lunes, 7 de mayo de 2007

England, Ireland, Scotland...

Alright, here we go with the long awaited blog post on my trip to London/Dublin/St. Andrews. I went with my friend from JBU Micah Williams. First stop: London.
We went to a lot of free museums, the first of which was the British museum. We got a real kick out of this museum. Basically it's stuff that Britain has jacked from other countries over the past couple thousand years. They have different rooms full of stuff from each country. It's like, 'hey look what we stole from Egypt, now look what we stole from Greece, now look what we stol from Italy...'
Ya, I digressed to third grade...
Micah, the next great philosopher, with a book in his hand as always...it just happens to be that the book he's holding is our tourists guidebook to western europe. Not quite philosophy but close for Micah.
Me and Alexander the Great, just chillin. I think when he was my age he owned like half the known world, and I...well I don't even own a car anymore, or an ipod anymore, or a phone anymore since I lost my second phone in Cambridge...
I have a picture just like this from about 7 years ago, and yes I even took a picture with me leaning over as if I was gonna dunk my head in the fountain again:) But Micah has that picture and I haven't gotten it from him yet.
Micah and I outside Buckingham palace.
Highlight number 1 of the trip: WICKED! We saw Wicked that Saturday night, and it was incredible, absolutely incredible.
Micah and I in our seats, and yes that is the back wall of the whole theater. For the second act we moved down about 15 rows, thanks to a gay friend I met the night before who worked as an usher in the theater.
Westminster abbey at night. Pretty darn beautiful. We went to an evensong and heard the London chamber singers sing. They were great and it was so cool to be listening to great music in Westminster.
Micah, in sepia, staring up at Big Ben=hot pic
Micah in the attic of the guys' house we stayed at. micah and I both slept in this tiny attic. The 3 London guys we stayed with were hilariously awesome. They were some friends of friends of Micah's sister. So it worked out well. They were great though. They made us a typical English roast that was absolutely delicious and huge.
These two things were the key to my surviving London. Micah and I kept a pretty crazy pace to be able to make it around the city. So my coke and my map basically saved me.
Micah and I on Tower Bridge. By the way, I ran frantically underneat London Bridge only to realize I had been lied to all my life...
So, since they are silly English pig dogs and drive on the left side of the road, they have to tell you on the street which way to look so you don't get creamed by a car. The best part of this picture is just to the right of the picture is an old guy on a moto stopped at the light. So Micah was staring right at him, and he was laughing as we walked by him after taking the picture.
Highlight #2 Les Miserables. We sat in the 10th row, the 10th freaking row. It was beautiful. The show was incredible. Jean Valjean and Javert were absolutely amazing. Sadly we got an understudy Marius who was pretty clearly an understudy, but the show was still awesome.
Me inside the theater. Just kickin it.


Now onto DUBLIN IRELAND!
Ireland was the place I wanted to go to the most in the world that I still hadn't visited.
Micah, Tyler (another guy from our program who we met in Dublin) and Stephen, a random dude we met on the airplane who was cool.
Christ Church
A picture of myself in Christ church. We went in and heard an evensong performed by a small group of 8. It was pretty sweet.
Dublin on a drizzly, dreary day.
Ahhh, a beautiful day to take a beautiful hike, and see a beautiful castle!
Me holding up the castle gate...
Micah and I enjoying some Magnum bars at 4am after dancing in some Dublin clubs for a couple hours. Note to all: Irish people suck at dancing. No honestly, they're awful. If you go to Dublin go to a nightclub and get a good laugh. They play top 40 songs, everything from Nelly Furtado to YMCA to the Killers. And the drunk Dubliners just jumped around.
So we took a day and went to Wicklow outside of Dublin on the coast. It was beautiful. This sign is just silly, it might as well say, "hey come check this out," so we did
We hiked up to a lighthouse
Me in a field on the coast. And that's it for Ireland. Micah and I at this point were running out of room on our cameras and we still had 3 days left, so we stopped taking so many pics.

And now to St. ANDREWS SCOTLAND.
Naturally we stayed with my sister and her husband, which was an absolute blast. They showed us the town, took us on a hike in a nearby town, and introduced us to some really cool friends who gave me the Office season 3! Woohoo! I watched 13 episodes the day I got back:)

So we went to a beautiful castle and hiked around. It was so gorgeous and green it was great! (I'm going for as much alliteration as possible in this post by the way).
Craig, castle, Scottish countryside, cool.

DnA hiking the trail ahead of us.
Well we were in Scotland, almost in the highlands...so why not?
And that's the end of Scotland.
Worst part of the trip: losing my phone in Cambridge
best part of the trip: 2 broadway musicals
Biggest surprise...hahaha this is a good story. After travelling for 10 days, we got back into the Madrid airport, and finally made our way to the bus station. When we got there we were gonna buy our overnight bus tickets to get back to Sevilla. But upon asking for our tickets we found out that both the midnight and 1am buses were full and we couldn't get tickets. So it was either sleep on the street, or pay a little more to travel all night on a bus to some town an hour away from Sevilla, and then take another bus to get to Sevilla when we got there. So that was our solution. We slept horribly on the bus, but made it back safe and sound.

And there ends our trip. Incredibly beautiful, incredibly fun. Micah and I had a great time and had some good bonding. I saw some incredible places. Life is good. Now just 11 days til I'm home!!
oh and to top it off, this past weekend I went to Portugal again just for the weekend to sit on the beach:)

5 comentarios:

AnĂ³nimo dijo...

Uhh, are you sure you're coming back? You do remember Kansas, don't you? No Big Ben, musicals, Portuguese beaches, castles, fountains, museums stuffed with ancient artifacts, or natives with crazy accents. Shoot, our best guess at a night club is Jul's, where they flicker the lights on and off to create a strobe effect. If I were you I would miss my flight, or accidentally board the wrong plane (the one that would take you to the 2 or 3 European countries you haven't seen). You're on a roll. Are you really looking forward to a summer chalk full of wackos who enjoy 10 hours of cacophonous, souped-up Chevys pointlessly tearing down the same quarter-mile strip of asphalt in an abominable waste of the world's most precious resource? Well, if you do decide to come back, it will be fantastic to see you again. I can't wait. Hey, maybe for a little adventure we can visit the World Famous Topeka Zoo.

Pureblood Prince dijo...

i love mark.

TBCJim dijo...

I don't know anyone who's been to Portchewgull even once, much less 3 times.

Foolish Thing Nine dijo...

My friends are staring at me as I laugh my head off reading Mark's comment...

Anyways, you freaking suck. Granted, I've been to NYC, DC, Philly, Princeton (x2), and the beach in the last 6 weeks or so, but I don't think it compares. Let me explain to you how excited I am for Australia in a couple months!

Nice choice with Wicked. I think my dad and I made out well getting to see it in NYC (my mom and bro just did too). How does the London theater district compare to NYC?

And the Ireland pictures are saved to my hard drive now :-)

AnĂ³nimo dijo...

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