Sunday, September 29, 2013
Pubs and Libraries
Location: still headed toward Cadiz, Spain!
Ireland, Day 3 (9/22/13):
I had to head back to Dublin on the 5:30pm bus, and I had already seen the lake, so I decided to dedicated my second day in Glendalough to visiting the round tower and the ruins of the monastic settlement in the ancient graveyard. I asked around town for the best place to have breakfast (which at some hostels is included, but at the Glendalough hostel is not) and was told to head to the Wickalow Heather Restaurant, which was about a mile down the road. I wasn't in a hurry, so I decided to walk there and then come back and view the ruins afterward.
Aside from an impressive number of wasps which eventually drove me inside, the restaurant was nice––I decided to forgo the traditional Irish breakfast on account of its similarity to the traditional English breakfast (seriously, beans are not a breakfast food!) and instead got poached eggs which came with two pieces of toast. Then they brought out another six pieces of toast! Who on earth needs that much toast? I ended up eating most of the toast and then making a butter and jelly sandwich with some more so that I could have it for lunch later.
And then I spent the rest of the day ambling around Glendalough, sketching the monastic ruins and graveyard, and finding a quiet place to sit in the forest and draw while listening to songs from the Lord of the Rings. When it was time to catch the bus back to Dublin I felt very refreshed, and was looking forward to going on the city's famous Literary Pub Crawl, which I had booked a spot on that evening.
There were already a lot of people waiting for the bus, and by the time it arrived the crowd was large enough that I was pretty sure not everyone was going to fit. I quickly established myself toward the front-middle of the line, at which point the driver announced that those with return tickets could get to the front of the queue. Fortunately that is what I had from the day before, so I was able to get on. I knew that the bus was going to be full, so I looked around for someone I'd like to sit next to for the next hour. Then I noticed a girl who I recognized from Semester at Sea, though I hadn't actually spoken to her before, sitting near the front of the bus.
Her name was Kira, and while I was trying to think how I knew her I remembered that it was because she was our student-presenter for Russia––she goes to school in Moscow, but is originally from St. Petersburg. Kira had actually come to Glendalough on the 11:30am bus, done the really long hike up the mountain and all the way around the lake, and then come back to the bus to leave at 5:30pm the same day. She was understandably a bit tired. But when I mentioned that I was doing the Literary Pub Crawl she decided to come with (you can also buy tickets at the door), so after the bus dropped us off in Dublin we headed to the Duke Pub, which is where the Pub Crawl begins from.
So what exactly is a Literary Pub Crawl? Well this particular one is famous because it is led be professional act ors who act out pieces from the works of famous authors from Ireland, and they lead you around to the different pubs that those authors used to frequent. Kira and I arrived a little early, so we went and sat in a side room to wait until we could purchase her ticket and claim mine.
We ended up sitting next to Fernando, a guy interning in Wales who is from Argentina and was visiting Ireland. So the three of us hung together while the Pub Crawl group moved between four pubs and a handful of other notable locations at which one of our guides would fire off a string of facts a mile long which I remember few of now but were really interesting to listen to at the time. In between we would have fifteen minutes or so at each of the pubs for people to hang out and get drinks. Kira and I hadn't had dinner yet and were not really in the mood to drink anything (I don't particularly like alcohol anyhow) and Fernando doesn't like the taste of beer, so our little company consisting of a non-drinking American, Russian, and Argentino made just about the most unlikely group possible to be on a pub crawl in Ireland.
And that is pretty much the gist of my third day in Ireland!
Ireland, Day 4 (9/23/13):
Which brings us to (dun dun dun)... my last and final day! I had one big goal for day four: go to Trinity College and see the old library and the book of Kells. The consensus seemed to be that to get the full experience one should sign up for a walking tour of the college, which includes the entrance to see the book of Kells and is only a couple Euros more.
So after wandering around Dublin for a while in search of breakfast, that is what I did! Our guide told us all sorts of things about the college (he was actually about to graduate and go to Oxford, so he said to forgive him if he got a bit nostalgic) and about the Book of Kells, which is considered one of the world's finest illuminated manuscripts and a national treasure of Ireland. There is a several-room informational display about the book's history and construction before you actually see it, so by the time I had gotten breakfast, did the college tour, and read all of the information the day was getting pretty far along (remember I have to be back on the boat before on-ship time at 18:00!)
The book itself was neat, but there were so many people crowded around that you couldn't really just stand and look at it for very long, so I think I actually enjoyed learning about it beforehand the most. For example, the Book of Kells actually contains the four New Testament Gospels, but the Celtic monks who created it were much less concerned with the content than with the style and beauty with which that content was presented, which meant that parts of it are hard to read because the monks would skip or forget bits and then add them later completely out of sequence, or they would abridge and abbreviate other parts.
We weren't allowed to take picture in the exhibit, but if you want to see what the Book of Kells looks like I would highly recommend googling it (or using the handy Wikipedia search bar that I put on the right-hand side of the page just for you guys!)
I then entered the Trinity College Library, which consists of one large and very impressive room with shelves of ancient books spanning multiple levels. Apparently it was mostly built to just be impressive, because at the time (according to our walking tour guide) there were only enough books to fill about 1/3 of it. The books were also organized in a most peculiar way: by size, with the largest on the bottom and the smallest on top, because it looked good. No idea how anyone ever actually found the book they were looking for with that system.
I cruised around the gift shop for a little while, before looking at the time, and realizing that while on-ship time is at 18:00, the last shuttle to get back to the ship leaves at 16:30. It was 16:15, and I still had to go and get postcards and a pin (I'm collecting them from each country.) Oops! Fortunately I knew exactly where I was going to get the postcards and the pin (then why hadn't I gotten them earlier? You've got to wonder...), but unfortunately they were in the opposite direction from the shuttle. So I'm speed-walking through the streets, getting everything that I was going to get, and arriving at the place the shuttle is supposed to be at 16:27––––but there's no shuttle. Great. They must have gotten full and already left. I had never actually had to walk back to the ship before, and although there was still technically an hour and a half until on-ship time I was still a bit nervous. I could see the ship waaay in the distance, so I spent the next half an hour speed walking there. Then I spent about ten minutes being lost in the harbor before finally finding and boarding the ship with almost 40 minutes to spare. Whew.
And that was Ireland! Stay tuned for when I get around to Portugal (no idea when that will be), and as always comments are very much appreciated!
Ireland, Day 3 (9/22/13):
I had to head back to Dublin on the 5:30pm bus, and I had already seen the lake, so I decided to dedicated my second day in Glendalough to visiting the round tower and the ruins of the monastic settlement in the ancient graveyard. I asked around town for the best place to have breakfast (which at some hostels is included, but at the Glendalough hostel is not) and was told to head to the Wickalow Heather Restaurant, which was about a mile down the road. I wasn't in a hurry, so I decided to walk there and then come back and view the ruins afterward.
Aside from an impressive number of wasps which eventually drove me inside, the restaurant was nice––I decided to forgo the traditional Irish breakfast on account of its similarity to the traditional English breakfast (seriously, beans are not a breakfast food!) and instead got poached eggs which came with two pieces of toast. Then they brought out another six pieces of toast! Who on earth needs that much toast? I ended up eating most of the toast and then making a butter and jelly sandwich with some more so that I could have it for lunch later.
And then I spent the rest of the day ambling around Glendalough, sketching the monastic ruins and graveyard, and finding a quiet place to sit in the forest and draw while listening to songs from the Lord of the Rings. When it was time to catch the bus back to Dublin I felt very refreshed, and was looking forward to going on the city's famous Literary Pub Crawl, which I had booked a spot on that evening.
There were already a lot of people waiting for the bus, and by the time it arrived the crowd was large enough that I was pretty sure not everyone was going to fit. I quickly established myself toward the front-middle of the line, at which point the driver announced that those with return tickets could get to the front of the queue. Fortunately that is what I had from the day before, so I was able to get on. I knew that the bus was going to be full, so I looked around for someone I'd like to sit next to for the next hour. Then I noticed a girl who I recognized from Semester at Sea, though I hadn't actually spoken to her before, sitting near the front of the bus.
Her name was Kira, and while I was trying to think how I knew her I remembered that it was because she was our student-presenter for Russia––she goes to school in Moscow, but is originally from St. Petersburg. Kira had actually come to Glendalough on the 11:30am bus, done the really long hike up the mountain and all the way around the lake, and then come back to the bus to leave at 5:30pm the same day. She was understandably a bit tired. But when I mentioned that I was doing the Literary Pub Crawl she decided to come with (you can also buy tickets at the door), so after the bus dropped us off in Dublin we headed to the Duke Pub, which is where the Pub Crawl begins from.
So what exactly is a Literary Pub Crawl? Well this particular one is famous because it is led be professional act ors who act out pieces from the works of famous authors from Ireland, and they lead you around to the different pubs that those authors used to frequent. Kira and I arrived a little early, so we went and sat in a side room to wait until we could purchase her ticket and claim mine.
We ended up sitting next to Fernando, a guy interning in Wales who is from Argentina and was visiting Ireland. So the three of us hung together while the Pub Crawl group moved between four pubs and a handful of other notable locations at which one of our guides would fire off a string of facts a mile long which I remember few of now but were really interesting to listen to at the time. In between we would have fifteen minutes or so at each of the pubs for people to hang out and get drinks. Kira and I hadn't had dinner yet and were not really in the mood to drink anything (I don't particularly like alcohol anyhow) and Fernando doesn't like the taste of beer, so our little company consisting of a non-drinking American, Russian, and Argentino made just about the most unlikely group possible to be on a pub crawl in Ireland.
And that is pretty much the gist of my third day in Ireland!
Ireland, Day 4 (9/23/13):
Which brings us to (dun dun dun)... my last and final day! I had one big goal for day four: go to Trinity College and see the old library and the book of Kells. The consensus seemed to be that to get the full experience one should sign up for a walking tour of the college, which includes the entrance to see the book of Kells and is only a couple Euros more.
So after wandering around Dublin for a while in search of breakfast, that is what I did! Our guide told us all sorts of things about the college (he was actually about to graduate and go to Oxford, so he said to forgive him if he got a bit nostalgic) and about the Book of Kells, which is considered one of the world's finest illuminated manuscripts and a national treasure of Ireland. There is a several-room informational display about the book's history and construction before you actually see it, so by the time I had gotten breakfast, did the college tour, and read all of the information the day was getting pretty far along (remember I have to be back on the boat before on-ship time at 18:00!)
The book itself was neat, but there were so many people crowded around that you couldn't really just stand and look at it for very long, so I think I actually enjoyed learning about it beforehand the most. For example, the Book of Kells actually contains the four New Testament Gospels, but the Celtic monks who created it were much less concerned with the content than with the style and beauty with which that content was presented, which meant that parts of it are hard to read because the monks would skip or forget bits and then add them later completely out of sequence, or they would abridge and abbreviate other parts.
We weren't allowed to take picture in the exhibit, but if you want to see what the Book of Kells looks like I would highly recommend googling it (or using the handy Wikipedia search bar that I put on the right-hand side of the page just for you guys!)
I then entered the Trinity College Library, which consists of one large and very impressive room with shelves of ancient books spanning multiple levels. Apparently it was mostly built to just be impressive, because at the time (according to our walking tour guide) there were only enough books to fill about 1/3 of it. The books were also organized in a most peculiar way: by size, with the largest on the bottom and the smallest on top, because it looked good. No idea how anyone ever actually found the book they were looking for with that system.
I cruised around the gift shop for a little while, before looking at the time, and realizing that while on-ship time is at 18:00, the last shuttle to get back to the ship leaves at 16:30. It was 16:15, and I still had to go and get postcards and a pin (I'm collecting them from each country.) Oops! Fortunately I knew exactly where I was going to get the postcards and the pin (then why hadn't I gotten them earlier? You've got to wonder...), but unfortunately they were in the opposite direction from the shuttle. So I'm speed-walking through the streets, getting everything that I was going to get, and arriving at the place the shuttle is supposed to be at 16:27––––but there's no shuttle. Great. They must have gotten full and already left. I had never actually had to walk back to the ship before, and although there was still technically an hour and a half until on-ship time I was still a bit nervous. I could see the ship waaay in the distance, so I spent the next half an hour speed walking there. Then I spent about ten minutes being lost in the harbor before finally finding and boarding the ship with almost 40 minutes to spare. Whew.
And that was Ireland! Stay tuned for when I get around to Portugal (no idea when that will be), and as always comments are very much appreciated!
Glendalough
Location: Southbound from Lisbon, Portugal
Yes, I made it to Lisbon!... and the ship actually left again today to head to Cadiz, Spain. That was fast. Anyhow, I decided to stay with the ship instead of traveling overland from Lisbon to Cadiz––remember how I did that from Antwerp, Belgium to Le Havre, France? Well there was the option to do it again here because the ports are so close together, but I decided not to because it seemed expensive and I had a hard time figuring out train/bus routes that would actually take me where I wanted to go. Over half the students on the ship decided to go overland, so it's pretty quiet here for once, which is nice. Hopefully this means that I can finally get caught up with the present on my blog!
Ireland, Day 2 (9/21):
After spending so much time in cities over the past couple of weeks I was itching to head to the countryside. And where better to do so than in Ireland? So I decided to go to Glendalough (glen-duh-lock), a little former monastic settlement founded in the 6th century by St. Kevin, which is located about an hour south of Dublin in the county Wicklow. There aren't around any public buses or trains to Glendalough, but there is a private bus similar to the Diamond Express (not nearly as cute though) which goes to Glendalough and back twice a day. It leaves Dublin at 11:30am, so on the morning of the 21st I packed a couple of bags, spent a little time exploring the area of Dublin around the bus stop, and then was on my way!
I had actually found out all of the information that I would need ahead of time, during my last day at Le Havre, so I was fairly confident that I knew where I was going and what I was doing. The one snag in this plan was that I wanted to spend two days in Glendalough, and this necessitated some kind of lodging. There is a youth hostel in Glendalough; it is a well-reviewed and generally pleasant-sounding place. It also does not accept debit card reservations online. So having been unable to secure a place to spend the night ahead of time, I boarded the bus with a feeling my mild trepidation. Would the hostel be full when I arrived? Hopefully not, because then I would either need to find the least-expensive B&B I could or go head back to the ship on the 5:30 bus that evening, which would be no fun.
So the bus pulls into Glendalough and drops us all off right in front of the visitor center. Convenient! I get myself a map and ask the woman at the desk where the hostel is located. She instructs me to go back to the main road, turn left, and just keep walking until I find it (apparently you can't miss it.)
It is a beautiful day; the sun is shining, and I have finally left the city! With a spring in my step I meander down the road, past a few stone buildings, over a little bridge, and past a small cluster of food/souvenir stalls. There isn't much room on the side of the road to walk, and I hug the edges as I climb a small hill and find myself passing an area of alternating fields and trees, leaving behind the small patch of civilization in the valley. The iconic round tower of Glendalough and the ancient graveyard at its feet rise up on the other side of a field to my left, and I snap a few pictures before hurrying on, anxious to see whether I will have a place to stay for the night.
My description makes it sound like I was walking for a while, but it really only a few minutes (like I said, the place isn't very big) before I rounded a corner and found myself facing a large and cheery yellow building with the sign, "Glendalough International Hostel" painted in flowing blue script on the sign out front. I had arrived!
The interior of the hostel is very nice; there is a large lounge area with a wall full of DVDs for rent, and down a side corridor is a several-room dining area. I approach the reception desk hopefully. The lady behind the front desk says that yes, there are beds still available (spiffy!), but that check-in is not for another few hours. I could leave my stuff in the side room and take a walk if I wanted, and she would put my name down for when I return. With a feeling of triumph, I march into the side room she is indicating. There are no lockers, and the room itself is not locked/watched like the places that Jazlin and I had left our backpacks while traveling in England had been. Huh. That doesn't seem particularly secure.
There are two other people in the room, and a whole pile of backpacks sitting on a fold-out table in the far corner. I ask the people if that is where one leaves ones stuff. Yes, apparently so. Now I look at the little fold-up backpack I had brought with me, which isn't very heavy but I would still rather not have to wear it for the next few hours, and decide that if anyone is really dying to steal its contents then they can go for it (I believe it contained some clothes and a sketchpad.) I transferred everything of actual value to the medium-sized blue satchel I had purchased in England and now carry everywhere with me.
Then I deposited my bag beside the heap of backpacks and set out to explore Glendalough!
I'm not sure my every move is worth recounting from here (if it ever was) so I'll just say that I got some food from one of the street stalls that I had passed earlier, found a the trail leading to the upper lake, and followed it through the forest. As it turns out, Glendalough is a very popular tourist/day-trip destination, so although the town itself isn't very big, there are tourists everywhere––especially during the peak times of day (like at that moment) when you would be hard pressed to take a picture along the path and not have people dotted all along it. Which was fine with me, because they were a generally freindly bunch, and there were a large number of Spanish-speakers to try and eavesdrop on (not that I do that!)
At one point I saw another path diverging in the wood, which everyone else was walking past (yes, I had a Robert Frost moment there, thanks for noticing.) It was mossy and pleasant-looking, so I ambled down the hill and started along it. After about a minute, the path was much less noticable. After a couple minutes, it was almost gone entirely. I kept going for a little while after that, relishing the thick green moss beneath my feet and the feeling of being able to look in every direction and not see any people. This lasted for only a few minutes, before I saw that another small group had also discovered the trail some distance back, and I headed back to the main path and continued toward the lake.
I spend a while exploring the area and sketching the lake before heading back into town. The lady at the hostel had informed me that the hotel in town had free WiFi (you have to pay for it at the hostel), and I was itching to try to call family members who I hadn't spoken to in weeks, so I took out my iPod and the headphone/microphone set that I had borrowed from someone on the ship and spent a very enjoyable couple of hours talking with my Dad and my grandmother in Minnesota via Skype.
By the time I got off the phone it was getting dark, and I still needed to get dinner. The food stalls were now closed, as was the barbecuing that I seen from a distance earlier. Fortunately the bar attached to the hotel was open, so I ordered a bowl of smoked salmon and seafood chowder, which was very tasty and contained what I thought to be a very liberal amount of fish for the price.
By the time I finished that it actually was dark out, and I pulled out my flashlight and I made my way back to the hostel, enjoying the quiet and the feel of the night air (while mentally acknowledging that traveling at night is right up there with traveling alone in terms of the number of warnings we have received in our pre-port lectures. So traveling alone and at night would definitely be admonishment-worthy. Heh.)
So of course I made it back to the hostel. Yes, by stuff was still there, sitting all by itself in the corner of the side room. I had to interrupt the reception lady during her dinner, but she was nice and I got keys and borrowed a plug adaptor to recharge my iPod (yes, I felt very silly for forgetting my adaptor on the ship.) I also figured out the machines to get a couple of internet cards. You see, the reason that I had actually borrowed the headphone/microphone on the ship and was now making sure that I had internet and that my iPod was charged was because the 21st was my grandpa's birthday and I was planning on surprising him with a call at dinner. Of course, Ireland is 8 hours ahead of the Pacific Northwest, so dinner time for them would be about 2am for me. But I was a woman on a mission! So I headed for my room (an 8-bed female dorm to which none of the other three occupants had returned yet), set my alarm to 2am, and went to bed early (well, early for me.)
That is technically the end of the 21st, but I will mention that I did indeed manage to wake up, find a place where my 2am phone call hopefully wouldn't disturb anyone, and say happy birthday to my grandpa––surprising people is always fun, and it was nice talking with my grandparents again.
Goodness––I know I always say this, but I've got to curb the descriptive rambling on my next posts, or I'm never going to get to Portugal!
Wednesday, September 25, 2013
Taxidermy and Hippopotamuses!
Location: Southbound in the Atlantic Ocean, just off the westernmost coast of Spain
Yes, we have officially left the shallow seas and entered the Atlantic Ocean! According to one of our marine biologists the approximately 300-foot deep waters of the continental shelf that we were traveling along gave way yesterday to waters that are now over two and a half miles deep. People have been seeing dolphins and whales all day (I missed them though) and everyone is really stoked for our arrival sometime tomorrow in Lisbon, Portugal (though we won't actually get to disembark until Friday.)
Anyhow, who wants to hear about Ireland?
Ireland, Day 1 (9/20/13):
I awoke on Friday morning with the sole plan of spending the day exploring our port of call: Dublin, Ireland. Known for its rainy weather, multitude of pubs, famous writers who once frequented those pubs, and Trinity College, home of the magnificent Book of Kells, I think that the city of Dublin is one of the more interesting ports at which we have stopped. It is also the first port in which a small fleet of shuttle buses were requisitioned on our behalf, so that instead of having to walk for about 40 minutes from the docks to the city center we only had to walk about 5 minutes there from where the shuttle dropped us off along George's Quay. It wasn't until the last day that I fully appreciated this service, but that is a story for a later post.
I actually do not have that much to say about my first day in Dublin. This may be due to a lack of interesting occurrences (impossible!) or simply that it has been too long and none of them are coming to mind at the moment. In any case, I disembarked the shuttle and set out on my own (armed with a map of Dublin that I picked up from the field program desk on the ship), though my group of one quickly became a group of two which then later picked up a third member. We spent the day walking all around Dublin; we went to Dublinia, Christ Church Cathedral, the Temple Bar area, Trinity College, and Dublin Castle.
We also walked through the Museum of Natural and Cultural History. From the name, one might expect to find an ordinary museum filled with informational displays about, say, the natural and cultural history of Ireland. Well, not exactly. The museum actually consisted of two rooms, one on the ground floor and another upstairs, which were packed full of... taxidermied animals! (Spell-check is telling me that "taxidermied" isn't actually a word––you get what I'm saying though, right?) Apparently there were over two million animals, all arranged in little exhibits showcasing their behavior in their natural habitats. In the first room there were cases of birds, mammals, marine animals, and insects all native to Ireland, including huge skeletal Irish Elk to waiting to greet you as you enter. Then upstairs there were animals from all over the world: kangaroos, giraffes, lions, elephants–––did you know that hippopotamuses are really huge? The one on display was almost twice as big as the Buffalo!
Anyhow, that was an odd but interesting experience. The museum was actually open later than usual because the 20th happened to be culture day in Dublin, which is characterized by all sorts of neat things that I didn't end up taking advantage of because due to the lack of internet I didn't get the schedule until halfway through the day and didn't have time to adequately plan anything. Oh well.
After leaving the museum the three of us spent almost an hour bumbling around trying to find some good, inexpensive Irish food (don't laugh, it was actually really hard!) None of us wanted to go to one of the Temple Bar pubs and spend upwards of $20 on a meal that didn't even include a beverage, and our only other options seemed to be foreign food (eating Spanish food in Ireland just felt wrong) or a convenience store. We did eventually get dinner though, and we made it back to George's Quay well before the shuttles stopped running (around 23:30 every night) so everything was good.
...and speaking of everything being good, I'm actually procrastinating on finishing an essay for my Cross-Cultural Psychology class right now by writing this blog post. So I should really go do that now.
Don't forget to comment!
Yes, we have officially left the shallow seas and entered the Atlantic Ocean! According to one of our marine biologists the approximately 300-foot deep waters of the continental shelf that we were traveling along gave way yesterday to waters that are now over two and a half miles deep. People have been seeing dolphins and whales all day (I missed them though) and everyone is really stoked for our arrival sometime tomorrow in Lisbon, Portugal (though we won't actually get to disembark until Friday.)
Anyhow, who wants to hear about Ireland?
Ireland, Day 1 (9/20/13):
I awoke on Friday morning with the sole plan of spending the day exploring our port of call: Dublin, Ireland. Known for its rainy weather, multitude of pubs, famous writers who once frequented those pubs, and Trinity College, home of the magnificent Book of Kells, I think that the city of Dublin is one of the more interesting ports at which we have stopped. It is also the first port in which a small fleet of shuttle buses were requisitioned on our behalf, so that instead of having to walk for about 40 minutes from the docks to the city center we only had to walk about 5 minutes there from where the shuttle dropped us off along George's Quay. It wasn't until the last day that I fully appreciated this service, but that is a story for a later post.
I actually do not have that much to say about my first day in Dublin. This may be due to a lack of interesting occurrences (impossible!) or simply that it has been too long and none of them are coming to mind at the moment. In any case, I disembarked the shuttle and set out on my own (armed with a map of Dublin that I picked up from the field program desk on the ship), though my group of one quickly became a group of two which then later picked up a third member. We spent the day walking all around Dublin; we went to Dublinia, Christ Church Cathedral, the Temple Bar area, Trinity College, and Dublin Castle.
We also walked through the Museum of Natural and Cultural History. From the name, one might expect to find an ordinary museum filled with informational displays about, say, the natural and cultural history of Ireland. Well, not exactly. The museum actually consisted of two rooms, one on the ground floor and another upstairs, which were packed full of... taxidermied animals! (Spell-check is telling me that "taxidermied" isn't actually a word––you get what I'm saying though, right?) Apparently there were over two million animals, all arranged in little exhibits showcasing their behavior in their natural habitats. In the first room there were cases of birds, mammals, marine animals, and insects all native to Ireland, including huge skeletal Irish Elk to waiting to greet you as you enter. Then upstairs there were animals from all over the world: kangaroos, giraffes, lions, elephants–––did you know that hippopotamuses are really huge? The one on display was almost twice as big as the Buffalo!
Anyhow, that was an odd but interesting experience. The museum was actually open later than usual because the 20th happened to be culture day in Dublin, which is characterized by all sorts of neat things that I didn't end up taking advantage of because due to the lack of internet I didn't get the schedule until halfway through the day and didn't have time to adequately plan anything. Oh well.
After leaving the museum the three of us spent almost an hour bumbling around trying to find some good, inexpensive Irish food (don't laugh, it was actually really hard!) None of us wanted to go to one of the Temple Bar pubs and spend upwards of $20 on a meal that didn't even include a beverage, and our only other options seemed to be foreign food (eating Spanish food in Ireland just felt wrong) or a convenience store. We did eventually get dinner though, and we made it back to George's Quay well before the shuttles stopped running (around 23:30 every night) so everything was good.
...and speaking of everything being good, I'm actually procrastinating on finishing an essay for my Cross-Cultural Psychology class right now by writing this blog post. So I should really go do that now.
Don't forget to comment!
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
Pictures from Paris
The Clock Ticks, Yet No Clever Titles Occur!
Location: Leaving Dublin, Ireland
Why look––it's me again! I'm not sure how often people check this blog, but I imagine at least some of you were wondering at my five-day absence. Well, first I had another paper due in my World Literature class, so I was up half of the night last Wednesday finishing that. And then through some fluke the ship's internet apparently doesn't work around the port in Dublin. No idea why that area would be a problem, but within two hours of the ship embarking the internet was back and I could use my email again. We were in Ireland for four days, during which time I explored both Dublin and a little town/region to the south called Glendalough (glen-dah-lock.) I will now endeavor to finish off my posts for France (can't believe I'm so far behind!) and then later move on to the last four days in Ireland.
Before I do that though, I would like to once again thank everyone who has been following along with the blog––seriously, I love knowing that you're out there (and I had no idea how many of you there are!)
France, 9/15 & 9/16: Paris to Le Havre
I awoke on the morning of the 15th to my ever-pesky alarm clock, and to the quirky little room of my hostel in Paris, France. The sun was streaming though the windows, and all but one of my roommates were already down at breakfast. The Aloha hostel is one in which breakfast is included in the price, so not wanting to miss out on that I scuttled down the staircase and into a cozy basement room packed with tables and benches (and people more awake than I seated on those benches chatting animatedly over their breakfasts.) After finishing a satisfying meal of jellied pastry, cereal, and tea, I grabbed a Paris map from reception and set off into Paris!
The way I figured it, there were two options for my partial-day in Paris: #1) I could take the metro and spend the day whizzing around below the city, popping up from time to time at some attraction and then descending back down into the depths to jet on off to another. #2) I could start walking, resign myself that it really isn't possible to see everything in a single day, and just enjoy the scenery (in the sunlight!)
Guess which one I went with?
So during my leisurely stroll through the less-touristy part of Paris on my way toward the Eiffel Tower (which was apparently only a 15-minute walk from the hostel), I passed many shops with flowers, pastries, fruits, and assorted meats before stumbling upon a decently-sized street market under a bridge. It was in this market that I witnessed the first stage of the price mark-up process: it was a basket at one of the first booths, full of relatively cheap little Eiffel Tower trinkets in a variety of colors. They were 4 for 1 Euro.
After snapping a few pictures (and purchasing a few pastries!) I kept making my way toward where the map said that the Eiffel Tower was located. Then I turned a corner and I could see it! Part of the street was sectioned-off and crowds of onlookers were cheering at a steady stream of pink-shirted runners who were raising money for a cause of some sort (never figured out what exactly––everything is in French, remember) and through the trees, rising up in the distance, was the Eiffel Tower framed against the horizon.
I pass a small booth perched on the side of the road, selling souvenirs, and I am met with the second stage of the price mark-up process: more of the little Eiffel Towers, and this time they are 1 for 1 Euro. The cost is four times higher now that the Tower itself is in view. Hmm...
So I finally make it to the base of one of the Tower's legs and look up at the enormous structure indecisively. Do I pay and take the time to climb up into it, or am I happy taking pictures from the ground? After all, it's not like you can see the tower itself while you are inside it (well, you know what I mean––you see parts of it up close, but not really in a photo-op kind of way.) On the other hand, which kind of person comes all the way to Paris and doesn't go up in the Eiffel Tower?
I sit and munch on pastries at a bench in the nearby park while pondering this. A ragtag group of very desperate pigeons nearby are chased by a gleeful grade-schooler. They then set their sights on my pastries, and one of the huddle actually doesn't notice when I reach out to touch it. Definitely feeling a bit pet-depived: I'm starting to turn to pigeons. Okay, okay, back to the Eiffel Tower!
So I made up my mind, got up, plunged back into the swarms of tourists milling about at the base of the tower (did I mention that there were tons of tourists around? Because there were!) and parked myself decisively waaay at the back of one of the lines. Then I waited. It really didn't take that long, and I amused myself by trying to eavesdrop on the Spanish-speaking family in front of me (I understood some of what they were saying!) I had decided that I would take the lift up to the second floor, because I wanted to do more than just walk to the first floor, and the top floor was closed (and I didn't really want to pay to go all the way up there anyway.)
There is actually a little security check point that you have to go through before they let you up into the tower. I nervously scanned the list of prohibited items, knowing that I really had no way locking up anything that I couldn't bring with me into the Tower. Fortunately the only thing relevant was no glass bottles, and mine was metal. I did run into a bit of a problem when the security officer tried to clarify something and I had no idea what he was saying (he didn't speak any English and I didn't speak any French.) He waved me on though––I guess I don't exactly scream "big threat to monument security."
The view was neat from the second floor, and I probably took more cityscape pictures than was strictly necessary. I also become the unofficial Eiffel Tower photographer when I offered to take pictures for a couple of people (you know how it is when you go someplace with only one other person and you both want to be in the picture, but instead you each take turns getting a photo of the other person? Well I tend to take pity on people I see in that situation) and then a small queue of others jumped at the chance to have me take theirs as well. One of these individuals was a middle-aged Asian man with his wife, and he handed me an ancient film camera which I had to struggle for a moment to figure out how to work. Another was a couple from China who had just gotten married and were there on their honeymoon; they wanted pictures with me in it too. I probably interacted with more tourists than actual French people, but I guess that is inevitable with how little time I got to spend in France, and how much of it was in tourist areas.
Anyhow, I realized that I should probably move on if I wanted to have time to do anything else before catching my train, and as I stepped down out of one of the legs of the Tower I encountered the third and final stage of the infamous price mark-up process: right at the base of the Tower was yet another souvenir stand, and sure enough, sitting in an identical basket were the miniature Eiffel Towers... now 1 for 2.5 Euro! That is a whopping 10x more expensive than the first ones that I had seen. Obviously this makes sense, and isn't a particularly new concept to anyone––I just had never seen it laid out in such tidy steps before, so I had to share.
After separating myself from the throng of tourists at the foot of the Tower, I set off to go see the Louvre! This involved quite a bit of walking (I was still stubbornly avoiding the subway), especially since the Tower is a decent distance away from many of the other attractions in Paris.
But I made it there! You know how often times you see a lot of awesome pictures of someplace you are about to visit and then when you actually get there you think "This is it?" Well, I was expecting to feel that way (especially since I knew I didn't have time to actually go inside the Louvre to look at anything, and would be mostly taking pictures of the outside), but I am pleased to note that I was surprised at the area around the museum and how nice of a walk it was to get there. I was sort of expecting it to just parked in the middle of the city somewhere (hey, the Hermitage in St. Petersburg was!), but it actually has its own area right next to the "Jardin des Tuileries," which I entered from the west side and walked along all the way to the museum itself. I did stop briefly to pick up the least expensive food that I could find at one of the park's outdoor restaurants (butter and powdered sugar crepe, yum!) and to sketch some of the expansive gardens out front. Then, all of a sudden, I walk up some steps and there it was!
I realize that it's a bit silly to say I went to the Louvre, when all I really did was stand outside and take some pictures of it and the glass pyramid in front. But I figured that it would be better not to wait in line, pay for a ticket, and then be there for like 20 minutes before having to leave. I would rather come back some day and actually have time to walk around. (Plus, don't tell anyone, but I'm starting to get a bit tired of museums.)
Speaking of time, I was almost out of it! As it so happens, Paris is pretty big (no, really?) and walking around the city takes a while. I did wish that I had gotten to see the Notre Dame and Sainte Chapelle, but I didn't regret not spending the day rushing around on the subway. I toyed with the idea of spending another night and then catching the train to Le Havre the following morning, but quickly nixed that plan––one really shouldn't mess with on-ship time, and I wanted to make sure that I was in Le Havre staying close to the ship on the last day rather than having to worry about a train getting delayed and the ship leaving without me (I don't even want to think about how that would play out!)
So I caught a bus to the train station (which took a bit of doing, because I wasn't sure how to pronounce it to the bus driver), waited in the ticket line because the automatic machines did not want to cooperate, and managed to get myself a train ticket from a helpful lady who spoke a little English (I pointed to the word "Le Havre" this time, instead of trying to pronounce it, which I think helped that process.) After a bit of a wait I was on a train bound for the coastal town of Le Havre, where hopefully I would find the M.V. Explorer waiting for me!
The ride took a while, and the girl I was sitting across from was non-communicative, so I mostly slept on the way there. It was dark when I arrived, and as I stepped off of the platform I realized that French railway stations are not nearly so liberal with maps of the surrounding city as Belgian ones are. Which posed a problem, as I had absolutely no idea where I was or where the ship was (well, I did have a name and a direction, and I maintain that I could have found it on my own eventually!) Fortunately, almost as soon as I got off the train I encountered a massive group of about 15 other SASers who, like me, had come overland and just arrived in Le Havre on another part of the same train.
So we all set off the direction we thought the ship was, huddling in our jackets against the crazy coastal winds which buffeted us on our way through the dark and empty streets of Le Havre. Then we saw it––the little string of lights atop the M.V. Explorer glimmering way in the distance. By the time we actually made it there I was so happy to see the ship; I think that was the first moment it really felt like coming home.
This has become yet another very long post, but I did promise at the top that I would be providing an overview of day five as well as four, so I'll just say that on day five I felt I'd had enough adventure in my life, and decided to just stay in Le Havre and hang out in a cafe with internet. So that is what I did! I had another crepe and some tea while planning what I would do in Ireland and Skyping my mom. Then I grabbed some groceries from a small store nearby and made it back to the ship about an hour before on-ship time.
Okay, next post: Ireland! I can catch up before we reach Portugal!
Why look––it's me again! I'm not sure how often people check this blog, but I imagine at least some of you were wondering at my five-day absence. Well, first I had another paper due in my World Literature class, so I was up half of the night last Wednesday finishing that. And then through some fluke the ship's internet apparently doesn't work around the port in Dublin. No idea why that area would be a problem, but within two hours of the ship embarking the internet was back and I could use my email again. We were in Ireland for four days, during which time I explored both Dublin and a little town/region to the south called Glendalough (glen-dah-lock.) I will now endeavor to finish off my posts for France (can't believe I'm so far behind!) and then later move on to the last four days in Ireland.
Before I do that though, I would like to once again thank everyone who has been following along with the blog––seriously, I love knowing that you're out there (and I had no idea how many of you there are!)
France, 9/15 & 9/16: Paris to Le Havre
I awoke on the morning of the 15th to my ever-pesky alarm clock, and to the quirky little room of my hostel in Paris, France. The sun was streaming though the windows, and all but one of my roommates were already down at breakfast. The Aloha hostel is one in which breakfast is included in the price, so not wanting to miss out on that I scuttled down the staircase and into a cozy basement room packed with tables and benches (and people more awake than I seated on those benches chatting animatedly over their breakfasts.) After finishing a satisfying meal of jellied pastry, cereal, and tea, I grabbed a Paris map from reception and set off into Paris!
The way I figured it, there were two options for my partial-day in Paris: #1) I could take the metro and spend the day whizzing around below the city, popping up from time to time at some attraction and then descending back down into the depths to jet on off to another. #2) I could start walking, resign myself that it really isn't possible to see everything in a single day, and just enjoy the scenery (in the sunlight!)
Guess which one I went with?
So during my leisurely stroll through the less-touristy part of Paris on my way toward the Eiffel Tower (which was apparently only a 15-minute walk from the hostel), I passed many shops with flowers, pastries, fruits, and assorted meats before stumbling upon a decently-sized street market under a bridge. It was in this market that I witnessed the first stage of the price mark-up process: it was a basket at one of the first booths, full of relatively cheap little Eiffel Tower trinkets in a variety of colors. They were 4 for 1 Euro.
After snapping a few pictures (and purchasing a few pastries!) I kept making my way toward where the map said that the Eiffel Tower was located. Then I turned a corner and I could see it! Part of the street was sectioned-off and crowds of onlookers were cheering at a steady stream of pink-shirted runners who were raising money for a cause of some sort (never figured out what exactly––everything is in French, remember) and through the trees, rising up in the distance, was the Eiffel Tower framed against the horizon.
I pass a small booth perched on the side of the road, selling souvenirs, and I am met with the second stage of the price mark-up process: more of the little Eiffel Towers, and this time they are 1 for 1 Euro. The cost is four times higher now that the Tower itself is in view. Hmm...
So I finally make it to the base of one of the Tower's legs and look up at the enormous structure indecisively. Do I pay and take the time to climb up into it, or am I happy taking pictures from the ground? After all, it's not like you can see the tower itself while you are inside it (well, you know what I mean––you see parts of it up close, but not really in a photo-op kind of way.) On the other hand, which kind of person comes all the way to Paris and doesn't go up in the Eiffel Tower?
I sit and munch on pastries at a bench in the nearby park while pondering this. A ragtag group of very desperate pigeons nearby are chased by a gleeful grade-schooler. They then set their sights on my pastries, and one of the huddle actually doesn't notice when I reach out to touch it. Definitely feeling a bit pet-depived: I'm starting to turn to pigeons. Okay, okay, back to the Eiffel Tower!
So I made up my mind, got up, plunged back into the swarms of tourists milling about at the base of the tower (did I mention that there were tons of tourists around? Because there were!) and parked myself decisively waaay at the back of one of the lines. Then I waited. It really didn't take that long, and I amused myself by trying to eavesdrop on the Spanish-speaking family in front of me (I understood some of what they were saying!) I had decided that I would take the lift up to the second floor, because I wanted to do more than just walk to the first floor, and the top floor was closed (and I didn't really want to pay to go all the way up there anyway.)
There is actually a little security check point that you have to go through before they let you up into the tower. I nervously scanned the list of prohibited items, knowing that I really had no way locking up anything that I couldn't bring with me into the Tower. Fortunately the only thing relevant was no glass bottles, and mine was metal. I did run into a bit of a problem when the security officer tried to clarify something and I had no idea what he was saying (he didn't speak any English and I didn't speak any French.) He waved me on though––I guess I don't exactly scream "big threat to monument security."
The view was neat from the second floor, and I probably took more cityscape pictures than was strictly necessary. I also become the unofficial Eiffel Tower photographer when I offered to take pictures for a couple of people (you know how it is when you go someplace with only one other person and you both want to be in the picture, but instead you each take turns getting a photo of the other person? Well I tend to take pity on people I see in that situation) and then a small queue of others jumped at the chance to have me take theirs as well. One of these individuals was a middle-aged Asian man with his wife, and he handed me an ancient film camera which I had to struggle for a moment to figure out how to work. Another was a couple from China who had just gotten married and were there on their honeymoon; they wanted pictures with me in it too. I probably interacted with more tourists than actual French people, but I guess that is inevitable with how little time I got to spend in France, and how much of it was in tourist areas.
Anyhow, I realized that I should probably move on if I wanted to have time to do anything else before catching my train, and as I stepped down out of one of the legs of the Tower I encountered the third and final stage of the infamous price mark-up process: right at the base of the Tower was yet another souvenir stand, and sure enough, sitting in an identical basket were the miniature Eiffel Towers... now 1 for 2.5 Euro! That is a whopping 10x more expensive than the first ones that I had seen. Obviously this makes sense, and isn't a particularly new concept to anyone––I just had never seen it laid out in such tidy steps before, so I had to share.
After separating myself from the throng of tourists at the foot of the Tower, I set off to go see the Louvre! This involved quite a bit of walking (I was still stubbornly avoiding the subway), especially since the Tower is a decent distance away from many of the other attractions in Paris.
But I made it there! You know how often times you see a lot of awesome pictures of someplace you are about to visit and then when you actually get there you think "This is it?" Well, I was expecting to feel that way (especially since I knew I didn't have time to actually go inside the Louvre to look at anything, and would be mostly taking pictures of the outside), but I am pleased to note that I was surprised at the area around the museum and how nice of a walk it was to get there. I was sort of expecting it to just parked in the middle of the city somewhere (hey, the Hermitage in St. Petersburg was!), but it actually has its own area right next to the "Jardin des Tuileries," which I entered from the west side and walked along all the way to the museum itself. I did stop briefly to pick up the least expensive food that I could find at one of the park's outdoor restaurants (butter and powdered sugar crepe, yum!) and to sketch some of the expansive gardens out front. Then, all of a sudden, I walk up some steps and there it was!
I realize that it's a bit silly to say I went to the Louvre, when all I really did was stand outside and take some pictures of it and the glass pyramid in front. But I figured that it would be better not to wait in line, pay for a ticket, and then be there for like 20 minutes before having to leave. I would rather come back some day and actually have time to walk around. (Plus, don't tell anyone, but I'm starting to get a bit tired of museums.)
Speaking of time, I was almost out of it! As it so happens, Paris is pretty big (no, really?) and walking around the city takes a while. I did wish that I had gotten to see the Notre Dame and Sainte Chapelle, but I didn't regret not spending the day rushing around on the subway. I toyed with the idea of spending another night and then catching the train to Le Havre the following morning, but quickly nixed that plan––one really shouldn't mess with on-ship time, and I wanted to make sure that I was in Le Havre staying close to the ship on the last day rather than having to worry about a train getting delayed and the ship leaving without me (I don't even want to think about how that would play out!)
So I caught a bus to the train station (which took a bit of doing, because I wasn't sure how to pronounce it to the bus driver), waited in the ticket line because the automatic machines did not want to cooperate, and managed to get myself a train ticket from a helpful lady who spoke a little English (I pointed to the word "Le Havre" this time, instead of trying to pronounce it, which I think helped that process.) After a bit of a wait I was on a train bound for the coastal town of Le Havre, where hopefully I would find the M.V. Explorer waiting for me!
The ride took a while, and the girl I was sitting across from was non-communicative, so I mostly slept on the way there. It was dark when I arrived, and as I stepped off of the platform I realized that French railway stations are not nearly so liberal with maps of the surrounding city as Belgian ones are. Which posed a problem, as I had absolutely no idea where I was or where the ship was (well, I did have a name and a direction, and I maintain that I could have found it on my own eventually!) Fortunately, almost as soon as I got off the train I encountered a massive group of about 15 other SASers who, like me, had come overland and just arrived in Le Havre on another part of the same train.
So we all set off the direction we thought the ship was, huddling in our jackets against the crazy coastal winds which buffeted us on our way through the dark and empty streets of Le Havre. Then we saw it––the little string of lights atop the M.V. Explorer glimmering way in the distance. By the time we actually made it there I was so happy to see the ship; I think that was the first moment it really felt like coming home.
This has become yet another very long post, but I did promise at the top that I would be providing an overview of day five as well as four, so I'll just say that on day five I felt I'd had enough adventure in my life, and decided to just stay in Le Havre and hang out in a cafe with internet. So that is what I did! I had another crepe and some tea while planning what I would do in Ireland and Skyping my mom. Then I grabbed some groceries from a small store nearby and made it back to the ship about an hour before on-ship time.
Okay, next post: Ireland! I can catch up before we reach Portugal!
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