natural history

Being followed by Crazies

Europe ~ Republic of Ireland ~ Dublin, Drogheda & United Kingdom ~ North Ireland ~ Belfast & Bushmills

What a fantastic country!!! Arrived in Dublin early in the morning, not really sure what to expect. Booked into my hostel, then set off on one of the open top, hop-on hop-off tours. Highlights of the day included Dublina (a cute little museum aimed at kids, certainly made it easier for me to understand!!), Christ Church and, of course, the Guinness Storehouse. YUM. The storehouse itself was a little disappointing – very manufactured, plastic-y, but the reward was the free pint of Guinness sitting waiting for you at the Gravity bar – right on the very top of the building. However, the amount of beer that was being thrown away would make grown men cry. Tourists were coming in, getting their free beer, having a sip and then leaving it basically UNTOUCHED. These beers were being poured down the sink. I almost had a bit of a sob myself!

Enjoying a pint of Guinness at the Gravity Bar

Enjoying a pint of Guinness at the Gravity Bar

After two days in Dublin I caught a [early] bus to Drogheda, to visit the famous Bru na Boinne. Bru na Boinne is an area that has three large pre-pyramid burial tombs (Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth), plus many many smaller ones. They think that the tombs were created between 3500 and 2700 BC. Knowth was particularity interesting because of all the carvings on the stones – the guides were able to speculate what they were about, but no-one really knows. Newgrange is the more famous of the three tombs – we were able to go right inside the tomb, where the guide showed us a re-enactment of what happens on winter solace. The cave-like tomb is in complete darkness for the whole year, except for the 5 days surrounding the shortest day of the year. During these 5 days, at 8.58am, light enters a small ‘window-box’ above the entrance and lights up the tomb. I think the most spectacular of all this is the man-power that it would have taken to create these tombs – huge rocks were moved over large distances to get them into place, amazing to think about when you see the size and number of these rocks.

Next stop was Belfast. I intended to spend two days there, but was so disinhearted after one night that I left straight away. Nothing seemed to be going right and I wasn’t having a good time, so I though ‘Bugger it’, and moved on. Glad I did, because the next place I went, Bushmills, was one of the best hostels I’ve ever stayed at… I had my own room, real beads (not bunks), ensuite… and, best of all, a BATHTUB. The luxury of it all… Spent the day seeing the coast, went to Giants Causeway. Giants Causeway is a section of naturally formed 4- and 6-sided rocks that look just like a pathway leading out to the sea. Legend has it that the giant, Finn MacCool, built it to visit his lady love in Scotland. Also stopped at Carrick-a-rede, a rope bridge strung 30 metres above the pounding ocean over to a tiny island. Whilst it was fun crossing the bridge, it was even better watching people pay 2 euro and then LINE UP just to cross a rope bridge. Guess I did it too, so who’s to judge?! After a day on the north coast, I moved back down to Belfast, where I enjoyed myself a lot more. Took a day tour of the city and found out all the nifty little facts. Like the Titanic was built in the shipyards there. Of course we went through the areas where the Troubles were most prevalent, down past the murals and all the churches and police stations with wire cages over them. Scary but intriguing too.

Giant's Causeway

Giant's Causeway

The people of Ireland are incredibly friendly. Almost all will chat to you over a pint, I’ve met a heap of people traveling on my own, locals and fellow travelers alike. Unfortunately, I also seem to be attracting the crazies too. On my trip to Newgrange, I noticed a guy carrying a little stick [wand?] with a feather poking out the end, waving it all over the carved rocks and bowing and whispering to them. This same guy turned into the hostel I was staying at. Turned out he was staying in my room. When we were all sitting around drinking later that night, he kept doing things like waving his feet over the glasses and mumbling to himself… My first night in Belfast, I was sitting in my room chatting to some of the other girls, when a guy walked in and proclaimed we were reading his mind. Turns out he was chatting to one of the girls earlier, he was completely nuts. And then in Bushmills, whilst waiting for the bus, an old guy came and sat next to me and chatted to me in what I think was Gaelic for about half an hour. My bus pulled up, and he said in perfect English, “There’s your bus”. Ahhh! With all this in mind, when I was on the bus on my way out to see Giant’s Ring (Belfast), and an older lady came and sat next me, I was more than a little wary. When she said to me that “I wouldn’t go there, dear, its not a nice place for young ladies to go by themselves, funny people go there”, I decided to take her advice. Had enough of crazies for the moment…

Cheers to all [said as I raise my pint of Guinness]
xoxo Bobs

Touring the Highlands with mum

Europe ~ United Kingdom ~ Scotland ~ Edinburgh, Inverness & Loch Ness

Mum arrived safely and soundly, the events in London didn’t significantly alter her travels, although her flight from Germany to London contained a heap of journalists and photographers. Our week has been full of the typical touristy things, it’s been fantastic. Before we were able to do all our sightseeing, however, I had to show mum the hostel we’ve been staying in… Up the 77 steps we climbed, to inspect the bedrooms and hang out rooms. Mum didn’t seem tooooooo upset, it could have been worse! When mum arrived, I commented to her that it was tough luck that she didn’t arrive the week before, so she could see all the protesters and what not. Just after I said this to her, she called me to the window of our hotel room. Right outside, there were alot of people boo-ing, whilst firefighters were getting protesters down off a bridge. They had somehow climbed to the top of the bridge and rolled out a sign. Waiting on the ground, with handcuffs at the ready, were the police…

I took mum to see all my favourite hangouts, including Greyfriars Kirk. Interestingly, after visiting Greyfriars, mum discovered scratches all over her arm – we took a photo. Weird. Also went to Mary Kings Close, very interesting. It is a small street that was closed over and largely forgotten about in the 1700’s, so that the council chambers could be built over the top. The street and some of the buildings have been kept in their original condition. When we entered one of the rooms, our guide told us how, in the 1980’s, a Japanese film crew had come down with a psychic. The psychic felt such strong emotions in this particular room, at first she refused to enter. Eventually she did, and she felt the presence of a small girl, named Anne. She said that the reason the girl was so upset is because her family had left, and she had no-one to play with. The Japanese psychic sent one of her colleagues up to the street to buy a doll for the girl, and ever since then, people have been bringing her toys and money. After a time, the toys and money are donated to a local childrens charity.

Mary Kings Close - notice the prominent orbs

Mary Kings Close - notice the prominent orbs

We hired a car for two days, which allowed us to get out of the city for a while and see the countryside. On the first day we went to Rosslyn Chapel, which was amazing. Built in 1446, Rosslyn Chapel is unique in that it conforms to neither architecture of the time, nor to any fashion of the time. Everything within the chapel is heavily carved, full of symbolism. Things like the carvings of maize from the New World that pre-date the discovery of America by Columbus by at least one hundred years. Rosslyn Chapel feautures in the book, ‘The Da Vinci Code’, as the place where the holy grail is supposedly buried. When we went, the chapel was in the middle of being restored, so there was scaffolding everywhere. Dissapointing, as it meant we couldn’t see the outside of the building well, but rewarding in that it meant we could climb up to the top and view the chapel from above.

The Apprentice Pillar, Rosslyn Chapel - Legend has it that the apprentice stonemason is entombed within his own peice of art

The Apprentice Pillar, Rosslyn Chapel - Legend has it that the apprentice stonemason is entombed within his own peice of art

On our second day with the car we took a road trip. Leaving extremly early, Tash, Elysha, Mike, mum an I set off for the highlands. Our aim of the day was to visit Loch Ness, on the way there we stopped off at tea rooms, to get scones and tea, yum! Lunch at Inverness, then onto Loch Ness. We went through the ‘Loch Ness Discovery Centre’, which was a bit dissapointing, they spent most of their time convincing us that the Loch Ness Monster didn’t exist. Afterwards we set off to the loch, to find out for ourselves. I don’t believe them, there’s definetly something in the waters there, there has to be. The trip home took us through the highlands and past all the lochs. Really beautiful countryside, lots of sheep, cows and Pavlova’s (read: sheep dogs).

Tash, Mike, Elysha & I

Tash, Mike, Elysha & I

Apart from our car travels, we’ve just spent the week discovering Edinburgh. We found the legendary Tesco’s – woohoo! Spent half a day at the castle, which was fun. Saw the dressing room where Mary, Queen of Scots gave birth to James I. We also saw the Honours of Scotland, the oldest jewels in the U.K. Saw mum off yesterday, shes off to Thailand to meet Charlotte, they should have a blast. Going to be nice and warm over there… Today I went into an interesting store. It’s called ‘Argos’, you walk in and walk up to a set of catalogues. In the catalogue there is everything you could possibly want to buy – towels, iPods, cameras, sofas, board games, books, hair dryers etc etc. Once you find what you want, you punch the number into the little machine sitting in front of you, which tells you if the item is in stock. After deciding what you want, you go to the front of the store, tell the staff and they give you a receipt. They then fill the order and bring it back to you in about 10 minutes. Amazing! A store that has completely taken away the idea of browsing through stock. It seems to work, it was really busy today.

Mike and Shannon browsing through the catalogues at Argos

Mike and Shannon browsing through the catalogues at Argos

Anyway, thats enough ramblings about weird shops… love to all, HAPPY BIRTHDAY LEAH!!!

xoxo bobs

Howing into the haggis

Europe ~ United Kingdom ~ Scotland ~ Edinburgh

Back in Europe once again, enjoying the life of the traveling backpacker. Well, not quite, as we have now settled down in Edinburgh to organise some funds until we head over to Europe to travel our last stint. We’re staying in a hostel in the central part of Edinburgh, the hostel is confusing to say the least. It’s just like one of those cruel mazes your parents take you to when you’re a kid, just so they can sit on a terrace above drinking coffee and laughing when you can’t find your way out… Every time I try to find my room (I’m in room ‘E’, bed ‘E=mc squared’, all the rooms have letters and beds have names to match, my first night I was in room ‘J’, bed ‘Joker’), I end up in another part of the hostel, if you’re not careful I’m sure that you could end up in another country altogether. Luckily, the doors back to reception are marked, and I always take a stash of breadcrumbs, so I don’t get lost that much anymore… Once again we’re in a predominantly male room – at least the door doesn’t say ‘MEN’ on the door this time. Tash was here all on her own, but now that I’m here, we’re starting to take over… The guys seemed quite horrified when they came in the other night to find us sitting in the middle of the room with another chick, sorting out my clothing, figuring out what to wear and other general girly stuff. I keep teasing them that I’m going to start putting posters of half naked men on the walls… We’ll see…

Edinburgh is a gorgeous city, everywhere you look there are old buildings, from wherever you are you can see the castle on the hill. I watched Harry Potter the other day, then went for a walk in the Scottish mist… It’s easy to imagine Harry Potter and all his friends lurking around every corner. Waking up after a night of heavy partying to the sound of bagpipes is an experience I never expected and will never forget. Walking along Princes Street, its not uncommon to see a man decked out in the kilt and all, standing on the side of the road playing his pipes. Even better is the guys my age wandering around the clubs in their kilts after a formal event, puts a completely different spin on things.

I went for a day trip to Glasgow the other day, didn’t enjoy it as much as I enjoy Edinburgh. From what I saw, Glasgow seems to be a more industrial town, without as many interesting buildings. At least, not in the middle of the town. Wandered along the main shopping drag for a while, the highlight of the day was going into a pub to get haggis, mmm yum. Nah, not really, it was an interesting dish, kind of like mince meat with more spices, and bit of a ‘bloody’ taste. It was ok, not my most favourite though. Still waiting to find a traditional fish ‘n chips shop, YUM!

As Tash already has a job, and I’m not all that keen to actually look for one, I’ve spent a lot of my time just wandering around the streets of Edinburgh, exploring on my own. I’ve been to Greyfriars Kirkyard a couple of times, I keep getting drawn back, its a really ‘nice’ graveyard, if that can be called a fitting word for a cemetery. If you’ve read my previous post, you’d know about our ‘supernatural’ encounter in the cemetery, it was really weird. We took the photos, and didn’t really look at them. A couple of days later, when I was uploading them onto the computer, I noticed the blue streak. I pulled out the camera and lo and behold, it was on the camera as well. The kirkyard is probably most famous for ‘Greyfriars Bobby’, the little Skye terrier that supposedly sat by his dead master for 14 years. He is commemorated by a statue out the front of the kirk, said to be the most photographed statue in all of the United Kingdom. Despite all the ghosty activity that is known to happen around the cemetery, many people visit and just sit around, reading books or having picnics.

Statue of Greyfriars Bobby, Edinburgh, Scotland

Statue of Greyfriars Bobby, Edinburgh, Scotland

Will be visiting the castle sometime soon, also planning on taking some more day trips around the area, I just have to motivate myself enough to get out of the hostel – its oh so cold outside! Hope everyone did well with exams, and are getting ready to party!

xoxo Bobs

Tackling Huang Shan

Asia ~ China ~ Huang Shan & Shanghai

Getting ready to leave mainland China now, about to head off for Hong Kong. From Xi’an we headed down to Huang Shan and then onto Shanghai and finally back here, to Beijing.

Huang Shan was beautiful, said to be the most well known mountain range in China, the ‘Mt. Fuji’ of China. The scenery was amazing, we stayed in a little hostel full of Chinese tourists. On our second day in Huang Shan we jumped on a minibus and headed off for the mountains. Turns out our hostel booked us in for a Chinese tour group, we all got yellow hats and little badges and walking sticks. We have seen these tour groups all over China, little groups of people wearing matching hats traipsing around the tourist spots. Anyway, finally ended up at the mountains, and off we went. Tash and I decided we didn’t want to walk to the top (a 3 hour hike), so we took the cable car up. Our guide freaked, convinced he was going to lose foreigners in the mountains and found some other people to babysit us while we waited for the cable car. Once at the top we hiked around for about 5 hours. The scenery was awesome, the hike wasn’t too tough, or so we thought. Whilst we were up the top we saw a total of 3 foreigners, everyone else was Chinese. And what a lot of Chinese, I’d say about 10,000 people, all in red hat and yellow hat and blue flag and green flag tour groups! Although we started off taking photo’s of the beautiful scenery, we ended up taking photo’s of the thousands of Chinese people taking photo’s of us!!! Finally it was time to go, our guide pulled us aside and asked if we wanted to take the cable car down, or walk. Well, stupid us decided that since it was all downhill anyway, we’d be fine. Over 9km of steep steps going STRAIGHT down the mountain… We basically fell down the mountain, our legs were jelly, and I’m not sure that our knees will ever be the same. [My legs are still extremely sore, that was a week ago.] We stumbled into our hostel that night, everyone just laughed at the silly foreigners – there were grannies doing the walk who seemed to be power steaming ahead!

Huang Shan Mountains, China

Huang Shan Mountains, China

The next day we took off to Shanghai, what an amazing difference. Shanghai is truly a destination for foreigners – upon arriving we ran into 3 separate groups of Aussies, almost more than we’ve seen in the past 2 months! Our days in Shanghai were basically spent sleeping and shopping, the nights reserved for the clubs. Clubs were good, met a lot of interesting people, a lot of people from Germany, surprisingly. Beers are expensive in Shanghai though, we were paying the same as what you would back home, bit of a shock! We tasted the foods – I tried stir fried bull frog, very tasty, if not a little difficult to eat. Shopping was good, Shanghai has a great selection of pearls, not exactly what a backpacker needs, but exactly what a backpacker wants!!! We stayed at the ‘Captain Hostel’, where all the staff were dressed as sailors, very full on. Our bar overlooked the city and the river, which made it a nice place to wind down after a tiring day shopping. Oh yeh, on our second day in Shanghai Tash and I took out my hair – I’m now blonde again, no longer have purple plaits down to my waist. It took us 3 hours to get out, and my hair has never been so frizzy and knotty in my life! Starting to get back to normal now.

Now we’re just chilling, doing our traditional ‘end-of-country’ shopping, we’ve been picking up some great bargains, mainly because we’ve finally got the bargaining thing downpat. Next stop – Hong Kong, should be fantastic!

Being famous in Xi’an

Asia ~ China ~ Xi’an

Well well well, hasnt been long since my last blog, but so much has been happening that I thought I should write it all down… We managed to catch our 14 hour train trip from Beijing to Xi’an, home of the Terricotta Army. Train trip was good, we were in a cabin with an older Chinese couple who went to bed as soon as we got onto the train (about the same time that Tash went to bed!). I stayed awake for a bit longer, chatting to a Mongolian guy who was travelling to Xi’an to go for a job interview. He had some really interesting views on life. At one stage, while waiting to go to the toilet another woman starting chatting to me, telling me all the good places to go to in Xi’an. Many many other people were happy to talk to me on the train, unfortunatley they didn’t speak English. However, when trying to communicate this, they obviously didn’t care and continued to chatter away to me in Mandarin!!!

On arriving in Xi’an, a group from the hostel that we’re staying at met us at the station. With them was another woman from our train who was to stay at the same hostel, turns out she was at the same hostel in Beijing with us! We all hopped on the local bus with our HUGE backpacks on, quite an effort, and ended up at the Bell Tower Hostel. Ended up sharing a room with Tracey, the girl from the train, really nice girl from Wales. Getting ready to go out for the day, we stepped out onto the street to find some food. Straight away a guy jumped in front of me and started snapping photos of me (no doubt because of my hair!), the first photo he took must have looked a treat, me completely shocked, with little sleep from the night before and just in general absolutley buggered!

We spent the day with Tracey, going to the Terracotta Army, an amazing place! About 30 years ago, a farmer who was digging a well found some statues buried in the ground. Come feel it was the greatest archeoligical find of the 20th century. 3 Large pits of terricotta statues have been uncovered, it is thought that there could be more, not yet discovered. The biggest pit is thought to contain over 6000 peices, including soldiers, horses, carts and weapons. They are believed to have been built over 2000 years ago, although there is some dispute over that. Really interesting site though.

That night we went out to a bar with Tracey. Turns out that whilst on the train, she met a group of guys and gals from Xi’an, who treated her as their guest all night, taking her to dinner and wining and dining her. One of the guys, Stanley, owns a bar in Xi’an, and he invited us out, so out we went! Upon arrival he started pouring our drinks, and didnt stop! The bar was awesome, made from old railway carriages, really interesting paintings and murials on the walls (he’s an artist as well, it turns out). After a couple of drinks at his place, he took us to another couple of bars, all the bartenders were shouting us too. Last stop was the Music Man, where we staying to the wee hours. Night was really good, only problem was that only Stanley and another girl, Jojo could speak English, so we were forever translating between them. And then we discovered that one of the other guys had been to Japan for 6 years, so I was able to chatter away to him in Japanese, it was great! We ended up getting back to the hostel at about 3am, late, but well and truly before the other people in our dorm room!!!

This morning we were all buggered (one of the other girls didnt get back until 7am!), so we slept in. At about 10.30, one of the girls that works at the hostel came barging in, saying “Bobbi, I have a surprise for you!”. Bit of a shock, we all sat up in bed, as I was given the morning newspaper with my photo in it! Turns out that the crappy photo that the guy took the other day when we had just arrived was in the paper! We spent today touring the markets and every second stall had the newspaper, so I had people shoving it in my face and pointing to it all day!! Who knew, I don’t have to earn millions to become famous, I just have to have purple put through my hair!!!

XO ME!

Me with my purple hair, scary!!!

Me with my purple hair, scary!!!