Okay, I’ll admit it, I was looking forward to returning to somewhere where people spoke English (yeah, yeah, lazy Aussie traveller award goes to me). Oh, and, for context, this all happened in late July/early August. Yeah, I’m behind, I know.
After possibly being distracted by my last fabulous breakfast at my hostel in Lisbon, I was kind of worried I was going to miss my plane, but I shouldn’t have, since I was flying with RyanAir. RyanAir, you may or may not know, are pretty much eternally delaying/cancelling/mysteriously rescheduling flights. So after my first Macca’s since leaving Australia (hey, no judgement – there’s nothing else to eat in Lisbon airport and I had a long trip ahead!) and a strange, unexplained RyanAir delay where we were all ushered into the hallway where you normally board your plane (the flight staff had checked our boarding passes and everything) and then ended up sitting there for 40 minutes on the floor, we eventually made it to London!
Now I say “London”, but what I actually mean is “Stanstead”, which is billed as a London airport but is actually a flibbityjillion kilometres away. And, although I didn’t know this until I had booked my bus from London Victoria to Cambridge, is actually closer to Cambridge than it is to London. So I was in for a lot of very repetitive scenery today, and a LOT of time spent in transit. But eventually I found my merry way to Cambridge, where I was meeting up with Max. Max is a friend from home who, due to his smart-cookie status, was doing a summer course at Cambridge University, and had graciously offered to host me secretly in his dorm room for a while.
Now, travelling is great, don’t get me wrong, but after 2 months of it, I was ready for a holiday from my holiday. I was ready to talk to someone with whom I could be grumpy or judgemental or lazy without worrying about being judged or rejected, and I was definitely ready to have a movie night (or 7). Don’t get me wrong, Max and I clocked some tourist time – we went to market square, visited colleges and college gardens, spent hours in heritage-listed bookshops and shopped (well, Max shopped. I, thanks to low baggage limits and low funds, mostly just told Max how cute he looked in various cat shirts), but it was also nice to just eat junk food and watch Cougar Town and complain about boys. I spent two weekends with Max, and then a day in a hotel room in London (Thanks, Max’s mum!) with him before he got his flight back home.
This worked really well, because it meant I got to spend weekdays in Cardiff and Liverpool and a very hectic 48 hours in Edinburgh while Max had classes, and then we could both take breaks together. It was nice. What wasn’t nice was sharing a single bed for a week and then finding out that you can actually get a second single put in your room by the college, no questions asked, for five pound. WHY DID WE ONLY FIND THIS OUT AFTER I HAD TO SLEEP IN A NEST MADE OF CLOTHES BECAUSE MAX AND I BOTH SCREWED OUR BACKS FROM SHARING A SINGLE. WHYYYYYYY?
Plus, you know, the fact that THIS was the view from his window was pretty cool too. Just a bit.
As I mentioned, I also visited Cardiff. Awkwardly, when people ask me why I wanted to go to Cardiff, the truthful answer is “I wanted to know about Wales because nobody ever talks about it and DOES IT EVEN EXIST and also do people still speak Welsh there and what does it sound like because no language should have that many consonants”. But, you know, that’s kind of a mouthful, so mostly I just said it was because I was curious. But Cardiff is actually really lovely – it’s really easy to walk around there, and it’s full of museums, ranging from the community-run “Cardiff Story”to the gorgeous national art museum, which actually has a very impressive impressionist collection, thanks to some very generous private donations. Oh and my FAVOURITE museum was St Fagans, which is basically a huge stretch of land to which they have relocated heritage buildings from all over Wales to form an oldy-worldy village, complete with butter churning demonstrations and buildings from pretty much every century dating back to the 1100s. The city is full of parks, and, relative to the rest of the UK, is pretty affordable in terms of food and accommodation. And shots. There were 1 pound shots. That was pretty great. And we went to the beach, which, for a beach in a country where it rains 99% of the time, I have to admit was pretty darn lovely, with grassy hills and soft sand (although the sand was kind of a strange colour. But you can’t win them all, Wales. You tried.). I think I even got sunburnt!
Onward to Liverpool! Liverpool, although freaking freezing (DAMN YOU ENGLISH WEATHER – IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE SUMMER), is buzzing with things to do. After being awarded the honour of EU Capital of Culture in 2008, Liverpool has really tried to live up to the title, installing new museums, running with their “home of the Beatles” fame (and running HARD. Seriously, if I hear one more karaoke singer singing Yellow Submarine I will drown myself. Using a yellow submarine), and building Rundle-Mall-esque open, pedestrian spaces. I also met my first Adelaidians since leaving Adelaide (Sorry Max, you don’t count), and they happened to be med students, which is always very exciting for me, since I think I hang out with more med students than most med students do. Tijana, one of the Adeladians, and I became dinner buddies, and made some pretty inspiring couscous one night, if I do say so myself. Running out of oil so cooking the chicken in peach juice instead? Genius!
The Liverpool docklands are really the place where everything happens – from museums to music to great people watching, this is the spot to be in Liverpool. I saw A LOT in Liverpool – the Tate Liverpool (twice), the Museum of Liverpool, the Piermaster’s House (3 times – oops! But there were actors demonstrating life in wartime! I like actors demonstrating things!), their beautiful city library, the Walker Art Gallery, the Liverpool Museum (WHICH HAS A KARAOKE ROOM. And no, I did not sing Yellow Submarine.), the cathedral, and, best of all, the Bombed-Out Church. The Bombed-Out Church, like much of Liverpool, was brutally bombed during WWII, and, instead of being re-built, it’s just kind of lingered in the streets, growing wildflowers and being overtaken by vines and moss. Now, the space, with it’s glassless windows and bomb-crafted skylight, is used for yoga and meditation, as well as for performances and community gardens and the like. I would have loved to see or perform in a show there – it was such an atmospheric space.
So Liverpool was lovely. After Liverpool, I came back, spent the aforementioned night in Max’s fancy hotel, ate a hotel breakfast so big I couldn’t eat all day and wasn’t even really that hungry the next morning, and hit the town of London, which never disappoints. I went to the BFI and used their free mediateque to finally see BBC’s Pride and Prejudice (okay, everyone, you were right – it’s pretty darn fab. Although it’s no Lizzie Bennet Diaries 😉 ), I explored the Southbank Centre, which is a huge arts centre in London that just happened to be hosting The Festival of Love! This meant love-themed shows, free love-themed film screenings, fabulously-gaudy heart decorations and just a really lovely (haaaa, get it?) atmosphere. The festival also had, on loan from the larger museum in Zagreb of the same name, its own little Museum of Broken Relationships, to acknowledge the fact that love doesn’t always go the way we want it to. I must admit that this one hit a little close to home for me, but it was still super interesting – people sent in artefacts from their own broken relationships (letters, jewellery, CDs etc), with a brief description of their breakup. It’s amazing to see how mature some people are about break ups. And, you know, the opposite, too. That’s also pretty amusing.
Anyway, after that I took a leisurely stroll along the Thames, before having to hop another night bus (one of many many many night buses I took in the UK) to take me to Edinburgh!
Now, anyone who knows me knows that I get a little crazy come Fringe time, both in terms of free time (i.e. I have none, because I’m out reviewing 3342345 shows every night) and in terms of general excitement. I love Fringe. I love the way the arts take over Adelaide for a month and run amok with our streets, our parks, our theatres and our populace. So, of course, I wasn’t going to miss a chance to see the only Fringe that is bigger than Adelaide’s – the Edinburgh Fringe, even if I had to pay a schmajillion dollars for accommodation (shoutout to Mum, who actually helped me out with the price of accommodation – you’re the best, Mum! Without you I would have had to choose between Fringe and food. And then, you know, starved).
For more info on the shows that I saw and the differences I noted between Edinburgh Fringe and the one back home you can check my other blog, but basically, I was in town for about 40 hours, and managed to see four shows, and to polish off a walking tour, and to rendezvous with the lovely Hannah, whom I met in Madrid, and who was running an excellent gourmet donut stand with her brother in one of the Fringe hotspots of Edinburgh. Anyone who happens to be around the UK, keep an eye out for Teadough! I’m sure you’ll be hearing big things about them soon. Anyway, so Edinburgh was crazy, but it reminded me why I love the place; I’d been here once before on tour with the Australian Girls’ Choir, and, although I’d forgotten a lot of the gory, quirky history of the city, I’d remembered that I loved it, and now I know why – the atmosphere, the literary heritage, the total artistic chaos (of course, that’s more specific to EdFringe than it is to Edinburgh year-round)… it all just kind of grabs you.
I was really sad to leave so quickly, but I was also super excited to start my long pilgrimage to Istanbul (via London, with the rejuvenating hospitality of the lovely Matt and Rose – thanks again for letting me crash, guys!), and to one of my closest friends from back home.
Stay tuned for the next post, which will be about Turkey and Greece and will feature the lovely JBo!