I didn’t have time to make a conclusion posting for my trip to Great Britain because I’ve been busy the past few days moving into my new apartment in Madison. I’m subletting in this apartment, but I selected it because I’m also on the lease for the 2007-2008 year as well, starting August 16th.

But now that I have some free time this beautiful Sunday afternoon, I’ll summarize (as best as I can) my thoughts on some of the important and inane differences that I noticed between the UK and the USA, as well as some statistics pertaining to my 16-day trip.

Differences between America and Britain

1. Shower heads: a silly thing, really, but one of the first things I noticed while at Nathalie’s house and throughout the rest of my trip. Shower heads tended to be of the detachable variety instead of fixed like the norm in the states. Of course in each country there’s variation, but I’m pretty sure that every hostel, home, and hotel I stayed in during my trip had mostly detachables, but the Generator and some of the hostels in Scotland had a couple “fixed” as well.
2. Electricity in water closets: I was caught by surprise my first night in England as well because I couldn’t find any place to plug my electric shaver in. I put it off as an eccentricity, but when the same thing happened the next night, I questioned the hostel I was staying at and found that there’s actually legislation opposed to having open outlets in the toilets. For that matter, many light switches were outside of the WC’s as well, making a sealed light fixture the only electrical appliance possible in the bathroom. I found this ironic because the vast majority of British homes are made out of non-burning stone, and they’re the ones worrying about things starting on fire? To continue this trend of cautiousness, all of the double outlets that I saw had switches for each individual outlet to control them, or turn them both off if need be. I wonder if this was done for any energy-conservation purpose, or just for safety?
3. High-flow toilets: Once again, I speak as one who didn’t spend a lot of time in Britain, but just as one who went from coast to coast, and I didn’t see a single low-flow style toilet. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, a low flow toilet uses much less water than the old standard “high flow” toilet, about 6.8 litres in a low-flow compared to 16.1 litres in a “standard” toilet. I’m not sure whether this is because Britain, obviously being an older country than America, has different plumbing systems, but while staying at Christine’s beautiful new home, I noticed that the toilets were high flow as well. Perhaps this comes down to an issue of personal preference (as several Americans, most notably Dave Barry, have expressed outrage at the USA mandate for low-flow toilets) but in closing – it IS an island, after all. It’s not like the British are lacking on water!
4. Street signs: this was probably one of the toughest and more annoying things to get used to. Anyone who knows me knows that I’m not always the biggest proponent of the USA in general, but after traveling abroad, by myself, and mostly by map, I really have to beat my head against my desk when I think of the time I spent figuring out just what street I was currently on, which way I was going, and what streets were going to be in front of me because of the street signs. In the UK, the norm was to have them attached to buildings, little posts near the ground, or fences. I don’t know if it’s mandated or just the norm in the USA, but being used to seeing them on green signposts at every intersection (the keyword being every intersection) I felt lost quite often in Britain.
5. VAT versus sales tax: One thing that any American tourist will love while shopping in Britain (and with the current exchange rate, sadly one of the few things in an fiscal sense) is that tax on purchased items has been conveniently factored into the final price already. I can’t think of a single person (both here in the States and in Britain, where a couple people actually did ask me why we do this to which I could only shrug helplessly) who prefer America’s annoying need to put prices on items “before sales tax.” In Britain, if an item is 3 pound 50, that’s how much you’ll be charged, end of story. On receipts, you can see the VAT (value-added tax) does exist, the same way our sales tax does…but lo and behold! They’ve already done that for you. I’m no fiscal genius so I won’t continue to compare and contrast these two systems…but unless Alan Greenspan calls me and tells me what gives, I’m going to continue to be very much in favor of this method of taking payments.
   …(yes, I know he’s retired.)
6. Restaurants and off-peak hours: I vividly remember my first day in England, where I was desperately cycling through Salisbury first to find Stonehenge, and then to find a toilet. I thought I’d be in luck at a little restaurant that I passed by, but was horrified to discover that it was closed. I thought to myself…”why would this restaurant/pub be closed at 3 in the afternoon?!” but as I learned later, this is a fairly common practice to close non-chain restaurants on off-peak hours and only have them open at breakfast, lunch, dinner, and then the drinking hours into the evening. Of course, my bladder wasn’t consoled by this information…
7. Traffic conveniences for the disabled: I was at first confused as to why there was always a loud buzzing or beeping noise whenever a light turned green at a crosswalk, and as to why there was patterns of raised bumps all over the place in every city, town, and village but gradually I realized that this was a greatly-advanced version of the conveniences that are just now appearing in even major cities in the United States. Raised bumps in L-shapes in front of every crosswalk path so that a blind person can feel not only when they’re in front of a crosswalk, but also when they’re about to walk past one. And the more-common loud beeping when the walk signal appears. This might not seem like too much, but the sad thing is that it is quite a bit in comparison to what I’ve seen in Madison and, for example, Washington D.C. (naming the largest city in America I’ve been in recently). And the amazing thing is that this wasn’t just in London and Edinburgh I saw these helpful additions, but every single little village, from London down to Peel on the Isle of Man. On that note too, I’ll make another traffic-related comparison. In Great Britain, the traffic lights don’t just go green-red-yellow-green like in the States, they go green-yellow-red-yellow-green, which just makes sense in my opinion.
8. Clothing differences: were difficult to quantify through different regions, even in a comparatively-small country like Britain. But a striking difference in the United Kingdom was that women seemed to be much more willing to wear comfortable clothes instead of what American women consider appealing clothing (treading carefully as I write this). Not to say that I was staring at a lot of women while traveling, but I saw that British ladies would wear loose khakis or baggy jeans, even with holes in them. It’s sad that I would notice such a gender-stereotyped issue like this, but that’s the state of female clothing in America – almost every woman that I know wears tight clothing, or at least tight pants. I might be causing some eyebrows to raise in offense here, but don’t kill the messenger.I found this trend to be remarkably refreshing while I was overseas. Don’t get me wrong; I enjoy attractive women as much as the next guy. But my feelings on the mass media here in America is that they present unrealistic images of women that far too many women feel that they have to strive to keep up with. Thankfully in recent years, this seems to have abated somewhat as people like Jean Kilbourne have called attention to it, but few will deny that our society has not yet been “cured” of this advertising disease. In London though, women seemed to be more comfortable with what they were wearing, literally. Obviously, I have no research to back up my thoughts, but if anyone has any commentary on this issue in either direction, I would love to hear from you.
9. The Beer: the most important part of any trip, of course! I was a little bit worried when I was told that in England, the bitters/lagers/ales are often served at room temperature, but after the first few days as my taste buds got used to it, I found that it was the natural way to drink beer. As any travel guide will tell you, Brits find American beer “comical” at best and “not even classifiable as beer” at worst. Compared with our cold, carbonated beer, British beer is heavier, more filling, and has a taste to it. Since it was part of my mission to sample the “house beer” at every pub I went to (most of them, such as the Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem, had their own special brew made either by them or for them), I was pleased that beer didn’t all have to taste the same like it does in the States, but instead had a whole rainbow of varieties, from the sweeter ales, to the heavy thick lagers to the aptly-named bitters. My favourite was probably “Newcastle Brown” out of them all though; I’m going to have to find out if I can get that anywhere around here…

Trip Statistics

• Pictures taken total: 2,689
• Pictures deleted because they were of my thumb: 13
• Videos taken: 41
• Pictures of myself taken either by some kind soul assisting me or by holding my arm out and trying to photograph my face: 216

• Money spent in pounds sterling overseas: 593.72
• Money spent in US dollars before leaving: 1,351.66
• Total money spent, translated to USD with current exchange rate: 2,598.47

• Pints drank total: 17
• Pints purchased for me by various friendly people: 7

And that’s that! Time to spend the rest of my summer taking classes in Perl scripting language, web design (so that someday I can write something as good as WordPress), and most importantly, working to replenish what’s left of my monetary reserves. But no matter what, I’ll never forget Britain, the sights that I saw, the smell of the mountains, the tastes of the ales and the rest of my tantalized senses. I’ll always remember the wonderful people I met like Neil, Christine, Chris, and Michael.

For the first time in my life, 4,861 miles doesn’t seem so far away!

edit: It looks like Google Maps took out the cute little prank they put on their maps, where they would tell you to “swim across the Atlantic Ocean” if you queried two destinations across the ocean. Sad, it was funny…and informative too!

My day started with an unintended long walk (I seem to have had several unintentional trips throughout these weeks) because the Underground pass they sold me at the Generator didn’t start working until “off peak” hours, which means after 9:30. I wanted to get to the Tower of London before the masses of tourists and their screaming children swamped it, though, so I decided to walk the mile and a half through the back alleys of London and along the Thames. I enjoy taking in the sights during a walk as any tourist in London might, but my legs were still killing me from last night so they certainly weren’t at their peak performance.

The Tower of London, manned by the severe-looking Yeoman Warders (or Beefeaters, as they’ve been nicknamed) is almost 900 years old. The most famous components are the ancient central building, the White Tower, which was created by William the Conqueror of Normandy in the 1100’s, and the (in)famous Bloody Tower. The Bloody Tower got its name because it’s where two princes were supposedly murdered by their uncle, Richard III to prevent the elder of the child princes, Henry V, from taking over after their father’s death. Other such notable names are Anne Boleyn and Walter Raleigh the explorer. And that’s only within the tower walls; there’s a grassy knoll outside the hill where the gallows once stood. Many thousands of people were “punished” there over the centuries, often partially strangulated, drawn, quartered, and then had their heads mounted on a pike over the South Gate of the old London Bridge. William Wallace was the first to receive such preferential treatment, but many others would follow.

The Beefeaters were excellent guides, a perfect combination of militaristic sternness, barking orders at the immense tour group of over a hundred people that I was part of (that’s what happens when it was the first tour of the day and it’s free) and amusing commentary and explanations. They got their nickname for their job in medieval days of having to test the king’s food before he ate it, but I don’t think they have to do that anymore. Our particular guide was particularly gruff; I think he frightened a few of the small children on the tour. I don’t know why parents bring their small children to a place like the Tower of London, considering its morbid history. I highly doubt that most kids understood what was going on. I mean, I’ll be honest – I doubt I would have at that age either.

The problem with the tour however was that it ran a little long, and I didn’t have time to go and see the Changing of the Guard. I used this newfound extra time to continue looking at the exhibits, but I am my father’s son – meaning that I made it to the London Eye with only minutes to spare before my ride went up (meaning no offense to you, dad). Looking out across the 60 square miles of London into the distance, I could have sworn I saw the Eiffel Tower, but the guide assured us it was only a transmission tower at the edge of London. Since the wheel is right on the edge of the curve of the Thames, it provided great views both to the east river and the south. It was a little short though, and our guide talked very quickly. I’m not sure if it was quite worth the £16 but I guess it was good for a one-time experience.

After the observation wheel, I stopped by Parliament (and St. Steven’s Tower, in which the bell nicknamed “Big Ben” is housed) and chatted with some English antiwar protesters that were staked out outside. I talked with them for awhile about the UK antiwar movement, exchanged websites and emails, and continued on to Buckingham Palace. I was disappointed to see that there weren’t any of the famous cue-tip guards, only the guards that actually look like they can kill you in moments, instead of being comical. I grabbed some lunch from the Sherlock Holmes cafe (located in the Northumberland Hotel, which appears in several Holmes novels) and spent the last few hours on the south banks of the Thames, over the Tower Bridge (the one that poor idiot, Fergie, was dancing on during the music video for “London Bridge) and then back over the Millennium Bridge that the tour went past the previous day.

I figured that I had better get some sleep, what with my plane leaving at 8:30 in the morning. I set my alarm for 4:30 in the morning and figured I’d reap the consequences later, but I didn’t have any problems this morning when I woke up. For that matter, the whole Tube ride was an uneventful hour-long ride that I slept through most of the way.

As the plane left the runway, and London vanished under its famous layer of fog as we sped towards the rising sun (now that’s cliché), I pressed my face against the glass and watched the cars shrink below. I know that I’ll be back soon.

“When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.”
-Samuel Johnson

The play itself was great – I’ve never been too much of a Shakespeare fan myself and I confess that a lot of his writings are too complex for me. But these professional actors understood this plight of a common peasant as myself and did an excellent job of making it extremely lively, humorous (of course!) and dramatic. By the time the first act had ended, I was getting the swing of the Shakespearian grammatical construction and could even occasionally understand entire sentences! When I get back home, I’m going to have to check out a copy of the play from the library and give it a read through myself…I found myself identifying with the class-clown figure of Granacio (yes, I know the spelling is horrible) more than anyone else, and since he gets the girl at the end too, it’s a win-win situation!

But I digress – I should describe my last hostel to you as best I can, because it’s without a doubt the most professional hostel I’ve yet stayed in. The whole place is done up in a sort of electric blue and steel theme, there are neon lights everywhere, and there’s a bar with pound-fifty pints, free breakfasts, free towels every morning, and amazing £3.50 dinners that are huge (not gourmet, but it’s a quantity, not quality that counts). The place is simply packed, and for once, there are quite a few Americans around in comparison with the other hostels I’ve stayed at. About twenty minutes after my arrival, I met a chap named Lester at the bar, a grad student from Boston, and we talked politics, partying, and Harry Potter for about two hours and the wonderful man bought me three pints out of the goodness of his heart. The latter also doubled as a “silent alarm clock” for me the next morning because with three pints in me, you’d better believe that I was…uh…waking up frequently. It didn’t help that once again the bunk next to me was inhabited by an ogre of man with the most unusual snoring pattern yet – sounding literally like one of the dwarves from Disney’s Snow White, with the kind of high pitched wheezing grunt that would have made me laugh if it hadn’t involved me pulling out my hair and wanting to suffocate him in his slumber.

This morning, I joined in on what I think has been my best investment yet on my entire trip – a three and a half hour walking tour of London. The price for this was (wait for it) the incredible price of free, hosted by a company that employs grad-student aged guides that have lived in London for several years. Our guide, Gregg, was excellent – combining fast-paced and upbeat descriptions of our various famous sights with stories behind them, taking us off the beaten path (as much as possible at least) and being hilarious the entire time. He called this the “Pinch me, I’m in London” tour. He made it clear that he was Australian from the outset and made a few jokes at every other country’s expense throughout the trip. They were good though, so we forgave him. As with the hostel, a surprisingly large percentage of our 26-person walking group were American tourists. I guess London is where everyone was the entire time in my travels.

We started over by the Great Fire Monument by the north bank of the Thames (pronounced “Tems” for you Yankees who don’t already know), and worked our way west along the north shore, hitting up the big names like the London/Tower Bridge(s), St. Paul’s Cathedral, the Church of the Knights Templar (or just “Temple”), Covent Garden, the Theatre District, Trafalgar Square, the National Gallery, and the government offices near Buckingham before ending at the steps of Westminster Abbey. Of course we didn’t have time to do much at each location besides hear Gregg’s stories and snap a lot of photos (which I willingly and ably complied) but it was great to just get a feel for each location, see it for the first time (for most of us at least), and get Gregg’s vocal and plaintive description of whether it was worth the admission fee or not. I can’t believe the guy was working for free, seriously. Most 1 hour tours are six pounds, and his 3.5 hour tour had no charge? I think the company is New London Tours; definitely recommended.

After the tour ended at around 15:00, we had some time to kill before things started closing down. Since I already had a daylong tube pass, I decided to get off the beaten path and see Abbey Road, sight of the famous Beatles album photograph that has the Fab Four crossing the zebra marks on the road near their studio (No one even needed that description I know, but I figured I’d add it just in case). I got to hold up traffic for a few minutes while a kind couple photographed me crossing the road and looking as Beatle-ish as possible. When I looked at the pictures 20 minutes later on the tube ride back into central London, I realized I was facing the wrong way on the crosswalk though; my pictures have me about at the right point to be nose-to-nose with Paul McCartney.

I thought the British Museum was open until 18:00 at least, but after leisurely strolling through the Egyptian section (which I really wanted to see because of the famous Rosetta Stone and their large mummy collection) they gave me the boot and conveniently relocated me to the gift shop. That’ll teach me to not read signs properly, again. By this point it was getting late, so I stopped back up at the hostel (which was only three blocks from the British Museum) to grab that feast of a dinner, watch the Simpsons, and then head right back out again to get my groundling spot at the Globe.

It’s been quite the full day, and I don’t know if my legs will ever forgive me for that punishment I just put them through (it was tight that we couldn’t even really shuffle around because of the press of people at the front of the stage, but I sacrificed my body for my love of the legitimate stage), but I’m ready for tomorrow. I’m planning an early start so I can tour the Tower of London (expensive but a necessary part of a first-time London visit), then the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace. Lester just ran into me a few minutes ago as I’ve been typing this, told me about his day and actually getting into Parliament and watching the politicians bicker, so I think I’ll do that too. At some point in the late afternoon I have tickets booked for the London Eye flight, and I’m not sure about what to do after that – maybe just more random walking around and taking pictures of things, or maybe trying to see another play; Spamalot is playing somewhere in the theatre district.

Time for me to get some sleep, but now that I’ve been sitting for a half hour since getting back, my legs might rebel against me and not allow me to move again…

This morning I went to the 10:30 service at the Liverpool Cathedral, and it was just as wonderful as I would have hoped, and also gave me the chance to observe some of the differences between a church service in America and one in England – there were few. The organ, as hoped, was simply incredible. I sat in the third or fourth row of the cathedral and listened to the thunder of the pipes as I stared up in the vaulted stone ceilings. I understand now what it is to feel small in the presence of God; the combination of the high ceilings and the raw power of the organ is enough to make the building echo for at least 10-15 seconds after a note is played, and we had the honour of witnessing a professional choir in from London to sing for us. I’m glad that I went to it, and it gave me a great starting point for getting right up to the Vestey bell tower as soon as it was over to see the amazing bells and look out over the city of Liverpool. I could see the sights I visited yesterday – from the Beatles Story over on the Mersey bank, to my hostel over to the west, and even a glimpse of the football stadium farther to the north.

However, the train system has done me in once again. I didn’t dally at the cathedral, rushing out to catch what I thought would be my train to Nottingham at 12:50. However, when I reached the now-familiar Lime Street Station, I was told that “the train was cancelled for maintenance on the tracks” and my next option was another hour later, with 2 transfers instead of zero. Oh well…I should be used to this by now. As many Brits have told me now during my trip, the rail system really isn’t that great; without a rail pass it can be hundreds of pounds to make a trip without time aforethought and planning to lower the price. I’m glad I have the pass, especially since it allowed me my memorable (or it would have been, had I the energy to remember anything at that time) night as a hobo between York and Manchester.

My stop in Nottingham was sadly brief, especially because I had lost 2 hours due to the change in my rail trip plans. I had originally planned to see the gallows tour, which had exhibitions of the dungeons and prisons of the era and was well-recommended by my guidebook and see the ruins of the castle too, but those had both closed by the time I had arrived at 17:10 and I consoled myself with a pint of house ale at the “oldest pub in Britain,” the Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem. The pub is so named for its founding in 1189, about the time of the crusades, as it’s where the soldiers would gather before starting off for the Middle East with Richard the Lionhearted. The pub had the further benefit (for a time-strapped traveller such as myself) of being embedded in the base of the ancient castle itself, so with only an hour from arrival to departure, I was able to see the castle too, or at least the outside of it. Then it was back on the train to London where I am now.

I’ve been spending my time on the train thus far by going through my guides to London; there’s so much to see and do in a city like this that unless I go through the books and make a list of specifically what I want to see, I know I’m going to miss something that I’ll learn about later and be sad that I missed my opportunity.

Only about two and a half days remain, and then it’s back to Chicago and then to Wisconsin! I’ll make them count.

Well, I’m extremely happy to say that this day is finishing up a lot better than it started out. I still haven’t had any sleep yet today owing to my much more necessary requirement of a shower and then email correspondence and the room is starting to get a little blurry as I struggle to maintain consciousness long enough to finish this up (at 19:14; isn’t that sad?) but I can honestly say that I’ve fulfilled pretty much all of my hopes for Liverpool.

After doing my hobo-riding from Manchester to York to Manchester, it was finally late enough in the day (6:30 or so) that there were trains to Liverpool and I got to the hostel (the Embassie again, same as last week) at about 7:15. The owner greeted me with familiarity, and I finally got a scalding hot shower in the horrific bathroom. For me though, after I reach a certain level of sleeplessness, my skin goes numb so I couldn’t really feel it. I set off as early as I could to get to the Beatles Story exhibit down on the docks, and spent the next couple hours engrossed in the historical story of the group’s beginnings, middles, and sadly, the ends. The place is essentially a museum to the Beatles, with a lot of the props from their (comical) movies and album covers as well as some rare artifacts as well (such as John Lennon’s tinted glasses, worth approximately £1,000,000 at its auction, and the only blue vinyl copy of The White Album LP in existence).

From there, I decided it would be within my best interests to find out something about this little-known sport that a couple regions in Great Britain occasionally play…”football,” I believe they call it. In all seriousness though, it’s amazing the Brits’ devotion to football. It makes American devotion to our “football” look like maybe having a preference for a certain breakfast cereal. I toured the museum of the Liverpool Football Club to the north of the city, where I struck up a conversation with a die-hard Liv FC fan who explained the history of the team to me as I was walking through the museum, what the various trophies were, and also a little bit of the darker and sadder consequences of the zeal of the fans. Liverpool is the best Club in the British nation, and have won 5 European Union trophies since the late ’70s (and just barely missed out on one last week, too). However, as I discovered, the massive crowd rushes can be deadly, as there’s been a few incidents involving the deaths of dozens, and in the most recent case, almost a hundred people in trampling or just being crushed to death under the weight of tens of thousands of eager, excitable fans. I didn’t get to see the field itself, unfortunately, but it was nice to have someone tell me more about the famous sport that America has essentially ignored. Of course, being an American, of course I was asked the question, “why the hell does your bloody country call it the wrong name?” and all I could do was shrug helplessly. I’ve sometimes wondered that myself; what the heck was the person who named it thinking when he chose a name that was already taken?

Finally, I decided to make my last stop of the day the huge and imposing Liverpool Cathedral, which I had walked past several times when I was here last week but never gone into. The cathedral is known for its superlatives, as my guidebook says…not only does it have the tallest ceiling in the world, it also has the heaviest set of church bells too at somewhere around 40 tons. The arches that hold up the huge ceilings are 107 feet in the air! I was a little late getting from the Liverpool stadium, so unfortunately the last tours of the tower were finished for the day and only the main body of the huge building was available to tour. I asked a passing tour guide though who was chatting with the electrician, and lo and behold, the two of them ended up giving me a private, personal, and free tour of the building! It was incredibly nice of them to stick around, even still guiding me around after the building was closed. Because the cathedral is actually comparatively new, built between 1904 and 1978, it had electricity built into it, and the electrician actually took me into the bowels of the church to show me the wiring (not interesting for most people, I’d wager, but it was for me) and the guide told me that it wasn’t often that she “met a young man with such an interest in architectural and religious history!” which embarrassed me because I really don’t think I’m that out of the ordinary. What got me though, is that the pipe organ has 9,765 pipes to it. That’s about 3 times the population of my hometown, and is ridiculous to even conceive. After chatting with my two guides for awhile longer, they asked me if I wanted to come to the service tomorrow morning, and I actually think I’m going to take them up on that offer. I think it would be nice to see an English church service, and the chance to hear those thousands of pipes going is one I wouldn’t dream of passing up.

I finished up my touring with an excellent dinner. I promised myself before I started this blog that I wouldn’t talk about food too much (something that I wasted pages on when I went to Europe a few years ago!) but this little bistro, Tabac, was a few blocks from the cathedral and recommended by my guidebook. They had the most amazing chicken and mushroom sandwich on focaccia bread, and the bread was so delicious I actually bought more from the waiter (he seemed surprised, but easygoing about it) and ate it on my way back to the hostel. Bloody brilliant; I’m going to have to find some of that bread when I get back to the States.

Well, it’s time for me to finally get some sleep, I think. I say that now, but I’ll bet I’ll still be up two hours from now doing laundry or writing emails or something. I have to be presentable if I’m going to be going to church tomorrow, and you know this is a posh church because Prince Charles was just here a few days ago to visit.

I’ve been on trains now for the past 7 hours, coming from Edinburgh to end up where I am now, somewhere around Manchester. It all started at the end of the Scottish tour, where I was supposed to follow my schedule that I had, be at the Haymarket station in Edinburgh, and then catch a train to Wigan, and then there to my night in Liverpool for touring tomorrow. However, Michael suggested to me that I just get off his bus at Waverly station, the main one for Edinburgh, because any west-running trains would stop at Haymarket in a couple of minutes. I was unsure for a few minutes, but agreed with his logic and followed his instructions. This would prove to be my undoing.

Everything went sour at Waverly and it was such a simple thing too. I found a train to Glasgow which of course would stop at Haymarket on the way out of town to the west. My train from Haymarket to Wigan left at 18:57, and this train to Glasgow should arrive at Haymarket at 18:45. A smaller station though; I figured there wouldn’t be any problem.
However, the train to Glasgow was about 5 minutes late, so as I was getting my stuff settled on the train when it finally arrived, I heard the following announcement: “Due to the lateness of the 18:45 train to Glasgow, it has been cancelled and is now the 19:00 train. We apologise for any inconvenience.” I looked at my paper and at my watch. Nineteen hundred…this was the cincher; it meant I would be missing my 18:57 ride out of Scotland.

After pounding my head against the wall a little bit, I rushed from the train and to the information centre and begged the man inside to tell me the remaining options to get me from Edinburgh to Liverpool. He made a few wise-ass comments about my timing but finally told me that I could take a train that was about to leave, to get to York, to get to Manchester, to get to Liverpool. However the kicker is that the layover between Manchester and Liverpool was about 4 hours of sitting at a station, and I would be arriving in Liverpool at about 5:30 in the morning.

I did have a nice ride between Edinburgh and a little past York – I met a nice Chinese girl, a student at Leeds’ college, who was riding back from Newcastle. She and her boyfriend had just broken up, literally a few hours before and she was pretty distraught. We were both heading the same way, so we spent the next couple hours talking about our lives and relationships, et cetera. She was wistful about the whole situation and what she was going to do with her life, and so I did my best to help her feel better about things and get her to think positively, using both personal experience and things I’d learned in my classes about relationship tendancies. Times like those that I miss being a psychology major; I like to help people with their emotions and thoughts but I’m like a plumber without his complete set of wrenches – I can only do so much with the background and limited education that I gained before switching degree programs.

Anyway, I arrived at Manchester at about 12:50 in the morning. Wandered around the station for about an hour, both inside and outside. The station was filled with the sort of drunken, unruly people you’d expect to be in a large city on a Friday night, and the police were not an uncommon sight. I staggered about, bleary-eyed, thinking about finding a loo but not wanting to spend the 30 pence to get into it. I could have killed for a McDonald’s burger and chips at that point, but the restaurants in the station were of course closed at 1 in the morning. So hungry…

So I got back on the train, where I am now. I’m heading back northwards to York, where at which point I will wait calmly for the next train to Manchester and go south again. The conductor has said that we’ll be in York by 3:45 or so, so then I can take another train back as soon as I can and maybe by that point the trains to Liverpool will be running. I just don’t want to wait in a station filled with crazed yokels; I’d rather be on a train where folk are slightly more controlled and the seats are comfy.

My only thought now is (besides finding a toilet as quickly as possible)…there are trains running all over the east side of the country, and I must have been only ten miles from Liverpool…and there are no trains to that?

Bloody ‘ell.

I’m very pleased to report that I’ve now seen both of the castles used in Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail as of today! After we left Oban this morning from the hostel, we haded out into the highland farms on the much-lauded “Hairy Coo Safari.” Now before any of you read that the wrong way, bear in mind that “coo” is the Gaelic word for “cow” and you’ll realize that these are the famous Highland Hairy cattle, which to my eye looked like big woolly dogs with ugly huge noses. They seemed quite used to the attention we were providing, but Michael warned us not to get too close to them, as there was a very large bull close by to the heifers and death in the highlands really wasn’t something we were hoping to conclude with.

But yes, from there it was onto the small town of Doune, more specifically, Doune Castle. As we pulled up the driveway, my heart leapt in my throat and I was giddy with happiness. The walls, the sunlight behind it, the tall tower…I could almost see John Cleese standing on the ramparts shouting the oft-quoted insults at me or see the trojan rabbit being wheeled to the gate. To make things even better, the kind and wonderful staff provides coconuts for you if you wish, which I happily clattered together around the castle. The rest of my group probably thought I was nuts, but it didn’t matter…I was in full Python-mode. I must have photographed every room in that castle from every angle I could in preparations for watching the movie again as soon as I get home, and I cajoled my fellow travellers to photograph me in classic Python poses (charging down the steps like Sir Lancelot slaughtering the party-goers, for example, and lying on the floor where Sir Galahad is “serviced” by the ladies of Castle Anthrax). And of course, going up to the top ramparts of the castle and looking down, realizing that I was standing exactly where Cleese had stood decades earlier and looking down to where Graham Chapman, dear King Arthur, would be standing. Obsessed? No, of course not. Although they did have to honk at me to get out of the castle so that they could move on.

Next we went to the imposing William Wallace monument in the city of Stirling, where Wallace won the Battle of Stirling Bridge in the late 1200′s against an English force twice the size of his own, and also one of the battles in Braveheart. Up on the highest hill in the city, the grateful citizens built a 67 metre tall tower, made a huge statue of him, and placed his monstrous claymore (gaelic for “great sword;” original I know) within it. 246 steps up to the top gives a great view of the surrounding countryside and the nearby Stirling Castle (which unfortunately we didn’t have time to go to). I took the time to watch the informational video on Wallace, though, and Michael had told us to be back at the bus by 15:45…I ended up sprinting up the 246 stairs (which are about .75 metres across, making it tough to pass people!) snapping a few shots as quickly as possible, and racing back down the cliff again. Once again, I was the last one back, but I think people were at least getting used to me doing this sort of thing.

That definitely was one of the sad and unfortunate consequences of trying to fit so many different events into my trip to Scotland – not enough time to stay and look at everything I wanted to, like yesterday at Stalker Castle, or at Doune Castle, and again at the Monument. My Scottish Heritage pass would have gotten me into Stirling Castle for free too, but we had to get back to Edinburgh, so that was out too. It definitely made me wish that I had opted for the 7 day trip, if I had the time and money too! I definitely recommend the MacBackpackers though, and Michael as a great guide too. He really impressed me with his knowledge of Scottish history, great jokes, and uncanny knack for timing his history stories for exact locations so that we’d see his intended target just as he reached the climax of his tales. His company’s website is www.celticadventures.com and I would definitely recommend him to anyone!

Before too much longer though, we were back in Edinburgh, bidding farewell to everyone and catching trains, buses and planes either onto the next tour location or back home for some. I met some really great people on the trip (even though the snoring last night by my roommate Phil was awesome to behold and left us all wanting to smother him in his sleep!) and I’m really glad I took a break from having to micromanage everything for the past 3 days and just was able to relax and take pictures.

Well, it’s time for me to make my way back to Liverpool now, but I’m definitely going to miss Scotland and I know I’ll be back. I have a mountain to climb, a Loch to swim in, and an island to tour, and that’s the very minimum. Next time I’m in Great Britain, I’ll work my way from the top down instead!

After I posted last, the weather continued to turn for the worst. Pouring rain constantly, the bus getting stuck in ruts at times on tiny one-lane roads. At one point, we had to pass by a city bus out in the wilderness and we were stuck side by side for ten minutes, trying not to run each other off the road. The passengers in each stared across the 3 millimetre gap with some nervousness to the other bus’s occupants, and it was a rather tense moment because we could go neither forward or back. Obviously we did finally make it out though, but that gives you a hint as to what the road conditions were like. For most of yesterday and today as well on the Western coasts, we’ve been on one-lane roads.

We saw ancient stone cairns out above Dunkeld, a thousand years older than Stonehenge and aligned with the winter solstice sunrise. It heartened me that I got to see something truly ancient on my trip, since I had missed out on Stonehenge and will have to save that for another day. We squelched about in the muck in the fields…Scotland has a free-passage law that says that trespassing is non-existent and people can literally go anywhere as long as they don’t damage the land. These cairns, called the Clava Cairns, were covered in markings from ancient tribes and served mostly as burial or cremation tombs.

After making a quick stop by the Battlefield of Culloden, where Bonnie Prince Charlie almost met his end in an ill-fated battle in 1745 (a battle considered by many highlanders to be a pinnacle battle for independence from England), we arrived in the famous Loch Ness region. I didn’t realize that the lake was so huge, being 24 miles long and 750 metres deep…deep enough, said Michael, to fit every member of the human race inside and not even reach the top. However, it was still pouring quite a bit, and scaggy too, so we couldn’t see too far down the loch (not that we’d be able to see 24 miles to the end anyway!) and many people just stayed on the bus too. Determined as I was to at least partially experience the loch, I waded out into it. It was cold, very cold. I quickly waded back out again…Michael told us later that most of the time, weather permitting, people leap out into the loch and swim around for awhile. Maybe next year.

We then made the last leg of the first day’s journey up to Inverness, the “Capitol of the Highlands”…visitors to the city from other islands around the mainland must be happy to see a city that has two lane roads and more than one pub! It was tiny, compared with the Edinburgh lodging, but the team of us amused ourselves for the evening by going to a Thai restaurant that Michael recommended (and he came with us too so it must have been good, we figured) called Hootananny’s where we had some great Thai food (rather an odd combination of locale and food, I thought!) and just chilled and listened to…surprise surprise, a didgeridoo. Who would have thought?

Today we started off by heading to the Island of Skye, renown for its beauty and mountain ranges. This is definitely one area, viewed as the bus rumbled down the mountains towards it and the mountains reaching into the clouds and stretching far into the distance, that needs to be climbed by me, and sometime soon. Apparently the Macbackpackers group that I’m with now does 3-4 day trips into Skye, just for climbing, but I’m on more or less a whirlwind tour of Scotland and we unfortunately can’t stay very long at any one location. We dropped off some people at Skye and picked up some other hikers, had a snack at a pub and took some photos, and we were off again back into the Great Britain mainland. (Michael was quick to point out that Skye wasn’t part of “Great Britain” but part of Scotland solely.

Next the bus was off to the nearby Eilean Donan castle, which many Americans know because of its conspicuous role in being the backdrop for a movie a couple people have seen, a little clip called “Braveheart” – yes, it’s the backdrop that Mel Gibson and his pals are trooping out from, and there were some pictures of the movie set in there as well. It’s actually independently owned by the MaCrae family and not by Scotland historians so it was a few pounds to get in, but it was beautifully done and had an amusing kitchen with amazingly realistic wax figures of members of the household and the food that would have been eaten after its 1932 restoration. I know it’s silly to think about it from the Hollywood position, but it was cool to walk across the bridge and think “Mel Gibson was here twenty years ago and walked right here.” I think it holds the unofficial honor as the most photographed castle in Scotland too, and I can believe it, too. I certainly added my own camera to the countless others that have surrounded it.

We made a quick stop by the Glen Coe area and the simply incredible mountain range surrounding the road there. It’s a little bit past Ben Nevis, the highest point in the entire Great Britain range (at 1300 metres, compared to my Snowden 1085 metre hike) and it’s a ring of cliffs standing around 1,200 metres tall, all around the road and covered in trees and heather and waterfalls. I felt very, very small standing there surrounded by the cliffs, with the tiny bus look like a dot of white against them as I hiked a ways away from it. It’s greener here than the Rocky Mountains, but a lot taller and more majestic than the Appalachian Range too. I really enjoyed seeing it, and it’s another one of those “if only I had more time” sort of things for me…I want to climb Ben Nevis now, too.

For the last stop before we reached our 2nd night lodgings of Oban, we stopped by a little castle, out of the way, near the little town of Appin. It sits on a tiny island off the shore. However, this castle is unusual because it goes by two names. It’s castle Stalker to some, but to millions around the world, it’s more famous as “Castle ARRGGHHhhhh” from Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail. Even though we could only spend 10 minutes there or so, and we were 200 metres away from it, I was tended to leap the fence (testing those pro-trespassing laws) and prostrate obsequiously before it. For a longtime Monty Python fan, seeing the very place where Arthur and Lancelot were refused entry, for the second time, and looking across the river and seeing the hill where the peasants and soldiers (almost all of them extras from Appin; what a lucky job!) assembled was a dream come true. But once again…a lightning trip this has to be and so we were back on the bus in a few minutes. Michael honked the horn at me; I looked up and everyone was back on the bus and watching me and laughing, I had been leaning on the fence staring at ARRGGHHhhh as everyone else left. I breathed a heavy sigh and rejoined the group, staring back at the castle longingly. Someday, someday…

Soon we were in Oban, and after grabbing some mince pies with some travel colleagues, we decided to see the local sights: McCaig’s Tower, which was a charitable job by the McCaig clan chieftain for 3 out-of-work stonemasons to build a tower in the dead of winter, inspired by the Roman Coliseum. It was never finished though, so it became a garden for the city. After snapping some shots of that, we moved on to the spooky, abandoned ruin of Dunollie Castle which has the honourable distinction of not having any guardrails, security, or any annoying things like that. It’s an ancient castle, almost destroyed now, and covered in vines and ivy and holes. We climbed around in it a bit, but as it was beginning to get dark and the stairs were both slippery and steep, we decided we should leave before it got too much darker.

The last day comes up soon, and it’s now half past midnight! Stirling tomorrow!

The bus arrived at about 9:00 to pick us up and we headed north immediately, across the Forth of Firth (I love that name) and into the Dunkeld region on the lower highlands, where we took a stop to tour the Hermitage forest, which houses the tallest tree in all of Britain and a beautiful waterfall with an overlook from it. The trees here are very old and mossy and the stones are almost covered in the thick green carpet. Our guide and bus driver for the next 3 days, Michael, said that Dunkeld forest was made by Scottish botanists who would take seeds from other countries, load them into a cannon and then fire them into the mountains just to see what would take root. There were beautiful purple rhododendrons everywhere which were certainly not originally native.

We then came to the next stop on the trip: Edradour, Scotland’s smallest distillery in the mountains of Pitlochry, where they make fabulously expensive whiskey with a team of only three men and they’ve been doing that since the distillery was founded in 1825. This place makes the whiskeys back in the States look like Fleischmann’s vodka; bottles of this stuff (aged between ten to twenty-five years in casks) cost anywhere between £39 and £69 – now double that and you have the price in American dollars. So as we’ve been driving north towards Inverness (stopping to grab lunch in the town of Pitlochry) it was a pleasant surprise that Michael got us a little gift at the distillery. Michael is talking to us about the history of the Scottish clans in the highland mountains, he tells us that there was Callies between the clans, meetings of people, and likens that to the 25 of us on the bus, and he whips out a big jug of 10 year old whiskey and says just like as the clans did, so we must all touch the bottle to our lips and drink (to show that we’ve not poisoned it to kill off the other clans). So suddenly the bus is filled with laughter and noise as we’re hoisting this big bottle around and swigging from it and of course, I didn’t mean to drink three swallows, but the bus went over a big bump and it just went down my throat unintentionally!

So we’re continuing to head north; we should be at Loch Ness within another hour or two. Michael’s put on Scottish music (everything from new age to jigs to bagpipes) through the loudspeakers, and the CD is skipping pleasantly as we hit potholes in the old highway. Shaping up to be quite nice so far!

No problems catching an hour-long bus ride up to Edinburgh this morning, putting me at about 9:15 for arrival time this morning. I found my hostel just as it started to rain, but enjoyed the view of the castle (which really is literally a mere couple hundred yards from my hostel!) and quickly decided to get out there and experience it (just carrying an umbrella too, thank goodness I brought it).

It was kind of a win/lose situation. I did enjoy Edinburgh Castle (especially since I had a special “Explore Scotland” ticket I had picked up yesterday that allowed me to skip the lines, like an amusement park) but on the other hand, I was wistfully comparing it to Conwy Castle and not in a positive way. I know that a big structure like Edin C. is going to draw a lot of international tourists (myself included, obviously) and some are going to need special accommodations. However, all of the ramps and guiderails and screaming children trompling on everything quickly destroyed any sort of historic majesty to the castle and instead it became a mere tourist trap in my mind, the ancient black stones lost behind the umbrellas and the tromp of footsteps and the shouting of the aforementioned children. That was combined with my dislike of the large number of “authorised personnel only” and “keep out” signs in every corner leading off to somewhere.In comparison with the comparatively quiet and peaceful Conwy Castle, in which you could go pretty much anywhere and was deserted, I found myself wanting to get away from it all.

So when I got back from the castle, I dropped off what remained of my stuff and decided to hunt for the quieter parts. I had lunch at a little place off of the main road called “The Elephant’s House”…it was famous for a certain writer getting her start there, doodling ideas on napkins about a boy named Potter and his wizarding world…yes, it was the favorite haunt of JK Rowling when she started writing, which they proudly proclaimed on a flyer on the counter. Me, I was just happy they offered 10% off for students! I then continued down the High Street (their word for our Main Streets) away from the mad tourist rush around the tartan/kilt stores and the castle and towards Holyrood Palace at the bottom of the hill. However, no tourists were currently allowed to visit the Palace…there was some dignitary visiting or something…some bloke named Prince Charles I believe, who actually has the title of the Duke of Rosyth (a Scottish locality) as well. I looked at it this way: I was probably within 300 yards of the Prince of England. It was a shame that I didn’t get to see the nearby Holyrood Abbey because of the visiting royalty either; I think I’m becoming an Abbey buff.

However, one glance to my right down the street and all thoughts of palaces vanished. There was a huge bluff stretching into the sky and consulting my guidebook told me it was “Arthur’s Seat” and was 823 feet tall. Following my new motto of “The best things in life are either free or are computer components” I knew that it had to be climbed. Umbrella in one hand and guidebook in the other, my shoes slowly filling with water (ugh) – I scaled to the top of the peak before me, only to realise that…………I had just climbed, not Arthur’s Seat but the Salisbury Crags instead! Drat. I had to suit myself with the second-highest point in the Edinburgh region.

By this point it was coming into the evening, so I descended and began my walk back, chatting with some of the police force dispersed around Holyrood to guard the Prince. They were quite amicable (probably out of sheer boredom) and told me some of the history of the city and of the areas around Holyrood and the hills. The Scottish accent varies quite a bit, I’m noticing; my tour guide in Edinburgh Castle was barely comprehensible with his thick brogue, but the youngest police officer I spoke with just sounded like an Englishman with something in his throat instead.

At 19:30 I had my final plans for the night: a Scottish Literary Pub Tour that started near the hostel. Even though I didn’t understand everything that was going on because of the constant literary references to Scottish writers and poets, the tour was made up of about a dozen people, mostly Americans like myself and I chatted with a friendly New York native (although she had been living in London for 6 years) who bought me a pint at one of our stops at a few of the pubs on our tour. The two guides were quite funny, playing a snobbish intellectual “against” a streetwise smart-aleck actor. Both of them were advertised as trained actors and I thought they did great. The weather was still pretty bad which would explain why more people didn’t come down. However, they even pointed me out to some great restaurant/pubs for me to visit, as by this point it seemed like my light lunch had been hours ago.

I ended up walking back down High Street again but I couldn’t find the one they reccomended, and since it was almost exactly 22:00 at that time, all of the restaurants had stopped serving food. With a heavy heart, I took my seat at…McDonalds. Ordered myself a few burgers, and watched morosely out the window at the trees waving as it grew darker. It was almost embarrassing to be eating burgers and fries in a beautiful historic place like Edinburgh, but I definitely plan on haggis within the next few days.

Wow, falling asleep where I sit here in my bed in the hostel. This hostel is quite nice (and busy too) and the rooms are named and the bunks are named appropriately. For example, I’m in the “underwear room” and my bunk is named “bloomers” – I’m across the way from boxers, briefs, and “crotchless”: I kid you not. The room around me is filled with snores from my sleeping roommates, and I’m pretty sure I’ll be joining them in the next few minutes…