This is a quick note to those people who’ve stumbled across this blog since I’ve returned home and stopped writing.
Hello! Welcome! Thanks for stopping by. Although I don’t update this blog anymore, I’m more than happy to answer any questions you have about Glasgow, exchange or travelling. Leave a comment and I’ll get back to you.
And to those who’ve already sent me questions, thank you! It’s nice to know that this random collection of ramblings is vaguely useful.
Look! Some bonus, you-weren’t-expecting-this posts!
I decided, because so many of you have told me that you like reading these (some people because they’re going on exchange soon, others because they say these posts sound so much like how I talk that they imagine me talking to them…whatever floats your boat) and because I’m hoping it’ll be a nice memory one day, to blog my last few months of travelling. Yes, I’m back in Australia now, don’t get confused.
First country on my around-Europe-in-no-particular-logical-order trip was TURKEY. Well, first a fun 9-hour bus ride from Glasgow to London (it was only £10, thank you MegaBus!) and a lovely afternoon sitting in the sunshine in Hyde Park slowly eating my macaron from Pierre Hermé. I know, I have all the fun. But anyway, TURKEY.
Day 1
So I arrived, navigated visas and passport control (and because I was apparently the only one who’d bothered to look up visa information, spent half an hour explaining to all the other Brits and Americans and Australians what they had to do), and made my way into Istanbul. I then had lots of fun trying to get to the hotel: past Ellen had written future Ellen a list of directions of how to get to the hotel, but future Ellen didn’t understand what past Ellen meant. I’ve now learnt to screenshot Google Maps instead. Navigational fun times aside, I made it to the hotel then decided I should go find water somewhere (which makes it sound like I was exploring a desert or something and was looking for an oasis). Then I encountered a man who shall now be known as The Friendliest Man Ever. I think I’ll call him FME for short. FME owns a little convenience store up the hill from the hotel, and was just so delighted by the fact that I was in his store that he forgave me for not speaking Turkish and for only having a 50 lira note for something that cost 40 cents (“Oh, but you just came from airport! Oh, of course it is all ok! Let me go find change. Here, I go find change. Ah, see, change. I give you change.”). He then proceeded to hug me, then (and I am still unsure why) high-fived me. I was suddenly suspicious that Kim and Sam had somehow made their way to Turkey and were convincing random Turkish people to high-five everyone. But in any case, FME was lovely. And yes, I did get my water.
That night I met everyone else on the tour (point of information time! My tour was called Real Food Adventure Turkey and was run by Intrepid Travel, and it was amazing, have a look-see here) and we headed out for our first meal, where we were given a whole fish each to have for dinner. Of course. But I was less interested in fish because there was dessert, and why would anyone be interested in anything over dessert? For those who haven’t been to Turkey, or haven’t seen the YouTube videos of ice-cream sellers twirling their ice-cream on the end of a stick, Turkish ice-cream is a bit different. As in, it’s solid, almost gelatinous. You eat it with a knife and fork. See look!
Evidently we also tried baklava, and it was fairly amazing as well. It’s not as sugary-sweet as what I’ve tried in Australia, it’s more nutty. And for all of you who thought baklava was Greek, you have a lot to learn my friends. Greek and Turkish people have a lot of very VERY similar dishes, or dishes that have the same name but are quite different, and it’s oh so very contentious working out who owns what. Just eat it.
We then walked down one of the main streets that come off Taksim Square on our way back to the hotel, which was all very lovely with lights and colours. Yes, they look like Christmas lights. Yes, it was June. But hey, don’t question these things.
{Spoiler alert – By our very nonchalant strolling around near Taksim, you should’ve worked out this is pre-riots. You’ll hear more about them later, but one of the sad and scary parts is that we saw this same street in some of the TV coverage, and all the lights had been pulled down or set on fire…eek.}
Day 2
Brace yourselves. There are a lot of photos here.
In the morning of our first full proper day, we had a walking tour around Istanbul. We started off at Galata Tower, which proved to be a very useful navigational device when trying to find our way back to the hotel in the next few days. It was also built in 1348. But, you know, ancientness is of secondary importance to navigational importance.
We then walked across Galata Bridge (which goes from one part of the European side to another part of the European side, apparently lots of tourists get all excited and think they’re crossing from Europe to Asia), and had a lovely view of the city and the Süleymaniye Mosque.
We walked past the New Mosque, which like most things in Europe that are called ‘New’, was not new at all. They started building it in 1597.
One of the strange cultural differences between Turkey and Australia (and the UK) was the love for pigeons in Turkey! There’s a row of stands outside the New Mosque where little old ladies sell plates of pigeon feed so you can feed the pigeons. I thought that only happened in Mary Poppins, but apparently not.
Right next to the New Mosque is the Spice Bazaar.
Cue piles and piles of Turkish delight and sweets and candied fruit and heaven knows what else. Much sampling was offered. Much sampling was duly sampled. It was fairly amazing.
And spices. Lots of spices in pyramid-shaped piles.
And plates. I should probably clarify at this point that the Spice Bazaar no longer sells just spices.
And because you can, some cheese. Apparently the cheese you can see on the left is sheep cheese that’s wrapped in goat skin. Mixing species is fun!
Another big thing in Turkey is dried vegetables. They look like sponges but I swear they’ve vegetables – see, the big long ones are eggplants…
So after promising most of the merchants that yes, we’d come back and buy things, of course we would, just later, we went to a little mosque called the Rüstempasa Mosque. This isn’t a touristy mosque at all, so we effectively had the whole place to ourselves.
The pattern in the carpet is like prayer mats, so people know they’re praying in the right direction. Clever interior decoration.
It was probably fair that we then braved the far-more-touristy Süleymaniye Mosque. Yes, my clever observant readers, this is the one we saw earlier from the bridge. The story about this mosque is that it was built by Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent for his second wife. This wife was originally born in the Ukraine but was abducted and sold as a slave into the Sultan’s harem, and charmed the Sultan so successfully he married her. Which all sounds very cute, but then she persuaded the Sultan to kill his son from his first marriage so her son could become the next Sultan. Apparently the son was a terrible Sultan too: he was fairly uninterested in, like, running the kingdom and more interested in what the Wikipedia page delicately calls “alcoholic and sexual pleasures”. I digress. Back to the mosque!
Here is the outside-outside.
Here is the outside-of-the-inside, or the second-outside. You go through the outside-outside to get here.
And here’s the inside. Yes, pretty colours and lights.
Then we walked over to the university (which, like most things in this city, is impossibly old). For some reason it also has this cool gate. Can we put one of these on the Parramatta Rd entrance back in Sydney?
Oh look, an oh-so-creative photo of the Turkish flag, just in case you forgot which country we’re in.
Near the university is the booksellers’ market, which seemed to have almost every book under the sun (including copies of Dan Brown’s new book in Turkish, if anyone’s interested). 
It also had cats.
The bookseller and the cat had a very deep conversation.
Another stall-holder seemed incredibly blase about the fact there were kittens sleeping on his stock.
Then we walked through the Grand Bazaar (complete with big flags celebrating a recent soccer win, I’m not going to pretend I remember or cared who won or what they won).
It’s lucky I was living out of a backpack at this stage and therefore had highly limited souvenir-buying room. I did briefly consider whether I could get some of the lights onto the plane by pretending they were earrings…
One of the few times that colour and sparkles do not make something good.
How come we don’t have mannequins with such elegant facial hair in Australia?
We had a free afternoon, and basically just wandered around looking at everything, trying more free samples of Turkish delight, and eating barbecued corn from the street carts.
That night we embarked on a kebap crawl (yes, kebap, apparently is the same thing as kebab but spelt differently), the events of which I only have patchy photos of, because I’m slack and too interested in eating rather than photographing. Tina, I am sorry. I prioritise.
We started off with a delicious rose cordial thing.
And then we had the most amazing hummus ever ever EVER. It was warm and had chickpeas on top and was just…oh yum. There were no photos, too busy eating. We also had lamb meatball things that I wasn’t a great fan of.
The second restaurant we went to was a proper kebap restaurant, and was the first place I ever tried ayran, which is a salty-sour yoghurt drink that is sold absolutely everywhere in Turkey and to which I quickly became addicted to. I know it looks like a soup, but try to break down your preconceived notions that only soup can be served in a soup bowl with a ladle.
I was properly, actually adventurous here, and tried the liver and the heart and the scarily-spicy sauce! This shot was halfway through them loading the table with all the things we were meant to fit into our kebaps.
Soup was the next stop, and although it was a bit spicy and I was getting very full, it was awfully yummy. I can’t remember what it was called, but I remember it had lamb and rice in it.
I was ready to go to bed and sleep off my food coma by this stage, but we kept going. Place number 4 was for breads and pizza-like things called lahmucan. Apparently this was just margarine in bread. It tasted pretty good, but good in a heart-attack-inducing kinda way.
We also got to see how the bread was being made!
By place number 5, I was perfectly ok with not eating for a week. Then they brought out more kebap stuff. I didn’t eat any of this one. I took a picture to compensate. It’s all diagonal and artistic too (probably because I was so full and tired that I couldn’t hold it straight, but ssshh).
Then came dessert, and thanks to the time-honoured rule of Dessert Stomach (one can be full to bursting point with food, but one should remember that the dessert stomach remains empty until dessert is consumed) I managed to give it a go. I’m slack and have forgotten the name, and in my notes I’ve written ‘goat’s cheese pastry dessert thing’ which is helpfully descriptive but not the proper name. Sorry kids.
According to our guide, the hierarchy in established Turkish restaurants is so rigid that only the kebap master has the privilege of having a moustache (our guide may or may not have been pulling our legs, make up your own mind). This is aforementioned kebap master. You’ll have to take my word for it that he had a moustache of spectacular proportions.
And that’s enough photos for now children. More Turkey in a few days!
This is it kids. The last post. Just like the last melon in Ice Age.
No, really, this is it, at least for a couple of months. I’m still undecided about whether I’ll blog about what happens over the next few months because I’ll be able to tell most of you in person, but then again the other purpose of writing these things is to remind me what happened when I start to forget things…we’ll see. Apparently these things amuse some of you quite a bit, so maybe just for you 🙂
But I’ve got to start writing now because I have SO MUCH TO TELL YOU and SO MANY PHOTOS TO SHOW YOU and blogging is just one of the many things on my to-do list for today (last day, aaargh!).
St Andrews
St Andrews isn’t a super big place, so this is a fairly small story! We worked out we spent longer on the bus getting there and back than we actually did in St Andrews itself. Still a gorgeous place though!
First we saw the ruined Cathedral, which was…creepy is the wrong word, but atmospheric sounds pretentious. Just image the ruins of what once was a massive cathedral on a cloudy and drizzly day with not many other people around, lots of seagulls, and the sound of the sea. IT’S HARD TO EXPLAIN. DON’T QUESTION.
I forgot my camera so we’re also back to iPhone quality pictures, sorry about that.
We also saw the castle, but were far too stingy to pay the entrance fee to go in. Why bother when you can see most of it from the outside?
Whilst we were walking around the town, we passed lots of buildings belonging to the University of St Andrews, and I have to say they’re a bit gorgeous. The University is the oldest in Scotland, and has been around for 600 years.
There was a really quite interesting museum all about the university, which looked at the experiences of people studying at St Andrews over the years (apparently some of the English people who came to St Andrews years ago found it so bleak and dreary that they almost cried when they realised they were stuck here for three years!).
Of course, St Andrews being St Andrews, we checked out the golf courses (there are so many!), and then walked along the beach. That water was arctic.
And we had lunch at a cute little cafe, and tried to find the ice cream store where Will and Kate went on dates but couldn’t (they met at uni here, for all those uninterested in these kinds of things).
All in all, a lovely place!
And now fast-forward a couple of weeks to this time last week, when I went on my impromptu adventure to Bath, Oxford and York.
Bath
I died, just a little bit, wandering around Bath. It’s incredibly gorgeous. Like, mind-blowingly gorgeous.
I downloaded a walking tour audio thing from the Bath tourism website, so I followed my little map to all the interesting places and heard all about them, but could spend as much time as I wanted in every place.
The tour starts off near the Abbey.
Then there were the famous Roman Baths. It cost a ridiculous amount to go in (although I hear it’s really interesting) and there was a long queue so I skipped going inside.
I was just taking photos of everything at this point I think. Look, it’s just a stock-standard, boring, ordinary street, but because it’s in Bath it’s got columns.
I also found this little courtyard (I think it’s a hospital actually!) and this garden.
Queen’s square was next, and the little voice in my headphones told me lots about how they went about building townhouses on a slope. I wasn’t really listening though…
I was too impressed by the vines!
Apparently in one of these gardens, an astronomer discovered Uranus. All of the fun things you learn.
Then I walked up to the King’s Circus, and decided that I wanted a circus too. It’s basically a circle of townhouses, split into three equal sections, and in the centre there’s a cluster of trees.
So in my fun news for today, I’ve hopefully sorted out where I’ll be living in Sydney when I get back, and have also decided to see if I can do Honours in government, so am signing myself up to 6-and-a-half years of university. Thank gosh for scholarships hey? Of course, this has all happened because I’m procrastinating from packing. DON’T MAKE ME PACK.
Saturday
So when I left you last, I was going to sleep in the Sahara. Surprisingly enough, I woke up in the Sahara the next morning, and then watched the sun rise.
There were also some goats who decided to walk over the roofs of the huts. As you do, I suppose, if you’re a goat.
An artistic shot of anther camel caravan (I don’t think I meant for it to be in black and white, but hey, I can be ok with this).
We had much better weather today, so there’s slightly nicer shots of all that desert!
And then we came across the Spanish rave party. What’s a Spanish rave party doing in a desert, you ask?
That’s an excellent question. I guess if you want to be really obviously high on a cocktail of drugs and alcohol, and want to blast your music all day and all night, then a desert is a fairly convenient place to do it.
There were still people dancing when we went past. That’s some serious stamina.
After we said goodbye to our camels and had showers, it was time for more driving. Yay for driving.
We did get to see interesting things on the way though, like this gate…
And some fossils…
And some ancient irrigation wells that we got to walk underneath. And then we drunk some tea. Of course we did.
There were some more cool oasis things going on.
And then we arrived in Todra Gorge!
The hotel where we were staying was right in the gorge. I mean absolutely right in, you-keep-driving-into-the-gorge-until-you-can’t-go-any-further, in the gorge. That afternoon we went for a walk around the gorge and the village just outside. 
The village and all its crops draw water from the river using a complicated system of water channels. If you want more water to go to your part of the fields, you simply block off the water flow as needed, like in the second picture (it’s not super clear, sorry about that, but she’s got a whole lot of hessian bags to block the main flow of water and divert it into the smaller channel that runs down to her crops).
Mustapha also took the chance to quiz us on whether we could identity all the plants. We failed. Miserably. So if we’re ever stuck in Morocco together, don’t ask me what plants are ok to eat. I’ll almost certainly kill you.
And I started getting a bit of a sore throat, but ignored it because everyone else was really properly unwell and complaining about a sore throat was weak. WEAK.
I should also mention one of our favourite Arabic words. Maashi mushkil is one of the most frequently-used Arabic words, probably second to inshallah (Allah willing). It means no worries for the rest of your days. It’s a problem-free philosophy…
Sorry, got distracted. But it really does mean no worries, no problems, not a big deal, that’s cool, everything’s fine, all of those kinds of things. Just stick it in every third sentence and everyone’ll love you.
Sunday
Today we did some more driving, my favourite thing, and made our way to Aït Benhaddou, which is famous for being the place where they filmed Gladiator. Yeah, the significance was lost on me. But it’s still cool! I still wasn’t quite over the fact we were driving through a desert but could still see snow.
On our way, we had tea with Mustapha’s mother and father and got to see a more modern Moroccan house.
We also stopped at a workshop that made perfumes and other products from rose petals. Seeing as we were driving through the Valley of the Roses, it made sense. Everything was just a bit too florally here for me.
A much more fun stop was at a traditional Berber pharmacy, where we got to see how illnesses and injuries are treated in the Berber culture.
We stopped at another mud-brick city on the way (I forget its name, my bad!).
And I discovered a lamp that can only be designed to provide a comfortable and spacious home for genies with…more voluptuous builds. It was about as tall as I am.
Then we arrived at Aït Benhaddou!
To get from the more modern town over to Aït Benhaddou, you have to cross the river by jumping from sandbag to sandbag.
Because we’re cool kids…
We climbed partway to the top, but it was getting dark so we decided to save that for another day.
Monday
First job for this morning was climbing up through Aït Benhaddou all the way to the fortress at the top.
The houses are made by mixing straw and mud together (see the bits of straw?).
There were some pretty spectacular views from the top!
Lucky we did such a lovely walk, because then it was back into the van for more driving. We did stop to get some last views of Aït Benhaddou.
And then a little old guy rocked up and started giving us snakes to hold.
This face is a combination of “Hey, I’m holding a snake!” and “I AM HOLDING A SNAKE. OH GOSH I’M HOLDING A SNAKE.”
We also visited a cooperative where they were making food and cosmetic products from nuts and nut oils. I may have eaten an inappropriate amount of the nut butter. IT WAS SO GOOD.
We also drove through the High Atlas mountains, which had some of the most terrifying roads I’ve ever seen. Granted, I’ve never been to India or anywhere with truly terrifying roads, but I was a bit sure we were going to die.
This meant that we drove along the highest road in Morocco. Look, a conveniently-photographed sign to prove it!
We had lunch in a roadstop stop, which looked like a butcher’s from the front (think a variety of dead animals strung up from the ceiling) but also had a whole series of barbecues. You pick what bits of meat you want, and then the men barbecue it for you. Not particularly vegetarian-friendly, but ah well.
Then some final spectacular views before we arrived back in Marrakech.
By this stage my throat was fairly kind of just a bit sore (by which I mean swallowing, eating, drinking and occasionally breathing made me cry), so I went to a pharmacy and with Mustapha as an interpreter managed to get an impressive variety of painkillers and antibiotics.
That night we walked to Djemaa el Fna square (yep, back where I was on Day 1!) and saw it in its entire insanity. Thousands and thousands of people in a very small space, combined with cobras and monkeys in nappies and stallholders trying to convince you to eat at their stalls and horse-drawn carriages and the yelling and the lights…it’s fairy overwhelming.
Tuesday
The next day we did a guided walk around Marrakech and saw lots of cool things, most of which I can’t remember the names of. Instead, you’re just going to get a stream of photos. No complaining!
I managed to google this one – it’s the tower of the Koutoubia mosque.
After lunch, I went back to the hotel and went to sleep. I swear I regress 15 years when I’m sick. Give me nap times and jelly please.
Wednesday
Our last day! And further reinforcing the fact I’m five when I’m sick, my one big activity for today was going with Sharon to get ice-cream. It was amazing ice-cream.
And then I flew back to Glasgow via France, and arrived at 1am. It was a bit bizarre to be standing waiting for the bus at Prestwick airport in the cold and dark, thinking that I’d been in North Africa that morning. It’s still a shorter distance from Morocco to Glasgow than Sydney to Perth, which is also a bit crazy.
Then I got back to Glasgow, still feeling pretty terrible, and struggled through the essays I had to finish. I had one day where I felt ok, and then the next day found out quite suddenly that I’m allergic to penicillin, which was in the antibiotics I got in Marrakech. All of the fun times. I got my marks back the other day though, and I passed all those essays! So unless I completely screwed up my British Politics exam, then I’m all ok, yay!
Tomorrow I’ll tell you all about St Andrews, Bath, Oxford and York, and then I’m off to London on Saturday to start my next set of adventures! Love you all!
My to-do list for the next few days is alarmingly long. I also spent most of today sitting on my floor surrounded by all the stuff I’ve managed to accumulate over the past few months and trying to work out how I can condense it into a suitcase-sized block. Someone who’s good at Tetris needs to come help me. Plus Alyce and Preet have both left, so our flat feels very big and empty and lonely right now (our other flatmate’s still invisible and Sam’s family is here so she’s with them). I mean, I can’t justify being too sad, I do get to go to Turkey this weekend, and I did just get back from my highly spontaneous trip to Bath, Oxford and York (which, incidentally, was amazing and I’ll tell you all about it soon!). It’s just a bit depressing working out when the last time you’ll get to see someone is.
Monday
For all of those thinking about going to Morocco at some point, here’s a hot tip for you. Casablanca’s kinda boring. They didn’t even film the movie Casablanca there! Crushing, I know. So we spent a grand total of a morning there in the Hassan II mosque before heading off to our next stop. That’s not to say that the mosque wasn’t absolutely incredible, because it was. I’m going to throw a whole bunch of pictures at you now! Basic facts: largest mosque in Morocco, seventh-largest anywhere in the world, and the minaret (the tower) is the world’s tallest at 210m.
It’s fairly new, completed in 1993 (such a good year, just by the way), which means it has lots of fancy extras. For example, see this massive fancy roof? This roof that weighs over 1000 tonnes?
Yeah. That retracts completely. In five minutes.
We tried to find the big red button just so we could test this claim. Sadly, I think they hide the button quite well.
This is part of the giant hammam (washroom) system underneath the mosque. It’s a necessary step for those wishing to pray in the mosque to conduct ritualised washing before they do so, and at prayer time all of these big mushroom-shaped things have water flowing out of their tops.
This is another part of the washing system.
And because colours and patterns make me happy, I decided quite early on into this trip that I’d take photos every time I saw a different mosaic pattern. Here’s just some of the photos I got from the mosque.
ALL OF THE PATTERNS.
ALL OF THE COLOURS.
Then we jumped on a train and headed to Meknes. The common consensus was that we liked Meknes much more than Casablanca. For one thing, it’s beautiful. Look at the gardens!
We were also lucky enough to get a guided tour all around Meknes. So we went to a variety of places, like a shrine to a lovely guy called Moulay Ismail. I’ll tell you why he’s so lovely in a minute.
Look, a fountain. 
Here’s an incredibly creepy underground prison system. The prisoners were both imprisoned here and helped to dig it out. There’s kilometres and kilometres of tunnel.
Apparently Moulay Ismail, the ruler in Meknes around the 17th and 18th centuries, and the subject of the shrine we saw earlier, was a bit vicious. He enjoyed cutting peoples’ heads off, just to show that he could. He also enjoyed the decorative potential of these severed heads, so hung ten thousand of them from his city walls so his enemies could also appreciate his interior design prowess. He was also a bit vindictive. Moulay Ismail was responsible for moving Morocco’s capital from Fez to Meknes, so he was responsible for much of the development in Meknes. To help him out, he…politely requested the help of more than 25,000 slaves. Many of these slaves were Christians who’d been captured from Europe in pirate raids. Understandably, their home countries weren’t the best pleased about this, and sent ambassadors to Morocco to bargain for their citizens’ freedom. Obligingly, Moulday Ismail built a lovely Ambassadors’ Pavilion, where he could receive all of these guests. Little did they know that he’d built it directly over the underground prison, and the ambassadors were standing over the heads of their countrymen.
When he wasn’t chopping off heads and being a general baddie, he was…enjoying other pursuits, and is alleged to have 888 children. Before you discount this as a fable or exaggeration, apparently records prove that he reached 867 kids in 1703 (of which 525 were sons), the 700th son popped out in 1721, and good old Moulay Ismail died in 1727.
But you know, he’s got a shrine now, so I guess he’s happy. Maybe.
We also went to the souks in the medina of Meknes, and it was incredible. Lots of colour, yelling, haggling, food everywhere, and also a butcher who hung camel heads outside his stall. There’s no photo of that, I was in shock. Here’re some nicer photos.
In other fun news, I was proposed to, and learnt that if you want to impress a date you take them to McDonald’s. We also saw a silversmith’s workshop (maybe not a silversmith, as he used metal with silver wire…) and were able to see him demonstrate how he makes different pieces.
Tuesday
Another train journey, this one to Fes, and another guided tour.
We saw the gates to the Royal Palace…
Complete with orange trees. If you like oranges, Morocco is the place for you. Fresh orange juice is everywhere. Oranges are everywhere. I think I consumed my entire year’s worth of vitamin C in two weeks.
Then we drove up to a viewpoint that gave us uninterrupted views over much of Fes. I don’t have a fancy-schmancy camera that lets me do panorama shots, but imagine these all stuck together.
And that’s just part of the view. Fairly amazing.
Then we went to a pottery and mosaic workshop. This whole visiting-workshops thing became a pretty common (and almost a little irritating by the end) feature of our trip. We’d be given a talk about whatever they were making (the quality of said talk varied dramatically), and then asked if we wanted to buy anything (with varying degrees of pushiness). But it’s an interesting learning experience anyway. Here we saw the men making the pottery…
And then how the mosaics were assembled. There’s a big frame that they fit the little bits of coloured tiles to (this is a sink, so obviously the coloured tiles are facing down so they’ll be the right way up when it’s flipped over). You’d think they wouldn’t be pushing stuff like sinks and tables and fountains at travellers, right? Wrong. Everywhere that sold larger items, like pottery, rugs, or large leather items, they all so very kindly offered to ship it home for us. Anywhere in the world, they said. How generous.
And then the to-be-expected shop. Don’t take all this complaining about the pushiness to mean that the stuff they were selling wasn’t good quality, because most of the time it was, it just felt a bit like we were another bunch of hapless tourists bought in to ooh and ahh over everything, then spend money. Still lovely things, promise! See?
Then we went into the medina.
There were normal sized streets (albeit with some alarmingly-looking wooden structures)…
Then some smaller streets…
Oooh look, some green things….
And then the teeniest street ever. I honestly believe that some people would not be able to fit down this street. If you’d had a big lunch, you might not be able to fit down this street.
Then the yummiest-looking strawberries I’ve ever seen.
Then a donkey who looked like Eeyore. Sad donkey 😦
Then we found a stall that loaned massive cooking pots to people who were throwing a party, or cooking for a wedding or a reception or something. Imagine how much food you’d cook in one of these things!
See all those coloured blocks? They’re nougat. Massive blocks of nougat. OH THE COLOURS.
This is an old university. Those windows near the top are where the students at the university used to live. Jealousy much?
Group photo!
Then one of those quintessential Moroccan experiences – a tannery. The colours came out better on camera than it looked in real life!
You can kinda see in the top photo the guy in his massive rubber boots-and-pants thing stamping on the skins in the dye.
After that we went to a carpet workshop, where we got to watch the women doing a really-complicated weaving system on a vertical loom. When you see that kind of work,and realise how long making a carpet would take (months and months and MONTHS) you begin to understand how carpets can be so expensive!
After carpets came weaving. Although it was a solely female workforce in the carpet workshop, the weaving seemed to be exclusively for guys. It’s quite a physical process I suppose. Yes, weaving, it is physical, I swear! You have to step on pedals at the same time as yanking on those ropes you can kinda see in the photo, one arm first then the other.
Wednesday
Today was a free day, so we were effectively let loose in Fes to do what we wanted. We were offered the choice of a few day trips, but none of them sounded particularly interesting for the price so we thought we’d just explore the medina a bit more. Here’s the Blue Gate, which was our one point of navigation: in the medina, there’s little signs on walls that point you in the direct of the Blue Gate, so we just followed them!
And another shot of the medina.
Today, everyone had chicken for lunch. I didn’t, because I’m not a big meat-eating person. Cool story bro? There is a point to this. It will become apparent soon.
OOH A MYSTERY.
Thursday
Today we drove (yes, we acquired a mini-bus with our own driver who was absolutely hilarious) through the Middle Atlas Mountains. It rained. I didn’t think it rained much in Morocco, but there you go.
Here’s a statue of a lion. Why is there a statue of a lion? That’s a good question. I’m sure there’s some explanation, I was probably distracted when we were being told.
And then we kept driving, first through some lovely forests…
AND THEN IT STARTED SNOWING.
This is Morocco.
What is snow doing here?
I’m smiling. This is just to cover my confusion.
And I’m not talking some piddling little snowflakes either. I’m talking proper, white, there-is-definitely-unarguably-snow snow. See?
I’m still confused.
Because this is what our hotel looked like, only a few hours away.
You remember how I said there was a camel head hanging outside the butcher’s stall in the souk? Camel’s a legitimate food source here. And when in Rome…
It didn’t taste as bad as I thought it would. Bit chewy.
I stuck to my vegetarianism after that. And coincidentally, and completely unrelated to vegetarianism in general, a few people started feeling a bit unwell today. THE MYSTERY DEEPENS. Well, no, it doesn’t. You should really have worked it out by now.
We saw some more weaving today…
And went for a walk around the village near our hotel in an area called Midelt (which, fun fact, is 1500m above sea level).
This is Mustapha, our lovely tour leader, in his equally lovely bright blue djellaba (the traditional Moroccan robe-type thing with a pointy hood).
Then we had tea with a local man, Mohammed, in his house (he built it himself!).
Friday
Aaaaand today, pretty much everyone was sick. Who wasn’t? The two of us who, surprise surprise, hadn’t eaten the chicken that day in Fes. I haven’t touched chicken since. Not that I’m paranoid or anything…
It wasn’t a particularly good day to get sick, because today we were off to the Sahara!
First, there was a lot of driving on death-defying roads. And the obligatory viewpoints. There’s always viewpoints.
Look, an oasis!
And then we arrived in the desert.Wasn’t the best day for those who value general visibility, as well as not swallowing lots of sand.
Don’t panic, Mustapha taught us how to wrap our scarves around our faces. Which of course meant we had to take lots of photos like this.
Then we met our camels. I named mine Brenda the Wonder Camel. Marshall understands this, I’m not sure if anyone else does. You’d understand it too if you grew up with us.
Meet Brenda. She’s a bit shy.
Then we set off on our Saharan adventure!
First we saw desert.
Then we saw desert.
Look, there’s our camel caravan!
Then we discovered more desert.
And finally, after becoming closely acquainted with much desert, we reached our home for the night, which was a berber camp.
You’d think a berber camp would be pretty basic, yes?
Not this one. Think electricity and flushing toilets.
After dinner, we watched a small drumming performance from some local men. After everyone else had gone to sleep, Amy and I got to have a go at being taught some of the drumming patterns. Won’t be giving up my day job I don’t think.
That night, I slept outside under the stars next to the campfire. I wish I could say that it was because the stars were so incredibly beautiful (they were, I swear) but honestly I was just really tired and couldn’t be bothered moving so I just stayed there and slept in a pile of blankets and pillows.
And that’s all for now kids, I have to go deal with the growing mess that is my room. I swear the mess gets bigger every time I turn around. And as per last blog, if you haven’t organised a final skype with me, do it soon because this might be my last chance until I’m home. OH WOW I’M GOING TO BE HOME SOON.
LOVE YOU ALL, miss you to bits!
This time in a week, it’ll be my last night in Glasgow. And since I spontaneously decided that I wanted to go away this weekend (hello Bath, Oxford, York, and a variety of very long train trips), I’ve really only got a few days left. Where did the time go? Six months was meant to be forever. At the same time, I re-read some of my first blog entries from when I first arrived, and realised how much has happened since then. So I’m a strange combination of sad (because I’m leaving), excited (because I get to go to all these cool places really really soon and see my parents, and after that I get to see everyone in Sydney!), a bit nervous (because I have to navigate non-English speaking countries by myself), and generally concerned about my ability to fit everything into my suitcase or consume all of my food. I’m making bread right now, I’m pretty sure it’s not going to work but I’ll let you know at the end of the post if it resurrects itself! So much to do, so little time. If I’ve promised you a Skype call, then CLAIM YOUR TIME. Like, right now. Facebook me and let me know when you’re free, otherwise the next time I’ll be with my computer will be back in Australia.
Now that’s all out of the way, let’s talk about Morocco.
Sunday
So after a fun little adventure the night before with my airport transfer (despite telling him the name of my hotel several times, he took me to another hotel that the tour company uses, and then didn’t know where my hotel was so had to ring a bunch of people, then we drove around for ages looking for it…frustrated face), Sunday was my free day in Marrakech before the tour began. Me being me, I decided to organise a tagine cooking class. A tagine is similar to a stew, but it’s cooked in a tagine (yes, a tagine is cooked in a tagine, don’t question) which is a specially-shaped pot-kinda thing, you’ll see it later in photos. I didn’t realise it at the time, but because Urban Adventures (the company I booked the class through) lets you pick pretty much any day you want to do the class, there weren’t any other people who wanted to do it on this particular day and I got the guide all to myself! The first part of the class was buying all the ingredients from the local souk, or market. The thing that surprised me most about this part was the fact that my guide seemed to know all the street vendors and could greet them all by name. This wasn’t a small souk either, it went on for ages and ages, down different alleyways and through lots of tiny squares. This is just one of those squares. The vegetables are sold lying on the ground, often without anything between them and the street. A lot of the time they’re measured using little scales: the vendors put the produce on one side of the scale (everything together, they don’t differentiate between carrots or onions or oranges) and then put their little weighted stones on the other, and the price is calculated from the number of stones.
We also bought some chicken from a little stall on the side of one of the souk’s more established streets. If you’re a committed vegetarian for ethical reasons, or are just attached to animals in general…maybe avoid seeing where people buy meat in the markets. Whilst there’s pre-cut (or pre-killed, whichever word makes you less squeamish) chicken in front of the stall-keeper, behind him are cages –stacked up to the ceiling– filled with squawking chickens. At least you know your meat’s fresh, right?
After purchasing all of our ingredients, we walked through the medina (‘Old Town’ in Arabic, and they’re a common feature in many North African cities apparently) to the riad where we’d cook the tagine. A riad is a typical Moroccan-style house: it’s very plain from the outside, practically just a blank wall, but the entire house is arranged around a central courtyard. Apparently such a style of architecture became popular because it was (and still is, to some extent) seen as inappropriate to display your wealth or good fortune. You’re both showing off and encouraging others to envy you, both of which are frowned upon in Islam. Privacy is also very highly prized. Riads were a way to have a beautiful home without revealing it to passersby, and the absence of windows that looked from the street into the home gave occupants privacy. ALL OF THE LEARNING. Here’s the riad from the ground and first floors, and from the roof terrace.
This was my first experience of mint tea. Mint tea, and tea in general, is a big thing in Morocco. A big, BIG thing. We were offered mint tea in stores, in a mosaic workshop and factory, in a carpet house, in the houses of local Moroccans that we visited, at tourist sites…It’s also slightly rude to refuse, so if you ever go to Morocco, be prepared. Moroccan mint tea is not like mint tea you might buy in a coffee shop in Australia or in the UK. It’s tea, yes, with mint sprigs in it, yes, but with a cupful of sugar in every glass. There’s so much sugar it makes the mint tea thick. This is why, according to our tour guide, Moroccans have such terrible teeth. One of those things best enjoyed in small doses.
Don’t worry, the cooking did happen, promise. Here’s the tagine before it was cooked; you can see the tagine cookware that I was trying to explain earlier (it’s like a bowl and a fancy lid really). We made a chicken and preserved lemon tagine with lots of spices and olives.
Because tagines take so long to cook, they sent me up onto the rooftop terrace with more mint tea for half an hour or so. Not a bad way to spend the time, really. The views were fairly amazing.
And then food happened. It’s a pity you can’t smell it, because oh my gosh it smelt so good. Om nom nom nom.
See, it’s practically a feast. I don’t think I ate much for dinner that night. This was also my first encounter with Moroccan bread. Usually the bread itself is a flattish circular loaf about the size of a large dinner plate, and it’s divided into quadrants. Morocco does like its bread. I liked it at first too. By the end of my trip, I was swearing off carbs for life. I think that lasted a week. {Talking of carbs, my bread is doing what it’s supposed to, yay, so I should have bread rolls really soon (theoretically), and the kitchen smells like a bakery.}
And finally we walked back through Jamaa el Fna, which is one of Marrakech’s most famous landmarks. In the middle of the day, it’s fairly quiet, but at night it’s ridiculous in a way I’ve never quite experienced before. But that’s a story for the last Morocco blog instalment!
The story you get today is of me quite innocently strolling along through the square and walking past a man sitting under an umbrella with a basket, when all of a sudden he lifted the basket up and a COBRA pops out. Like, all of three feet away from me.
Just a casual heart attack.
So after I managed to extricate myself from the jaws of the cobra, I headed back to the hotel, picked up my bag and went to the train station.
Yep. This is a train station in Marrakech. ‘Tis a little bit fancy.
And then I braved the Moroccan train system by myself.
Ok, to be honest, I was by myself for all of about 20 minutes before the lovely guy sitting in the next seat started chatting to me. We talked for a good bit of the several hours we spent on the train from Marrakech to Casablanca, and then when we arrived he helped me catch a taxi without getting ripped off (an annoyingly common theme in Morocco), and then when the taxi driver didn’t know where the hotel was, he Google Mapped it for me, and walked me there, and I KNOW WHAT YOU’RE THINKING BUT THIS ISN’T ‘TAKEN’ AND I’M NOT SILLY ENOUGH TO GET KIDNAPPED. It was daylight and there were lots of people around. So I got to my hotel safe and sound, and met up with the rest of the tour group. I was a little bit surprised at the range of age in the group: I was the youngest, there were a couple of girls in their twenties, another few girls in their thirties and forties, and then a married couple. I think I liked this dynamic better than if the group had just been young people: it was a bit more of a family atmosphere, and many of the others had done lots of travelling before so they had lots of interesting stories and knew how everything worked on these kinds of tours and in these kinds of places.
That night we had our first group dinner, and I had a traditional Moroccan soup called harira which quickly became the default dinner option for when we were couscous-ed and tagine-d out.
Then we went to bed, and I’m going to go to bed now too, because my train is at 6am tomorrow morning and that’s going to be painful enough as it is.
Talk to you after the weekend! All my love.
P.s. The bread worked! And now I have lovely bread rolls for my trip this weekend. Next week’s project is bagels.
I wanted to add ice-cream to the title too, but that wouldn’t fit with the alliteration (I also feel like croissants is a bit out of place too, Nathan or Sam will pull me up on this so I’d best admit it now). This isn’t a travel blog anymore, it’s an eating blog where the eating just happens to occur in different places.
But before we launch into a full retelling of what we got up to in the South of France apart from eating, I have officially finally booked almost everything for the next two months of travelling, which is incredibly exciting and I’m so excited I’m going to tell you every little detail! So I’ve got another couple of weeks in Glasgow, and will hopefully make it down to England and check out Bath and Oxford and stuff like that (suggestions of must-see places will buy you my love, send me a message or leave a comment). Then I head down to London on the 25th of May, and fly to Istanbul on the 26th to start my tour there. It’s a food tour (check it out here – look, I can do hyperlinks!), which really shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone at this point. So after much eating of kebabs and gözleme and baklava, I pop over to Paris on the 8th of June and spend a week and a bit there with Mum. I plan to live in Pierre Hermé for most of this time. I leave Paris on the 17th and fly to Krakow, then do a nifty train-bus-bus combo to get me to a mountain range in Slovakia called the High Tatras. Apparently the “best hostel in the world” (according to a very reputable source) is in a little town called Zdiar, and I hang out there for three days before heading down to Vienna and spending a few days there. I backtrack back into Slovakia and stay in Bratislava for another couple of days before flying back to London and meeting Dad on the 29th of June. Then it’s Spain for a week, then back up to Glasgow on the 5th of July to say goodbye to this fairly amazing city and some even more amazing people, and then the joys of the obscenely long flight all the way back to Brisbane.
So if there are any explosions or earthquakes or great shortages of foodstuff, you’ll know where I am and whether it’s my fault or not. I’m a bit excited 😀
But before that happens, I have to catch you all up on what happened in the Easter break!
Sunday
So a bit of context, this was the weekend after St Pat’s in Ireland. I flew back from Ireland on Wednesday morning, spent a few days madly writing essays, then flew out to Carcassonne four days later. I’ll be forever grateful that exchange students just have to pass their subjects to get full credit back home.
We weren’t staying in Carcassonne itself, France has this silly thing where you have to be a member of International Hosteling to stay in a lot of their hostels, and the only hostel in Carcassonne itself is one of these. I’m not paying 30 euros on top of the normal hostel cost. Nice try. So we chose a hostel in a nearby village called Preixan. Shameless advertising – definitely one of the best hostels I’ve ever stayed at (have a look here). It was a little self-contained house with a proper kitchen and bathroom, and there were only two other people staying there! Plus the lovely owner came and picked me up from the airport because public transport doesn’t run on Sundays. And there was a cat in a pot plant.
By the time I arrived it was fairly late in the evening, so I went for a wander around the countryside (because I feel like that’s the appropriate thing to do when in the South of France).
Then I wandered into the teeny-tiny village itself. The whole village is on the top of a hill, and the church is right in the middle. All the houses are arranged in a circular pattern around the church, like ripples in water when you throw a rock in (such a deep and poetic analogy). Makes navigation lovely and easy!
Monday
More walking today! My preferred navigation method is ‘Pick the direction you like the most’, so I think I went around in circles a bit. But I found a lovely little shrine by the side of the road, which was just so typically French I had to show you.
Then more vineyards and rolling hills…
And I kept walking…
Then found some trees…
Then a river…
Then a cemetery…
Then the church…
And then a cat.
So in conclusion, I found most things in a fairly wide radius.
That afternoon, I caught a bus into the city of Carcassonne itself. Anyone remember the board game called Carcassonne? Yep, this is the city it’s based on. It’s a medieval city on top of a hill, surrounded by walls and turrets, and generally looks like the perfect castle.
The towers have cool little coloured hat-things, look!
It was an excellent cardio workout, there were so so many stairs everywhere and I didn’t bother to try to work out where I was or where I wanted to go so I walked in circles again. I seem to do that a lot.
Although on second though, the walking-in-circles thing probably has more to do with the fact that all the streets curve around.
There’s a church in there too (of course, it’s France), which was a little bit imposing.
Sam arrived later that afternoon, and we had our first of many Carrefour experiences. Carrefour is a French supermarket, and I think there’ll always be a special place in our heart for our time there (“Do you reckon these are chickpeas?” “Mmm maybe? Probably? Let’s buy them and see?”). I was also really amused that the French are so culinarily-minded that the supermarket-branded ready microwave meals had quinoa in them. Sorry hipsters, quinoa’s not the cool new thing anymore. Try amaranth or something.
Tuesday
The next day Sam and I went to Carcassonne again, where much food was bought (special mention to this amazing biscuit and confectionary store – so much yum!).
That afternoon we jumped on a train to Avignon, our second stop in the South of France, and spent the rest of the night chatting to the other people in our hostel. Special mention goes to the seventeen-year-old American who was travelling around Europe completely solo for a year. You’re braver than I am.
Wednesday
Breakfast at the hostel cost 5 euros, and we’re too stingy for that. So we went to a big indoor market in Avignon to find something else to eat. Two years of French paid off: I can successfully ask what cheese the fromager recommended for eating with croissants. Fresh goats’ cheese and just-baked croissants for less than 2 euros each? Winning. So much winning. This also reinforced why I carry plastic cutlery around in my bag at all times.
Avignon is famous for being the place that Pope Clement V ditched Rome for in the 14th century. Six successive popes lived in Avignon, and one of them decided that they’d rather like a very big castle in which to live, thank you very much. So they built the Pope’s Palace. It’s appropriately big.
The Pope’s Palace also has some lovely gardens with some beautiful views.
You can even see the Pont d’Avignon from up there! The Pont d’Avignon, properly called the Pont St. Bénézet, is a famous medieval bridge built in the 12th century. Apparently there’s also a song about it but I’ve never heard it. And yes, it doesn’t actually reach the other side of the river. I’m not sure it can really be called a bridge.
So we wandered down and had a closer look at the bridge, and confirmed, yes, it did look old.
And then we just walked around a bit more. Lots of stairs. So, so many stairs.
Can we justify the ice cream with the stairs? I think we can. It was amazing ice-cream too, France seems to have this attitude that if there will be an ice-cream store, it will be an excellent ice-cream store and have a ridiculous number of flavours, so I tried fig and violet. Both were amazing. Om nom nom.
Thursday
Thursday was pretty much a repeat reel of everything we loved about Wednesday – we had croissants and cheese for breakfast, walked up to the gardens, and then found a cupcake bakery for morning tea. Then we jumped back on a train and headed to Nice.
Friday
Nice was a very different city to Avignon and Carcassonne. It’s on the ocean, and definitely has a Mediterranean vibe. I mean, the beach was made of pebbles, but I think that’s the Australian beaches setting my standards too high!
In the morning, we wandered around the farmers’ markets and Nice’s Old Town, which is one of the most confusing places I’ve ever been. Think tiny little alleyways and dead-end streets and stores that look the same…yep, navigational fun times. I was a big fan of the different coloured buildings though.
We had a celebratory last lunch at this amazing little restaurant near the markets, and I learnt that it was possible to make a crème brûlée with smoked salmon!
In order to work off all of that delicious lunch, we rented out some rollerblades and went skating along the promenade.
It’s been a while since I’ve been rollerblading, and I may have forgotten how to stop properly. I came to this realisation halfway down a hill. Not my most graceful moment. Once Sam re-taught me how to stop, we managed to skate all the way around to the harbour…
And then all the way back around in the other direction!
That night, seeing as it was our last night together in France, we bought some fresh gnocchi and ravioli and homemade beef sauce from a lovely little store in the Old Town, and cooked it with some cherry tomatoes and cheese that we got from the farmer’s markets. Who says backpacking isn’t glamorous?
Saturday
Saturday was my last half-day in France before I flew to Morocco, so we walked up Castle Hill and took some last photos. It was a little bit wet. 
The one thing that I was dying to try in Nice was socca. It’s like a pancake, but made out of chickpea flour (most of you will understand my love of chickpeas). So we stood under a little umbrella in the markets whilst this lady made socca, and then ate it in the rain walking back to the hostel. You know, it’s pretty yummy stuff, despite the rain. After that, I caught a train to Marseille and wandered around there for a few hours (which was all I needed, I didn’t like it very much at all) before I caught a bus out to the airport and flew to Marrakech. As you do.
Massive massive long post, if you’ve reached this far well done! As always, hope everyone’s doing ok, love you all to bits and see you in a few months!
As of now, my uni semester is officially OVER. Every essay’s been handed in, every exam is done, and apart from a few library books I have to return, I’m probably not going to be spending any more time at uni. I’m a bit sad about it really, the past four months have gone by so so incredibly fast and I’ve only got another two-and-a-half months until I’ll be home again. I swear six months isn’t meant to be over this quickly! Then again, I’m super excited to be going off on a whole new set of adventures in a few weeks (I’ll tell you about it soon!) so it’s not like I’m really allowed to be upset. Another upside is that I have all this free time to write lovely long blogs without feeling guilty! Winning 🙂
Sunday
So, you might not have heard, but St Patrick’s Day is kind of a Big Deal in Ireland. Like, they tend to get a bit excited about it. So we figured, since we’re in the UK for the St Pat’s weekend, we should probably go see what all the fuss is about. We did. And it was insane.
The first sign of how crazy this was going to be was the fact that we started looking at accommodation in January, and there was nothing left in Dublin that weekend. There’s somewhere around 30 hostels in Dublin, and every single one of them was booked out months in advance. So we decided that we’d catch a bus to the parade in Dublin on Sunday morning, catch a bus back to Belfast late that night and stay in the hostel there, then get back on the bus again the next morning to go back to Dublin. We spent a lot of time on buses. Completely worth it though!
After we got to Dublin, found Peter and found a spot near the parade, it was time to become appropriately green. Some of us (read: Jack and Peter) got a bit more enthusiastic about this than others. I don’t think the rest of us were really keen to test out that warning on the hairspray bottle (the one that says you should absolutely categorically never ever get this on your skin) by spraying it on our faces. They didn’t die, so maybe it’s ok!
The first part of the parade is called the People’s Parade, and it’s basically a whole bunch of ordinary people from various organisations or groups (or even from different parts of the world) just walking along.
We discovered that Americans really REALLY love being Irish. The number of American marching bands was obscene. Plus some poor cheerleaders in outfits that really were not suitable for a cold and rainy day.
Then the real parade started.
I’m still confused.
What does a whale have to do with anything?
[Apparently I wasn’t even looking at the whale]
Then we had a dancing bear…
Then a pirate ship…
Then a giant globe…
I’m not even sure what this is…
But I feel like the logic (or lack thereof) of St Pat’s shouldn’t be questioned. I mean, Peter and Jack ended up halfway up a lamp post.
But all in all, it was a fantastically fun few hours. Look at that enthusiasm!
Of course, the insanity hadn’t really started yet. When the parade finished, and the approximately 750,000 people watching the parade decide to find a pub so they can get drunk at 2pm…yeah, that’s the crazy bit.
Luckily for us, we amused ourselves for a bit by taking photos of the leprechaun. Naturally there was a leprechaun. He was a fair bit bigger than I’d imagined, but if you’re ever going to see a leprechaun in Ireland, St Pat’s would be the day to do it!
After making friends with the leprechaun, we decided to do what everyone else was doing, and find a pub. There are a lot of pubs in Dublin. On St Pat’s Day, there are a lot of very full pubs in Dublin. It was like a giant game of find-the-pub-with-some-space, only there were a couple of hundred thousand people playing the same game. Fun times.
After a while, Rachel, Kara and I decided we’d go for a wander around Dublin seeing as it was their last day in Ireland. So we saw the Christ Church Cathedral, which was a little bit imposing…
And the unpronounceable St Audeon’s Church, which was a bit cute.
Then we went back and met the boys in Temple Bar (fun fact: Temple Bar is an area, not a bar. Although there is a bar called Temple Bar. I think there’s a couple actually. But it’s named after the area, not the other way around), and the insanity had possible gotten even worse because everyone was completely drunk. But here’s a pretty picture anyway!
We also got to hear some live Irish music in the pub which was awesome. We also concluded that there were probably more Americans that actual Irish people in Dublin at the time.
After a few hours, Rachel, Kara and I headed back to the bus station to catch the bus to Belfast. We got back at sometime around midnight, and were walking home when a policeman came up to us. In so many words, he said that there were riots near the area where we were staying (St Patrick’s Day is a Catholic thing, and the Protestants get a bit grumpy about it, and Belfast is a predominately Protestant city), and that to be safe we should take all our green stuff off and hide it in our bags. Rachel was wearing a green and white striped scarf, and you could only see a little bit of it because her coat was done up. Nope, get rid of that too, said our friendly policeman.
That was a fun walk home.
And then I thought about Jack, and how he was covered in head to toe in green stuff…and decided he was definitely going to die.
He didn’t though! They got tired of rioting by the time Jack got back to Belfast apparently. So in conclusion, the only casualty was the pillow Jack slept on without washing the green off his face. Good job team.
Monday
Yep, we were a bit tired on Monday. So for some reason we decided that it’d be a really good idea to do a walking tour. It was really good, truly, I just spent a lot of time yawning. We did see almost everything in Dublin though, I’m beginning to really appreciate cities where everything’s in walking distance!
Trinity College is possibly one of the most gorgeous universities I’ve ever seen.
The girl who was running the walking tour went to Trinity, and so we got to heard a whole lot of really cool stories. For example, see those cobblestones in the picture above? They weren’t there originally, but somewhere along the line someone decided that it’d look far better if Trinity had cobblestones. But then they didn’t want cobblestones that looked new, that’d ruin the whole image! So they went to a poor area of Dublin and ripped up all their cobblestones and stuck them in here. Authentic cobblestones, check!
Also, apparently if you walk through this arch before you graduate, you’re fated to fail all your exams and never graduate. I don’t know, I’d be tempted to just give it a shot anyway.
And then we saw Dublin Castle.
See how there looks like there’s a couple of different building styles going on there? That circular tower is one of the few surviving parts from the original castle, at some point some clever cookie decided it’d be a good idea to store all the dynamite in one place.
Yeah.
Didn’t work out so well for them.
Then we saw the park where the original Viking settlement in Dublin was. There were a whole bunch of small children running around on the concrete swirls. Less Viking-like. 
After that we went to a pub and listened to a traditional Irish folk story. The moral of the story – if your dad tells you to NOT GET ON THE HORSE with the magical faery-lady…seriously, don’t do it. No matter how pretty she is. The second moral – if you are silly enough to get on the horse and you end up in a faery kingdom, you’d better get used to it. You’re not going back, everyone knows time works differently in faery world and everyone’ll be dead when you get back. It’s a faery world, surely that’s kind of awesome. Suck it up sunshine.
After all that walking, we decided it was definitely lunch time, and we had the most MASSIVE HUMONGOUS steak and guinness pie ever. Literally, the size of my head. Lucky we were sharing hey?
That afternoon, Sam and Jack went to the Guinness factory. Now, if you know me at all, you’ll know I’m not a massive fan of Guinness. See? Look how unimpressed I look (and look at how shocked the guy in the back looks!).
So I decided that paying an obscene amount of money to go to a factory that makes something I don’t like would be silly. So I went shopping instead! Seriously, I did need to buy stuff, promise. So I asked the tour guide where a cheap shop like Primark would be, and she said that Ireland has Primark too, and told me where to find it. I got there, and all I could see was a shop called Pennys. The weird thing was, the font they used to write ‘Primark’ and ‘Pennys’ was kinda similar…and it was in the same colour. But that’d be stupid, why would the same store have a different name in Ireland? Sceptical face.
Yeah.
It’s the same store. It just took me far too long to believe it. I had to go in and find a dress that I knew they sold at the Primark in Glasgow to convince myself. And then spent far too much money. It’s not my fault everything in the UK is so cheap, it’s practically economical for me to buy things here.
Tuesday
Last day in Ireland! It was just Sam and me left by this point, courtesy of our amazing uni timetables. I wanted to go hire a bike and ride around Dublin Park, but it was a bit damp for outside activities so we went to Kilmainham Gaol instead. Believe it or not, it was actually incredibly interesting! We learnt a lot about the fight for Irish independence (since a lot of those people fighting for independence ended up in the goal here!) which was depressing but fascinating. Plus it was absolutely freezing, and we were wearing proper coats and scarves and everything; I don’t want to image how cold it would have been for the people imprisoned there. Here’s an artistic-y photo!
But as far as goals go, there were some ok bits – the newest part had a big skylight thing (because darkness leads to darkness in the soul, or something like that).
One of the most interesting things I learnt was that one of the top revolutionaries was a woman. Countess Markiewicz (she married a Polish Count) was heavily involved in fighting for independence, and was the first woman elected to the British House of Commons (although in protest she didn’t take her seat). See, I’m learning things!
Then it was lunch time, and Sam introduced me to the amazing wonderfulness of Mongolian BBQ. Is there one in Sydney? I’ve never found it, so this was new for me. You get a bowl, and fill it up with vegetables, noodles, tofu, spices, sauces…really whatever you want (everything’s in little bowls at a big salad bar thing, and you grab how much you want of whatever you want), then you grab another little bowl with meat in it and you take it to the people running a giant hotplate thing, and they cook it for you! So much yumminess.
That afternoon, we did an accidental coffee shop crawl. The first one we went into because they had all these different types of tea (for me) and crazy flavoured Italian hot chocolates (for Sam). I got my tea, but they’d run out of hot chocolate. So we sat there and I drank my tea and we shared a piece of cake, but then we had to get Sam some hot chocolate, so we went to another coffee shop. Then Sam remembered that the one thing she really really wanted to see in Dublin was the coffee shop in the crypt in the Christ Church Cathedral. So we went there! Sadly the coffee shop in the crypt was shut, sad face, but we still got to see it which was cool. AND we got into the church for free because we said we just wanted to see the coffee shop! All of the winning.
See, we weren’t meant to see this without paying!
And that’s it! It was an incredible weekend, but by the end I was so tired I just wanted to go home and sleep for a long LONG time. Which I didn’t do because I had essays to write, but oh well. I got my BritPol essay back a few days ago, and I passed! Although I forget how the Glasgow marking scale worked, and couldn’t work out what I got. Why oh why do you mark out of 22? That’s just silly.
Next time it’ll be South of France, so keep using these as procrastination! I hear Public International Law’s being a gem, I’m so looking forward to doing that…not. All my love to you all, miss you all heaps and I’ll see you soon 🙂
I was trying to think of how to best describe Ireland. It’s green, it’s perpetually drizzling, and there’s an alarmingly large number of sheep. NEW ZEALAND!
[In anticipation of the abuse this is going to get me – Tiwi, I’m sorry, but really, if you’re ever in Europe and get homesick…]
But really, it’s a very cool place, and we were lucky enough to spend a few days in Ireland over what might be the craziest, busiest, most insane, but most fun weekend of the whole year: St Patrick’s Day. Although you get to hear about the actual St Pat’s Day next post because it’ll turn into a small novel if I try to fit five jam-packed days into one blog. Ha! You have to keep reading now . It’s like How I Met Your Mother: you’re hanging out to hear who the mother is so you have to keep watching, even though the show kinda got boring.
I’ll stop now. Sorry.
Thursday
So Jack and I survived our flight over to Belfast, but got lost several times trying to find the hostel. No Google maps meant we had to resort to caveman-like methods of navigation, like (shock gasp) asking people. It was a strange experience for all involved. We got there eventually though! After dinner we went exploring around Queen’s University, which was gorgeous and old and slightly guilt-trip-inducing because I had an essay due that I hadn’t finished and being in a university was reminding me. I finished it eventually, promise!
Friday
Thanks to Jack’s epic researching skills, on Friday we did an amazing (and amazingly cheap!) bus tour that went up the coast of Northern Ireland to County Antrim.
First we saw a castle (because there’s always a castle…) and the place where King William landed. It’s a big deal, truly, hence the blue circle plaque thing proclaiming it a Big Deal.
After that we went to risk life and limb by crossing a teeny-tiny rope bridge over a 23m-drop. It swung from side to side. I’m looking impressive nonchalant.
Just to prove it was high…
There was some incredibly gorgeous scenery too.
And then some more gorgeous scenery…
Neither photo reflects the rain (and hail!) we experienced throughout the day. But that’s ok, we’ll ignore that.
After more driving through more impressive scenery, and seeing more different shades of green than I’ve seen in one place, we arrived at the Giant’s Causeway.
Cue story time.
As the legend goes, there was once an Irish giant named Finn MacCool. Yes, really, his name was actually MacCool. Don’t question the story! Anyway, Finn MacCool is challenged to a fight by the Scottish giant Benandonner (who gets a less cool name that sounds a bit like a kebab), because I guess you’ve got limited extracurricular activities as a giant and fighting is probably a popular pastime. Finn MacCool accepts, and goes about building a big bridge over to Scotland so they can fight. Benandonner begins to cross the bridge, and when Finn MacCool sees him coming he realises that he’s screwed up and this Scottish giant is far bigger than he is. So he runs home and asks his wife, Úna, what he should do. I quite enjoy that it’s the wife who does the problem-solving here. She suggests that Finn dress himself up as a baby, get into a cradle, and pretend to be asleep. When Benendonner finally gets to Ireland, he goes looking for Finn and finds Finn’s wife and the ‘baby’ instead. Benendonner panics, figuring that if the baby’s that big, the baby’s father must be absolutely humongous, so he runs back to Scotland, tearing up the bridge behind him so that Finn MacCool can’t follow. The Giant’s Causeway is what’s left of the bridge.
I mean, you could also say it’s a bizarre formation formed by rapidly cooling lava, but that’s nowhere near as fun.
It stopped raining long enough for us to climb around for a bit, and try to take photos that disguised the fact that there were buckets of other people there at the same time!
See, looks like we’re the only people there.
Of course, pretending that we’re the only people there does get a bit difficult when there’s a photo where both of us are in it, but ignore the logistical inconsistencies. Also ignore all the people in the background.
Final stop was a whiskey distillery, where I confirmed that no, I do not like whiskey. At all. So Jack got to finish most of it. Taking one for the team there.
Saturday
Seeing as it was raining when we woke up on Saturday, we decided the best way to see a bit of Belfast would be to take a taxi tour. Yep, it’s exactly what it sounds like, you all pile into a special taxi and the driver’s also a tour guide.
We got to see some pretty interesting places and hear lots of stories, mostly to do with The Troubles (yes, it has capital letters), which is the name given to the conflict between [warning: somewhat oversimplified explanation here] Protestants unionists and Catholic nationalists about whether Northern Ireland should be a part of the Republic of Ireland or whether it should remain part of the United Kingdom.
Different areas of the city are known as Catholic or Protestant areas, and it’s often fairly evident which is which. Case in point – one of the murals in the Protestant area (Ulster was another term used to describe unionists). The gun follows you around as you walk around the area, you can’t ever seem to get away from where it’s pointing.
One of the other places we saw was one of the Peace Walls, which were built to divide the different communities. They’ve added some pretty neat artwork to bits of it, like this giant red face-thing.
All in all, it was a very interesting and eye-opening tour, if a bit depressing at times. I think it was knowing that so many people had been killed right where I was standing, in a first-world country, and during my lifetime (the Good Friday Agreement, which officially marked the end of the violence, was only signed in 1998). The taxi driver also told us that the police had found and diffused an explosive device that morning, which was a bit unnerving. Belfast is an incredible city and definitely worth a visit, but if you’re not familiar with its history I’d recommend doing a tour like this one to understand Belfast a bit more.
After lunch we ventured out of the city and headed to Belfast Castle. It’d gotten progressively more wet as the day went on, and by the time we’d walked from the bus stop all the way up to the castle we were a wee bit damp. The castle was totally worth it though, it was beautiful, and there was even a wedding going on inside.
So…um…hey.
How are you?
I feel really bad about the way things ended between us. I shouldn’t have just disappeared for a month without telling you, and I should’ve tried harder to make sure we kept talking. You still mean a lot to me.
I know forgiveness is a lot to ask. But if you want to, I’m willing to give it another shot.
I’ll give you pictures? Lots and lots of pictures? And stories? About EVERYTHING.
Good 🙂 Glad we’re ok again.
But seriously, I am sorry about being AWOL this week. It’s a funny story really, I came back from Morocco with tonsillitis, got antibiotics, and there was about a day when I felt ok, then I discovered that I’m really quite a lot allergic to penicillin. So for heaven’s sake, if any of you are ever with me when I manage to do some kind of damage to myself, don’t let them give me penicillin. But I’m all better now, promise!
Of course, I’ve got so much to fill you in on that we’re going to have to travel quite far back in time to get to where I left off!
Isle of Skye
Just going to put it out there, this wasn’t my favourite weekend. I spent quite a lot of it throwing up actually, so I look like I’m dying in most photos, and I wasn’t really in the mood to be taking photos of interesting things. Bit of background – this was a trip organised by the International Society, so there were a couple of big buses full of people, and we booked out two whole hostels on the Isle of Skye. Not exactly a small or subtle trip, which means that most photos have a collection of random people in them.
Case in point:
For those clever cookies who’ve been paying attention, yes, this is Glen Coe, and yes, we’ve been there. And yes, someone has a tripod. I’m still confused.
So Saturday was pretty much the bus convoy driving up to the Isle of Skye with stops at various and often inexplicably random places along the way. You know the drill by now. A few castles, a famous bridge or two, some lochs, chuck in some mountains, and multiply by 7 hours.
Sunday was a bit better (less dying on my part), we got to see some pretty cool places on the Isle of Skye. For those who haven’t bothered to google where the Isle of Skye is, it’s right in the north-west corner of Scotland, so think very few people, lots of very desolate and Scottish-looking scenery, and lots of sheep. There’s always lots of sheep.
One of the famous things on the Isle of Skye is the Old Man of Storr, which is essentially a big rocky mountain/hill/phallic-shaped thing that looks like this (photo courtesy of wikipedia):
We just saw a lot of mist. It was very lovely mist! But no rock sadly. Apparently it was used in Prometheus, but I guess we’ll take Wikipedia’s word for it.
Then we saw Mealt Falls (yes, actually saw it, the mist lifted a bit!). The cool thing about this waterfall is that it’s one of the few in the world that fall straight into the ocean. I know, it’s not something you think about, but when you do, it’s a bit like, yeah, you know what, I really haven’t ever seen a waterfall fall into an ocean!
Then we went to more waterfalls (there’s a lot of water around here, it has to go somewhere right?). This one was called Lealt Falls.
There was an alarming lack of fencing for somewhere with such big drops.
And then, all waterfall-ed out, we went back to the main town of Portree for lunch. We also found a little cemetery, which, as far as cemeteries go, was kinda sweet and overgrown and oh-so-Scottish-y.
And then drove allllll the way back to Glasgow.
I know, it’s not as exciting as Ireland or France or Morocco, but chronological order is very important here. Patience children. You also get to look forward to when my photos get mildly better after I buy a camera!
NEXT POST: Ireland! Which I may break into two parts just to frustrate everyone.
A Girl in Glasgow 