HAMISH!!!!

Yesterday I took a tour up to Inverness and the Scottish Highlands. Yes, I admit it, I did join one of those accursed tour groups that I keep griping about but it was just far more economic to do it this way.

I was sadly plagued by all the problems associated with tour groups - I didn't get to spend half as long as I wanted at the places I wanted (1 hour at Urquhart Castle is definitely not enough) and just got jerked from place to place on a coach.

Never the less there are some important advantages associated with taking the tour group.

Firstly and most importantly I got to see Hamish (one of Scotland's most important citizens in my opinion). Now Hamish reinforced my love for all that is bovine and I felt like I could just wuffle him all day! He's so shaggy and fat and just adorable! (You can see a picture of me with him above) All ye hail Highland cows!

Secondly I had a tour guide who, throughout the trip, gave us random interesting facts about Scotland (and all those who know me will know how much I love random interesting facts). For example, I now know that the Loch Ness holds so much water that if you were to drown the entire population of the world thrice over in it the bodies would still not break the surface of the water (macabre but true). I also know that a lot of whisky is lost to evaporation in the maturing process and the Scottish call this evaporated whisky the 'angel's portion'. Now the idea of a whole bunch of tipsy/drunk angels tottering about Scottish skies I find particularly hilarious so I had a good guffaw in the coach at that one.

The Highlands themselves are definitely worth seeing. Majestic, carpeted with heather and groomed by the biting winds it feels utterly desolate but utterly beautiful at the same time. A eerie feeling that is exemplified by the ruins of Urquhart castle situated precipitously on the shores of Loch Ness. Visit it if you get the chance. Leave more than an hour so you can explore every nook and cranny and still have time to sit and find some inspiration in the area that looks so pristine and serene now but definitely wouldn't have been all those hundreds of years ago.

Today I visited Glasgow which is modern, industrial, not as touristy as Edinburgh but home to a lot of contemporary art galleries. Now the best part of Glasgow is that its patron saint is ... *drum roll please*... SAINT MUNGO!!! (GO MUNGO!) That's right, its patron saint is him who gave the name to my school house! I went and visited the St Mungo Cathedral and the St Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art and had a chat to the guides on hand about the remarkable life of St Mungo (whose real name apparently was Kentigern) and all the miracles he performed. :p

PS: Just so you all know the lack of internet access here means that often I am posting 2 entries at the same time (so do scroll down if you're interested, or just at work with nothing better to do!)

Two Plain Pies and an Onion One as Well

Oh my gosh! I totally love Edinburgh! I want to be Scottish! And poo to anyone who says that England and Scotland are really one country as they must either:

(a) Be lying; or
(b) They never actually visited England and Scotland.

The cool Scottish folk here make their English brethren seem dreadfully dull and dumpy. (No offence to anyone English) After the long drawn, bleak faces of London it's so incredibly lovely to be greeted by great big Scottish smiles and warm welcomes wherever you go. Oh and yesterday there were people wandering around in kilts! Yes that's right! Even though it's crazily cold here people still worn their traditional get up and wandered around bare legs and all! (I was informed that was actually just because there was a Scottish football match on but it was still so much fun to see!) I sat in a bar till the wee hours of the morning yesterday with Alex (a California roomie of mine in the Edinburgh hostel) and two Scottish guys (and a South African) who were trying to teach us to talk like true Scots. Apparently the phrase to master is 'Two plain pies and an onion one as well'. But I admit defeat because to me it just sounds like 'Ta pley pays anda ling-a-ning-a-long'. However they did give Alex a Scottish scarf and I a Scottish flag for my efforts!

Oh and the topography of the land here is just so unique. Edinburgh is set into really hilly land so the streets here are decidedly bizarre. Some of the streets (called Closes) really look more like private house accesses than public roadway. They are either a claustrophobic gully created by the tall buildings on either side or just a steep and narrow flight of steps. The most amazing thing is that these Closes don't just exist above ground but also underground and (for a small fee) you can descend into the subterranean maze (with a dressed up guide) and have a glimpse at how bleak it must have been to live in this warren in medieval times.

Today I also climbed Arthur's Seat. No, not the one of the Mornington Pennisula but the big 250m peak that would formed by a volcano in the heart of Edinburgh. It was a tough climb, and no I'm not just saying that because I'm fragile. The road up is very steep and the wind is so blustery it feels as if it might sweep you right off the hill. I also took a wrong turn at one point and ended up facing the choice of backtracking a good 10 minutes or trying to scale a 60ºb incline. I chose the incline and had to do the climb on all fours. It made me feel like I was in the Highlands. At this point I thought about the true Scot who would be making the climb in a kilt and decided that the Scottish are truly mad. And then I saw a bunch of young laddies (I think they were Spanish) run up the craggy hill screaming 'WILLIAM WALLACE!' at the top of their lung (undoubtably the only Scot they actually know of) and promptly realised that no, it's all homo sapiens that are crazy.

Oh and it has come to my attention that my blog template is a little funny, so if you can't see a link in the top left hand corner that says PHOTO GALLERY in big letters scroll down the page and you should see it near the bottom. :p

Now is the Winter of Discontent...

When I first arrived in York I admit I was rather irate. It was cold again and it seemed that everywhere I went I was forced to pay outrageous sums of money to go to crappy attractions. Alright I'll begin by telling you the exchange rate from pounds to AUD is approximately 2.5 so you can get an idea of why I was going crazy.

For example the York Castle Museum cost me £5 and can only be described as a waste of time. Well actually if you want a proper rundown it is basically a museum dedicated to the mundane - mainly housework. So the only reason I didn't run outside immediately is because I paid £5 to get in.

Clifford's Tower also charges an outrageous £2.50 or something like that for entry into a broken rubble on top of a hill. Whatever!

However I started to come around after I visted the York Minister which is apparently the biggest Gothic Cathedral in Northern Europe. It has the most AMAZING stained glass windows I have ever seen. Apparently preserved because Cromwell's general in the Reformation was some dude actually from York so sheltered it from the bash happy soldiers and the like. Although getting into the Minister (and the Undercroft) cost me something like £6 it was definitely worth the admission price - especially when you find out that the poor Minister is actually close to falling into ruin and the cost of maintaining it for 30 seconds is £2.50. If you are an avid fan of history like me DO NOT miss the tour of the Undercroft. It comes with a free audio tour that spews really interesting fact at you and you get to see all these really fascinating foundations and the like.

But never despair! There are also some awesome free attractions in York. The Art Museum is free (if tiny) and best of all the Association of Voluntary Guides in York gives a free guided walking tour at 10:15am every day. A guide who (voluntarily, obviously) gives up their free time will take you around the city for about 2 hours regaling you with stories from York's history (and given the historic nature of the city, believe me there are plenty of tales) and pointing out these fascinating little nooks and crannies that you would never have noticed had you gone pottering around independently.

I also enjoyed sitting on the bridge in the morning and watching the crazy pigeons circle overhead in aimless loops. I like to think that maybe some young bright spark bird one day just decided that his diet of overprocessed white bread (fed to him by obese tourists) was making him horizontally ample and thus he needed to reverse this hideous problem by flying around in endless and pointless circles. Soon this body image conscious trend caught on and now all these birds of a feather flock together every morning for this daily flight to battle the bulge.

Now for those well versed in Shakespeare you may have noticed that I've again borrowed from Richard III for a headline (note I didn't say quoted because I can't really remember the exact wording of the quote). Now this is not due to any particular love for that particular monarch but it just chances that there is a tiny museum in York (in one of the guard towers on the wall) that puts poor Richard III on trial for the murder of the two princes in the Tower. (You know, Richard's 2 little nephew princes that he locked up in the Tower of London) They actually have an appallingly bad mannequin of Richard III in a witness box and you can listen to an audio recording of his 'cross-examination'. Now the lawyer in me was most upset by the fact that the defence were actually allowed to cross-examine their own witness and I was most tempted to jump up with 'Objection your honour! Leading the witness!' but alas I did not think that an audio recording would respond too well to that kind of excited interaction! :p

Anyway, I am now on a train from York to Edinburgh. I am SO impressed by the long distance trains here in England. Not only do they have power sockets in the wall so you can charge your electrical appliances, but they also have WIRELESS INTERNET in the carriages. Okay so I can't get on it right now because I'm too poor to pay but goodness I'm still majorly impressed!

Treading Softly in the Steps of Shakespeare

I'm currently on the train from Birmingham to York with the most awesome ticket inspector ever who is today annoucing himself to the commuters with "Tickets, passes and excuses please!" :p

But I've spent the last couple of days in Shakespeare country - Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwick and the like. I must admit it hasn't really been educational - although Stratford-upon-Avon (that's Shakespeare's home town) has become something of a Shakespeare factory I found myself curiously uninformed about the great bard as I shuffled through his birth home, his daughter's home and his granddaughter's home along with about a million other tourists. I mean sure old Tudor style houses are cool but I really fail to see how they really evoke any memory of Shakespeare (although they have tried uber hard by placing Complete Works and quills etc on every other table).

However one thing I did in Stratford-upon-Avon which no visitor should be allowed to miss is catch a performance by the Royal Shakespeare Company. It's really, really good. I saw Coriolanus, which is obviously not one of Shakespeare's better known works as I had never heard of it before (despite owning a complete works). And it's pretty clear WHY it's not really one of his masterpieces - the characters are all fairly one dimensional and the play lacks the really eloquent and insightful dialogue that marks so many of his greater plays. However I personally found the performance excellent. The thespians, particularly a couple of the older ones, were masters at treading the boards and kept me enthralled for the full three hours. I also had no trouble understanding the dialogue despite it being in ye olde English which I always think is the mark of a really great Shakespeare performance. I'm so addicted now, I think I will try and go catch The Tempest in London when I get back there AND try and see the performance of King Lear with Ian McKellan in the titular role. (Ian McKellan may be better known to you as Gandalf, Magneto or Leigh Teabing)

I should also note that in Stratford-upon-Avon I indulged by staying in B&B accomodation rather than hostelling it (mainly because I didn't want to walk 2 miles out to the nearest hostel at 10pm in the evening). Now have you ever seen that episode of Gilmore Girls where Lorelai and Rory accidentally end up in a B&B and spend the whole time skulking around for fear of being drawn into chit chat with the oldies? Well I didn't think B&B's like that existed in the real world. But they do! The lady who owned the B&B I stayed at, Carlton's, would basically lurk in the dining room (which you had to pass on your way out) and then ambush you as you exited for chit chat. Now she was really nice, and I don't mind chit chat so stayinbg there was actually quite nice for me. Plus the HUGE English breakfast that I was served the next morning made me really rather forgiving.

Now Warwick doesn't have much except a giant castle. Now I personally think this castle would have been ABSOLUTELY AWESOME if I had have been 15 years younger. The kiddies there were so cute and having an awesome time dressing up in plastic suits of armour and waving plastic weapons and, when bored of that, sliding across the overwaxed floors on their tummies. They also have these actors dressed in period costumes reprimanding you whenever you tried to treat them like they came from the 21st century. Although I found the whole castle experience a little kitschy I did love the grounds which offered a perfect retreat from the hubbub of tourism in the main castle. A personal highlight was the Peacock Garden which contained live peacocks as well as shrubs pruned to look more like peacocks but in actuality look more like seals.

oh I also visited Birmingham, and no offence Anna, but it's pretty boring tourist country there!

Oh My Aching Feet...

Well the reason I haven't really posted in my blog for a few days is that I am madly in love. Yes, that's right, I'm completely infatuated with the British Museum.

I realise now that my initial estimate of 9 hours to get through the Brit Museum was a complete and utter gross underestimate. I have now spent more than 21 hours in there and I could still go back (I won't, I will restrain myself but I could)!

It's totally amazing to see the metopes from the Parthenon that I did my Year 12 Classics catalogue on as well as the frieze from the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus itself! I was so excited to see that famous bust of Perikles (I went by and said hi and told him I would one day actually finish Thuycidides' History) and that vase with Achilles slaying Penthiseleia... wow... I'm such a happy camper.

I realise that to most people my rant would make them think the British Museum is actually incredibly borin, but I don't care, I love it soooooo much with every fibre of my being! (Except for my feet which are complaining after having stood for 21 hours...)

I've uploaded a picture of the Rosetta Stone. For those of you that don't know the Rosetta Stone was the key to deciphering Egyptian heiroglyphics. If you look carefully you can see me in the reflection in the glass in front of the Stone taking the picture! :p

Alright, I have to go massage my aching feet now...

But It's Just a Bunch of Rocks...???

Stonehenge gets my vote as the most underwhelming attraction I've been to so far. Quite frankly unless you want to know some random information via the audio tour you can definitely skimp on the entry fee and just take photos through the fence. Frankly I expected so much more from a monumental engineering wonder that has inspired hundreds of writers and been the subject of so much speculation and debate.

Maybe if I took off all my clothes and ran around Stonehenge naked it might provoke more interest...

...or maybe if there simply weren't constant buses disgorging loads of ignorant tourists onto the site. If I hear one more person call Stonehenge one of the 7 Wonders of the Ancient World... grr...

However I don't think my trip out to Salisbury to see Stonehenge was wasted at all.
St Mary's Cathedral at Salisbury is simply awesome. Not only are the walls decorated with a multitude of statues of saints '(all unique) but there are also the Grotesque heads contorted in the most anguished expressions I've ever seen (see picture gallery). Luckily I delight in such things. I was also privileged enough to be there when the local school children's choir was performing so I got to see all this to a soundtrack of delightfully cherubic voices. (For those of you wondering, that was NOT sarcastic) Oh, and Salisbury Cathedral also has the most well preserved copy of the Magna Carta existing. That was pretty exciting - I was all "this is the beginning of the rule of law". Ahhh, my HPL lecturer would be proud... :p (For the unenlightened, ie non-Melbourne Law students, HPL = History & Philosophy of Law, you learn about Mabo and the rule of law in it)

I also stopped by Old Sarum on the way back to Salisbury from Stonehenge. Old Sarum is the ruins of a castle built by William the Conquerer. These battered stone walls are set atop a huge hill in the most tranquil and lush English countryside imaginable. And, because to the unimaginative person a bunch of rocks which don't even make a wall are indescribably boring, the place was largely devoid of snap-happy tourists so I got to sit in peace atop a ruined wall surrounded by nothing but endless green and sunshine and the occassional bird chirp and write in my journal and ponder what will become of OUR modern metropolises (is that the correct plural? Maybe metropolii?) after we are all returned to dust... ahh, such is bliss...

(PS: The reason that my photo looks stretched and pixelated is because I tried to increase its size to make the rocks look more impressive but apparently eblogger doesn't like that :p - maybe I should switch to LiveJournal to make Lil happy... :p)

What's the Matter with English Weather?

London is such a majestically beautiful city.

I got my first glimpse of London from the air as I was flying in from Scandinavia. After the wee bite sized Scandinavian capitals I simply couldn't believe what a sprawling metropolis this city looked like from the air.

It was no different after I landed. Everything in London - every single brick in Trafalgar Square to every blade of perfectly manicured grass in Kensington gardens to every intricately carved coffin in Westminster Abbey oozes the prestige and power that London has enjoyed throughout history.

There is SO MUCH to do in London. I've had 3 really full days in London and I think I would need AT LEAST 3 more to just get around to all the MAJOR sights! It's crazy!

So far the highlights have been:

Watching Les Miserables at the West End. The first time I have ever seen a standing ovation. I stood up at the end of the curtain call just because I wanted to see the curtain call and couldn't over all the standing people. :p

Trafalgar Square
I love this place! It's just so big and busy! You can stand at the entry of the National Gallery (which has just an incredible collection of art, although the audio guide is crap and there are actually mistakes in the explanations - hmmm...) and just overlook the whole square and watch the people feed (or scare) the pigeons depending on their personality bent, enjoy a quiet moment by the beautiful fountains or climb all over the lions at the base of Nelson's Column to try and get the best touristy photo. Plus the whole space is just really well designed and executed so it's just good.

The Parks
Kensington Park and Hyde Park are just beautiful spaces to go walk your dog or feed the birds or just while some hours away doing nothing. It's also awesome for people watching.

St Paul's
Climbing up something like 800 steps to the Golden Gallery (basically the pinnacle of the cathedral) to get the most spectacular view of the city. Too bad buying the London Pass meant that I was super short on time so had to run the whole thing. I think it's a sign of the times that I wasn't even really out of breath after the climb. But oh my aching legs...

Also see the photo gallery for some highlights of my trip through Madame Tussauds.

Note that Westminster Abbey and Buckingham Palace didn't make the list. The overwhelming sea of tourists put me off. Okay, I realise that I myself am actually contributing to the tourist traffic but I somehow consider myself superior to all of them. I will tell you the logic behind this when I figure it out. Maybe cause I wasn't blocking off the entire view to the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. Maybe that was because I couldn't get close enough to the fence to block the view... hmmm...

Oh and the British Museum isn't on that list either because I haven't been. Methinks the standard opening hours of 8 hours is just not going to be enough for me. I'm waiting for one of those days when they have extended opening hours! :p Yes Xin is crazy... :p

Oh yea and I went up to Oxford today. And was once again hit by my curse of always going somewhere when the one attraction I actually want to see is closed. I went to Oxford to see the dining room where they film the Hogwarts Hall for Harry Potter but that was closed. Poo. Nevertheless Oxford is such a beautiful city. I love all the Grotesque decorations on the buildings (noticed I capitalised Grotesque to signify that I was referring to the artistic/decorative/architectural style not using the word in the sense that the decorations are ugly). Now have lots of photos of funny looking creatures making faces (basically that's the layman's definition of what Grotesque style is :p).

So I want to finish this entry by raving about what awesome weather I've been getting in UK (touch wood). It's only rained once when I was actually inside Westminster Abbey so it didn't even matter and apart from that I have been getting spectacularly sunny skies! Yay! :p

A Mattress! A Mattress! My Kingdom for a Mattress!

Err yes, I realise the fact that I couldn't find a monosyllabic synonym for mattress means that the above quote is no longer in iambic pentametre but pray forgive :p

Anyway for the past few days I stayed with Mary and Darren who are on exchange in Oslo. Oh and I got to sleep on a really comfy mattress - hence the title of this post; apparently Mairs and Darren had poked all the mattresses on offer to make sure I got the comfy-est one :p)

I should inform that my last post on this blog was actually much delayed - for the last 5 days or so I have actually been in Norway rather than Sweden but have been rather slack with updating my blog. There is a reason for this - I have been hanging with Mairs and Darren. See the crux of the matter is that when you're travelling alone, you return home (wherever that may be) at the end of the day and there's not really anyone you can chat to so I tend to just do all the administrative stuff. However when you're hanging out with friends you laugh and talk and things like blog updating just tends to fall by the wayside.

Although I want to add that this in no way reflects on how boring/good Norway is - Norway is an AMAZING country.

Oslo is not as dreamy and romantic as Stockholm but it has a lot of attractions on offer - the National Gallery which has famous paintings like Munch's 'The Scream' and 'Madonna' (neither of which I saw because the Munch room in the National Gallery was under renovation - grrrr!!! Damn wintertime renovations!!! For the same reason I missed out on seeing Rodin's 'The Thinker' in Finland) as well as really well preserved Viking boats and the like. Vikings are a big part of culture in Scandinavia - it's cool, yah. :p The Nobel Peace centre is there as well. It's a very moving experience; not to mention THE most technologically advanced monument/museum/attraction I've been to so far. They have this hall with all the photos of the Nobel Peace Prize laureates on display on the screens and when you move in front of them the screens change and give you information about their achievements.

Oh and the three of us also went up to Bergen for the weekend. I took a tour around the Norwegian fjords (the tour is called Norway in a Nutshell) which was just so incredible. I took a train from Bergen to Voss, then a bus from Voss to Gudvagen, a boat through the fjord to Flam, then the famous Flam to Myrdal railway (which is incredibly steep and an absolute feat of turn of the century engineering because it goes through 20 tunnels of which 18 were dug without machine aid) and then another train from Myrdal back to Bergen.

The scenery was just so beautiful - the person who invented the word 'breathtaking' must have seen these fjords because that's exactly what they were. These steep hills that frame crystal clear waters were crowned with clouds and just shrouded in snow. There were also all these tremendous waterfalls that had actually frozen over and then been covered with snow. The most curious thing is that the icicles were not clear but a gorgeous shade of Tiffany's blue. Every moment from every angle looked like something from either paradise or a tourist brochure... wow... you have to see it for yourself...

Oh yea, I should add that I tried to go cross-country skiing in Oslo... hmm... how can I describe this experience... Imagine something you have failed at really badly - then multiply that failure by about 100 times, I think you now have an idea of how badly I failed at cross country skiing. I don't think the word 'hopeless' truly encapsulates how truly bad I was at this particular activity. But I blame Mary's non-waxed skiis, yes I do... :p

Anyway now I am in London - will update on that soon! :p

Sigtuna Good, Sn-rain Baaaaaaad

Sigtuna is a little town in Sweden. It's actually the oldest town in all of Sweden. I took a day trip with a couple of other girls in my hostel out to this cute and quaint little pocket of Sweden on Sunday.

Easily my favourite part of Sigtuna is a little coffee shop in a building from the 1700's. It is absolutely tiny and just the coziest place you will ever have a hot chocolate. The roof seems almost to be buckling under the weight of so many years and the lintels of the doors are so low that I hit my head going in AND going out. (A very Xin-esque thing to do)

Sigtuna, despite being so small that you can walk from one end to the other in the space of about 5 minutes, has its own museum displaying Viking artefacts unearthed at the Sigtuna locale. Whilst this exhibition was of only passing interest my companions and I got endless amusement out of the fact that the museum was housing a temporary exhibition of manga art - mainly just stills from Dragonball Z! :p

I left Sigtuna and Stockholmn via overnight bus to Gothenburg, a city in sort of the west of Sweden that is only a few hours from Oslo. Gothenbury is where I first encountered the phenomenon of 'snrain'. Note that the word 'snrain' itself is a Xinnism and it means snow that is so liquid it is practically rain. Snrain is bad, very bad. You can almost walk through it without an umbrella but doing so causes great discomfort. It also has none of the magic of snow - when it falls on the ground it just creates slush rather than fluffy goodness.

While this snrain definitely put a damper of Gothenburg the city was saved in my eyes by the plethora of amazing churches. Each church was so remarkably different from the others that even though I did a whirlwind tour of 7 churches in 2 days I am still not 'churched out' and am ready to see even more churches!

I'm current in Oslo staying with Mary and Darren who are kind enough to share their dorm (not to mention random food) with me. :p

PS: The photo you see is of Xin and Leah (Korean-Canadian chick I met in my Stockholm hostel) outside the Sigtuna town hall. The town hall is tiny! I don't think it could even fit a school class in it. It does evoke images of Stars Hollow small town life though which definitely gives it bonus points. (For those of you who don't know Stars Hollow please go back and re-educate yourself by watching some more Gilmore Girls episodes... :p)