Vacation: Family Week (March 15-22)

In preparation for Dad and Morgan’s arrival, I had to try and get all of my work done in advance – which only sort of worked, since I had four essays to do, two movies to watch twice, and two novels to read all in the vicinity of their arrival. I got almost all of this done in time except for one of the essays, which would have to wait.

They arrived in London on Saturday, but after car rentals and driving time, I didn’t see them until late afternoon. It was extremely weird seeing my brother’s head sticking out of a British car, but I was so, so happy and I couldn’t stop hugging them. I showed them Linley House, introduced them to my housemates, and we walked up past the Abbey in search of a place to eat. In Café Retro (right next to my house, after all that), we talked about Bath and how I was liking it, how Britain was different from America, and what we were going to do for the next week. We made a plan to see about nine different things, four or five of which ended up happening, but such is travel.

Sunday: the Cotswolds. We drove (English driving is a harrowing experience, even as a passenger) north to Painswick, a tiny town with cream-colored stone buildings and a church garden filled with yew trees. We ate hearty food in a pub and continued on to Broadway, known for its tower that overlooks seven counties or something. It was actually closed by the time we got there, but we took pictures of it and just then a herd of deer crossed by the tower. So it was kind of beautiful anyway. On the way back down, we saw a sign for a castle so we veered that way – it was closed, too, but there was still a lot to see in the little town, cathedrals and rows of quaint buildings. Lovely.

Monday: Wales. We woke up earlier this day and drove to Cardiff, where I got to show them all the cool stuff I’d seen last time I was there. We went to Cardiff Castle and touched the ancient Roman wall at the bottom of the structure; we wandered around the Parliament building and took pictures of gardens. We ate in a tiny Welsh café, where they were out of the most “traditional” meals, but it was still delicious. We took pictures of the tall fountain monolith from Torchwood and went in the Doctor Who exhibit. After Cardiff came Caerphilly, which had an enormous, dilapidated castle with a proper moat and a leaning tower inside the battlements. It was the coolest thing ever. Morgan took all of my best pictures all week, being the photographer in the family, and some of the best ones are of this huge castle, where the only noise came from the countless gaggles of ducks and swans in the moat. By the time we got to Tintern Abbey it was dark, so it was a very spooky experience: the hollowed-out abbey like a skeleton in its poor footlights, only showing up in my pictures as grainy as sand. We drove back to Bath after that and had Indian food at a delicious restaurant recommended to me by one of my teachers.

Tuesday: I had class, so I didn’t see Dad and Morgan until after, when Dad cooked beef stroganoff for my entire house. They were, of course, absolutely thrilled to have someone cooking for them, and they had only the best things to say to me later about how sweet my dad was and how much they liked the food and how outgoing my brother was. After dinner, we worked out the rest of the week – where we were staying in Scotland, in London before our flights, and when we would leave after my classes on Thursday.

Wednesday: The essay which had been looming finally attacked, and I didn’t see them at all, because I was up until 3 a.m. writing about Shakespeare’s soliloquies in his early history plays. After this I had to write a 1-page summary of a story I hadn’t thought of yet for my Exploring Short Fiction class, so all said and done, I didn’t get very much sleep that night, and that was probably about when I started to get sick.

Thursday: Got up early for classes, which ended at 1:30. Met Dad and Morgan for tea at Sally Lunn’s, one of the oldest buildings in Bath and home of delicious scones-and-clotted-cream combinations. Morgan continued to talk about Sally Lunn Buns for three days. After tea, I introduced Dad and Morgan to some of the ASE staff, and then we drove to Liverpool, where we stayed for the night. Dad went out to check out the music scene while Morgan and I wound down with some British television.

Friday: Listening to BBC radio the whole way, we drove to Carlisle, which is right under the border, and visited Hadrian’s Wall. The wall is remarkably intact – I think I expected something a little more ruined, being Roman and all. It was absolutely freezing up there, so we drove down to a tea shop in the little town below. We cheered when we entered Scotland and drove through mountainous hills covered with sheep and lambs until we reached Edinburgh. Our bed and breakfast was absolutely adorable, with three beds and ruffly trappings and a set for tea on the table. We went out into the city to look for dinner, and ended up with a fancy Japanese restaurant. At night we watched Stephen Fry’s game show, QI, and a cool dramatic show called “Hotel Babylon.”

Saturday: we woke up early and headed out to Edinburgh castle, which had a line out the gates all way across the courtyard, and where the expected wait was over an hour. So we wandered around the farmer’s market below the castle, and we had lunch at the Castle Arms Bar, where Dad got some traditional Scottish food and I had a chicken burger. When we made it back up the hill to the castle, the line was much shorter, so we prepared to wait, even though the line was still out the door and it was starting to snow. Inside the gates, the castle is like a miniature city, with intact and functional buildings from all kinds of periods of history. Our guide (who must have been freezing in his kilt – we couldn’t believe it) informed us that Edinburgh castle has never been taken by force, ever, and that in an emergency it is one of the places authorized to protect the Queen. The crown jewels (sword, crown, and staff) are housed there, at the top of the hill in one of the oldest buildings. The story of the crown jewels is crazy – some of them were papal gifts, some of them were stolen, found, stolen again, and they were all smuggled out of the castle during the attacks of Oliver Cromwell, and didn’t resurface for years and years until a search party found them in a locked trunk in a basement somewhere, along with several other precious items that had obviously been considered of similar value. The sword was broken in half in order to smuggle it out better, and you can still see the tiny line where it was hammered back together. We spent a lot of time in the crown jewels exhibit pretending that everything in there was ours, because we’re Stewart descendants. Heck, one of those lesser jewels would have paid for everything that could ever happen to us as a family. I’m ready to reclaim the throne, please!

After Edinburgh castle we started the long drive back to London. I was fairly sick by this time, but lots of sleeping in the car helped. We checked into a Holiday Inn right next to Heathrow, and early Sunday morning, Dad and Morgan woke me up to say goodbye. Thus began part two of my vacation, in which there were fewer family members, but more volcanic islands. It was so wonderful to see Dad and Morgan, and it was so strange when they had to go home, as if that wasn’t where I was. It was also very fun to show off Bath and Cardiff and places I knew. Stay tuned for Vacation: Santorini style!

The Weekend of Feb. 19th: Ireland. This Entry in Present Tense for No Particular Reason.

(Apologies for how amazingly long it took me to write this up - it's nonstop action over here across the ocean. More is on the way!)

Friday: we wake up before the sun does and pile into a bus for Bristol. “How did you fit everything in there?” exclaims Andrew Butterworth, indispensable trip chaperone/guide (see YouTube for further evidence). I look down at Hunter’s smallish backpack and my purse; apparently I have become a light traveler. Even so, at the airport I have to give my purse to another girl with more space in her bag, because purses count as carry-ons and you can only have one. When we split up for lunch, this nearly results in me getting left at the airport, when the lady asks for my passport and I realize that I don’t have it. Fortunately, the girl shows up, we get on the plane, and I sleep all the way to Ireland, which when we step outside is drizzling rain all over us and wonderful, wonderful.

We take a coach to the center of Dublin with its tall incomprehensible spire where Nelson’s column used to be (“the stiletto in the ghetto,” they call it), and we trek laden with backpacks to Isaac’s Guest House, a block and a corner from the riverside customs building. We wring ourselves out, lock our stuff in the basement, and settle around the tables in the main room of the hostel to eat breakfast and await our first “educational tour” guide. Already there is a jocular tone to the trip, modeled for us primarily by Andrew Butterworth and Adrian Paterson, my Irish Literature teacher, who for the duration of the weekend are transformed into twelve-year-old boys.

(“Andrew, do you want a coffee?”
“Don’t distract me!” Andrew is counting money.
Adrian waits.
“Andrew, do you want a coffee?”
Andrew counts money. Adrian waits.
“Emily, would you please ask Andrew if he would like a coffee?”
“Oh, all right, yes, get me a coffee!”)

They invent nicknames for the two classes on the trip, Irish Literature and Irish Nationalism, confusing everyone: for the rest of the weekend, we are the Nats and the Lits.

Our tour guide is a small explosive man named Lorcan in a skullcap and a leather jacket. He takes us on an enormously entertaining historical tour of Dublin, pointing out bullet holes and cheesy tourist districts and explaining everything in a loud motormouthed way. (The next day’s tour guide, a beatific man in a huge tawny overcoat, cannot possibly live up to Lorcan, who is apparently famous even among tour guides. Our second tour guide even good-naturedly calls him a “Stalinist” at one point.) Lorcan leaves us at Trinity College, and Andrew disperses us to lunch. Dawn and I have sneakily brought tuna fish and pita and avocadoes to Ireland, trying to save some money in anticipation of spring break, so we unobtrusively make ourselves sandwiches in a kebab shop down the street from the College. After reconvening, we walk to the Book of Kells, which is on the Trinity campus. The book is intricately detailed and surprisingly brightly colored for something so, so old. I spend several minutes just looking, making room for German tourists who filter in and out. Then I walk upstairs into the ancient, vaulted-ceilinged library called the Long Room, and wow. I could stayed in there forever - it's all dark wood and musty smells, and there are rickety ladders to get up to the top shelves, and marble busts of famous authors in between alcoves. Totally amazing. I couldn’t take a picture – one woman who did had a security guard on her in thirty seconds, demanding that she delete it.

After the Book of Kells, we all walk to a W. B. Yeats exhibit at the Library across from the National Museum, where there are poets and actors on tape reading his poems aloud, and incredibly hi-tech interactive computerized books of rare correspondence where his original handwriting can be magnified and turned into Times New Roman and pages can be turned, all by touch. Some students go to see the bog people at the next-door museum, but the rest of us go back to the hostel and nap until dinner.

The cheesy tourist area absolutely transforms at night. There is music and laughing and the burble of conversation everywhere, in every building and spilling out into the streets; the pubs are packed to the brim. After an hour or more of searching, our impromptu group (everyone who woke up, late, at the same time) finally finds a pasta place that can seat us. After eating we wander over to the Stag’s Head, a cool, vaguely secret pub that is only signified by a mosaic of a stag’s head in the sidewalk. The mosaic is at the opening of an alley, which eventually leads to the pub. In the basement of the pub, Andrew and Adrian and some Nats and Lits are crammed into tables, listening to traditional Irish music. The night is lovely – the whole room, led by a table of elderly couples, roars along to the songs and we bluster along too, taking our cues from Andrew, who only knows about half of the words himself.

The sleeping arrangements are more or less like a giant sleepover, with six girls in a room. We giggle about our tour guide and Andrew and Adrian’s antics, compare digital pictures and answers for Adrian’s 55-question optional quiz on Irish literature and culture. One girl, Jess, becomes my partner in crime; we share answers (cheating is of course allowed) and we plan to get more the next day. There is a prize for the people who pass the quiz, and we intend to win it. After the Stag’s Head we all drop into bed late and on Saturday we wake up early; sleep is not really on the menu in Ireland but all the awesome makes up for it.

The second day is our comparatively calm tour on the rebellion of Easter, 1916, and a trip to the Dublin Writers Museum. It isn’t raining anymore, but the wind is freezing and unavoidable, and all the girls have made the necessary hair adjustments with scarves and headbands and ponytail holders. I buy a pack of large bobby pins and hope for the best. We spend the afternoon in Kilmainhaim Gaol, a huge, stark place with cold stone and desperate messages scratched into the walls. In the center of the building is the “panopticon”-style high-security area, which with its complex and weirdly pretty system of wire walkways has been the set of many movies. In the back is Stonebreaker’s Yard, where the rebels of the Easter Rising were shot. So many famous Irish political leaders have been kept in Kilmainhaim that it became sort of a badge of honor to spend time there, a kind of proof that you were against the English. During the famine, people committed petty crimes on purpose in order to get thrown in jail, where they still served regular meals.

In the evening we meet in the upstairs of a pub for a “literary pub crawl,” where the tour guides act out scenes from famous Irish literature and tell us about Irish authors’ lives in between 20-minute stops at various pubs. There is a vague kind of quiz going on, where we have to remember facts about authors’ lives, and at the end someone wins a t-shirt. For the first time in apparently years, someone from ASE does not win the prize. Andrew dreads going back to Barbara, our program director, with the news.

After the tour we try to squeeze the whole program into another pub, but the evening has worn on and most pubs are full. A lot of the trip disperses to the hostel or Supermac’s, Dublin’s answer to MacDonald’s (literally an answer – it was founded in protest), but some of us stick it out in the pub, and eventually there is a table and eventually there are enough chairs. We interrogate Andrew on where he met his wife and how long he’s been married, and when Adrian’s teacher friends join us, we turn the spotlight on them, too. We leave when the bartenders start closing the pub.

Sunday: we have to be out of our rooms at the hostel by 11 a.m., so we wake up early and lock up our bags again. Today is a free day, so a lot of students take trips down to the Victorian beach resort town in the south. Dawn and I wander the streets of Dublin, taking pictures, until it’s time to meet up with my friend Eoin, whom I haven’t seen in three years. He informs us that we are in the uncool part of Dublin and proceeds to take us to the cool part, back by Trinity and the Bank, which used to be the Irish Parliament building. He approves of our knowledge of the Stag’s Head, shakes his head at the way I eat scones, and basically knows everything about Dublin and Ireland. Dawn goes off to read in a café and Eoin and I explore churches and go all over town trying to get the rest of the answers for Adrian’s quiz. Since Eoin goes to Trinity, we a) get into the Book of Kells for free and b) get access to the Trinity computer lab to look up all the answers that are too far to walk to find. I basically have this quiz in the bag. Eoin drops me off at Isaac’s Guest House and there isn’t much to do after that but walk to the buses that take us to the airport. In the airport, Adrian reads the quiz questions aloud, and Jess and I chirp all the answers back at him, totally assured in our victory. (We are also two of the only students doing the quiz.) We win whiskey-flavored fudge and a book of Irish verse. Jess and I talk on the plane about how great we are, and then we are in Bristol, and then a bus takes us home to Bath. It’s weird how touching down in England doesn’t feel like travel anymore; it feels like returning. We spend all of Monday sleeping.