Muggles, Lizzie Bennett & Wickham (!), and Guys & Dolls, oh my!
After visiting Christ Church in Oxford to see all the HP-related rooms, we headed off for the Bodleian library which holds the divinity school which was used for the hospital wing in the movies. There is also the Duke Humphrey's library which was used as The Library in the films, but we found that we couldn't actually see that one unless we went on a tour. We decided we hadn't travelled all this way (god, starting to sound like Ewan McGregor in his travel book...)to chicken out because of the £5 admission price, so £5 poorer, we found ourselves signed up for the 2 pm tour.
In the interim, I dragged Laura around the city of Oxford looking for the best Trinity regalia we could find. We ultimately decided that a bonafide Trinity College Oxford scarf is what I needed; I know what I'll be going as for Hallowe'en this year! We won't talk about how much it cost, but believe me when I say it's super cool! We'll have to take a photo of me "kitted out" in all this stuff at some point!
We also stopped into Blackwells and looked around, but soon enough we were on our tour of the library. Our tour guide was the real-life incarnation of Madam Pince! She was so surly and snooty and gave Laura the most aggregious look when she asked whether our bags would be locked up during the tour (since we had to leave them behind). Anyway... the tour was actually really boring (due in no small part to Pince, we think). Now we remember why history can be so dull! Blech! We did learn a few cool facts (like how Cambridge began when students defacted from Oxford because of killings that were taking place!), and the Library was awesome. They really have the books chained up (like in the Restricted Section!) and everything! Alas, we couldn't take pictures, it was verboten, and there weren't any postcards of the place, but we have the memories. Oh! And we also got to check out some places around the library that will be featured in the next film, so we'll have to keep our eyes peeled (we did take pics of those!).
After a scrumptious cream tea (with clotted cream!) we got on the train to London... We ate chicken cottage for dinner again, and then went to bed. Our hostel isn't as great as we thought it would be, but it is clean. The breakfast is pathetic, and we have a hard time finding a hot shower, but we're safe and it's mostly quiet (we've recently been overtaken by children)...
Not enough time to regale you with all our tales so far (sorry for the misleading title), but you'll hear all about London, Ewan,Platform 9 and 3/4!, and Wickham in our next update. It's a heck of a time!
Back in England... a super fast update! We swear!
We last left you before heading off to Mary King's Close. It had been recommended to us by Clart, our guide on the Lit Pub tour. We had signed up for the latest slot, although it didn't really matter as since it was below ground, it would dark always. We couldn't find a place to eat that satisfied all of my vague requirements: no potatoes, something with cheese, maybe meat, not fish and chips. Thus, we went back to The Elephant Cafe and had a fabulous salad while talking about JK and HP. The tour of the Close was... goodish. It was pretty interesting to see the underground alleyways (although they were not underground originally), although it would have been better if they had not bothered to try and be remotely scary since that just made things cheesy. If we wanted scares, we would have gone on the City of the Dead tour and then required new trousers, because when we first went into the Close, it was pretty scary on its own. We didn't like how the guides had to reenact the time by pretending to be people stuck down there; our guide was purportedly Mary King's own daughter. Still, it was pretty interesting, and we did like hearing about all the nasty and disgusting things they did in/to the Nor Loch (now Waverly Station and the Princes Gardens).
We had the most traumatic wakeup call the next morning as 2 of the people in our room decided to engage in activities perhaps best left for private rooms rather than 12-bed dorms. Even though they had constructed a little cave out of covers, it wasn't soundproof and they managed to wake up the entire room with their shenanigans. So frightening. More effective than any video in health class. Eep!
We left Edinburgh to go to Alnmouth/Alnwick (pronounced: Annick) to visit Hogwarts itself. It was really cool, and our tour guide Sid was fantastic. Alas, we could not totally enjoy ourselves as we had nowhere to put our rucksacks, and so we had ot carry them with us the entire time. We eventually abandonned them just past the spot where the kids take their first flying lesson. While at the castle, we also saw the improper site of the womping willow, the archway that Hagrid carries an Xmas tree through, the quidditch pitch backdrop, and a little area that the kids cluster around when Ron says that Hermione is a nightmare! So great!
We then took the train to Manchester, where we checked into our hostel and then went for chinese food (our first time in like, 43 days or something!). It was quite expensive everywhere, but we got a good deal in China town, and stuffed ourselves well.
The next day we took the train to Disley where we visited Pemberley/Lyme Park. We had dodgy directions from the station (read: walk half a mile from the station), so we thankfully found a woman who told us how to get there by foot (apparently this is uncommon). After much traipsing up cobbled laneways and across very hilly grasslands (lyme park itself), we made it to The building. We took pictures of the stairs that Darcy runs down when he is trying to catch Lizzie from leaving Pemberley, and of course, took pictures of the back of the house, and The Pond. We then spent a lazy afternoon dozing on the lawn near the pond and reading. No good gifts in the shop (zut!), but we did have a cream tea there, since how could we pass up that opportunity? Suck it, Taryn! Ha ha ha!
Got in very late to Oxford, and shared the train with many weirdos. One man had broken glasses and kept moaning and moving backwards from us but kept staring at Laura. Also, there was another man who was dressed as though he were an Indian chief.
Hostel provided us with full English breakfast (yum!), and since then we have been out and about wandering the streets of Oxford. Visited Christ Church, where we took pictures of the cloisters, the great stairway, and of course, the Great Hall (had to wait an extra half hour just for it to open, but only paid £2 instead of £3,50 for our troubles). Next we're off to do some more HP-themed sightseeing, and will head to London later today.
No more time to write, but we daresay there shall be time enough in London. Can't believe the trip is pretty much over. Can't say we want to come home... we're English girls at heart now! Haven't we always been?
Bloody Hell! Adventures and near misses in Edinburgh.
Welcome to the land of poor grammar. We're not talking "Irvine Welsh" style prose here, but just full-on disrespect for the English language. Who ever knew that apostrophe-s made things plural? I am now going into overdrive as "The Grammar Warden". The city is lucky that I haven't taken to carrying a black sharpie with me to undo all of their grammatical offenses!
Anyway, a night of sleep did little to quell our stomachs back in Inverness, so the next morning, we did what years at university have taught us to do when one wakes up feeling queasy: eat a greasy breakfast. It might be a patented hangover cure, but it worked wonders on our roiling tummies as well. Who would have thought that McDonald's mcmuffins would be cure-alls?
We booked ourselves on a Jacobite Passion/Sensation tour, and wound up on a very nice tour bus with only one other elderly (more like ancient) couple to share it with. Our tour guide George was awesome (we have such good luck with guides), and was quite surprised to see the numbers so low. High season indeed! We blame the weather as it was threatening rain and was quite chilly out. The tour was a bit expensive, but the price included transportation to and from Loch Ness, admission to Urquhart Castle, a half hour ride on a boat on the Ness, and entrance to the Official Loch Ness Exhibition. Furthermore, George regaled us with stories and trivia about the area whenever we were on the bus, so it was a good deal!
We drove to the boat docks where we caught our ferry across Loch Ness to Urquhart Castle. It was quite cold out, and we think that might be why we didn't see Nessie. Still, we were happy that the water wasn't choppy, as apparently the waves can be as high as 6 or 7 feet when rough! The boat ride was actually really nice (despite the lack of paranormal visitors), and slow enough that no winds cut us to the bone.
When we reached Urquhart - which is really just the shell of a castle - we took tons of touristy type photos (we were in a mood), most notably ones where we are pointing out to the lake with aghast expressions on our face. We've left enough room to paste in a little Nessie when we get back home! In the souvenir shop, we found out by reading about the different clans that the Elliot(t)s were "bad-asses" and pretty much rabble-rousers who stole sheep and the like. It actually explains a lot. I guess you can't fight your past!
We were a bit late getting back onto our tour bus (George actually came looking for us) but this was only because we had taken his advice and watched the film in the tour center about Urquhart's history! Still, we vowed that we would be early when he came to pick us up from the Loch Ness Center. The center was really cool: you walked about from room to room watching little movies that traced the history of the loch and the monster sightings. Some rooms were very high-tech involving smoke and lasers (which Laura felt looked like the Dark Mark!), and it was all very interesting to see how they have gone about investigating the possibility of there being a monster/dinosaur living in the loch. George isn't the exhibitions biggest fan since it was put together by a single man and is therefore a unilateral look at Nessie. According to the exhibition, it is likely that Nessie is really just a huge sturgeon. Of course, sturgeon or no, we still didn't see her! Also, George has spoken to countless individuals (including some monks) who have all claimed to see something in the loch, and as he pointed out, they weren't all that concerned with convincing him about what they had seen since they were all personally satisfied. Also, all of these people were "reasonably intelligent" (in George's own words!) and had no need to make up stories. I guess we'll have to closely examine our pictures once we get back and see if anything mysterious crops up.
Once back in Inverness, we checked out of our first hostel and transferred over to our second one which was situated right across the street from a mall. Now we know why all the people from Fort William's went shopping in Inverness since, I personally managed to pick myself up a pair of jeans that no longer shame me when I wear them. They weren't too expensive, and were "petite" so they are the perfect length. Why oh why can't all North American stores have a petite section? It's just not fair to us short girls!
After some time doing some extensive window shopping, we began looking for a supermarket to get some food for dinner. Although we failed on that account (and actually wound up in a second-hand bookstore which seemed so promising at first (beautiful winding, iron staircase) but soon revealed itself to be infuriatingly unorganized), we did find a pub that had an awesome curry special on. Essentially we got a great curry with some rice, nan, chutney, and popadoms plus a drink for £4.99. We wanted to get Blackthorne (not knowing what it actually was, but the name sounded familiar). We were happy to find out that Blackthorne is cider, but then were saddened to find that they didn't actually have it available, so each got a pint of Fosters instead.
As we (ok, I) stumbled our way home afterwards, we lingered out in the cold for a bit longer as we watched some children doing some highland dancing. We were particularly amused by this tiny mulletted boy and his partner (Ginny Weasley) who essentially just lunged from side to side and threw their hand in the air. Very amusing!
The dampness from outside crept inward when I realized after climbing into bed that my sheets were moist. Although I got the guy at reception to change them for me, the matress itself was wet and so, I ended up just cocooning myself in the overlying duvet. Not the most comfortable sleep, although Laura was prodded throughout the night by her especially springy matress (she could feel every coil!). There was nothing good on tv (just Wife Swap, for whatever reason), so we stayed in our room reading. Much to our horror, just as we were getting ready to turn in for the night, Vomit Girl from the bus in from Fort William and her very unfortunate looking boyfriend/brother showed up! What are the chances that they would be in our room! It sounds like taking the tour bus was the best choice, since they had gone to Loch Ness as well but had walked for 12 miles or something and also did some hitch-hiking. No thanks!
The next day we took the train into Edinburgh. At first we were concerned because all of the seats appeared to be reserved, but the train was actually quite empty, so I guess people just didn't show up. The train was quite cold, although I slept through most of the journey! We did see a field where all the cows were lying down, although Laura couldn't remember whether her dad said that meant the world was ending OR whether it was going to rain. It then began to rain, so I think we're leaning toward the latter explanation!
We had to walk up some frighteningly steep hills (in the rain) once we reached Edinburgh, only to find when we got to our hostel that they had no record of us. This makes no sense since we booked it through the same site at the same time as our Fort William hostel, and they had us in their books! After 20 minutes showing them our confirmations (thank goodness Laura brought them along!) they conceded that they didn't have us in the books but that they had beds for us anyway (why they didn't tell us this from the get-go, we don't know). They wanted to put us in separate rooms, but then again, decided that they would not do this. This was all rather frustrating, but it did work out in our favour, so ha! Take that, Castle Rock Edinburgh! If we weren't so angry at them, we would have possibly been charmed by the Medieval Times like atmosphere of the place. The jury is still out on that. Also disappointing is that we got put into the Plant themed room, and are sleeping in beds called "Root" and "Nice Pear" instead of in the Scottish Slang Room or the Scotish Bands Room. Och!
We ended off the evening by wandering through the streets looking for a nice place to get some hot food since it was FREEZING out. Seriously, July here feels like late October in Toronto. Even wearing all of our long-sleeved clothing, the cold still got to us. We ended up eating at a pub called "The Last Drop" in the Grassmarket, which had great food and warm drinks (I had a frothy honey-milk drink called a "pooh bear"!). The pub is quite cleverly named as it stands just feet from where the gallows once stood, and where the last person was hanged. Clever!
After eating, we returned to the hostel where we read until we fell asleep, burrowed in our sheets (and in Laura's case, on top of egg-carton foam to boot).
The next day, we went to the castle where we had the best tour guide (eva!) named Jim Crewe. He was super Scottish and even wore a little baret with ribbons down the back. He told many jokes and had a strange proclivity for grasping people's shoulders in his iron grip. Never let Laura say that I am the geeky keener of the group, since when Jim asked us what the name of the tallest mountain in Scotland was, she blurted out "Ben Nevis" so quickly, no one else had time to react. Who's our little Hermione Granger now? Careful! You forgot to pack a pocket protector! ;) Then again, I was the one who proudly crowed out, "Nothing!", when Jim asked us what Scottish men wear under their kilts...
Anyway, we learned many cool facts about the castle, the Scottish Disease (golf, in case you're wondering), why they fire the cannon daily at 1 pm rather than noon (to save themselves 11 shells!), how the English end parties (they don't ask you to leave, they just clear up the food and put on their pjs!), and what will happen to the Stone of Destiny when Prince Charles or one of his sons is made king (it'll go back to England for the coronation).
After checking out the jewelry, the armour, and the Royal Apartments, and the Prisons (so cool! So many pirates! So little time! We could have made our own forged money and bought pieces of 8!), we had a whisky tasting at one of the gift shops. Never fear, we had the girly version: Drumgray, which is essentially like Bailey's Irish Cream. Very yummy, although we got less than a thimble full. Probably for the best that we stayed away from the other stuff as it smelled like cleaning solvent! Still, we couldn't go all the way to Scotland and not have a tiny taste, now could we? Although, after seeing some pictures of haggis, I don't know that we feel the same way about that!
We then made our way over to The Elephant House, which is the cafe where JK wrote her first Harry Potter novel. We enjoyed the delicious shortbread and paninis (brie & mango; give it a try at home!), and then went to the Museum of Scotland. We didn't make it off the ground floor, although we did learn quite a bit about torture instruments (best part of the exhibit AND it came in handy later... moihahaha). We headed into the Royal Museum, but weren't so interested in seeing Canadian totem poles (so that's where they all went). We did, however, see a child who resembled a turnip (we nicknamed him "Neep") more than any child ever should!
As we began searching for the statue of Greyfriar's Bobby (which it turns out that we had passed about 3 times previously), a scary man with huge gashes on his arm came up to us and began mumbling about how we had "missed him". We had no idea what he was talking about, but then he said something about how we had just missed seeing "Rom [sic] Weasley" yesterday. When I asked if he meant "Ron Weasley" he acted as though that was what he had said, and added "Chamber of Secrets" just to be clear. Turns out Rupert Grint may have been in the neighbourhood the day previously (a shop girl in another store seemed to confirm this), which pretty much makes us the worst Harry Potter fans ever. Fil, perhaps we were too hasty in taking away your membership. Our little hearts have broken, and we are inconsolable, although we cling to the hope that the Edinburgh drug smuggling ring is now just using Harry Potter lingo as a coverup, and that guy was just asking us if we wanted some heroin. Please let that be the case... We have no idea why he would talk to us about HP otherwise, since we weren't talking about it (for once) nor were we wearing/doing anything that would link us to HP. So it must have been drugs! Right? (Taryn, please do not comment on this matter; your cynicism is not welcome here).
Heartbroken, we wandered to the new Parliament building (the Charlie Brown Xmas music playing the entire way). Even its supreme ugliness could do little to raise our spirits, but apparently being £400 million over budget doesn't mean you'll construct a building that anyone is proud of! Took some shots of the Queen's residence (Hollyrood) but didn't feel like paying the exorbitant fee to actually go in.
Unable to figure out which type of tour of the city we would like to do (scary? scotland's history? Edinburgh's history? Undergound? Old school?), we decided to go on the literary pub tour that evening and to pick one for the next night later. The pub tour was AWESOME! We set ourselves apart as trouble makers early on, as we could not stop laughing, even when our guides were perhaps not purposefully being amusing. Although, it is our opinion that the other members of the group did not laugh nearly enough. Ms. Clart and Prof. McBrain were hilarious (especially McBrain's excessively effeminate mannerisms and his asking "Would you like a cream bun?"... we almost peed our pants!), and the fact that we decided to live it up and actually drink at the pubs as well, didn't hurt. We managed to stick to cider (strongbow and... some irish one, maybe Magners?). When we reached the end of the tour, there was a quiz about the facts that they had told us about during the tour. It's safe to say that we cleaned up, as we managed to remember quite a bit despite the pints of cider and the giggling fits. We knew the code names Burns and his "platonic friend" had used (Sylvander and Clarinda), the name of one of Edinburgh's female authors (Murial Sparks), the fictional character based on Deacon Brody (Gene Brody), and the ironic end that Deacon Brody met (being hanged on the gallows that he himself invented... I got to bring in my info from the Museum of Scotland and even named the device: the Maiden... our guides were a bit confused by that as they had not mentioned it. Keeners = Us!). When we got to the final pub, the barkeep, kept staring at my chest, which was a bit offputting, but then he finally asked if I went to the University of Toronto. Turns out his dad had gone to Trin and I was wearing my Trinity hoody. Whew! Still don't really know why he would recognise the crest, but oh well.
We made our way to a kebab shop recommended by Laura's book of lies (it had told us the city cafe served lamb burgers... they do not! Lies!). On our way, we passed a pub where drunken karoke was going on (someone was beautifully butchering "Common People"), and as we passed another bar, some guys yelled from the roof "Excuse me! Are you single!" at us as we passed and whistled quite a bit. Laura assures me they were trying to get my attention, but I think she looks less like a 12-year old boy than I do, so I think the flatteries were for her. No matter, we bypassed the kebab shop, and ended up getting pizza and a kebab elsewhere (at a place where we could understand the menu!). Dragging our sloshed selves home, we collapsed into bed, and slept very soundly. Word of warning: Saturday nights in Edinburgh are the times for hen parties, and those girls are, well... the text-book definition of "trollopy".
AFter a bit of sleeping in this morning, we got up and went to the Writer's Museum. Unfortunately it was closed, but we did get tickets for tonight's tour of Mary King's Close (Ms. Clart had recommended it to us last night). When we were getting our tickets, the man at the counter asked if we were both from Toronto, and then asked if we knew about Waterloo (where we think he is going to be visiting/staying). Little did he know Laura was an expert on the place. Sadly, we could not be enthusiastic about the city, since what more is there to say than it is a university town? We also got to hear our favourite street musicians so far, the "Brassed Off" band; a group of 5 fellows who each play a different brass instrument and play lovely classical tunes, so enjoyable! We then made our way to the post office, which was also closed, and did some more wistful window shopping in Zara and Nine West (I hope the prices are better at home!). As you may be noticing, we've pretty much exhausted all there is to do here in Edinburgh as tourists proper, so it's just as well we're heading off for Alnwick/Manchester tomorrow.
We ate a wonderful lunch at Ndeble (?), an African cafe. Alas, the book of lies proved false once more in terms of sandwiches offered, but we were still well-satisfied with what we got.
So, just the underground city tour tonight, and then it's off to England. It's not quite so blustery today, in fact, it is almost warm out! Still, it's hard to believe it's summer... which seeing as it's almost over - we've only a week before we're home! - is maybe just as well. It's hard to believe we've been gone for nearly 6 weeks now! Ah well, no time to be nostalgic; there's still plenty more to see! Namely: EWAN! We won't let him escape us as "Rom" did....
