During a two-week break in February (the French love thier vacations), my friend Jenna and I took off on a whirlwind tour of England, Wales, Ireland, Northern Ireland, and Scotland. It was absolutely fantastic and a ton of fun, and not only did we survive our exhaustive itinerary but we actually still like each other!
We started off in London, which was very exciting although most of the attractions are prohibitively expensive; except for the museums which are fabulous (especially since they’ve been stealing national treasures from all over the world for hundreds of years and refusing to give them back). For example, we saw the Rosetta stone, which is an ancient stone covered with writing in 3 languages: Egyptian hieroglyphics, the language of ordinary Egyptians, and ancient greek - it was the key that enabled researchers to decipher how to read hieroglyphics!
Then we headed to Stow-in-the-Wold, which is in the Cotswolds, and is such a picturesque little English countryside village. We were quite panicked when we learned that the Sunday buses apparently don't run on winter, so ended up plastering the town with desperate posters begging for a ride; luckily we met a very kind women heading the right direction and didnt miss our bus from Cheltenham the next day.
After sitting 10 hours on a bus next to a 16 year old boy reading a magasine about "Fast Cars" / softcore porn, we ended up in northern Wales. We stayed the night in Caenarfon, where we explored a really well-preserved fortress at Caernarfon full of twisting passageways and towering battlements, exactly like something King Arthur might have had! Also had a great time hanging out with some real Welsh guys who taught us how to write "Prince Charles is a twat" on our postcards (the official "Prince of Wales" is extremely popular in his constituency), and introduced us to Welsh pie (essentially ground beef topped with mashed potatoes) and a Welsh bitter called Brains (one of the best beers I've ever tasted).
Then we headed across to Dublin, Ireland and we went to an awesome museum all about Guinness beer, it's history, production process, advertising, degustation... I can now say I appreciate it a lot more! We spent a good chunk of the time in the best Irish institution of all - the pub!
I also really liked Belfast, in Northern Ireland, where the city is still very much divided by religion, at least in the working class neighborhoods, and run by the Protestant and Catholic militias. Each side makes these huge political murals in their neighborhoods, some of which are still very militant and threatening, especially in the Protestant area, such as one where a man in a baklava points a semi-automatic directly out from the mural so that it looks like he's aiming at you no matter where you stand! The Catholics seem to have caught on to the advantages of drawing on public / tourist sympathy by featuring a lot of rainbows, broken chains, doves, and slogans like "our revenge shall be the laughter of our children." Apparently many people in the city have become very disillusioned as the militas have degenerated into fighting over control of the drug and prostitution trade.
We also headed along Northern Irelands' Antrim coast to check out the Giant’s Causeway, which is this amazing geological formation of about 40,000 perfectly hexagonal stone columns rising from the sea – it was very cool to see, and also a rare sunny day, and a nice break to get away from cities for a bit.
Then we went to Inverness in the Scottish Highlands and rode a boat on Loch Ness searching for the monster (haha – actually we learned a lot about the facts and fiction and how a lot of the “evidence’” has been faked, they now think there may be some large sturgeon living in the depths). We also visited Culloden Moor, where Bonnie Prince Charlie’s Highlander army was massacred in less then an hour, before getting food poisoning from our brave attempt to eat haggis.
We then headed down to Edinburgh, which is very old and beautiful, although we learned some sordid history during a ghost tour through the underground storage caverns that homeless people used to be forced to live, and where they would usually die within 18 months (only 4 months expectancy if you were under 14 or over 30).
Finally, we headed back to London and saw a few more things, like the perfectly preserved, hidden underground War Cabinet Rooms, from where the British government directed the fight against Germany during WWII and a museum on Winston Churchill that was incredible. We then took a 15 hour bus ride back to Strasbourg (yick). One upside to taking the bus is that we got to see the Eurotunnel running underneath the English Channel, but it was very not what I expected: you drive into these narrow trailers that are sealed after every few vehicles, and then the whole thing runs as a sort of train through the tunnel, but unfortunately you can't see anything - quite different than my original vague idea of an underwater highway, which would be way too dangerous now that i think about it.
Anyways, it was a lot to pack in, but I'm glad that now i know where I will go back and spend a lot more time when i have the chance. It was interesting to feel, though, that even after 3 generations of my family being in Canada, England still felt a little bit like coming home.
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