tea and crumpets

---

so... blog entry number two. i feel like i have done fifty million things in the past couple weeks! after dublin, i headed to the little town where noel lives, called nenagh. i was imagining a little village with sheep and cows and one pub, but it was actually a proper town, nightclub included. noely lives at home in this beautiful house, and his family totally took care of me... his mom fed me more than any normal person should eat in one sitting, even making proper irish fry-ups in the morning! amazing. one day noel was at work so his big bro took me out to this cliffs called the cliffs of moher... they are these amazing massive cliffs and are apparently THE place to commit suicide... supposedly u can see all these islands and stuff across the water, but it was pouring buckets of rain and we couldn't see a foot in front of us in the fog, but i got the gist of the magnificence. and luckily i look great as a drowned rat, so that was great. 😊

two interesting (first i wrote weird but actually it's just different) things i noticed in ireland were that 1) they don't have six-packs of anything, they only have 4-packs of tall cans. and they think it's weird when i call it a tall can, cuz it's a normal sized can. and 2) eoin and i went out for a massive roast dinner (which they call a carvery and serve at midday, but that's not the weird part)... so they give u a massive heaping plate of amazing food, and if u don't finish it... u leave it. they don't have to-go boxes! for anything! but i was like eff this, i am playing the foreign card and taking this food home... so the guy gave me some tinfoil and a paper plate and a couple weird looks but i ate it later and it was worth all of it.

anyways, back to nenagh, i hung out there for a couple days and i knew i had to be back in england in five days to meet a friend so i couldn't figure out what i should do for the next few days, so i googled a bit and found a cheap flight to scotland... so off i went to scotland, and i am SO GLAD i did! i was on the fence but it was so great. i went to stay with caleigh who i used to work with and her boyfriend andrew in edinburgh and it was amazing. my bus rolled up to the most amazing view of CASTLES EVERYWHERE and in my head i was like please let this be my stop... and it was! so i took zillions of pictures and then went to their flat, caleigh was at work so andrew totally took the role of tour guide and we walked around everywhere and saw MORE castles (or things that looked like castles), and pub hopped a bit... then caleigh got off work and came and met us... the next day caleigh had to work again but andrew is AMAZING and we went EVERYWHERE (including the cafe where harry potter was born)... then i met up with SOPHIE from ESPERANCE in AUSTRALIA who i haven't seen FOREVER and we had tea and caught up... it was soooooo cool to see her, i wish we had more time but i had myself booked on a tour of the underground vaults of the city. totally, 100% as cool as it sounds. that city is so insanely old and has so much insane history, they lead u underground and tell u what happened and all these crazy ghost stories... then after that, caleigh wasn't working (!) so we went on a haunted tour of the city... most of the tour takes place in (different) underground vaults that are totally haunted and crazy stuff always happens, but unfortunately (or maybe not), nothing happened on our tour until the end when they let us out into the bar where we had a free drink voucher and it was the weirdest bar full of the weirdest people we had ever seen... highly entertaining. i think u had to be there but MAN. i laughed so much.

so then i find out that my friend sian (also from esperance!!!) who is a contiki tour guide will be in london for the weekend in between tours! amazing. so i decide to go to london to see her... we go to look at train prices and the train is 150pounds... which is $300! insane!!! so i ended up booking a bus, which was soooooooooooo long but way cheaper. so i arrive in london, meet up with sian, get drunk and catch up, decide to go to fabric (this massive rave of a multi story nightclub in london), but we wanted to wait til 3 cuz apparently it's half price after that time... but then by 3 we couldn't drink another drop so didn't go. phew. close call. the great over here tho is that they have 24 hour convenience stores that sell booze. yeah. no waiting til the beer store opens at 9am EVER.

so then on sunday i took the train to portsmouth to meet my friend ian who i met in airlie beach in australia... so great. ian was the most amazing tour guide in the universe (sorry andrew), he had zillions of things to do and was SO HAPPY to show me around and actually knows everything about everything... especially the royal family for some reason. 😉 we went to this little pub that had the most massive list of ciders i have ever imagined. and every one delicious. so cool. the next day was MASSIVE, we went to stonehenge, which if u don't know are these massive rocks in the middle of nowhere and no one knows who brought them or where they came from, only that they are really, really old and from whales... which doesn't sound that cool but it actually is rad. then we went to the salisbury cathedral which is like 800 years old and is the home of the worlds oldest working clock... it's SO COOL, especially being from canada where we don't have the worlds oldest anything. i think that is the coolest part about europe, everything is so incredibly ancient and there is so much history... i do a lot of WOWing. maybe too much. i can't help it tho!

then we went to the windsor castle... where the queen lives... it was cool, she wasn't around so u can just sit in her throne and stuff........... right. just kidding. please tell me someone believed me for a second. anyways, it wasn't open when we got there but we took zillions of pictures... pretty much the most amazing castle i have seen yet. and i definitely knew it was a castle. when i was in dublin, we would be driving and i'd be like "eoin! is that a castle?!" and he'd be like "no... that's a church." five seconds later i'd be ""EOIN! is that a castle?!" and he's all ""no. that's a school." and then again five seconds later i would see another one and it would be the post office. true story. but by now i have seen loads of real ones and am getting better at differentiating.

so that was all amazing... i saw so much of england that i would never see. OH, i also saw the birthplace of cricket (the sport... u may or may not have heard about it but it's the bees knees over here), AND i saw the birthplace of charles dickenson. how cool is that?!

then yesterday we drove to brighton, which i think is my favorite city in england so far... it has a cool beach with a cool pier and these little lanes full of shops and pubs and restaurants which are adorable, and my friend elin who i met in thailand lives there... so i met her, caught up, spent the night there then took the train back to london and went to the airport and flew to amsterdam today! whew! it's been a busy few days!

so now i am in amsterdam, i am having my first couch-surfing experience... if u haven't heard of couch surfing, basically loads of people all over the world have profiles and u can search through them and find cool people and stay at their house... it's for travellers, it's a way to meet locals and get more of a real experience, make new friends and also save money cuz u aren't paying for a hostel... so i found a cool guy, his name is ramon, so i arrive at the airport, he picks me up, brings me back, makes me dinner, then he had to go out so he gives me a set of spare keys and a phone, and OH YEAH he is a massage therapist. i think i stumbled on a jackpot of a first couchsurfing experience. insane.

so it's nice to be here, they drive on the right side of the road so it's a relief to not have a near-death experience every time i cross the street... ramon lives right by this amazing lake, so i went for a little walk about earlier and i felt a little weird. first this man kept trying to talk to me, but he is turkish and we did not find a single word that both of us could understand (except i think he said coffee but i pretended i didn't hear him)... then when i was coming home, i thought i would recognize ramon's building cuz i noticed a whack of bikes parked outside of it, but as i was trying to come back i realized that oh SHIT, this is HOLLAND where everybody rides bikes and every building had loads of bikes parked outside... but i only swipey swiped one wrong building before i found the right one. his building is set up kind of motel-like, the doors are outside... so i am walking past some doors on my way to his door and who pokes his head out of his window but the turkish man from the lake! ah! so he lives on ramon's floor. weird. he again said a bunch of stuff i didn't understand (coffee again i think), but i just smiled and nodded and ran away. what else do u do when a turkish man wants to have coffee with u.

anyways, i plan on having an action packed day tomorrow so i best get some sleep... more soon.xo

---