playing catch-up

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Dublin, with Tina and Rob!
doing my "the hills are alive" bit in Regents
at the theatre with our new pashminahs (sp?)
yay mica!
yes, i was as terrified as I looked, but I still made it up the towers of Notre Dame. you can almost see my knuckles turning white from gripping that wire so hard, and this was the only time I was out of reach of the concrete walls, for I hugged them more than I hug my mom.

It’s been a while since I updated, I know, but we weren’t really willing to pay 1GBP for 20 minutes of internet while in London. Plus, it was London, so I wanted to be out in the city as much as possible.

Our last night in Dublin was filled with meeting friendly people (Tina and Rob from Australia and Virginia Beach (!), respectively) and a pub crawl that didn’t end when we were finished with the Literary Pub Crawl we paid for (and which wasn’t as good as I thought it would be). Traveling ryanair to london was a bit of a nightmare, for they put “boarding” on the big board on time, but we just ended up queuing for an hour. Anna’s cell phone died, so we had to deal with that (which resulted in a cross-London search for a Motorola battery), and we had to rush a bit to meet Jon and Hannah (and Brian, from my Eighteenth Century Novel Class, and another London group member who I didn’t know) at the Volunteer. They didn’t have the chicken and asparagus pie that made me fall in love with that pub last year, but the cute bartender who looks like one of the hobbits from LotR was still there (but not especially happy about it).

After that, we hung out at Regents with Hannah and Brian for a bit before returning to the hostel (where all of our roommates were asleep! It was London, on a Friday, who are these people?). Next day, we did Westminster Abbey, ate al fresco in Regents Park (in the “secret garden”), found Anna a battery, bought tickets to Spamalot, went to the theatre, and walked along the south bank of the Thames home—my favorite walk, my special way of saying farewell to London.

Next day, we checked out, saw this fantastic and fascinating exhibit at the Tate Modern on Global Cities, then took the train to Paris, where we are now.

We met up with Mica last night, saw her cute little apartment (her bathroom has a porthole!), thought about going up the Eiffel Tower, reconsidered, wandered, and finally sat on the Champs du Mars and snacked as we watched the Eiffel Tower sparkle on the hour for ten minutes. It’s great seeing these people I know on this trip, meeting up, sharing some experiences, and it’s especially nice in Paris because the more people around me who speak the language, the better.

Today, we’re off to a few museums (unfortunately, the Musee Rodin is closed today, so we’ll (or I’ll) have to fit that into the plan of going to Versailles tomorrow). Then probably meeting Mica for dinner around 8pm. I really don’t want to stay out too late in this city, I don’t feel especially safe, not that I feel especially in danger, either, but the metros stop running at midnight, and I’m fine not staying out longer than that. I like my sleep and I like seeing the sights more than I like drinking or clubbing or whatever it is people do past 2300. I’m missing home a bit, and being in Paris, I can’t help but miss my mom. I’ll push though and not dwell because I’m in Europe and I’m going to enjoy the hell out of it.

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Edit: the post above was written this morning, since then my optimistic ending has proved a bit more difficult to follow through on for reasons not fit for public disclosure. I will say this, I hope this all works out but quick. There's always a few days in a trip that all the shit seems to rise to the surface, but, "Shit," I say, "you will not sully this trip for long."