Stonehenge, Salisbury and travels in between - Slideshow

If you click through to the web album (the little colorful symbol in the corner, and then the album title) you'll be able to see the video clips as well...



Stonehenge was amazing, the Salisbury cathedral was amazing. It's crazy what people accomplished so long ago, and probably not with the thought in mind that so many people would be coming to see it, so many years later.

Really wild, high contrast lighting towards the end of the day - dark clouds, bright sunshine... crazy.

Leaving Scotland Tomorrow

Not sure when/if we'll get internet in England, but that's where we're off to next. We've had a nice, low-key time here staying with Brooke & Rynny, they've made us yummy food and given us bus directions and helped us buy tickets online and such. It's definitely more relaxing to be somewhere with someone who actually knows what's going on :)

We were super low key yesterday, pretty much slept in and went out to explore Dundee just a little bit in the afternoon. Stopped to eat at a little pub called Drouthy Neebors and had nachos, salad, veggie burger, baked potato and french fries (or chips as they say here)! It seemed like a lot of food, but we were SO hungry, hadn't really eaten anything besides a scone and a bit of cereal for the morning, plus it seemed to be rather light, as in not too greasy, so it ended up being just the right amount I think. And the biggest looking dish was the huge salad, and that's all green stuff anyway. :)



This morning we had to get up "stupid early" (to borrow a painfully accurate phrase from Rynny.) to get to the Campbell Castle in Inverary. We were a tiny bit worried it might be closed or something because it was a bank holiday, but it turns out just the bus ride itself was worth it! We went through these towering, rock-covered hills that were just gorgeous and full of tiny streams and boulders and trees. And then the castle was open anyway! Hooray!

They only let you tour through a portion of the castle, because the current Duke actually still lives in the castle part of the time! and I saw him! Just briefly, i was coming out of a room, and there is a glass door marked "Private" down the hall and I saw a lady in the hall and then the Duke came out! Just looked like a good-looking late 30's guy in a red sweater, except that I'd just come from a room plastered with photos and newspaper clippings of his achievements, so I recognized his face right away. Not wanting to stare I just continued down the stairs as normal, hoping that G would come out in time to see for himself, but unfortunately the Duke was gone by the time G came out.

In any case, the castle was beautiful, the grounds were beautiful, and it was an all around great experience. I know G wanted to talk a bit more with someone about family history, but there didn't really seem to be anyone available to talk with... Ah well. I think he enjoyed it too anyway.



Tomorrow we have to get up "stupid early" again to catch our plane into London. From there we take a train to Guildford to see Adrien in her play, which is very exciting! Snilly us did not try to reserve a place to stay ahead of time, so we are going in fingers-crossed that the B&B we found online tonight will have a vacancy for us, because it's right by the City Centre, which is also supposed to be close to the train station, and the theatre.

As I said at the beginning, not sure when/if we'll get internet again, so this might be my last entry before we come home! But who knows!

St. Andrews and Dundee and BBQ

Today we went over to St. Andrews (maybe around 20 min?) and walked around the city, down by the rocky shoreline of the old castle, around the town, stopped for snacks and saw the ruins of the old chapel too. Took tons of pictures of the neat doorways and building carvings and windows and such.



I had to pay 30 pence to use the public restroom. That's a thing here, paying to use bathrooms AKA the WC. So far they've been pretty nice though, so I guess it's worth it. I was happy to pay but I couldn't see anyone at the window booth, so I just started going in, and this guy comes bombing out from where ever he was hiding shouting "Pence please!!!!" and I'm like "sure, I didn't see you." snilly. Was very happy to pay him, just had to go!

Afterwards we stopped by a grocery store and picked up things for a birthday BBQ of some of Rynny's co-workers and then took a taxi out to her place. She has two dogs and little backyard, and they had grills for veg & meat and a whole bunch of baked potatoes and grilled corn on the cob and this one nice guy who was part Iranian made all this really nice (nice is a high compliment over here, not a wishy washy thing to say)food, my favorite being this pot of rice that had a crispy bottom of turmeric.

Let's see if I can remember how he told me to make it.

Basmati rice - soak for 20 minutes. Put it in boiling water for 6 minutes. Prepare a pan with vegetable oil and turmeric, and then cook the rice again in that. Sounds easy enough. Might take a try or two to get it just right, but it was yum in any case!

It really cooled off towards the middle/end of the party, so Brooke & I moved the grill to the middle of the group and put more charcoal on. It was a bit smokey at first, but the Canadian guy - (Mike? Mark? too many new people!)got the flames going and that helped a lot. It's neat hanging out with new people and hearing all the accents and talking about our trip and what they do and such. Everyone seemed really nice, and it was fun to be outside, even if it got cold and there wasn't really anywhere to actually sit down. We all just ended up huddling closer as the night wore on, both to get closer to the fire and each other for warmth. Luckily two people had cars, so the people without were able to split between them and we didn't have to catch a cab home.

We've been watching a crazy British show called "Green Wing" on DVD. The closest thing I can compare it to is Scrubs, but it's totally wacked, highly stylized speed-up/slow-down of the action, distinctive music, and the people are crazy and silly, and it just cracks me up hardcore. Rynny mentioned it being just a bit "Dali-esque" and I can totally see what he means. I wonder if it's at all easy to find in the states? Last night we also watched a bit of Blackadder, with Hugh Laurie before he was the sex symbol Dr House, and was just a silly young goofball. Very funny, and I know that one is at the Library because my dad had recommended it before.

Alrighty, way past time for bed. I seem to have a hard time getting to bed over here still...

Edinburgh Bus Tour Slideshow

We went back to Edinburgh and took the bus tour again since our tickets were still good. It was fun because we had a different tour guide and we got to hear some slightly different stories, plus it was nice and sunny instead of raining, and we weren't tired from traveling all day.

Dublin, Waterford, Blarney at Night

Slideshow of the morning in Dublin, our brief stop at the Waterford Crystal gift shop, and our arrival at Blarney village.

Walking Around Dublin (Slideshow)

One of the things we plan to do in pretty much every place we go to is "Walk Around". Seriously. G had that on our lists, and would say it whenever we started explaining our trip to people - "We're going to go to Dublin, walk around, then drive to Waterford, walk around, etc"

And that, my dear friends, is EXACTLY what we did. Walked around. Even ended up full circle back at the restaurant where we ate for dinner. Silly winding streets :)

Here's a slide show of ALL our pictures from the day... About 140, I didn't have time to just pick out the best stuff, so it's all there. I think if you click the colored logo in the bottom corner you'll be taken to a place where you can see them bigger.


I still have to go back and caption a bunch of these, but thought I'd get a jump on it. Who knows when we'll get internet again, so trying to keep on top of things.

I think I got sunburned. grrr. Thought it was late enough in the day I wouldn't need sunscreen - we didn't even go out until after 5pm, after a little hour long nap. On the one hand it was kind of good because all the tours and museums and such were closed, so in that sense we probably save ourselves some money, and we didn't have to try and decide or pick just one thing. We kind of just walked wherever we saw something cool, although we were also looking for a few restaurants I'd pegged from the map at the hotel as having vegetarian options. The first one "Govindas" (G thinks it was a Hari Krishna restaurant) was closed, so we ended up at an Italian place.

Then we just walked and walked and walked and saw a bunch of cool pubs, statues, buildings, and street performers. Really neat old city with lots of little surprises around corners and stuff.

I really wanted to go back to a pub called Panama after 9pm for some traditional Irish Folk music, but by then our feet were killing us, it was more like 10:30, and we'd picked up some souvenirs and bottles of water and were looking a bit haggard in general, so we decided to just go home, even though it sounded pretty good - if what they were piping through the speakers to the sidewalk was what was being played inside... I hope we'll be able to take in some music at one of the other towns along the way. It's nice that all the pubs are smoke free, I'm not sure if that's the case in other towns. A smokey place would severely limit my music enjoyment in it... sigh. On that topic, it's kind of funny, since people can't smoke inside, they congregate out on the sidewalk in front of the pubs, so you end up walking through a lot of smoke a lot of the time. And the ground is just littered with cigarette butts... I wonder if it was any different when you could smoke in the pubs. Anyway, I'm glad of it, gives someone like me a lot more options of where to go.

Other random noticings:
- Kelly green really is big here, I think it's probably ALWAYS in fashion to wear it, no matter the other colors of the season. They even had little green lights to illuminate the way on the bridges across the river.

- Overheard a lady at the restaurant say "dis and tat" for "this and that". Funny how you can take two words that in theory both start with "th" and work them out to have two different sounds instead. I wonder how you know when to use which?

- Several guys propped up against random doorways pretty much passed out/asleep/drunk to a stupor? Sad. One had an unlit cigarette in one hand and his other hand was half way in his pocket, like he'd reached for a lighter and couldn't finish the effort before passing out completely. I can't imagine they're comfortable, or that they won't have HUGE crinks in their necks when they wake up...

- The weather was gorgeous, although it cooled off right quick when the sun dipped down.

- Most of the girls are wearing long, dark denim. Lots of funky jackets and skinny scarves and more crazy hair than I'm used to seeing - chunky highlights, short on to long on bottom, dreds, etc.

Still can't figure out if I'm just amped on traveling or messed up from the time change, but I'm going to try to go to bed for reals now.