The Meat of my Trip-Sandwiched Weekend

Alright...here's my story. April 19-20th. So, my flight from Dublin to Glasgow, Scotland was at 8:50am. The buses started at 6am and went to the airport from the stop near our hostel. I set my alarm, got ready, checked out, and made it to the bus stop before seeing a clock stating that it was only 4:45am rather than 5:45am....I was an hour early! I didn't realize the clock on my phone didn't switch automatically. So, luckily I was able to get an airport shuttle to spend my last 6 Euro on to take me to the airport, which I figured was much better than waiting an hour in the cold for the public buses to start running. There I was, only a mere 3 hours and 20 minutes early for my flight and not coherent enough to fully function so I basically found a table and just sat there for an hour. I suppose though, early is better than late!

Needless to say, that morning was a fluke and the rest of my Glasgow experience was great! My friend, Ian, met me at the Glasgow central station and we walked around downtown Glasgow for a bit. First we checked out the Glasgow Cathedral, where St. Mungo is buried and is the only medieval cathedral on the Scottish mainland.

It was quite windy that day, but the sun was shining!

Behind the Cathedral we found the Necropolis...a bunch of tombs in the hillside.


We walked around for a bit and got some great views of Glasgow!

Afterward, we grabbed a bite to eat and not just any bite...a homemade Steak Pie bite! Soo tasty, steak with a sauce and a flaky pastry thing over the top, mmm mm.

Then, we made our way to George Square where this, the City Chambers, is located. Here, we just chilled for a bit while enjoying the sun...something that had been quite foreign to me until the past weeks.

Next we made our way up to University of Glasgow, where Ian goes to school...totally is Harry Potter-esque...and wonderful! But first, we stopped for a drink on this cute little street in the "posher" part of Glasgow where we met or more so encountered a nice, older lady who was waiting for a wedding party to arrive. She basically joined us at our table and carried on conversation when she wasn't watching for the bride and groom to get there. Ian even ended up taking a picture of her and the father of the bride who I might add...was wearing the traditional kilt! And this is one of the few places where hearing a bagpipe player on the street isn't rare.

Alright, here's the University which dates back to 1451 when it was founded.

And us with our scholarly, "thinker" looks, fittingly. Unfortunately, I missed getting the tower in the background.

The arches connecting the two quadrangles...there is an official name for the arches that is on the tip of my tongue but can't remember for the life of me. It starts with a 'C' though...of that I'm 88% sure.

A view of one of the quadrangles.

...and the other.

This is the Kelvingrove Art Gallery, we didn't make it to this one but did check out the Hunterian Gallery which had a lot of sketches and paintings. One of the artists featured was Whistler...I have yet to figure out if it's the same Whistler who painted Whistler's Mother or not.

Flowers! Spring is here...finally!

That night we went to a movie (21-good movie!) with Ian's friend Jenny at one of the biggest movie theaters I've ever been too. I think we had to go up something like 6 escalators to get to the movie. Oh, and there was a fire alarm that went off at 3am in Ian's building and we all had to evacuate...luckily we had gotten back only 15 minutes before so no sleep was lost.

The next day we went to another town about a 45 minute train ride away called Loch Lomond. It was full of rolling hills, the largest inland lake in the UK and...these hilarious ducks!

They were just looking for food among the rocks, but I thought they were hilarious and we watched them for probably 5 minutes...these are only a few of the many pictures I took of them. I know I'm a dork :)

See, rolling hills!

We skipped rocks for a bit...I think the record, held by Ian, was 8 skips. I was close with 5! There were so many dogs too! It's a great place where the locals come to walk their dogs, ride bike, and let their kids wear off some energy.

This hill may not look so tough, but we had to take a break on our way up to this castle.

And our view from the breaking point.

<-- Ian Castle -->

Haha, I just realized that there's a HUGE tree in front of it...literally just noticed. And I thought this was such a better picture than the one I took before we headed up the hill.

There were these funky pine trees...which looked like Charlie Brown's Christmas Tree as saplings...sorry I didn't get a picture of a lil' one for you.

I love the bright colors!

After strolling around the Lake area for a bit we got something to eat where I was introduced to one of my new favorite desserts...scones, cream, and jam. Sounds simple enough right--delicious! In fact, I could go for some right now...

Afterward we took the train back to Glasgow where Ian and I parted at the train station...it was a really short trip unfortunately. This was quite the traveling day...my flight was supposed to leave just before 9pm, but ended up being delayed an hour and a half which wasn't a big deal because I was meeting Hilary, Miki, and Garrett at the airport where we're camping out for our 6:40am flight back to Copenhagen. So, anywho the flight back to Dublin wasn't so bad except toward the end when the stewardesses started running up and down the aisle faster than usual, the engine powered down, and the flamboyantly gay man and his girl friend sitting next to me were freaking out about how their friend had cursed them and we're going to crash; all that happened within a 5-minute period...then, I got a little nervous. But we landed and it was actually one of the smoothest landings I have experienced this semester thus far.

I met up with the rest of the crew and here we are camped out in the only open area in the airport that we could find to sleep. I slept for maybe 45 minutes this night...not too keen on the hard, cold floor. And you see in this picture how I had plenty of space to lay down on toward the bottom of the picture, but where did I choose to curl up? ...in half of the tiny little space between the sets of legs and behind the blue backpack. Smooth, right? But satisfaction awaited me as after we checked in at 4am, Miki and I found these padded benches outside a restaurant where I passed out until I was woken up to board our flight. Good trip!

Ah, Ye Emerald Isle! Land of craic, bollocks, and wankers, not really :)

Hello all, so rather than work on my project I'm procrastinating by updating this because it's much more fun than writing up histories on different parts of Copenhagen :) So, Dublin! Hilary, Garrett, Miki, and I flew to Dublin since this past weekend was a long one (we had Friday off from school) along with quite a few others...Dublin was the destination of about 7 other DIS students. This was a packed weekend as I not only flew to Dublin but also went to Glasgow, Scotland to see Jordan's friend Mike's brother, Ian who's been studying there since last fall. So, unfortunately I had only a day in Dublin...but I liked what I saw!

First, after checking into our hostel which was right off one of the main streets (O'Connell Street) we made our way to the Guinness Brewery! Well, first we ate and I had a delicious chicken ceasar wrap in which I savored every piece of chicken. I haven't done much grocery shopping in the past few weeks so meat tasted Wonderful! haha

I was in culture shock after being there for about an hour and realized that I may have more culture shock when going back to the states than when I came to Copenhagen! The reason being is that now I'm so used to not understanding anything from advertisements to people's conversations that when in Dublin where they speak English I was so thrown off to understand what people were saying and being able to read the advertisements! I don't know if I got over it the whole day.

Also, in reference to the title...I'll show you a couple of ballochs and wankers in some upcoming posts. Some friends posted pictures from Prague where we met a bunch of them.

Here's a bridge we walked over to the Temple Bar district, Dublin's most touristy area. The area has kept it's medieval street pattern with narrow, curvy, cobblestoned roads and is Dublin's cultural area.And here's the district...lots of souvenir shopping but mostly restaurants and places for people to hang out. I almost tripped over a drunk homeless man here who was getting a talking to by policemen.

The Temple Bar...either named after the Temple family who lived in this area or as an imitation of the Temple Bar in London...Wikipedia didn't know. I actually have a t-shirt from here that my friend Eitan got for me last summer when he was here.

Continuing on our way...which by the way I was leading the way in getting to the brewery. Little did the group know that I only kinda knew the area where the brewery was because I'd seen it on a map at the hostel but the maps we had with us stopped short of where the brewery was. Haha, it's all about confidence cause I got us there! It just took asking a few people including a group of three people who were standing on a street corner (which made Hilary a little nervous because apparently they were homeless? Haha, I didn't realize) and a shop owner. We walked into the shop and the owner pretty much finished our sentence because he could tell we're looking for the brewery he said.

I'm a fan of clock towers...and getting lamposts in my pictures.

Ooooo, these were great and I still get excited about them! At every crosswalk they had directions on which way to look. So, rather than automatically look both ways when I got to a crosswalk my thought process went like so: 1. Stop 2. Look down 3. Read out loud 4. Look which ever direction it told me to 5. Cross. Haha, these should be implemented everywhere! The roads were all over the place here, so I see why they needed them. To get to the other side of the street at one intersection we had to cross about 5 crosswalks to do it legally....and they jaywalk here! And even more so in Glasgow! It was a nice change from the 'no one crossing on a red signal even if there's absolutely no cars coming' attitude in Copenhagen.

Shoot, this is a Catholic Church that I can't remember at the moment...oh, it's the Christ Church Cathedral haha, I just looked it up, quite original. It's one of two medieval cathedrals in Dublin. It has 19 bells that ring full circle on New Years Eve, the largest number of bells that ring that way in the world and the Anglo Norman Warrior Richard De Clare, aka Strongbow (possibly who the hard cider is named after??) is believed to be buried somewhere on the grounds of the cathedral. This is all taken from my Guinness Brewery guide, well done!

Almost there...

I asked a friendly man to take this for me who ended up being from Chicago. he was there with his wife and another couple. Both the women had studied in a city outside Dublin 10 years prior. This was such a cool brewery! And huge...6 floors high!

I think these are all the different bottle shapes they've had? There wasn't much on it cause it was right when you walk in.

We went through the making of the beer...first playing in the barley seeds and then checking out the huge hops plants.

One of my favs...Garrett took this...I said I'd give him credit. Apparently water is quite important for beer (sarcasm) so they had a large waterfall you could walk under.

And a sampling room that showed all the Guinness beers you could get and where they're available. Among them were the Draught, Stout, and this one which is only available in Ireland...but unfortunately not in the brewery. Although the bar was great here I was a little disappointed that they only offered the Draught rather than giving us options of all the beers they produce like the Carlsberg Brewery did.

We walked right across this and didn't ever realize it until we're a few floors up looking down at others who were doing the same. It says "There is beer and there is GUINNESS. The essence of GUINNESS is all around you."

We were in a bit of a hurry to get to the bar before it closed so I didn't really get to see what this display was all about but liked how it was set up.

We got one Guinness with our ticket and had to wait about 5 minutes after they poured it for it to settle and then for them to top it off...there's a short video at the end of this showing them settle.

My attempt at a 3-leaf clover.

Garrett and I got ours first...and Garrett actually didn't like his so Miki, Hilary and I got to split it. I can't say it was my favorite but by taking big swigs I was able to finish it. The funny this is...Guinness is so filling that all of us were starving by the time we got to the bar but after finishing our beers we're set for another hour at least.

Cheers! or as they say in Denmark, Skole! I don't know if I've mentioned this before. Instead of clinking and cheers-ing in Denmark, they hold their classes up say Skole! and make eye contact with everyone. It's always awkward when us Americans try...cause we say Skole and just look from person to person which takes about 6 seconds before taking a drink. Then we laugh cause the Danes do the cheers thing when we're around, so it just gets all screwed up haha.

The bar was sweet....see that circular thing to the left of all these silos...that's the gravity bar with glass all around giving a 360 degree view of Dublin!

You can't really see in this picture too well, but I dubbed Dublin (no play on words there) the city of cranes...there were 6 off in the distance in this picture, and 3 others if you were to turn 90 degrees to the right from here. Right below is part of the brewery.

The tower with the green top is St. Patrick's Tower built in 1805. It's an old windmill that's lost it's four blades. Unfortunately I don't think the sun came out at all when I was there but at least it didn't rain!

Hahaha, this still makes me laugh. After walking out of the brewery we decided to take a different way back because we followed the sound a nearby ice cream truck. Not too far away we happened upon the ice cream truck named none other than...Mr. Greedy!! Who names their mobile ice cream business Mr. Greedy?! Hilarious, but creepy as well.

On the walk back, upon which we got lost (I swear I wasn't in the lead this time though!) we happened upon the Quay's Bar. I think this is the name of the bar Alex said she used to go out to in Galway, Ireland last semester. So, I had to take a pic.

We wandered through the streets on our way back and grabbed some dinner after awhile. Then, you aren't going to believe this...we didn't party that night, even though we're in Dublin! All of us were exhausted having been up since 5-ish in the morning so we took a nap, went out for some delicious dessert and then made our way back to the hotel around what I thought was midnight...to be continued :)