It's a little embarrassing to write a post that is so overdue, but I do have a good excuse, my laptop was MIA for a few weeks and then we couldn't get it online. Upon my return I was also mostly in habitation mode in attempt to readjust to being back. After a week of reading Thomas Hardy and playing with the cat I then felt ready to re-enter the world. I'm still getting used to being back- I don't think it's sunk in yet that I'm not going back to England. Or that my dissertation is finished. I need someone to give me an essay topic. Even just a reading list!
I start work in the real world on Monday and am looking forward to it, though I think the 40 hour work week will be a bit of an adjustment.
So I promised updates about the trip, and I had intentions of presenting a well organized travel journal, however my journal writing became more irregular and rambling as the trip went on and now I'm honestly too lazy to make sense of scribbled phrases like "weather forecast!" and "the creativity of pub food..."
But for a summation (without pictures, as Blogger still seems to be making my life difficult), my first stop was Haworth, a beautiful town in the middle of no where that took me a day to get to. I was thankful to have my Elizabeth Gaskell novel with me. I sprung for a bed and breakfast, which turned out to be owned by a guy who could have been a British version of my Uncle Bob. Haworth was by far the most stunning place I had been to in the UK, and being a city girl it felt like I had stepped into a Disney movie. I wandered amongst sheep, horses, chickens and cats and managed not to break into song. I did, however, try to make friends with some sheep who in turn looked freaked out and avoided me. My assurances that I was a vegetarian didn't seem to help, as the fact that I was talking to them seemed to make the situation more worrying. Anyway, the town has milked its Bronte heritage of all its worth and there was nothing you couldn't buy with a Bronte face on it. The Bronte parsonage, where the family lived, has resisted too much commercialization and was well preserved. It was run by the Bronte Society, which is just scholarly enough to prevent Haworth from being a big Bronte shop.
But the best part was the countryside around the town, with the wide open rolling hills and thin rolling fog it was hard not to feel inspired. On my last day I walked up to Wuthering Heights in the rain and allowed myself to feel rather angsty. The air was full of so much energy, it was overwhelming.
The next day I headed back down to Gatwick to meet my sister, who was apparently arriving the day after, so I spent 12 hours longer in an airport than I needed to. Anyway, 12 hours later Julia arrived and we went back to our hostel so she could sleep. We did some shopping in near-by second hand shops, and the next day we went to Camden market, which is full of the coolest useless merchandise I've even seen but also the worst place in London to drag a giant suitcase around. We also went to the British Museum, which somehow in my year of being in England I had never visited. The Egyptian and Greek/Roman collection was amazing.
On Sept 11 we were in Scotland, having took the longest train ride ever that almost drove us insane with boredom. Edinburgh was breathtaking at first sight, the architecture of the city is so fantastic you hardly know where to point your camera. We did all the trouristy things, including the gigantic castle and the National Gallery. The best part of the castle was going into the dungeons, which included shared bathrooms and bunkbeds, on which my sister observed "it's just like a hostel!"
I would have to say the highlites were the Whiskey Experience (I can love anything that begins with "let's take a trip back in time...") and the ghost walk which took us underneath the city in a series of vaults, and when told they were haunted few people disagreed. The Writer's Museum was also interesting, being spread out through someone's house and containing lots of information about Robert Louis Stevenson and Robert Burns, among others. Sadly even Robbie's oddly lyrical Address to a Haggis didn't convince either of us to try the dish.
Around this time we discovered a passport had gone missing and we had to cut our travels short to make a very urgent and very expensive trip down to London to get to the Canadian Consulate before we left to country. In the end everything worked out, but we were so broke and tired we were looking forward to the plane ride home where we could get two full meals and sit in cushy seats. Nine hours and three viewings of Failure to Launch and X-men 3 later we were back on Canadian soil and eager to do laundry. Pictures will be up on Flickr asap so you can have some visuals.
Several people have asked me "so how was England?" and I'm still trying to sort out the answer. It's a bit like being asked to cram a years worth of experiences into a few words. Mostly I just have to say it was overwhelming. But for the time being I'm home, and home is always the best destination.
