If failing to update ones blog in a timely fashion were a
punishable offense, Abby and I would both have been served with consecutive
life sentences by this point. We do apologize, but the reason for the delay is
that we’re out having adventures faster than we’re able to write them down!
(Plus there’s that whole silly matter of school.) So there you have my
justification for attempting to consolidate a month and a half worth’s of
activities and journeys into a readable space… hope you’re sitting comfortably.
I’ll begin around mid-March, a week or two after I returned
from Inverness, with my trip to the London Zoo. Having grown up around zoos,
I’m definitely a huge fan, so I was really excited to see what London had to
offer in the zoo department. I went with a British friend of mine who I met a
few years ago on a trip to Honduras; she’s currently living in Northampton,
about an hour north of London. To digress for a moment in order to briefly relate
another of my March exploits – I later visited her there, and together we
visited one of the town’s main attractions, its shoe museum! As most of you
reading this blog probably know, I’m an acknowledged shoe maniac, so this was
quite a delight for me; here are just a couple highlights:
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| Shoes worn by Elton John in the rock opera "Tommy"! |
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| A fetish shoe with a naked lady standing on the toe. (Not something I'D go for, but hey, it takes all types...) |
Anyway, back to the zoo – the admission price was pretty
steep, but we had a splendid time. There was lots to see, such as a nocturnal
animal exhibit (including the Slow Loris of internet fame), an impressive
aquarium, and a family of Galapagos tortoises, the oldest of which was seventy! Still, I thought the coolest part by far was their monkey exhibit.
An outdoor path wound through the leafy habitat, with bare branches overhead
and wire around its borders, and the monkeys were moving around freely – no
glass, no fences; they were scuttling down the path alongside you, crawling
through the bushes on either side, and swinging on the branches above, just as
bold as you please! (A little too bold, maybe; one of them stole some lady’s
chapstick…) Of course, this would only be fun if you think monkeys are adorable,
like my friend and I did. I know of a certain someone who would probably deem
this experience about as fun as chewing on a cactus. Still, I hope those of you
with anti-monkey sentiments can stomach a few pictures, because I thought they
were just precious.
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| Look at hiiiim <3 |
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| They congregated en masse when the keeper brought popcorn! |
Later that month, my college groupmates and I traveled to
St. Ives, a delightful coastal town in Cornwall, one of England’s southwestern
provinces. With its sweet, kitschy little souvenir stores, its plethora of
candy shops, and its overall touristy-yet-charming character, it had much the
same ambience as many of Oregon’s seaside towns. We were lucky enough to get
sun that weekend, which, in combination with the soft, sandy beach and the
brilliantly blue sea, made us all a little giddy with happiness. The seafood
there was fantastic – I had whitebait for the first time, as well as some of
the best fish and chips of my life. The Tate Museum of Modern Art also has a
gallery in St. Ives, founded because many painters throughout the years have
been drawn to the city by its exceptional quality of light, although the
exhibition we saw there was by no means as traditional as what you might be
imagining. It was called “Since 1982” by Simon Fujiwara; look it up if you’re
in the mood for some seriously modern art. Speaking of, we also saw the Barbara
Hepworth Sculpture Gallery while we were there – she was a famous twentieth
century sculptor who lived in St. Ives for a time, and after her death, her
house was turned into a museum of her work (as per her wishes). I’m always into
learning more about groundbreaking and independent women artists, even though
not all of her sculptures did it for me; plus she had a lot of cool things to
say about her creative process.
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| Me with one of the sculptures |
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| "I felt the most intense pleasure in piercing the
stone in order to make an abstract form and space; quite a different
sensation from that of doing it for the purpose of realism." - Barbara Hepworth
|
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| What better way to wrap up a weekend at the coast than with ice
cream? |
And now, friends, the moment you’ve all been waiting for.
Saint Patrick’s Day 2012: Dublin. …Also Balbriggan, a very small town about an
hour north of Dublin, which is where Abby and I stayed for the sake of
cost-effectiveness (all the reasonably priced hostels in Dublin had been sold
out for months). I met her there on Friday morning, and we started out by
visiting the nearby Ardgillan Castle. To be fair, “castle” is a bit of a
misnomer, though it does stand on the site of an 18th century castle;
but today it more closely resembles an estate house, situated in the middle of
a sprawling, beautiful plot of land next to the sea. It has a long and storied
past, which we learned from our very kind tour guide, who led Abby and I
through each room of the house (it was just us there, which was quite cool; we
felt like VIPs getting a private tour!). He taught us lots of interesting
tidbits about the history of Ireland, the family who owned the house for many
generations, and the beautiful period furnishings on display – he even let me
play a “Jane Austen”-era piano, which basically thrilled me to the core! (He
even said he thought I was “quite good,” teehee.) He also explained to us why
so often in nineteenth century portraits of children you find it hard to tell
whether the child is a boy or a girl…
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| Well, really they just all look like
girls... for example, this is "Hilda und Franzi Matsch," by Franz Matsch, 1901. Believe it or not, the blonde on the right is a boy. Not one of the paintings on exhibition at Ardgillan, but they're of a similar nature. |
The reason for this is that any time a new child was born to
a family with a lot of wealth or land, their more distant relations – who stood
to inherit the fortune if the family should fail to produce a more immediate male
heir – were of course anxious to know its gender. The more devious of these
relatives, if they were to learn that the child was indeed male, might be
tempted to harm him in order to keep themselves first in line for the
inheritance. So, when people clamored for a portrait to be created of the new
arrival, the family would dress the child in girl’s clothes regardless of its
actual sex, and would continue doing so until he was old enough to watch out
for himself. Quite interesting, no?
That night we supped bemusedly at an American-style rock ‘n’
roll diner, went out for a few drinks, and hit the hay in time to get plenty of
rest before our early start the next morning, when we took the bus into Dublin
for a day of revelry in the name of St. Patrick! We began by staking out a spot
from which to watch the parade, taking time along the way to get a little
festive facepaint.
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| Skillfully painted by some very cool art students |
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| Just a small sample of the parade, which was great fun |
After the parade and a spot of lunch (during which I was
introduced to Irish soda bread and promptly fell in love with it), we went to
Dublin Castle. “Castle” is again a bit of a misnomer here; it’s more aptly
described as a set of stately buildings surrounding a courtyard, though again,
it stands on the site of a medieval Norman castle, established by King John of
England in 1204. Before that, it was a Gaelic ring fort, part of the Viking
settlement called Dyflin that provided
Dublin’s foundations; the city’s name derives from Dubhlinn harbor – Gaelic for “Black Pool.” Most of the surviving
architecture is from the eighteenth century, but remains of the original Viking
fort are still visible down underneath the courtyard (Abby and I, as a couple
of ladies with Viking roots, thought this was way cool!).
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| Some of the fort's remains, including the moat |
Inside the building, things looked much more palatial. The
castle functioned as the seat of English rule in Ireland until the nation
became a republic on January 16th, 1922 – another cool item on
display was the document signed by Michael Collins that declared Ireland an
independent nation. From 1684 until that time, though, it served as a palace
for the English viceroy, so its interior is accordingly grand and ornate.
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| Today, the castle is used to house the State Apartments and various
government offices. (Don't know how this picture got so yellow...) |
Our tour guide also taught us the reason why Ireland is associated
with shamrocks and the color green – St. Patrick supposedly used the shamrock
to teach the Irish about the trinity – as well as the reason why one of its
prominent national symbols is the harp: one of its earliest kings used to
soothe his armies before they went into battle by playing the harp for them.
(“Hey guys, you’re probably about to die, but isn’t this harp music sooo nice
and mellow…?”) After the tour, we briefly took in Dublin Gardens, a beautiful
park next door to the castle where the flowers were just beginning to bloom.
Then our next stop was St. Patrick’s Cathedral – it seemed only appropriate. We
tried to line up our visit with the Mass so we wouldn’t have to pay to see the
inside, but it didn’t quite work out, so we contented ourselves with the outside.
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| Us at Dublin Gardens |
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| St. Patrick's cathedral |
Then we decided the time had come to honor the St. Paddy’s
tradition and hit the bars early! We were in and out of lots of neat pubs,
including the oldest one in Dublin, and even though neither of us are big fans
of dark beer, we shared a half-pint of Guinness in the spirit of the day (it
definitely tasted better than Guinness in the United States). It so happened
that someone had had the bright idea to schedule an England vs. Ireland rugby
match that night, so the scene was pretty rowdy for the first few hours, but
things calmed down a bit after the game (poor Ireland lost)… only to pick up
again as people began to hit the point of drunkenness where one loses, among
other things, ones volume control. Here is where the story gets a little fuzzy,
not to mention somewhat not-internet-friendly. Chances are, if you’re reading
this, Abby or I know you well enough to be comfortable telling you about it in
some less public setting. Suffice it to say, it was the craziest night of both
our lives.
So with that we skip forward to the next morning, which
miraculously found Abby and I back in our hotel in Balbriggan. We took the
afternoon to explore our little village a bit more; the weather was blissfully
nice, so we strolled along the beach for a while and enjoyed the sunshine.
While we were there, we were also chatted up by a local man who asked if we’d
seen any leprechauns on our trip so far, and, when we told him we hadn’t,
suggested that we could find one in his bedroom. Points for creativity, at
least.
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| The beautiful beach! |
Then we returned to Dublin, where we saw Trinity College,
walked around St. Stephen’s Green (a gorgeous park in the north of the city),
and had a delicious dinner at the pub before boarding our ferry home! (This
part of the journey was slightly terrible due to a long layover between the
arrival of our ferry at Holyhead and the next train to London, and involved us
standing around in the bathroom hitting the hand dryers repeatedly in order to
stay warm, but we’re troopers; we dealt with it.)
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| Swans at St. Stephen's Green |
I’ve had a few other wonderful London adventures since that
most marvelous weekend, but soon after my return, I found to my dismay that the
end of the term and the boatloads of work that accompany it was drawing near,
so my free time took a bit of a dive. I’ve finished it all now, though, and am
currently traveling through Europe for a few weeks before my inevitable return
to the States on May 4th. Regardless, though, I fear this post has
already grown massive… so I’ll let Abby cover our recent sojourn to Lyme Park,
and I’ll return soon (read: soon-ish, possibly not soon at all) with an account
of my continental travels. Here’s a preview: everything so far has been
AMAZING.
Ta ta for now, my loves!
