Cork

Cork was nice. I was pretty lazy the whole time because it was so cold and rainy. There were two Israeli guys in my room and a guy from Australia who has been traveling for 11months!!! How freaking cool is that.

They have a really cool English market. They have all kinds of meats and cheese and fish and stuff. I took a bus out to the blarney castle so I could kiss the Blarney Stone. You have to climb up these ridiculously steep steps to get there and then you sit down and lean backwards to kiss it. I met some people from Texas while I was there! In the back of the castle they have a poison garden. Why the heck would you ever have that??? There are signs that say don't touch smell or eat the plants. Pretty sure that wouldn't be allowed in America.

I didn't go out or do anything too exciting except for lay in bed because it was sooooo cold and rainy and read a couple of books. It was a nice little lazy two days.

Kilkenny

I took a train and then a ferry over to Dublin where I stayed for the night. I ended up going on a pub crawl with some girls from my room. They are studying in Galway for the semester. How freaking cool!! We had a lot of fun and they told me when I come to Galway I can stay with them!

On Saturday we went to the kilmainham jail and did the tour there. It looks just like the place in shutter island! So creepy! They were going to go to the castle and the cathedral but I ended up leaving and getting a bus to Kilkenny. It's such a small town but do cute! There wasn't much to do besides the castle and some churches. Saturday night I went out for a little bit but it was really cold. I went to a bar called Paris texas and there was like no one in there! It was nice though because they had a Texas flag and other texasy things inside. I almost wanted to cry!

On Sunday there was a big Irish football game on so I went and saw the castle and church before the game started. Irish football has got to be the most amazing sport I've ever seen. It's like football and soccer all mixed into one. They don't wear pads and they generally just beat the mess out of each other. Apparently new York has a team now so I will definitely be watching when I get back home! I was sitting at my own table for a few hours just drinking beer. They just got blue moon over here!! This group of Irish guys came into the bar and one kept looking at me and finally came over and started talking to me. Holy cow it was so hard to understand them! It's like they were speaking a different language. We went to another bar and it was a great Sunday fun day!

On monday I caught a bus to cork. I love seeing all of the countryside!! Everything is so green and gorgeous here. It's a lot like Scotland but not as cold.

London

I took a bus from Inverness at 7pm to London and got there at 7 am. It was a lonngggg uncomfortable night. I got to London and my hostel was not far from the station so I went to try and check in but it was too early but he let me go take a shower so that was wonderful! I was at buckingham palace by 8am before all the tourists were out! I was expecting some grand beautiful place. It was nice but not what I thought it would be. I walked forever before ending up by the county hall which holds the aquarium and film museum. I ended up doing one of those hop on hop off buses because I was sick of walking. Seriously my feet are killing me. I went and did a tour of the tower of London. They have the yeoman warders do the tours and the guy was hilarious. Did you know that every year on their birthday beefeater gin sends them a bottle? I don't like gin but still that's awesome.

The bus tour that I did also offered a free Harry potter location tour! Of course I was all over that!! We saw the entrance to diagon alley, the ministry of magic, and a few other places from the movies. We even went to the candy shop that inspired the one in the books.

Also I'm freezing. I ruined my jeans in Paris and I don't know what it's like to be warm anymore since I got to Norway! It's always soooo cold! I tried to find some jeans here I went to like five different stores but I cant figure out the sizes. Ladies, you know how awful it is to find jeans. It's even worse when you don't understand the sizes. Ugh.

On my last day there I just walked around for five or six hours. I tried to go to the planetarium but it had moved way outside the city. So I ended up going to the aquarium instead which was pretty cool. When you walk in you walk over a glass floor and you can see sharks swimming under you. They had big turtles and scary looking sharks. After the aquarium I tried to go into the film museum to see the tardis from dr who. The museum was closed because there was a conference being held there. It just was not my day to see things. I did however find a seven story toy store that was absolutely amazing. They had so many awesome toys! They had a life sized statue thing made out of Legos or Kate and William and Harry from the day of the wedding.

I tried to see one of the girls I met in Croatia but she never got back to me until the last night I was there so I was sad I didn't get to see either of them.

Loch ness monster!

I took a bus up to Inverness to go loch ness monster hunting!! It was a really cute little city with not a whole lot to do. I went to a pub for dinner and needed up meeting some people that were from London but were up here working for a week. We ended up doing a little pub crawl of our own. I of course ended up ninja-ing off and made it back to my hostel. I guess I still need a leash when I go out drinking. My friends at ecu would turn around and I would just be gone.

The next day I took a boat cruise on the loch and saw urquhart castle and tried to find Nessie. All I found were ducks. I love the pubs here! They have such good food and there's always a band that's playing Scottish music. I had a fun night listening to music but went home early since I needed to do laundry.

I wanted another chance at finding Nessie so I booked another tour that took me to the castle and to the loch ness monster museum. I had so much fun running around the castle and exploring it. There isn't a whole lot of it left mostly just crumbling walls. You can still go up in the tower which gives you an awesome view of the loch. I wish I could dive in there!! Something about there's too much peat in the water so it makes the visibility terrible.

After running all over the castle we took a bus to the loch ness monster museum. You walk through these different rooms and they show you about how st columbo came there to convert people and said that he drove away a sea beast. That's the first recorded account of Nessie. You get to see different peoples accounts of seeing Nessie and the scientific things they have tried to do to find her. I'm sure there is nothing in there but still it's fun to believe in. It's like Santa. I got our bus driver to tell us some of the stories he grew up hearing.

They said that Nessie was a shape shifter and her favorite was a beautiful horse. People that didn't know would try to go up and pet her but she would grab them and drag them to the bottom of the loch and eat them. He also said that strangely there is a horse breeding place that has been known for their beautiful horses . . . So I'm sure there's no way that the owners of that place would have started that story to keep people from trying to capture pretty horses beside the loch!

Edinburgh

I absolutely fell in love with Scotland. I've already looked into moving here and what all I need to do with Kirby so he can come too.

Walking out of my hostel the first thing you saw was the castle sitting high up on a hill. There is a pub every five steps and steak and ale pie is amazing. I went wandering down rose street and found a pub that looked fun. There were two guys sitting by me so I asked them where were some good places to go. It turns out they were brothers and their friend kerry came and met them! She was so much fun. We went to a bar called Jekyll and hydes and the inside was all dark and had creepy things in it. The bathrooms were even hidden behind bookshelves! The older brother got wayyy to drunk so they had to take him home. They walked me home but before we got there we jumped the fence into the park next to the castle!! It was such an amazing view!

The next day I just went walking around Edinburgh. I did the free walking tour that they had there and learned all kinds of interesting history. I even tried haggis! It was actually kinda good. We got to see the place where jk Rowling write the first two harry potter books Also we saw the cemetery where she mix and matched names to make some of the characters. One of the guys from the walking tour was staying at my hostel and a bunch of us were going to do the pub crawl.

The pub crawl was a lot of fun. I met a group from Austin Texas! I hung out with them most of the night. We got to the last bar and I remember looking up and no one was there from the pub crawl! I had been dancing with an Irish guy who ended up proposing to me. I wish I could have remembered his name! Somehow I made it home and the next day was rough. I apparently hit my head on something pretty hard because one spot really hurts.

My last day in Edinburgh was pretty lazy. I just walked around for a while and did the scotch whiskey experience! You go on this little ride and see how they make scotch and you get to taste one. There are four areas that produce whiskey so I tried the one that is sort of fruity. I got the gold ticket package thing so at the end I got to taste one from each of the four. It was hard to drink them! I really liked one that was very smoky. It tasted like I was drinking barbecue. They have the worlds largest collection of scotch there it's something like 3400 different bottles. Some of the bottles were really cool looking like chess pieces or golf bags.

I was so sad to leave!! I am dying to go back but money is running out so I have to start heading towards Ireland.

Norway

My flight to Oslo was super interesting. We had to emergency land near Milan with only one engine! It was already a bad day on its own and that just made it worse. When we were finally let off the plane, I went straight to the bar and started throwing back beers. I tried to call my parents because I was freaking out but they didn't answer which is probably good as I would have started crying.

Anyways, we made it there about three hours late and my dads cousin and her husband picked me up at the airport. They were so amazingly nice! It was such a good five days.

Friday night when I got there we had dinner and didn't do a whole lot. Saturday, thorstein took me into tonsberg with his granddaughter Jenny and we saw a replica Viking ship that a bunch of volunteers had made by hand the way Vikings used to make them. They were giving tours and rowing it out into the river. You could tell they weren't professional towers because they weren't all synced up and oars kept hitting each other! Thorstein's son Paul was looking at a house to buy so we went and looked at that. There is an old fort near the town and we climbed up the hill and went inside and up to the top. There was such a gorgeous view of the city and part of the fjord. That night, we went out to dinner with three other couples to this really nice place on the harbor. It was pretty good and I had mashed potatoes for the first time in months so I was happy! I felt like such an adult with all of them haha. They all came back to Claudia's house and she had made this peach pie thing which was really tasty. I feel like even more of an adult because I've been drinking tea AND coffee.

On Sunday, we took two of Paul's kids, Jenny and Adrian, out to a lake. Jenny is four and Adrian is 7 I think. The three of us ended up playing in all of the sand and we dug this awesome canal/moat thing. There were some other kids there and they saw what we were doing and they came to play too! It was probably one of the most fun things I've done on this whole trip. And none of them could speak English. When I had first gotten there, Jenny would run away from me because she's shy I guess. After we left the lake though she had to sit next to me and always be around me. She's so adorable! When we got back home, Thorstein started grilling and we had an awesome dinner with pasta and potato salad and lots of meat! Yum!

Monday we went into Oslo and had lunch with their daughter missy. She does research stuff at the hospital there so we ate in the cafeteria. She was just so sweet! She invited me to come stay with her for a few days in Oslo but since I was leaving on Wednesday from an airport back near tonsberg I said no because I didn't think it would be enough time to actually do anything. After we left the hospital, we drove through downtown Oslo and went to a really famous park. We also got to see the Viking ship museum! The ships had been buried because they were graves for Hugh ranking people from back then. There were a lot of interesting things that the found buried with them. They even have pieces of cloth that survived for thousands of years and you can still sort of see whats on them. It was a small museum but pretty cool. We stopped and got some fro yo and saw the castle that is there. I had no idea that they still had a king! He doesn't do much so I guess he is like England's queen. There is so much cool stuff here that I want to buy! I've decided when I get into Ireland I will start throwing clothes away and making room and just start buying souvenirs and stuff. So if you want anything let me know!!

On Tuesday I didn't do a whole lot. I wanted to soak up the last bit of relaxing I could before I rush through three countries in a month! On Wednesday I fly to Edinburgh and I'll stay there for two nights before going to Inverness and down to loch ness. I'm hoping I can go diving or take a really cool boat cruise on the lake. I've been dying to go here and find Nessie since I was a kid! I cant wait to be there!

After that I think I'm going to London for three or four days to meet up with some friends I've made on the trip and then on to Ireland for two weeks and then home!