Celtic Odyssey: Enter the UK

So last Friday, Julia, Kelsey and I went to London. As UCD is on the southern end of Dublin and the airport is on the Northern end, it would take us about an hour to reach the airport. Our flight was for 815 and we had to arrive 2 hours early to get our passports stamped and through security. Aoife had warned me that many business Dubliners leave on early morning flights for day conferences in Europe and that there could be a lot of people at the airport that early. So, we decided we needed to catch the 450am bus to get there early. Well, we got out there at 450, but we must have just missed it. The next bus wasn’t until 510. As we waited, a taxi drove by and picked us up just before the next bus arrived (his far was cheaper so it worked out). We got to the airport faster than the bus could have taken us (because we didn’t have all of those stops for people) and blew through security and everything. As we were heading to the terminal, our flight status changed from on time to departure time of 1215 – a 4 hour delay!! We headed for our terminal in search of answers, wondering what in the world could cause such a delay and could we possibly change our flight. The ryanair people didn’t know and some of them told us we couldn’t switch unless we paid an extra 200e fee, which of course we weren’t going to do. Defeated, we sat and waited. Kelsey and I went for a little walk, but fortunately Julia stayed near the counter and heard that there was a policy that if you were delayed more than 4 hours, you could switch your flight for free. Well, there was another flight to London (at our terminal actually) scheduled for 815, heading into a different airport outside of London. We booked it back, found out we had to somehow get out of the airport and re-enter and get new tickets, then recheck our passports and go back through security. This took a while, but we made it onto the plane. I will say that Dublin airport is really, really long, so we probably made at least 2 miles with going back and forth twice and running around trying to find an exit. I was wearing my boots (which aren’t easy to get off and on) because it was scheduled to pour in London while we were there and Ryanair has a strict one bag only policy of a moderately sized bookbag. Honestly, I’m just glad we didn’t lose 4 hours sitting in the airport. We made it over to London, bused into the city and found our hostel. We had only one roommate, Hannah, an awesome Aussie who’s touring Europe. She was really nice. I must say – first impression of London – BRICK. So much brick. I’ve never seen so much in one city before. And the streets are illogical like Dublin, but the buildings seem so much more similar. Granted, the designs on the faces are different (though not drastically), but the height of everything is quite uniform and unyielding – it is not as friendly as Dublin at all. I think it would be very easy to get lost here. Still, I’m in a city that used to own my country – what an odd concept. I’m so used to independence, yet America didn’t always have it. Really, it’s odd visiting a place that once had dominion over your birthplace (and mine literally – go original colonies).

As the weather was actually gorgeous, we walked out to the river Thames, found a café to eat lunch and then walked up it, taking photos of parliament and Big Ben as we neared them. A park we wandered in had a piano and we learned that there are pianos hidden throughout London so that people can play them and create ‘live art’. What a great idea! We checked the price for London Eye (largest ferris wheel) but it was ridiculously expensive (18 pound ~ $34) and there was a long line so we scratched that. We wandered some in the city and found the National Museum. This holds some of the world’s most exquisite and best paintings and honestly I was overwhelmed by the talent hidden within. We weren’t allowed to take photos, but I’ll do my best to describe. The architecture was gorgeous, in the common rooms it had red marble and lots of décor on the columns. They’d arranged the rooms by centuries. I’ve never been in an art museum like this, the kind with benches in the middle because you could just sit for hours staring at any one image. Even though the ones from the 15^th and 16^th century didn’t have depth like ours do now (you know, they’re very flat and show 3D by just having one thing somewhat obscure another), the level of detail was still mind-blowing. Things like this never cease to amaze me, that someone can put all of the strokes in exactly the right places to make a portrait of someone that looks like a photograph (some in the 18^th and 19^th century were this good). I mean I was literally overwhelmed trying to take in all of the detail and work housed in this one place. And yet even the very best ones are not quite as good as our eyes’ images, which really speak to God’s craftsmanship and amazing He is. I really liked how many of the images were related to Jesus or even just different scenes from the Bible, though this prominence unfortunately waned as you drew closer to modern art. It was truly a great experience, to see and appreciate others’ hard work. I never really thought I would like going through an art museum, but I really did enjoy it.

When we got out, it started raining. I will say that the rain jacket Mom helped me get back was a lifesaver. Because I got a medium (a little larger than I would have liked initially), my mini bookbag could fit under it. I was essentially rainproof in my jacket and boots. We headed over to the royal palace, walked to the Wellington Arch, right next to the Australian WWII war memorial. It looks very much like our Vietnam memorial, but has letters of names bolded so that the names of the battles where the Aussies fought stand out and there is a constant light stream of water over the names. It was a really cool memorial. After that, it started raining, so we headed back to the hostel and found a nice place to eat dinner. I got sausages and mashed potatoes because I’d liked them so much from earlier that week. I also tried English Toffee, which was really good. Since we’d been up forever, we called it a night early and went to bed.