Hello my loyal readers:
I've moved! I have a new blog, for reasons which I explain here:
Pulpo en un Garaje: Personal Struggles and Spanish Government Troubles...
It's a new blog for a new adventure. I've changed the tone, and therefore feel like it's appropriate to start a whole new blog, especially now that I've wrapped this one up nicely. This one is just old and dated, and the title just doesn't even really make sense any more ("I am going to go to Spain"-really??). Anyway, I've appreciated your readership (always thought that was a weird word) more than I can say, so if you'd like to keep up with my adventures, I have SO many ways for me to spam you, which include:
My new blog: Pulpo en un Garaje link here: enungaraje.blogspot.com
Instagram name: SpaniSherri
Twitter handle: SpaniSherri
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sherri.dill1
YouTube Channel: DillLikeThePickle link here: https://www.youtube.com/user/DillLikeThePickle
Second YouTube Channel: TwoGirlsOneShow link here: https://www.youtube.com/user/TwoGirlsOneShow Videos to come!
Tumblr (though it has nothing to do with my Spain adventures, you should follow it anyway): stuffmydogsitson.tumblr.com #SMDSO
And if you've got my phone number and a smart phone, you can of course, "get at me"via Viber, What'sApp, SnapChat.
I don't have a vine, but what do you think? Should I get one?
Alright, that's all, everybody. I hope you guys enjoy my shameless self promotion as much as I do. I'd love it if you'd join me on the next leg of my adventures, because my blog may have ended, but my adventures will (hopefully) be forever. ¡Ciao!
Saturday, September 21, 2013
Tuesday, September 17, 2013
London, Part 2
Thursday morning, Noah and I woke up somewhat early. He had to work in the early afternoon, and I needed to head back to London for my very last weekend in Europe. He walked me to the train station and we arrived just as the train to London pulled in. "Is that mine?" I asked as we walked down to the platform. "Yeah...maybe run?" Noah replied. And I hitched my backpack tighter around my shoulders and awkwardly shuffled to my train, and I was off to London yet again.
That afternoon, I went to meet William, someone I had met through couchsurfing. I had already decided that hostels were no longer an option (during the summer in London-an already expensive city-AND during the olympics, the price of accommodation was unbelievable), so I searched on Couch Surfing for someone to host me. I noticed William right away because with all his friends, positive reviews, pictures, and helpful information, he definitely stuck out from the rest.
That afternoon, I went to meet William, someone I had met through couchsurfing. I had already decided that hostels were no longer an option (during the summer in London-an already expensive city-AND during the olympics, the price of accommodation was unbelievable), so I searched on Couch Surfing for someone to host me. I noticed William right away because with all his friends, positive reviews, pictures, and helpful information, he definitely stuck out from the rest.
William
met me at the train station with his bike. My first impression was that he is
extremely outgoing, very in his element talking to people and making new
friends, and was certainly no stranger to couch surfing. We walked to find some
rental bikes and all the while William chatted to me as if we were old friends.
He’s really into bike riding-he actually owns, like, three bikes, but I’m much
more comfortable with both feet on the ground. I’m uncoordinated at the best of
times, but put me on a REALLY heavy bike with 10 extra pounds on my back and
before you know it, I’m on the ground at the edge of a really busy London
intersection pressed between the pavement and the previously mentioned really
heavy bike. Several people ran over to check if I was okay while William stood
at his bike looking amused. They picked me up and dusted me off and I
(bravely) got back on my bike and followed William home (about 50 meters
behind, sweating) through Hyde Park. “You know for a city with famously shit
weather, there are a lot of parks,” William observed.
When
we got back to his apartment in Nottingham Hill, he graciously took me in his tiny blue
car to a nearby grocery store, where I bought one packet of instant noodles for
each of my remaining days in Europe (I call it
the “poor traveler’s diet”) and he bought things like hummus and carrots and
cucumbers and other various healthy type foods and laughed at my dietary choices. I assure you, William, it was more
a monetary choice than a dietary one.
ANYWHO,
William politely accepted me into his home and, much like many British people
I’ve known, offered me a cup of tea before doing anything else. We chatted for
a while, long after the sun had set, until he asked if I wanted to take a walk
through city.
It
was nice to walk around with someone who had lived there for a long time. It made
the city of London, which before had seemed too impossibly large to
navigate, appear more manageable, more familiar, if only marginally. Much like
New York City, the very center of London didn’t seem to slow down at night at
all, in fact with the Olympics in town, it seemed to come alive with all the décor and pretty lights
around, not to mention all the patriotically dressed tourists from all over the world. We
walked and talked for a long time, just enjoying the city before heading back
to his apartment.
I
woke up the next morning and went to the British library
and walked around for hours. It’s a cool looking building, but what attracted
me was the knowledge that the very first drafts of JK Rowling’s Harry Potter
and the Philosopher’s Stone were being preserved here, in all their spiral
bound, hand-written glory. Along with a lot of other interesting drafts, like
the Hobbit, Beowulf, and Jane Eyre.
At
the end of my self-guided tour around the exhibit, I bought a book in the gift
shop and found a coffee shop to sit at and read (and be sad at my quickly
waning trip). It would have been a serene yet nostalgic moment if it weren’t
for the cloudy chill and the persistent drizzling that drove me back inside.
When I returned to William's apartment, we watched the opening ceremony together. William is quite the night owl (even more so than myself), and afterwards we watched a movie. And then had some tea and chatted into the wee hours.
The next day, Scottish Steve returned to London. It was a surprisingly nice day, and I went to meet him in front of Buckingham Palace. We walked for a long while before deciding to check out St. Paul's Cathedral, which is too impressive for words. We decided to go up into the dome, and despite my brief episode of claustrophobia in the tiny winding stair case (a good way of getting over your claustrophobia is the knowledge that you can't go back down the way you came up), it was really cool at the top. St. Paul's Cathedral: Do it.
Later on we went to a pub in Victoria where the Olympic games were airing (though really I think you'd have had a harder time finding a place that wasn't airing the games). This is where I discovered that Smirnoff vodka is seen as bottom shelf liquor in the UK after both the bartender and Steve gave me a look after I ordered a drink. Who knew?
I had to get back to William's in Nottingham Hill before the trains stopped running, so Steve went back to his hotel and I went back to couch surfing. William and I, in true night owl form, went back out so he could show me a bit of his part of London. We walked around quite a lot, and when he drove us back he parked in front of his building but didn't take his hand off the gear shift. "I kinda wanna keep driving. I don't really wanna go in just yet." He said. "Me either, really..." I said. Like a puppy with its head out the window, I love car rides. We continued to drive for another half hour or 45 minutes or so, looking at the lights, talking about life, and counting all the effing round-abouts we passed.
The next morning, my time with William was up. I thanked him for all the tea and the nighttime rides around the city, and went to go check into the Clink hostel for one last night. After all, I couldn't have asked for a better first couch surfing experience, or a better person to host me.
I met Steve a little after midday and together we went to a pub to watch the Rangers game. A note to Steve, if you're reading this: I'm going to butcher this story and I apologize. I'm not going to fact check any of this, so feel free to correct me or yell at me in Scottish expletives. See, the Rangers are not so much a Scottish soccer ("football") team from Glasgow as much as a Glaswegian religion. I couldn't tell you why, but for whatever reason they hadn't played in a long time. I think they were suspended. Or something. I don't know. Anyway, this was their first game since. We met an Australian guy of Scottish descent named Luke, and he and Steve spoke circles around me. I was happy to stand there while they chatted away with fervent conviction that the Rangers were the greatest thing to grace our Planet Earth, because they didn't even notice when they skipped over me in buying rounds of drinks. That is to say, Luke bought a round for all three of us, then Steve, then in their excitement to continue drinking and watching a game with someone just as thrilled about it all, Luke bought another round without even realizing there was a third person present who might have contributed.
So anyway, the good news is that the Rangers won. In my limited knowledge of soccer, it was all just a blur of screaming, drunk Scots heavily squished into a pub. This happened a year ago, but I still remember the very random and unintelligible breaking out into song, like a crowd of pre-teen girls at an N*Sync concert. But boy are there lots of songs about this one soccer team.
It was good that they won because if not, Steve would have probably been a bummer. Instead he pranced happily through the otherwise depressing, cloudy rain on our way to the next bar. I was going to meet my English friend Leon for my very last night in London, and indeed Europe, and Steve needed to get his flight back to Scotland that night. In the meantime, of course, we went for another drink.
We chatted for a long time before I realized I really should be sober enough to go have dinner with Leon. After a subdued cab ride and a sentimental goodbye, Steve disappeared into the London Underground at King's Cross station. I didn't have time to be sad, however, because it was off to meet with my favorite person in the world: Leon.
Leon is a London native so he knew exactly where to go: Nando's. Nando's is a magical place and if you're ever in the UK (or wherever else Nando's may be, really), you should definitely go. I can't explain it with any justice, so I'm going to leave it to Jack Whitehall:
We chatted for a while before going to Oxford street, where we stopped in to a very touristy-looking shop. "Pick something out," Leon said simply. I picked up a tiny little red phone booth on a key chain, and Leon took it from me and without a word, without asking or insisting, bought it for me (I mean it was only, like, a pound or two, but still very sweet). I had it on my keys for a long time afterwards until months and months later I noticed it had broken off.
I didn't want the night to end, nor did I want to go back to my hostel to be alone just yet, so we went to one of Leon's regular bars. We talked for a long time about our travels and our respective hopes to return to the other's country. I know how much Leon misses the US, but hopefully he'll return at a time when our paths can cross.
Eventually, we realized how late it was, and it was unavoidably time to part ways. Leon walked me back to my hostel like a gentleman, insisting that I couldn't walk alone. He, like Benny before, had explicitly told me how uncomfortable I would make him if I cried, and he looked very sincere. I promised him I would be good, but when I saw that we were only a few short blocks from my hostel, I felt that familiar lump in my throat and I knew resistance would be futile. I hate to sound like I spent much of my time in Europe as an emotional nuisance, but it was the culmination of my amazing summer coming to a close, having met some awesome new friends, seen and consequently said goodbye to so many of my existing friends, and the knowledge that I will never have an adventure quite like this one again. Sad because it was over, and extremely happy and thankful and humble that I even had the opportunity to do everything and see everything I had. Leon was simply the unlucky one that happened to be with me when all this came to mind.
I stood in the doorway of my hostel as quiet tears streaked my face, not wanting to go inside. Leon was visibly uncomfortable and unable to quite meet my eye (which is stupid because I wasn't even really crying, just teary eyed, and anyway boys shouldn't pretend they don't have emotions), and it just became funny watching him squirm. Feeling a little better, I hugged him and we promised each other we'd meet again, and he turned and walked away.
So there it is. My adventures as an undergrad wandering around in Spain and much of western Europe. I'm not going to try and get all deep, because I know how much you guys hate that, but I will say this: I did not come back to the United States the same person who left it. It was Noah who said to me on my first night in Brighton, "You spend so much money while you're travelling, you'll go broke. But the wealth that you gain from your experiences is so much more.........innit?"
"El mundo es un libro y ellos que no viajan leen solo una página."
The next day, Scottish Steve returned to London. It was a surprisingly nice day, and I went to meet him in front of Buckingham Palace. We walked for a long while before deciding to check out St. Paul's Cathedral, which is too impressive for words. We decided to go up into the dome, and despite my brief episode of claustrophobia in the tiny winding stair case (a good way of getting over your claustrophobia is the knowledge that you can't go back down the way you came up), it was really cool at the top. St. Paul's Cathedral: Do it.
Later on we went to a pub in Victoria where the Olympic games were airing (though really I think you'd have had a harder time finding a place that wasn't airing the games). This is where I discovered that Smirnoff vodka is seen as bottom shelf liquor in the UK after both the bartender and Steve gave me a look after I ordered a drink. Who knew?
I had to get back to William's in Nottingham Hill before the trains stopped running, so Steve went back to his hotel and I went back to couch surfing. William and I, in true night owl form, went back out so he could show me a bit of his part of London. We walked around quite a lot, and when he drove us back he parked in front of his building but didn't take his hand off the gear shift. "I kinda wanna keep driving. I don't really wanna go in just yet." He said. "Me either, really..." I said. Like a puppy with its head out the window, I love car rides. We continued to drive for another half hour or 45 minutes or so, looking at the lights, talking about life, and counting all the effing round-abouts we passed.
The next morning, my time with William was up. I thanked him for all the tea and the nighttime rides around the city, and went to go check into the Clink hostel for one last night. After all, I couldn't have asked for a better first couch surfing experience, or a better person to host me.
I met Steve a little after midday and together we went to a pub to watch the Rangers game. A note to Steve, if you're reading this: I'm going to butcher this story and I apologize. I'm not going to fact check any of this, so feel free to correct me or yell at me in Scottish expletives. See, the Rangers are not so much a Scottish soccer ("football") team from Glasgow as much as a Glaswegian religion. I couldn't tell you why, but for whatever reason they hadn't played in a long time. I think they were suspended. Or something. I don't know. Anyway, this was their first game since. We met an Australian guy of Scottish descent named Luke, and he and Steve spoke circles around me. I was happy to stand there while they chatted away with fervent conviction that the Rangers were the greatest thing to grace our Planet Earth, because they didn't even notice when they skipped over me in buying rounds of drinks. That is to say, Luke bought a round for all three of us, then Steve, then in their excitement to continue drinking and watching a game with someone just as thrilled about it all, Luke bought another round without even realizing there was a third person present who might have contributed.
So anyway, the good news is that the Rangers won. In my limited knowledge of soccer, it was all just a blur of screaming, drunk Scots heavily squished into a pub. This happened a year ago, but I still remember the very random and unintelligible breaking out into song, like a crowd of pre-teen girls at an N*Sync concert. But boy are there lots of songs about this one soccer team.
It was good that they won because if not, Steve would have probably been a bummer. Instead he pranced happily through the otherwise depressing, cloudy rain on our way to the next bar. I was going to meet my English friend Leon for my very last night in London, and indeed Europe, and Steve needed to get his flight back to Scotland that night. In the meantime, of course, we went for another drink.
We chatted for a long time before I realized I really should be sober enough to go have dinner with Leon. After a subdued cab ride and a sentimental goodbye, Steve disappeared into the London Underground at King's Cross station. I didn't have time to be sad, however, because it was off to meet with my favorite person in the world: Leon.
Leon is a London native so he knew exactly where to go: Nando's. Nando's is a magical place and if you're ever in the UK (or wherever else Nando's may be, really), you should definitely go. I can't explain it with any justice, so I'm going to leave it to Jack Whitehall:
(It's worth a watch, I promise)
(Edit: I did not mean for Mr. Whitehall to make it sound like a date, but after watching this I felt like I needed to clarify that it wasn't)
(Edit: I did not mean for Mr. Whitehall to make it sound like a date, but after watching this I felt like I needed to clarify that it wasn't)
We chatted for a while before going to Oxford street, where we stopped in to a very touristy-looking shop. "Pick something out," Leon said simply. I picked up a tiny little red phone booth on a key chain, and Leon took it from me and without a word, without asking or insisting, bought it for me (I mean it was only, like, a pound or two, but still very sweet). I had it on my keys for a long time afterwards until months and months later I noticed it had broken off.
I didn't want the night to end, nor did I want to go back to my hostel to be alone just yet, so we went to one of Leon's regular bars. We talked for a long time about our travels and our respective hopes to return to the other's country. I know how much Leon misses the US, but hopefully he'll return at a time when our paths can cross.
Eventually, we realized how late it was, and it was unavoidably time to part ways. Leon walked me back to my hostel like a gentleman, insisting that I couldn't walk alone. He, like Benny before, had explicitly told me how uncomfortable I would make him if I cried, and he looked very sincere. I promised him I would be good, but when I saw that we were only a few short blocks from my hostel, I felt that familiar lump in my throat and I knew resistance would be futile. I hate to sound like I spent much of my time in Europe as an emotional nuisance, but it was the culmination of my amazing summer coming to a close, having met some awesome new friends, seen and consequently said goodbye to so many of my existing friends, and the knowledge that I will never have an adventure quite like this one again. Sad because it was over, and extremely happy and thankful and humble that I even had the opportunity to do everything and see everything I had. Leon was simply the unlucky one that happened to be with me when all this came to mind.
I stood in the doorway of my hostel as quiet tears streaked my face, not wanting to go inside. Leon was visibly uncomfortable and unable to quite meet my eye (which is stupid because I wasn't even really crying, just teary eyed, and anyway boys shouldn't pretend they don't have emotions), and it just became funny watching him squirm. Feeling a little better, I hugged him and we promised each other we'd meet again, and he turned and walked away.
So there it is. My adventures as an undergrad wandering around in Spain and much of western Europe. I'm not going to try and get all deep, because I know how much you guys hate that, but I will say this: I did not come back to the United States the same person who left it. It was Noah who said to me on my first night in Brighton, "You spend so much money while you're travelling, you'll go broke. But the wealth that you gain from your experiences is so much more.........innit?"
"El mundo es un libro y ellos que no viajan leen solo una página."
Monday, September 2, 2013
Scotland: Adventures in Drinking
It's entirely possible that I spent the duration of my weekend in Scotland in a state of mild tipsiness. It's been far too long since my visit to write in any amount of detail about what I did there (although I do have fond memories of spending much of my time drinking beer and peeing), and when I expressed this concern to my friend Scottish Steve, his remarks were: "Well 90% of Scotland is drinking, to be fair."
Fair enough, Steve. Fair enough.
I met Steve in the Clink hostel in London. We chatted for a good long while and exchanged phone numbers. I was finding myself with a lot of free time and not knowing how to fill it. I was alone, and quite small in a big new country, and I found myself really timid to even make a move, so I was understandably excited to make a new friend, especially one who was willing to show me around in Scotland.
I got myself a flight from London to Edinburgh on a Friday night. I arrived at the hostel and settled in.
The next morning I got a train to Glasgow, where Steve lives. He met me at the train station, and then we set off for a walking tour of his home town. Beginning, I believe in George Square.**
He gave me a sort of "west end" tour, mostly, he says, because the "east end" is too dangerous and warned me to never ever go there because I'll immediately get stabbed. I'm paraphrasing here, but you get the gist.
On our walking tour, Steve showed me a whole lot of things, including but not limited to: the University of Glasgow, some unnamed art galleries, the Riverside museum, and some quirky Glasgow-type things, like some TARDIS sightings:
How magical is that? These little beauties are scattered around Glasgow & Edinburgh.
Also there is a statue of the Duke of Wellington that, for whatever reason, always has a cone on its head. Steve told me about this, and I almost didn't believe him. But as we were walking past, the statue was surrounded by authority figures in an effort to remove the cone from his head.
This is such a common occurrence that it inspired this little vinyl sticker:
Now, I've said this before quite frequently, but stick with me: You get a little something extra when you visit a friend in his/her hometown. You see things with a familiarity that you don't get when you're on your own. Suddenly a nondescript ice cream shop on the corner has meaning because you know that's where your friend spent her days after school, or perhaps you see a park where she had her first kiss. These landmarks were different with Steve. Walking with Steve, it was more like, "There's a really good pub, this is some park, that's a good bar, there's another good bar, check out that thing over there, my friends and I go to that bar all the time, that over there is my favorite pub, this is another of my favorite drinking spots..." And it went on like that for a while.
We continued walking, never stopping, past the Finnieston Crane, which is completely useless, but I suppose is meant to represent the engineering "heritage" of Glasgow. We walked past the Clyde Auditorium (which I had to google just now), and then past BBC Scotland headquarters. As we did, a man jogged by. When he was out of earshot, Steve revealed to me that the man was a Scottish actor. I'll present that as a major cultural difference between the United States' celebrity obsessed mindset and Scotland's apparent apathy to people they see on TV. Any American, myself included (....probably), would jump at the chance to meet or get a photo of a celebrity-ones we're not even familiar with or even hate.
So after all the walking, you might be able to guess that when we were on our third museum, Steve decided it was time to call it a day, and we went for a drink. We hadn't eaten anything all day, and I had it in my head that I had to try something authentically Scottish: haggis. I've not heard mixed reviews on haggis. The popular opinion is that it's vomit-inducing, but I didn't mind it. Probably because it was drowning in cheese on a pizza...But still, Steve waited until I was done eating to tell me what haggis is. Go on. Google it. I'll wait here.
We bar hopped for a short time, Steve having me to try some of his favorite drinks. After the sun had set, we took a train back to Edinburgh. It was only about 11:00 when we got back to the hostel, but Steve is quite old, you see (24 at the time-yikes!), so we called it a night.
The next day we were up early to walk around the city. We walked the Royal Mile, a string of streets in what's called "Old Town" of Edinburgh. All very picturesque. Along the way, Steve thought it was necessary for me to try Irn-Bru (pronounced iron brew). It's a Scottish soda fondly referred to as Scotland's "other national drink." It tasted like really sugary bubble gum to me.
Then, almost on a whim, we bought tickets to something called Mary King's Close. We had to wait for the next tour, so we decided to walk around outside, when, serendipitously, we came upon a street performer. He was a tall and just generally large shirtless Scottish man with a black bowler hat, who did things like swallow swords and fire and lay on a bed of nails. The sword thing was particularly nauseating.
Since I don't seem to have a travel tip from this experience, I'll give you this one:
Always tip those guys when you stop to watch them. Don't be a dick.
Mary King's Close was really cool and a little bit terrifying. It's a sort of underground (and I don't mean that in a hipster sense, I mean literally underground) tourist attraction that displays a "historically accurate example of life in Edinburgh between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries," at least according to its Wikipedia page. It's not the ideal place for someone who is afraid of the dark or enclosed spaces, but it was interesting from the historical point of view anyway. The tour guide, whether or not he was lying, told us that there had been a woman to go on the tour many years back who actually knew someone (perhaps a grandfather or something) who had lived in the close as a really young child. Who knows if it's true, but how cool would that be?
The Fringe Festival happened to be on during my little visit. Steve tells me there are festivals quite frequently in Edinburgh. I was extremely confused, but excited by all the commotion. I couldn't really see any coherent theme for the festival, but there were lots of people wearing kilts and bright red wigs. (Update: I just looked up the Edinburgh Fringe Festival on Wikipedia, and it says that it is "with no selection committee, and therefore any type of performance may participate." So I guess that explains that.)
After we were through sight-seeing, we began drinking (of course). Steve insisted I try Scotch whisky. He bought me some and returned to our table with a small glass of water in tow. Apparently if you can't handle it, as Steve anticipated I could not, you're meant to add water to dilute it for the desired strength. And oh, was it strong. I powered through and finished it, though. Like a champ.
A little before sunset, Steve had to make his way back to Glasgow, as he had work the next day. It felt sort of unfortunate to hug him goodbye and to watch him leave for the train station, and strangely lonely to go back to the hostel on my own. I qualify "strangely" because you'd think I'd be used to it after spending so many nights on my own in hostels in the weeks prior. But though my euro-trip was coming to a close, I knew I still had a lot left to look forward to.
My only regrets about my trip are that we never made it to that café where JK Rowling got the inspiration for Harry Potter (though I did get to see the castle that started it all-*squeal!*). Also I didn't really take many photos...I can attribute this to being taken around town by Steve, who was a cool and collected local, and I suppose I felt silly snapping photos of someone's hometown...
I had my flight back to England the next morning, where I returned to Brighton for a few days to see Noah, and then it was time for London for the very last nostalgic leg of my trip.
"El mundo es un libro y quienes no viajan solo leen una página."
Fair enough, Steve. Fair enough.
I met Steve in the Clink hostel in London. We chatted for a good long while and exchanged phone numbers. I was finding myself with a lot of free time and not knowing how to fill it. I was alone, and quite small in a big new country, and I found myself really timid to even make a move, so I was understandably excited to make a new friend, especially one who was willing to show me around in Scotland.
I got myself a flight from London to Edinburgh on a Friday night. I arrived at the hostel and settled in.
The next morning I got a train to Glasgow, where Steve lives. He met me at the train station, and then we set off for a walking tour of his home town. Beginning, I believe in George Square.**
He gave me a sort of "west end" tour, mostly, he says, because the "east end" is too dangerous and warned me to never ever go there because I'll immediately get stabbed. I'm paraphrasing here, but you get the gist.
On our walking tour, Steve showed me a whole lot of things, including but not limited to: the University of Glasgow, some unnamed art galleries, the Riverside museum, and some quirky Glasgow-type things, like some TARDIS sightings:
Also there is a statue of the Duke of Wellington that, for whatever reason, always has a cone on its head. Steve told me about this, and I almost didn't believe him. But as we were walking past, the statue was surrounded by authority figures in an effort to remove the cone from his head.
This is such a common occurrence that it inspired this little vinyl sticker:
Now, I've said this before quite frequently, but stick with me: You get a little something extra when you visit a friend in his/her hometown. You see things with a familiarity that you don't get when you're on your own. Suddenly a nondescript ice cream shop on the corner has meaning because you know that's where your friend spent her days after school, or perhaps you see a park where she had her first kiss. These landmarks were different with Steve. Walking with Steve, it was more like, "There's a really good pub, this is some park, that's a good bar, there's another good bar, check out that thing over there, my friends and I go to that bar all the time, that over there is my favorite pub, this is another of my favorite drinking spots..." And it went on like that for a while.
We continued walking, never stopping, past the Finnieston Crane, which is completely useless, but I suppose is meant to represent the engineering "heritage" of Glasgow. We walked past the Clyde Auditorium (which I had to google just now), and then past BBC Scotland headquarters. As we did, a man jogged by. When he was out of earshot, Steve revealed to me that the man was a Scottish actor. I'll present that as a major cultural difference between the United States' celebrity obsessed mindset and Scotland's apparent apathy to people they see on TV. Any American, myself included (....probably), would jump at the chance to meet or get a photo of a celebrity-ones we're not even familiar with or even hate.
So after all the walking, you might be able to guess that when we were on our third museum, Steve decided it was time to call it a day, and we went for a drink. We hadn't eaten anything all day, and I had it in my head that I had to try something authentically Scottish: haggis. I've not heard mixed reviews on haggis. The popular opinion is that it's vomit-inducing, but I didn't mind it. Probably because it was drowning in cheese on a pizza...But still, Steve waited until I was done eating to tell me what haggis is. Go on. Google it. I'll wait here.
We bar hopped for a short time, Steve having me to try some of his favorite drinks. After the sun had set, we took a train back to Edinburgh. It was only about 11:00 when we got back to the hostel, but Steve is quite old, you see (24 at the time-yikes!), so we called it a night.
The next day we were up early to walk around the city. We walked the Royal Mile, a string of streets in what's called "Old Town" of Edinburgh. All very picturesque. Along the way, Steve thought it was necessary for me to try Irn-Bru (pronounced iron brew). It's a Scottish soda fondly referred to as Scotland's "other national drink." It tasted like really sugary bubble gum to me.
Then, almost on a whim, we bought tickets to something called Mary King's Close. We had to wait for the next tour, so we decided to walk around outside, when, serendipitously, we came upon a street performer. He was a tall and just generally large shirtless Scottish man with a black bowler hat, who did things like swallow swords and fire and lay on a bed of nails. The sword thing was particularly nauseating.
Since I don't seem to have a travel tip from this experience, I'll give you this one:
Always tip those guys when you stop to watch them. Don't be a dick.
Mary King's Close was really cool and a little bit terrifying. It's a sort of underground (and I don't mean that in a hipster sense, I mean literally underground) tourist attraction that displays a "historically accurate example of life in Edinburgh between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries," at least according to its Wikipedia page. It's not the ideal place for someone who is afraid of the dark or enclosed spaces, but it was interesting from the historical point of view anyway. The tour guide, whether or not he was lying, told us that there had been a woman to go on the tour many years back who actually knew someone (perhaps a grandfather or something) who had lived in the close as a really young child. Who knows if it's true, but how cool would that be?
The Fringe Festival happened to be on during my little visit. Steve tells me there are festivals quite frequently in Edinburgh. I was extremely confused, but excited by all the commotion. I couldn't really see any coherent theme for the festival, but there were lots of people wearing kilts and bright red wigs. (Update: I just looked up the Edinburgh Fringe Festival on Wikipedia, and it says that it is "with no selection committee, and therefore any type of performance may participate." So I guess that explains that.)
After we were through sight-seeing, we began drinking (of course). Steve insisted I try Scotch whisky. He bought me some and returned to our table with a small glass of water in tow. Apparently if you can't handle it, as Steve anticipated I could not, you're meant to add water to dilute it for the desired strength. And oh, was it strong. I powered through and finished it, though. Like a champ.
A little before sunset, Steve had to make his way back to Glasgow, as he had work the next day. It felt sort of unfortunate to hug him goodbye and to watch him leave for the train station, and strangely lonely to go back to the hostel on my own. I qualify "strangely" because you'd think I'd be used to it after spending so many nights on my own in hostels in the weeks prior. But though my euro-trip was coming to a close, I knew I still had a lot left to look forward to.
My only regrets about my trip are that we never made it to that café where JK Rowling got the inspiration for Harry Potter (though I did get to see the castle that started it all-*squeal!*). Also I didn't really take many photos...I can attribute this to being taken around town by Steve, who was a cool and collected local, and I suppose I felt silly snapping photos of someone's hometown...
I had my flight back to England the next morning, where I returned to Brighton for a few days to see Noah, and then it was time for London for the very last nostalgic leg of my trip.
"El mundo es un libro y quienes no viajan solo leen una página."
Thursday, August 8, 2013
Brighton, Parts 1 & 2
So remember that time I had a blog? No? Well, I don't blame you. It has been a little over a whole YEAR since I went to Brighton, and here I am, writing about it for the first time.
In the spirit of being proactive, which I have lots of motivation to do when it comes to traveling (but not so much other stuff), I have decided to finally return to this blog, so that I might actually finish something I started for once in my life. Besides, I'll need to finish it so that it'll free me up to write about all my upcoming adventures later on this year.
So Brighton, how was that, you ask? Brighton was lovely, but unlike my trip to London, where I was a shameless photo-snapping, video-taking tourist, I felt like I was more of a visiting local in Brighton because I was there to see a friend of mine. Noah was another one of those exchange students I had met the previous semester at UNCW.
Part 1
Noah had recently come back to Brighton to live for the summer before returning to school in London in the fall. And as such a poor college student living away from home for the summer, he was working. A lot. No complaints, of course. It was great of him to let me stay, use his water, and eat his food.
Once I said my goodbyes to Benny at Waterloo station in London that Wednesday, I bought my ticket to Lewes and was on my way. Lewes is a small town right outside of Brighton, where Noah's mother lived and where he worked. I arrived with just a backpack, and stepped outside just as the drizzle turned to rain. Noah had given me directions to find him at work, and despite my complete inability to follow directions, I found him. I walked into the Pelham House, a fancy hotel, and asked the man at the front if Noah was working. He pointed to what looked like a dining room, and I walked through the door.
There was Noah, back to me, taking a table's order. I stood in the doorway and waited patiently. At one point, he must have seen me out of the corner of his eye, because he looked over quickly, then returned to his work. I then saw the image of myself standing in the doorway actually register in his head, and he did a fantastic double take, face lit up, and said through a big smile, "Oh, my days!"
We both stood at the bar, where his boss gave me a (FREE!) half pint, and caught up ("Your accent sounds so out of place here").
When he was finished with work around 11pm, we took a train to Brighton, where he showed me around a little bit. I've said this before, but going to visit a friend in a new city has a certain intimacy that you don't get when you just go visit a new city. Noah showed me where he used to hang out as a school-aged kid, which place has the best burgers, and then possibly one of my favorite spots in Europe, a regular hang out among him and the rest of the youths in Brighton. It's a row of benches along a pedestrian street outside a local theater, affectionately dubbed "The Benches." It was a Wednesday night, and even during the summer, not many people were about, but we stopped by a corner store ("Isn't it nice how corner stores have the decency to always be located on a corner?" There'll be a lot of these-Noah said lots of quotable quotes over the course of my week in Brighton) to buy some beer.
Even though it was late, we spent a while on the benches chatting, catching up on each other's lives, sharing some wine straight from the bottle. Despite the lack of people out, it was obvious this was a well frequented place. A few girls were sitting a few yards to our right and were being harassed/annoyed by what appeared to be a homeless man. A guy walked by and asked for a light, but he said "Have you got a light?" instead of "Do you have a light?". It all felt thoroughly British.
We then went back to his apartment, which I don't think words will suffice in describing to you, but I will try. It was dirty. Messy. Beyond disgusting. And normally this would bother me, but it was just so repulsive that it had a certain cinematic quality to it...Like, it was so dirty it couldn't even be real. We stepped around the empty beer bottles, plates of partially eaten food, and carelessly discarded sweaters, up to his bedroom and attempted to watch a movie, but fell asleep.
The next day, Noah had to work somewhat early (and by "early" I mean at like 2pm, which is early when you go to bed at 5am), so we left his place and he gave me an extremely quick walking tour of Brighton, just to allow me to get my bearings. Here's the pavilion, here's some famous hotel, here's the pier, that's Churchill square.
That afternoon, which was a Thursday afternoon, while Noah was working, I was planning my weekend trip to Scotland. I met him later at his work, from where we both walked to his mom's house. That night, Noah showed me how to make some noodles and a watered down can of tomato paste last for several meals, before we settled in for the night with some amazing British reality TV: Embarrassing Bodies. Seriously, that shit is thoroughly good. If you haven't seen it yet, I highly recommend it.
The next day I left for Scotland. I wasn't sure of my plan, and I certainly didn't want to overstay my welcome or assume that I was allowed to stay longer than I was, so when Noah expressed disappointment that I wouldn't be around for the weekend to go out to some of the clubs in Brighton, I suggested the idea of coming back after Scotland. Noah seemed excited enough about the idea, so it was settled. After Scotland, it was back to Brighton, not London.
Part 2
For that Monday, Noah had given me directions to get back to his mom's house in Lewes, where I met his mom and younger sister, Lois. His mom was awesome and very hospitable. She, like every other British person I've known, offered me copious amounts of tea, asked me about my family, and said things like "Nice one."
Noah got back from work a little later, and together we scraped some left-overs together and fashioned ourselves a make-shift meal of marmite (If you want my advice, stay far, far away from marmite or any other spread that ends in "mite"), rice cakes, and all that remained in several different bottles of wine. After a quick episode of Embarrassing Bodies, this time about genital deformities and reproductive diseases, it was off to bed.
The next morning, Noah's mom offered me another cup of tea. And you don't just say no when a British person offers you tea. After a little while, Noah had to go to work, and I went to meet his mom and Lois at a public pool. The problem is that my complete lack of a sense of direction or indeed any type of spatial intelligence has contributed to an extremely low level of confidence in my ability to find anything at all in the geographical sense, and I end up doubting myself ("Is this a slight right? This doesn't look like a slight right. I'll just walk on to the next one." "Is that the red sign he was talking about? That looks more orange....") and thus: the complete inability to follow instructions I mentioned earlier. Anyway, I got lost on my way to this public pool I was headed to. The lucky thing is that I may not know where my destination is, but I always leave a trail of mental bread crumbs. So while I had no clue where this public pool was, I did know where I was. And it just happened to be a lovely summer day! That was lucky. Imagine walking around all afternoon looking for a pool you doubt even exists, all in the rain that is so typical of England.
So after a while I gave up and decided just to head back to the Pelham House to find Noah, and as luck would have it, Noah's mom and Lois as well. Turns out there'd been a massive line outside the pool, and when I never showed up, they got slightly worried. Noah's mom felt so bad that I'd gotten lost (though it was entirely my fault), she bought me a pint. Don't you just love other peoples' parents?
While I was there, another UNCW veteran came to meet me. Lucky is originally from London and while Noah still had a few hours to work, he and I took a train to Brighton to eat and then to see the Dark Knight. The Duke of York theater is the most adorable hipster hang out. It's an old theater refurbished into a cinema. After the movie, Noah met us and we all revisited the corner store to get beer ("This one says it's 6 pounds for 6 beers...So if we each get 2, then it'll be 6 pounds or 1 pound each..." Good math, Noah. Good math).
In the spirit of being proactive, which I have lots of motivation to do when it comes to traveling (but not so much other stuff), I have decided to finally return to this blog, so that I might actually finish something I started for once in my life. Besides, I'll need to finish it so that it'll free me up to write about all my upcoming adventures later on this year.
So Brighton, how was that, you ask? Brighton was lovely, but unlike my trip to London, where I was a shameless photo-snapping, video-taking tourist, I felt like I was more of a visiting local in Brighton because I was there to see a friend of mine. Noah was another one of those exchange students I had met the previous semester at UNCW.
Part 1
Noah had recently come back to Brighton to live for the summer before returning to school in London in the fall. And as such a poor college student living away from home for the summer, he was working. A lot. No complaints, of course. It was great of him to let me stay, use his water, and eat his food.
Once I said my goodbyes to Benny at Waterloo station in London that Wednesday, I bought my ticket to Lewes and was on my way. Lewes is a small town right outside of Brighton, where Noah's mother lived and where he worked. I arrived with just a backpack, and stepped outside just as the drizzle turned to rain. Noah had given me directions to find him at work, and despite my complete inability to follow directions, I found him. I walked into the Pelham House, a fancy hotel, and asked the man at the front if Noah was working. He pointed to what looked like a dining room, and I walked through the door.
There was Noah, back to me, taking a table's order. I stood in the doorway and waited patiently. At one point, he must have seen me out of the corner of his eye, because he looked over quickly, then returned to his work. I then saw the image of myself standing in the doorway actually register in his head, and he did a fantastic double take, face lit up, and said through a big smile, "Oh, my days!"
We both stood at the bar, where his boss gave me a (FREE!) half pint, and caught up ("Your accent sounds so out of place here").
When he was finished with work around 11pm, we took a train to Brighton, where he showed me around a little bit. I've said this before, but going to visit a friend in a new city has a certain intimacy that you don't get when you just go visit a new city. Noah showed me where he used to hang out as a school-aged kid, which place has the best burgers, and then possibly one of my favorite spots in Europe, a regular hang out among him and the rest of the youths in Brighton. It's a row of benches along a pedestrian street outside a local theater, affectionately dubbed "The Benches." It was a Wednesday night, and even during the summer, not many people were about, but we stopped by a corner store ("Isn't it nice how corner stores have the decency to always be located on a corner?" There'll be a lot of these-Noah said lots of quotable quotes over the course of my week in Brighton) to buy some beer.
Even though it was late, we spent a while on the benches chatting, catching up on each other's lives, sharing some wine straight from the bottle. Despite the lack of people out, it was obvious this was a well frequented place. A few girls were sitting a few yards to our right and were being harassed/annoyed by what appeared to be a homeless man. A guy walked by and asked for a light, but he said "Have you got a light?" instead of "Do you have a light?". It all felt thoroughly British.
We then went back to his apartment, which I don't think words will suffice in describing to you, but I will try. It was dirty. Messy. Beyond disgusting. And normally this would bother me, but it was just so repulsive that it had a certain cinematic quality to it...Like, it was so dirty it couldn't even be real. We stepped around the empty beer bottles, plates of partially eaten food, and carelessly discarded sweaters, up to his bedroom and attempted to watch a movie, but fell asleep.
The next day, Noah had to work somewhat early (and by "early" I mean at like 2pm, which is early when you go to bed at 5am), so we left his place and he gave me an extremely quick walking tour of Brighton, just to allow me to get my bearings. Here's the pavilion, here's some famous hotel, here's the pier, that's Churchill square.
That afternoon, which was a Thursday afternoon, while Noah was working, I was planning my weekend trip to Scotland. I met him later at his work, from where we both walked to his mom's house. That night, Noah showed me how to make some noodles and a watered down can of tomato paste last for several meals, before we settled in for the night with some amazing British reality TV: Embarrassing Bodies. Seriously, that shit is thoroughly good. If you haven't seen it yet, I highly recommend it.
The next day I left for Scotland. I wasn't sure of my plan, and I certainly didn't want to overstay my welcome or assume that I was allowed to stay longer than I was, so when Noah expressed disappointment that I wouldn't be around for the weekend to go out to some of the clubs in Brighton, I suggested the idea of coming back after Scotland. Noah seemed excited enough about the idea, so it was settled. After Scotland, it was back to Brighton, not London.
Part 2
For that Monday, Noah had given me directions to get back to his mom's house in Lewes, where I met his mom and younger sister, Lois. His mom was awesome and very hospitable. She, like every other British person I've known, offered me copious amounts of tea, asked me about my family, and said things like "Nice one."
Noah got back from work a little later, and together we scraped some left-overs together and fashioned ourselves a make-shift meal of marmite (If you want my advice, stay far, far away from marmite or any other spread that ends in "mite"), rice cakes, and all that remained in several different bottles of wine. After a quick episode of Embarrassing Bodies, this time about genital deformities and reproductive diseases, it was off to bed.
The next morning, Noah's mom offered me another cup of tea. And you don't just say no when a British person offers you tea. After a little while, Noah had to go to work, and I went to meet his mom and Lois at a public pool. The problem is that my complete lack of a sense of direction or indeed any type of spatial intelligence has contributed to an extremely low level of confidence in my ability to find anything at all in the geographical sense, and I end up doubting myself ("Is this a slight right? This doesn't look like a slight right. I'll just walk on to the next one." "Is that the red sign he was talking about? That looks more orange....") and thus: the complete inability to follow instructions I mentioned earlier. Anyway, I got lost on my way to this public pool I was headed to. The lucky thing is that I may not know where my destination is, but I always leave a trail of mental bread crumbs. So while I had no clue where this public pool was, I did know where I was. And it just happened to be a lovely summer day! That was lucky. Imagine walking around all afternoon looking for a pool you doubt even exists, all in the rain that is so typical of England.
So after a while I gave up and decided just to head back to the Pelham House to find Noah, and as luck would have it, Noah's mom and Lois as well. Turns out there'd been a massive line outside the pool, and when I never showed up, they got slightly worried. Noah's mom felt so bad that I'd gotten lost (though it was entirely my fault), she bought me a pint. Don't you just love other peoples' parents?
While I was there, another UNCW veteran came to meet me. Lucky is originally from London and while Noah still had a few hours to work, he and I took a train to Brighton to eat and then to see the Dark Knight. The Duke of York theater is the most adorable hipster hang out. It's an old theater refurbished into a cinema. After the movie, Noah met us and we all revisited the corner store to get beer ("This one says it's 6 pounds for 6 beers...So if we each get 2, then it'll be 6 pounds or 1 pound each..." Good math, Noah. Good math).
The next day, Noah had work off, and the three of us hung out all day. Unfortunately it's been entirely too long since this has happened and I have no idea what we might have done on this day. That night Noah was eager to show us the nightlife ("There are some good clubs in Brighton innit?"). We went to a place called Digital, located by the pier almost right on the shore, and it was exactly how it sounds. Loud dubstep played in a massive dark room (save for the flashing colored lights) while people danced or stood around the nonsensical and non-utilitarian furniture. I'm not one much for clubs, but I will say this: on the whole, I think English boys are better dancers than American boys.
Oh, travel tip:
Though, in my opinion, breaking up a drunken fight between your friend and a guy wearing a muscle shirt with the word "RIPPED" across the chest is the right thing to do, it may result in a punch to the face. And those hurt.
The next morning, Lucky left early to go back to London. We slept in for a really long time, but after a while I felt recovered enough to get on a train. I had no sense of urgency, but eventually Noah had to work. He walked me to the train station and with one last hug and a "thanks for letting me crash and eat your food," I waved goodbye out the train window as we bustled away all cinematically, and was on my way back to London.
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