Wrappin' up in Edinburgh

So after getting my kilt and related accessories, I got all dressed up and went for a walk. I was going to meet up with a tour guide who gives… well, haunted tours. I was going to gather up some ticket info and such, and I must say I felt kind of scared in the kilt. When people walked along the sidewalks towards me, I’d cross the street and duck in behind cars. I didn’t know how much of a tourist-loser I looked like, until I found the tour guide and asked him.

I explained that I’d bought all this touristy crap, and was wondering if I’d even put it on correctly. He looked down at me with my socks, kilt, sporran, belt and buckle… He said I was wearing it about as well as any Scotsman. Wicked! On my way back to the hostel, I was proudly marching past groups of people, who really took no notice of me at all, as though I belonged there wearing that damned silly thing.

At night, we went on the haunted tour and I continued to wear my kilt. The tour was really cool, it focused on the cemetery here in Edinburgh, and it’s inspiration for a whole bunch of authors and such. The place Anne Rice once lived in was pointed out, her view overlooked the tombstones. The view we were shown of the graveyard made it easy to see where Dracula’s movements, scaling up the walls was inspired by. The large stone walls the author was surrounded by when the story of Dracula was penned looked like stuff straight out of medieval-themed horror flicks, and looking at them it's hard not to imagine- no, SEE shadows ripping up the thousands of footholds along the walls. Even the high wall around a school just on the other side was culturally influential as it spurred talk amongst the locals with regards to just what was being taught at that school that ordered such secrecy. This ended up being the stuff of legends. The locals figured surely they must be teaching the children how to fly around on brooms. …and the seed for the Harry Potter empire was planted.

We had an amazing time here, which kind of sucks that I’m watching what I’m watching now.

Iza went to sleep at the hostel, and I thought I’d roam around Edinburgh looking for an unsecured wireless router. And I found one. It's at one end of a bridge that straddles the train station down below, the train station next to the street that our hostel was on way down below. As I stood here at like… three in the morning checking emails and such, I saw a part of Edinburgh that sort of tarnished my overall impressions of the place. I heard lots of noise way down below. I looked over the railing here and saw a large group of people spilled out onto the street below. I guess there was a night club in the area, and they’d finally closed up for the night. People shouted and carried on as drunks do, and I stopped paying attention and went back to the emails.

There’s a large staircase that follows the side of the building I appeared to be stealing my internet from, and some of the people from way down below made their way up here. At first a small group of sloppy drunks made it up, which didn’t worry me at all. They carried on, spat over the railing at the people below like grade school kids, and moved on. Then another group came up, two members of which were yelling at each other. At first I thought all in good fun, but when they started shoving each other around I wondered if I should move. The friends not involved in the fight seemed too messed up to worry about, and I could pretty easily take on the two who were in the shoving match. They walked by me without paying me any attention, so I carried on.

I stopped emailing and walked away for a while when a larger group of shouting people stormed up the stairs. They were spitting over the railing, one was kicking random stuff, they looked like they were looking for trouble and all I wanted to do was write some emails and go to sleep. After they left, I came back and continued.
The next group was a bunch of girls. A few of them got into it, which was something that I was NOT leaving for. This is the kind of shit I’d PAY to watch. Mmm… cat fights. Hair pulling, screaming, slapping, good times.

I’m writing this blog now though because of this one group of people. I honestly thought I was going to see someone die today. One of them climbed up on the railing, and looked down at the crowd below. I don’t know just how high this area was from the ground below, but it was EASILY over 100 feet (30 meters or so). A totally lethal plunge, no doubt. He just stood there, talking calmly to two others who were with him but on safer ground, looking over the edge, drunk.

I’m all for drinking and having a good time, but the Scots take this too far. I don’t even know how many fights I’ve seen, and I had to walk away from my free internet a few times, watched them carry on like children or thugs… not cool. But, I guess it’s part of their culture, and if that’s what they do for fun, so be it. Not exactly how I'd spend my time, but I'm sure they'll be back again another night to do it all over again.

“We’ll drink and drink and drink and drink and drink and drink and fight.
Drink and drink and drink and drink and drink and drink and fight.
I might see a pretty girl and sleep with her tonight.
Drink and drink and drink and drink and FIIIIGHT!”

Irish Drinking Song lyrics, but it seems to apply here too.

Cha-ching...

Expensively is how it plays out. I got the whole thing.

We also couldn’t help but buy up a few other souvenirs as the streets here are lined with some really cool shops with swords and the like. We didn’t have room to bring back a sword, and besides there’s BOUND to be some problems with Customs officials at that point, but we snagged up some sword-like letter openers. Iza also picked up a little stuffed Scotsman, who she wore dangling from her neck, but while we were shopping around for things he was either lost, left behind, or stolen… which kinda sucked. Iza managed to haggle a great deal out of the vendor for a replacement for the Lost Scot, after sharing her sob story. She loved her little Scotsman.

All’s well that ends well, I guess.

Window Shopping in Edinburgh

Edinburgh is really nice, clean and medieval. I’m looking at picking up a kilt, and what started as a kilt mission has resulted in me looking to get socks, a belt, a sporran and pin too. We've managed to talk a local vendor, a Polish girl named Monika, down to £60 for the whole thing. Iza's looking at getting some lambwool scarves too, so maybe we'll be able to work out a sweeter deal yet. We'll see. I'm having second thoughts too, as one regular kilt goes for around £25... which is a fair bit of coin already at about $50 Canadian, and I'm not sure it's cool enough to pay £60 or $120 for a few souvenirs.

We'll see how this plays out.

Coolest Hostel Evar.

So Iza's ordering a small pitcher of Mai Tai for £6.95, minus a 10% discount because we're staying at this wicked hostel in Edinburgh. The place is fantastic, and the location is unfuckingreal. It's right in the middle of a bunch of great stuff, and the architecture we can see from our hostel window is breath taking. I get the feeling that we'll be having a private room as no one else has checked in yet and it's getting late on a Tuesday.

Okay, booze is here. Time to drink!

Scotland!

Just got off the plane and I’m walking on Scottish tarmac. These smaller airports are kinda cool, you get to walk down the stairs and around the aircraft, hear all the noise and stuff. Not like Pearson, or any other major airport, with those well insulated bridges that get you to the door of the airplane in boring ol' silence and tranquility.

Farewell Ireland.

Leaving Ireland for Edinburgh... I've got a few regrets. First off, we rushed the Guinness brewery. See, when we bought our tickets we knew we were pressed for time. We figured that we would hit the 7th floor bar and have a couple pints, blaze through the rest, and rush off to the airport. We knew we were in trouble as we posed for pictures, but I mean how can you be in Dublin and not hit up the brewery? Anyway, after a mad dash through the city, we got to the airport late. Was it worth it? Well, yes. But knowing we missed the flight, we should have just taken our time. Also, we found out that parking at the brewery was free while we paid to park at the transit station. We also found out that that we could have wandered around the brewery for free as no one ever checked to see if we had a ticket. Not at the main entrance to the tour, not at the service staircase up and down the back, nor at the elevators between all the floors. Between the unnecessary parking, admission costs, and the missed flight, those were two expensive pints.

The brewery tour was nice, well laid out, informative and interesting. I've never seen growing hops before and the way they had them displayed was cool. They had them growing upright in long narrow glass case, stretching between floors and interestingly lit. It's the kind of thing that would look really cool in columns in a livingroom or something. Now, if only I had a livingroom... Anyway, we took a bunch of pictures, Iza scooped a fist full of grains to bring home, we drank fresh Irish Guinness, all is good. Expensive, but good.

My other regret is that we didn't try Murphy's Stout. The scary-looking American hostel roomie in Liverpool told us we should have some, and I trust his opinion on beer. We had some beer conversations earlier, and he knew his stuff. He says it's better than Guinness but everyone drinks Guinness 'cuz it's got the name and marketing behind it. It's built the brand. Oh well. I'll keep an eye out for it anyway.

On that note, thank you Ireland. We had a great time.

Arrived in Dublin, Ireland.

We commuted into Dublin without major incident. We parked at a transit station and are walking to the Guinness brewery. The home of Guinness! Whoo!

Luck Of The Irish

09/05/06 10:11

We're leaving Oretto, our cute little bed and breakfast in Athlone where Mary Murray took us into her home and treated us like we were her own little Irish children. Before heading off on this leg of our trip, we fired off an email to a hostel we found in an Irish hostel listing published in 2006 to reserve two beds for the night. We told them we'd be coming in a bit late in the night, but that we would definitely be there, and thanked them in advance. We never got a reply to that email, not even a delivery failure notice. *Update: Even now that I'm updating this entry on the 24th more than two weeks later.*

We took some pictures to help show why, but for now I'll just say that Iza pointed out that THIS IS HOW HORROR MOVIES START. We got to the hostel, not a single window was in place and the foyer had a shitload of debris cluttering the entrance. There was a bag of flour smashed in the doorway, pamphlets and maps littered the floor, a mattress was thrown up against the reception desk, there was no lighting, things were shattered and smashed everywhere. The only thing we heard was the sound of water dripping from the ceilings. I grabbed the camera and wandered further in. You could clearly see that it had been a nice hostel at one point; the walls were painted pleasant and inviting pastels, the carpet was soggy now, but nice. You can imagine that the bedrooms would look great if you picked up the furniture and put the beds back at right angles and tucked them up against the walls. The lounge even looked nice, if not for all the smashed stuff. Clean that up and replace the toppled
and destroyed vending machine and it'd be easy to imagine a room full of tourists swapping stories of their travels.

On the floor of the office, next to the kitchen with its trashed cupboards, was a nicely mounted artist's rendering of what the place looked like in its day. It looked really good.

As we drove through town, we came upon Mary's little lit sign in the front yard, a sign she was just about to turn off for the night, and we spent the night in her welcoming home. After an Irish breakfast, where everything including the tomato was fried, we gave her a Canadian keychain attached to the house and room key she gave us. She said it would remain with the room key from here on in and it'll be there when we return. So, if anyone's in the neighbourhood and can update me on the status of the Canadian keychain, please do so.

Driving in Ireland... Driving me NUTS

This one's a long one, I'm sorry.

Sinking cars is AWESOME FUN!! While driving around Ireland's stupid roadway through Dingle Peninsula, stupid only because the signs aren't very clear in how they're directing you, and speed limits... you know, we'll get back to that in a sec... I've got a rant to share. Aaaanyway, while driving around following a taxi, Iza and I needed to pee and I followed the cab off the road when it swerved suddenly. We pulled into a little area that looked rather promising. Lucky us, no doubt a result of my Irish birthday and my presence in the Land o' Luck, first thing we came across were toilets. Boo-yeah. But there was way more boo-yeahing to be had. We stumbled upon Inch Beach, which had it been 15 degrees warmer would probably resulted in us missing some flights. It's not a huge beach, but the sand was nice and the beach allowed you to take your car onto the sand. So, ignoring a warning to motorists to be weary of soft sand, we zipped along the beach, and even with the wipers on high, we couldn't see anything for all the water being thrown onto the windshield.

We took a few photos, one of which featured Iza and myself with our rented Nissan Almera on the water, a really nice pic that had it been printed in an ad would have suggested that buying this car would land you a chick and give you a far more exciting life than the one you're living now. Great picture. Pretty neat car too, though the styling isn't quite right up my alley. I'd definitely overlook the headlights and be a happy Almera owner if it somehow found its way into my hands along with registration papers in my name. Handled quite nicely, modest gas consumption too. (6.1L/100km in mixed hilly stupid driving, if you care and can relate.)

Stupid driving. Let me tell you about some stupidity.

Ireland. Love the people, love the countryside, love the ACT of driving. REALLY REALLY REALLY FUCKING HATE THE ROADWAYS. Here's the thing about driving in Ireland: their signage sucks enough ass to make me want to kick babies and eat kittens. ...Okay, but MORE than usual. Iza took a picture that illustrated one of the extremes, too many signs. The USEFUL ones are buried under a sea of other useless ones, and all the signs are often angled in such a way that makes them either difficult to read, difficult to see other signs behind them, or difficult to determine exactly which fucking road they want you to take.

The other extreme is the lack of signs. We've followed a bunch of signs, in some cases several times, only to make a turn or take an exit, only to never see any mention of our destination again. This is made even worse if a roundabout is involved.

For the uninitiated, they're circular roads usually around an island, cleverly placed in your path to impede your progress and to provide you with ample opportunities to get lost or crash your car. A number of roads connect to this ring and you enter on one, and assuming you don't crash into something or spend eternity circling around the center island, you exit on another road hopefully on the road going in your direction. This is almost always done uncontrolled, that is to say no traffic lights help the drivers out, and everyone just kind of enters these things at once.

Another sign issue was their highway speed limit signs. Apparently, the Irish have no understanding of physics. See, they'd mark a highway as being 100km/h, then not more than 150 metres away they throw you into an insanely twisty stretch of road. *Update: I've now seen a highway speed limit sign posted not more than 15 metres before a roundabout.* Sometimes I would try to accelerate to 100 before slamming on the brakes to negotiate a hairpin turn, and I'd fail more often than not. And there's no warning of slow sections coming up either; it's just a new speed limit sign thrown up at the point of change.

Another annoyance were the Twisty Road signs. Some looked like a Z with sharp angles that back-tracked a bit, other signs were like an S... but often times the severity of the turn didn't match the signs. Some Z turns were easier than S ones, or the other way around. Worse, the signs didn't match the direction of turns. Using an S for an example, entering the bottom of the S you would expect a left turn, then a right turn. Reality is that you're just as likely to turn right first, they just use the signs to tell you that the road's twisty ahead. Hopefully you can see the turn beyond the hill soon enough to sort out the direction on your own.

Finally, they paint the word “SLOW” on the pavement before things like turns or whatever… but they don’t say HOW slow, or for what reason. Sometimes it’ll say SLOW, then a couple metres later it’ll say SLOW again. Then, for shits’n’giggles, SLOWER. I guess the paint’s psychic or something. Or the Irish just KNOW you won’t take the other SLOWs seriously.

Oh, most of the information centres are never open, F.Y.I..

Those Damned Sheep!

Ireland's pretty. Sleeping in a rental car isn't. The roads here are a driver's wet dream; they're narrow, ridiculously twisty, puddles of water pool up everywhere... and the scenery's stunningly beautiful. Just be careful if you want to wander off to take a picture of road-side sheep, as a car might zip by and send one of these puddles 20 feet at you soaking you to the skin and getting into your new digital camera. Oh, and your boyfriend might be busy laughing at
you while watching it happen.

Good times.

Oh My God. Almost Literally.

06/05/06 12:34

The Liverpool Cathedral is massive on a scale that makes open mockery of the concept of something being "obscenely massive". Just one of the wings or side altars would make a pretty good church, this place is easily a dozen good churches mashed into one. It's awe-inspiring enough to make it an actual effort to not take up religion just to be able to say that I am somehow a part of this. I'm reduced to summing it up with a borderline retarded "wow".

Liverpool And The Spice Girls

We zipped off to Liverpool, our intended cheap hostel was out of room and so we ended up calling some £32 place home tonight. We have a large American as a roomie. Seems the Gentle Giant type. I think he might be a wrestler. Apparently knows some Canadian wrestler from the east coast who actually says "aboot".

Crawled around Liverpool, hit up a couple of clubs... Wondered how these people, ALL THESE PEOPLE, are managing to walk around in the cold all scantily-clad. I don't mind, if you've got it and wanna show it off... Uhm... I was beaten about the noggin a lot today as I don't believe Iza shares my point of view.

Iza made the observation that the Spice Girls... well, they look all dolled up with their silly outfits and haircuts, and while to us they look comically out of touch with fashion and such, that's actually what the girls here look like. It's strange. I can't tell if the Spice Girls were such a hit here that they spawned "That Look", or if the Spice Girls just took that look from the scene.

Anyway, England's pretty. ...and fucking expensive. Ireland tomorrow.

Cheers!

Euro-Trash

Changed time zones now to the You-Dot-Kay-Dot 05/05/06 7:16, new time 12:16

Okay, Manchester is super pretty and clean, but I can't figure how since it took me forever to find a trash can. Nowhere in the train station, bus areas... Finally took a (free!!) bus (are you listening TTC?) to Piccadilly Gardens and found a garbage can. ...then had my picture taken with it. Well I mean, when you've invested this much effort into getting rid of your luggage tags, it's become an accomplishment worthy of a few megapixels of memories to share.

Oh. And I've smelled pot a half dozen times since arriving... I have brothers overseas!

Not Dead Yet!

Touched down and bumping along the runways... First leg done, no casualties.

The View From Above

So we just a half hour ago saw Ireland, and are coming in to Manchester... Countryside is so pretty...

In-Flight Movie

Okay, so the other movie's Last Holiday. The first movie's just got going, much to my dismay. I've just consumed my allotted 14g bag of crunchy sesame blobs which were incredibly salty and good. Just a shame I'm not high; that would have totally hit the spot.

My cup of apple juice is nearly gone... Yes, apples bled for my juice even though orange juice was available. Stunned? Wow, Art didn't opt for OJ, the apocalypse is upon us! My god I'm bored... but looking forward to the rest of this trip. I'm sure I won't be blogging all this useless nonsense once I've got other cultures to occupy my time.

Leeeaving ooon a jet-plane...

Iza and I just marvelled at the lava-like lighting of Mississauga and east out towards the downtown core as we flew south of the lake shore. My first major disappointment of the trip was the announcement of the in-flight movies... Big Momma's House 2, and some other flick featuring Queen Latifa. ...if I haven't been restrained by the flight crew before the other movie starts I'll fill in the blank movie title then.

Let the vacation begin!!

Euro Blogging!

Hey guys. Connectivity has been sketchy through Europe, and actually being able to transfer my blog to the online world has been sketchier still. So, expect blogs in spurts.

Cheers!