Our night at the airport wasn't as uncomfortable as we had thought, and we definitely weren't alone. It seems like quite a popular thing to do with people catching early flights. Our sleeping bags that zip together were pretty handy too, and it made it a little more comfortable. We ended up getting around five hours sleep, which was just as well because we had some issues at check-in. Our bags had managed to put on about five kilos each during the last three weeks, as we had redistributed books into them, we each had some leftover alcohol from New Years, and just generally moved things around. This meant we were faced with a £120 overweight fee or to repack. Naturally we chose to repack. This crisis averted, we went through security where a more serious travesty occurred. Our Vegemite, used for only a couple of slices of toast, was seized. I was very distraught, and the tiredness probably didn't help. We had been very careful about keeping liquids and our cutlery out of our daypacks but the Vegemite had escaped our attention. The plane trip was a short one, although I managed to steal a few more precious minutes of sleep, and we arrived in Dublin ahead of schedule. This did not, however, make us feel any better about our fifty-minute wait at passport control. On the upside, we got into the city for a very cheap €1.90 each, were dropped off almost right outside our hostel (Avalon House) and logged on for some much needed internet time to ensure our families knew we weren't dead. Dublin is nice, it doesn't have the charm of Edinburgh, but it feels like it has a really nice mix of contemporary culture and history. I think we'll appreciate it more after we do our walking tour tomorrow after a good night's sleep.
We didn't really do much else, just wandered around and did some shopping. In fact, the highlight of the day was probably Keeley's "epic nachos", a truly magnificent creation of bolognaise sauce, cheese, corn chips and sour cream. Best of all the leftover sauce should feed us for the next couple of days. Find your ideal job with SEEK Time for change?
Our last two hostels had advertised free wireless internet, but they were "broken" and not on offer respectively, so I haven't updated in a couple of days. Sitting in the hostel in Dublin, will update again tonight hopefully.
DAY 21 – LONDON08/01/2009
After stumbling upon a 25% discount to the London Bridge Experience and London Tombs, we thought we'd head there and check it out, It turned out to be one of the more interesting and exciting things we'd done, although I'm not sure it will come out that well in words. We were first led through a short 'interactive' immersive exhibit where we were tasked to 'go back in time' and learnt about the history of the various bridges that have spanned the Thames at that spot (each replacing the former and all called the London Bridge). It was pretty well done, the actors were all very good and the props were impressive. There has been a bridge on that site since forty-something AD, and interestingly the wooden buildings on the stone bridge burnt down only a couple of years before the great Fire of London in 1666, and this ended up providing a barrier that prevented the fire from spreading south of the river. Following our 'experience' we went down into the not-historically-accurate frightfest that was the Tombs. It was really good, not truly terrifying but suspenseful enough shuffling through pitch-black rooms with only strobe lights to guide us and lots of people jumping out at us etc.
Our night ended with the long-awaited pub-crawl. It was very enjoyable, and we met a lot of really nice people and got really good value from our tickets, with free shots and cheap drink deals. We met a lot of Americans, who were really good fun, and although they may not be lifelong friends, they did make the night a lot easier with their shenanigans. One guy, Mike from Virginia, practically skulled a bottle of red wine that we bought on the way from one pub to another. The pubs were a good mix, with one terrible 'American-themed' one (which had really nice Long Island Iced Teas), a grungy Belushi's franchise arrangement, a no-music 'traditional British pub', a funky contemporary modern one with a cool upstairs balcony overlooking everyone, and an electro-club style one that we ended at. All of today was very much recommended for anyone coming to London, that's for sure.
DAY 22 – LONDON09/01/2009
We dragged ourselves out of bed for breakfast, but our post-2am bedtime got the better of us and we went back to bed for a bit. This hostel (one of an apparently new 'Smart' franchise, in Russell Square) is really good for that – each bed has its own little set of curtains so you can block out the light and sleep whenever you want. There's also a cool little RF keycard system, although it and the Oyster card sometimes get confused so you have to keep them separate. Brekky was good; it was much like everywhere else but with one crucial difference – the jar of Vegemite I bought in the supermarket yesterday. It was hidden on the bottom shelf, but the yellow jar and lid was unmistakable. I didn't realise how much I'd missed it, and from now on breakfasts will be that much better.
We headed to Greenwich today, in London's southeast. The train ride was interesting – the docklands has its own dedicated light rail line, similar I guess to a tram, and it snaked its way through the modern, skyscraper part of London. After spending so much time at ground level amongst old buildings, it was cool to see the contemporary part of London. Also, the train was remotely controlled by an attendant roaming the carriages, and didn't have a driver per se, or even a driver's compartment, so that was different. Once in Greenwich we were disappointed to find the Cutty Sark, an old sailing ship, was covered in scaffolding and tarps, under repair, so we went to the Old Naval College (now Greenwich University I think), saw some paintings in Inigo Jones' Queen's House (one of the first Renaissance buildings in all of the UK), and wandered through the Painted Hall and the Chapel. Both of these buildings were immaculately decorated, and the Painted Hall in particular was, unsurprisingly, painted on every surface. For example, there were regular old round columns with very lifelike flutes painted onto them, a giant mural on the ceiling, and details more delicate than some of the framed paintings we've seen. It was set up as a dining hall, and I have no doubt that it would make an incredibly impressive, and expensive, function venue. After the College, we climbed the hill in Greenwich gardens to get to the Royal Observatory, where the prime meridian of the earth is located. It's a bar in the pavement with a cool sculpture at the end, nothing particularly special, although there was a pretty interesting museum of clocks and timekeeping there. One chronometer that was designed to be taken on ships to sea took 19 years to design and had over 700 precisely engineered components. We leave London to head west to Salisbury tomorrow afternoon, so we have to finish all our sightseeing pretty quickly and make the most of the day.
DAY 23 – LONDON AND SALISBURY10/01/2009
Our last day in London… We were keen to get a couple of photos of sights we hadn't really got around to, but it turned out to be a day of surprises. First we went in search of St Paul's cathedral, a truly spectacular and massive church. Alas, to our dismay there was a very steep entry charge (£8.50 for the chapel proper and £11 for the crypt) so we decided against exploring the inside too much and contented ourselves with photos of the outside. Unfortunately, one side was also covered in scaffolding for refurbishment so that limited even external photo opportunities. We went over the Millennium Bridge, which is a little underwhelming, in search of my obsession for the week – the Clink Prison museum. I have been convinced that I visited it with the family when we came in '99 and loved it, but it has proved very elusive. It turned out to be another disappointment: it isn't open over winter. Let down, we headed toward the Borough Market (sort of accidentally) and ran into the most unlikely of people – Tom Molyneux from hockey in Geelong. Of all the people in all the places… he was apparently on holiday to France and was just in London for a week to visit his aunt, and happened to be on the same stretch of footpath as us at that moment. Bizarre. The market itself was a very pleasant experience – there were all sorts of tastings: yoghurt, cheese (lots of it!), olives, pestos, bread, sweets, fruit, meat, everything. When Jamie Oliver talks of going down 'to the local market', this is what he's talking about. It was great, exclusive-tasting food from independent producers, and it wasn't really that expensive. We picked up some really good yoghurt for fifty pence a tub, including some unusual flavours like lemon (surprisingly nice) and Keeley's favourite, a fruit called damson. It's really good, and we're looking forward to eating it on our bike ride to Stonehenge tomorrow. That's the plan, anyway. We also finally got around to catching a double-decker red bus, where we lurched from stop to stop hoping we were headed in the right direction (fortunately, we were!).
Salisbury is a cute little town, with lots of one-way streets, some nice little shops, some canals, and not much else. Except for the massive Sainsburys (a supermarket chain here) with all sorts of things in an Aldi style – TVs and toasters to food and clothing. Alas, however, it was beaten out for our affections for the smaller Tesco store across the canal where we purchased a toffee pavlova. We were impressed, to say the least, even if we did eat it half-frozen. The hostel is a country house type of arrangement, which is a welcome change from our urban hostels, and is pretty well equipped and clean, which is nice. There are no mixed dorms though, and it is rather quiet, so Keeley gets a whole 8-bed dorm to herself. Privacy is nice, but we think she'll be a bit lonely.
DAY 24 – SALISBURY11/01/2009
With our minds set on riding bikes the short 8 miles to Stonehenge, we set off this morning in search of places to hire bikes. Alas, the place that the lady at the hostel sent us to doesn't seem to exist, but a very nice girl in Costa (think Gloria Jeans) helped us out. We discovered that, unsurprisingly, everything is closed on Sundays. A little dejected, we got on the bus and headed to the famous rocks. The trip was okay, the prerecorded commentary was interesting enough, but the countryside was nothing special. There were a few burial mounds of great historic and spiritual significance along the way, but they looked like, well, mounds. Stonehenge itself was much more magnificent, rooted in a big sort of hill, looking over an otherwise pretty barren landscape. I have to admit though, the stones weren't quite a big as I had expected. Don't get me wrong, though, they weigh an average of 65 tonnes and it is suitably impressive to behold. Our £14.50 bus ticket got us fast-tracked entry into the Stonehenge area, skipping the rather modest line. As the afternoon wore on there were more and more people coming, so I can imagine it would get pretty hectic during summer. We braved the wind to listen to the complementary audio guide talk about the history of the stones, with some pretty interesting bits about its construction. It was made using carpentry methods like tongue-in-groove and mortice joints, the stones have, on average, one third of their mass below the ground, and some of the stones were transported around 240 miles, probably along the Avon river. Apparently some people tried to recreate that journey in 2002 and failed, showing how impressive a feat that was over five thousand years ago. The price probably wasn't really good value, but I'm really glad we did it. It was one of those things I'm glad I experienced in person rather than just through pictures on the net.
Faced with a lot of time to kill in Salisbury, we wandered the streets, looking in shops and the like. We also visited the Salisbury cathedral, a disproportionately large church for the size of the town, and it is really something special. It has been really well maintained, the space makes you feel tiny, there is a brilliant fountain at the front entry and a chapter house and cloister garden at the back. The chapter house annexe at the back is important because it houses one of the four surviving copies of the Magna Carta, an agreement between the people of Britain and King John which granted them specific rights. It was the first codified human rights agreement in history, and the building is a bit of a shrine to it. The guide who spoke to us about it was a bit old and doddery, and seemed to confuse herself and forget what she had already told us. It was pretty funny really.
The rest of the day was pretty uneventful, just sitting on buses on our way to Stansted airport. We stopped for a stunning, cheap meal at Yates' pub in Southampton, and are now settling down to a no doubt uncomfortable night on the airport tiles. We fly out early tomorrow morning and unfortunately we wouldn't be able to get here in time if relying on public transport.
