they were normal-ish, and Cherisse wanted to give them our room number. Insert me rolling my eyes and sighing and shaking my head. We did not give them our room number. We watched some Olympics, but the commentary was in German, and the only thing on was fencing and weight-lifting, so we weren't super interested and had no idea what was going on.
Tuesday, July 31, 2012 (Germany day 2)
We got up in the morning and found our shuttle to Heidelberg with only one minor mishap (we were standing in the wrong spot, but we got to the right spot with plenty of time). But then the shuttle dropped us off at some random hotel in Heidelberg, and we didn't know where we were, and Cherisse's friend Luisa (with whom we were staying), doesn't actually live in Heidelberg, so she didn't know where we were or how to get to us, and we ended up wandering down the street, again, dragging Cherisse's heavy suitcase, again, and yelling at each other a bunch, again. But eventually we found Luisa (more like she found us) and found some lockers in the train station to lock up Cherisse's suitcase, since Luisa's house is an hour train ride and we couldn't exactly drop it off and come back, and went into the heart of Heidelberg.
It's a pretty big tourist spot, so there were tons of shops. We looked at stuff for a little while and then decided to go see this castle at the top of a hill. Literally at the top...and the hill was steep. But luckily it was just a hill and it only took like five minutes to get up there, so it was no big deal. We had to pay like 5 euro to get in, which annoyed me, because it wasn't even a whole castle—it was the ruins of a castle. But whatever. It was cool, but there were no info signs anyway, which was kind of a bummer. I like when they tell me what stuff was used for and stuff like that. I'm a nerd.
After the castle, we shopped for what felt like forever but probably wasn't. I'm not a big shopping person, so anything longer than an hour feels like forever to me. The only shop I chose to go into and got excited about was a running store, where I drooled over the shoes and almost legitimately blew 85 euro for a pair of new shoes. They were pretty fancy, so 85 euro was a good deal! Plus they were yellow—how could I not want them?? But we still had the whole Germany trip, plus Paris, and then all the time left in England and Scotland. And they were Nike—I've never run in Nike, but I've heard they're not great for distance running. They didn't look like they had great shock absorption, and I wasn't so sure they were wide enough for my super fat feet. So I decided to be practical and sadly put them down and left the store. I really only wanted them because they were yellow anyway.
We went back to Luisa's and went to the grocery store, where we stocked up on German chocolate. We spent the night in and watched some slightly strange Alan Rickman movie, because Cherisse is obsessed with him. I fell asleep. We had planned to go to some lake and leave at like 8.
Wednesday, August 1, 2012 (Germany day 3)
Well, we didn't get up until 8. And the lake was 3 hours away. So we decided to go on a hike and see another castle. Honestly, the appeal of castles has pretty much completely worn off for me. (We're stopping at the Harry Potter castle on our way to Scotland, but I'm pretty sure I'll still be excited for that. And we might go to the Downton Abbey castle. I'm down with that, too.) But the hike was awesome. It felt so good to be out of the city! I am not a city person at all, and that's all we've been doing—big cities. So being up in the mountains and smelling the dirt and the forest and feeling the sun and breathing fresh air with no cigarette smoke in it was so wonderful. And it felt nice to stretch my legs. We've done a lot of walking, but just city walking. This was hiking, and it felt so nice, even though I got super super sweaty. It took about an hour and a half to get up to the castle and another hour and a half down. Plus it was an hour bus ride both ways, and we spent time up at the castle, so the excursion took pretty much all day. We got back and ate dinner and cleaned up and then went to a pub for karaoke. I'd gotten used to the English and Irish version of a pub—more of a restaurant, but obviously with alcohol. But this was a bar. I've been in bars a good deal this summer, going to Mark's shows, but they're not exactly my favorite places.
This was super fun, though. Cherisse and I sang “Say My Name” by Destiny's Child and realized while we were up there that we really only know the chorus. Awkward. They had the words, obviously, but the verses have sort of awkward rhythm and we felt silly. It's probably less embarrassing when you're drunk. Luisa's friends were all really nice and her boyfriend and his friend sang like 50 songs. It was kind of hilarious. Cherisse sang another song with one of Luisa's friends, and they ended up getting third place—it turned out to be a competition—and Luisa's boyfriend and his friend won. The prizes were free shots, so Cherisse just gave hers to someone else. We stayed for like three hours. It was really fun, but I wish I would've taken my contacts out or something, because they were so dry I wanted to die. And after 11, they had to shut the doors and windows because of a noise ordinance, so it was SWELTERING. Everyone was sweating and jeez, people do not believe in deodorant. I sure wish they did.
The first problem was Cherisse decided to bring her entire suitcase for the Frankfurt/Paris trip. She couldn't fit enough clothes in her backpack for the whole week (we did Germany Monday through Thursday and Paris Thursday to Saturday), so she brought everything she brought to England on the plane with us to Frankfurt. This irritated me a whole lot, because then we had to stand in line for her to check her luggage when we could've just gone with carry-on. Plus her suitcase weighs thirty pounds and we had to walk to the train station from Catherine's in the morning, because we took a train to London and then flew out of Heathrow. It was kind of far, like probably a fifteen minute walk, and lugging that thing was not easy. Then, when we got to Frankfurt, we had no idea how to get to our hotel and oh yeah, we don't speak German. The directions she had said it was a walkable distance from the airport, but we couldn't even figure out how to really get out of the airport, and we were walking around, dragging her suitcase, for like twenty minutes. She kept wanting to split up, which I kept saying was the stupidest idea on Earth, and we almost had a fistfight in the middle of the street. There was much screaming (both of us), much frustration (both of us), teary eyes (her), and some cursing (me). Finally, we went back in the airport and asked the info desk, who pointed us to a free shuttle from the airport to our hotel. Once we got to the shuttle, the ride was literally a minute. We probably actually could've walked if we could've found it. We were not speaking to each other at this point.
We got up to our room and found it was super super nice, which was a big plus. It's not like we were staying in dumps before—the hotel in Dublin was really nice, too, minus the no wi-fi in the room thing—but this one was probably one of the nicest hotels I've ever stayed in, and it was super cheap. We sort of settled in, and I wrote a long, fuming Facebook message to Mom complaining about Cherisse and telling Mom she'd probably only get one daughter back from this trip. I just wanted to scream and cry and go home. I didn't even want to go to Germany in the first place and it was a total disaster. I didn't even really want to go on the trip as a whole, but Mom and Dad didn't want Cherisse to go alone, and they were paying, and it's the kind of trip everyone says is “once in a lifetime” and “a great experience” and I sort of felt obligated to go, so I was super frustrated that I was so miserable. I loved Dublin, and we only got to spend two days there, and we didn't even get to leave the city and see the pretty part of Ireland, so I was mad that we had to go to stupid Germany instead of spending more time in Ireland.
We had calmed down somewhat by this time and needed to get something to eat, so we decided to venture into Frankfurt. The boy at the reception bar thing didn't speak great English, but his broken English and pantomiming told us how to get to the bus stop. We got to the bus stop and realized we had no idea which way town was and no way how to find out because everything was in German. Remember how we don't speak German? Cue more annoyance and frustration. My thoughts were sort of like: THIS IS STUPID. WHY AM I HERE? I DON'T SPEAK THIS EFFING LANGUAGE. I HATE THIS COUNTRY. I may have been overreacting just a tad. We ended up just getting on the first bus that came and riding it until we saw stuff that looked like places to eat. That's probably not the most street-smart way to do things, but we didn't really have much choice. We tried asking the bus driver where we were going, but he either didn't speak English or just didn't want to talk to us, and he charged us 4 euro each for the ticket. We were annoyed because the bus tickets in Dublin were only 2, so we didn't exactly love Germany at that point.
We got off the bus and wandered down the street. There were no food places. We were starting to get very frustrated and annoyed again, but we finally found a square thing with a bunch of shops. But then we couldn't figure out what people were selling because of the whole WE DON'T SPEAK GERMAN thing. I don't remember super clearly, but I'm pretty sure I angrily screamed that at Cherisse at least once every five minutes. We found a Chinese guy who was selling hot dogs (yeah, I don't know either) and bubble tea and both got hot dogs. Cherisse also ordered bubble tea, but when the guy was asking her what kind she wanted, we discovered there was actual tea in this bubble tea, unlike what we were used to. But we couldn't really understand what he was saying (his broken English was split between a German accent and a Chinese accent...it was weird) and ended up just getting the tea anyway, even though we had no idea what was in it. Sorry, word of wisdom. We didn't know what to do! It tasted good, anyway, so hopefully it wasn't too horrible for our bodies. The hot dogs were pretty good—Renae had told me they put mayonnaise on their hot dogs, so I was prepared for that, but it turned out to taste pretty good. Then we went to this organic, all-natural grocery store across the street (we're pretty sure it was organic, anyway...WE DON'T SPEAK GERMAN. But I'm pretty good at spotting hippie food, since I eat that stuff now.) and bought some plums for breakfast in the morning. Then we traversed our way back to the hotel, which included finding a bus stop that said exactly what our earlier ticket said, asking the bus driver if he was going to the airport (he stared blankly for a minute and then nodded yes), getting off at the airport—he literally went to the terminal—and taking the shuttle back to the hotel. While we were waiting for the shuttle, we met a girl from Canada and a girl from Boston who were both staying at our hotel. We talked to them for like five minutes, and they were normal-ish, and Cherisse wanted to give them our room number. Insert me rolling my eyes and sighing and shaking my head. We did not give them our room number. We watched some Olympics, but the commentary was in German, and the only thing on was fencing and weight-lifting, so we weren't super interested and had no idea what was going on.
Tuesday, July 31, 2012 (Germany day 2)
We got up in the morning and found our shuttle to Heidelberg with only one minor mishap (we were standing in the wrong spot, but we got to the right spot with plenty of time). But then the shuttle dropped us off at some random hotel in Heidelberg, and we didn't know where we were, and Cherisse's friend Luisa (with whom we were staying), doesn't actually live in Heidelberg, so she didn't know where we were or how to get to us, and we ended up wandering down the street, again, dragging Cherisse's heavy suitcase, again, and yelling at each other a bunch, again. But eventually we found Luisa (more like she found us) and found some lockers in the train station to lock up Cherisse's suitcase, since Luisa's house is an hour train ride and we couldn't exactly drop it off and come back, and went into the heart of Heidelberg.
It's a pretty big tourist spot, so there were tons of shops. We looked at stuff for a little while and then decided to go see this castle at the top of a hill. Literally at the top...and the hill was steep. But luckily it was just a hill and it only took like five minutes to get up there, so it was no big deal. We had to pay like 5 euro to get in, which annoyed me, because it wasn't even a whole castle—it was the ruins of a castle. But whatever. It was cool, but there were no info signs anyway, which was kind of a bummer. I like when they tell me what stuff was used for and stuff like that. I'm a nerd.
After the castle, we shopped for what felt like forever but probably wasn't. I'm not a big shopping person, so anything longer than an hour feels like forever to me. The only shop I chose to go into and got excited about was a running store, where I drooled over the shoes and almost legitimately blew 85 euro for a pair of new shoes. They were pretty fancy, so 85 euro was a good deal! Plus they were yellow—how could I not want them?? But we still had the whole Germany trip, plus Paris, and then all the time left in England and Scotland. And they were Nike—I've never run in Nike, but I've heard they're not great for distance running. They didn't look like they had great shock absorption, and I wasn't so sure they were wide enough for my super fat feet. So I decided to be practical and sadly put them down and left the store. I really only wanted them because they were yellow anyway.
We went back to Luisa's and went to the grocery store, where we stocked up on German chocolate. We spent the night in and watched some slightly strange Alan Rickman movie, because Cherisse is obsessed with him. I fell asleep. We had planned to go to some lake and leave at like 8.
Wednesday, August 1, 2012 (Germany day 3)
Well, we didn't get up until 8. And the lake was 3 hours away. So we decided to go on a hike and see another castle. Honestly, the appeal of castles has pretty much completely worn off for me. (We're stopping at the Harry Potter castle on our way to Scotland, but I'm pretty sure I'll still be excited for that. And we might go to the Downton Abbey castle. I'm down with that, too.) But the hike was awesome. It felt so good to be out of the city! I am not a city person at all, and that's all we've been doing—big cities. So being up in the mountains and smelling the dirt and the forest and feeling the sun and breathing fresh air with no cigarette smoke in it was so wonderful. And it felt nice to stretch my legs. We've done a lot of walking, but just city walking. This was hiking, and it felt so nice, even though I got super super sweaty. It took about an hour and a half to get up to the castle and another hour and a half down. Plus it was an hour bus ride both ways, and we spent time up at the castle, so the excursion took pretty much all day. We got back and ate dinner and cleaned up and then went to a pub for karaoke. I'd gotten used to the English and Irish version of a pub—more of a restaurant, but obviously with alcohol. But this was a bar. I've been in bars a good deal this summer, going to Mark's shows, but they're not exactly my favorite places.
This was super fun, though. Cherisse and I sang “Say My Name” by Destiny's Child and realized while we were up there that we really only know the chorus. Awkward. They had the words, obviously, but the verses have sort of awkward rhythm and we felt silly. It's probably less embarrassing when you're drunk. Luisa's friends were all really nice and her boyfriend and his friend sang like 50 songs. It was kind of hilarious. Cherisse sang another song with one of Luisa's friends, and they ended up getting third place—it turned out to be a competition—and Luisa's boyfriend and his friend won. The prizes were free shots, so Cherisse just gave hers to someone else. We stayed for like three hours. It was really fun, but I wish I would've taken my contacts out or something, because they were so dry I wanted to die. And after 11, they had to shut the doors and windows because of a noise ordinance, so it was SWELTERING. Everyone was sweating and jeez, people do not believe in deodorant. I sure wish they did.
Ireland
Saturday, July 28, 2012 (Ireland day 1)
We got up at 3 this morning to catch a taxi at 4 to the Manchester airport for our flight to Dublin. I didn’t sleep very well last night because I was worried about getting up on time, so I slept for the whole cab ride. I really don’t remember anything except I was slightly worried to fall asleep. The dude could totally have killed us without a second thought or anyone noticing. But I couldn’t stay awake. We got to the airport with like 2 hours until our flight, so we went through security (we got to keep our shoes on!) and everything and wandered around shops. I fell asleep on the plane, too. The plane ride was only like 45 minutes or something. So then we were in Ireland! We landed in Dublin but then we realized...we weren’t REALLY in Dublin. We were outside of the heart of Dublin. So we thought we’d walk into town. After about ten minutes, we realized the sidewalk ended and we couldn’t. So we went back to the airport and a nice Irishman helped us figure out which bus to take. We paid 12 euro for a ticket into Dublin city center with an open return included, which was great because we wouldn’t have to pay for a ticket back and we’d have a for sure ride back to the airport. On the bus, we realized how impossible it would have been to walk to Dublin. A. There was a “no pedestrians” sign and B. it took almost 40 minutes driving, so walking? Yeah, not so much.
We got into Dublin and decided to get some breakfast. By then it was about 10:30 I think. We found a store that was advertising a 4-item breakfast for only 3.95. Sounded great. We went in and it was like a swanky cafeteria, basically. So we went through the line and the cafeteria lady asked what I wanted. All I saw was unidentifiable fried stuff and lots of sausage and bacon. But there were little half Roma tomatoes with seasonings on them and beans, so I got that. She seemed confused that I didn’t want more but I said no. Then I grabbed an apple Danish and there was a fruit salad, so I loaded up a plate. 4 items. I get to the cash register and the girl tells me the fruit salad is 3.50. What? I only had 4 items. Nope. The 4 items applied to the fried stuff only. I paid 8 euro for one tiny tomato half, a scoop of beans, a Danish, and a little plate of fruit salad. This did not please me.
We wandered around O’Connell Street (the main central street) for a while, looking at shops and statues and stuff. We went into a touristy store and spent a long time looking around. We were all super tired from getting up super early and wandering around forever, but we couldn’t check into our hotel until 2. We had bought tickets for this hop on, hop off bus tour, so we rode that around for a while. We checked a map and thought if we got off on one of the stops, we could walk to our hotel from there. The tour was cool. The architecture in Dublin is amazing! A lot of stone buildings and cool colored doors. And obviously there’s a ton of history. But we were so so tired and freezing because it kept raining and the wind was blowing and the bus was a double-decker and we were on the top deck, which was open, so we were soaked. So we got to the stop we thought would take us to our hotel and started to get off. Luckily Catherine asked how to get to our hotel from there, because the bus driver looked at us like we were nuts and told us we were miles away. We had to get back on the bus, get off at a different stop, and take a regular city bus to our hotel. What? Not cool. So we did, but figuring out which bus to take was confusing and we were supposed to have exact change and we didn’t know what was going on. Eventually we found the 66 bus we needed and struggled through finding exact change for the fare. But then we realized we didn’t know which stop we needed to get off at. Our tickets said a street, not a stop number, but then none of the streets or the stops had street names anywhere. Apparently Dublin doesn’t believe in street signs. So we rode for a while and then a sign said we were heading toward Galway, which is a whole different city, so we got sort of freaked out. We went down and asked the bus driver if we needed to get off and he gave us this sort of exasperated look that said we were idiots and told us it was the next stop. Once we got off, he pointed in the general direction of our hotel, but apparently we were trying to go the wrong way or a dangerous way or something, because he stopped the bus again and pointed out the pedestrian path for us. Supes awk.
We finally saw our hotel, but there was a big wall around it so we had to keep walking to find the opening. Walking. Walking. Walking. Where’s the freaking opening?? We had to walk into this shopping center and then walk around to get to the hotel. By this time we were all tired and hungry and frustrated and annoyed. We finally got into the hotel. We got checked in and they handed us three room keys. We took the elevator to the first floor, because apparently Dublin also doesn’t believe in making your room number (343) match up with the floor. Floor one for a room in the three hundreds? Okay. We took a two hour nap and then tried to figure out what to do. Cherisse had booked us tickets to this traditional Irish show thing in Dublin. I really didn’t want to try navigating the bus again and going to some stupid party thing. I was tired and cranky. But she (well, actually, Mom) had already paid for it. So we paid another 2.15 for the bus and the nice bus driver helped us figure out where to go and even let us only pay 2 euro each because we didn’t have the right change. We found the exact pub it was at and had like two hours until it stated, so we found this convenience store thing and bought food. Cherisse and Catherine bought sandwiches, but they all had meat in them, so I bought a pastry and an apple. The pastry was called a flap-jack, but it was nothing like a pancake. It was oaty and full of different fruit and SO GOOD. The apple cost 50 cents. Seriously! For one apple. Is fruit hard to come by in Dublin or something? I don’t know what the deal is with their fruit being so expensive. But we were all much more cheerful with full tummies and it was a nice night and it wasn’t raining (at that exact moment, anyway). We wandered around and then went to the show.
I was grumpy about going to the show, but it was awesome! Super cool music and the guys were funny and talented and it was tons of fun. One of the guys were really cute, too. He played the illin pipe, which sort of looks like a tiny bagpipe but is pretty different. It’s the really distinctive sound in Irish music. You don’t breathe into it; you pump it with your elbow. And you play this pipe thing with your fingers but you have to use the palm of your hand to play chords on these other keys, all at the same time. It seemed crazy hard. We bought the CD of the band because they were so cool. And the Irish songs were pretty funny. Then we successfully caught our bus back to the hotel and were pretty proud of ourselves. We were sitting in the lobby using the wifi (our hotel didn’t have wifi in the rooms) and trying to figure out what to do for Sunday, whether we were going to church or what, and we were getting grouchy again. There was no way to figure out how to get to church because we didn’t know street names or anything. Cherisse wanted to go see the Cliffs of Moher, but it’s like 4 hours away and would’ve cost like 60 euro just for the way there. Mark said his group was going to Blarney Castle, so we were thinking of meeting up with them, but we weren’t sure how we’d do that.
While we were sitting there trying to decide what to do, this guy who was sitting by us also using the wifi asked if we wanted tickets for the red hop on, hop off tour. We'd gotten tickets for the green one and the red one was definitely better. It went to more places and a bus came right to our hotel at 10 every morning (or so he told us). He said it was for two days but he and his family were heading to London and couldn't use the tickets for the next day and asked if we wanted theirs. We said that would be great and he asked what our room number was so he could leave them at the front desk for us in the morning. That sort of sketched us out a little, because we didn't want to tell him our room number, so Cherisse just told him our reservation was under Gore and we hoped he wouldn't find us and kill us. So we decided to stay in Dublin and go along on the tour. We set alarms so we could be up early enough to check out and catch the red bus at 10 from the hotel and figured if he didn't actually leave the tickets we could just take the city bus and keep doing our green one. I kept tossing and turning because I was worried that guy was going to break into our room or something.
Sunday, July 29, 2012 (Ireland day 2)
Catherine woke us up and said, “It's 9:00.” None of us had woken up early like we'd planned. I hurried and took a shower and we rushed to get dressed and out the door. We made it to the lobby by 9:40 and checked out and went outside to find the bus. No bus. We stood around for a little while and then went back into the lobby and asked one of the desk clerks. The bus actually left at 9:40, not 10. The guy was wrong. That sucked, so we still had to pay our 2 euro for the city bus, but it was super nice of him to give us the tickets and the red tour was a lot better. I am 90% sure that the recorded narration on our tour was Allen Leech. I've done a lot of listening to his voice and he's from Dublin so I'm pretty sure it was him. I wish it would've been a live guided tour and he was the guide. We decided to just ride it all the way through before getting off anywhere, because we hadn't been all the way through yet. We saw more cool architecture and places of interest. Phoenix Park looked really cool. It's huge—twice the size of Central Park, according to Allen Leech. And we passed the American embassy and the home of the Irish president (also a white house...I think they even call it the White House). They don't plant any of the trees or flowers; they just let them grow naturally, except in one place. And the entrance has no gates. Apparently, legend has it that in the 30s there was a big Eucharistic conference going on at the park and the people in charge took the gates off to accommodate all the crowds, but then they did such a good job storing them they never found the gates again. And the first Irish president, who established the park, did it because he was a politician and a park ranger. Pretty cool. It got to the end of the tour and we stayed on for it to go back around so we could visit some of the stops we wanted to go to.
We went to Trinity College-Dublin, which is a big, old college. The grounds were super pretty and there were lots of statues and stones and everything that seems to be typical Dublin architecture. And (as Allen Leech told me on the bus), one of the provosts of the college (whatever a provost is), some guy named Lecky, had prophetic words: he said over his dead body would women be admitted to degree, and he died in 1903—the same year women were admitted to Trinity College. It sounds way cooler in an Irish accent. Allen Leech went to Trinity College, so I was excited about that. And he studied theater, which is in the same building as social sciences. We would have been in the same building if we had gone to school together! Cool. We bought some snacks from a vending machine. For some reason all the chips were cheese and onion flavored. We tried it—not my favorite. I bought a Mars Bar, but it's different than the Mars Bars we used to have in the States. It's basically just a Milky Way.
After Trinity College, we went to Dublin Castle. We thought it was free (Allen Leech said we could wander around the grounds for free!), and we were pretty excited about that because we didn't want to blow any more money. But then when we got in there, we found out that you can't go inside unless you pay for a guided tour. Lame. We didn't want to pay, so we just looked around at the cool architecture. We also got to go into a church on the grounds that super ornate and gorgeous. You couldn’t go into the actual church part, but you could look into the entryway. Really, really pretty. We walked up the street to Christ’s Church Cathedral, but it’s another one that cost money so we just looked around. As pretty as it was, I won’t lie, it wasn’t that different from everything else.
About that time, it started raining. Now, here's something we learned about Dublin: it rains on a schedule. It's like every half hour it will rain for ten minutes. Usually it's just sort of a drizzle, and all the buildings have little overhangs you can stand over until it stops. But this was not the light drizzle we'd gotten used to. It started pouring. We stood under some trees for a little while, because we weren't close to any buildings to stand under, but it wasn't super effective. St. Patrick's Cathedral was up ahead, and we wanted to go there anyway, so we booked it over. But there was a guy outside saying it was closed for about two hours because they were having services. Uuugh. Some guy in front of us went in, and it occurred to me we could probably go see the service, so I asked and he said yes, as long as we stayed for the whole thing. Done. So we went in and immediately saw one of the most impressive medieval-y looking churches I've ever seen. It was crazy—all stone bricks and stained glass and candles. It looked like a movie. It wasn't mass; it was something called evensong, where they just sing songs and read passages from the Bible. I was kinda bummed, because I've never seen Catholic mass and I really want to, but the evensong was cool. They handed us programs that told us when to sit and when to stand and when we should kneel. The pews had little cushioned bench things in front for when you kneel. I was surprised that the priest guy didn't actually preach...the program called it “lesson one” and “lesson two”, but all he did was read a few verses from the Bible and then the choir got back to singing.
After the service, we wandered around the cathedral. It was pretty awesome. They had a lot of history in there. There were memorials for people who had died and a bunch of memorials to different groups of soldiers. There was also this huge wooden door with a big hole in the middle and a plaque explaining that two families had been fighting (like the Hatfields and McCoys, I guess) and one of the families went to fight the other family, who was hiding behind their giant door. A guy in the first family realized that the bloodshed was pointless and wanted to declare a truce, but obviously the other family didn't trust him and wouldn't open the door, so he hacked a hole in the door and put his arm through as a show of good faith. It said that explains the expression “to chance your arm”, meaning to take a risk. I've never heard that expression, so it must be Irish or something. They also had the place where you could light candles, like I've always seen on movies (Rudy was the first one to come to mind), so I lit a candle. There was a sign saying something about the welfare of the homeless, so I lit a candle for the homeless. I'm a fan of social services and such.
We kind of spent too long in the cathedral and the gift shop, so then we had to hustle back to where we were going to catch our shuttle to the airport. It was raining again, of course, but this time it wasn't stopping. We got kind of lost wandering around, trying to find O'Connell Street. I don't know what Europe's problem is, but they're not huge fans of street signs. So we were wandering wandering wandering, getting irritated because we were hungry and tired and lost and trying to hurry so we wouldn't miss the shuttle because we (obviously) needed to get to the airport. We never actually made our way to O'Connell Street, but we found a different stop for the airport shuttle, and there was a sandwich place right next to it, so we got food and waited at the stop. Eating definitely eased the grumpiness and we got on the shuttle and everything was fine. I fell asleep on the shuttle (of course...I fell asleep on any ride that was longer than twenty minutes if I didn't have to worry about getting off at the right stop) and when we got to the airport, I made quite the commotion getting off. I sort of fell out of my seat, and then I didn't notice the step to get into the aisle, so I tripped going down that, and then I accidentally hit someone with my bag, and then I tripped again going down the stairs to get off the bus. I left Dublin with a bang, that's for sure. There's really nothing to report about the plane ride or the taxi ride back to Catherine's, because I was asleep for both.
We got back to Catherine's at like 11, unpacked our stuff, and repacked for Germany in the morning, then went to sleep. Traveling is tiring. I've been exhausted this whole trip. Part of it stems from not sleeping well, because I haven't been running. Not running has just thrown everything off for me. My emotions are a lot harder for me to control because I don't have running to mellow me out. I get grumpier way easier and I can't control my temper as well. This has caused a lot of friction between Cherisse and I when we're traveling, because security and planes and bus rides are already sort of stressful, so me being impatient and grumpy doesn't help. I honestly almost killed her in Frankfurt.
We got up at 3 this morning to catch a taxi at 4 to the Manchester airport for our flight to Dublin. I didn’t sleep very well last night because I was worried about getting up on time, so I slept for the whole cab ride. I really don’t remember anything except I was slightly worried to fall asleep. The dude could totally have killed us without a second thought or anyone noticing. But I couldn’t stay awake. We got to the airport with like 2 hours until our flight, so we went through security (we got to keep our shoes on!) and everything and wandered around shops. I fell asleep on the plane, too. The plane ride was only like 45 minutes or something. So then we were in Ireland! We landed in Dublin but then we realized...we weren’t REALLY in Dublin. We were outside of the heart of Dublin. So we thought we’d walk into town. After about ten minutes, we realized the sidewalk ended and we couldn’t. So we went back to the airport and a nice Irishman helped us figure out which bus to take. We paid 12 euro for a ticket into Dublin city center with an open return included, which was great because we wouldn’t have to pay for a ticket back and we’d have a for sure ride back to the airport. On the bus, we realized how impossible it would have been to walk to Dublin. A. There was a “no pedestrians” sign and B. it took almost 40 minutes driving, so walking? Yeah, not so much.
We got into Dublin and decided to get some breakfast. By then it was about 10:30 I think. We found a store that was advertising a 4-item breakfast for only 3.95. Sounded great. We went in and it was like a swanky cafeteria, basically. So we went through the line and the cafeteria lady asked what I wanted. All I saw was unidentifiable fried stuff and lots of sausage and bacon. But there were little half Roma tomatoes with seasonings on them and beans, so I got that. She seemed confused that I didn’t want more but I said no. Then I grabbed an apple Danish and there was a fruit salad, so I loaded up a plate. 4 items. I get to the cash register and the girl tells me the fruit salad is 3.50. What? I only had 4 items. Nope. The 4 items applied to the fried stuff only. I paid 8 euro for one tiny tomato half, a scoop of beans, a Danish, and a little plate of fruit salad. This did not please me.
We wandered around O’Connell Street (the main central street) for a while, looking at shops and statues and stuff. We went into a touristy store and spent a long time looking around. We were all super tired from getting up super early and wandering around forever, but we couldn’t check into our hotel until 2. We had bought tickets for this hop on, hop off bus tour, so we rode that around for a while. We checked a map and thought if we got off on one of the stops, we could walk to our hotel from there. The tour was cool. The architecture in Dublin is amazing! A lot of stone buildings and cool colored doors. And obviously there’s a ton of history. But we were so so tired and freezing because it kept raining and the wind was blowing and the bus was a double-decker and we were on the top deck, which was open, so we were soaked. So we got to the stop we thought would take us to our hotel and started to get off. Luckily Catherine asked how to get to our hotel from there, because the bus driver looked at us like we were nuts and told us we were miles away. We had to get back on the bus, get off at a different stop, and take a regular city bus to our hotel. What? Not cool. So we did, but figuring out which bus to take was confusing and we were supposed to have exact change and we didn’t know what was going on. Eventually we found the 66 bus we needed and struggled through finding exact change for the fare. But then we realized we didn’t know which stop we needed to get off at. Our tickets said a street, not a stop number, but then none of the streets or the stops had street names anywhere. Apparently Dublin doesn’t believe in street signs. So we rode for a while and then a sign said we were heading toward Galway, which is a whole different city, so we got sort of freaked out. We went down and asked the bus driver if we needed to get off and he gave us this sort of exasperated look that said we were idiots and told us it was the next stop. Once we got off, he pointed in the general direction of our hotel, but apparently we were trying to go the wrong way or a dangerous way or something, because he stopped the bus again and pointed out the pedestrian path for us. Supes awk.
We finally saw our hotel, but there was a big wall around it so we had to keep walking to find the opening. Walking. Walking. Walking. Where’s the freaking opening?? We had to walk into this shopping center and then walk around to get to the hotel. By this time we were all tired and hungry and frustrated and annoyed. We finally got into the hotel. We got checked in and they handed us three room keys. We took the elevator to the first floor, because apparently Dublin also doesn’t believe in making your room number (343) match up with the floor. Floor one for a room in the three hundreds? Okay. We took a two hour nap and then tried to figure out what to do. Cherisse had booked us tickets to this traditional Irish show thing in Dublin. I really didn’t want to try navigating the bus again and going to some stupid party thing. I was tired and cranky. But she (well, actually, Mom) had already paid for it. So we paid another 2.15 for the bus and the nice bus driver helped us figure out where to go and even let us only pay 2 euro each because we didn’t have the right change. We found the exact pub it was at and had like two hours until it stated, so we found this convenience store thing and bought food. Cherisse and Catherine bought sandwiches, but they all had meat in them, so I bought a pastry and an apple. The pastry was called a flap-jack, but it was nothing like a pancake. It was oaty and full of different fruit and SO GOOD. The apple cost 50 cents. Seriously! For one apple. Is fruit hard to come by in Dublin or something? I don’t know what the deal is with their fruit being so expensive. But we were all much more cheerful with full tummies and it was a nice night and it wasn’t raining (at that exact moment, anyway). We wandered around and then went to the show.
I was grumpy about going to the show, but it was awesome! Super cool music and the guys were funny and talented and it was tons of fun. One of the guys were really cute, too. He played the illin pipe, which sort of looks like a tiny bagpipe but is pretty different. It’s the really distinctive sound in Irish music. You don’t breathe into it; you pump it with your elbow. And you play this pipe thing with your fingers but you have to use the palm of your hand to play chords on these other keys, all at the same time. It seemed crazy hard. We bought the CD of the band because they were so cool. And the Irish songs were pretty funny. Then we successfully caught our bus back to the hotel and were pretty proud of ourselves. We were sitting in the lobby using the wifi (our hotel didn’t have wifi in the rooms) and trying to figure out what to do for Sunday, whether we were going to church or what, and we were getting grouchy again. There was no way to figure out how to get to church because we didn’t know street names or anything. Cherisse wanted to go see the Cliffs of Moher, but it’s like 4 hours away and would’ve cost like 60 euro just for the way there. Mark said his group was going to Blarney Castle, so we were thinking of meeting up with them, but we weren’t sure how we’d do that.
While we were sitting there trying to decide what to do, this guy who was sitting by us also using the wifi asked if we wanted tickets for the red hop on, hop off tour. We'd gotten tickets for the green one and the red one was definitely better. It went to more places and a bus came right to our hotel at 10 every morning (or so he told us). He said it was for two days but he and his family were heading to London and couldn't use the tickets for the next day and asked if we wanted theirs. We said that would be great and he asked what our room number was so he could leave them at the front desk for us in the morning. That sort of sketched us out a little, because we didn't want to tell him our room number, so Cherisse just told him our reservation was under Gore and we hoped he wouldn't find us and kill us. So we decided to stay in Dublin and go along on the tour. We set alarms so we could be up early enough to check out and catch the red bus at 10 from the hotel and figured if he didn't actually leave the tickets we could just take the city bus and keep doing our green one. I kept tossing and turning because I was worried that guy was going to break into our room or something.
Sunday, July 29, 2012 (Ireland day 2)
Catherine woke us up and said, “It's 9:00.” None of us had woken up early like we'd planned. I hurried and took a shower and we rushed to get dressed and out the door. We made it to the lobby by 9:40 and checked out and went outside to find the bus. No bus. We stood around for a little while and then went back into the lobby and asked one of the desk clerks. The bus actually left at 9:40, not 10. The guy was wrong. That sucked, so we still had to pay our 2 euro for the city bus, but it was super nice of him to give us the tickets and the red tour was a lot better. I am 90% sure that the recorded narration on our tour was Allen Leech. I've done a lot of listening to his voice and he's from Dublin so I'm pretty sure it was him. I wish it would've been a live guided tour and he was the guide. We decided to just ride it all the way through before getting off anywhere, because we hadn't been all the way through yet. We saw more cool architecture and places of interest. Phoenix Park looked really cool. It's huge—twice the size of Central Park, according to Allen Leech. And we passed the American embassy and the home of the Irish president (also a white house...I think they even call it the White House). They don't plant any of the trees or flowers; they just let them grow naturally, except in one place. And the entrance has no gates. Apparently, legend has it that in the 30s there was a big Eucharistic conference going on at the park and the people in charge took the gates off to accommodate all the crowds, but then they did such a good job storing them they never found the gates again. And the first Irish president, who established the park, did it because he was a politician and a park ranger. Pretty cool. It got to the end of the tour and we stayed on for it to go back around so we could visit some of the stops we wanted to go to.
We went to Trinity College-Dublin, which is a big, old college. The grounds were super pretty and there were lots of statues and stones and everything that seems to be typical Dublin architecture. And (as Allen Leech told me on the bus), one of the provosts of the college (whatever a provost is), some guy named Lecky, had prophetic words: he said over his dead body would women be admitted to degree, and he died in 1903—the same year women were admitted to Trinity College. It sounds way cooler in an Irish accent. Allen Leech went to Trinity College, so I was excited about that. And he studied theater, which is in the same building as social sciences. We would have been in the same building if we had gone to school together! Cool. We bought some snacks from a vending machine. For some reason all the chips were cheese and onion flavored. We tried it—not my favorite. I bought a Mars Bar, but it's different than the Mars Bars we used to have in the States. It's basically just a Milky Way.
After Trinity College, we went to Dublin Castle. We thought it was free (Allen Leech said we could wander around the grounds for free!), and we were pretty excited about that because we didn't want to blow any more money. But then when we got in there, we found out that you can't go inside unless you pay for a guided tour. Lame. We didn't want to pay, so we just looked around at the cool architecture. We also got to go into a church on the grounds that super ornate and gorgeous. You couldn’t go into the actual church part, but you could look into the entryway. Really, really pretty. We walked up the street to Christ’s Church Cathedral, but it’s another one that cost money so we just looked around. As pretty as it was, I won’t lie, it wasn’t that different from everything else.
About that time, it started raining. Now, here's something we learned about Dublin: it rains on a schedule. It's like every half hour it will rain for ten minutes. Usually it's just sort of a drizzle, and all the buildings have little overhangs you can stand over until it stops. But this was not the light drizzle we'd gotten used to. It started pouring. We stood under some trees for a little while, because we weren't close to any buildings to stand under, but it wasn't super effective. St. Patrick's Cathedral was up ahead, and we wanted to go there anyway, so we booked it over. But there was a guy outside saying it was closed for about two hours because they were having services. Uuugh. Some guy in front of us went in, and it occurred to me we could probably go see the service, so I asked and he said yes, as long as we stayed for the whole thing. Done. So we went in and immediately saw one of the most impressive medieval-y looking churches I've ever seen. It was crazy—all stone bricks and stained glass and candles. It looked like a movie. It wasn't mass; it was something called evensong, where they just sing songs and read passages from the Bible. I was kinda bummed, because I've never seen Catholic mass and I really want to, but the evensong was cool. They handed us programs that told us when to sit and when to stand and when we should kneel. The pews had little cushioned bench things in front for when you kneel. I was surprised that the priest guy didn't actually preach...the program called it “lesson one” and “lesson two”, but all he did was read a few verses from the Bible and then the choir got back to singing.
After the service, we wandered around the cathedral. It was pretty awesome. They had a lot of history in there. There were memorials for people who had died and a bunch of memorials to different groups of soldiers. There was also this huge wooden door with a big hole in the middle and a plaque explaining that two families had been fighting (like the Hatfields and McCoys, I guess) and one of the families went to fight the other family, who was hiding behind their giant door. A guy in the first family realized that the bloodshed was pointless and wanted to declare a truce, but obviously the other family didn't trust him and wouldn't open the door, so he hacked a hole in the door and put his arm through as a show of good faith. It said that explains the expression “to chance your arm”, meaning to take a risk. I've never heard that expression, so it must be Irish or something. They also had the place where you could light candles, like I've always seen on movies (Rudy was the first one to come to mind), so I lit a candle. There was a sign saying something about the welfare of the homeless, so I lit a candle for the homeless. I'm a fan of social services and such.
We kind of spent too long in the cathedral and the gift shop, so then we had to hustle back to where we were going to catch our shuttle to the airport. It was raining again, of course, but this time it wasn't stopping. We got kind of lost wandering around, trying to find O'Connell Street. I don't know what Europe's problem is, but they're not huge fans of street signs. So we were wandering wandering wandering, getting irritated because we were hungry and tired and lost and trying to hurry so we wouldn't miss the shuttle because we (obviously) needed to get to the airport. We never actually made our way to O'Connell Street, but we found a different stop for the airport shuttle, and there was a sandwich place right next to it, so we got food and waited at the stop. Eating definitely eased the grumpiness and we got on the shuttle and everything was fine. I fell asleep on the shuttle (of course...I fell asleep on any ride that was longer than twenty minutes if I didn't have to worry about getting off at the right stop) and when we got to the airport, I made quite the commotion getting off. I sort of fell out of my seat, and then I didn't notice the step to get into the aisle, so I tripped going down that, and then I accidentally hit someone with my bag, and then I tripped again going down the stairs to get off the bus. I left Dublin with a bang, that's for sure. There's really nothing to report about the plane ride or the taxi ride back to Catherine's, because I was asleep for both.
We got back to Catherine's at like 11, unpacked our stuff, and repacked for Germany in the morning, then went to sleep. Traveling is tiring. I've been exhausted this whole trip. Part of it stems from not sleeping well, because I haven't been running. Not running has just thrown everything off for me. My emotions are a lot harder for me to control because I don't have running to mellow me out. I get grumpier way easier and I can't control my temper as well. This has caused a lot of friction between Cherisse and I when we're traveling, because security and planes and bus rides are already sort of stressful, so me being impatient and grumpy doesn't help. I honestly almost killed her in Frankfurt.
England, Days 1 and 2
Friday, July 27, 2012
We got to England yesterday. We left Wednesday at 1:00 and it didn’t actually take two days to get there, but we lost most of Wednesday because of the time difference. On the 9 hour plane ride from Portland to Amsterdam, I watched three movies (the Iron Lady, Big Miracle, and a documentary about a highschool football team called Undefeated). I didn’t really sleep, which was stupid. They fed us about 4 full meals, which was ridiculous! I do not need to eat that much. (But I did.) Then we had about a 3 hour layover in Amsterdam. The first thing I noticed was the undeniable smell of alcohol. Then body odor. Apparently Europeans aren’t so big on deodorant. The layover was long and boring and Cherisse kept wanting to leave the airport. (Obviously not gonna happen. Hello, stupidest idea ever. When you have a layover, you don’t leave the airport unless it’s like a day long. Plus we had to go through security again so it would take up more of our time.) By the end of the layover, it was noon local time and something like 4 am to our bodies. We were craaaaashing. I slept the entire hour and a half plane ride to Leeds. I was asleep before the did the video thing. One kind of annoying thing that happened was their seat numbering was weird, like ABE were together and CDF were together, so Cherisse and I didn’t end up next to each other. It didn’t really matter because we were both out the whole time. Then we slept for a lot of the drive back to Catherine’s house. I think it was like 2 hours? My sense of time wasn’t doing so hot anyway and falling asleep for most of it didn’t help.
They have kind of three stories to Catherine's house, with the kitchen, living room, and bathroom on the ground floor, two bedrooms on the next floor up, and just Catherine’s bedroom at the very top. The staircase is super narrow and steep and winds up and it’s kind of treacherous trying to find your way in the dark. I think Catherine said it’s a terraced house. The bathroom only has a bath, not a shower, and the hot and cold taps are two different faucets, so that seems interesting. I think I read about that in Harry Potter. Maybe it's a British thing?
We had fish and chips for dinner last night. They call the place you buy them a “chippy” but I kept accidentally calling it a fishy. I felt a little anxious when Catherine pulled them out of the bag because the paper it was wrapped in was literally dripping with grease. All I could think of was how bad that was and how I was going to feel super gross when I ate it and I hadn’t run in two days and I was going to smell like grease and fish. But I was kind of hungry, and it’s part of the British experience, so I ate some. They’re not crispy like American fries; they’re more like home-cooked fries because they’re softer. They were fine...I didn’t think it was spectacular, but I’m not really a fish person. We got a fish cake instead of the normal fish they give you, because they normally give you a fried fish. A literal whole fish. Cherisse and I couldn’t believe it. And the amount of food they give you is insane! So much food. After dinner Cherisse and I took like a two hour nap. Then we went on a looong walk with Catherine and her 13-year-old brother, James. We walked to this park that had an old Victorian mansion called Cusworth Hall. It was pretty cool but it was night when we got there so we couldn’t go inside. The walk was really pretty and it was nice to stretch our legs. We pretty much went to bed as soon as we got back. I was exhausted. I had made plans to run in the morning and James said he wanted to go with me, but the alarm went off at 5:40 this morning and I turned it off. I was so tired!
We got up and went to Scarborough today. It’s a town on the seaside. (The North Sea.) I took a bath--that was interesting. I was just trying to wash my hair and it was tough because of the water not mixing. I wanted to do it under the faucet so the water would be clean while I rinsed but the hot tap was too hot and the cold tap was freezing. I did my best and tried to be fast because it’s the only bathroom in the house. Catherine made us bacon and crumpets for breakfast. (I didn’t eat any bacon.) Crumpets reminded me of a cross between an English muffin (which isn’t really an English thing, turns out) and a pancake. Scarborough is kind of like Seaside, only way bigger. I think it’s probably comparable to beaches on the east coast, with shops all over and a boardwalk and all that. I had never been somewhere like that. The public bathroom had this sink that had a dryer attached, right in the middle of the faucets. (Apparently not having the hot and cold water mix is normal here.) We bought some donuts from a booth and they were pretty good. We walked around the shops and went into an arcade for a while. Arcades here aren’t really the same--instead of tokens, you use actual money. Their arcades are just full of gambling. It’s totally normal here. Cherisse and I blew about 15 pence (sort of like cents) on one game trying to win a Russian nesting doll. No dice. Then we went down and built a sandcastle and put our feet in the water for about one second--it was freezing! We walked around to some more shops and found this clothing store that was selling American and British flag spandex. Whaaa? Cherisse and I put them on in the dressing room and took pictures but we didn’t want to spend 5 pounds on them. But then we found another shop that was selling American flag shorts and we both bought a pair. They were still 5 pounds but we figured shorts were better than spandex. Then we bought some “candy floss”, AKA cotton candy. It’s exactly the same.
We stopped at a store called Morrison’s on the way back. It’s pretty much Walmart. Well, a Super Walmart. Cherisse and I were looking for phones so we can call each other if we get lost and we can get in touch with people we’re meeting up with and all that stuff. That Morrison’s didn’t have any so we had to stop at the one in Doncaster by Catherine’s house. We went there and spent like half an hour waiting for someone to help us and then pay 40 pounds for two phones. It’s not too bad. But then it took FOREVER to get the phones working. We had to “top up” before we could use them (fill up the pay-as-you-go thing with money) and that was a hassle because the shop didn’t take cards, only cash, and then we thought they weren’t working because Cherisse put the numbers in wrong so I spent an unnecessary two hours or so on the phone with customer service. Oh well. We’ve got them figured out now. We ate at a pub called the Sun for dinner. Again, everything was fried. I was pleasantly surprised to find the menu included vegetarian stuff, but vegan was basically impossible. I had salad, vegetable samosas (vegetables fried in like a wonton wrapped type thing) and these things called poppadums and dippers. I don’t even know how to describe poppadums. It looked like a big elephant ear, but super thin and white. It sort of tasted like mashed potatoes. The dippers (aka dipping sauce) were gross. I didn’t even eat them. One was a mango chutney. Catherine said chutney is like jam, but the mango chutney was sort of spicy. I don’t know how to describe it but I was almost gagging. And the other was some kind of ranchy type stuff but I didn’t like it. We also played pool at the pub. I was losing miserably--Catherine only had one ball left and I had only hit one ball--but she hit the 8-ball in so I won! It was pretty funny and this semi-drunk older couple was watching us and laughing.
We’re getting ready to go to Ireland tomorrow (technically today by now) and I’m pretty excited! Our taxi leaves to take us to the Manchester airport at 4. That’s in 4 hours. Yikes. Mark is in Ireland right now too and we’re hoping to meet up. That would be fun and we would feel super cool about being world travelers.
We got to England yesterday. We left Wednesday at 1:00 and it didn’t actually take two days to get there, but we lost most of Wednesday because of the time difference. On the 9 hour plane ride from Portland to Amsterdam, I watched three movies (the Iron Lady, Big Miracle, and a documentary about a highschool football team called Undefeated). I didn’t really sleep, which was stupid. They fed us about 4 full meals, which was ridiculous! I do not need to eat that much. (But I did.) Then we had about a 3 hour layover in Amsterdam. The first thing I noticed was the undeniable smell of alcohol. Then body odor. Apparently Europeans aren’t so big on deodorant. The layover was long and boring and Cherisse kept wanting to leave the airport. (Obviously not gonna happen. Hello, stupidest idea ever. When you have a layover, you don’t leave the airport unless it’s like a day long. Plus we had to go through security again so it would take up more of our time.) By the end of the layover, it was noon local time and something like 4 am to our bodies. We were craaaaashing. I slept the entire hour and a half plane ride to Leeds. I was asleep before the did the video thing. One kind of annoying thing that happened was their seat numbering was weird, like ABE were together and CDF were together, so Cherisse and I didn’t end up next to each other. It didn’t really matter because we were both out the whole time. Then we slept for a lot of the drive back to Catherine’s house. I think it was like 2 hours? My sense of time wasn’t doing so hot anyway and falling asleep for most of it didn’t help.
They have kind of three stories to Catherine's house, with the kitchen, living room, and bathroom on the ground floor, two bedrooms on the next floor up, and just Catherine’s bedroom at the very top. The staircase is super narrow and steep and winds up and it’s kind of treacherous trying to find your way in the dark. I think Catherine said it’s a terraced house. The bathroom only has a bath, not a shower, and the hot and cold taps are two different faucets, so that seems interesting. I think I read about that in Harry Potter. Maybe it's a British thing?
We had fish and chips for dinner last night. They call the place you buy them a “chippy” but I kept accidentally calling it a fishy. I felt a little anxious when Catherine pulled them out of the bag because the paper it was wrapped in was literally dripping with grease. All I could think of was how bad that was and how I was going to feel super gross when I ate it and I hadn’t run in two days and I was going to smell like grease and fish. But I was kind of hungry, and it’s part of the British experience, so I ate some. They’re not crispy like American fries; they’re more like home-cooked fries because they’re softer. They were fine...I didn’t think it was spectacular, but I’m not really a fish person. We got a fish cake instead of the normal fish they give you, because they normally give you a fried fish. A literal whole fish. Cherisse and I couldn’t believe it. And the amount of food they give you is insane! So much food. After dinner Cherisse and I took like a two hour nap. Then we went on a looong walk with Catherine and her 13-year-old brother, James. We walked to this park that had an old Victorian mansion called Cusworth Hall. It was pretty cool but it was night when we got there so we couldn’t go inside. The walk was really pretty and it was nice to stretch our legs. We pretty much went to bed as soon as we got back. I was exhausted. I had made plans to run in the morning and James said he wanted to go with me, but the alarm went off at 5:40 this morning and I turned it off. I was so tired!
We got up and went to Scarborough today. It’s a town on the seaside. (The North Sea.) I took a bath--that was interesting. I was just trying to wash my hair and it was tough because of the water not mixing. I wanted to do it under the faucet so the water would be clean while I rinsed but the hot tap was too hot and the cold tap was freezing. I did my best and tried to be fast because it’s the only bathroom in the house. Catherine made us bacon and crumpets for breakfast. (I didn’t eat any bacon.) Crumpets reminded me of a cross between an English muffin (which isn’t really an English thing, turns out) and a pancake. Scarborough is kind of like Seaside, only way bigger. I think it’s probably comparable to beaches on the east coast, with shops all over and a boardwalk and all that. I had never been somewhere like that. The public bathroom had this sink that had a dryer attached, right in the middle of the faucets. (Apparently not having the hot and cold water mix is normal here.) We bought some donuts from a booth and they were pretty good. We walked around the shops and went into an arcade for a while. Arcades here aren’t really the same--instead of tokens, you use actual money. Their arcades are just full of gambling. It’s totally normal here. Cherisse and I blew about 15 pence (sort of like cents) on one game trying to win a Russian nesting doll. No dice. Then we went down and built a sandcastle and put our feet in the water for about one second--it was freezing! We walked around to some more shops and found this clothing store that was selling American and British flag spandex. Whaaa? Cherisse and I put them on in the dressing room and took pictures but we didn’t want to spend 5 pounds on them. But then we found another shop that was selling American flag shorts and we both bought a pair. They were still 5 pounds but we figured shorts were better than spandex. Then we bought some “candy floss”, AKA cotton candy. It’s exactly the same.
We stopped at a store called Morrison’s on the way back. It’s pretty much Walmart. Well, a Super Walmart. Cherisse and I were looking for phones so we can call each other if we get lost and we can get in touch with people we’re meeting up with and all that stuff. That Morrison’s didn’t have any so we had to stop at the one in Doncaster by Catherine’s house. We went there and spent like half an hour waiting for someone to help us and then pay 40 pounds for two phones. It’s not too bad. But then it took FOREVER to get the phones working. We had to “top up” before we could use them (fill up the pay-as-you-go thing with money) and that was a hassle because the shop didn’t take cards, only cash, and then we thought they weren’t working because Cherisse put the numbers in wrong so I spent an unnecessary two hours or so on the phone with customer service. Oh well. We’ve got them figured out now. We ate at a pub called the Sun for dinner. Again, everything was fried. I was pleasantly surprised to find the menu included vegetarian stuff, but vegan was basically impossible. I had salad, vegetable samosas (vegetables fried in like a wonton wrapped type thing) and these things called poppadums and dippers. I don’t even know how to describe poppadums. It looked like a big elephant ear, but super thin and white. It sort of tasted like mashed potatoes. The dippers (aka dipping sauce) were gross. I didn’t even eat them. One was a mango chutney. Catherine said chutney is like jam, but the mango chutney was sort of spicy. I don’t know how to describe it but I was almost gagging. And the other was some kind of ranchy type stuff but I didn’t like it. We also played pool at the pub. I was losing miserably--Catherine only had one ball left and I had only hit one ball--but she hit the 8-ball in so I won! It was pretty funny and this semi-drunk older couple was watching us and laughing.
We’re getting ready to go to Ireland tomorrow (technically today by now) and I’m pretty excited! Our taxi leaves to take us to the Manchester airport at 4. That’s in 4 hours. Yikes. Mark is in Ireland right now too and we’re hoping to meet up. That would be fun and we would feel super cool about being world travelers.
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