Wee little post

Wrap it all up . . .

Back in Cambridge now - hello free internet!! So I figure I should fill you in on teh rest of my adventure . . .

From Prague we flew to Dublin, and we stayed there three nights. Our hostel did the job and had a great kitchen (I love ovens! I missed frozen pizza!), but was not a favorite of mine. Berlin's Circus is still the best place I've ever stayed (go there immediately). The thing that bugged me was that we "had to" keep our food in the kitchen (they didn't want the buggies), but the kitchen "closed" (read: doors locked!) at 9 PM. I tried to make a cup of tea at 9:30 PM once when the doors were left open, and got a bit of an ear-full from a staffer. Woah there Nellie - all I wanted was my Earl Gray. Whoops.

When we left, they had closed the kitchen for the whole day because of some problem with the water, but I wanted to pick up our non perishable food, and basically had to argue with the woman so I could step over a small puddle to get to the cabinet. Part of it might have been that I had been traveling for 5 weeks and was running low on people skills (well, only when people were being unreasonable - I'm good with people skills with nice people), but it irked me.

Other than where we laid our heads, Dublin was fantastic. It's a nicer London - smaller, more manageable, more friendly (but still go to London, its super too). Of course, I'm an English major (although these days I wish I wasn't . . . ) so I also loved to see the Ulysses' signs (noting locations from Joyce's epic). John and I went on a Literary Pub Crawl, where we joined two actors in visiting four pubs, where the crowd would drink and the actors would recite and act bits of famous Irish works - it was a blast. And one again, our failure to make friends with people our own age was apparent (however, to our credit, everyone our age was way more drunk, and way more obnoxious than we were, hence our avoidance of them) when we struck up a conversation with another middle-aged vacationing couple, bringing our new-friends-over-40-list up to around 6 or 8.

I also did a bit of window shopping in Dublin - try and find Sabatoge. Its the best store in life. I found a perfect dress that I had to visit twice before I made the hard decision that 80 Euro is too much when my bank account was under USD $500, despite beauty. Sigh.

From Dublin we took a bus to Belfast, Northern Ireland. We weren't there very long, but it was a great stop. We took a black taxi tour of Shankill and Falls Road - the front lines between the Catholic and Protestant Troubles, and got to snap a few photos of the political-religious murals. The ceasefire has been in effect for a while now, but our driver pointed out that the gates are still closed at night and on the weekend , separating the two communities of Protestants and Catholics, and there isn't any serious talk of the "Peace Wall" coming down. It was terribly interesting, and very strange. Especially since we were walking around about the time school was ending, so kids were running around, kicking soccer balls and playing - right in front of these murals attacking the other group, and commemorating hunger strikers. What a strange environment to live in.

Day 2 we took an all day trip to Giant's Causeway, one of my FAVORITE things ever. It was a gorgeous trip through the countryside of Northern Ireland, and we got to see the Carrick-a-rede rope bridge, some castle ruins, and of course, the Causeway.

Now, we're back at Cambridge. Last term, here I come. I'd rather skip the academic bit and travel some more, but my bank account is sadly empty. I'm hoping to make it out to Scotland and Greece yet, before I turn stateside, but I'm not sure if I can participate in enough brain scans to make up the dough . . . we'll have to see.

In two months, I'll probably be home. I'm stoked.