London: Day Two

Our second day in London, we went to the famous Tower of London. I was rather surprised to learn that it isn't just a tower, but rather an entire castle, with many towers inside it. I felt kinda dumb about that.

When we arrived, a tour was about to start, so we decided to tag along. It ended up being really fun and interesting! All of the tour guides at the Tower of London are Yeoman Warders who live inside the castle. To become a yeoman warder, you have to be a decorated sergeant major in the British military who has served for at least 22 years.

Not only to you get to live in the castle, but you also get the sweet uniform. Our guide was very funny and good with the children who were in the group; there was one 2 or 3 year old who kept laughing and clapping at everything he was saying, regardless of whether it was funny or not.

There is a legend, dating from the 13th century or some such, which states that if the ravens of the Tower leave, England will fall. To prevent this from happening, the King had 6 ravens put in cages with the their wings clipped to keep them from flying away. That kind of seems like cheating to me, but to this day the ravens are still there.

After an enjoyable morning at the Tower of London, we went for a brief walk along the Thames on our way to St. Paul's Cathedral. Here we are posing in front of the Tower Bridge. This bridge looks much much cooler than the more famous London Bridge. The London Bridge just looks like any regular ol' bridge.

St. Paul's was very pretty and very large. Caitlin wants me to tell everyone that Princess Diana was married there, but I didn't really think that was that important. I'm probably a bad person or something for saying that. Unfortunately, the Anglican church charges money to go inside their most famous places of worship, so we passed on going inside.

Across the Thames from St. Paul's is the Globe Theater. We were hoping to be able to see a Shakespeare play while we were in London, but we came about a week before the season started. Apparently, one can go to plays for about five pounds in Globe Theater if you are willing to stand up the entire time, just like the peasants did back when Shakespeare was alive. That would have been awesome, but we didn't get the opportunity.

Here is the view from the South Bank near the Globe Theater looking back towards St. Paul's Cathedral. The awesome modern-looking bridge over the Thames is the Millennium Bridge, built in 2000. London sure has a lot of famous bridges.

After checking out the Globe Theater, we took the tube to a cupcake restaurant called Hummingbird Bakery. It was very good. Caitlin was excited at how good their decorations were for the cupcakes.

After our afternoon snack, we went to Hyde Park and rented a rowboat so I could row Caitlin around the Long Pond in Hyde Park. It was very fun. Caitlin said she felt like was in Pride and Prejudice. As you can see in the picture, I was enjoying myself as well. I was really bad at it at first, but by the end of our half-hour I sort of had the hang of it.

While we were rowing about, we had the chance to chase some swans around. They were very stately looking, and also much faster than me with my poor rowing abilities. Also, swans are BIG. After our time was up, we walked around Hyde Park for a bit and then had a bite to eat before going back to our hostel. This was probably my favorite day in London, with the Tower of London and the excellent rowboating.

London: Day One

We flew from Dublin to London early Monday morning. Our flight got in at 9:30, but by the time we took a bus into the city, then two subways to our hostel, it was already lunch time. We were really tired from five straight days of sightseeing, so we decided to take it easy for the rest of the day. We wandered around the British Museum {which was right next to our hostel} and saw the Rosetta Stone. We weren't huge fans of the museum though, because it didn't have any exhibits about British history. Most of the museum was Egyptian artifacts, similar to what we saw at the Met in New York. We ended the day by having dinner at a delicious Turkish restaurant one of our CEA friends recommended.

We woke up early on Tuesday morning to check out the Portabello Road Market in Notting Hill. When we got there around 9:00 am, there were hardly any booths set up! We were very surprised because its supposed to one of the biggest markets in London. But, I bought a teacup at a very cute boutique {you would have loved it, Allie!} We asked the shop girls why the market was so empty, and it turns out that its a lot busier in the afternoon, which is the opposite of French markets.

We left Notting Hill and joined a Fat Tire Bike Tour to see all the royal sights. The bike tour lasted four hours, with a break for lunch in Trafalgar Square. Our tour guide, Matt, was really awesome! He had the most interesting stories about London. First, we rode through Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park, stopping at Buckingham Palace.

Then we rode to Trafalgar Square. The guy on the top of the column is Admiral Nelson. He won an important naval battle off the coast of Spain during the Napoleonic Wars. He defeated the French Navy, but sadly perished. His men wanted to bring him back to London for a proper burial, so they stuffed him in a barrel of rum to keep him preserved for the two-week journey. When the authorities opened up the barrel back in England, they discovered that most of the rum had disappeared! Yep, you guessed right, the sailors drank it! Eww!

During lunch, we sat with an older British couple. The man had been to Houston lots of times for work and had some very interesting opinions about the city. Mostly because he tried to walk over a mile from his office to his hotel - in the middle of August. Below is a picture of the Royal Mews, where the Queen's horses are kept. It's also where beach volleyball will be played in the 2012 Olympics.

Westminster Abbey. You can see our tour guide animatedly telling us about Guy Fawkes' Day in the corner.

Finally, Big Ben, which is apparently named after a 19th century street fighter. We rode back through Hyde Park, taking a different route this time to see the Princess Diana and Prince Albert memorials.

After our bike tour, we went to Harrod's. It was huge, but also ridiculously crowded! We only stayed for about half an hour, because we want to head back to Westminster Abbey for the Evening Song service. It's the only way to get into the church for free. The music was fabulous and the interior was beautiful! I didn't take any pictures though, because there were tons of clergy everywhere.

That was our very busy first day in London. Little did we know that we would be there much longer than we planned!

Dublin: Day Three

On Sunday, we woke up in the morning and went to 10:00 Mass at St. Mary's Pro-Cathedral in Dublin. We were excited about this for two reasons. First, it would be in English, and we hadn't had a Mass in English since the beginning of March, in Geneva. Second, we thought it would be interesting to see how Mass was in Catholic Ireland. Unfortunately, there were very few people who even showed up to the Mass, and the priest said it extremely fast - we were out of the church at 10:29. I don't really know why it was like that.

After Church, we caught a train to Howth, a small city on a peninsula north of Dublin. We ate lunch in a park, and then walked along the cliffs that surround the peninsula. The views were beautiful.

Below is a picture of the cliffs that we walked on.

They were dangerous.

But not too scary.

I did have to convince Caitlin to get this close to the edge for the picture, even sitting down.

During our cliff walk, we saw a plaque commemorating the cliffs of Howth which quoted some famous author, maybe Mark Twain or James Joyce or Emile Zola (I really can't remember at all though; Caitlin says not Mark Twain, and she is probably right), who said that these views were some of the most beautiful in Europe. I believe it! I liked it just as much as the Cliffs of Moher. Those were more impressive, but we could walk around more at Howth. It was definitely very cool to see the eastern and western coasts of Ireland in one weekend.

Pretty!

Dublin: Day Two

On our second day in Dublin, we got up early and walked across the city to the Guiness factory. Nothing like beer at 11:00 am!

The Guiness factory was reaaalllly big. It took us a while to find the visitor center building. The building is actually shaped like a giant pint glass. Inside, we learned about the fascinating process of brewing Guiness. We also got to try some!

I love how excited Caitlin looks in the above picture. She wasn't really that excited though. At the top of the building they have a cafe, and you can redeem your ticket for a drink. I had the obligatory pint, and Caitlin had a coke. The cafe had some pretty nice views. At 8 stories it is one of the tallest buildings in Dublin, surprisingly enough.

After finishing our morning beer, we went to a little pub and had lunch. We then headed to Phoenix Park, the largest city park in all of Europe.

It was extremely pretty and very green. They also had a giant, I mean absolutely enormous monument to the Duke of Wellington. It was a ten story obelisk. He is a Dublin native, so I guess it makes sense that they have one, but I did not realize that the British were such big fans of the Duke of Wellington.

After the park, we went to St. Patrick's Cathedral. Oddly enough, it is not a Catholic church, but an Anglican one. When Henry VIII declared the Anglican Church separate from the Roman Catholic church, all but two of Ireland's bishops followed him. However, almost none of the clergy and lay people did. In effect, all of the property of the church in Ireland became Anglican, but none of the people. So there are two cathedrals in Dublin, a predominantly Catholic city, and both them are Anglican. Caitlin and I both felt like St. Patrick's Cathedral should have been Catholic, since St. Patrick is such an important saint. In addition, there wasn't really any information about him inside the church, which was a little disappointing. Plus, Anglican churches charge money to go inside.

Outside of the Church, there is a pleasant little park. Apparently, St. Patrick baptized many of the Irish right there. Pretty incredible! After all the walking we did, we were pretty exhausted, so we had dinner, went back to our hostel, and went to sleep.

Cliffs of Moher

On our third day in Ireland, Adam and I took a sightseeing tour from Dublin to the Cliffs of Moher, which are all the way on the other side of the island! We had originally planned to take a train over there and spend the night, but a sightseeing tour ended up being the most convenient and cheapest option. Our tour guide was hilarious! He was extremely worried about us having enough bathroom breaks. He spent about half the time discussing when the next bathroom break would be, the quality of the toilets, and so on. Before we got the cliffs, we stopped at this pretty castle in County Limerick on one of our many pit stops.

We left Dublin at 8:00 in the morning and arrived at the cliffs around noon. We were so in awe of their incredible beauty! Did you know that these are the same cliffs from the Princess Bride, where they're known as the Cliffs of Insanity?

It's always a little windy on the cliffs, as you can see from my crazy hair in the above picture, but on days when it's extremely windy people can be blown off! There were several signs warning visitors to be extra-careful.

We had about an hour to walk around the cliffs. There were railings along most of the area, but we found a section without them to take a cool picture. Despite my happy expression, I was freaking out a little bit while Adam snapped this photo.

We had lunch at a nearby pub and drove to our next scenic location, the Buren. Our guide book described this national park as something "just out of a fairytale" but it was actually the opposite. Buren means "barren" in Irish, so this is one of the few parts of the Emerald Isle that's not green. It looked more like the moon than a fairy wonderland!

Here we are on the west coast of Ireland. Pretty amazing considering we were on the east coast that morning!

We made two brief stops in the Buren. First, we saw an ancient Druid burial site, pictured below. Last, we saw an abbey that housed Irish monks in the middle ages.

We arrived back in Dublin at 9:00 that evening. We quickly grabbed a slice of pizza and then finally achieved our goal of listening to Irish music at a pub just a few minutes from our hostel. It was really weird because a ton of French people were in Dublin that weekend for a big rugby match. So, we were sitting in a pub listening to Irish folk music and the conversations of drunken Frenchmen!

Dublin: Day One

We flew on Ryanair to Dublin bright and early Thursday morning. After checking-in to our hostel and eating a traditional Irish brunch, we took advantage of the good weather by heading to Saint Stephen's Green. Its very small compared to other city parks, mainly consisting of a duck pond and a flower garden. We were actually able to smell the beautiful flowers throughout the park, something we've never experienced before.

Although we could have sat around in Saint Stephen's Green all afternoon, we walked over to Trinity College to see their legendary library. The campus was absolutely amazing, but nothing compared to the old library. We saw an exhibit about their most famous book, a copy of the gospels illustrated by monks in the 11th century, known as the Book of Kells. Can you imagine writing almost all the new testament by hand, without making any mistakes?

Our last stop of the day was the Marks & Spencer's on Grafton Street, Dublin's version of Fifth Avenue. We had afternoon tea at their top-floor restaurant. Our tea came with scones, clotted cream, and strawberry jam for seven euros per person. It was a little bit of a splurge, but so delicious! In retrospect, we were glad that we had tea in Dublin because it was much more expensive in London. We didn't see any advertised for less than ten pounds per person.

We ended the day by having dinner in the Temple Bar area. We were hoping to listen to some live music, but all of the pubs with music were outrageously overpriced. Though we found a reasonable restaurant eventually, we found Temple Bar pretty disappointing overall.