Goodbye, Ireland

The next day was a travel day. We rented a car in the late morning and headed towards our next AirBnB: Ballintotis Castle in County Cork. We decided to drive instead of take a bus so that we could stop at any little town or area that piqued our interest, and it was well worth it. Ireland's countryside is so much fun to travel through. The only downside was that the driving itself was a bit nerve-wracking. Not only did we have to drive on the wrong side of the road, but we decided to go on a toll-free route, which ended up taking us down these tiny little back roads through the country, winding around with just barely enough room to fit two cars. Never have I been so glad to not be driving. Luckily, Nick and Niko got us there all in one piece and we unanimously decided to use the toll highways on the way back, which are much easier to drive on.

Our abode for the night was AMAZING, probably the highlight of the while trip (besides the Harry Potter play, of course) so far. It was an old tower style castle that had been recently rennovated by an Englishman. There were 3 floors: on the 1st was a storage room, the 2nd had a bedroom and bathroom complete with huge bathtub, and the 3rd was a kitchen/dining room/extra bed. There was also a rooftop terrace.

Our castle from afar.

Looking up at Brittany on the roof

To give you an idea of the 3rd floor. All the furniture was so old and gorgeous!

While it was a small castle (especially the staircase! TINY!), it was nicely rennovated while still feeling ancient. What an amazing place to spend the night, and well worth the affordable price. When else will you get to rent out a whole castle? We spent the evening just enjoying leisure time at the castle, and picked up sandwiches from the grocery store to bring back and feast in our dining room. It felt positively medieval. 

The next day, we woke and ate a breakfast of fruit and pastries up on top of our castle, sipping tea and coffee while looking out at the countryside below us. 

Not a bad way to start the day.

Reluctantly leaving the castle behind, we meandered through the countryside in our rental car on our way back to Dublin. We stopped in Cork in an attempt to see Blarney Castle, but an hour long queue stopped us. Instead, we headed on to see the Rock of Cashel in Country Cashel, which made up for not getting to kiss the Blarney Stone (not that we were missing much, I've done it once before and it's perpetually damp from a million tourist lips). The Rock of Cashel is an ancient cathedral ruin up on a towering knoll. It was very grand and impressive, and well worth the trip.

Just driving through the County Cashel is worth it, the countryside is so green and gorgeous and picturesque. While not the breathtaking beauty of Yosemite or Yellowstone, it's a more comforting type of beauty, that makes you feel at home.

We arrived back in Dublin extra early after some trouble we had had with our last flight (just typical Ryanair drama), but had more than enough time, and a stress-free check in. And good news arrived! We received a full refund for the London AirBnB, after having complained to AirBnB itself. Hopefully no one has to stay in that God-awful place ever again.

Now we're on a plane to Scotland, and I'm beyond excited to explore a new country. I've been to London and Ireland before, and it's always fun to revisit fond places, but there's always something thrilling about going somewhere brand new!

Dublin

We all made it to Dublin in one piece. We dropped off our luggage at the hostel (too early to check into our room) and, exhausted from the early start to the day, ate some breakfast at a nearby restaurant, wandered around the downtown a bit, and then came back to the hostel to watch some Back to the Future movies while waiting for check in. It was nice to have a day of mostly relaxation after so much non-stop action day after day.

After finally getting into our room after 2 PM, we all took a nice long nap before heading out to dinner. At the hostel manager's recommendation, we hit up Slatery's, a nearby bar that served typical Irish pub food. It was fantastic, I had the Fish and Chips which were wonderfully crispy and greasy, and the others had various Irish classics, like Irish Stew, or Bangers and Mash, which were all equally good.

From there we wandered over to Temple Bar, the pub district, to find a pint to wash it all down. Most of the bars had live Irish music playing, and we found one that also had some performers step dancing. Sure, the area was overpriced and I'm sure almost everyone in the bars were tourists, but the beer was good, the music great, and the company superb. After playing cards for a bit, we headed back to the hostel room for an early night's rest in preparation for a full day in Dublin the following day.

The Temple Bar district.

Sláinte! 

Listening to some lovely Irish music.

Sadly, Lindsay had caught a cold and wasn't feeling well enough in the morning for a full day of sightseeing, so she opted to hang out around the hostel while Niko, Brittany, Nick, and I ventured out. Our first order of business was to see the Guinness Storehouse.

We decided to go here on the recommendation of literally every single person we've talked to about visiting Ireland (apparently this is a SUPER popular tourist attraction, like #1 in the UK popular), but if I'm being totally honest, it was kind of a letdown. What I had been expecting was a guided tour through an actual Guinness storehouse and factory, showing us the process of massive-scale brewing. That would have been well worth the 18 Euros we spent on tickets.

But what it actually was, was a museum-slash-shrine to the Almighty Guinness. There was no tour guide (why even call it a tour, or make people sign up for tour times???), we just wandered around the building at our own pace, with not a single employee to be found to ask questions to.

There were some saving graces: it was cool to learn about the history of Guinness, I especially enjoyed an exhibit on the making of barrels, and learning how to properly pour the perfect Guinness was a fun little activity.

Aww yeah, look at those perfectly poured pints.

But for the most part, it was just over the top showmanship. They had an entire floor just dedicated to the History of Guinness Advertising! There was a room just for sniffing brewing ingredients, complete with dramatic dry-ice filled basins. There was a massive water feature in the first room, just because. I mean, I like a little flair in a museum, but this just seemed like a distraction to cover up not a whole lot of substance. And why even have the "Storehouse" located at the factory if you don't even get to take a peek? 

But now I'm ranting. I did find the museum enjoyable, contrary to how it may seem, just not worth the 18 Euros per head, or touting the title of #1 attraction in the UK. There are plenty of other places more worth your time.

One of these places being the Teeling Distillery tour. After Guinness we all parted ways for a bit. Niko went off to the Distillery, and from what he told me, it seemed like everything the Guinness tour should have been: lots of history of whiskey in general (not just talking up their own product, looking at you, Guinness), an actual tour of their distilling facility, a very knowledgeable tour guide, and a great tasting of several of their whiskeys at the very end. Ah well, don't cry over spilled Guinness and all that.

Brittany went over to the Kilmainham Gaol, and this also turned out to be totally worthwhile. She managed to charm her way onto a tour, even though they were all booked up for the day, and spent an hour learning about the Irish Rebellion and the bloody history of the gaol.

Nick and I ate some lunch and visited the museum of the gaol, but weren't able to get on a tour. From there, we all met up at St. Patrick's Cathedral, including Lindsay, who was feeling well enough to join us. The cathedral was gorgeous, full of weighty old architecture and packed with information on its history.

From there we traipsed over to the shopping district, then went back to the hostel for dinner and another early night. We had a long day of driving ahead of us!

Mister Monty

Bonus picture of Monty that my friend sent to me because I'm missing him so much. Just look at that face!

Wrapping up in London

Sorry it’s taken so long for an update! We’ve spent the past few days traveling from place to place with limited access to wifi, so it’s been difficult to get a blog post up. To make up for it, I’ll post a few entries in a row. Let’s go back to where we left off.

Chiselhurst was quite fun, and definitely an unusual London thing to do. It was on the outskirts of the city and in an area that felt like true British suburbia, very green and quaint, where all the buildings are built of brick.

The caves were all man-made, and they spread out for a huge distance. It would be all too easy to get lost in there, and I was grateful for the guided tour. It was surprisingly cold down in the caves, and our only lights were oil hurricane lanterns, which added to the ambiance. Our tour guide was also great, telling us all about the history of the place, from chalk and flint mining by the Romans and Saxons, to being used as a massive bomb shelter during WWII, to a popular rock venue for concerts in the 50’s and 60’s, with performers such as David Bowie, Jimmy Hendrix, and Pink.

Nick in front of the map to the caves

Spooky

After Chiselhurst, we went straight to the West End to eat dinner at a fantastic burger joint and then see a performance of Midsummer’s Nights Dream put on by a company called Sh*t-Faced Shakespeare (sorry for the language, Grammy!). The idea behind the performance was that they take classically trained Shakespearean actors and every night one of them gets completely, totally, falling-down drunk. The resulting performance was rambling, lewd, and absolutely side-splittingly hilarious. Much humor was obviously rehearsed, but much of it was trying to keep the drunken actor on track as he slurred his way through his lines and went woefully off-book. Our drunkard was playing Lysander, but I would love to go back and see it again with a different actor under the influence. Wanting to get an early start the next morning, we went straight back to our flat after the play finished.

The whole audience was laughing from literally start to finish.

The next day we did indeed get an early start. So early, in fact, that we arrived at the Brick Lane Market a full hour before it was to open. But luckily all turned out for the best, as we found our way to an amazing breakfast joint and had our first Full English Breakfast of the trip. It all tasted amazing, but there was SO much meat. Definitely not something I could stomach every morning.

When the market opened, we wandered around there and the nearby Spitalfield Market for a few hours before heading over to the museum district. The afternoon was spent in 3 neighboring museums: the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum, and the Victoria and Albert Museum (the V&A).

In front of the Natural History Museum

First was the Natural History Museum, full of exhibits on dinosaurs, animal specimens, and the human body. Their marine life exhibit was especially good. Lindsay managed to give us a scare here when she showed up 30 minutes late to our meeting time because she had gotten the time wrong. Classic Lindsay.

Next was the V&A, my favorite museum in London. Not only is it chock full of massive collections of sculptures, art, and antiquities, but my favorite part is the Cast Room, a wing full of full size replicas of famous sculptures and architecture. Michelangelo’s David is there, as well as the reliefs that started the Renaissance, Trajan’s column, and so many more. It’s so humbling to see all of these great works of art in one area, and in some cases the originals have been destroyed, leaving these the only copies in the world.

Just a few of the specimens to be found

Michelangelo's David

Trajan's Column

Lastly, the Science Museum. Lots of technology, of course. Exhibits on space, agriculture, clocks, automobiles, you name it. The museum was massive, and we were running short on time so we had to go through it all pretty quickly, as we were on a time limit for a special surprise I had planned.

The “big surprise” I had planned for our last night was an escape room in the back of a pub in central London. An escape room is where you and a team of people are shut in a room and have to solve a series of puzzles and games to be released. The escape rooms are usually themed with a story of some sort. Our story was centered around the deceased Lady Chastity and her legendary ambrosia wine. Her very last bottle of wine was locked away behind four padlocks, and we had to solve a series of puzzles to unlock each one, including riddles, codes, secret rooms and compartments, and hidden messages, with the time limit of 1 hour. We ended up getting the wine with 15 minutes to spare, only 2 ½ minutes behind the current record!

Look at that fine vintage.

Everyone had a great time, made all the better by going into it completely blind. After drinking our hard-earned wine and basking in our success, we headed back to the AirBnB to get a few hours of sleep before heading out early in the morning for our flight to Ireland.

We're actually about to board our flight to Scotland now, so I won't be able to get the full Ireland post up until later, but I'll try to get it written down and posted later today, and at latest tomorrow morning! Off we go!

Cursed Child Part II

Well, the second half of the play was just as incredible as the first, but we'll get to that.

The next day was less eventful than the first. We had all stayed up late after the play, hanging out at a nearby pub and chatting with Casey and Kjelsie. And Niko and I both stayed up after that till nearly 2 AM to wait for Nick to arrive from Germany. But now he's here, and nothing could be better! A Harry Potter play and the arrival of Nick all in one night, pretty sure it was one of the best nights of my life.

We all slept late into the morning, and then while the others went off to see Buckingham Palace, Hyde Park, and Camden Market, Nick and I spent some time together, wandering around the area to buy things Nick needed, and just walking and talking. We tried to meet up with the rest of the group at Camden Market in the afternoon, but just missed them.

At Camden Market, we we spent the rest of the day in a desperate search for a blanket. Due to a miscommunication with Nick, he hadn't brought a sleeping bag with him to London. Since our room is technically only booked for 4 people (shh, don't tell!), one person was supposed to be sleeping on the couch with his sleeping bag. But at 2 AM in the morning in the morning, with nothing at all to use as a blanket, we ended up using one of the bed blankets on the couch and taking down the curtain from the window and using it as a makeshift blanket for the night. Needless to say, we were determined to find a blanket the next day.

When we eventually did fine one, it wasn't in Camden Market at all, but at a store called Argos down the way, where you "shop" on an in-store iPad, while workers retrieve your items from the massive storehouse in the back. 

But it ended up being such a wild goose chase that we had to buy it and then head straight over to the theater. Dinner was some delicious Thai food, and we had just enough time to stop by a tiny Harry Potter pop-up shop/museum and then onto the show.

As stated before, the play was just as wonderful as before, with some moments that truly moved me to tears near the end. While I’m glad the script is being released for everyone to read, but there will be so much missing by just reading the words: the emotions of the actors, the indescribable experience of seeing magic unfold on stage. Of course, I’m sure the play will go on tour, and I would have seen it eventually, but to see it like this with no preconceptions or expectations was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and I couldn’t be more grateful.

Right before the show, too bad Nick had to wait outside!

After the play was finished, we all went out to wait by the stage door. We all got autographs from most of the actors and pictures with some of our favorites. They were all very patient and warm, taking the time to talk to every single fan who had lined up. That’s one thing I love about British theater: the actors’ appreciation for their audience. You could tell they knew how much this play meant to some people, and acted accordingly.

Me with Harry Potter

Lindsay and Albus

Lindsay and Hermione

Brittany and Scorpius Malfoy

After that, we found another pub (a difficult endeavor on a Friday night in London), sat and chatted for a while, and finally went back to our AirBnB around midnight…which brings me back to our AirBnB debacle. Let me fill you in on the ongoing saga of our pit of a room.

First was our arrival. When we came inside the building, we were exhausted from so much travel and were greatly looking forwards to some much-needed rest…only to find that all of the doors were locked. After wandering up and down the stairs for a while, finally we found someone who turned out to be a kind of live-in helper at the building. He seemed VERY confused about our booking (not a good sign) and ended up having to call the manager. Turns out, they did not have a room ready for us at all and told us to come back between 6 and 7 PM to get into our room.

We went out, hung out beside the canal, ate some dinner, and returned just after 6 to find our room empty, but they hadn’t even begun to clean it yet. Great.

An hour later, our room was finally ready, and guess what? It was actually better than expected! Four separate beds, meaning that Nick wouldn’t have to bring a sleeping bag, and an ensuite bathroom! Sure, the bathroom had a little black mold growing in it, but we could live with that. But I’m sure you know this is not where the story ends.

When Lindsay came back early the next day because of her knee, she was lying down to take a nap when there was a knock on the door. Outside was a confused looking Swedish family saying that they had this room reserved. Sure enough, on their reservation was a big “Room #3” which WAS the room we had been staying in. Turns out, the hosts had put us in the wrong room. After talking with the manager, Jonathan (and he acted totally surprised we were in room #3 even though that’s the room he told us to go into), we were moved into a room on the first floor. A tiny, depressing pit of a room.

Some of the highlights: a chirping, low-battery fire alarm right outside the door. Sheets with tiny blood stains on them. Nail heads popping out of floor boards. No openable windows except for a tiny square high in the corner of the room. Only two beds and a couch, thus the need for Nick’s missing sleeping bag. But even all this we could live with. We figured that we were really only sleeping in this room, and out and about all day long. Everyone seemed to take everything in stride, and we settled in to our new abode.

And that’s when the leaking began. Two separate spots in the ceiling leaked water whenever someone used the shower or the sink. We had to move all the furniture to the center of the room just to avoid our beds being dripped on, and this is not just a small little drip, it’s a steady, constant, dripping all along a whole line of wall. This was finally the breaking point.

I called the manager in the morning, demanding that we either be moved or get a full refund for our time here. Nails, we can deal with. Dripping water soaking our stuff? Not so much. And so later today we’ll be moving rooms. Thank goodness!

Now, we’re on our way to Chiselhurst caves, a series of tunnels underneath East London which were dug by the Romans and Saxons, and used during WWII. Should be interesting!

Arriving in London

It all began with snagging tickets to a play. Not just any play, of course. It was Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, written by good ol' J. K. herself, next installment in the series, and completely canon. How could we not try to buy tickets?

At the time, I hadn't even expected to get them. The whole system for buying tickets was lottery-based, and I had to wake up to 3 AM in the morning to get into the queue. Once that was accomplished, I had to wait for one and a half hours until my number came up, as I was over 10,000 in line. At that point, I nearly gave up hope of getting even the worst of seats. But, here we are. Once my turn in line came up I managed to get 6 tickets (that was the max) to a preview showing in July. All that was left was to find 5 people to go with me and plan an entire trip to London. Piece of cake, right?

Those people turned out to be my siblings, Niko and Lindsay, my cousin Brittany, a friend from college, Casey, and his friend Kjelsie. Ever single one of us huge Potter nerds. My family members and I decided to extend the trip into a short tour of London, Ireland, and Scotland, and our journey is just beginning.

We all met up at the airport with little issue, but all exhausted from a long day of traveling. The tube ride from Heathrow to our AirBnB was one of the longest hours of my life. Looking forwards to arriving at our flat and crashing, we were sorely disappointed. Things with our AirBnB have been...tumultuous, to say the least. Luckily everyone has been enormously good sports about it, and it hasn't dampened anyone's spirits in the slightest. I'll get into the AirBnB later in this post. In fact, it probably deserves a post all of its own.

Regardless, we spent the first day just attemptint to relax. We left the AirBnB in search of a peaceful park, which proved a bit of a journey. The nearest park we found on google maps turned out to be a swampy wildlife reserve full of ducks, squirrels, and lots of bugs. But we eventually ended up at a little grassy steppe nearby a canal, where we wiled away the time with cards, books, and naps. We ate dinner at a nearby Ethiopian restaurant which had huge flat pancakes that you used to pick up and eat various saucy dishes. Sorry I don't have any pictures of this day...we were all pretty near passing out at this point. 

It was near 7 when we got back to our room, and 15 minutes later all 4 of us were completely passed out, sleeping for 12 hours straight.

The next day we headed off into London! Our first stop was the Palace Theater, where we picked up our tickets for later that evening. 

Next was off to Trafalgar's Square to see some of the famous sights of London. We spent the morning wandering around the National Gallery, an amazing art museum in central London. I forsee us visiting plenty of museums in the next few days, as they are completely and totally FREE, one of the very best things about England, in my opinion.

The National Gallery

Monument in Trafalgar's Square

After that is was we walked Central London, visiting the most famous tourist sights: Big Ben, Westminster Abbey and London Bridge.

Lindsay, Niko, and Brittany hanging out in front of Big Ben

Note, this is not London Bridge, this is Tower Bridge (the veiw from London Bridge)

Turns out London Bridge is actually pretty boring, who knew?

Last part of the day before heading off to the Cursed Child was visiting St. Paul's Cathedral. This one we had to think about because unlike all of the museums in London, the cathedrals are NOT free. Entry costed a whopping 18 pounds, which was enough money to give us pause. But entrance got you access to the cathedral itself, as well as the crypts and the upper galleries. Lindsay ended up heading back to the AirBnB as her knee was hurting and she didn't want to climb all the steps, but Brittany, Niko, and I headed in and it ended up being my favorite part of the trip so far. Unfortunately, no photos were allowed inside, but the outside can give you a small idea of the magnificence awaiting us inside.

The whole thing was just amazing: huge marble statues, gold enamel on everything, huge paintings and glittering mosaics on the towering ceilings. The building was absolutely massive, and its size combined with the jaw-dropping decor was awe-inspiring. Going down to the crypts, there were massive grave toppers, and people buried both in the walls and the ground. And the exhausting climb into the 3 different galleries made the amazing view of London from the top that much sweeter.

You can't see it in the picture, but we're all soaked in sweat.

We spent so much time wandering around St. Paul's Cathedral, that we only had time to stop quickly by the AirBnB to change, and then headed straight over to the play.

You're darn right I wore my Gryffindor tie.

In as few of words as possible: IT. WAS. AMAZING. I won't give a synopsis here because either you're reading this before the script is released to the general public, and in that case I'm not allowed to talk about it (#keepthesecret), or the script has already been released and you can look up a summary online that is probably far better than I could ever give. Suffice to say that the play takes place 18 years or so after the end of the last book, and centers around Harry Potter and his son Albus. Harry Potter is very much still Harry Potter, just grown up, and Albus is very much NOT like Harry Potter. He goes to Hogwarts, befriends Scorpius Malfoy, and they get up to all sorts of trouble, trouble which starts out light-hearted and funny, but which quickly becomes deathly serious.

The whole thing was just an incredible experience, it's difficult to put into words. I've always loved Harry Potter, I've grown up with the books and all that. So seeing the play, and seeing it done well, meant a lot to me. I was prepared to enjoy it simply because it was another part of the Harry Potter saga. But my expectations were completely blown out of the water by this play. The story itself was clever and engaging,. The actors were phenomenal and really captured the essence of the characters while giving them an older, more mature feel. And the stage effects were simply stunning. It felt as though you were watching actual magic happening on stage before your very eyes: characters casting spells with flicks of their wands, being sucked into telephone booths and bookcases, dementors swooping just above the crowd, people transforming via polyjuice potion right on stage. It was really unlike anything I had ever seen before.

More than just a good Harry Potter experience, it was a phenomenal play standing all on its own. Ending in a tantalizing cliff hanger, I can only hope that Part II proves to be just as thrilling.