Photo Link:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/5ZRmKpkZJTAnEC2B6
So after leaving London, I flew into Edinburgh. The city was a nice and compact, with attractive medieval architecture. Cool church architecture and some impressive castles as well. Between Edinburgh and the highlands, definitely got my medieval castle fix. However, one day was definitely more than enough to basically see everything here. I did manage to snag some really delicious scones at a local bakery that one of Martin’s friends recommended. But right away, you could tell that Scotland has a pretty distinct culture from England. For one, the accents are borderline incomprehensible here. They follow the stereotype and use the word “wee” all the time, which I couldn’t get enough of. You see the Gaelic language everywhere (though always with English afterwards). And food wise, haggis and black pudding are quite common, and both delicious! Fried Mars bars are also a thing here for some reason, and are absolutely decadent. Drinks wise, having drams of whiskey seems to be the thing to do, and I actually found myself, dare I say, enjoying some of these whiskeys. Really only the smokey ones though, but I was shocked that it was tolerable. I think my favorite part of Edinburgh was the hike up to Arthur’s Seat, which I believe was close to 200 meters. Pretty easy hike…by the time I got my heart rate up, I was at the peak. But it was still a good exercise, and the views up top were pretty neat. The best part of this hike though were the obscene winds. First time in my life where I legit had to stop and duck and let the winds pass before proceeding either up or down hill. So much fun, but definitely could be dangerous in a far more difficult hike. Also met some more unique people in Edinburgh, which was a nice change of pace from all the college and fresh out of college kids (nothing wrong with that! but still) everywhere else in Europe. One was an aspiring conflict journalist who had traveled a bit doing freelance and was moving to Beirut full time soon, so that was legit really cool. It’s always nice to meet people who are passionate about actual cool things and manage to make a career out of that.
After Edinburgh, I went on a 3 day tour of the Scottish Highlands. My sister went on this same exact tour with her college friend back in November, and she only had good things to say and her pictures were cool so I decided to go with them as well. Overall, it was a good-but-not-great tour. I think in a way it encapsulates the problem with me travelling so much…it takes a lot to WOW me so I still enjoyed this trip, but it did not hold a candle to Ladakh or Tajikistan, and was still some ways behind Namibia, Jordan, or the American southwest for me in terms of barren scenery. Can’t really include Nepal here since I was honestly not into hiking when I did that trip so couldn’t fully appreciate it (and the elevations I was at were anything but barren). But that said, it was obviously still cool and I am glad I did it, just that I think if one was pressed for time there are better nature trips they could take, especially if looking for desolation.
Our driver/guide was pretty cool, and he spent the entire trip giving us all these Scottish folklore stories. Sort of cool/interesting how many stories there are about fairies and giants and the likes up in the highlands, and I think there’s definitely a strong Norse connection here with the Viking raids, and these are the remnants that survived the mass conversions to Christianity. The landscapes were great, but definitely a lot greener than I anticipated. I was expecting like total barren and lifeless land (sort of like Tajikistan, though obviously was not expecting anything that cool as that’s an unfair standard), but instead there was tons and tons of grass everywhere. Though the land was not good for productive growing, so it was all scraggly short grass that was there for sheep to eat. My god, there were so many sheep here…couldn’t drive more than five minutes without seeing a giant herd of sheep in the distance. The highlands are also incredibly popular for film locations – numerous Harry Potter locations, Skyfall, Monty Python and the Holy Grail locations, and most memorably, a castle that my driver informed me was the location for the Bollywood song “Kuch Kuch Hota Hai” after he asked if I was Indian.
One thing that definitely negatively impacted my enjoyment of the trip was the crazy amount of mist. It was still very cool seeing the barren landscapes (I mean, despite the greenery it is *still* barren as humans can’t live off it, only sheep), with the large hills/small mountains teasing by barely emerging from the shrouds above. Definitely gave it a more fantastical vibe, which made it more unique and memorable in a way. The Isle of Skye itself was the biggest example of this. While driving around, we would go from crystal clear skies, to heavy mist and fog, to 45 mph winds, to sleet and snow, back to clear skies, back to a heavy downpour, all in like a literal 5 minute window. Even on some of the walks and hikes we did, we would experience all these weather phenomena within a 30 minute window. The heavy, heavy winds definitely played a factor, blowing clouds here and there and everywhere. But it was awesome, loved the total chaos of the weather. Again, this would have been annoying and lowkey dangerous if these were difficult hikes, but here it just made it an incredibly fun time, though I think the rest of my tour group probably disagreed.
In general, landscapes throughout the trip were great. As mentioned above, tons of scraggy hilltops and protruding rock formations that you would occasionally glimpse through the mist, absolutely godawful weather (which honestly made the trip more enjoyable for me. I love desolation and the tough weather conditions add to the beauty of the location), and just barren greenery everywhere. It’s definitely one of those places that is better in person as opposed to the photos and videos you see online. Especially since the mist everywhere can’t really be captured by those mediums, nor the ridiculous weather patterns. And when the mist did clear, it was almost like a homeless man’s Tajikistan, driving around with giant hills topped with snow all around you and your midget 4 wheel drive car that is dwarfed by the surrounding environment. Can definitely see how myths about giants took hold in a land like this.
After getting dropped off at Edinburgh, I took an early night at the hostel before flying off to Dublin (back to the EU!) the next day. Ireland was decent enough, but honestly I would only recommend it if you were of Irish descent or had a TON of time to travel in Europe. It’s crazy expensive (cheapest hostel in Dublin was over 40 USD a night), and basically like a less interesting version of England. Still glad I went I guess, but easily could have done without it. I’d go as far as to say that after Mozambique and possibly Thailand, it’s the least impressive country I have visited by some good distance. I guess for me, especially with Europe, my interest in a country is strongly linked to history. And Irish history is largely being a provincial part of Great Britain. There were no real negatives for Ireland besides the cost, but I had a few days to spare and this fit the bill.
Anyways, I met up with my 4th Central American friend of this little Eurotrip here, meeting up with my friend Lauren who is a nurse about an hour south of Dublin in a town called Wexford. She was in my week long Guatemala jungle trek, which was somehow ten (!!!!) months ago. Obviously we spent a good deal reminiscing about that…the more time passes, the more I am convinced that Guatemala is the single most underrated country for Americans. So easy to get to yet no one goes there. Definitely in my Mount Rushmore of countries list with India/Cambodia/Tajikistan/Tanzania/Uganda/Iraq (I know there’s more than 4 but still). We went to the Guinness brewery, which was actually a surprisingly cool tour. Parts of it were almost like a modern art museum with their various ads and random art installations set up. After that, we went to some of her favorite pubs in Dublin (including what is the oldest pub in Dublin, The Brazen Head) before ending the night in the famous Temple Bar district, which was full of American and other tourists as apparently locals avoid the area due to the higher priced drinks. When travelling abroad, every Irishman you meet will swear up and down that the Guinness in Dublin tastes the best. I always took that for a load of BS, but honestly, the Guinness does taste better out here. There’s a slight numbness that hits your tongue after each gulp, and the tip of the tongue has a sweet flavor while the sides have a mildly bitter flavor. Might be the most unique beer flavor I’ve ever had to be honest.
The next day, Lauren and I checked out the Book of Kells exhibit in Trinity College. The Book of Kells is this 1200 year old medieval manuscript – because it’s so old, the main thing to see here are the reproductions of certain pages. Much like the Bayeux Tapestry, it was still super cool as these were straight out of the medieval art stereotype (like what you see in Monty Python and the Holy Grail). After this exhibit was The Long Room, which was like a legit Hogwarts Library stand-in. Grand, church-like architecture in this long (redundant, I know) room which housed rows upon rows of ancient, leather-bound books and the wafting smell of rich mahogany. Probably the coolest cultural thing I saw in both Scotland and Ireland to be fair. Lauren had to leave after this, and I just wandered around Dublin and did a little bit more sightseeing – St. Patrick’s Cathedral was a nice medieval gothic setup, with the contrasting stained glass windows of the older, medeival/French-Norman style, and the “newer” English style with larger and more realistic figures.
My last day in Ireland, I did a day trip for like 35 USD to see Glendalough and the town of Kilkenny. Glendalough was decent enough – old medieval Christian ruins which was largely just a cemetery with some buildings interspersed through at this point. I did get a decent hike in here though, like 200+ meters of elevation gain over ~2.5km of distance to a nice overlook over the the lakes in the valley here. After this, we went to the medieval town of Kilkenny, which had some cool old churches as well as a well preserved castle exterior. Probably the most impressive castle I saw in the UK + Ireland, though this was also the closest castle I saw which was probably why. And of course, the drive to and from Dublin was filled with rolling green fields and pasture lands – same as what was in England to be honest. Overall, Ireland was nice, but everything that Ireland offers, England has, and England has a lot, lot more (plus far far cooler history). Again, I had a few days to kill before going to Iceland so it made sense to just hop over to Ireland before going there, but if you’re just doing a trip abroad there are countless other places to spend your valuable vacation time on.
Flying to Iceland next, and the plan is to do a few day trips there to see some highlights before heading home to NY for a little. I’ll see my parents and sister, get my COVID booster shot, see some friends, and then go to a friend’s wedding in Puerto Rico before heading down to South America until summer time. Knock on wood, Burning Man then! (Got my tickets!! But if there’s some zeta variant BS I swear to god…).