Back to London

We got up at 10:00 am and the showers were broken, which meant we had to skip taking showers again! We felt even more disgusting after sleeping in those beds, but we were just glad to finally get out of that awful hostel! We checked out of the hostel but left our luggage there since we weren't really leaving Dublin until the afternoon. We found an open market and bought some fruit (bananas and grapes) and bread, which we ate by the water.





Then we went to the Guinness Storehouse, although we decided against the tour after seeing the huge line! We just went into the gift shop instead. Afterwards, we went to a pub called The Quill, and I got Guinness there (I felt like I had to try it since we would have gotten some on the tour, haha). Then, we went back to the hostel, grabbed our luggage, and caught the bus to the airport at 4:00 pm.













to be continued....

Dublin, Ireland

We got up at 5:00 am, skipped showers and left the hostel at 5:30 am, caught a bus to the Edinburgh airport and arrived there at 6:00 am. We were glad we made it there fast without any problems! Our flight was not until 8:00 am, so we had lots of time to kill. I spent the time writing in my journal and catching up from the trip.

We arrived in Dublin around 9:00 am. We would spend the day and night in Ireland, and then we would head back to London the next afternoon. It would be a short trip, but we really wanted to see Ireland, and it was cheap to travel from Scotland to Ireland. When we landed, we took a bus to O'Connell St. and walked to our hostel, the Rainbow Hostel.





At the hostel, they didn't have Leigh Ann's name registered for 2 beds, even though she had pre-booked them and paid a deposit! This was the first thing during the whole trip that hadn't gone smoothly. The girl at the desk said it would be O.K. and she would put us in a room for that night. However, it was only 10:00 am at the time and the rooms wouldn't be ready until later, so we stored our things in the luggage room and left to explore Dublin. We had gotten a map from the airport so we could figure out where we were going right away.

The first thing we did was eat lunch at a little cafe. We ordered tortellini and soup and it was delicious! Then we walked to Christ Church Cathedral and explored the inside of it as well.





The side of the church was under construction:




We decided to walk to Dublin Castle next. We got there, but then we couldn't figure out how to get in! A modern building was connected to it, and what looked like the main entrance was locked. We walked around to the side and found an unlocked entrance, although it only led us to a small chapel. We sat down inside and looked around for awhile, then we looked at the gift shop, and lastly we explored the large garden outside. We didn't get to see any more of the inside of the castle, but we were O.K with that since we had limited time and limited money (since there was probably an admission fee). We were happy that we had now seen Edinburgh Castle, Stirling Castle, and Dublin Castle!

Pretty ivy that we saw on our walk to the castle:


An American flag! It felt really weird to see this:








The organ in the chapel:


There were these weird baby heads coming out of the ceiling that we had to take a picture of, haha:


The garden:


Our next stop was St. Patrick's Cathedral. When we got there, we saw that there was an Evensong service at 5:30 pm tonight and decided it would be fun to go!







We still had a few hours until the service, so we went to the Old Jameson Distillery and paid €7 for a tour. The tour was really interesting, and it basically explained how their whiskey is made, including a video presentation and demonstrations. There was even a free tasting at the end! In the gift shop, I bought whisky fudge and dark chocolate truffles laced with whisky. :)







After the tour, we had the perfect amount of time to walk back to St. Patrick's Cathedral in time for the Evensong service. We joked about going straight to the church from the whisky distillery :). The service lasted about 45 minutes. There was a boys' choir which was pretty good, and we had to kneel at certain parts which is always different, but we did enjoy the service.





Then it was time for dinner. After checking out several menus of restaurants (they kept being too expensive!), we settled on O'Shea's Merchant. Leigh Ann got a traditional Irish lamb stew, and I got chicken stuffed with salmon and spinach. Both dishes were really good! We each ate half of our food and then switched plates and ate the rest of the other food. Well, the waitress saw this and ended up charging us an extra €2.40 for splitting our meals! This didn't make any sense because we individually ordered complete meals. Oh well, we decided not to fight it. It was 7:30 pm when we got our food, and we wanted to make dinner last until 9:00 pm because live music was supposed to be playing across the street then at The Brazen Head (the oldest pub in Ireland)! We stayed and talked the whole time and made the meal last. We then went across the street expecting live music; however, it was extremely crowded and we didn't hear/see music, so we just walked back to the hostel.







It was pretty scary walking back to our hostel. All of the pubs were overflowing with drunk people and they were stumbling out into the streets. People were everywhere and there was loud music playing from all directions! Our hostel just happened to be right in the middle of all this craziness, in the middle of the city. We pushed through crowds of people, made it inside the Rainbow Hostel, and asked the guy at the front desk about our rooming situation. Well, they had accidentally put our names in a room that was already full, so they had to try to find another place for us! We were so tired and just wanted a place to sleep - the fact that there was no room didn't help us feel any better. The guy at the front desk said he thought he could find us a place to sleep, and he asked us to follow him.

We followed him through several doors and hallways, past all the rooms that looked like bedrooms. Where was he taking us? Finally we came to this small room that was crowded with beds and mattresses. He told us we could sleep in here, so we set down our stuff on 2 vacant beds. We examined the beds and they were disgusting! This had to be a room not really cleaned/prepared for guests - possibly an overflow room, which is what we were at this point. There were stains on the mattresses/blankets/pillows, and there were also hairs clinging to their surfaces. Leigh Ann and I decided to put an old t-shirt over each of our pillows so our faces wouldn't have to touch them! Her sheet also had a gigantic hole in it! I didn't even want to touch the blanket, so I just laid on top of the bed with no blanket, and it was so hard for me to go to sleep.

We were smiling in these pictures because we didn't know what was coming....




In the middle of the night, 3 guys and 1 girl stumbled in the room drunk and looked for empty beds. Since it was dark in the room, they couldn't see which beds were vacant....so they decided to feel around and see if there was a person in each bed!!! I woke up, terrified, to a guy's hands touching me (and I had no blanket)! He quickly realized a person was there, apologized, and moved on. After that, I couldn't go to sleep. The new people kept talking to each other, and after they fell asleep, one of the guys snored extremely loud which woke other people up too (including Leigh Ann). The rest of the night was long and miserable, basically a series of short naps. The morning could not come fast enough.

Touring Stirling

We got up at 8:00 am, took showers and got ready, and walked a few doors down to a little cafe for a traditional Scottish breakfast. This was a huge meal including tea, toast, bacon, baked beans, grilled sausage, black pudding, an egg, and a potato scone! I was a little scared about the black pudding - basically sausage made of blood - but I just had to think of it as sausage. The food was so delicious and we loved all of it!







We planned on taking a Stirling bus tour today that only cost £5. We waited at the bus stop, and at 10:00 we saw the Sightseeing Tours bus speeding around the corner. The driver didn't look like he was going to slow down! So we jumped up from our seats and got his attention, and he picked us up. Well, it turns out that he was headed to the gas station first before picking people up at the bus stop, and that's why he was in such a hurry, haha. We were just happy to be on board though, and we patiently waited for him while he filled up at the gas station.





This was a hop on-hop off tour that included 12 stops, and a bus came every 30 minutes to each stop to take people to the next one. After picking some people up, the bus took us to our first stop, the National Wallace Monument. When we got off the bus, we saw the gift shop and a statue of William Wallace that said "FREEDOM." Then a van took us up the hill to the monument. We had the option of paying £4.50 to climb the 246 steps in the tower and see the sword, but we decided against it. We just took pictures of the memorial and the gorgeous view of the city from the hilltop.

















A dad helping his 2 kids fight with the swords they just got from the gift shop:


The next stop on the tour was Stirling Castle. We had just visited it the night before, but we knew it would look completely different during the day. There were more people on the bus this time, so we decided to sit in the seats on the top of the bus :).

The tour guide:






I took a picture of the National Wallace Monument as we drove far away from it. It really stands out above the city!












It was £4.50 to go inside this one too, so we just took pictures from the outside. We were planning on taking the bus back to Edinburgh in the afternoon, so we only had a few hours left in Stirling. Instead of waiting for the bus to come and take everyone to the next stop, we decided we were done with the bus and walked into town since it was close. We passed the Old Town Jail (also £4.50 to go inside) and a pretty cemetery, which we took several pictures of.



The cemetery with Stirling Castle in the background:


We saw lots of Celtic crosses:






Walking into town:


The Old Town Jail:


Flag of Scotland:


We walked through the Old Town and got to the busy city.


This picture looks like it belongs on a visitor's brochure, haha:


This cute dog, tied to a pole, obediently sat and waited for its owner to finish shopping in a store. I was hoping it could ironically be a Scottish Terrier (haha) but I'm not really sure. :)





















We were walking back to our hostel and realized there was an Oxfam right next door to our hostel! I told Leigh Ann we had to go in since that's where I volunteer in Oxford :). This one was just a bookstore (no clothes, or home decor like the one in Oxford). We looked around for a few minutes and each bought a book. Then we went to our hostel to get our luggage, made a quick stop at the post office so Leigh Ann could mail a couple postcards, and headed to the bus station. It was 1:15 pm, and the next bus for Edinburgh wasn't until 2:45 pm, so we just waited inside the bus station and got some food to kill time.

The bus came and we got back into Edinburgh around 3:45 pm. We first went to our hostel, a different one called the Belford Hostel. This was a really cool place to stay because it was actually converted from a church to a hostel! We were in a small room with 3 bunkbeds, but nobody else was staying in the room with us, so we had our own room. We even had a little stained glass window :).









A funny mural on the wall downstairs including a cartoon haggis perched in the tree! Haha



We bought tickets for a Ghost & Ghouls Tour tonight, which was basically a tour of haunted places in Edinburgh! The group was to meet at 7:00 pm at St. Giles Cathedral, which was a long walk from our hostel (although it was very close to where our first hostel was). We didn't want to pay for a bus, so we left our hostel and started walking in that direction. On the way, we stopped for dinner at the Doric Tavern. Leigh Ann had Haggis, Tatties & Neeps, and I had Bangers & Mash (sausages and potatoes). We passed beautiful scenery and lots of upscale shops on the way to town. It was about 5:45 pm when we got into the area, and we still had about an hour before the tour. We shopped at some tourist places, browsed a whisky shop, and took some beautiful pictures of Edinburgh Castle while the sun was setting. Then it was time for our tour!







We saw a man in a kilt!




Edinburgh Castle:




St. Giles Cathedral, where we met for our tour:






The tour was really good! About 50 people were in our group, including a handful of kids. The guide was a passionate woman and the audience really listened to her! We walked down the road to different spots, and the guide told spooky true stories. We even walked into a sort of cave underground with lots of chambers, and candles and lanterns lit the way. I wasn't too scared during the tour, but there were definitely some stories that were scary if they were really true (I'm a skeptic, haha)! When we went underground, the guide told us we were going to avoid a certain section of the caves because they have had "incidents" happen there during tours in the past....

The guide staging a demonstration of punishments on volunteers from the audience:




Preparing to go underground:






In one of the chambers, there was a skeleton (Is it real?) lying on the ground, and I took a picture of it. Well, Leigh Ann didn't see the skeleton when we were on the tour, and when she was going back through our pictures, she got a pretty good scare from seeing the skeleton in this picture!


After the tour, we went to a pub called Albanach and got Bailey's, and then we walked all the way back to our hostel. We went to bed right away, because we were getting up really early in the morning to go to Ireland!