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Published: September 29th 2008
The tour guide at Trinity
Too bad he is blocking the wonderful pocket square, but you get the idea.Ok, so this has taken a really long time to accomplish, but I have made it to London so I finally have me feet back on the ground again for long enough to throw together some blogage. I’m sorry I didn’t update at all on the tour, but it was enough to handle without trying to type up all that was going on. I wish I had kept up with it better as it went along, but I’ve taken some notes and tons of pictures, so I’m going to attempt to piece together the coach tour as well as I can. I also don’t want to make this a gigantic rush of information, so I’m going to split the tour into two big chunks to make it easier for me to bake and you to chew.
But first things first. The last couple days in Dublin:
On Thursday night, Riley, Ingle and I met a group of about 7 other Furman students at O’Neill’s Pub after we ate dinner. Somehow, the conversation for the entire time we were there remained on Disney Channel Original movies and the songs that were featured in them, TV shows we watched as children,
A library at Trinity
Apparently crossing at the top is really scary. and random toys we’d had that were associated with the other topics. (Andrew and I discovered that we both had the Hears Premiers CD of songs from Disney Channel Original movies and the same McDonald’s toy of Rufio from Hook that we’d both played with in the bathtub. It was kind of creepy.) Later that night, we ventured back to Club M. We didn’t pass any Oscar winners on the way there this time, but on the way back we passed a fountain right outside the front gates of Trinity that had been made extremely sudsy by some pranksters. This isn’t an uncommon sight to see on Furman’s campus, so the group stopped to play with the suds. While everyone else was walking around the outside of the fountain and throwing the suds at one another, I was kicking off my flip flops and rolling up my jeans. Before anyone else knew what was going on, I was in the fountain. I guess the Furman student in me just took over. The water was barely at my knees, so Riley decided to join me. We walked all the way around the fountain blindly because it was absolutely full of foam.
Our Last Day in Dublin
Ingle and I dressed up at the Liffey It was so cool. After a good bit of cavorting, I hopped out of the fountain, grabbed my flip flops, and headed back to XXX. The only drawback of the whole experience was that the foam smelled (and tasted…) terrible, but it was TOTALLY worth it. That will probably be one of my fondest memories of Dublin.
The other drawback of the experience that we were all conveniently trying to forget was that we had a history quiz on Friday morning. Even though I did a majority of my studying that morning a few hours before the quiz, I think I did alright. Dr. Barrington pulled some fast ones on us to see if we’d been paying attention to things outside of lectures, though.
Shortly after class, the group met up outside XXX for a tour of Trinity (yes, we took a tour of the campus on our last day…). When we came outside, Ingle and I were really excited because we knew we were finally going to get to see Margaret. Sure enough, as we crossed Parliament square, we saw her standing with the group. I couldn’t contain myself, so I ran the rest of the way across
the square and gave her a big hug. Ingle joined us shortly. Margaret’s first request of us was to get a picture of the two of us jumping off of the steps of the building we were in front of. We acquiesced without any further questions and climbed to the top of the stairs. Ingle decided she wanted to get a running start, so of course I joined her. We ran, leaped, and landed on all fours on the cobble stone ground. Something about the momentum of our jumps made it impossible for us to land on our feet, but we were both relieved to look over to see that we weren’t the only person who’d fallen. Margaret of course felt bad for asking us to do something that caused us bodily harm, but we were laughing too hard for either of us to be injured. While we were waiting, a gentleman in a brown suit with a flamboyant pocket square sporting a pair of designer sunglasses asked if we were the group with John Barrington. After we affirmed this fact, he told us he was our guide and that he’d be back to give the tour after going inside
FINALLY
Ingle and I display our elation as Margaret succeeds in her attempt at looking apathetic. to “powder his nose.” It was from that moment that I knew we were in for a treat. Once he returned, the guide introduced himself as a current philosophy professor at Trinity and a graduate from the physics department. Between these two differing fields and the fact that the whole tour was very historical, this guy was definitely a jack of all trades. I decided that his character was a cross between the characters played by Robin Williams and Nathan Lane in Birdcage; he had the appearance and swagger of Williams with the voice and fabulousness of Lane (sans cross-dressing). He was absolutely hilarious. He was easily the best tour guide we’d had so far because he definitely knew what he was talking about, but he kept everything very entertaining with his comments that closed informative phrases. Jane-Allison and I agreed that he had the comedic delivery and timing of Eddie Izzard. One of the funniest bits of the tour was his discussion of a building where funerals are sometimes held being right across from a newer wing of the library most frequently used right before exam time. He commented that he hoped that the people headed to the former
didn’t try to cram in as many good deeds as possible in the 3 days before judgment like the people headed to the latter did. It was a great sendoff from the university.
Most of that day went by so quickly because there was so much preparation for the coach tour that began the next morning. I finally had to do some laundry which was such a barrel of monkeys. That night we went to a nice but affordable restaurant called The Bank for a pleasant pre-show meal. I got a big plate of The Bank’s Sausage and Mash (or Bangers and Mash as I’ve heard it referred to before), and the sausage was some of the best I’ve ever had. It had such an amazingly rich flavor and it was very tender. After being sufficiently satiated, we returned to Trinity to traipse to The Abbey Theatre together for a performance of Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband. Our seats were in the next to last row, but we still had a nice view of the stage. When we walked into the theatre, the stage was black a bare except for a very large chandelier that had not yet been
A cannon on the wall in Derry
This one was supposed to threaten USC. It worked again. risen to a proper height above the stage. After a few minutes, a man in a suit with a khaki trench coat over it came on to the stage and just started looking around. Another man joined him then they both began to set the stage with small end tables, chairs, and sofas. They were joined by other trench-coated men and furniture until the stage was set, and one of the men signaled for the chandelier to be risen. I’ve never seen such a pre-show. When the show began, one of the men (who had taken off his trench coat and was obviously a butler) proclaimed the first set of stage directions: “Act One: The octagon room at Sir Robert Chiltern's house in Grosvenor Square. The room is brilliantly lighted and full of guests.” This was accompanied by the entrances of many guests in modernized dress with the early 19th century style in mind. For instance, one character had on a full dress with a large bustle, but the pattern was one of inch-wide black and white stripes. Her companion wore a dress of similar style in a bright orange color. Those two were pretty hideous. The men’s costumes were
The murals
I forgot to mention that there are tons of murals in Derry by a group called the Bogside artists. They were so cool and political. also modernized as they were mostly fairly typical tuxedos with tails, but it was much less… distracting. Each time a small group of characters had a conversation, everyone else at the party would freeze into silence. It was actually a pretty cool effect I thought, especially because I had wondered how they would handle this very busy first act. It is in the first act that we are introduced to the Chilterns, Sir Robert and Lady Gertrude, who are the hosts of the party and the protagonists of the play. Sir Robert, a wealthy member of the House of Commons, is confronted at his gathering by Mrs. Cheveley, an evil woman hell-bent on getting what she wants. Mrs. Cheveley tries to blackmail Robert into supporting a plan to build the Suez Canal by showing him that she has a letter he wrote to a wealthy baron in his youth that includes illegal stock tips. It is here that Lord Goring steps in to help his friend Robert and foil his former fiancée Mrs. Cheveley. Upon Lord Goring’s entrance, he was the only character to announce himself to the party by reciting the stage direction that Wilde had written to introduce
him: “Enter LORD GORING. Thirty-four, but always says he is younger. A well-bred, expressionless face. He is clever, but would not like to be thought so. A flawless dandy, he would be annoyed if he were considered romantic. He plays with life, and is on perfectly good terms with the world. He is fond of being misunderstood. It gives him a post of vantage.” It was a very interesting choice, but it fit the character, and the play had already been given a sense of the fourth wall being broken by the butlers acting as stage hands (this occurred between each act just as it had in the beginning. This motif continued with a butler “putting out the lights” at the end of the first act and at intermission with a snap of his fingers.) By the end of the first two acts, I wasn’t a big fan of the Chilterns. Although I had been very supportive of Robert when I’d read the play, it was very hard to be sympathetic for the character the way it was being performed. Lady Chiltern was in a similar boat, but she was just a bit melodramatic for what the part called for
(the play has a melodramatic air to it, but I think it was too played up in this production). Lord Goring and Mrs. Cheveley, on the other hand, were very entertaining to watch. Both characters are so well-written that it’s hard not to love the former and hate the latter, but the actors handled them pretty well (especially Goring… one would really have to bugger up this performance to not be a crowd favorite in this role… Wilde wrote one hell of a character when he created Goring). The second half didn’t change these initial inklings at all: the Chilterns were still bothersome, Lord Goring was still wonderful, and everyone hated Mrs. Cheveley. There was one part of Act Four where Robert left the room to write a letter. While the scene was going on in the main room, I spotted Robert sitting at a desk that was slightly to the right and behind the huge flat the served as the back wall of the room. He was literally writing the letter in what was essentially an area that was off-stage. Not everyone from the audience could have seen him, and again I just thought it was an interesting choice
The blacksmith at the UAFP
Do you know? He knows, but don't say it... to have that action going on in the background behind the flat. The final interesting choice that I’ll mention (aside from Lady Chiltern wearing an extremely modern, Asian-style bathrobe in the last scene) was that the final blackout was cued by a very dramatic snap from the foiled Mrs. Cheveley after she had trudged across the stage (which was a room that she’d simply entered through a “wall”) with all of her luggage. Overall, I enjoyed the production despite the Chilterns and some questionable technical decisions, but I expected better from a Wilde production at The Abbey.
After the play, almost the entire group went to The Duke pub (the first pub of the Literary Pub Crawl) to commemorate our last night in Dublin. It was our first night with Margaret in Dublin, so she caught Ingle and I up on some of the goings-on in Furman Theatre in our absence. We were still really excited to have her with us, as is evidenced by the photo of the 3 of us. A small group of us ended up talking to two Irish couples for a while. One of the females was celebrating her birthday, so they shared some
of their champagne with a couple of people in our group. While we were getting the lo-down on the places we were headed to from Dublin, the girl whose birthday it was interrupted her boyfriend to point out that among about 8 students, three of us were redheads and 5 or 6 of us were wearing some shade of green (Ingle and I fit both descriptions). She essentially excused us of being faux Irish. I told her I couldn’t help the red hair and that green is simply a great color. On the way back, there was a GREAT saxophonist on Grafton. We stopped to dance and enjoy the music for a bit then made our way back to XXX. It was a great send-off from a great city. I’m going to miss Dublin, but I’ll make it back some point…
On Shatterday, we had to wake up too early to make the drive to Derry. I slept almost the entirety of the bus ride… before and after we stopped for lunch. When we arrived there, we were delighted to find that we were staying in a very nice Ramada Inn. Before we had time to think in our
rooms, we had to be back on the bus to go into Derry for a historical walking tour. Our guide (probably in his mid-thirties) introduced himself as a republican and former IRA member who’d try to give us the straight story on the history of Derry. Historically, Londonderry was established in the early 17th century as an English plantation across the river Foyle from the established Irish city of Derry. Londonderry was the first planned city in Ireland and was (and still is) a completely walled city to protect it from the Irish in Derry who resented the English presence and intrusion. By the end of the 17th century, the city had made it through a siege by the Irish of Derry and had served as a very important Protestant garrison during the Glorious Revolution, holding off the siege of James II for 6 months (a year before the Battle of the Boyne was fought). These Irish vs. English/Natives vs. Settlers/Republicans vs. Unionists/Catholic vs. Protestant tensions have lasted throughout the existence of the city, as is evidenced by the fact that the Irish call the city Derry and the English call it Londonderry. The modern Troubles started with The Battle
The ship
We were trying to kind of look piratey. of the Bogside in 1969 and reached its peak with Bloody Sunday in 1972 in which 13 members of an IRA-associated civil rights march were killed by British police. The tour began and ended by a monument commemorating the lives of the men killed on Bloody Sunday. After the tour, our guide told us that we shouldn’t leave the bus waiting for very long because a tour bus wouldn’t be welcome in the working-class part of town we were in. This caught us off guard, so we boarded the bus to figure out dinner plans. While on our way back to the hotel, the bus was going pretty slowly in a roundabout. We heard a loud noise that I thought was something hitting the bus from underneath it. Then our attention was drawn to the shattered window on the right side of the bus. Someone had thrown a rock at it. The tour guide hadn’t been kidding. No one was hurt, and the glass was shatter-proof, so there weren’t any loose pieces or anything, but we were all pretty shaken up. After all of the talk of Bloody Sunday, someone decided to designate this day Shatterday, which spurred the singing
of “Shatterday Night’s Alright,” a play off of Elton John’s hit. Once we got out of that neighborhood, Seamus (our bus driver, who wasn’t at all happy about his window) stopped the bus so that those of us who wanted dinner in town could get it. Some people remained on the bus (whether they wanted to get back to the hotel or had been too shaken up by the rock in the window), but most of us went to a small café that our tour guide had recommended to us. There weren’t too many other options, so we were glad that we’d had a destination. While eating, a local asked us where we were from in the states, and then proceeded to ask us if we watched The OC and Laguna Beach. Ingle talked to him for a while about Laguna Beach and The Hills then he went to sit down to eat. A few minutes later, he started singing all of the American songs he could think of. I know Umbrella by Rihanna was one (they freaking love Rihanna here…), but I don’t remember the other few. It was quite the assortment, and this guy was quite the character.
Wow.
It was all like this. Amazing. After dinner, we walked back to the hotel by way of a grocery store to get some lunch supplies. Upon our return, we watched the first half of The Dark Knight (Ben found it bootlegged online). Even though it was poor quality and on a computer screen, I was reminded of how freaking amazing that movie is. RIP Heath.
On Sunday morning, we were greeted by the most amazing continental breakfast. Breakfast foods are a bit different in these parts, though. The bacon is more like ham (which is ok by me… I love ham… it’s pretty close to country ham, but not quite as salty), the sausage is huge links, beans and mushrooms are always present, there is white and black pudding (not that kind of pudding… it’s more like sausage than Bill Cosby’s favorite dessert), and there are always croissants where we would put biscuits (which is what they call cookies!). Top that off with porridge in the place of oatmeal or grits and the same cereals we have in the states sporting different names (Frosted Flakes are Frosties, Coco Crispies are Coco Pops, etc.) and breakfast just presents a lot of confusion for much too early
I'm huge!
Ben had to lie down on the ground to capture this one for me. an hour. All this being said, I had the most amazingly satisfying bacon and scrambled egg sandwich.
After eating our fill and then some, we boarded the bus bound for the Ulster-American folk park. This place was a lot like Colonial Williamsburg, but not nearly as cool. The Ulster-Americans are the folks who immigrated to the US from the UK to escape the famine and blight and such, so this was an indoor/outdoor museum that was a glimpse at their lives. There was a blacksmith who instigated a long running joke among our group about asking what one of his tools was used for (“Do you know what this is? If you do don’t tell me, but what is it? Don’t say it… but he knows. Do you know? Don’t say it…” etc. There was also an area that had a lot of chickens running around loose in it. To lighten the mood, I hiked up my pants and ran after one while declaring “I’m gonna kick me a chicken!” Those are really the only two things you need to know about The Ulster-American Folk Park. Oh! I almost forgot. There was a little area that was like a mock-town
I climbed this.
After I took this picture, I joined. that included a chemist (pharmacist) and a boat yard (aka, pirate ship). Now you know all you needed to know about the UAFP.
On Monday we left Derry and headed towards Great Britain. Before boarding the ferry to take us to the big island, we stopped at Giant’s Causeway. Wow. That’s really all there is to say. It was amazing. Just absolutely beautiful. The day was very misty and overcast, but it lent towards the atmosphere of the natural formation. It’s coastline, but there are all of these sheer rock faces and rock’s jutting into the ocean. The best way to describe Giant’s Causeway is just to look at the photos. The group had an amazing time climbing, wading, and photographing all over the place. On the way back, John of Tate, Benny, Ashton, and I all stopped periodically to pick and eat the blackberries that lined the walk.
After the causeway, we made our way to the ferry for a two-hour trip to Scotland. The ferry was REALLY nice… like cruise-ship-lite. The ride passed quickly because we could sit at a table and play cards as opposed to the restricted seating of the bus. Riley taught us how
Self-portrait at Giant's Causeway
This was me at the top of the tall thing. It was windy and I felt like I was going to fall at one point. But it was so awesome. to play a game called Golf that I lost triumphantly. After 18 rounds, we went to the deck of the boat. It was extremely windy and wet, but very cool. We had fun letting our rain jackets fill with wind and sticking our faces out into the wind stream (like dogs in a car really.) We could just make out the Scottish coast.
After the ferry, we had a loooong bus trip to Carlisle, England. Once we got to our hotel (which was quite dinky… especially compared to the Ramada of Derry. It was actually one of the least desirable stops of the tour.), we wandered into greater downtown Carlisle to find some good eats. We’d walked about a block from our hotel when we found Walkabout. This place was an Australian-themed bar that served better and cheaper than average pub grub. We found out that Mondays meant half-off burgers, so we were all happy as clams after a long day of traveling to stuff ourselves with a good, cheap meal. After we had already decided to ring in Elizabeth’s birthday in the Walkabout (her birthday was the next day, so we just had to make it until midnight), I
saw a sign for Karaoke on Mondays. Earlier that day (during the hours of bus ride), I had a thought that doing karaoke while we were in England would be so much fun, but I quickly dismissed the thought because I thought the opportunity would never present itself. Thus, when I saw the sign the very same day, I knew it had to be some kind of mistake or joke. Au contraire. This was no joke. I told the group what I’d seen, and Walkabout got even better (could it be possible!) It was as though God had known that nothing would be going on in Carlisle, England on a Monday (our only night there), so he sent us Walkabout. Once the karaoke started, some of the girls quickly signed up for and performed “Wannabe” by The Spice Girls. This included me, Megan Butler, Ingle, and Ashton. Andrew was going to join us, but I don’t think he wanted to crash the party. I asked Andrew if he would sing “Summer Nights” from Grease with me, but he then found out that they did indeed have “Ring of Fire.” Not wanted to double-book him, I went with “Ain’t No Mountain
Oh no!
Falling rocks! High Enough” on my own. Andrew’s rendition of “Ring of Fire” was easily the highlight of the evening. I think it was the dance moves (“Love, is a burnin’ ring” was accompanied by the drawing of a ring in the air…“I went down, down, down, and the flames went higher” was accompanied by a finger point to the ground that was then lifted back up. By the end of the song we were all doing it). After a few more acts, Ben and Ingle did a hilarious rendition of “Ironic,” and Andrew was dismayed to find that I hadn’t entered us for “Summer Nights.” So, I did. Soon “Ain’t No Mountain” came on… but it was the Diana Ross version… which I didn’t realize was different from the Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell original. It was rough. Oh well. Andrew and two other girls from our trip sang “Mamma Mia” which was hilarious because of Andrew’s involvement. By then it was close to midnight, so we had a New-years-esque countdown to Ingle’s birthday. We all sang, and there was great excitement. Ingle loved it. About 20 minutes later, we were ready to go, but “Summer Nights” had not come around.
The boys on the ferry
Will, Riley, Andrew, John of Tate, and John Delucas inflated. It was sad. But overall, we had a blast at the Walkabout.
Tuesday morning came, and the professors and other members of the trip were surprised to hear of the bash we’d had in Carlisle. On the way to Edinburgh, we stopped at an Anglo-Saxon high cross, the Ruthwell Cross. It was inside a small church, and not as impressively carved as the others we’d seen. There was more writing on this one, and it was taller, but it had been reconstructed… and not very well.
After the stop at the Ruthwell Cross, we made our way to New Lanark, a mill town that was established by David Dale and later run by Robert Owen. Owen made the town into a kind of socialist utopia and established one of the first co-ops there to serve the workers. We toured one of the mills that is actually still running on a much smaller scale. The most entertaining part of the visit was a Disneylandesque ride called the Millennium Experience. Dr. Barrington had warned us about lack of any actual educational value on the ride, but we knew we had to go. Our guide’s name was a hologram named Harmony. She
Land ho!
There's Scotland! was from the future, but she came back in a time machine to tell us about New Lanark. The first part of the ride was Harmony telling us about what the future is like (“We just like you! My friends and I like to talk about boys and clothes, only our technology is much more advanced.”) Then, she took us back to New Lanark when Robert Owen was in charge. On one part, we passed a school house, and little kids faces kept popping into the window. Ingle and I agreed that one of the small children looked remarkably like me when I was a small child (I mean, she didn’t know me as a small child, but she could imagine). Near the end of the ride, Harmony told us that Robert Owen was a very ridiculed man even though he had achieved great things, then we rounded a corner to see video clips of such great people as Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr., and Mother Teresa. We found it extremely entertaining that they expected us to draw connections between Owen and the people in the clips. Just when we thought the fun was over, we rounded the corner
The Ruthwell Cross
There were numbers for the hymn numbers. I took a couple and made Ingle pause for a photo-op displaying her new age. after getting off of the ride to find one of those huge pictures that you can stand behind and put your face into of Harmony and one of her friends. Oh my gosh. Too funny. Check out the picture of Ingle and me. After the tour, we hiked up to the Falls of Clyde, the reason that the town is located where it is (to harness the water power). Along the way, Riley and Margaret (and maybe a couple others…) commented that they had seen me on the ride. That was hilarious because I thought I’d be the only one who would notice the uncanny resemblance of myself to the small child in the window. I told them that as a child I did some acting for themed rides and a couple commercials but I just couldn’t stand the pressure of the big time. Anyways, the trip up to the falls was very cool. The water is kind of the color of tea because all of the peat in Scotland discolors it, so that was weird. But the final pinnacle of viewing the falls was really nice.
After all the stops, we finished the trek and arrived in Edinburgh. First
Machine at New Lanark
It was really loud, and there used to be like 10 times as many in that one room. impressions of Edinburgh: much bigger than Dublin… not necessarily in spread-out size, but the buildings and streets were on the whole a lot bigger. This meant things weren’t quite as overwhelmingly quick and crowded. After depositing our things in our rooms, we grabbed a quick dinner then met up as a huge group to celebrate Ingle’s birthday. One of Ingle’s friends from Furman who is studying in Edinburgh led us to a pub called the Three Sisters. After milling around for a while, we realized it was quiz night. Three teams from Furman formed because you were only supposed to have 6 people per team. I joined Andrew and Katie… we were the Super Sexy Vipers. None of us did very well, but it was a lot of fun to try. The first round was Pot Luck, so it was mostly current events. Because we’d had limited access to the outside world because of our on the go living arrangements, we did pretty terribly. On the Children’s Literature section that followed, however, we made up some ground. The last part of the first half was a Picture Round in which we were supposed to identify a bunch of cars and
I'm a Giant
This was a tiny New Lanark that I towered over. Or was it the actual New Lanark and I just miraculously got really big?... celebrity couples. We did horribly. The only couple we knew was George and Laura Bush. The second half went better with some success in rounds that included Geography and TV Show Theme Songs. Most of us left before the scores had been announced, but Katie informed us that we came in 5th… out of about 10 teams.
Wednesday started with a walking historical tour of Edinburgh. The guide was kind of boring and it was really hard to hear because we were always really close to the road with cars going by and general hubbub, so I didn’t get as much out of it as I would have liked to. The main thing to know about Edinburgh is that it is separated into Old Town with a Medieval plan and style and New Town that was established in the 18th century, so the architecture of the two parts is quite different. The tour ended with a trip to the church where Adam Smith, the famous Scottish economist, was buried. Ironically, his gravestone was lost at some point, so there is only a very small stone with his name and picture on it to denote where he was buried. I
The Millenium Experience
Just a glimpse of the ride... thought that was funny, especially because there is a huge statue of him at a very busy intersection in town. A bit anticlimactic I suppose.
That afternoon we ventured to Edinburgh Castle because we had seen it sitting majestically at the top of a hill at one end of the city all day. The castle was very cool and had an amazing view, but my favorite part of it was a beautifully constructed war memorial for all of the Scottish soldiers who had died since 1914. In one of the wings, I was completely overcome by a sense of humility and spirituality. I’m always leave places like this frustrated because of why they have to be built in the first place, but it was a beautiful sentiment to fallen soldiers. There were also a lot of flags from individual regiments dating back to the 19th century. Those were very awesome, too. There was a cannon on the wall of the castle that had cannon balls the size of those bouncy balls that little kids sit on to bounce around (think Julian’s ball that he bounces on during the Kangaroo Song in Big Daddy… or the ball that Dwight gets to
Perfection.
Hahahahahahahahahaha replace his chair on The Office…if you still can’t picture the size, that’s all I’ve got…). I could have literally crawled inside the barrel and disappeared, but unfortunately they had signs forbidding that. Another cool spot in the castle was the Great Hall that was taken over by Oliver Cromwell and made into army barracks in the mid-17th century. It had two men dressed in traditional army uniforms and many different types of arms lining the walls. The best quote of the trip to the castle was when we were in an exhibit devoted to war heroes. They had some medals in a case, a couple of which had rainbow-patterned ribbons on them. I asked John of Tate and Ashton how the soldiers felt to get those or what they thought they were for. John responded without skipping a beat: “You did fabulousss!!!” Ashton and I died laughing.
That night we went to see Macbeth at the Lyceum theatre. THE Scottish Play… IN Scotland. I was so excited. I wasn’t sure what kind of quality to expect, but we found out that the student tickets were half-price, so it was only a £6 investment. Good thing. I was skeptical
from the beginning (mostly because of the lousy sound and costume designs), but by the time Lady Macbeth had come out and overacted her way through welcoming Macbeth home from battle and convincing him to kill Duncan, I was a bit fed up. I didn’t like that the monologues were all very presentational versus internal, and the ghost of Banquo and the witches were all quite ridiculously clad and poorly executed aspects. I held out some hope at intermission because I felt that the guy playing Macbeth had actually done a pretty good job with the dagger scene and the Banquo scene (two of the trickiest in the whole show). However, this hope was soon all lost. I got really bored for a while, and then once the action picked up, everything was just God-awful. The killing of Macduff’s family was laughably horrible, his reaction to it was even worse (which was unfortunate because I thought the actor had done a decent job otherwise), and the climactic fight scene between Macduff and Macbeth was what finally made me realize that what we were watching was like Macbeth: The Video Game. And not even a good video game like for X-Box
Our first English telephone booth
this is what Clark Kent would look like in the UK. 360…a computer video game with bad graphics and music. They had played the same beat every time there was a scene with any dramatic occurrence. I wish I could describe it in words, but you can kind of imagine it I’m sure. We left feeling cheated out of our proper Scottish Play in Scotland experience, but we laughed pretty much all the way back to our hotel.
The next morning I woke up pretty early to venture to Arthur’s Seat with the professors and a few other girls on the trip. Arthur’s Seat is an amazing mountain that overlooks Edinburgh that literally looks like a seat when viewed from below. The climb was pretty… uphill, but the view was totally worth it. It was amazing. The weather was really nice and the climb was fairly leisurely. Dr. Barrington was so funny… he kept forging ahead of the ladies and standing majestically at the top of each raised portion to wait for us to catch up.
Upon our return, I unintentionally fell asleep for a couple of hours. This kind of defeated the purpose of getting up early, but I guess I needed a recharge after the early-morning trek. That
Arthur's Seat
This is what it looks like from the city. afternoon I went to the Scott Monument with a different group of people. This is a tall tower to the accomplishments of Sir Walter Scott who wrote Ivanhoe. The trip to the top entailed 267 stairs, and all of the staircases were spiraled and about a foot wide. It was rough (especially after the trek to Arthur’s Seat that morning), but the view was much closer to the action of the city of Edinburgh than the Seat. After descending the stairs, we wandered down Prince’s Street which is the shopping district of Edinburgh. On our way back, we found a place kind of like Border’s that had some pretty cheap books and CDs. I bought Damien Rice’s new CD for £3. I’d thought about buying it in Dublin (he got his start on Grafton St.), but Scotland was close enough I suppose.
For dinner, I didn’t know if any plans had been made, but I knew where I was headed: Chiquita’s. It was a Mexican place right off of Prince’s St. that I had passed earlier that day. I’ve had (and still do) a craving for a JC from Moe’s since we got to Dublin, so I figured this was
as close as I was going to get and whoever wanted to join me was welcome. I tempted Andrew, John of Tate, Ashton, and Ben with my promise of Mexican goodness, and we were off. Ben and I started by splitting tortilla chips and a beef and queso dip that was too amazing for words. I got a huge chicken quesadilla with onions and delicious guacamole and salsa for dipping. I was in heaven. I washed it down with a Dos XX and felt completely and utterly satisfied with life.
After we returned, a large group went off to celebrate the birthday of another girl on the trip, Courtney. We started out at a dance club called Espionage, but the dance floor didn’t open until 11. We attempted an Irish Pub, but they didn’t allow student IDs and a lot of the group didn’t have anything else. We went back to the Three Sisters, but there was a big sketchy Rugby party going on that including men clad in ridiculous costumes (I briefly talked to a banana) and very little clothing. After leaving the Three Sisters, we weren’t having warm and fuzzy feelings as we’d had little success and it
Dog Graveyard at Edinburgh Castle
This was dedicated to dogs who had served purposed in the armed forces. was rainy, but we stumbled upon a bar that had… you guessed it… karaoke. John Delucas and I were the only people in the group who’d been to the Walkabout karaoke, so the others wanted to join in on the karaoke in the UK fun. I quickly told Courtney to choose whatever song she wanted me to sing and I’d sing it as her gift (as long as I knew the song). Before she chose, the girls all sang “I Want It That Way” by the Backstreet Boys and John joined a few of us for “Piano Man.” Jane-Allison did a wonderful rendition of “I Will Survive” dedicated to the birthday girl, but Courtney still hadn’t decided on a song. She told me to choose one, and with the help of Jane-Allison, I settled on “Sold (The Grundy County Auction Incident)” by John Michael Montgomery. I spotted the song, knew that I knew all the words, and asked JA if she thought Courtney would be familiar with it. JA told me that Courtney’s father was an auctioneer. How perfect. Am I good or what? I asked Courtney if she knew/liked Country music, and after her affirmative response, I knew she’d
Cannon ball's view
This is what it would see right before it was propelled through the air. know the song. I told John what I was singing, and he asked if he could join me because it was one of the few songs that he knows all of the words to. What are the odds? So we sang this ridiculously country song in a pub in Edinburgh, Scotland for Courtney on her birthday because her father is an auctioneer. She loved it, and informed me that her brother is an auctioneer as well.
Alright. I’m spent. TO BE CONTINUED…
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