Giant's Causeway, Scotland

So I think I'm starting to get too lazy for blogging! This post will be somewhat brief - you can all ask more questions later if you want! Monday and Tuesday last week were my last days at the pharmacy. Kinda busy but in a good way and everyone said I have to come back and visit again before I leave so I plan to do that this Wednesday. I did a day trip back to Northern Ireland to see the Giant's Causeway, the rope bridge to Carrick-a-rede, and a little bit of Londonderry (Derry), sight of Bloody Sunday. 

It was kind of a long trip just for the day - spent many hours half asleep on the bus listening to our driver, Troy, and his playlist of Rihanna, Beyonce and Adele. An odd choice of music if you had seen our driver for sure. The weather turned out to be pretty decent although it looked gray and rainy at first and the causeway and the rope bridge were honestly impressive. The causeway was made by cooling lava - it cools evenly in all directions and something else happens that I forget but that's what gives it the cool hexagonal shapes for the pillars. The rope bridge was pretty cool too but a little shorter than I expected, which is probably good or it might have been freakier! Londonderry was cool from what I saw but we only had about a half an hour or so there, and naturally I spent 20 minutes getting a bowl of potato and leek soup! Yummmm. Got back home around 9pm and then had to rest up for CAROLYN to arrive the next morning!!!!

This whole mini trip Carolyn did to Ireland/Scotland was completely awesome and ridiculous and worked out in spite of our planning and lack of plans...but you'll understand why soon. This crazy girl flew into Dublin at 9:30am (Dublin time, 4:30am NYC time) and grabbed a bus to my little cottage. She got to the bus stop just as I was walking around the corner so to get her attention I naturally yelled "FREEDOM!!!". We relaxed for about 3 hours, drank some tea, ate some bagels, and then packed to go back to the airport to fly to Scotland! We were flying RyanAir for the first time for both of us and it made us a little paranoid - aka weighing our backpacks and getting to the airport about 2 1/2 hours early, both of which were unnecessary. We just sat around delirious for a while and the flight got delayed 45 minutes so we got into Edinburgh at about 8:15, lucked out when the bus to the City Centre came by just as we exited the airport and took the quick half hour ride to Waverly Station, right in the middle of Edinburgh. 

That. City. Is. So. Cool. I may be partly biased since Carolyn was with me for this trip but Edinburgh is definitely one of my favorite places, if not my top favorite, of everything I've seen in Europe. We got dropped off on the bridge directly above Waverly Station and everything was lit up in Christmas lights with a ferris wheel and fair going on by Princes St. Our directions to the hostel said to look at Edinburgh Castle and then turn left - and we realized what an awesome place it was when neither one of us was sure which old, awesome, enormous, impressive building was actually the castle. Granted, it was dark, but we honestly picked at least two or three that could have been a castle before realizing where it actually was. The short 15 minute walk to our hostel (also in a wayyyy cool area known as the Grassmarket) was just amazing. The hostel was also very nice and had really friendly staff who suggested a place to eat called Mum's Comfort Food and boy was it comforting! I had bangers and mash (two different kinds of sausage - their original with spices and a special pork and mulled wine blend, plus mashed potatoes with garlic and courgettes aka zucchini in it) and Carolyn had shepherd's pie. Oh my gosh sooooooo good and pretty cheap too.

We made it an early night since Carolyn was all out of whack and I'm just a grandma. We had a 4 person room with only one other girl but she was asleep when we got back and then got up super early to leave the next morning. Either way we got about 9 hours of awesome sleep before grabbing breakfast (best bacon ever!) at the hostel and heading out on a free walking tour with one of the staff around 11am. Our guide was really friendly and helpful and from Australia and there were a total of 5 tourists on the tour so nice and small. At the top of the street our hostel was on, Candlemaker's row, was a cemetery and the remains of a wall that used to divide Scottish and British (I think) with about 80,000 people living inside the walled area. 

We saw HOGWARTS aka a really old private, very wealthy school that J.K. Rowling used as inspiration for Hogwarts and was actually believed by townspeople to be a school for wizards and witches way back in the day. Professor McGonagall's name came from the cemetery outside the school as did Tom Riddle (although spelled Riddell so not sure how true that is). We also saw The Elephant House, where JKR wrote The Sorcerer's Stone, and where Carolyn and I later had tea and also wrote Harry Potter...literally, on a napkin. I learned that the meaning of the word "shitfaced" comes from when hundreds of people were crammed into living in an area called the Royal Mile. There was no sewage system yet and everyone threw trash and chamber pot contents out the windows onto the sidewalk. Before tossing something, the person was supposed to yell out a phrase (I forget what) to tell people below to get out of the way and if someone was walking by they could yell "hold your hand!" so they had time to move before getting dumped on. Well, usually the drunk/hungover people coming home in the morning around 10am (when everything was dumped out) would forget or not react quickly enough and quite literally were "shitfaced" when someone emptied the chamber pot on them. Our last big stop was Carlton Hill which gives ridiculous views of Edinburgh - so so so awesome and such a clear day - our tour guide said she didn't even know there was snow on the mountains in the distance because you usually can't see them. 

Carolyn's friend Grant, a Scot who did study abroad with Carolyn at UNCW, met up with us at about 2pm and showed us around the city. By that I mean we stopped at a pub to grab a beer and then turned the rest of the day into a pub crawl, with a quick stop at the castle for some pictures. Lots of Irish Coffee, mulled wine, fire punch and hot toddies kept us warm for the next...8-9 hours as we roamed the city and just enjoyed each other's company in freaking Scotland! Fish and chips with cheese and teeny tiny forks turned out to be a great choice on the way back home for the night, again pretty early but one of our "roommates" was already asleep! I think we got into bed around midnight...and then both of us didn't sleep until we had to get up around 5 am thanks to our other roommate returning and a ton of very loud people on the street outside. My alarm failed to go off but thankfully Carolyn checked the time and we made it out the door in about 15 minutes at 5:30am with maybe half an hour of sleep. A fox ran by us as we walked to the bus stop! Thankfully the trip home was pretty easy and we chose to stop back at the cottage - me for a shower, Carolyn for a nap - before going back out and seeing Dublin.

We tried to go on a tour of Trinity College, which AGAIN I missed somehow, but we saw the Book of Kells, a 9th century copy of the four gospels, and that was kind of mindblowing. We had lunch at O'Neill's pub - and will never go back again, even though the food was fine, because it was way too confusing and the tables sucked and there were blacklights in the bathroom stalls. Yes, that's right, the toilets and TP glowed eerily in the lights and it was creepy and kinda gross. The city was pretty packed with Christmas shoppers so we didn't get to many stores before bailing entirely and walking across the Liffey to see O'Connell St and then back around for the Guinness Storehouse. It was really nice to get to the storehouse around 4:30, take our time looking at everything, and then enjoying a pint at the Gravity Bar with a panoramic view of Dublin at night. We had a pub crawl scheduled for later on that evening, but without sleep and after a few long days of traveling, we skipped it and went to The Gotham Cafe (ironic I know) for some delicious pizza and had a glass of mulled wine at a really cute place back in Dundrum called The Port House. 

Hot water bottles awaited us at the cottage and Carolyn packed up to leave for NYC this morning (Sunday). I walked her to the bus stop and then promptly went back to sleep until about 2pm and was lazy for the rest of today. Gotta pack my backpack for tomorrow morning when I head to Galway and the Aran Islands for two days but then the last packing I do this week will be to head home! 

RCSI and Belfast

This week was very relaxed. Monday and Tuesday I was back in Dundrum and Wednesday and Thursday I was in the City Centre at Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. RCSI is located right next to St. Stephen's Green which is perfect when you take the Luas. I believe it was the second pharmacy school in the Republic of Ireland - there are now 3, one at Trinity College (also in Dublin) and another in Cork. RCSI has had a medical school for a while now but the pharmacy school is only about 10 years old. There are only 50 students per class so each year the entire country only has about 150 pharmacy graduates.


I was shown a quick tour by Judith Strawbridge, a professor who studied at Queens in Belfast. RCSI was a stronghold for the Irish rebels during the 1916 rebellion and I got to see bullet holes in one of the rooms! On Wednesday I sat in on a lecture with 4th year students (final year of pharmacy school with one to go in internships) about drugs in lactation. It was a nice review because we haven't had that topic in a while. After the lecture we watched 1st year students give presentations on various topics (I think they were assigned by a professor) but one was about immunizations so Judith gave me a quick introduction to the class and I was able to briefly tell them about how it works in the states. It's really cool to see how different things are (what works, what doesn't) and to see different levels of student knowledge.


Both Wednesday and Thursday were half days for me (yay!) and Thursday was very similar - a few presentations by 4th year students and then a tutorial in the afternoon where they went over some mental health cases. Since I got done early I was able to do a little more shopping in the City Centre without the crazy night/weekend crowds. 


This morning I got up early to take a day tour from Dublin to Belfast in Northern Ireland. NI is part of the UK but there's an open border and Catholics tend to want a united Ireland (the 6 counties in NI to be reunited with the other 26 in the Republic of Ireland) but Protestants want to remain part of the UK. On the way we stopped in Drogheda to go into a church and see the head of Oliver Plunkett - and honestly I can't remember much of what happened to him except he was drawn and quartered and then never given a proper Catholic burial. His head has been preserved there for about 300 years. We also stopped at Monasterboice, a little monastery, but the one I saw at Glendalough was definitely more impressive.


We drove about another hour or so to get to Belfast. Once we arrived, some of us took the famous Black Taxi tours that go through the political issues between Catholics and Protestants. There are numerous murals all through the city depicting heroes or victims of the violence that has taken place. There is a wall called the Peace Line that divides the Catholics from the Protestants and we were all given Sharpies to write whatever we wanted on it. I found it interesting that the city has taken sides on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and Catholics are for Palestine while Protestants are for Israel. The Good Friday treaty was signed in 1998 or 1999 and has helped promote peace in Northern Ireland by giving Catholics and Protestants the same rights. Belfast City is in the top 5 for safest cities in Europe (oddly enough) but the suburbs can still have skirmishes and so the police drive in armored Land Rovers with bulletproof glass. It kind of blows my mind that stuff like this still happens.


I spent about an hour outside City Hall where there was a Continental Christmas market featuring food and booths from all over Europe. I had a French Le Croque de Monsieur (toasted ham and cheese sandwich) and some Swiss mulled wine to keep me warm as I roamed around. There was even an exotic meats booth selling ostrich meat! Well actually the ostrich was sold out so it must have been good. I walked around a few blocks near City Hall but didn't venture far because there was a free tour of City Hall at 2pm. Inside was gorgeous - Italian and Greek marble everywhere. Apparently in the late 1880s - 1890s when it was built it cost 369,000 pounds - something like 140 million today, which would still be a bargain for what you get. We sat in one of the "courtroom" areas and the tour guide explained to us about how nationalists (those who want NI to reunite with ROI) sit on one side and unionists (those who wish to stay in the United Kingdom) sit on the other - again, Catholics vs. Protestants. 


One of the ballrooms is Titanic themed since the Titanic was built in Belfast (the largest port in the British Commonwealth at the time) and it was the last stop before heading out to sea. There were about 85 people from Belfast who went down on the Titanic and there is a memorial outside City Hall for them - it's being revamped because the centennial of it's voyage is next year. Apparently the last remaining living survivor of the Titanic passed away earlier this year. I wish we had time to see the Titanic museum (makes me want to watch the movie again!) but we did get to see the Titanic Quarter which is basically a shipyard but has the dry dock where the Titanic was built. It was HUGE! When you see the pictures, keep in mind that the only part of the ship that even fit in the dry dock was the part that would have been below the water line - so it's really even bigger than you think.


After the Titanic Quarter we headed back to Dublin and everyone slept on the 2 hour drive. It was nice to see for a day but I think Belfast didn't seem as tourist-y to me so I wouldn't have needed much more time there. I will be back in Northern Ireland on Wednesday to go to the Giant's Causeway, Carrick-a-rede, and Derry (Londonderry) to hear about Bloody Sunday. Then it's off to Scotland with Carolyn for a day and a half, then more Dublin, the Galway and Aran Islands, and then home. Whoosh.

I went to London this weekend! I still can't quite believe it. Here's how it went down:


Friday I left work a little early to get home in time to finish packing and catch the Aircoach to Dublin Airport (while I was there I scoped out the duty-free stores for gifts!). The gate for my plane didn't open until just under an hour before take-off, but as soon as I got to the gate I found out the flight was delayed by about 45 minutes. I tried to figure out how to use country codes and my pay-as-you-go phone to let Elaine know I would be late but I had to use 10 minutes of free wi-fi because I couldn't figure everything out :/  the flight was a little bumpy on the way over but it was short and I arrived in London Gatwick Airport around 11:15. The lines to get train tickets out of the airport were wild and I was at least 20 people back when some guy started yelling that if you had to get to London Bridge, you could buy your ticket on the train or at your destination. Since that was me, I found the platform and jumped on a train - but no one came around asking to see a ticket and when I left the train the turnstiles were all open so I got a free ride! I met Elaine at around midnight to get on the Tube (aka subway) to Canada Water then a bus to the wharf on the Thames where Elaine lives. You can see the financial district just across the river right in front of her flat! It's pretty crazy. All of Elaine's flatmates were really nice - one of them roomed at VT with another Franklin Regional girl - and we spent about half an hour or so figuring out what our plan of action was for Saturday since Elaine would need to leave to babysit by 5:30pm. Finally went to sleep around 2 am with a 7:30 wake up. 


Saturday started early with a tube ride to Knightsbridge near Chelsea to have a full English breakfast at the Knightsbridge Cafe (toast, bacon, sausage, scrambled eggs, and beans + freshly pressed apple juice!). We went to Harrod's first - a crazy big, fancy, famous department store. Elaine had actually never been so it was fun to experience it for the first time together. It was amazing! Everything is ornate and over the top. There is an Egyptian themed escalator that runs up and down to all 5 floors (see pictures on Facebook) plus an amazing food hall full of everything you could think of, plus designer clothing and jewelry and gifts and furniture, plus a PET store and spa with lots of puppies, plus a HARRY POTTER shop. We spent an hour there just walking around and ogling. Hyde Park is right in the same area so we walked through part of it to see the Prince Albert monument (very cool). The weather was honestly great the whole day - partly sunny and about 50 degrees F.  The Harry Potter shop at Harrod's got us a little sidetracked for our plans for the day because we added in King's Cross! Got to see Platform 9 and 3/4 and it definitely was worth it. We went to see Tower Bridge next and it was amazing. Honestly it's kind of crazy to see all of the modern buildings and then right next to it is a building that is hundreds of years old. We walked past the Tower of London too - definitely will have to tour that someday!


Next stop was Trafalgar Square complete with a huge Christmas tree! The cold weather is worth it to visit during the holiday season. I'll probably butcher some of this so if you want more info go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horatio_Nelson or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trafalgar_Square but basically the main things of note in the Square are the National Gallery, Nelson's Column, the four pillars or plinths, and the entrance to The Mall. Admiral Nelson fought at the Battle of Trafalgar during the Napoleonic wars and his column is surrounded by four lions made from the melted down cannons used in the war. The four pillars were built to hold four statues but only three statues were completed in the 1800s before funds ran out so the fourth pillar stood empty for many years until it was decided to allow a local artist to exhibit some sort of art for a period of time on the fourth pillar. Right now the fourth holds a replica of the HMS Victory in a bottle. The Mall leads to Buckingham Palace but we didn't go to see it (Elaine said it's not that impressive and since I wasn't going to do a tour inside that was fine with me). We walked down to Westminster Abbey - the detail work is crazy - and you could see the London Eye from the bridge we walked across. The Eye is a giant Ferris wheel with large pods for people to stand in and see the whole city. After crossing the Thames we walked along the South Bank through the Christmas Market that was very crowded but smelled delicious. Honestly the street vendors selling roasted nuts almost had me a few times until I looked into the gross metal bowls they roasted in. Yuck. 


More walking brought us to The Globe Theatre - closed in the winter since it doesn't have a roof. We took the Millennium Bridge (a footbridge) back across the Thames to see St. Paul's Cathedral, also with it's own Christmas tree. By this point it was around 4pm and we hadn't eaten since our big breakfast so we stopped to warm up, rest our feet and get some food. Elaine left after dinner to babysit and I continued back across the Millennium Bridge to go into the Tate Modern museum of art. I'm a little iffy on modern art sometimes - I either think it's really cool or really lame (like "Hey, I could do that, it's not art"). There was definitely some of both at the exhibits but some of them were really cool. My favorite were the family trees, the floating staircase, and the sunflower seeds. Pictures of the staircase and sunflower seeds can be seen below. The family tree exhibit was by an American photographer and it had 18 chapters - each chapter was comprised of three large frames - in the first one on the left were plain pictures of people that were numbered and represented a family tree. The middle frame held the names and relations of the people as well as about two paragraphs on the main story line - from a family affected by thalidomide to the first female hijacker to a family practicing the Druze religion that believes in reincarnation. The last frame held a few pictures of items that were important to help tell the story of that bloodline. For more info go to http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/tarynsimon/default.shtm or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBatctT7iFo (the second one is better - this clip was playing on a screen at the Tate and helps explain the exhibit really well). It was a really moving and interesting exhibit and I actually read all of the blurbs which never happens. I started looking at the pictures of the family first and trying to guess what their story would be but I was usually wrong (except thalidomide was kind of easy to guess). The staircase exhibit I liked mainly just because it looked really cool. The sunflower seed exhibit was sweet because the seeds are actually not seeds but instead hand-crafted porcelain - read the description in the picture included. 


So all in all a great and busy day. I spent about two hours at the Tate before taking the Tube back to Canada Water, then had a black woman ask me if I was feeling okay since I looked really pale (thanks a lot lady), then took the bus back to Elaine's place. I relaxed and looked up the best taxi/train route back to Gatwick for early the next morning and then went to sleep for about 4 hours. The taxi I had scheduled didn't show and I must've given my phone number incorrectly but we used Elaine's phone to call another one and I made it to the train station 5 minutes before the train to Gatwick, then got to the airport and through security about 15 minutes before boarding my flight. Thankfully I didn't have any further hiccups or I might've missed the flight! I took a three hour nap once I got back but it was definitely, definitely worth it and thanks again to Elaine for taking so much time to show me around!!

                                                      Near Harrod's in Knightsbridge

                                                         Millions of "sunflower seeds"

More for this post - today was a big day in Ireland because half of the new budget is being rolled out over three days. Almost every fee or tax is going up and almost every subsidy is going down. Relevant stuff: family max for prescriptions per month - increased from 120 euros to 132. Student contribution to college/university - increased from 2000/year to 2250/year. Child benefit stipend - remains at 140 euros for kids 1 and 2, any subsequent kids reduced from 160-something euros to 140 (i.e. only have two kids). For more info go to http://news.sky.com/home/world-news/article/16124201 or http://budget.gov.ie/Budgets/2012/2012.aspx . 


In other news, I learned about some really crazy superstitions today. Well, Nichola (who was telling me, Tony, and Catherine at work) seems to believe them because she's seen the cures work but it's really far fetched. Okay so basically there are some people who are "blessed" or "healers" or have "The Cure" for strange diseases or conditions. The first one we heard about was The Cure for burns. If you get a burn - hot water, picking up a hot pan, etc - you would go to see someone who has The Cure and they would lick (yes, lick) wherever you've been burned and it will take away the pain plus increase healing and the burn will not leave a scar. How does someone get The Cure, you ask? By licking the belly of a lizard. A bog lizard. So, the next time you're in a bog, lick a lizard's belly and you will then be able to lick various body parts of friends, family, and strangers to heal them. Sounds absolutely ridiculous I know but I'm just reporting what I heard. Another cure is for thrush. If a girl (or maybe a boy too, but Nichola's friend who has this Cure is a girl so I'm not sure if it's gender specific) anyway if a girl is still in the womb when her father dies, she will have The Cure for thrush. THANKFULLY if you have The Cure for thrush you DO NOT have to lick someone where they have it (sdjfwoeitenjrgim ew the thought makes me want to vomit worse than the idea licking someone's burn) but instead you can bless water, thus making the water holy, and when the person drinks the water they will be healed. So. Interesting. Tony, Catherine and I were very intrigued by these stories but I think we all thought they were a load of crap, but Nichola has seen people who have been "treated" by someone with "The Cure" and says they're fine now, so....believe what you will.

Dun Laoghaire

Just a few quick lines today. Went for a half day at a methadone clinic in Dun Laoghaire (Done Leary) that was pretty interesting. Patients who have had heroin, codeine, or cocaine addictions can transition to methadone and then be monitored and have daily dispensing of their methadone liquid. Most of the people I saw today looked like your typical "I wonder if they're on drugs" kind of person but there were a few who surprised me. The clinic can have up to 100 people enrolled at a time and I think there are about 94-95 right now. If they were full there would be a wait list and it's usually first come first served unless there is a pregnant woman or someone with HIV that should really be in treatment.


Dun Laoghaire is a port south of Dublin so it was really nice to see the ships and the water - the weather was cold but partly sunny and a quick train ride along the cost for 3 euros brought me to the National Crafts and Designs fair. My landlady has actually participated in this fair in the past so I got a free ticket! There were a few hundred booths to look through - naturally my favorite were the ones with food. Tried some delicious mulled wine and Irish coffee as well as lots of chocolates. Since I was only at the clinic for a half day I was able to spend some time at the fair and still get home before it got dark.


Tomorrow is my last day at the Leopardstown pharmacy and then LONDON for the weekend! Just a short stay but I'm sure it will be worth it.