Ah, More Rain (oh, and lots of GOOD beer)!

Sunday, June 3 – Day 6 (Dublin)

Surprisingly, we woke up to rain this morning! Again, it rained all day...however, we had just the one day to explore Dublin so we set out to see what we could see… First stop - the Guinness Storehouse! This is the modern name given to the St. James Gate Brewery (and visitor center)… This great brewery tour mixes the history of brewing, distributing, and marketing Guinness beer with an education on how the beer is made (here is AM with her most favorite ingredient), and OFCOURSE a pint of the brew at the end (sort of like the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow – but no leprechauns)…

After our brewery tour and Guinness tasting, we took a stroll around Dublin (south of the Liffey River). We explored the Temple Bar, the Trinity College area, and the Christ Church Cathedral. We got a bit turned around at one point, and obviously looking puzzled at our map, a very kind local stopped and asked if we were lost. After we explained we were searching for the St. Patrick’s Cathedral, he pointed us in the right direction and we made our way there. While a church has stood on the site of St. Patrick’s Cathedral (in Dublin) since the 5th century, the building you see here dates from 1191… Interestingly, the St. Patrick’s choir was the first to perform Handel’s Messiah in 1742.

To finish off our visit to Dublin and round out our beer experience, we stopped into The Porterhouse for an Irish stew dinner. The Porterhouse is a local microbrewery specializing in some very tasty porters (just across town from the Guinness brewery)…

Tonight we spent the night in the Dublin airport – not the most desirable of accommodations, but we had a 6:00am flight to Vitoria, Spain. We had to be at the airport to check-in by 4:00am, so rather than spend three hours sleeping in a hotel/hostel and trying to figure out how to get to the airport at 3:00 in the morning, we just took the last bus from downtown out to the airport and found a comfortable (comparatively speaking ) area to rest our heads for the night. Here were our accommodations for the evening…

A little Irish Culture, History, and Beer

Saturday, June 2 – Day 5 (Belfast to Dublin)

We woke up to rain AGAIN today, but Rich and I decided to head out into Belfast for the morning so we could catch an early train to Dublin. Belfast is a fascinating place steep with a modern history – “the Troubles” – that I never knew very much about! Like Ireland itself (split into Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland), Belfast is a divided city – quite literally…A “peace wall” splits the city into the Catholic section and the Protestant section. The Catholic Falls Road and Protestant Shankill Road, on either side of this peace wall, have been battlefronts since the 1970s. Even today, for the most part, members of each faith do not cross into each other’s “territory” and do not mingle.

Rich and I took a walk down both Falls Road and Shankill Road and crossed through a gated section of the peace wall seen here… This is actually only one of the gates at this point in the wall. Rich took this photo while standing in a doorway (like the one behind me) of another gate that was parallel to this one blocking the same thru-way.

On the Catholic Falls Road was this pristine memorial for volunteers and members of Sein Fein and the IRA’s Company D who lost their lives during the conflict...

The city is being rejuvenated, but the history still stands (around almost every corner). It seemed everywhere we walked throughout the city we found impressively large murals expressing political and religious passions. Here are a couple of examples…

After trekking all over town, we took a train from Belfast to Dublin. We were worried about trying to find a place to stay on a Saturday night in Dublin – known for its Temple Bar party district. Fortunately, after striking out on our internet searches, we had success booking a hostel over the phone (from Scotland). So upon arrival, we headed straight for the hostel. We decided to take some time to calendar out the rest of our adventures (I’ll try to provide a list in another post so you can know where we are headed and when). We took a walk to the local grocery store and grabbed one of each of the various Irish beers they had in stock (a sort of taste test, if you will). We spread out in the lobby area of the hostel and got down to business with our guidebooks (and our beers).

After a short time, we noticed that we would be sharing the hostel with several groups in town for their “hen party” or “stag party.” What a riot! Here Rich pretends to take a picture of me with my Harp, but he really was tickled by the games being played by the hen party behind me – all decked out for their night on the town…

After we had a rough draft of our calendar complete (and all the beers were gone too), we decided to venture over to Temple Bar to find a bite to eat. We took a seat by the window, and before calling it a night, we must have counted no less than twenty hen and stag parties.

Catching Up SLOWLY!

Friday, June 1 – Day 4 (Edinburgh to Belfast)

We got up early this morning to enjoy a cup of tea and surf the internet to make future accommodation reservations, starting with that evening in Belfast. Unfortunately, our hostel offered no place to leave our luggage while we explored the town, so we had to make a special trip to the train station to drop our bags there.

We had hopes of fitting in a tour of the Edinburgh Castle and the underground “vaults”’ before we had to catch our first train of the day. However, all of the vault tours were booked through 12:40pm and we had to be on a train at 1:30, so we’ll have to save that experience for another trip.

The Edinburgh Castle was amazing! Here is a picture of Rich as we stood on the esplanade of the castle before we bought our tickets… The castle is an 11th century hilltop fort with incredible views of the city below (seen here)…
This is a picture looking out over another part of the city as a fog rolls in... The castle comes complete with Scotland’s Crown Jewels, a royal residence, Romanesque chapel, war memorial, and military museum. Here Rich and I stand on the castle grounds between the third and the fourth gates that protected the castle from enemies. Up above us is St. Margaret’s Chapel, the oldest building in Edinburgh…

After the castle, we took a leisurely stroll back to the train station to catch our first train at 1:30pm. From Edinburgh, we had to connect in Glasgow (with 30 minutes to walk from Queens Station to Central Station downtown) to catch a 4:30pm train to Straenrear where we were to take a 7:50pm ferry which had us into Belfast at 9:30pm. Here we say goodbye to Scotland and the UK as the ferry heads over to the Republic of Ireland…

When the ferry landed in Belfast, we found ourselves in the middle of an industrial shipping yard with no public transportation. We decided to walk into town (just about a half mile) to catch a metro out to our hostel. As we reached the edge of the city, we saw a little place on the corner called “The American Bar.” As we walked closer, one of the bar patrons came outside to have a smoke (the Republic of Ireland recently passed a no smoking ordinance…I like the place already!) Anyway, she asked us if we were lost and we told her we were trying to make our way to the metro. She proceeded to give us directions in a language I can only guess was rapid English…then she decided maybe those weren’t the best directions and called out another patron who gave us similar directions in a similar tongue. By the time all was said and done, there were three of them outside, they decided that the directions would do us no good because the metro had stopped running for the night, they called us a cab, and one of the ladies bought us each a Guiness. Here we are in The American Bar with some of our new friends… People in Belfast are really nice!

Still Playing Catch Up on the Blog

So, here we sit in an internet cafe with wi-fi by the hour...no luck with wi-fi in our hostels since we left Dublin. We are in Madrid right now, and it is June 8 - Day 11...Here is the latest I can offer to bring you up to speed:

Thursday, May 31 – Day 3 (York to Edinburgh)

We woke early this morning to join all of the other B&B guests for a “traditional English breakfast.” Spiros and Elizabeth cooked up quite a feast. After breakfast, we headed out on the town. First, we took a stroll through The Shambles, an atmospheric old butchers’ quarter with colorful tipsy medieval buildings and original meat hooks sticking out from under the eaves. Here you see Rich in “a shambles”… Next, we visited York’s Castle Museum where they have created replicas of century-old streets and everyday objects from the Victorian and Edwardian eras. After the Castle Museum, we went to the York Minster. This beautiful Gothic cathedral sits on top of the remains of a Romanesque church dating back to 1100 and a Roman fort dating back even further. Constantine was proclaimed emperor here in A.D. 306! We took a tour of the undercroft which (thanks to the work of excavators and archeologists) displays the foundations of these three separate and distinct buildings. We also climbed the 275-step tower for an incredible panoramic view of the city. Here is one view from the top…

We took the 3:00pm train to Edinburgh, arriving in the middle of a torrential rain shower. Since it was pouring down rain outside, we decided to take care of some business in the train station – good thing too! We knew we needed to take a ferry from Scotland to Ireland, but we were not sure of the times, locations, connections, etc. After waiting in the cue, we were told that we had to catch a 1:30 train out of Edinburgh in order to make all of our connections and arrive in Belfast by 9:30pm the next night. This meant we were not going to have a lot of time to spend in Edinburgh, we were going to need to spend the night in Belfast (something we had not really intended), and we were going to need a place to stay in Belfast BEFORE we got there.

Armed with new information and with no signs of the rain letting up, we ventured out into Edinburgh to find a place to rest our heads for that night. After traipsing through the rain for about 30 minutes, we found a hostel downtown along the “Royal Mile.” Both of our guidebooks mentioned this hostel as a good place to stay…unfortunately, though it was one of those places that must have gone DOWN HILL since the books were published.

Once we dropped our bags off in the room, we took a walk up the Royal Mile almost to the esplanade of the Edinburgh Castle. The Royal Mile is a historic road lined with museums, pubs, and shops, stretching from the castle to the Palace of Holyroodhouse (the Queen’s home away from home). We stopped in a pub for dinner and a beer before hitting the sack.

Pictures coming soon! Promise!!!!

Today we flew from Ireland to Spain and encountered MANY MANY challenges which we will share in more detail SOON. In the meantime, we were able to reduce the size of our photos, but THEN were unable to conect to the internet with the laptop. We will try again tomorrow. Please stand by!!!

Not As Easy To Find Blog Time As Originally Intended

So, our apologies to our loyal readers (ha ha ha). Unfortunately, our camera takes pictures that are WAY TOO BIG to post, so I will shrink those and they will appear in the next posting. Meanwhile, here is an update that will bring you current through Wednesday or Day 2 of our adventures:

Monday, May 28, 2007 – Day 0 (Dallas to London)

Despite our better judgment, we did not test our backpacks before today. Fortunately, everything we NEEDED to take (and then some) fit into our bags. Here you see the contents of AM's backpack (she took the pack light recommendation to heart), and the contents of Rich's backpack...
Our very kind friend, Steve, drove us to the airport for our 7:10pm flight. At 9:30pm after fixing several “mechanical problems,” we finally took off down the runway, and we were off over the big pond!

Our flight was fairly uneventful…we studied our guide books and continued to plan our travels; we caught up on some recent releases, including Music & Lyrics starring Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore; oh, and there were two unaccompanied minors who decided to play Yatzee at about 2:00am while the rest of us were attempting sleep…just your usual nine hour flight.


Tuesday, May 29 – Day 1 (London to Bath)

Our decent into London Gatwick Airport was a wee bit bumpy, and I noticed that American does not seem to provide those handy barf bags anymore…in the end, I thankfully did not need one, but it was touch and go there for a little while.

From Gatwick, we grabbed a train to Bath. Unable to sleep on the airplane (thanks in part to the Yatzee players and also the cramped quarters), I passed out on top of my backpack (not a very comfortable pillow). Rich was good enough to stay awake and make certain that we did not miss our station.

We arrived in Bath at approximately 4:30pm and quickly located a small hostel outside of town called the White Hart. By this time, we were starving and decided to forage out in search of a decent meal. On our walk to the Bath town square, Rich and I discovered the River Avon...


We ended up at a small café in the town square across from the Bath Abbey and the Roman Baths. That night we ate the traditional English meal of Fish and Chips. As the sun was setting over the town square, Rich caught AM in the shadows of the Bath Abbey...
After dinner and some good English ale, we joined a comedy walking tour called Bizarre Bath - great fun and a great introduction to the town! Following the tour, we made our way back to the White Hart (the English call a deer - a hart) and succumb to our jet lag.


Wednesday, May 30 – Day 2 (Bath to York)

We awoke to a rainy morning in Bath, but hurried to the town square to meet up with a historic walking tour. Bath is a beautiful Georgian city beside the River Avon. That is the same River Avon of Stratford-upon-Avon (home of the Bard, himself). The people are very friendly (unfortunately, a bit of a rarity in most of the rest of England). As we learned on our tour, the city is steeped in history. Sitting atop of a hot mineral spring reported to have curative effects, the first King of England, Edgar, was crowned in Bath’s Anglo-Saxon abbey.

A bit soggy after our tour, Rich and I ducked into the Roman and Medieval Baths for another tour. Here AM contemplates the Baths (doesn't the green murky water make you want to jump right in?)... The baths were green and murky because the water is untreated and the baths are still lined with the original lead plates from the 10th century?!? Our tour of the baths ended in the famous “Pump Room,” home to Bath’s aristocratic society members in the 18th century. We were invited to share in a glass of the curative mineral spring water…I’ll take Dallas tap water over THAT any day. It was hot and tasted absolutely AWFUL! Short on time, we hopped a train to York at about 2:30pm. I slept almost the entire four hour train ride. Rich caught up on his journal writing. He has been keeping fairly good real time records of our adventures and helps me with details I forget to account for since I am OBVIOUSLY behind in recording our blog.

At 6:30pm in York, we jumped off our train and began our hunt for a place to stay. First we ventured out about a mile to a “new hostel” called Marmadukes written up in our Europe on a Shoestring Budget guidebook. As we approached the reception area with our backpacks, the night receptionist gave us a funny look and informed us that the hostel was now a rather expensive hotel. Luckily we had a whole list of back-up hostels.

The next hostel, on Queen Anne Street, had a “No Vacancies” sign, and the B&B on the corner of Sycamore Street had a “No Vacancies” sign. Then finally, a B&B farther down the road had a “Vacancies” sign. Rich rang the door bell. The keeper answered and after checking his book, apologized and informed us that the B&B in fact had no vacancies. Feeling defeated, we noticed the final B&B at the end of Sycamore Street still showed that it had “Vacancies.” Tired and hopeful, I approached the door and rang the bell. Spiros, “the boss’ husband,” answered the door. After checking his wife’s book, he informed us that they had one room left and asked if we wanted to see it. As we followed him up four flights of stairs, the temperature in the house rose about twenty degrees. The room was a family room with three beds that usually let for 75 GBP per night (that’s about $150), but since there were just two of us, he offered to let us stay for 50 GBP. We took it and it only took us an hour to find it! Did I mention we took the LAST room?...

At 8:30pm that night, the sun had STILL not yet set and we headed out to walk York’s 12th century city walls. The walls stretch out three miles around the city, and were built by the Normans to assert control over Northern England. Rich and I walked only a short section of the walls. We entered the walls at Bootham Bar (in York, a bar is a gate and a gate is a street) and exited at Monk Bar just as a kind policeman was about to lock up the city walls for the night. The walk provided and interesting walk back in time and some beautiful views of the city below. Here we are with the York Minster Towers behond us (more on that in later posts)...

When you fail to plan, you plan to fail!

After several weeks of diligent planning and preparation, the final countdown begins...T-minus one week and counting. One week from today, Rich and I board our DIRECT flight from Dallas Fort Worth International Airport to London Gatwick. Where we go from there is still yet to be determined. However, we have the rail passes, the guidebooks and the back packs, and final preparation are underway.