Alright, so you still want more, eh? Well I will oblige. We last left off at the beginning of my final week in London. Things are stressful with schoolwork, I'm still having separation anxiety from Scotland (which was not lessened by a weekend in Roma), and I have to pack up my whole apartment. Oh, and Brett is on his way to see me for the first time in six months. Can we say hectic?
Even though I probably should have, and definitely could have, I didn’t really sleep in after getting in at 1:30 and not getting into bed until about 4. Instead I woke up bright and early and started to clean my room and finished up all of the final touches on my portfolio due that evening. I also ended up meeting (finally!) with my supervisor at Foresight Communications (the internship with the now infamous Dr. Onkar Sahota). We met up and went out for a cup of tea in a nearby restaurant. Wow, was it nice. This place even had its own piano player and was decked out completely in leather couches and chairs, wait staff clad in dress shirts and tuxedo pants. Anywho, our meeting really shed some light on to my situation and why things turned out the way that they did. I think if I would have known before what I know now, I could have had a much better experience and been much more helpful. But, none the less, a good conclusion to the whole situation. After our meeting I headed to Vauxhall to print off some things at Dods for my portfolio. I just love everyone at Dods. So nice. I printed off all of my portfolio and bound all of the pages then set off (in the rain) for Cromwell Road for my final Perspectives on Experiential Learning Abroad class. I got there with quite a bit of time before my class started, so I decided to break down and purchase Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I had refused to pay 27 Euro in Italy for the book, but I just could not continue to resist, so I went down to Sainsbury’s and picked it up and started reading. Well, our PELA class only lasted about 15 minutes, then we turned in our portfolios and went our separate ways. Most everyone else went down to the pub after class, but I could not resist the temptation of Harry Potter, so I went home and read instead. I spent the rest of the evening alternating between Harry Potter, cleaning, and being on the phone. Very nice.
Tuesday, not so exciting, I guess. Work. Uploaded the magazine, as usual to the website, transcribed some interviews, prank phone calls (they weren’t really prank calls, I was checking to make sure that all of the phone numbers in our directory were still correct, but I felt like I was doing prank calls). Thrilling really. The evening was spent in a similar fashion to the previous evening, this time with a bit of packing thrown into the mix. Wow, I know.
Wednesday was a bit more exciting, just on the principle that the day that I had been counting down to for the previous six months had finally arrived. Brett and I finally we back together for the first time since January, when he had left for Australia. The day started off a bit rocky, as I missed my bus stop at Kings Cross Thameslink because I was so busy reading Harry Potter! Fortunately though, I was only one stop too far, so I rushed back in a solid power walk. Work was actually borderline torturous on Wednesday. The whole day was spent transcribing interviews. Three interviews. Yikes. But I none the less survived in one piece. Success. The evening was full of cleaning, attempts at doing laundry, and Harry Potter. Around 9pm I headed out for the airport to pick up Brett. Like an idiot, I forgot to check what airline he was flying with before I left. I recalled it being British Airways, so I went to the BA terminal and was waiting there (already a few minutes late) and I noticed that there were no flights coming in from the US, let along Chicago. So in a panic, I called my mom who checked my email. He was flying American Airlines, which of course is on the total opposite side of the airport. Seeing as the Underground was closing in a few minutes, I ran from one terminal to the other, and barely had time to greet Brett, who was sitting patiently waiting for me, before we had to rush to back to the Underground. After we got back to the CMC (that’s Charles Morton Court, my apartment building) Brett got all settled and we headed to bed.
Up early on Thursday, getting ready for my last day of work. Harry Potter joined me once more on my last commute to work (this time I was careful not to take the bus too far!). Once at work I was assigned with making a list of all of the heads of government for every single country in the world. Needless to say, that took quite a bit of time. By the time I was finished with that, it was about lunch time. Because it was my last day, Richard, my supervisor, and Sarah, my would be supervisor took me out to a lovely long lunch a few blocks away. We had a bottle of wine, starters, entrees, the whole works. In the middle of our lunch it started raining, and since I was the only one who had brought an umbrella, we sat around a bit longer than we might have otherwise waiting for the rain to stop. We talked about all kinds of things, mostly politics, of course, and just had a wonderful time. After lunch I finished up my last assignment (a transcript of course! L) and said my goodbyes. Seeing as I had only been there a month and previous to that day had never been out with any of my coworkers before, it was surprisingly sad. After work I met up with the rest of the students from my group for a goodbye dinner at a pub nearby CAPA. Filled up on meat, cheese, fish, veggies and pita, I headed back to my apartment to meet up with Brett, who had gone out earlier to meet up with some of his friends back from Australia. The rest of the night was spent doing some final packing, deciding what needed to come to Florida (where I will be taking a holiday with my parents after my European tour), what needed to come to Europe, and what just needed to be sent home with Brett to Michigan. So that pretty much took the whole evening, complimented with a couple of movies.
Friday was kind of a sad day. Last day with the people that I had just spent the past 3 months with, day and night, for better and for worse. I was one of about ten people (at best) that went to class. We turned in our final papers and got a lecture for about an hour and a half about the future of the United Kingdom. If he couldn’t already sense it, I think Sofia (one of the older women in our group)’s comment of “we don’t want to be here all day” made it obvious to our professor that he was expected to keep the class short. As he lectured, I felt for the first time a great deal of personal opinion coming through, especially regarding the topic of Devolution. Lets just say, if Russell were there, there may have been a full scale brawl over some of the things that Professor Meenagh said about Scotland. I called him immediately after class to share the blasphemous things that I had been told. He was fuming. After class I met up with Brett at the Tower of London, where we took a tour of the complex, guided by a saucy Beefeater. We was really quite amusing. He shared all of the history of London and the Tower, as well as informed us about the origins of many phrases (a great number of which I had never heard of before). Fabulous tour. After the tour ended we went into the Jewel House and saw the Crown Jewels. It was really unbelievable how gaudy some of the things were. I enjoyed imagining Elizabeth just making a phone call to pull some of the items out to use them at parties, like the punch bowl the size of a bathtub. And then of course there was the 530 carat diamond in the scepter. You know, it wasn’t that impressive, I have seen bigger (not really, it was ginormous, to the point that I didn’t even believe that it could possibly be real). After seeing the Crown Jewels, we went into the Armoury (which neither of us were particularly interested in, but they have a way of trapping you so you have to go up like 5 flights of stairs and go through the whole building to exit), and then to a one room exhibit about Torture at the Tower (oohh, scary!) complete with famous torture devises like The Rack. After going through the Tower, we headed back to my apartment to finish packing, clean up, and drop our things off at Brett’s friend Gaby’s house, since I was going to be kicked out of my apartment the following day. Well, long story short, after about six phone calls, three texts, a Facebook message, and a Skype call later, we realized that she had bailed on us. So not only did we not have a place for our luggage while we headed to Bristol the next day, but we also had no where to stay for the next three days. Enter crazy idea. Impromptu trip to Scotland. Sleeping in airports. Sounds fabulous. I called to check with Russell if he and Graham would be free to meet up if I were to come. While the boys contemplated this idea, Brett and I went out with my TWC group to Piccadilly Circus to The Zoo for a final night of Shenanigans. Like an idiot I had forgotten my Oyster card for the Underground when we left, so we got separated from the rest of the group. Once we got to Piccadilly no one was answering their phones to give directions to the club! By some miracle we found our way there anyway, only for me to realize that I also had forgotten all of my ID. Fortunately, the bouncer fell for my white lie that my purse had been stolen and let me into the bar anyway. Finally I met up with everyone else, and the proper evening of shenanigans commenced. There was plenty of dancing (sometimes on top of bars), chatting, late night eating, and our final trip on the N 73 (tear). By the time that we got back to the CMC it was quite late (considering Brett and I had a 9:00am bus to Bristol the next morning). So I said my final goodbyes and booked our flight and Brett’s hostel for Scotland (I was staying with Russell in Edinburgh). It is actually quite fortunate that I did this at 3:00am rather than waiting until the morning, because by the time that we woke up at 3:30, the internet had been shut off.
The internet was not the only thing that had been shut off in the wee hours of the morning. After packing and getting all situated, Brett and I went to take some garbage from my room and the apartment out to the dumpster, only to find that my keys had been shut off to the building. All of our luggage, my purse and my cell phone were all locked inside. Fortunately, by some miracle, Brett had his cell phone in his pocket and we were able to call the after hours line to have someone come and let us in (who had apparently been doing this since 3:45am, poor guy). Crisis Averted. So Brett and I grabbed all of our bags and hopped on the 73 for the last time, got on the Underground (all six bags in had) and went to Victoria Station, where we put our luggage into storage and went to the coach station to catch our bus to Bristol. We were going to see Starlight Express, an Andrew Lloyd Webber play that I had known the soundtrack to since the age of 11, but never seen. Well, Bristol didn’t really have a ton to offer. We walked around the city a bit and stopped in at a few shops (where I found a fabulous pair of pink flats for only 7 pounds) and then just went right into the theater. The play was great, although admittedly, not quite what I was hoping for. The play had been modified because it was on such a small stage, and some of the songs were cut out while others were added in, and even some characters were cut out! There was also a 3D part that was not in the original version (which I thought was a little hokey, but I could see how little kids would love it). But overall, the play was still very good. We ended up catching a earlier bus to London, because there was nothing else that we really wanted to see in Bristol after the play was over (although we did walk around a different part of town again, but most places were beginning to close). Once back in London we switched my extra bags to a different (read cheaper) luggage storage place, grabbed some dinner, and hopped on a train to London Gatwick for our first night of sleeping in the airport.
We arose at 4:00am to check in (not that either of us were sleeping particularly well on our bench). After clearing security we grabbed some breakfast and hung out until our flight finally took off for Edinburgh. I got those wonderful butterflies in my stomach just being back in Scotland (really it’s such a fabulous country). We took the airbus into town and checked Brett in to his hostel, dropped off our stuff and went out to explore. We took a stroll down part of the Royal Mile to Hollyrood Castle, taking some pictures. After the castle we walked down past the new (hate it or love it) Scottish Parliament building and just outside of town to walk up the mountain, heading for Arthur’s Seat. We hiked/climbed the mountain for about two hours, taking some fabulous photos (really, any photo of Scotland is a fabulous photo) then walked back in towards town. We walked back up the Royal Mile in the other direction, towards Edinburgh Castle, stopping in a number of the cute little shops, and booking Brett a Haggis Day Tour up into the Highlands, so that he could get a sense of the Scotland I love. On our way to the castle we stopped in at a little restaurant where I manned up and tried some haggis (in the form of a pizza). It wasn’t bad, but I was definitely glad that I didn’t order JUST haggis, because it seemed like one of those things that you could get sick of really quickly. After walking up to the Castle (deciding not to go in based on the ticket price and being told that it was pretty overrated) we walked down past some of the many museums in Edinburgh and down into the gorge across from Prince Street where there was jazz festival going on. Since it was a beautiful Sunday, the hill was littered with people enjoying the music and sunshine. Brett and I walked down to the fountain at the far side of the gorge and grabbed a seat on one of the benches and joined the others enjoying the day. In the gorge there was not only a beautiful fountain, but an adorable carousel, a bungee bouncy castle and a spectacular view of the Castle, up on the hill. Trying to make the most of our time, we forced ourselves to move away from our little bench and we walked down Princes Street stopping in a couple of the shops, walking towards some monuments at the end of the street, up on the hill. The view from the top of the hill was spectacular. There was not only a fabulous view of the entire city of Edinburgh, but there was also an amazing view out toward the ocean. We played around at the top of the hill a bit, watching some massive rain clouds coming in toward the city. With this cue, we walked down toward the Royal Mile again, to check out some more of the shops out that way. We were not lucky enough to outrun the rain however. But, a little drizzle never hurt anyone. We walked the Royal Mile again, and decided to head back toward Princes Street (because I wanted to check out the ultra chic Zara—we couldn’t go before because we had drinks). After a ridiculously long walk to end up ultimately unsuccessful in my shopping exploits, the rain was still following us, on and off. We decided to seek shelter in a Costa Coffee, burning a little bit more time before returning to Brett’s hostel to get ready for the evening, where I would be meeting up with my darling Haggis driver, Russell. Before meeting up with Russell, Brett and I grabbed a drink at WalkAbout, an Australian pub, where I tried my first snakebite (a half beer, half cider drink died pink with grenadine). After I had finished my snakebite and Brett finished his beer, we walked to the Scott Memorial for me to meet up with Russell. After introducing Brett and Russell, Brett went back toward the hostel and Russell and I went to a pub to grab some food and a couple of drinks. After chatting away, like always, for about 3 hours, we finally dropped off my stuff, changed and went out again to the Grassmarket hopping around a few different bars, ending up finally at the Last Drop, the bar that people being executed were taken to for their last drink before being killed. Overall, a fabulous evening of debauchery.
Monday morning we slowly started the day off, watching a bit of BBC, then grabbing some lovely breakfast. After breakfast we started wandering the city. Russell is pretty much a walking encyclopedia on everything. So the day was full of learning about little factoids of Scottish knowledge. We walked up toward the gorge, then up toward the castle ending up once more at the Grassmarket, then toward the Royal Mile. We stopped in at a few churches and cemeteries (where I of course was listening intently about all of the little stories associated with the buildings and people buried in them). After our walk down the Royal Mile, we went into the Scottish Parliament, grabbed a coffee/tea, then took a little peak around the inside of the building, including the chamber (where we ended up sitting and talking for about an hour). After the Parliament, we started walking back up the Royal Mile, doing a bit of shopping, and buying Russell a new kilt, made from scratch (which the process of choosing this kilt took about an hour and half between finding the best price, choosing the best tartan, measuring, paying, etc.). We met a cute little old woman, helping us put the whole thing together. She was quite amusing. A saucy little woman. After we FINALLY got everything all settled with Russell’s kilt we got back to our aimless wandering of the city, focusing our efforts primarily on shopping for a birthday present for Russell’s sister (which worked out nicely because I was sort of vicariously shopping… I got to pick everything out, but I didn’t have to spend any of the money). It was on this little adventure that we discovered a number of cute little shops around Edinburgh, both on the Royal Mile and in the Grassmarket. In between our shopping, Russell took me to a little toy museum, but by the time that we made it inside, Russell had decided that the wonder that he remembered from his childhood wasn’t really there, and that it was lame, so we quickly made an exit (I didn’t have a problem with it, personally. It was kind of cute, full of toys from a ton of different eras and such—I am a history nerd, I know.) When Russell was satisfied with all of his purchases (both for his sister and himself) we went on to satisfy a longtime craving that I had been having, oh yes, MEXICAN! Our last dinner was legend, a chimichanga and margarita for me and a beer and burrito for my man lover. Granted, it was no Border Cantina, but it definitely did the trick. The day flew by, and before I knew it, it was time to pick up our bags and get Russell to the train station and me to the airport. Sad. I don’t want to think about it. No more Scotland. Change the subject. After just a few hours Brett and I were back in London Gatwick airport for yet another night of sleeping in airports. Woo Hoo. Joyous times in Gatwick. Not exactly ideal, but it was economical. What can you do? Lots of Harry Potter reading, phone talking and halfway sleeping on a bench.
Brett and I survived the night and made it successfully to Dublin after yet another delayed flight, to arrive into the city centre in the middle of the afternoon. In proper Irish fashion, we started our Dublin adventures off with a pint in the neighboring pub while we waited to check in to our “hostel” (aka sketchy-ass hole in the wall with beds). We finally got all checked in and settled, and cleaned up from our airport adventures before we headed out for a bit of exploring around the city on a beautiful sunny day. We walked around a bit and eventually ended up out by Trinity College and in the Temple Bar. We grabbed a bit of dinner and walked around the campus of Trinity College, taking time to stop and sit a bit on a little bench under a tree and enjoy the last bits of the day. We called it a night pretty early, because we would be getting a ridiculously early start the next day to take a tour of Northern Ireland (well, selected parts of Northern Ireland, obviously).
Our day started at 5:15 am to make our 5:45 departure from Dublin for Belfast to begin our day. To be completely honest, I slept pretty much the entire bus ride to Belfast. When we finally arrived into the city, we went to the tour’s meeting spot where we were greeted by our guide for the day (who’s name I never actually caught, because our speaker was broken in the back). Brett insists it was either Michael or Patrick Mc Something, but I told him that he was just a racist (haha). But no matter. He was so cute. Exactly what you would expect from and Irishman… red hair, strong accent (duh), pale skin, skinny, and spent the whole day singing. Like I said, very cute. Our tour started off heading toward Giant’s Causeway (which I had seen the corresponding side of in Scotland). But before we reached the causeway we stopped at the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge. This bridge, which originally was only 3 ropes, one to walk on and two to hold, was used by fisherman to catch salmon as they approached this little island and diverted around it. So we hiked for about 30 minutes through little hills to the rope bridge, crossed it, then hiked around the little island for about 20 minutes before we headed back across the bridge to the bus. From this area you could actually see across the sea to the coast of Scotland (tear! So close, yet so far!) I considered just jumping in the ocean and taking a swim. Nevermind that. The whole day this one group of three people was late getting back to the bus at every stop. The bridge was the first instance, and there were about 4 more to follow. They were never just 5 minutes late. No, they were about 20 minutes late AT EVERY STOP. At the final stop our bus driver was basically like, if you are late again, I will leave you here (and that was the first and only time they were punctual for the bus). Anywho, after leaving the rope bridge we drove to the Giant’s Causeway. While we were driving there, our driver told us the story of the Causeway. Now, this story varies slightly whether an Irishman is telling it or a Scotsman, but here is the gist. Because we are reflecting upon the Irish portion of my travels, I will tell it from an Irish perspective (forgive me Russell!). There was an Irish giant who would stand on the shores of Ireland every day. One day he spotted in the distance a fair Scottish lassie (or princess, as some say). Every day after that, the Irish giant would stand at the shore watching the Scottish lass, wishing that she would be his. One day with the help of his gang, the Irish giant decided that he would go over to Scotland and get his bonnie girl. So one stepping stone at a time, the Irish giant placed rocks into the sea and walked over to Scotland. When he was there, he finally spoke to this girl of his dreams and asked her to come back with him to Ireland. She agreed, and they both returned to Ireland and were living there quite happily. But one day while the Irish giant was away from the house a Scottish giant, who the Scottish girl was supposed to have married came over Ireland, demanding that the girl return to Scotland. She told the Scottish giant to return the next day and fight her Irish giant husband, and then she would follow him back to Scotland. That night when the Irish giant returned the Scottish girl told him what had happened that day and told her Irish giant that she had a plan. That night she told her husband to shave his entire body. The next day as they saw the Scottish giant approaching, the woman told her husband to hop into the baby’s cradle in the corner. When the Scottish giant reached their house, he was ready for a fight. The Scottish woman invited him in and made small talk telling the Scottish giant that her husband was still out and it was just her and her baby in the house. She then proceeded to introduce the Scottish giant to her “baby.” Seeing the size of this baby (and therefore drawing conclusions about the father), the Scottish giant took off in a sprint from the house and ran back across the sea, smashing the stepping stones behind him as he retreated to Scotland. And from this we have what we call the Giants Causeway. The actual sight was really cool. There were tons of cliffs and such, but the coolest part was these rock formations that were like little octagons and hexagons everywhere along the beach. I’m pretty sure I have pictures, it is kind of hard to describe, I guess. So we hiked around the Causeway, along the beach, to the Amphitheatre (a rock formation that is- gasp!- in the shape of an amphitheatre) then up 200-something stairs where we got some lunch and hopped back onto the Paddywagon bus (where the annoying group was late again). It was at this point that the warm bus, the full tummy from lunch, the driver’s singing, and the light rain that had started outside the bus lulled me into a deep sleep (it was quite a good little nap, I will say). I was woken up in Derry, a really important city in Northern Ireland in the battle between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. Although I missed the official lecture about Derry (and so did Brett because of our broken speaker) I feel like now I have a pretty good grasp on the situation. One interesting factoid about Derry is that it is one of the only walled cities that still has its walls still completely intact (and it had been sieged quite intensely by the English many times before). But the modern importance of Derry was within the conflict between the Catholics and Protestants and the English (British) military presence in the area. In the 1970’s conflict raged between the military and the people with many protests and riots because of (and causing more) violence by the military. Now the city is covered in murals all over the buildings depicting the pain and suffering of the town caused by religious persecution and the violence against its citizens. The whole thing was really quite interesting and the murals were extremely beautiful, and really moving. After Brett and I had looked around at all of the murals, we wandered Derry for a bit, and returned to the Paddywagon. From Derry we made our way back to Belfast and caught the bus back to Dublin. When we got back to Dublin, we grabbed some kebabs from MoMo’s, a place recommended to us by some kid Brett met in Edinburgh. Not bad, really, but it was no Green Lanes kebab, that’s for sure. After we had finished our kebabs, we walked around the Temple Bar area again, trying to find a bar that Brett had read about. When we finally found what we thought was the bar he had wanted to find, he suddenly doubted whether that was it (because it had sounded absolutely massive and cool, and when we got there it was less that spectacular in all these respects). Nonetheless, we did not stay, instead heading back to the “hostel.” I should mention that I use the quotations because our room had no lock on the door, no lockers for our stuff, our one bathroom had mold covering all the walls, and the other backed up to the porch but only had curtains covering the top half (in other words, you could see my bum through the window getting in and out of the shower and on the potty. Pretty classy place, I know).So realistically, Thursday was our only day in the city, so we jam packed everything in. Well, actually it wasn’t really packed. There is surprisingly little that we could actually do in the city. We started the day off with a tour of the Guinness factory (an obvious must in Dublin). It was your pretty standard brewery tour (self-guided). My favourite part was actually looking at all of the old Guinness advertising, especially all of the animal cartoons that are now famous. We spent about 2 hours just looking around the tour area before we headed up to the bar on the seventh floor for our free pints (I tried a bit and just gave mine to Brett). The bar itself was pretty cool because the whole thing was enclosed in glass, giving a nice view of the city. So while Brett was skulling his beers, I took pictures of Dublin. After the Guinness factory we walked to St. Patrick’s Cathedral, looked around the gardens a bit, and grabbed a bite to eat at a Johnny Rocket’s kind of diner. After lunch we headed out to catch a walking tour of the city, only to find that the guide book was a piece of crap and had an incorrect time for the start of the tour, meaning that we missed the tour for the day (figures, the one thing I really wanted to do in the whole bloody city). Totally crushed, we headed to Dublin Castle to look around there for a bit. Inside the walls of the castle there were four artists making sand sculptures. Very cool. We opted to skip the charge to go inside of the castle, and made our way across the river to St. Michan’s Church, which had supposedly inspired the book Dracula. It was soon after this that we came to the conclusion that Dublin was a filthy city. I am having trouble recalling any time that I have ever seen a dirtier city. Not only was there garbage everywhere, but there were the most disgusting smells that I have ever encountered in my life. Ugh, just thinking about some of the smells makes me want to gag. New topic. After the church we headed to the General Post Office, the one must-see I was given by Russell. The only problem was he neglected to say that I needed to go upstairs into the museum about the 1916 Rebellion. Inside it is literally a post office. I mean, there is a statute about the Rebellion, but otherwise it is a post office, complete with stamps, letters, and all that jazz. Outside the post office (which the exterior was quite impressive) you could still see the bullet holes in the pillars from British troops attacking the rebels inside of the post office. So that was pretty cool. After being overall unimpressed by the GPO, we started wandering a bit, not know what to hit up next. We sat the steps of a hotel trying to regroup. Nothing came to mind. Eventually when we started walking again, we were passed by a city tours bus, and the lighting bolt of inspiration hit. We walked to Trinity College and hopped on the city tours bus and finally got to see Dublin as more than a festering trash dump (better late than never I suppose). The only negative thing was that we were approaching the end of the day, so we couldn’t really just hop on and off the bus everywhere, but had o be more selective. We decided to hop off the bus at Kilmainham Goal Prison, but unfortunately we had missed the last tour. However, we were able to look around the museum a bit. The museum was really cool, and had a ton of information on the 1916 rebellion. After we were kicked out of the museum (closing time!) we hopped back on the city sightseeing bus (where our driver was so LAME in comparison to our first driver) and spun around the city, letting our brains soak in the sights and knowledge from the tour. After we had done the whole loop, we set out for the internet café to satisfy our technological addictions (at least mine). After we had our fix, Brett wanted to head over to Little Italy on the other side of the river for a bite to eat. Well, let’s just say Little Italy was a good description. There were only about five restaurants, only one of which actually was serving food (opposed to just appetizers). We ended up at an Italian Restaurant in the Temple Bar area. It was actually quite a lovely little meal. I had a pizza, Brett had pasta. We shared some bruschetta and a bottle of wine and had a splendid time. We were planning on going out to grab a pint in the Temple Bar district, but all of the pubs were too crowded and my tummy couldn’t handle any more substance. Instead we walked back to the “hostel” and I sat with Brett in the adjacent pub while he had a pint and listened to the musician playing. After he had finished his drinks, we went back to the room, where I was forced to pack up all of my stuff in the complete dark. Interesting. Definitely interesting.
Friday morning we headed to Dublin airport, leaving our hostel at 5:45am (ouch). We successfully checked in and awaited our departure and the final chapters of Harry Potter were helping me pass the time. Around 9:30 am we took off back for London. When we arrived back at Gatwick, I felt a little pull at my heartstrings, saying goodbye to the airport that had pretty much been home for the past few days. I knew that I had to move on with my life, so I gathered my strength, grabbed my bags, and we headed off for the train back to Victoria. After sorting out all of my luggage that had been in storage, we hopped on the Undergound and headed to Gaby’s to clean up, repack, and grab a bite to eat. After we sorted everything out in Ealing, we headed back into Central London, checked in with Contiki, and checked into the Royal National Hotel in Russell Square. The rest of the evening we just grabbed a bite to eat, went to our welcome meeting, and took a bit of a walk around the city, before hitting the sheets with a bit of High School Musical. Lots of rest was required, although we may not have known it then, we were heading to a high impact week of adventure!
Alright, I hope you are still hungry, because the entree is on it's way... One Contiki European Horizon's Tour coming up!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment