The Luck of the Irish

After living in London for 3 months, the number one thing we've learned is that it always, ALWAYS takes longer to get somewhere than you plan.  Always. Even if you think you're giving yourself a healthy amount of buffer time, you will still find yourself running through a train station like a crazy person at some point during the journey (or find yourself waiting for the train for an hour because you gave yourself way too much buffer time).

On Thursday night, we were right on schedule, waiting to catch a bus to the Stansted airport, where we'd catch our plane to Dublin. According to schedule we were going to have a full two hours at the airport before boarding began, and were feeling pretty smug. Then, a bus pulled up and the driver told us that due to traffic, the buses were way behind, and if you were catching a plane tonight, you should probably ride the train. Dang! So we ran to the ticket office where we purchased train tickets to get to the airport, but we wouldn’t arrive until 20 minutes before our gate closed! After purchasing tickets, we had to catch the Tube to the correct train station, catch a train to the airport, check-in at the desk with our passports, make it through security, then find our terminal. When we got to the airport we ran around like maniacs and made it in time, hallelujah! 

Of course, we hadn't had enough trouble for one night, so we got to the airport, pulled out a map, and began walking to our hotel. After about 20 minutes, it became apparent that the map to our hotel didn't do the distance justice and we weren’t quite sure we were walking the right direction. So, we hauled our stuff back to the airport and caught a cab. Then the cab driver got lost finding our hotel, which ran our bill up an extra couple Euros (can I just say I don't know how people afford to take cabs??). So much for being prepared right?

Don’t worry, that’s not all.  We had rented a car for the 4-day weekend, but decided to opt out on the GPS because that would save us money, and we had a map... (Keep in mind, our phones don’t work without Wi-Fi, so we were doing this the old fashioned way with a big paper map).  We left Dublin after spending Friday morning at Trinity College, and got on the wrong motorway (freeway). Rather than turning around to get on the right road, I suggested we take a little country road that would connect us to the correct motorway.  Well, that tacked on about 2 hours of additional driving, with lots of U-turns and “Are you sure”s from Spencer.  On the plus side, the countryside was beautiful!  Finally, we made it to Limmerick where we’d be spending the night…and we could not find our hotel.  Finally, we stopped at a gas station where an incredibly friendly manager pulled out a more detailed map and showed us the way.  Phew!

Look at those gorgeous fall colors!  Notice I'm sitting on the left side of the car as the passenger??

Above right and left: The Long Room library at Trinity College was gorgeous.  The books are not organized by topic or author, but by size so that it is more aesthetically pleasing!

The good news is we didn’t spend much time lost after that.  I got better at reading the map (actually I was pretty dang good by the time we left), and we learned to stay on the bigger highway roads rather than blazing off onto the country roads for a “short cut”.  The moral of the story is, if you’re going to a country you don’t know, spend the extra money and get a GPS!

Every time we saw sheep on the road, I tried to take pictures, but they would run away!

 One of the highlights of our trip was climbing around on these castle ruins.

Sometimes it was so cold, I sat in the car to enjoy the views...

So cold!

Aside from the woes of travel, our time in Ireland was fantastic!  Yes, it rained for about 36 hours straight, but something has to keep the place looking so green!  We spent Saturday driving around The Ring of Kerry and Sunday driving The Dingle Peninsulas looking at all the scenery. On our last day, Monday, we visited the Cliffs of Moher and got to enjoy a little bit of sunshine before we made the 3 hour trek across Ireland back to Dublin.  (As a side note, if anyone is ever planning to go to Ireland, we loved the West Coast where we spent most of our time.  Dublin is on the East Coast, but we found we weren’t that interested in the city because most people go to Dublin to drink.  So, if you aren’t interested in Dublin, you should just fly into one of the airports on the west coast and buy yourself some more time!)  

Everyone in Ireland paints their house or shop in these bright, fun colors!  I loved it!!!

Eating like cheapskates!  Leftover cold pizza and PB&J made in the car for lunch! Mmmmm

The Cliffs of Moher

See that cute boy I'm hugging?  He's a trooper!  Our rental car was a manual and I'm not very proficient at stick shift...on top of that we had to drive on the "wrong" side of the road and the "wrong" side of the car, it cost extra to add me as a second driver, and I forgot my drivers license!  So, Spencer drove every foot of our 1391.1 kilometer journey over the 4 days!  Gosh I love this kid! 

Postcard from Paris

Well, it's been a couple weeks since I last blogged. I've been busy entertaining my wonderful mom for the last 10 days, but I just dropped her off at the airport yesterday :(,so now I have a little spare time. But more on her visit next time...this entry is all about our trip to Paris two weeks ago.

Thursday: After booking non-exchangable tickets for the 5:40 AM train, we realized we had to be to the station by 5:10, and the public transport didn't start running until 5AM...shoot. So we had no choice but to sleep in Central London on Thursday night, I call that hostel "the prison hostel" because the beds were literally a full wall of bunk beds with slats of wood dividing the beds, lovely. Luckily we arrived late and left early so it wasn't too big a deal.

Friday: We woke up puffy-eyed at 4:30 in the morn, made it to St. Pancras station, and boarded our train to Paris. The journey was about three hours, and travels under the English Channel in the crust of the earth for about 20 minutes of it! Our first stop in Paris was Notre Dame, which was one of Spencer's favorite things we've done in Europe. The cathedral is a mind-boggling 850 years old! Spencer took tons of pictures, here are just a few:

The amount of detail that goes into these things is mind-boggling!

After Notre Dame, we split an omelette in a cafe and caught the Metro to the Eiffel Tower (just for the record, I totally prefer London's Underground, they all smell like stale urine in Paris. Plus a girl almost puked on me on the Metro). The one problem with the Eiffel Tower was once we'd taken pictures with various angles of the tower, there wasn't much to do. So we walked around the surrounding area. Did I mention it was soooo cold?? We couldn't just sit in a park and enjoy, because it was too darn cold. 

Spencer was so embarrassed that I asked some random lady to take a kissing picture of us.  I didn't care, I wanted my kissing picture at the Eiffel Tower. 

I'm not sure if it was overconfidence or lack of language skills (probably some of both), but we got lost multiple times in Paris.  We kept getting on the wrong train, something we've never done in London. 

At 6PM we hit the The Louvre (art museum). I found out the day before we left that from 6PM-9PM on Friday nights, you can get into the Louvre for free if you're between ages 18-26, bonus! We visited the Mona Lisa, the Venus statue, and a few other famous works of art then wandered around more statues and the Egyptian exhibit. After the Louvre we ate dinner in another cafe, and even ordered a Creme Brûlée. Then we went back to the Eiffel Tower to see it all lit up at night which was beautiful, but impossible to capture in photos. By the end of the night, we were exhausted! By the time we made it back to our hostel, we figured it had been a 17 hour day!!! The good news was we had a private room with a double bed so I didn't have to deal with people snoring and coming in at all hours of the night. 

The plaza outside of The Louvre

The Venus, the Mona Lisa, and a miniature sphinx (he was even missing his nose!)

Saturday was the day I had laid aside to visit the Palace of Versailles. The palace was built in the 1700s and is probably most famous for being the home of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette before the French Revolution. The palace was ridiculous! It was beyond grand with elaborate paintings on the ceiling, crystal chandeliers, and gold trimmed everything. Included in our tickets for the Palace was a self-guided tour. We're talking the little electronic devices that you type numbers into, hold up to your ear, and learn about each room. We are true tourists now! The guide actually did help a lot, because it explained the different pieces of art, and put meaning behind each room. 

I wish these pictures could do the ceilings justice!

The Hall of Mirrors, arguably the fanciest room in the place it was a hall full of chandeliers, paintings, and mirrors (hence the hall of mirrors).

Spencer with his listening device and map.  Both of us with the outside of the Versailles.

After the palace interior, we visited the grounds of the palace, which go on for acres. My favorite part was the enormous hedges which reminded me of the hedge in Harry Potter 4, as well as all the fountains everywhere.

After Versailles, we caught a train to Normandy. We checked into our 1 Star hotel (gotta do Europe on a budget) for the night, then headed towards the downtown of Bayeux (the town we stayed in) for dinner. Unfortunately, by this time it was 10 PM, and Bayeux is a sleepy town, unlike London or Paris. We quickly realized that pretty much everything was closed. We saw one place open and walked in, the lady inside informed us they were now serving "Dessert only." I asked if anything else in town was open, she said no. It could have been a lie, but it seemed believable and we were starving! (We hadn't eaten anything but granola bars since we'd split a baguette sandwich 9 hours before). So we sat down and ordered 3 crepes (butter and sugar, Nutella, and applesauce). They were hands down the best crepes I've ever had. Maybe it was just because we were so hungry, but they were amazing enough they inspired me to get crepes in France 4 more times. No other crepe has been as delicious as those Bayeux crepes.

On our way to the train station in Paris, we came across a parade celebrating the harvest of the grapes.  No words can describe how strange it was.  It was basically a bunch of middle-aged adults walking down the street in bizarre costumes related to food.  There was even one part where they had dead fish on the end of a rod which they flung around at the spectators.  The highlight was a cute old man handing me this bouquet of flowers. 

Sunday: Sunday we went on an 8-hour guided tour of the D-Day sights. We rode in a 9-passenger van with 3 other couples that were all our parents' ages, and a German tour guide (how's that for ironic?). We could have toured the Normandy beaches ourselves, but everything is so spread apart, you'd do a lot of walking, see less, and you wouldn't appreciate or understand it as much. 

A gorgeous sunrise over the French countryside

Each place we stopped, our tour guide would describe what had happened here, showed us pictures, told about different soldiers who fought there, then gave us time to explore on our own. We visited Nazi bunkers, Omaha Beach, the American Cemetery, Point Du Hoc, a D-Day artifact museum, La Fiere bridge (upon which the last battle of Saving Private Ryan is loosely based), Utah Beach, and a church that served as a hospital during the attacks. 

Top: La Fierre bridge, Middle: German bunker and turrets, Bottom: Utah Beach

Omaha Beach was beautiful (think Oregon coastline), and it was hard to imagine it as a massive battlefield. Our tour guide did a good job of describing the reasons the landing on Omaha was so difficult for the Americans, and why there were so many casualties. (The Nazis had higher ground as you can see in the bottom picture, the Nazis had set up explosives and obstacles in the water, the Americans had to come in at low tide meaning there was more beach they had to make it across, etc.). 

The American Cemetery was closed while we were there due to the government shutdown, but our tour guide told us how to sneak in the back way, and gave us an hour to explore. So, we hopped the fence, and it was totally worth it. It was incredibly humbling to see all the grave markers overlooking the sea. 

The only people in the cemetery with us were two other couples from our group.  We may not have been able to see the visitor's center, but we did get the whole place pretty much to ourselves!

You can't really tell from the picture, but the railing we're climbing over was on a piece of concrete that was several feet off the ground.  It wasn't particularly hard to climb, but a lot of older people were standing outside the wall because it was too high off the ground for them to hoist themselves up. 

Point Du Hoc is an area of cliffs that gave the Nazis an advantage because they had the higher ground to visualize the coastline. The Americans dropped 3000 bombs here (all of which missed their targets), and the marks are still quite visible in the landscape. The only bummer about our tour of Normandy was the cold, blustery sea-wind and the intermittent rain.

The top right is our attempt to show the bumpy landscape.  The other two really capture the wind and rain up there.  My hair WAS in a ponytail at the beginning of the day. 

Monday: This was our last day in France, and was much lower-key. We visited an artist's area, the Basillica (another church, see below), the Arc de Triomphe, Champ de Elysses (a famous and expensive shopping district), the lock bridge (a couple writes their names on a lock and hangs it on the bridge), and ate escargot and fondue for lunch. 

The Arc de Triomphe, this was build during Napoleon.  Armies march through it to celebrate their victories.  Hitler  himself marched through it when he took over France, then the Allies marched through it when they liberated Paris.  

Top left: Our view of Paris from the Basillica  Bottom Left: The Basillica  Right: The artists square

Fondue for two!

We wanted our last day to be more about walking around and seeing Paris then racing from site to site. On Monday night we boarded our train to London and arrived home at midnight exhausted but very happy with our trip.

Wow! If you're still reading this, I apologize for the long-windedness. I'll try to keep it shorter next time!

Warwick Avenue

This last weekend was one of my favorites since we've arrived in London.  Spencer worked at the university in Warwick (about an hour train ride north of London) on Friday.  I caught a train out to Warwick later that afternoon to meet up with him.  We spent the night at a Bed and Breakfast so we could get up bright and early and head over to the castle.  

The castle and grounds

Friday night we got a Dominos Pizza and Dr. Pepper for dinner.  We also bought Ben and Jerry's for dessert (how healthy are we??) which we ate while we watched Marley and Me on TV.  Spencer had never seen it before.  By the end of the movie, he told me he wanted a dog.  That movie always makes me emotional, so with tears in my eyes, I agreed.  We'll see if that actually happens when we come back haha.

The B&B we stayed at, and the "Traditional British Breakfast" they served us.  It's toast, sausage, eggs, and bacon (all pretty normal) along with fried tomato, mushroom, and Heinz baked beans.  The good thing about it was we were so full we didn't need lunch! Money savers! :)

Saturday we visited Warwick Cathedral and Castle.  The castle was one of my favorite places we've visited.  The grounds looked like they were straight out of Pride and Prejudice, the outside of the castle looked like a proper castle should, and the inside looked like Downton Abbey.  The castle also had The Castle Dungeon, which was put on by the same company as the London Dungeon we visited last week.  I actually enjoyed this one more, probably because we had a smaller group.  The dungeon included tales of the plague, a hall of mirrors (which is really creepy when things keep popping out at you), torture chambers, a trial (I was found guilty of being a witch), a beheading, and a witch story. I didn't scream once in the London Dungeon, but I think they got me at least 5 times here.  One of the poor little girls in our group was so terrified, she cried most of the time. *Sigh* she'd been so brave in line.

Warwick Cathedral, pictures never do these cathedrals justice.  They're so old and gorgeous!

Waiting in line for the Castle Dungeon

Just a few of the fancy rooms within the castle (the castle is run by Madame Tussauds, so they had wax figures throughout)

For those that want a medieval experience, the castle also had an exhibit called the King Maker which focused on the preparations for war.  The bottom right was down in an old jail cell.

Can't you imagine Mr. Darcy strolling around in the Peacock Garden? Or a county picnic in the field beyond? Gorgeous.

They literally had peacocks roaming around in the gardens, of course, Spencer needed a picture with one.

More pictures of the castle...The castle also had a presentation on birds of prey.  Spencer wants a pet eagle now too.  I must say, those things are amazing, especially when they're flying right above your head!

You know that awkward moment when you're trying to find someone to take a picture of your whole group together? Then the picture is crappy? Well, it took us 3 separate times to finally get a picture with the whole castle in it.  Amateurs. 

After the castle, we caught a train over to Oxford where we were staying in a hostel.  The first night we slept in a 12-man room complete with bunk beds, the second night we up-graded to a four man room, with bunk beds.  Hostels are not my favorite way to travel.  First there was the shower.  No matter how I adjusted the taps, the water was stuck in a pattern of gradually heating up until it was boiling hot then gradually cooling back down until it was near freezing.  No matter what I did, the water did this throughout my entire shower.  About halfway through the ordeal, the lights in the bathroom shut off, I had no idea how to turn the lights on, so now I was showering in the dark. Finally with freezing cold hair (I couldn't handle the hot water on my head), and scalding feet (the shower was too small to avoid the hot water spraying onto my feet), I was finished.  Then, the worst realization of all came to me.  I left my freaking towel in our room down the hall.  (The bathroom wasn't connected to our room). I had no choice, I opened the door a crack, and started yelling down the hall for Spencer to bring me my towel.  That night was a Saturday, and our hostel was directly across from several night clubs.  I could literally hear drunk people yelling, and pounding club music right outside my window until 4 AM, even with ear plugs in. (We were later given the advice "Never trust a hostel that gives out free ear plugs" haha). In the morning we woke up before all our hung over roommates for breakfast, which was sugarless cereal with room temperature milk.  Neither of us could stomach it, so we had McDonald's for breakfast.  Gotta love mickey-dees.  Things could definitely be worse, at least we had a place to stay, right?  But, I've decided hostels are not my favorite way of traveling.

Examples of how money conscientious we are: tap water, buy 1 get 1 free coupons, and bunk beds.  

 Sunday morning, we joined a free walking tour that showed us many of the highlights of Oxford University along with the history behind it.  Oxford was beautiful, unfortuanely, we couldn't go into any of the buildings because the "freshers" were moving in. The most exciting part about Oxford for me was all the authors that came from Oxford inclduing JRR Tolkien (Lord of the Rings), CS Lewis (Narnia), and Lewis Carroll (Alice in Wonderland).  Oxford was also used for some of the filming for the Harry Potter movies, and one of their dining halls is said to have inspired the Great Hall at Hogwarts.  It was cool to walk around and see things that may have inspired the authors.

Notice the engraving on the door? Aslan. The gold decorations? Mr. Tumnus. This lamp post is right next to this very door.  According to our tour guide, this was the inspiration for those elements of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. 

Some of the gorgeous architecture in Oxford.

An "iconic bridge", the field where Lewis Carroll told the stories of Alice in Wonderland, and a random door.  Tell me this door doesn't look like the entrance to Bree.

This building at Trinity College was used for filming for Harry Potter.  The top floor houses the Hogwarts Library, complete with restricted section.  The bottom floor is home to the hospital wing.  As I said, all the buildings were closed.  Otherwise we also could have visited the Grand Staircase of Hogwarts which is inside Christ's College. 

Overall, we had an excellent weekend, and we're even more excited for the upcoming weekend...Paris :)