I know it's been forever since I've posted anything and most of my "regulars" have probably stopped checking due to having been disappointed too many times. :-) In Wales, I didn't have any internet access. Since then, I've been staying with my cousin Anna (I believe we are technically second cousins) who lives in Manchester. She has dial-up internet which I could use for a bit of communication but it tended to freeze up after just a few minutes. I'm now in Edinburgh, staying in some university accommodation. I can get a whole day's worth of internet for just 3 pounds, but I haven't used it yet because I've been going to Edinburgh International Arts Festival events in the evenings. Right now, I'm writing this in my journal on a coach bus, going on a day trip to the Highlands of Scotland. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
On my remaining two days in Wales, I visited Caernarfon Castle (which is remarkably well-preserved), the Roman ruins of Segontium Fort, and a picturesque seaside village called Portmeirion. It was rainy for most of those days, but the sun hesitantly peaked o ut for an hour or two when I was at Portmeirion, which was glorious. I also got to hear the Welsh language spoken all over the place, and it was a lot harsher than I was expecting. I guess I thought it would be soft and flowing like Gaelic or like Celtic music, but it had quite a few guttural sounds. It was also interesting because everyone spoke English perfectly (of course), but they also spoke Welsh to other Welshmen. I think most of the people there are truly bilingual instead of just speaking a second language.
I spent half of the next day travelling to Manchester to visit Anna. I was greeted with warm hospitality and lots of wonderful English tea, which can soothe any care-worn traveller. Staying with Anna has definitely been one of the highlights of my trip. We had fun getting to know each other better and discovering that we have quite a bit in common. I was actually supposed to go to Durham halfway through my stay in Manchester, but the people I was supposed to stay with (whom I have never actually met) were being rather uncommunicative, plus I was having such a great time with Anna, and she graciously invited me to stay longer with her.
On our first afternoon together, Anna took me on a tour of Manchester. It was really fun to see a city from the perspective of someone who lives there because I got to see some things that would never have been in a guidebook. For example, we went to a teeny bopper paradise with stores selling quirky clothes and paraphernalia, unique costumes, and Gothic attire. It was quite interesting to see! We also went to a museum that had exhibitions on roof gardens, fashion, and Anime. Perhaps most interesting of all was the food section of Selfridges. In addition to selling every imaginable flavor of sushi, gourmet wedding cakes for 500-1000 pounds ($1000-2000), and candy made from real bugs or parts of rodents, it also had highly overpriced American food that you can't get anywhere else in England. For example, boxes of Lucky Charms were 7.50 pounds ($15), and boxes of Macaroni and Cheese cost 4 pounds ($8)! I was also introduced to British junk food including prawn crackers and bacon crisps. They were both very good, but bacon crisps would become my signature snack if I lived here (much like Cheez-Its in America). During my time in Manchester, I also got to see some British TV shows, including the British version of The Office and Miss Marple.
The next day, we went to the Lake District and it was a gloriously sunny day! We took a train into Windermere and got to see some of that town's lovely scenery from the top of an open-top bus (with the wind in our hair and the sun smiling down on us) on our way to Grasmere to see Wordsworth's home. Dove Cottage, as it was called because it was once a pub named the Dove and Olive, is a cozy white house with only a few rooms, even though it used to have many occupants. At its highest occupancy, it was home to Wordsworth, his sister Dorothy, his wife, his wife's sister, a few children, and possibly a long-term guest like Coleridge. The ground floor rooms were rather dark (but they supposedly did their sewing down there!) while the upstairs rooms were fairly light and airy. There are now other buildings surrounding Dove Cottage, but it is easy to imagine how glorious the view of Grasmere Lake (mere=lake, so it is redundant to say Grasmere Lake but it is clearer because it is also the name of the village) and its mountainous border.
After a quick walk through the Wordsworth museum, we made a beeline to get back out into the sunshine. We hiked through the wilderness to Rydal Mount, where Wordsworth moved after his family outgrew Dove Cottage. It's more secluded and wild than Dove Cottage, and I think its surroundings are probably closer to how they would have been in Wordsworth's time. Ann and I enjoyed having tea in the beautiful garden.
The next day, we visited Tatton Park, a mansion with gardens and parkland. It was another gorgeous sunny day (which was a pleasant surprise). On th eway to Tatton Park, we went through Knutsford, which is where Elizabeth Gaskell was from. We saw a triptych tapestry made by the community for the millennium. Anyone could stitch their own house, but the lady in charge of the tapestry stitched the outline from a photograph and supplied the thread to make sure that all the separate pieces would fit seamlessly together in size and color. We ate at a little cafe that was decorated with penny farthings (those bikes with one tiny wheel and one huge one). The mansion itself was beautiful and elegant, the gardens were huge and fun to walk through (you could imagine wearing a nice dress and "taking a turn around the garden"), and the parkland was even larger, filled with sheep, trees, and lakes.
I spent the following afternoon in Liverpool, home of the Beatles. I went to the Beatles museum and the Tate Liverpool, both of which are located on the famous and distinctive Albert Dock. Liverpool is the 2008 European Capital of Culture, and it really feels like it has taken on the role well.
I went to York the next day. This walled medieval city was quite nice (even nicer than Canterbury, I think), and its cathedral was truly fantastic. I feel like I'm becoming a snob, but after seeing so many amazing old buildings, it takes rather a lot to impress me now. Well, I was very impressed by York's cathedral. It is the largest Gothic cathedral in the UK, and it has almost half of the country's medieval stained glass windows. Some of the most notable include the Seven Sisters (made by the Cistercians out of silvery glass; they didn't believe in having images in the stained glass so it's just patterns), the Rose Window (created to celebrate the end of the Wars of the Roses between the houses of Lancaster and York), the Jesse Window (depicting the lineage of Christ in the middle pane with the patriarchs on one side and the prophets on the other), and the great East and West windows (one of which was sadly under construction when I visited).
I also saw the Jorvik Vikings Museum. The Vikings conquered the city in the mid-800s and named it Jorvik, which is where the name "York" comes from. Archaeologists discovered part of the old Viking settlement underground and have now restored it using as many original artifacts as possible. They have even created wax figures of the Vikings who lived there based on skeletons that they found. Visitors tour the city in moving compartments, kind of like a slow amusement park ride. It was quite an interesting, unique museum.
I went to the Peak District on my last full day in Manchester. I wandered along a public footpath through the Pennine Mountains to a small trickling waterfall. This area was designated "access land," which means that you are allowed to leave the path and walk freely through it. Well, of course I couldn't resist that! I walked up the mountain next to the stream. It looked like a much easier climb than it was. For one thing, all the plants made it impossible to see the terrain I was actually walking on. For another thing, it was quite muddy in places and I didn't want to get my shoes horribly wet as they are my best walking shoes. Plus it was just a lot steeper than it looked. But I had fun going partway up, crossing the stream, and then coming back down on the other side.
I went a little farther along the trail and saw another mountain I thought I would try to climb. Apparently I had learned nothing from my first experience of discovering that these mountains were a lot more difficult to climb than they appeared. I started up what seemed to be a dry stream bed. Soon enough I started to hear a trickling sound, but I couldn't see anything, no matter how much I tried to look under and around the plants. It sounded like it was coming from right below me, so I thought maybe it was an underground stream. I kept going up the mountain. Eventually I felt my foot slip much farther than it should have. Yes, I had discovered the stream and I was standing knee-deep in a muddy ditch. Fortunately, the water was only at the very bottom. Unfortunately, when I had instinctively grabbed for something as my foot slipped, I had grabbed a sticker plant. I pulled myself out of the stream bed and plucked the stickers off my hand and clothes. I searched for the stream, but really could not see it; that's how dense the foliage was. Everywhere else except right near the stream was too steep to climb down, so I just carefully descended and hoped that I wouldn't slip into the stream again. I did eventually make it back to the path, quite wet and muddy. But it was fun anyways. The mountains are really pretty, and I enjoyed getting to walk through sheep fields as well.
That afternoon, Anna's mom Jan had returned from her trip to America, and it was fun to get to see her. She, Anna, and I had tea and crumpets and then a nice dinner. The next morning, we relaxed and chatted and then had to rush a bit to get me to the train station on time. I arrived in Edinburgh, once more burdened with my over-large, ridiculously heavy suitcase. I was trying to navigate my way to my accommodation based on a crappy map and the incorrect and conflicting directions I had recieved from a police officer and from a person who works at Travelodge. Eventually, I got good directions from a taxi driver who had just accepted a different job and couldn't drive me. After an hour and a half of walking around hilly (compared to London) Edinburgh with a large purse, heavy backpack, and monstrous suitcase with a breaking zipper, I arrived at my hotel, sweaty and exhausted. It's very basic university accommodation, but I have my own room (which covers over a multitude of sins, haha) and there is a lovely view of an extinct volcano called Arthur's Seat.
After taking a shower and organizing my life a bit, I walked the mile and a half or so to the city centre to see my first Arts Festival event, the world premiere of Matthew Bourne's Dorian Gray ballet. It was really well-done and had a lot of depth, emotion, and intensity as well as exploring the interesting themes of celebrity and the relation between the surface image and what is underneath. All the costumes were modern, and Basil (the painter in the book) was a photographer of models while Dorian became a highly successful perfume advertisement model. In a lot of ways I really enjoyed it but its graphic sexuality made me a bit uncomfortable.
Yesterday, I saw the Writers' Museum about Scottish authors Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott, and Robert Louis Stevenson. It was a really good museum--and it was free! I ate lunch at the Elephant Cafe, which serves good food at a reasonable price and promotes fair trade products. But the real reason I went there is that J.K. Rowling ate at this cafe to start scribbling down her ideas for the first Harry Potter book. After that, I spent hours at the Edinburgh Castle. Needless to say, it was quite a good castle with several interesting exhibitions.
That evening, I went to a staged concert called I went to the house but did not enter. The lyrics were all from different 20th century literary works by T.S. Eliot, Maurice Blanchot, _____, and Samuel Beckett. The only one I knew anything about was, of course, Eliot. The text was "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." Four men sang for all the pieces, sounding sort of like a modernist barbershop quartet. Each of the works was chosen because the speaker is ambiguous and has multiple voices (so I personally don't know why Prufrock was selected out of all of Eliot's works). For Eliot's section, the four men were all dressed in vests, top hats, and coats. Before any singing, they took a long time carefully wrapping up a tea set and methodically putting away the rest of the things on stage (2 pictures, a table, a rug, curtains, and a half-mannequin). Then halfway through the singing of the poem, they methodically replaced the set in reverse order. There were a few minor changes (black tea set instead of white, mannequin on the other side of the stage) and it came out of a different box so it was clearly supposed to be a different set of items. Obviously they were trying to show that Prufrock is persnickety and overly concerned about seemingly unimportant things. Also, I'm sure they were acting out "decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse." But beyond that, I'm not really sure what this musical/theatrical setting added to the text of Prufrock.
Sadly, the things I wasn't really sure about increased exponentially as the piece went on. Imagine encountering three notoriously difficult modernist texts for the first time by hearing them sung barbershop-style and acted out in modernist theatrical style that doesn't add to one's understanding but rather throws more ambiguous and complex ideas into the mix. It was still kind of fun to try to analyze, even though I'm sure I failed miserably. It was also fun to observe the people in the theatre. Some were pretentiously acting as though they understood, but I'm pretty sure most of them didn't because I did not hear anyone make any sort of insightful comment about the productino during intermission or afterwards. (And that's pretty rare because you can usually hear almost everyone discussing the production at those times.) The guy next to me clapped only twice after the first half, I think because he didn't want to pretend to be enjoying something when he didn't know what was going on. He also pointed out that more people than usual seemed to be coming back from intermission with drinks. I definitely wish I could have seen this production with another English major to be able to discuss it with them afterwards.
Today, as I mentioned at the beginning of this blog post, I have been on a tour of the Highlands. I have been writing in my journal during the down times. We have seen some beautiful lochs, mountains, and glens but it's been more of a bus tour than I would have liked. I thought we would be out of the bus more often, but I guess that's okay. We've covered a lot of ground this way, and we did get to go on an hour-long boat cruise on Loch Ness (no sign of Nessie though). I'm really glad that I'm getting to see the Highlands, even if I can't experience them fully in the amount of time I have here.
I'll be in Edinburgh until early Monday morning. Then I will spend all day travelling to Dublin. My train leaves Edinburgh at 6:45 a.m. (I'm taking a taxi to get there) and then I have to change trains twice to get to my ferry. The ferry takes me to Belfast and then I take a train to Dublin. I'm going to store my extra-large suitcase in the Dublin train station until I fly out a few days later. I'm spending my first night in Dublin, then two nights in Sligo (Yeats's home town), then one more night in Dublin, and then I fly to Washington, D.C. I'm sure I'll have to pay the $50 fee for overweight luggage, but oh well, I guess.
Before this blog post gets as large as my suitcase, I'm going to sign off. If you made it to the end, congratulations and thanks for reading!
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