5 Tips for surviving Belfast

Belfast: more like bell-slow.

Belfast is a city full of things to do. Anyone working within the tourist infrastructure scoffs at any news mentions of Belfast as a dangerous place. Other locals are not afraid to greet you with a friendly "YOU DROPPED YOUR MAP YOU FRICKIN TOURIST!" the moment you get off the bus.

It is a calm city, in which you probably won't get yelled at in the street more than twice a day. Here are some helpful tips to make sure your visit is as pleasant as possible.

1. Don't insult the architecture, even if it is an atrocity of modernism meets neoclassical, all in one building. Belfast thrives on the clash of cultures from different sources coming together. This fine building is part of a college right by the botanical gardens.

Cubism, meet columns and a sculpture?

Ok, some of the college buildings are legit.

2. Take some time to appreciate the rainbows. They almost make up for the five times a day you will get rained on from the bipolar weather systems. Oh, and probably acquire yourself an umbrella, or you won't be able to tell the raindrops apart from your tears.

I think Ireland was on the other end of this rainbow.

3. Don't wear William and Mary gear. Well, you might get a high five in Protestant area. As you can see, orange day is a big thing, and William is so popular he gets a whole side of a building in the ultra-union-jack part of the city. You can take a black cab tour from all manner of Troubles veterans. You can request a bias so you can have the tour skewed perfectly to conform to your world view, or you can just take your chances. 

Anyway, don't wear William and Mary gear in the Catholic section, or you will get a high five to the face.

William! And Mary! Loved of Old! Hark upon the &c &c.

4. If you need cheering up after the tour of troubles, go to city hall!

Pretty enough building. What could improve its coolness?

Rows of artistic terra cotta warriors!

He pandance if he wants to.

5. The best way to survive Belfast? Get out of Belfast. You are so close to Giant's causeway, it is a necessary day trip. If you are very lazy, like me, you can find a daytrip bus and feel super tourist for a day. Doing it this way provides a couple benefits, other than avoiding public transportation hassles:

Pirate statue. You get to visit this castle just long enough to snap a photo!

Tiny islands near  Carrick-a-Rede, which is a tiny rope bridge.
You can pay five pounds? For the privilege of walking on a bridge.

Or you can stand around and take pictures.

You can guess which I picked.

Now, to the Causeway!
Giant's Causeway is an important location for many reasons, not the least of which because Hermione teleported herself, Ron, and Harry here for no apparent reason except to provide some very nice scenery in the last movie.

You can walk around on the rocks, slip and fall and get a bruise, because the damps stones are super slick. You can also go hiking up a trail and walk on top of the cliffs. This is a nice hike, but at the top of the cliffs the geographical formations tend to be pretty much like normal cliffs and water, less distinctive than Finn McCool's legacy.

Natural geometric formations!

It's a pattern for a stone soccer ball/football.
Note: the thing I have to apologize most for while traveling:
the American use of he word football.

You haven't seen the last of rocks and water! Oh my no!

Pretty weird formation, right? And big.
Note the genuine rain droplets on the lens!

Cliffs: good for hiking!
Warning: uphill. 

From up here, giant is not the word I would pick.

Anyway, Giant's Causeway is the remnant of Finn McCool's duel with a Scottish giant named Benandonner. The story was explained to me thusly: 

So Ben hears Finn is the most badass of the Irish giants, and he's like cool. So he sends Finn a letter, saying Hey, wanna fight? Build me a causeway so I can come over and kick your ass!

Finn says cool, and builds a bigass causeway to join ireland and scotland, because giant's can't be bothered to take a boat. So Finn sits there and crosses his arms and watches Benandonner strut over from across the channel. As he gets closer, Finn realizes this is bad news bears, and he's like great scot, that is a great big scot. So, being the quickthinking guy Finn is, he gets his wife to wrap him up in swaddling clothes and put him in a crib. (What a baby!)

So when Ben finally gets there, the wife says oh hey, my hubby is out for the moment. Lemme just feed his son, and I'll go get him. So Ben sees this enormous baby, and thinks "Damn. If that's the size of the baby, I don't want to see the dad." So Ben runs back across the causeway, tearing it to pieces, and leaving broken rocks and a whole lot of bizarrely hexagonal footprints. Yay!

Seven things to do in Glasgow

Things to do in Glasgow!

1. Find beautiful night photography!

I would like to tell you I remember what this building is.

Cathedral, from the only angle without
all the scaffolding ever.

2. Put traffic cones on top of statues!

Kidding. The Modern Art Gallery beat you to it.

3. Go to the Botanical Gardens!

Just don't throw stones.

Don't throw stone statues either.

It's like being inside a tropical UFO.

4. Take a trip through time and space!

Whooville.

5. Take more pictures of that Cathedral.

You don't have to look so grave.

The Cathedral building is hollow on the inside.
You can walk in, if you want to.

It also contains a flag from the time when a gator ruled England.

6. Find Victorians in a vintage festival!

I am half convinced they came from the Tardis.

Clearly, not steampunk enough.

7. Learn to Thistle.

Teach me how to thistle,
teach
teach me how to thistle!

Edinburgh, more like edinburrrrr

Scotland, or, the start of cold. In my travels through England, the weather was a heatwave induced perfect. Wales, mostly perfect. Scotland: I don't think I saw blue in the sky once. And when it rains, it isn't actually all that warm. It's pretty much got that San Francisco summer chill. By which I mean surprise frostbite or a light jacket.

So we decided to check out Edinburgh. Spoiler: there's a castle in the middle of the city! It's really quite hard to avoid. But why would you want to?

Castle rock; party rock.

At night, the castle is lit up with a haunting blue glow. Hope you like ghost castles. I know I do!

Ghooooossssttttt

Really, you can see the castle from everywhere in the city. Here's another view:

But really it's the frame you should care about.

Really, the important part of that picture is the window frame. Why? I'm glad you asked. This window happens to be the window in The Elephant House, which is a cafe. It's a view that's cited as an inspiration point for the famous literature that was composed in that very cafe. What literature? Oh, I don't know, a little obscure book and second book something to do with a boy wizard.

Elephants: not present in Harry Potter.

The cafe sticks to its elephantine roots, and doesn't make a big deal of it. Except for the bathrooms. They're pretty moving, covered with graffiti of thank you notes from readers to Rowling. And I hear there's something about "wands at the ready" in the men's room by the urinal. I did not investigate.

And just outside of the cafe is a graveyard with a lot of very familiar names.

He Who Should Not be Named.
This gravestone needs to get with the program.

Though the above is currently the most photographed grave in Edinburgh, it is a city with many really remarkable gravestones. There was a massive plague, so the graphic designers of the gravestone age tried to warn graverobbers and necrophiles that to mess with the graves would land you in your own grave right quick.

Plaguing stones:

Or it commemorates a dancing skeleton.
Maggie Dickson?

Or, more simply:

Yo, ho! A Pirate's Death for Me?

But really. Absolutely the most important thing to do in Edinburgh is to go on one of the free walking tours. Our guide knew his shit, and could bring the stories of the city to life. Plague stories, medieval punishment stories, Maggie Dickson the undead celebrity stories, and the history of the castle. It was a three hour stroll of entertainment and history. In a good way.

To keep it relevant, the guide demanded a volunteer when we got to the medieval punishment block. One of my fine traveling companions shoved me forward, so I stumbled up to the punishment octagon to learn the tragic story of my hypothetical medieval life.

I made appropriately sad faces while the guide narrated the medieval justice that would result after my husband died in the military and I was caught stealing bread to feed my three starving children. Without trial or jury, the shopkeepers would have arranged to nail my ear to the punishment octagon, and I would have to stand there for a day without a babysitter, food, water, bathroom breaks, or any food for my starving children. If I couldn't hack it, and tore myself away from the block, I would be marked forever as a thief. There would be shunning, and poor medieval thief would have no recourse but to turn tricks at the docks and face a guaranteed death by syphilis after two years.

Oh dear!

Now all the punishment octagon is used for is royal pronouncements, which are proclaimed exactly three days after the news is released from London. On the bright side, the several-days gap will prevent the town criers from being duped by fake celebrity deaths on Twitter. 

England: Middle Bits

If you go to London, you will be left with the impression that England is entirely populated by tourists.

To learn that England is not entirely populated by tourists, stay with real English people! I was the guest of some very lovely people in the middle of nowhere! This involved a lovely thatched roof cottage, which was older than America (the cottage, not the people). It was a really great break from tourists. Tourists are the bane of my vacation! (Clearly, there is no double standard here...)

The town was very small, and very cute. It had a church that was very small and very cute.

Proportional place of worship!

With faces! 

Stone cold.

And from this tiny town, we took a day trip to the much larger but pretty small city of Lincoln. This city contained a very large Cathedral. Perhaps disproportionately large.

Small town, big cathedral.

This Lincoln cathedral is pretty huge and elaborate. Much less cozy than the tiny church. Contains highly elaborate stonework. Such as the green man hiding in an archway below: 

Decoration within decoration,
because the masons had nothing better to do.

And drove over a massively enormous bridge, which was once upon a time the longest suspension bridge in the world. Now it's not the largest, but it remains disproportionately massive.

Bridge in the middle of nowhere: suspension of disbelief
made easy.

This is getting disordered--somewhere in there, in England, I went out driving with a couple of cool people. No, of course I didn't drive, I would have ended up in the wrong lane, and it would've been awkward.

We blazed by the Stratford upon Avon tourist trap.

House: not quite authentic.

Really, the most authentic part was the gift shop!

Not pictured: Shakesbear shirts. 

And Stonehenge! We found some stones.

Stonehenge is a dish best served old.

Oh yeah, and there was Liverpool.

I still have no idea why these towers were being towed...

The straws that broke the Costa's roof.

Very unfortunately, I ran out of time and didn't get to see the slavery museum. I wanted to compare/contrast the presentation to Virginia's approach. (Later, in Glasgow, I went on a slavery walking tour, which was all about merchant triangle traders. Sorry, the chronology is starting to fracture around the edges). But I did see the Beatles museum! It was a rare example of audio tour done right.

And you can't hang out in Liverpool without going to the precise and detailed replica of the most popular venue of the Beatles' heyday. The Cavern!

Second Cavern replica I walked into that day.

Unforgivably unchronological tangent:
Back in London, once upon a time there was a train station:

How do you know when the King's Cross?

And I think that's about it for England.