Thanksgiving in Edinburgh

The past few weeks have been crazy, starting with Thanksgiving. All the study abroad students were feeling pretty homesick about missing such an American holiday. For most of us, it was also the last day of classes. We planned a large dinner in our house and invited all the Americans we knew. Lorrie was in charge of the turkey, which she spent days working on. 

It was potluck, so everyone brought different things. The Scottish students had some interesting contributions, like Yorkshire pudding and Eaton Mess. The thing that was really missing was pumpkin pie. 

I was very homesick on Thanksgiving, but everyone here was so excited to celebrate it together. And we taught the Scots a lot about our own traditions!

Note: Photos are borrowed from Alexander

London

London was by far the city I felt the most comfortable in. It reminded me a lot of DC because there were constantly people speaking other languages. I arrived at King's Cross Station on Thursday evening. Fiona met me and we tried to find Platform 9 and 3/4 but it was missing. We went looking for it between Platforms 9 and 10, but nothing was there. I felt just like a confused Harry Potter. 


After dropping my stuff off at Fiona's dorm in Camden Town, we got burritos near Oxford Circus. London at night is so lively and it was really cool to take public transportation. I got an Oyster Card the first day, which is the equivalent of a SmarTrip except that it saves you at least 50 pence on every trip. 

Near Covent Garden:

The next morning, I went to Westminster Abbey. I was so excited and I loved doing the audio tour. From a history perspective, London was the most exciting place that I've gone. 

Then we went ice-skating by the Museum of Natural History with Fiona's friend Ellie. There are rinks all over London set up between now and Christmas.

Walking by the museums, you can see scars on the buildings from WWII:

We walked through Hyde Park and the Kensington Gardens, where we saw the Albert Memorial:

Kensington Palace is currently "being transformed," most likely in time for the 2012 games:

We had afternoon tea at the Orangery, the restaurant at Kensington Palace:

The next morning, I went to the Tower of London. I got there just in time for a yeoman tour. The yeomen have at least 22 years of military experience and spend the tour alternating between historical stories and poking fun at the crowd. 

We met friends at Picadilly Circus for lunch. My friend Dean dragged us to a Texan restaurant, which was pretty funny to find in the center of London. 

After lunch, Dean, Lea, and I went to an arcade where we spent the afternoon bowling and playing games. Fiona took me around Camden before dinner, showing me the Camden stables. The stables were turned into a market, with stalls being different stores. Fiona, Ellie, and I got French food for dinner in Islington, which is a really nice neighborhood. On Sunday morning, I went straight to King's Cross. It was then that I noticed a sign for Platform 9 and 3/4, which had actually been moved out of the train station during construction. I opted out of seeing the fake one.

I really loved seeing all the different neighborhoods in London and taking the tube everywhere. The downside was that both Fiona and I weren't feeling well, possibly because of food poisoning. I still went out even when I wasn't feeling well, but I can't wait to go back and see even more of the city!

Tintin!

Last Wednesday (Nov. 16), we went to see The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn. It's an American movie that turned the French comic books into a 3D animated film. It released a lot earlier in Europe and there were a lot of older people there. It was really cute and a great use of 3D!

It's a really great movie regardless of your age. A little violent for children in my opinion (which is weird for a children's movie), but still good. 

Amsterdam

Amsterdam is as beautiful as Paris, but less crowded. It's one of my favorite cities to walk around. Most tourists try to bike a little, but I was not a fan of that idea. Most of our weekend there (Nov. 11-13) was spent walking around the canals and eating street food.


Sitting by a canal:

Amsterdam was full of really great graffiti: 

Near all the museums:

Line for Van Gogh museum:

The Van Gogh museum was really great! We saw a few of the sunflower paintings and lots of self-portraits. It was definitely worth the wait. Afterwards, we went by the biggest flower market:

We stopped by the Anne Frank House, but didn't have a chance to go inside:

We made sure to go by a cheese shop before leaving, where I picked up some Gouda from Holland:

On our way to the train station, we saw a lot of people dancing around in blackface. It was super confusing and we later found out that their Christmas includes Santa Claus and "black pete":

I'd love to go back to Amsterdam at some point!

Céad míle fáilte!

100,000 Welcomes to Dublin! Fiona and I went to Dublin for the weekend of November 4th. It's taken me a while to post about it because I've been traveling a lot since then (more on that later). 


I took a morning flight (which Lorrie happened to be on) and got to Dublin before 10am. I was really early to meet my friend Abby so I wandered around and saw the Whitefriars Street Carmelite Church (where St. Valentine is buried) and the Shaw birthplace:

I met Abby around noon at the Chestur Beatty Library. The library is a museum built around Beatty's private collection of rare books, especially Asian ones. The library is right behind the Dublin Castle (which I went to later). I was practically falling asleep because of my early flight, but it was really amazing to see such early books from all over the world. Here are the castle gardens and the stagecoach house by the museum:

I went to check in to the hostel after the museum and it went pretty smoothly at first. I took a nap because I didn't have anything to do until Fiona arrived in Dublin, but I was woken up by a Spanish man telling me I was in his bed. The hostel had just given me the wrong bed number and it was easily fixed but it was not the best experience. Fiona got to Dublin easily, but then tried to take the tram (LUAS) to our hostel in Smithfield. First, the tram stopped and no one was allowed off. Then they were all forced off because of a fire on the tram tracks. Finally, she met me at the hostel and then we went to dinner. 

The next morning, we started off by wandering towards Temple Bar. The Bar part originally meant walkway, which is common throughout the British isles. There was an open air market and lots of clothing shops:

We got brunch at Elephant and Castle in Temple Bar, which is the name of a lot of restaurants in the UK and this one has a partner restaurant in Greenwich Village. After Temple Bar, we walked by St. Patrick's Cathedral. We didn't go inside any of the churches, but St. Patrick's green was beautiful in the sun.

Then we went to the Guinness Brewery! 

The tour is a separate building from the brewery. The different levels of the building take you through the entire process of making Guinness. They especially emphasize how they get the ruby color of the beer. They also had exhibits on employees and advertising campaigns. I did a search for McBride in past employees and only one name came up. 

At the top, there's the Gravity Bar. Everyone (over 18) who goes through gets a pint of Guinness:

A lot of stuff around the city was green, including the lighting under the bridges in the middle of the city:

 The next morning, I went to O'Connell Street, the historical center of Dublin. I walked by the Post Office that still has bullets in the walls from the Easter uprisings. In Remembrance Park, there was a memorial for the Children of Lir:

Afterwards, I went to the Dublin Writer's Museum, which is really underwhelming. It was interesting to hear about how James Joyce's Ulysses walked down O'Connell Street.

My last stop in Dublin was the Castle, which is really a Georgian palace. I got there just in time for a tour through the State apartments. There isn't much to see, but we saw the room where Queen Elizabeth had a formal ceremony for her visit earlier this year and where presidential inaugurations take place. I was actually visiting a few days before the newest presidential inauguration on November 11th. 

Overall, I had a great time in Dublin. It reminded me a lot of Boston and was full of the friendliest people I've ever met. The one thing I would like to do more of in Ireland is see the countryside, which seems beautiful. 

Afternoon Tea

I brought up the idea of high tea to Lorrie and Molly a couple weeks ago. They liked the idea so I did some research. After ruling out places based on location, price, and menu, we decided to go to Eteaket, near Princes Street. Lorrie did some research and found out the difference between high tea and afternoon tea. High tea is actually dinner, eaten between 5 and 7pm, and is often fish and chips. Afternoon tea is the light snack between 2 and 5pm. It was actually quite confusing when I first got to Scotland because people would refer to dinner as tea and most of us Americans had no idea what they were talking about.

We went to tea on Sunday, October 30th. The "light" meal consisted of sandwiches, scones, clotted cream, jam, shortbread, pastries, and, of course, a pot of tea. Once the tea came, we each had a timer before we could pour it:

Our food arrived and it was somewhat overwhelming:

Between the five of us, the food barely fit on the table, even when it was stacked. 

We pretty much demolished the food. It was all delicious, especially the scones with clotted cream and jam!

This is definitely something the British do right.