Today, we took every form of transit imaginable.

We said “no” to another Ulster Fry this morning, opting instead for cereal, tea and toast to start the day. After lounging around in our room watching BBC, we packed up our things and walked to the bus station to start the first part of our journey home. Because our Belfast plans didn’t come together until late in the trip, and we had booked a series of return tickets rather than one-way trips, we took a very nonsensical, backtracking route, bussing from Belfast to Dublin, catching a plane from Dublin to Glasgow’s small airport, and taking a train from the small airport into Glasgow’s city centre. We stayed the night in Glasgow, in the same no-frills hostel we slept in on our first night in the UK. We got settled and went right back out into the shopping district, but by the time we got to it all the stores had closed. Just when we were feeling a little loose with our dough, we had nowhere to spend it. All was not lost, however—we found a chic little bar tucked away behind some of the high-end stores in Merchant City, and (lucky us!) they were having a 2-for-1 deal on pizzas. While the pies were pretty run-of-the-mill, the atmosphere was great and it was nice to have a sit-down, civilized meal on a trendy patio for about the same as we would have paid to hunch over a fast-food grease-fest on swivel-chairs and a melamine table. We were even able to pack up the pizza we couldn’t eat, and take it with us. We went to bed pretty early, mostly out of boredom, looking forward to the following day’s flight to Ottawa.

And here we are, two busses and one plane later, trying to survive the week until our internet gets hooked up at home. For now, we’ll be hitting up Bridgehead once a day to check our email and have a coffee, thereby satisfying two of our worst vices in one sitting. We hope you enjoyed following us on our journey and we can’t wait to see all of you soon. By the way, Tim Hortons has hopped over the Atlantic and is now clogging arteries and rotting guts over here with their sludgy, burnt "coffee" and mass-baked lard-blobs. Sorry, Dad :)

xoxo

Brian and Karen

Today, we learned that brick walls with barbed wire are still brick walls with barbed wire, no matter what you call 'em.

My first thought this morning, waking up with a dry mouth, a slight headache and my makeup all over my face, was kill me. My second, immediate thought was wait. Let me eat breakfast, then kill me. You see, Kate’s is known for the “heart attack on a plate” the owner serves guests for breakfast. A full “Ulster Fry”, consisting of sausages, bacon and egg, fried tomato, soda bread, toast, and coffee or tea, waited for us when we awoke, and it was just the antidote for the previous night’s indiscretion.

We hauled ourselves away from the table and set out on the town, doing a bit of window shopping before hopping on one of those big, red, open-topped tour buses and doing a big loop around the city. Overall, it was pretty informative, and for the price we paid, we couldn’t complain. The route went through the Falls and Shankhill neighbourhoods, two of most infamous districts from Belfast’s ‘Troubles’. The two areas are separated by “peace lines”—hulking, concrete walls lined with barbed wire—and are home to the political murals for which Belfast is well-known. The curbs in front of some of the houses are still painted to indicate whether the family living in each is Protestant or Catholic, and politico-religious slogans, flags and symbols are everywhere, letting interlopers like us know exactly where we were.

Some of the buildings still bear the scars of bullets, rockets and serious vandalism, and every street, every corner, every building has a story to tell (like the statue of justice, above, who had her scales stolen). Walking around in these neighbourhoods, as we did later, on our own, we passed people the same age as us who had likely seen so much bloodshed, hatred and struggle by the time they were in their early teens. While this generation is purportedly more open-minded than their parents, and many are less invested in upholding the divisions wedged between the unionists and nationalists of previous generations, there are undeniable numbers of young people who believe very deeply in carrying on the fight. We can’t even begin to understand the complexity of these tensions, but walking through the city and talking to some of its people opened our eyes to a situation we knew nothing about before.

After getting off the bus, we grabbed a pretty early dinner at Subway again, if only for the sake of knowing that what we ordered would look and taste exactly like we expected it to. We walked back to our room and hung around for a bit until we got bored, and then went back out for a walk around the neighbourhoods we’d driven through earlier in the big, tacky bus. We felt safe and not unwelcome as we walked, and we were comfortable enough to snap a few pictures along the way. The tensions run deep, but we got the sense that they weren’t about to erupt into violence any time soon. Still feeling a little nauseous from our Guinnessessessesses the previous night, we grabbed a bag of Jelly Babies and gobbled them down on our way back to the B & B.

Today, I go overboard describing the food we ate.

We woke around 7:30am and, since our supply of cereal and toast had run out, headed into the city centre for breakfast and coffee at a café that was ironically (for us, at least) set on appearing quintessentially American (New York references, pictures of Sinatra, “American-Style Bagels” and so on). Our first choice, a French café next door to this one, was, naturally, not terribly concerned about opening when it said it would. How very French indeed.

We got to the bus station with only a half hour wait before the next bus to Belfast, and after a 3-hour drive, arrived in Belfast, where we are now. We grabbed lunch at Subway (cheap + vegetables), and checked into our room at Kate’s B & B, near Queen’s University. It was exactly what we expected—cozy, cluttered, un-fussy and friendly. Unexpectedly, however, our room turned out to have three beds in it (one twin and two singles), a loveseat, a few chairs, a TV and a shower and sink. (Seeing the superfluous beds, Brian kept fretting that someone else would be sharing our room with us, and tensed up every time we heard footsteps near our door. He’s since relaxed a bit, and has accepted the fact that we’ve simply ended up in a room normally reserved for families.)

After dropping our stuff off, we embarked on a rambling walk around Belfast. We went into the city centre and around the University, and picked up two tickets for a bus tour the following day. When dinner time hit, and the hunger pangs started, we made our way toward a restaurant our travel guide touted as affordable, popular and tasty. It might have been popular, but the other two adjectives don’t reflect our experience there—the service was inattentive (and we’re really not fussy, and usually very understanding of servers given Brian’s experience in that line of work), and the food ranged from tolerable to inedible.

Now, those of you who know us well know that we’ll eat just about anything. Did it fall on the floor? We’ve got it, don’t worry. Is it past its best-before date? That’s just a guideline anyway—smell it, and if it’s not too funky, we’ll take care of it. Stale, bland, broken, unidentifiable, discarded, half-eaten, whatever. If you know us, you also know that we clean our plates, especially at restaurants. We even pocket the packets of butter sometimes, especially while on vacation. But at this restaurant, I left half of my entrée, and Brian abandoned ship with a handful of fries and a chunk of burger still on his plate. At the risk of sounding like a couple of restaurant critics, we’ll describe the meals for you.

I should explain that the “jacket” potato (baked potato, for you regular folk) was a common menu item across Scotland and Ireland. Restaurants tended to serve them with a few different kinds of toppings—cheeses, veggies, chilli, and so on—and we even found a place in Edinburgh that served nothing but baked potatoes with every combination of toppings imaginable. I’d been meaning to try one, so I chose the “Prawn Marie-Rose” jacket potato at this particular spot. I was imagining fresh, sautéed prawns in a buttery, creamy sauce on top of a big, steaming potato. What I got was a big, steaming potato indeed, but it was topped with a huge, sloppy glob of cold shrimp (the tiny kind you get in a can), which were swimming in a thick, sickening sauce I can only describe as mayonnaise mixed with lard and cream. The “house salad” keeping my potato-from-hell company was an innocent bed of lettuce, topped with a mushy mixture of shredded cabbage, carrot, and that awful lardy-mayo sauce again.

Brian’s burger was equally puzzling. It had no condiments, in contrast to my meal, which was nothing but condiments. The thick, beef patty, which would have been a perfect candidate for grilling, was obviously deep-fried, so it had a thick, chewy “skin” on the outside, and a greasy, soft centre. His fries were so soaked in oil he had a hard time containing the mess.

The saving grace was the Cheesy Garlic Soda Bread we started with (it’s hard to screw up bread, cheese and garlic), but even that made us feel kind of guilty—it would take a lot of Sweatin’ to the Oldies with Richard Simmons to undo the damage done by that dish alone. To top it all off, the chatty girls overseeing the place undercharged us by 4 pounds (fantastic, really), and then short-changed us by 1 pound as if to claim the tip they knew they wouldn’t be getting. Oh well. We came out of it feeling a little queasy and angry at our guide book, but the 3 pound “discount” softened the blow.

Feeling let down and betrayed—alone in this new place, still hungry, on the verge of severe indigestion and anticipating an urgent trip to the bathroom—we were prime targets for the 2-pound pints at the Empire Pub’s happy hour. We drowned our sorrows (quickly, as we only had a half-hour before the prices went up) in a second “meal” of Guinness, and after chugging two each, the memory of our disappointing dinner was almost erased. We chatted up two girls sitting next to us (one Canadian, one Irish, both teaching English to Italians… in Ireland… follow?) and ended up getting pretty tanked with them. We staggered back to our room, had a snack, and fell asleep.

Today, we went where the locals told us to go.

Sunday, as planned, we went to Dun Laoghaire for a taste of the Irish coast—the East one, to be precise. We disembarked the train by the town’s waterfront, and set off on a long walk along the coastline. Dun Laoghaire is pretty—there were lots of boats and ships in the water, and plenty of spots for sitting or dipping your feet. The buildings around the water were strangely Mediterranean-looking, some even reminiscent of the ones we saw in Malibu or other posh parts along the California coast last summer. A few minutes from where the train stops, we came upon a traveling fair that was in the process of setting up. Seems innocent enough, right? A good place to take the kids? Well, sure it was—if you’re morally OK with Pam Anderson, wrapped (loosely, I might add) in the American flag, airbrushed in a sultry pose on the side of the ticket booth. The creepiness continued with a bumper-car-style ride with the most random American celebrities airbrushed around the canopy of it—Tina Turner, Nikki Taylor (memba her?), and a handful of semi-recognizable has-beens.

We kept walking, not really knowing where we were going, but confident that if we stuck to the water’s edge we’d end up in the towns described to us by Brian’s colleagues. We passed a tower that housed James Joyce for a while, and “the bathing place” where he, and countless other men over the years, took to swimming nude in the Irish Sea. It was only about 15 degrees and intermittently cloudy when we went by, but there were enough old men strutting around in Speedos around there to play “there’s your boyfriend” for eternity.

We continued on through Dalkey and Killiney (where Bono lives, apparently—but we didn’t see him), a walk that turned out to be entirely uphill and, after a while, not terribly interesting. We found a small café at the top of the hill, and we were starving. We had to settle for a pastry to tide us over, and after a small rest while we snacked, we headed back down the hill into Dalkey, where we planned to catch the train up to Howth since we still had a whole afternoon. After chatting with a man on the platform, we decided to go instead to Malahide, on the advice that we’d probably find it more interesting. People, it seems, do not want us to see Howth. Fair enough.

We rolled into Malahide around four o’clock, and found a quaint little town with a marina and a nice, well-trod park by the water. Still running on pastry-fuel alone, we were wasting away. We managed to summon the energy to haul our skeletal, gaunt bodies to a take-away fish and chip place recommended to us by a shop owner in the town. We handed over 5 pounds each and, in return, received a greasy paper bag filled with a piece of smoked, deep-fried cod suitable for doing bicep curls with, and a packet of deliciously soggy, thick-cut French fries doused with vinegar and salt. We took our fatty finds down to the park, planted ourselves in the grass, and dined-a-deux in the afternoon sun.

Five pounds heavier, we waddled back to the train and made our way back to the campus for our final night in Dublin.

Yesterday, We Got Home!

But we're not about to sit down for a whole blog-forsaken hour (or more, for blog's sakes) blogging you up to date. We'll get around to it, though, just hold your bloggin' horses. We have a LOT to tell you about: our two days in Belfast, and the two-day odyssey that brought us back to Ottawa, among other things.

For now, just know that we're home safe and sound, and we couldn't be happier (well, maybe if we were at our REAL home in Nova Scotia, and all of you Ottawa-ites were there too, having a backyard barbecue with my Ma's spinach salad and Brian's Ma's potato salad, my Dad and David manning the grill... *drool*). Whew, that got out of hand really quickly! The point is, check back soon if you want to know how our dynamic duo fares in their journey to Northern Ireland and back to the nation's capital!

Yesterday, We Made Up for Friday's Shortcomings

Our Friday night was supposed to be really good. We had plans to meet up with a few students in the city centre, for dinner and drinks. We all convened at the mammoth spire jutting up from one of the main streets in town, and Brian and I made arrangements with the group that we'd catch up with them at one of the small Chinese restaurants down the street after we returned a few items to the grocery store, which we weren't going to have time to eat before leaving Dublin (we're cheap, remember?). A nice plan, but after ducking into every freakin' Chinese restaurant looking for our group (unnerving for other diners, we're sure), we couldn't find them.


We ended up walking around looking for a pub to have a pity-pint in, but somehow we ended up at home, in bed, drinking Guinness from tiny breakfast cups and eating Hunky Dorys. So, in addition to being cheap, we're also quite cool. In any case, it wasn't the end of the world, and Brian was up at a reasonable hour the next morning to prepare for the Clinton Institute's symposium (CI pictured below) where all of the summer school folks get a chance to share their papers with the rest.


Now, UCD is a very windy campus. It's not the kind of place you want to go out walking in a flowy skirt if you prefer to keep your lady parts to yourself. It's also not the ideal place to stretch out and read a book by the fountain if you prefer to decide when to turn the pages as opposed to having them turned for you. If you try to do both in a single afternoon, you find yourself in the situation I was in yesterday. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and I stuck it out for an hour and a half before finally giving in and coming back to the room.

The evening was great, though. The summer school people kindly welcomed me at their BBQ after the symposium, so I got a chance to clear up any misconceptions about Brian having a hermit wife. They fed us a delicious meal of hot dogs (way more sausage-like than the crap we get in Canada), chicken, the tastiest sweet corn off of the grill, salads, and herbed new potatoes, followed by a plateful of fresh strawberries, real whipped cream and meringue nests. The booze was flowing, as were the conversations, and despite the chill in the air as night settled in, everyone was having a good time. Thanks to the gift of storytelling these Irish students have, we had a few hearty (and hurty) belly-laughs--the most reliable marker of a good night. The party moved inside the Clinton Institute when it got too cold and damp in the garden, and we stayed until close to midnight before joining the slow trickle of people back to the residences.

It's Sunday morning now, and we're preparing for a day-trip to Dun Laoghaire (pronounced "dun leary") and a few of the conjoining towns, instead of the jaunt up to Howth as we'd planned. The locals thought we'd have a better time in the other towns, so we're taking their advice. We'll let you know how it pans out later tonight!

Yesterday, We Succumbed to the City

That's right, folks. We let our hair down, opened our wallets (a crack), and said, "Take us, Dublin".

It kinda started Wednesday night. Brian's summer school was hosting a "traditional Irish Music and Pub night" in the city, and after finding out I'd have to pay 20 Euro just to come along, I opted out. We are going to be one cheap old couple, that's for sure. Pity our kids and grandkids--they can anticipate many Christmases and birthdays in the future where they receive an inexplicable, obvious re-gift, like a stained doily or a Women's Weekly magazine from 1984. Anyway, the pub night. I felt very ashamed once Brian left for it--why didn't we just pay the money? I had talked about going and seeing a movie by myself while Brian was out, and although I felt pretty crappy about being such a tightwad, I forced myself to go. I'm glad I did. I saw Mamma Mia--my first time going to a movie alone, and in a new city at that--and it put me in a chipper mood. I don't even like musicals, but this was canceled out by a) Abba, b) the Greek island setting and c) Meryl Streep (rolling around, jumping, doing the splits, and other things normally reserved for people half her age--amazing).

Just after boarding the bus home, a body moved from the back and slid into the seat beside me, and it was Brian! Purely by coincidence, we'd gotten on the same bus. We shared stories about our evening apart, and it turns out I didn't miss much at the pub night. What the 20 Euro charge was for is still a mystery. It didn't buy food, drinks, or cover into the venues. It may have paid for the "traditional music" played by two guys, one of whom clearly had a Manchester accent and was therefore far from "traditionally Irish".

Thursday morning, like all of the mornings before it, was spent on campus. UCD, if you're curious, looks like any North American University--sprawling, with lots of buildings straight out of an engineering student's sketchbook... if they were drawn while drinking Absinthe... and without any regard for the people who would have to navigate their way through and around them. It does have a really nice fountain though, in front of the library.


Brian skipped Thursday evening's speaker (the evening sessions are not mandatory), so after having lunch here at the residences, we got on the bus into the city centre, with the intention of seeing a film (The Visitor--might be on DVD in Canada) at the Irish Film Institute. When we got off the bus downtown, though, the streets were abuzz with shoppers, tourists and the odd local, and we were sucked in.

We found a few cool shops we'd never seen before, grabbed a cup of coffee to walk around with, and sat for a while on the steps of the tourist information centre, drinking our Americanos and hashing out a few ideas Brian had been mulling over for the next day's seminar. In the course of our walk, we actually parted with a few Euro, buying a decoration for our new apartment, a box of notecards that were designed precisely with me in mind (if you're reading this, you'll probably get one at some point, and you'll know what I'm talking about), and a glamorous, oversized ring to rival the one on my left hand (at a fraction of the price, and without the meaning). Check it out:

After a while, we started feeling peckish and found our way to one of the restaurants that had been recommended to me by the receptionist at the salon where I got my new head-suit. Her idea of cheap, it turns out, is not in line with mine. The entrees were each around 14 Euro, and none of them were tempting enough to make us want to spend that much. We politely left the restaurant before ordering anything, and hoofed it to another place the salon girl had mentioned, and which we had passed earlier that day and approved of the prices. We each got a savoury pie for 9 Euro, Brian's filled with Guinness-braised Beef Shin (I know, shins!?) and Mushrooms, and mine with Lamb Moussaka, Roasted Aubergine and Minted Potatoes. They were to die for, but they were pretty small for our North American-grown gullets. Besides, we'd spied a Häagen Dazs
on our way to dinner and our internal compasses were pointed that way ever since. We treated ourselves to a sundae at one of their courtyard tables, and people-watched while we indulged.


Today will be pretty uneventful, but we'll have something to share with you by Saturday night.

Today, we did nothing you'd want to hear about.

Seriously. I haven't even got a picture to upload. We worked all morning--Brian says I've got Catholic guilt and a Protestant work ethic (how appropriate, given our location), and the two combined lead to intense guilt about not working, a frightening focus while doing work, and pure elation upon completing a task. I think he's right, because today felt good.

Afterward, I went into town while Brian continued working, got tired of shopping almost immediately (it's just the same stores only I'm paying through the teeth on conversion), and got myself a snazzy new haircut just for kicks. When I say "snazzy new haircut", what I mean is, the same friggin' haircut I always end up with, no matter what I ask for. My hair is a one-trick pony. So much for my daydream scenario where Canadian women swoon and fall at my feet back in Ottawa, begging for the address of my stylist, at which time I toss my locks over my shoulder and say, "I had it done in Dublin, darlings."

Anyway, Brian's in a lecture until 10pm, and I'm just biding my time--working a little--until he gets back. He's definitely got a cold, poor bugger.

Today, we went to jail... Er, gaol.

I'm sitting here in a rather swanky dorm room (comparatively speaking, of course, with reference to the dumps we've been inhabiting lately) at University College Dublin, and Brian's out at the kick-off session to his week-long intensive summer school. Tonight's attraction: Stanley Fish. Jealous?

So, it's been a while since the last post, and for that reason, I'll bring you up to speed. As planned, our last full day in Edinburgh was spent drinking coffee in the morning and catching up on a little school-related reading. After dropping the laptop and books back at the hostel (pictured below--f.y.i., it's right at the bottom of the steps to Edinburgh Castle... did I say that already?), we met up with our free tour of the city.
About fifty bajillion other tourists had the same tour in mind, so we were split up into three groups of about 25 people each. Brian and I were lucky enough to have Andy, a "canoe-faced" young guy (his words) from Oklahoma with a puzzling Oxfordian-sounding accent, as our guide. He was quite funny, very knowledgeable and warm enough that both of us left with slight platonic crushes on him. The tour took us through many of the places we'd already been, but it helped us understand a bit more about the city, why it looks and feels the way it does today, and what kinds of social narratives are playing out on top of its physical, geographical features.


Near the beginning, we were taken back to Greyfriar's Kirkyard and told a few creepy stories--for example, about the way bodies used to be kept above ground for a few days in "mortsafes" to ensure the people were dead (sometimes, as in the case of Maggie Dickson, they weren't!). We also heard the story of Greyfriar's Bobby (statue below), the now-famous Skye terrier who waited by his dead owner's grave every day for fourteen years before eventually dying on it. Now, people from all over, along with some local kids, come to put sticks on Bobby's little grave. The groundskeeper picks them all up and scatters them around the graveyard at the end of each week, so the whole shebang can start anew.


After the kirkyard, our amorphous blob of a tour group moved from sight to sight, checking out Robbie Burns' house (below), Princes Street Gardens, the Grassmarket area (mostly pubs and shops) and a lot of other things we would have overlooked if left to our own devices. Just like on the highland tour of Skye, the stories were the best part.


Since the tour didn't take us up to the Castle, we decided to take ourselves there once the group dispersed. Looking up from the Princes Street Gardens (formerly the canal where Edinburgh's citizens used to collectively "drop the kids off at the pool", so to speak--read: this is where all the crap went in the 1700s), we could see a path leading up the steep, grassy hill between the us (in the lowest part of the city) and the castle (the highest part). We climbed all the way to the top, only to find out that one can't actually access the Castle from that angle--it was fenced off. We had to climb back down again and approach it from the street. All was not lost, however, as we were able to snap a few pictures of the New Town from way up high. Then, when we reached the castle, we found our way to the little plaque indicating the 12 X 12 area on the castle grounds that is legally Nova Scotia. Needless to say, we're satisfied and we no longer need to come home in September. PSYCH!

Having ended up just across the street from our hostel, we called it a night, under-cooked two store-bought, refrigerated, personal pizzas, and holed up in our room for the rest of the evening, packing and preparing for the next day's travel.

Worried that we might be cutting it too close otherwise, we woke up at 5am, scarfed a few crumpets for breakfast, and hiked down to the bus station. We caught a 6am Citylink to Glasgow, and from there, we hopped on another bus at 7am to Prestwick airport, the hub of Ryanair. If you're unfamiliar with this airline, I suggest you check out their website to get a feel for how kitschy, cheap, and flagrantly funded by advertising they are. That said, we arrived on time, had no problems before, during or after the flight, and aren't too nervous about our return trip with them in a week. The flight from Glasgow to Dublin was only 30 minutes (during which time the airline managed to squeeze in a mind-boggling number of sales-pitches for beer, food, on-board shopping, and so on), and upon landing, we took an hour-long bus ride through the city centre and out to UCD, where we are now. We were famished by the time we arrived here, and scoured the campus for something--anything--to eat. We found a hot food counter in a convenience store and tossed back two panini without tasting them (probably best), and dropped our things off at the residences. We set off again immediately in search of groceries to feed ourselves while we're here, came back, watched Hancock online whilst eating crackers in bed (it's a tradition hearkening back to our Vegas trip), and went to bed.

We woke up this morning feeling like a million bucks--a full night's sleep, a clean, quiet room, a bed that's more than egg-carton foam on plywood (seriously, that's what we slept on at Castle Rock), and ENSUITE bathrooms really go a long way. Stoked abouty the beautiful weather, we got on a bus and set about exploring the city centre, through the posh shops we can't even afford a sideways glance at (below), along the historic, hipster-infested Temple Bar area, and through St. Stephen's Green, a park that, quite frankly, is no prettier or more inviting than Public Gardens in Halifax (SSG is pictured below--you be the judge).



None of the shops were open when we first rolled into the city, so we continued walking along the Liffey, stopping for a cappucino, and carrying on through the brewery district to Kilmainham Gaol, a prison built in 1792, one of the first to take up Jeremy Bentham's "panopticon", used to house political prisoners, other purported "criminals" and even children who'd stolen diapers, played hopscotch when they weren't supposed to, or, like many adults of the day, helped themselves to someone else's food during the famine. The prison fell into disrepair in the early 1900s, until it was restored by a group of volunteers to its present state as a museum and educational tour. Being there was beyond words. The older wing, where prisoners were often crammed into overcrowded cells meant for one person each, was chilling and moving--the halls were dank, musty and cold; the walls were scrawled with writing, some of it legitimately that of prisoners, some of it from other tourists.


The newer wing of the jail--the panoptic part--was equally stunning. The structure itself was breathtaking, and the idea of constant, thorough surveillance and the philosophy supporting it were so cool to think about.


The tour ended in the execution yard, and we were told about the final few prisoners to inhabit the gaol, and a handful of the ones who died there. Needless to say, it was a pretty moving experience... well, unless you were that freaking guy who kept laughing at everything. He must have been nervous or uncomfortable, but come on... really?

We were pretty pooped by the end of the tour--and, as luck would have it, Brian's developing a bit of a cold--so we walked slowly back into the city centre, ducked into a few shops along the way (i.e., I found myself tugged in by a supernatural force called 'shopping', and Brian reluctantly followed or loitered outside), and caught a bus back to the university. We had an exquisite meal of spaghetti from a can and a gourmet salad made of lettuce that had frozen in the too-cold refrigerator, discounted cherry tomatoes and a price-busted cucumber, slathered in that most mysterious of European and British condiments, "Salad Cream".

All of the pictures we've taken thus far (all 500 of em) are now viewable online--just click the icons below. We'll let you know what happens tomorrow, after it happens, of course. Tomorrow.

Scotland - Part 1

Scotland Part 2 + Dublin Part 1

Today, We Unwittingly Spent $10 on a Brownie

We ran out of underwear today. For this reason, I took a jaunt down to the Launderette after breakfast at our hostel while Brian stayed behind and did some work. Our hostel, by the way, is Castle Rock Hostel, an old, well-established haunt right at the bottom of the stairs to Edinburgh Castle. There are some really long-term guests here, and we feel a little out of place when we’re in the common areas. But our room is comfortable enough, and the showers are not as bad as the last hostel in Skye… but, I digress. After the laundry was done (5 pounds, 40 pence later!), I came back to the hostel and we set out to explore the city. Our first stop was a guided tour of Mary King’s Close, the only part of old Edinburgh preserved from the 1500s. In the mid-1700s, the houses in the area known as Mary King's Close were "decapitated" so that the Royal Exchange (now the City Chambers) could be build on their foundations. The old streets and houses have been more or less preserved under the Exchange building since then, while the surrounding area has been almost completely demolished and rebuilt. Below, an existing "Close" (read: narrow passage between buildings):

The tour was not as scary as we’d hoped, but it was definitely interesting. When it was over, we walked down into the “new” town. In this case, “new” means 1700s and after—this second part of the city was built in response to the overcrowding (and consequent disease) in the old town. Today, new town has more of the designer fashion stores and high-end shops (yippee!). We sat down for a cappuccino (me) and that deceiving brownie (Brian), and then took a few hours to stroll around the shops. Clothes here are pretty cheap, but we’re even cheaper, so there weren’t many purchases.


We found a bar boasting 2 meals for 7 pounds, so we stopped there for a dinner of bangers and mash (with peas and onion gravy). We continued our walk into the evening, venturing into Greyfriar’s Kirkyard, a creepy old graveyard with stones and “mortsafes” from the 16 and 1700s. According to Wikipedia, it’s one of the Sci-Fi channel’s “Scariest Places on Earth”, and it’s supposed to be haunted. It was admittedly pretty unnerving.


Leaving the graveyard, we walked toward the hostel, as most of the shops were closing and the weather was looking a bit menacing. Brian spent most of the walk home trying to convince me to get drunk because the liquor is so cheap here. It didn’t happen. We’re winding down now, and planning to hit up a café in the morning for coffee and a better breakfast than the one offered here (seriously, there was about a kilogram of whole nuts in my muesli this morning… sounds good, but really isn’t). After that, we’re going on a free, three-hour walking tour at 11am, and then spending the rest of the day making sure we’ve seen and done as much as possible before we jet off to Dublin (New accents! New money! New food! New scenery!) on Saturday.

Thanks for following us—keep checking in! We promise to take better pictures of Edinburgh tomorrow, ones that will give you a better sense of the kind of city it is (and it's a freakin' . For now, here's something you'll only find funny if you're as immature as we are:

We Saw Big Mountains Around Small Towns; Heard Long Stories About Short People

We’re relaxing in our “cosy wee” hostel room in Edinburgh, after arriving here a few hours ago at the end of a three-day bus tour into the Isle of Skye. The tour was incredible in parts, frustrating in others, disturbing, enlightening, inspiring, upsetting, satisfying, intriguing, entertaining, exhausting, but overall, memorable and eye-opening.


We saw a lot in just three days—too much to document it all here. We'll post a link to all of the pictures in a few days, when we have faster internet. Some of the highpoints, though:

Tracing my roots to the ancient village of Dunkeld: Kenneth McAlpin, the first king of the Scots, took his people to Dunkeld for safety from enemy clans and Viking raiders in the late 800s. The bus stopped down in the village, and we had a chance to get out and explore a ruined church (below) containing artifacts from around the time of my ancestors. I didn’t think I’d feel anything, but I did.

Our tour bus driver and guide, Ewan MacLeod. A slight guy with long, tangly blond hair and the thickest Scottish accent you can imagine, he never ran out of stories to tell us about the things whizzing by our windows. He was unabashedly anti-imperialist, highly opinionated, and shockingly frank—nay, amusingly crude—and we’d count him among the best storytellers we’ve ever come across. He knew the lore of the highlands inside and out, and seeing the Isle of Skye through the stories that have been passed down over the last thousand years or more allowed us to look at things in a way that made the culture make sense in a way ‘official’ history never could. These stories are powerful things, and I hope our children and grandchildren have some to tell too. In any case, you never knew what was going to fly out of Ewan’s mouth the whole time, and we wrote down a few of the gems to share with you. Remember—all of this should be read in a thick, Dundee-educated Scottish accent (think groundskeeper Willie for a rough guide):

- Following a burp: "Excuse me! That was a bit of Scotch Pie there..."
- "Start learnin' to drive, ye old pouf!"
- Describing some historical Scottish figure's daughter: "...long blond hair, piercing blue eyes, fiiiirrrrm breasts, supple thighs... [trailing off, dreamily] a peach of a bum on her..."
- On K.T. Tunstall (a contemporary Scottish singer/musician): "She's lovely... bit of a squinty eye. Just the kind of girl I like: pretty... but not too pretty..."
- "OK, off ye pop! Take a few photos."
- "Och, did you see those bikers earlier? I've never seen so many corned beefed asses in my life. One old guy up at the castle had the tightest spandex on... all of his bits pokin' out... it was terrible."
- Explaining how a highlander would hang his tools on his kilt: "Some would hang it here, but it'd be knocking about your plums... wouldn't make any sense at all."
- "Get yourselves some sweeties and juice."
- "One young man who went to that school was Tony Blair... LIIIAAARRRRRRRR!"


Despite being total curmudgeons, we managed to meet a few nice people from all over the world. We let them get drunk without us, though. The idea of nursing a whiskey hangover on a 9-hour bus ride with Ewan’s “wee tunes” blaring at us just a wee bit too loudly from the speakers overhead, lurching over winding, hilly highland roads, with the smells of other people’s lunch choices and backpacker body odour hanging in the stagnant bus air—well, it didn’t sound worth it.

Having a kilt explained to us: it sounds kind of odd, but I’d bet money that many of you don’t really know what kilts are all about—we didn’t before this tour. You might think underwear is optional; you might be slightly uncomfortable about a man in a “skirt” (which Ewan says is “just stupid”). Ewan took a huge piece of tartan (about 6’ by 6’) and showed us how a highlander would have made it into a kilt, and more importantly, why he would opt for this particular piece of clothing. Briefly, the pleats keep you warm in the winter and cool in the summer, the length (shorter than pants) allows you to walk over the watery peat of the highlands without soaking your clothes, and the top layer of material (eliminated from the tailor-made kilts we see today) could be folded over and tucked into your belt to make as many pockets as you needed to carry your tools (and yer oats), and one big sling in the back to carry big game home for dinner. Then, when you “get home to your wife”, the whole get-up can be whipped off by pulling your belt, and you’re ready to rumble, so to speak. So a skirt, ‘tis not.

The sights—oh, the sights. We saw castles, ancient battle fields, ruined churches and villages, a faerie glen, prehistoric burial grounds, cliffs and snow-topped mountains, glens and beaches, and the castle from Monty Python… among other things.



Hamish, the Hairy Coo.

We were happy to get back, though. The hostel in Skye was a little crappy, even by hostel standards, and we were looking forward to exploring Edinburgh on our own terms.

Today, We Went Where Harry Potter's Been

After our late breakfast, Kathy returned home and told us the pipe band was about to march through the town square to kick off the town's summer festival. We stepped outside just in time to catch them rounding our corner, and watched until the speakers took the stage.










We took off in Derek's car toward a few of his favourite places. We drove around Wedderburn Castle, where a weary wedding party was packing up the previous night's decorations and leftovers--the idea of a wedding in one of these old castles is enough to make me want to get married all over again. To Brian. Of course.

We crossed into England (Duns is in 'the borders' area of Scotland, so this is not a huge feat) and wound up at Alnwick Castle (pronounced 'Annick'), otherwise known as--get ready for it--Hogwarts, at least in the first two films.

Not being a Harry Potter fan myself, I found this only slightly exciting, and mostly because I knew how jealous a few of my friends would be. It was also the set of Elizabeth: The Golden Age, for those of you who care. Even without the Hollywood connection, wandering around this castle was undeniably awe-inspiring. Just feeling the cobblestones beneath our feet, worn down by huge, horse-drawn carts; marveling at the intricately carved woodwork in the interior rooms; walking the grounds and scaling the castle walls, knowing that centuries ago, one might have looked over the edge to see an army advancing. For Brian and I, it was surreal. For Derek, it's just another day at home... well, not quite. He was an excellent, enthusiastic and knowledgeable guide.

From the castle, we took a jaunt into the town of Alnwick, grabbed a take-way lunch at a Gregg's Bakery (restaurants here have 'take-away' prices and 'sit-in' prices for the same food items, the latter usually at least 25p more expensive than the former) and checked out its famous used bookstore, housed in an old train station and filled to the rafters with books of all kinds--well, except for Sociology, whose section had only about a dozen books, most of them dated textbooks you couldn't pay me to read. The history section was equally disappointing, so we concluded that for academic books, this isn't the place to go. For a good, cheap read--usually under a pound--it's ideal.

By the hour we left Alnwick we were running out of time for our day-trip--we had to get back to Duns in time to go to the co-op to pick up food for dinner and for Brian and I to take with us on our bus tour. We managed to see two more castles (from the outside, just driving around the grounds), including the Bamberg Castle, pictured below:


We also drove into Berwick (pronounced 'Berrick'), parked, and walked along the wall surrounding the town. Parts of it are covered in soil and grass, while others are still bare rock. Standing atop the wall offers an incredible view over the houses, gardens and farms that comprise this, one of the largest towns in the borders area.


We've finished a home-cooked dinner, and Kathy is perusing the 'Castles for Sale' section of the newspaper before we walk over to the Whip & Saddle Pub to sample some real ales--a special selection of beers straight from the keg, brought out to kick off the summer festival. We leave bright and early tomorrow for Edinburgh, to catch our 3-day bus tour of the Isle of Skye.