day 11.5 - march 27, 2009

A day full of travel and not much else.

I really hate the ends of trips. The beginning is always the best because you're RIGHT AT THE START and who knows how much fun you could have? The middle is good too, because you can think about what you've already seen and done and wonder at what's to come. But the end? The end means IT'S OVER. You have to go home and unpack your suitcase (which is the worst) and look at your pictures and try to impart upon friends and loved ones the fantastic time you had. Which is next to impossible. The only good part about the end is that you've had all these great experiences and have amassed a slew of pictures (an enormous slew when you travel with kp) so you can look back on them and play the "remember when?" game.

HEY! KP!

Remember when we got to hang out with our old pal B in Ireland?

Remember when you thought all the apartments for rent in Dublin were public toilets?


Remember when we spent St. Patrick's Day in Dublin?

Remember when we went to a place called Dingle?


Remember when you took a picture of a dog mid-piss?


Remember when we ate the most delicious hot chips?


Remember when you took too many pictures of me sleeping?


Remember when we met up with Tori in Edinburgh?


Remember when we knocked on the door of Edinburgh Castle and someone answered?


Remember when we fell in love with the Scottish Highlands...
...and also a wee bit with our tour guide?


Remember when we narrowly escaped hypothermia after swimming in Loch Ness?


Remember when we drank the water from this spring?


Remember when we got really drunk on heather beer in Inverness?


Remember when you finally fulfilled your life-long dream of getting a real Scotsman to recite your favourite lines from "So I Married an Axe Murderer"?


Remember when we met Hamish?


Remember when we went to London?


Remember when we had the best time?
Thanks, kp, for making every moment fun.
Let's make this the first trip of many.
What do you say?

day 11 - march 26, 2009

Well.
I'm not going to lie to you.
Our last day overseas was not a crazy, milk-it-for-all-its-worth, let's-make-the-most-of-it sort of day.
I just don't want you to be disappointed with an anti-climax.

Now that we're on the same page, here's what happened:

Kp and I woke up to fresh towels outside of our door, courtesy of Steve.
(Dear Steve and Martin's mums: thank you for raising such lovely, hospitable gentlemen.)
We had decided the night before not to bother going back into London and instead spent the afternoon with Martin, catching up. I don't know if it was because we were at the end of our trip, but I definitely preferred a low-key day of chat in good company as opposed to traipsing about London, trying frantically to see as much as possible in one day.

I don't have any pictures of the time we spent with Martin, so instead here's a picture of kp wearing plastic, patent gloves that don't fit:
It was taken in Dublin, but this is my blog, so I can do what I want.

After hanging out with Martin, kp and I decided to take ourselves in Camberley, the nearest town. Camberley has about two main streets, both of which we walked the length of. At the end of the second street it suddenly occurred to me that there was no way we could leave England without having CREAM TEA. The first cafe we saw didn't do cream tea, but they pointed us in the direction of the mall. In the mall was a little cafe that did what kp would call a "buck up" version. Which basically means there was tea, there was cream, there was scones and jam, but it wasn't really CREAM TEA.

But we ate it anyway and loved it.

The next logical step in our day was to find a pub and have our final pints of English beer. We went to a place called The Carpenter's Arms and I drank Speckled Hen. We decided, rather foolishly and mostly because kp made me, to enter the pub quiz for the night. Note to fellow travelers: don't join the pub quiz unless you have someone at your table from the country you are currently in because you will have ZERO frame of reference for 80% of the questions. Ie. you will not win. It was almost comical how poorly we were doing and apparently other people noticed. We were seated by a window, and a man who was standing outside, smoking, tried to give us the answer for #14... but he was outside, talking to us through a closed window, so we couldn't understand him. That didn't deter him, however, and he took it upon himself to come in and help us. Kp and I were feeling a bit like we didn't want the company of a stranger, but he was fairly insistent upon sitting with us. Here's the best part: he was from Liverpool and kp could barely understand a word he was saying. I sort of wish I could have heard the conversation she thought she was having with him. After a while it didn't matter that they were having a chat like two ships passing in the night because we kept on with the pints.

And then things like this happened.
I can't remember why, but this was REAL funny.
Trust me.

Our new friend didn't quite get our brand of humour (I CAN'T IMAGINE WHY) but he was still content to sit with us and marvel at our ridiculousness. And then he bought us these:
He wasn't looking to get laid or anything, I don't think. I think he was just a bit lonely, had come down to the pub on his own, and was happy to have found two nutso Canadian lassies to entertain him for the evening. I have no idea what his name was, but I did find out the following: he started work at 15 and now at 34 he has 3 sons, the eldest of which is 12 (we saw photos!). Growing up, he lived within 2 miles of almost all his relatives which means he could never get away with anything. It was completely interesting to talk to him about his life and ultimately I ended up not minding that he had crashed our kplv party. Thank you, random Liverpudlian whose name I don't know, for adding something unexpected to our night out in Camberley.

It wasn't too late when we were ready to leave, and we walked up to catch the bus back to Martin's. Just as we were reaching the street, the bus went by and my instincts kicked in, so I ran to catch it. I realised fairly quickly that kp wasn't behind me and to my "COME ON KP!!" she yelled "let's just get the next one!" Which would have been totally smart, if that hadn't been the last bus of the evening. We took a taxi home.

And that's it. We went to bed, kp snored, and I finally got some good sleep when she got up to drink grapefruit juice at 6:30am. These are the important details that I chose to record in my journal and which I am transcribing for you now.

One last night in a very comfortable bed and then wake up, pack up yer sh*t and fly back to Toronto.

day 10 - march 25, 2009

Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the North,
The birth-place of Valour, the country of Worth;
Wherever I wander, wherever I rove,
The hills of the Highlands for ever I love.

My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here;
My heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer;
A-chasing the wild-deer, and following the roe,
My heart's in the Highlands wherever I go.

Farewell to the mountains high covered with snow;
Farewell to the straths and green valleys below;
Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods;
Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods.

My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here;
My heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer;
A-chasing the wild-deer, and following the roe,
My heart's in the Highlands wherever I go.
--ROBERT BURNS

Okay. So, that's a TAD dramatic, but kp and I were feeling a bit Burns-ish on our first morning in London. We awoke to the sound of chirping birds. Except they weren't birds. It was the sound of three cell phone alarms going off, followed by the sounds of young girls starting their appearance prep. Kp and I waited them out, got ready in a quarter of the time and went in search of breakfast. Our breakfast was grumpy, helped only a bit by tea. I'm not sure why we couldn't shake our initial prejudice against London. I've been to London before and loved it, but I think this time it was a combination of being too different from where we had just been AND the fact that being in London meant our trip was almost over. Thus: grump.

We started our day at the Tower of London:

We didn't go inside because we couldn't be bothered to shell out the pounds

We took ourselves on a bit of a walking tour, as recommended by the lovely Jacqui Okum.

The Tower Bridge was an impressive thing to look at and walk across. Does anyone know if it's always been baby blue? Or at what point was it painted this particular shade? Is it the Queen's favourite colour? How do decisions like this get made? These are the things we wondered about as we walked across it.
We headed toward the Globe Theatre--that was the one thing I wanted to see on this London trip.

I think here I am adding "impatient" to my "grumpy".
Sorry, kp.

We made it to the Globe! Here is the view from the roof.

We ran into this nice fellow fixing the stage.

And this fellow was sweeping up.

We decided to spend our tour money here. I was really hoping that we would catch a rehearsal in progress, but we didn't, so I felt a tiny bit ripped off. The theatre was quite beautiful, though.
It briefly crossed my mind to ditch the tour and sneak backstage and explore on my own. But then I remembered things called laws and people called police and figured I didn't want to come up against either, so I stayed with the group.

Next time I'm in London, I'm going to see a play here. I think I have to.

We continued our tour of London's sights with a stop at Big Ben.Good job living up to your name, big guy.

The architecture in Parliament Square is definitely awe-inspiring.
I can't imagine commuting past such gorgeous buildings on my way to work every day. Eventually you must get desensitized to it, I'm sure, but that's a shame.

So are these outfits. A real shame.

Despite the fact that neither of us are religious, kp and I decided to attend the Evensong at Westminster Abbey. I've been to church a hand full of times in my life, but a good portion of those times the service was in Croatian and therefore mostly incoherent (my Croatian vocab is chiefly swear words, which are not often used in the house of God). Luckily there was a program for the Abbey's service, so we knew what to say and when to say it. Otherwise we would have been exposed as fakes. Well.... come to think of it, I'm pretty sure we didn't fool you, God. I enjoyed the part of the service that we stayed for--I really shone in the greeting-your-fellow-worshipper bit with a "peace be with you" and it was wonderful to experience the church being used for the reason for which it was built. The stained glass was beautiful, the acoustics were amazing and listening to the choir sing gave me goosebumps. Even though it wasn't a religious experience for me, it was still a memorable one.

We left the service early because we still wanted to see Trafalgar Square. We were a bit pressed for time because we had to catch a train to my friend Martin's house, where we were staying for the next two nights. We made it to Trafalgar Square just as the light was fading.

This was the highlight of our day:
Thank goodness we have each other. Who else would find this so entertaining?

On our way to the train station I was completely determined to find Cornish pasties for dinner. We eventually found them and SCARFED them down because we were really cutting it close. (They were still delicious even though they went down quickly!) We took the tube to our hostel, grabbed a cab to take us to the door, wait for us to grab our packs, then drive us back to the tube. THEN we made our way to Waterloo station and bought our tickets despite a very unhelpful customer assistance lady who hindered rather than helped. We had to run to catch the train, but we made it. I charmed an older man into letting me borrow his mobile to call Steve, Martin's roommate.

I think this is probably post-charm. Thanks nice older man! That's a dapper suit.

Steve very nicely picked us up at the station. Thanks Steve! Steve and Martin's place was so lovely (just as I suspected it would be) and it was a wonderful change to be in a place with a real kitchen and incomparable water pressure in the shower. Bliss. Kp and I got some food and wine from the Sainsbury's and spent the night consuming the aforementioned and enjoying each other's company.

We spent a very enjoyable evening by ourselves in Martin and Steve's kitchen doing things like this:

We ended the evening by watching a VERY amazing British show called "Snog Marry Avoid." It was... unbelievable. Find an example here. And here. And look forward to an American version premiering sometime in the near future.

Although we had started the day not feeling totally happy with where we were, we ended the day very happy, a little bit drunk and stretched out in a wonderfully comfortable bed. A little bit of wine and some warm hospitality can go a long way. But neither could quite erase the unavoidable from our heads--our impending last full day abroad.

day 9 - march 24, 2009

This was a transition day, between Scotland and England. This day was the first day that we realised our trip was coming to a close. This day was a grumpy day. We weren't ready to leave Tori's company and her (and Scott and Jade's) hospitality. (THANKS FOR EVERYTHING!!) Nor were we ready to leave Scotland. But when you've got a flight to catch, you don't have much choice.

Scott drove us to catch the bus to Glasgow. We said some hurried goodbyes and got on the bus just in time. We pulled away from Dumfries and kp promptly fell asleep.

Finally! My revenge!
I also have a video of this which I'll try to upload later.

The day was grey and cold and rainy so my first impression of Glasgow was pretty much grey, cold and rainy.
We spent most of the day shoe shopping, and wandering around Primark deciding which ridiculously cheap things to purchase. We came in out of the rain and ate a hot meal, then it was time to head back to the bus station to grab our packs and head to the airport.

kp had a crush on the airport shuttle because it matched her outfit.

The flight to London was fast and easy--I fell asleep so it felt like we were there in no time.
I shouldn't even bother. She's just better at catching me in my countless lowest points. It's a real skill. Asshole.

We got into London and got on the Gatwick Express. BIG MISTAKE. It cost us £33! EACH! (Actually, I can't remember if it was £33 each, but let's say it was to illustrate my point that London was ripping us a new one from the get go.) We got onto the tube and then off again and starting walking in the exact wrong direction from our hostel. RIP. Plus, it was raining. RIP. Finally, we got turned around and found our hostel. By this time we were fairly settled into our grumpy moods. The hostel was fairly unwelcoming, and I had to buy a small towel that cost me £3.50. I lost my towel after the Loch Ness swim and had hired towels at hostels in Scotland for 20p. Nice, good sized towels. And then here I was in London buying a towel that would barely cover my ass. RIP. The size of the grumpy mood only increased when we got to our room and found the other bunks occupied by twittering post-teen girls who were intently discussing their outfit choices for the next day. For a long time. Like, entirely too long. Like, in whispers even after they turned the lights out. Kp & I escaped to the showers to wash away the grump, but when my shoes got wet despite my best efforts at keeping them dry, I decided to accept that London was giving us the shaft. (Now, looking back on it, I see that it wasn't London so much as it was ourselves just being grumpy, but at the time I was not pleased with our location. Plus, I missed Scotland.) We went to bed in our little bunks hoping that the next day would bring exciting fun in jolly old England.

At least the linen was clean.

day 8 - march 23, 2009

Scott and Tori made us a traditional Scottish fry up for breakfast. "Fry up" means LOTS OF MEAT.

"I used to be a vegetarian!"

I ate almost all of it, I even tried the black pudding and I have to admit--it was pretty delicious. Let's not talk about what's in it, though. Deal?

Scott was nice enough to give us the whirlwind tour of Dumfries and Galloway. We drove to Dunscore, where Tori's aunt and uncle have a farm. Her cousin was in and he let us explore the grounds and buildings. There were chickens:
And seldom used rooms and things:

I love exploring old places.

We climbed the hill opposite the farm, in the sheep paddock, and got an amazing view of the village of Dunscore.

The sheep kept running away because we had a dog with us. But she was more interested in kp.

It was windy.We checked out the Dunscore Kirk (church) which had a graveyard with some very old gravestones.

We left Dunscore and continued our driving tour of the area.

Dumlanrig Castle and Tori (babe).
Morton Castle. This castle was just open for anyone to go in and take a look. There were info plaques, but no one charging a handful of pounds for entry. Amazing.

If you know kp, you know she likes taking timed photos, as in setting up the camera, hitting the timer and running into the shot. She set one up in Morton Castle and tried to run into the shot, but didn't quite make it in time. So she asked me to do the pushing of the button and running into position. Piece of cake, I thought. I pushed the button and wasn't sure if it was working but kp yelled "IT'S GOING IT'S GOING!! RUN RUN RUN!!" So, I ran. Fast. Over uneven ground. And twisted my ankle. It made a gross grinding sort of crunch and pain shot up my calf and I limped the last few steps to kp. I didn't quite make it into position, but the camera did its job without fail.

lv: "kp, I think I hurt myself!"
kp: "GET IN THE SHOT GET IN THE SH--is this a trick?"

Driving around the Scottish countryside and seeing things from the car, pointed out to us by a local, was one of my favourite parts of the whole trip.

We had dinner in Dumfries then went for drinks at the Globe, which was Robbie Burns' "howff" (haunt, or local watering hole, sort of).
There was no one else in the bar, so we sat in the little snug that had Burns paraphernalia on all the walls. The bar lady chatted to us and when she found out that we were visiting she offered to take us on a tour of the upstairs, which is like a living Burns museum.
We saw the room he stayed in, where he ate and drank and we even got to sit in his chair.
In his room, she recited one of his poems to us and it blew us all away.

There is something about the Scottish attitude toward history that I really love. It's like history lives with them rather than behind them. Like it walks beside them as they go about their business, it informs their daily life and it's always there, intertwined in the now. It's a comfort rather than a burden. I admire it.

We had some good, authentic Scottish whisky before leaving the Globe and heading back to the house. A perfect end to a very Scottish day.