HopSctoch (Part 3): To the Sheep

Dearest, Darlingest Sheep:

       It's a little difficult  to say this. Sometimes words just aren't enough, but for now it will have to do. Dear, beautiful, fluffy sheep... I love you. I do, honestly! I know you might not believe me, because somehow in Scotland they take you all for granted (maybe because there are sheep almost everywhere...), and they don't seem to appreciate you the way you deserve, but this New Yorker sees you in a way the silly locals just don't. I love your fluffy tails, lopped or long or in between, and I love the way your silky black ears swivel at my approach. I love the way your little paws (yes, I know they are technically hooves, but somehow paws is cuter) clip along over the peat, and I love the way your little dark faces half disappear into the long grass when you graze. I love the way your hoarse Baaaahs sound like alarms, mama ewes, when I come too close to your babies, and I love the way tiny droplets of water catch in the thickness of your fuzzy coats when it begins to rain. The way you stare at us, bold and challenging and unafraid, might be attributed to stupidity by lesser people, but I know better, and your curiosity is charming. I wonder what the world looks like through your yellow eyes, and whether you appreciate the aesthetic contrast of your snowy flanks against the green of Scotland's hills. Dearest, loveliest sheep, you are simply too cute for words.

Some people, dear sheep, place the blame for the changes in the highlands in the 18th century at your delicate feet. You see, the small crofts of the common folk were converted into large farms by the landlords who wanted more profit from their property, and that meant that people were kicked out and replaced with your ruminant ancestors, oh fuzzy ones. In fact, 1792 was called the Year of the Sheep because there were so many of your distant kin brought into the Highlands, showing that the land owners really did not regard their tenants well at all, though they did not take you for granted it seems... Not fair for people to blame you though, is it? How on earth anyone could be angry with such adorable personifications of quadrupedal innocence, I cannot imagine. Don't take it too much to heart, dearest sheep - you know that I love you.

Up on the Carloway crags about the Blackhouse village, your sure-footedness was proven as you leapt lightly over bogs that pulled at my boots and rocks slippery with peat mud. I only wish you had been trotting toward us, instead of away. Your fluffy hindquarters with their splashes of identifying paint receding into the distant made my heart ache - I need you in my life, dear sheep! If only you little lambs were trusting enough to let me pet your wooly sides and scratch between your knobby little horns, and feed you more of that emerald clover you seem to like so much... Alas, it was not to be. But though we must be parted now, dear sheep, I hold you in my heart forever, never to be replaced. May your creamy coats grow thick to furnish many a tweed loom, and may the banks and braes of Lewis be forever graced with your presence.

Love,
Carly

HopScotch (Part 2): Long Live the Weeds and the Wilderness

And also, long live Peter and Theresa Wormald.

Peter and Theresa, the couple who shared our room in the Stornoway hostel, are in their late fifties. Peter is going grey, skin weathered and lined with life and sun. Theresa's hair is completely white, her cheeks rosy and her movements energetic, though careful. They are former teachers at a high school level academy - Peter taught chemistry, while Theresa took biology and psychology. It was a good school too, Peter told us as we chatted in the common room one evening. "We sent our own children there," he said. "That's how you know a school is really worthwhile - if the staff send their kids there too." He laughed a little at that. Both he and his wife have the patient, cheerful demeanor of those rare, excellent teachers who can convince even sullen teens that science is worth learning, and Theresa's mischievously twinkling grin and Peter's kind humor made Carly and I think that their students must have loved them. They aren't the the types to laze about in their retirement though, Peter told us, and are keeping busy instead.

Peter took a breath. Also, he told us, he has cancer.

"I'm not the type to sit around and wait for bad things to happen to me," he said matter-of-factly. Ordinarily, when one is diagnosed with Advanced-stage Prostate Cancer, the not sitting around involves living out a bucket list of places to go, things to see, before the disease takes hold. But for Peter and, by extension, Theresa, it goes beyond that. "I wanted to put some money back into the coffers," Peter said, referring to Macmillan Cancer support group who had helped him and Theresa during the early stage of his diagnosis. "I'm still strong, I still feel healthy," he said, and then launched into an explanation of the Grand Plan. To raise awareness and money for the Macmillan group, he and Theresa decided to bicycle across the western isles - all the way up the Outer Hebrides, from the southernmost tip of Barra to the north of Lewis, 25 miles a day or more (with saddlebags on the bikes, and a trailer, over mountains). It comes to a grand total of about 500 miles in less than three weeks, a truly staggering number for athletes in any stage of life, but more particularly when one considers the slightly advanced age and health of the pair. Awed and not a little intimidated, Carly and I hesitantly enquired if they did this sort of thing often, wondering what sort of herculean folk were sharing our room. "No, we've never done a bike trip like this," Peter replied rather, shrugging easily. "We've hiked around the highlands for years, but this is the first bike trip." "Wow. Wow." was all we could say in response. At this point they had already made it past their initial goal  of 200 miles, and, after reaching the end of Lewis, they had turned around and were now on their way back south to the Tarbert ferry, across Skye, heading home.

The glasses Peter wears are thick and round, and made his eyes look even larger and more expressive than perhaps usual; as he told us about their trip his eyes behind his spectacles shone with a determined light. "We keep sending back texts to report how we are doing, and the support we get, the responses, are really encouraging." Peter smiled. "I thought we would crash after the first hundred miles or so, but we just keep going!" We shook our heads in amazement, silently sure that we would have crashed, long before the first hundred miles. He told us about the contact at their old school who spreads the word of their progress to the rest of the staff. "The fellow whom I text always tweaks things when he tells everyone else, just to make it a bit funnier. So, we haven'st stopped in Stornoway to rest and explore - instead it's so Theresa can do the washing. He seems to be under the impression that her life consists largely of washing and ironing." He shrugged his shoulders in bafflement and laughed quietly.

When we returned from our Hebridean outing the next day, Theresa was sorting things in the room, sympathized with our sodden, half-frozen state, and recommended the hostel's tea. Once we were marginally warmer and could speak without our teeth chattering like mad, I chatted with her for a while about their trip. She asked about us as well, with delicacy and ease. As with her husband, it was incredibly easy to speak with her. Before she and Peter left for the evening she recommended that we visit the museum with the Lewis chessmen before we departed (thank goodness she said something or we might not have made it to see them!).

Carly and I sent the couple on their way before we left on Wednesday morning, watching in awe as they piled their lives into tiny saddlebags and a little trailer, and accoutered themselves to withstand the tumultuous island weather: waterproof pants, jackets, and coverings for their helmets, and even plastic shells for their shoes. The brims of their helmets shaded their faces, and the little yellow flag on the back of their trailer waves bravely in the breeze. We waved goodbye as they pedaled off, wishing that we were half as strong and courageous and crazy as these two delightful people. 

We watched for them all the windy, rainy way to Tarbert, knowing we would likely be taking the same road that they were, but we didn't see them. Praying that they had not drowned in the torrential rain that the sky hurled down at us all the way across Harris, we eventually arrived on Skye assuming that we would likely never see Peter or Theresa again. Incredibly, the next day as we drove about Skye on our grand tour of the north of the island, we caught sight of a pair of bikes and a cheery yellow flag waving just off the road. There, on a little bench overlooking the Uig harbor, sat our former roommates, Peter and Theresa, eating lunch and admiring the view. We nearly crashed the little car in our eagerness to turn around (driving on the wrong side of the road didn't help, but more of that later...) and we pulled off, and clambered out of the car, hoping to goodness we weren't intruding too much but unwilling to pass up this chance to once more wish them well. Likely a little amused at the silly Americans, the pair were still calm and gracious, and regaled us with tales of their harrowing ride across Harris the day before ("It was fine, except when we were having the kitchen sink thrown at us," laughed Theresa). Apparently a nice man in a truck had taken pity on the soaked couple halfway up a small mountain and had offered them a lift. They turned him down, though, after explaining they were doing the ride for charity, and he drove off, shaking his head. They ate their lunch huddled in the shelter of a bus stop, during some of the worst of downpour, and Carly and I stared at them wide-eyed, thinking almost guiltily of our cosy bus and dry ferry ride, not to mention the fact that rather than trusting our legs to get us around Skye, we had rented a car... They seemed undaunted by the weather, however, laughing a little at the ridiculousness of it all, and if they judged us for our automotive transportation they never let on.

"That is part of what makes the islands what they are," Theresa had said the day before, as I had griped about the incessant rain. If it were not for the weather, there would probably be more people and more tourists in the Hebrides, and the untamed wildness of the stretching moorlands would soon loose some of its empty beauty. "There is a Gerard Manley Hopkins poem about that, about the wildness of things," she said. "About how necessary the wildness is, in our world. Wild and wet, wild and wet... I don't remember the title." She smiled. "Look it up. That is the reason to come to the Hebrides, that wildness. Also, it's a beautiful poem."  I found it, eventually, and discovered that she was right. Long live the weeds and wilderness yet; long live the wild empty Hebrides; and long live Peter and Theresa Wormald, inspiring and stoic and strong.

Inversnaid
This darksome burn, horseback brown,
His rollrock highroad roaring down,
In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam
Flutes and low to the lake falls home.
A windpuff-bonnet of fáwn-fróth
Turns and twindles over the broth
Of a pool so pitchblack, féll-frówning,
It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.
Degged with dew, dappled with dew
Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,
Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,
And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.
What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.                                          Gerard Manley Hopkins

HopScotch (Part I): Or, Why Anyone Who Does Not Go To the Scottish Islands Is Seriously Missing Out

Finals were four days of worry, a week and a half of hell, then OVER, thank goodness. In celebration that we had somehow not been crushed beneath the weight of fifteen reference books, hundreds of articles and the sheer stress of sitting in a room with 150 other students and writing for two hours (the results of which largely determined one's entire grade...!) Carly and I decided we would take a Scottish islands trip to celebrate. It was one of those last-minute, no-idea-how-we-got-all-of-that-together, impulse decisions that just work out brilliantly, and I am so, so glad we made it. It was one of the best choices I made all semester, and I will try to do justice to it here, in brief. Carly my darling my dear, this is for you. :)

PART ONE: LEWIS

• On Monday, May 16th, Carly and I got up early and walked to St. Andrew's bus station, our long shadows misshapen by the bulging of backpacks that dwarfed us with their bulk. Literally, I think Carly's backpack was bigger than she was.
• We bussed north though the Highlands, mountain-faces scarred with mining and clearly planted evergreen forests, birchwoods thick with bracken and more lambs than we could coo over flashing past through rainstreaked windows... We passed brilliantly yellow gorse blossoms, glaring against dark, damp leaves, illuminated by the stormlight over the Cairngorm mountains. 
• Brief stop in Inverness - we staggered, stiff-legged, into an Indian place to get curry, because what else does one eat in the UK? - then got back on the bus toward Ullapool ("Uh-lah-pool"). 
• An Australian man with ginger eyebrows and salt-and-pepper hair seated in front of us turned up his hearing aid, the better to hear the sweet-voiced, petite old lady from Nottinghamshire seated next to him. The two held one of the most courteous conversations it has ever been my pleasure to accidentally overhear  - the garrulous old Aussie made the tiny woman laugh, tinkling and clear, when he made some joke about the thousand thousand sheep we passed as we kept on, moving north and north. Carly and I began to feel that we had been on a bus forever, our muscles aching from what we were convinced was atrophy...
• Starved and tired, we clambered off the bus in Ullapool, got our ferry tickets, and decided to stretch our legs with a short walk. The town was tiny  - two streets, maybe three? - but starkly lovely and somehow charming, and it quickly became one of the most beautiful places on earth when we smelled the fish and chips shop. Ohhh fried food smells like ambrosia and nectar sometimes, if you are hungry enough, and especially when said fried food is chips with salt and tons of vinegar. It was utterly delicious.
• We stepped aside at the bottom of a narrow, steep set of stairs on the ferry to let some people down, and an elderly fellow pattered past, holding the railings tightly and calling out a breathless 'thank you!' He was closely followed by another older fellow, who caught sight of us, and our styrofoam container of chips, halfway down. His eyes lit up. "Ooo-ooh-ooh!" He exclaimed, and rattled down a little faster, stretching out an age-spotted hand for our chips. Laughing, we pulled them aside, (we were not about hand over our precious chips - we had barely tasted them yet!) and with a dramatic, disappointed sigh he left, eyes still twinkling. Ten minutes and many, many vinegar-soaked chips later, Carly and I were seated in the front of the boat on very swanky padded seats, with a dramatic view of the grey sea and green hills before us. We were just about to get under way when I heard someone calling, "Jane!" I turned around, and saw the same portly gentleman, with the pink cheeks and bright eyes, stomach straining comfortably against the buttons of his shirt. He was addressing a dignified lady with elegantly coiffed silver hair sitting just across from us. "Come my love, we are sitting on the other side now," he said, pointing to a nearby set of seats. He must have caught sight of us as well, for when she enquired why he preferred to move, he replied, "Well, a cheeky young lady wont give me any of her chips and they smell too nice..." Carly and I laughed and blushed, and as his wife gathered her things, we offered him the chips. Scanning our faces quickly, he smiled, and said, "You know, I think I will; just a little one, just a little one..." Wide old fingers deftly pulling out a greasy chip, he popped it in his mouth, hummed in pleasure, and said "Enjoy the rest of your trip girls!"  
• A loud, rowdy group of high-school-aged boys sitting just behind us had apparently come from a football (soccer) tournament, where they had won first place (or so said the voice over the speakers, crackling a congratulations). One fellow, probably no more than thirteen or so with a shock of red hair was showing off his medal to a round-faced woman in her forties, wearing a blue staff uniform. He didn't seem to want to hand it to her, though, and kept possessive hold of the ribbon. "I'm not goin' tae tak it," she laughed, as he squirmed, a bit embarrassed. Then she smiled, admiring the medal. "Well done you. Congratulations." He stood a bit straighter, grinning mischievously again. "Did you ever win a medal then?"he enquired a little impudently, and she raised her eyebrows, amused. "When I was your age I did, aye," she told him, "for dancin'. Highlan' dancin.'" Laughing at his look of surprise, she turned and made her way back down the stairs. "Cheeky!" hissed an older teammate, but the redheaded fellow only grinned carelessly and shoved his hands into the pockets of his trousers. 
• Bright sea, bright sky, lit by streaks of sun forcing its way through the clouds; dark, damp rock rising stubbornly from the waves, for hours. Even the islands gave out after a while, and still the boat kept on, out across the brilliant, wide sea. It felt like we were traveling to the ends of the earth, and when, more than three hours later we reached the isle of Lewis, it seemed as though we'd got there.
• Stornoway (or Steórnabhagh in Scottish Gaelic) with a population of about 9,000, is the 'Metropolis of the Western Isles,' apparently - meaning that there are five or six, instead of one, main streets, there is a Tesco and an old cannery, and there are cute touristy shops to be found, as well as at least five pubs; yet still, it is quite, quite small. More than the size, though, what made Stornoway feel so otherworldly, so incredibly distant from everywhere was a) the light (the sun was not fully set until 10 pm, and darkness fell still later, while sunrise was near to 3 am) and also b) the quiet. Silence lay like a comfortable blanket over the Hebrides, ruffled only by the undertones of sea and wind and the occasional gull, and even the rumble of passing cars did not seem to disturb the perpetual peaceful stillness for more than a moment. It is a beautiful place, with wooded hills to one side, clustered around an old castle, and brightly painted buildings lining the harbor. I want to come back to stay there longer - it is someplace I would want to live for a summer or two, when I become a fabulously successful writer and can do things like that... Hah. Our hostel was perfectly lovely, with heavy woodframe bunkbeds, a well stocked kitchen and dangerously comfortable couches in the living room. Our two roommates were extraordinary as well - so very much so, in fact, that they are receiving their own separate post (see part 1B). 
• With the exception of pubs, which seemed not to serve food that often, most restaurants seemed to close by about 9, which was unfortunately about when we began our hunt for dinner. Eventually we settled for Chinese take away, which was not nearly as sketchy as it could have been, and shockingly delicious. We sat and ate our egg rolls and hot-and-sour-pork by the water side, wondering how in the world the Cantonese immigrants running the restaurant had decided on the isle of Lewis when they were choosing a destination for their new life... and also pondering what on earth the Hebridean youth did with themselves in the evenings. We did not see any movie theaters, nor any real dance clubs, pubs seemed to mostly old-man pubs (not that that stopped us - we got whiskeys like proper old Scottish men, though minus the accents, alas) and we saw only one multi-purpose entertainment venue that might, we supposed, serve as the 'night-life' in Stornoway on the right evenings...  Still somewhat puzzled, we suddenly realized that the red car driving  - somewhat speedily - past had already gone by at least once. As had the blue pickup behind it. And the battered white car behind that. They honked and waved briefly at a little silver car and a heavy black SUV rushing past the other way, calling things out of opened windows, and within the next ten minutes they had all passed at least twice more, going in both directions. This, we decided, bemusedly, must be what the young hooligans of Lewis do at night - they drive. Hebridean Lowriders; word. We were amused. 
• The next day we ate breakfast in the hostel (toast and cereal and delicious jam) then headed out on our Hebridean tour – hopping on and off local busses all around northern Lewis. When we climbed onto the bus at the Stornoway station, the driver paused his conversation with the only other passenger long enough to wish us a good morning and give us our tickets, and once we had seated ourselves he continued chatting away animatedly. My goodness, I thought, I must be getting worse at deciphering the accents here – I can’t understand a word! It was then that I realized that what I was hearing was Scottish Gaelic, as were the voices on the BBC Alba Radio Nan Gaidheal crackling away as we pulled out of town and out into the moorlands. It is beautiful language - sing-song and melodic, full of soft sh-s and gh-s and all sorts of other sounds that lovely linguist Alice could categorize, but I can only admire. I was wishing desperately that I had continued my informal Gaelic lessons with my classmate, because even a simple 'good morning' and 'thank you' would have been nice... alas. As it was, I could only sit and smile as the peat bog rolled away in russet- and tan-swells on all sides, trading delighted glances with Carly, and reveling in the feeling of being somewhere foreign. Lewis had felt remote as soon as we arrived, but now it felt like a whole other world, and I loved it. 
• In the US, if something has been around for 100 years, we think it old and worth preserving. If it has been around two or three hundred years, it is typically enclosed in glass so that no one can mar its ancient surface by getting fingerprints on it, or by breathing too hard, and had we any prehistoric monuments, we would likely have them enveloped in plexiglass with a ten foot perimeter all round, or at least a set walkway like the one around Stonehenge... Therefore as American tourists, the experience of visiting the Callanish (Chalanais in Gaelic) standing stones was all the more incredible because there was none of the security that we would expect from a monument nearly 5000 years old. They are a little older than Stonehenge, and though they lack lintel stones the massive upright rocks are nearly as tall as those that stand on the Salisbury plains. What makes them truly incredible, however, is their utter isolation. There is no one around. A little winding path wends its way up from the car park, hidden by a grassy hill, and from the middle of the stones you can see, far away in the distance, a handful of small houses, but when Carly and I stood by the megalithic center stone, ringed by silent giants with the alignment stones stretching away in perfectly straight avenues to the west and east, we felt as though we were the last people on earth. The low stone fence was the only thing that prevented Lewis's many roving sheep from trotting all over the former burial ground; we trotted all over it instead, sitting in the shadow cast by the massive fifteen-foot center stone, and crouching low to the ground, trying to capture the silvery shapes of the monoliths against the pale sky. The rain and dew that coated the long grass had soaked through our shoes by the time we at cast our last awed glance at the circle and strode back down the hill to the little gift shop by the parking lot. After ringing up my post cards, the little old man working the till handed me a minute waxed paper bag that looked far smaller than the post-cards themselves, shook his head disconsolately, and told me, "If ye can get it in first try, you're hired." Somehow I did, and when I asked him quite seriously when I should start, he laughed a little, and offered me an apron. I truly wished I could have taken him up on that offer. 
• The bus that Carly and I took to the next stop on our Hebridean tour was even emptier than the previous one, and when the only other passenger, a little old lady, got off after a stop or two (on a stone bridge in the middle of now where, with nothing in sight but rolling hills and grass and peat and heather for miles... where was she going?!) we debated briefly whether we ought to feel unsafe with only ourselves and the terse grey-haired fellow who was currently taking the bus around the corners far too fast. Our concern escalated a little when we ended up pulled over on a side road, nothing visible but sheep and hills, and the driver got our and began to rummage around in the rear of the vehicle for what we were convinced was a murder weapon. No cell reception out that far, of course, and we laughed a little hysterically at how ridiculously easy it would be for a homicidal bus driver to off the silly American tourists and toss them in a boggy ditch with no one the wiser. Thankfully, our driver was no more a psychotic murderer than most bus drivers are, and we survived the trip intact. 
• The Carloway Blackhouse Village historical center is a collection of traditional island houses, made of dry stacked stone, thickly thatched and low, huddled around the rocky margin of a little bay. Although they were inhabited until the '70s, the design of such houses had not changed in centuries, and once again we had a disconcerting sense of timelessness as we walked past the low doorways and dangling rocks swaying gently on their strings (to hold the thatch down, apparently). Ducking inside one, we warmed our hands over a smoky peat fire, and were relishing the coziness of the small room after the damp chill of the out-of-doors when we heard a heavy thud-thud-thud, accompanied by a sounds similar to the noise four year olds make when gifted with a nice, bangable pot and a wooden spoon coming from the next room. We followed the noise, to find an old man with bright pink cheeks weaving smoky blue harris tweed on a loom the size of a tractor and twice as loud, and listened to him talking about the tradition of weaving on the islands and the colossal iron looms themselves ("After a while you get to know your machine, you get to respect it," he said. Nearly deafened by the racket made by the flying shuttle and slam of shifting warp strings, I believed him - I had a great deal of respect for the scary thing already). A documentary about collecting and drying peat was playing in another of the houses; the dvd player and projector seemed incongruous when mounted on a blacked, ancient beam as thick around as my waist, and the screen hung against the stone wall looked highly out of places. 
• We cooed over the adorable sheep, climbed a boggy little mountain, ruined our shoes, nearly lost my camera and phone (or I did, anyway – somehow it fell out of my purse as I was making record-breaking leaps over the aromatic muck) and were blown away when we reached the top – metaphorically by the amazing view of the cliffs and islands to the west, and almost literally by the stiff breeze. Nothing between us and the very northern tip of Newfoundland, we realized – we were only a degree or two south of Greenland, and level with Juneau, I later discovered, when I looked at the latitude on a map – and all I could think about, standing at the rocky tip of the world, was the endlessness of the grey sea crawling away forever from my feet. It was a heady feeling.  
• We might have made the 1:30 bus back to Stornoway if I hadn’t tossed my belongings out into the bog and subsequently had to retrieve them, but as it was we would have had to sprint for something like a mile through the ever increasing rain to even have a hope of making it. Instead, we happily made camp in the café, ordered tea and ate our tesco sandwiches on the sly, played cards, and made smalltalk with our waiter for what turned into almost an hour. Craig The Waiter was friendly, a former chef, new to Lewis (having lived in Harris, to the south,) and was expecting a baby, that day. When we asked aghast why on earth he was at work and not home with his wife who was due to go into labor at any moment, he shrugged a little and looked at us a bit oddly. “Bills have to be paid,” he said, as though the suggestion of leaving work was an extravagance in the extreme. He smiled a little, and tipped his hat farther back on his head as he cleared away the porcelain and napkins from one of the other tables, as outside the diminutive window beneath the thatch, the rain poured down.
• We went out again anyway after a while, and got thoroughly soaked walking down to the beach, by which point it almost didn’t matter how wet our feet got, since they clearly could not get any wetter. When we eventually caught the bus I am pretty sure I resembled nothing so much as a drowned rat, and an hour later, back in Stornoway, we were both still wet to the bone. A shower, a change of clothes, and spicy thai food helped chase the chill from our bones, and the evening turned beautiful as we left the restaurant and walked through the old Macleod castle grounds and gardens. The tumultuous sky was brilliantly illuminated by the descending sun, and the bright harbor buildings had the crisp, newly-washed look of a town after rain. We were sorry to think of leaving the next day.
• That morning, before we got on our bus, we went and saw some of the Lewis Chessmen – a set of carved Viking chess pieces from the 12^th century that were discovered on Lewis in the 19^th century. The age of them alone would make them fascinating, not to mention the romance of the Game of Kings, but what was really striking about them were the faces – each individual, and few showing the noble bravery of soldiers about to engage in battle: the King looks wide-eyed and peeved, the Queen world-weary and resigned (you can almost hear her saying, Men and their wars, at it again…), and one of the knights is shown biting his shield in suspense or fear. I was charmed. We spent quite a while examining the pieces, and wandering around the funny little museum which was a single room in the second story of what might once have been a schoolhouse. Seeing other pieces in the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh when we returned, and later some in the British Museum, was a bit like greeting old friends.
• We hauled our bags onto the bus, and bid a reluctant farewell to Stornoway and Lewis, heading south toward  the Tarbert ferry and the isle of Skye.

Galway Girl

WARNING! EPICALLY LONG POST ALERT!!!


As any of you actually following this online journal MIGHT have noticed, it has been a while. A long while, in fact, because what with life happening, and finals happening, and traveling and exploring and bussing and training and flying all over the place, dragging my loverly computadora out every time I wanted to record something ceased to be a very viable option. Also, I got lazy. But because I have several very messy journals full of travel notes that need organizing, and because I started this thing and I might as well finish it by george, I am going to do just that. So! Be prepared! Lots and lots of months-late-but-newly-written travel reports are heading this way! I know you are all just bursting with anticipation.

Here we go then:


Once upon a time, long long ago, all the way back in APRIL, I started a blog post about going to Ireland...

.......................

This post, belated as it is, is dedicated to an amazing woman, my grandmother Alice Cavanaugh. I wish I had had the opportunity to get to know her, because she must have been incredible - anyone who could singlehandedly raise seven children, not to mention people as extraordinary as my Dad, must be truly special. But she passed away when I was six years old - to young to do more than remember the energy of her smile, its brightness, and its joy, and to remember the cool dry feel of her lips tickling the back of my neck as she crooned, "kiss pocket!" I remember how unconditionally she loved us, and Dad.

I also remember some slightly scratchy wool sweaters, cream-colored and thick with knitted knots, little leather buttons all down the front. They were from the Aran Islands, and my Dad and Nana brought them back to us after a trip to Ireland that the two of them took, the year before she grew really ill. I was tiny, but I remember waiting at the airport and running up to them as soon as possible, the same way Theo and I would run shrieking and dancing out to the driveway the minute we heard the car approaching in the evenings. They had been all over Ireland as I (dimly) recall, from one side of the island to the other, but lingered in Galway a little, I think. That is where her family was from, the west of the country, and it was from Galway that her parents had emigrated when they came to the states, way back in the early part of the 20th century. Nine years later, when the Bonsall clan made our pilgrimage to the Emerald Isle, Galway passed in a barely-noticed blur for Theo and me, primarily because the days we spent there coincided with the release of the 6th Harry Potter book. I remember the book shop quite clearly, but alas, very little else of Galway registered, overwhelmed as we were by the trials and tribulations of a certain boy-wizard and the mysterious Half-blood Prince...

It was to my great joy, therefore, to have the opportunity to go back to Ireland this semester, and Galway in particular, to see what I had been missing when my nose was so deeply buried in Jo Rowling's book, six years ago. My Macalester gal pal Miss Chelsea Bakalar, baker extraordinaire, staunch companion on the dance floor and in the library, expert-party-planner and font of all things French, was studying in Galway city this semester, and I was lucky enough to get to join her for a few days. my old friend Kilian was galivanting about the British isles at the time, so after a visit to Edinburgh we both took off for Ireland, bussed from the Dublin airport to Galway city center, and met Miss Bakalar. As Chelsea finished her last final, we wandered about the city, tossing dandelions and daisies into the slow dark water of the canals that run alongside the Corrib river, lingering to listen to the street musicians on Shop Street, and enjoying the quaintness of the town. Galway is known for its university and its music, which we got a taste of that evening in one of the "trad bars" - pubs where live bands regularly play traditional music. Chelsea and I each got a pint of Guinness (our "first dinner") and the bar tender, perhaps noting my excited, wide-eyed enthusiasm, or else catching the American twang as we chatted quietly to each other, treated us to a shamrock-shaped swirl of foam on top of our pints, a trick likely reserved for silly tourists. I was charmed anyway. Our real, "second" dinner later consisted of utterly delicious burgers, followed by gelato that we ate slowly on the rather lengthy walk back to Chelsea's apartment, which was about a 40 minute unhurried amble from the city center.

Seeing Chelsea again was in some ways like coming home - all of my Mac friends from that first year course are quite a bit closer to family than just acquaintances by now, and although worlds were colliding a bit to have Macalester and Europe intersecting so drastically, it was also wonderful to see her. We had a lovely time gossiping away, unfortunately leaving poor Kilian a bit out of the loop as we nattered on about people we knew and people we didn't, boys we liked or danced with or kissed, and the utter loveliness that is a man with an accent, be it Irish or Scottish. Chelsea graciously offered us the use of her apartment couches and spare beds as well, which was just the cherry on the top of an already brilliant time (three cheers for free accommodations!).

The sky was turbulent, the next day. All dramatic grey clouds and crystalline sun, with the wind whipping things into shape all around. We hiked across a field or two, past dandelions and empty beer bottles and scraggly berry bushes before hopping the low wall to the sidewalk. Suburbs in Ireland are not so very different from suburbs in the states it seems – large, multilane street with too many cars chasing each other recklessly past overgrown grocery stores and long parking lots. I realized that I had barely seen parking lots all semester, except for the eight-car car-park at Robbie’s Close and a few spaces for vehicles to linger near campus; Edinburgh doesn’t have much space to be devoted to automobiles, and besides, most people walk anyway. I hadn’t missed them. 

Wandering about Galway that day was sufficient to remind me why I came home at the end of my family's 2005 jaunt across the pond enchanted and heartbroken, utterly in love with Ireland. Galway is ADORABLE. The brightly painted shop fronts, cobbled streets and swan-filled quays all simply made me smile, as did chomping apple cores while perched on sea-side boulders, making dandelion chains from the tall grass around the football pitch, and lingering on too-small swing sets under a high grey sky before wandering back into  town. Revive Café’s windows overlook the shopping street in Galway, and as Chelsea and I perched there over our tea and rhubarb pie, writing post cards and dreaming Celtic dreams, we could almost see the saxophone player ponderously playing just around the corner. We could also just catch a glimpse of the bright-eyed stone carver with the quick hands and kind smile who had been tooling pieces of slate as we had wandered past earlier. Under his chisel, smooth roofing slate tiles came alive with the curvilinear shapes of serpents, birds or men, horses and trees and simple knots twisting and curling in shapes first drawn into the Book of Kells a millennium and more ago. They were utterly beautiful, and we could not resist. One slate with a knotted, calculating bird tied to itself now sits on our coffee table at home, a gift for my dad. (Honestly, in Ireland, the problem was not what to get, but what not to get for my wild Irishman of a father. Everywhere I went I saw things that I didn’t just think he would like, but knew he would like. Resisting the all the souvenirs, ridiculous or sentimental or both, was surprisingly difficult.)

We met Kilian (who had been doing some solo wandering) at the end of the walking street, by a statue of a seated Oscar Wilde, which made me quite excited. I am just a very little bit in love with his plays. Someone had apparently decided that the witty writer looked a bit peckish not so long before, and so his bronze lips and chin were streaked with something scarlet and drippy and very, very sticky, as I discovered when I tried to lessen his resemblance to Dracula (ketchup perhaps? or Boysenberry ice-cream?). I gave up, and posed anyway, and now have photographic evidence of me smiling in a besotted way at one of my favorite authors, Mr. Wilde the Vampire. 

That night, after Chelsea’s thrown-together-but-still-delicious-as-usual dinner, we joined her compatriots in an epic puzzle event, and spent several hours squinting at tiny off-white pieces of cardboard, trying to distinguish whether this particular bit of grey was the grey of the rocks, or the grey of the sky, or the misty grey of the border, or perhaps the grey of the lettering that read INIS MOR: THE ARAN ISLANDS in large, grey letters. It was quite fun, actually, and after the puzzling we watched a rather brilliant movie (The Lives of Others – see it immediately, it’s wonderful) and went to bed.

The next morning dear dour Kilian got on a bus back to Dublin, where I hoped he would see a bit of the city before heading back to the states; he told me he would likely be catching up on homework in the hostel instead. Traveling, as Kilian told me, is simply not his thing, and that is something that I had a great deal of trouble understanding. Mostly, I think, because it is so very very much my thing, and I have difficulty imagining disliking it; however, it takes all types, as they say, and Kilian waved cheerfully and smiled only a little ironically as we bade him farewell. Chelsea and I then betook ourselves to a tourism office, and purchased tickets for the Aran islands. After grabbing breakfast in a local café (and wondering briefly why they call rolls “baps” and also why the British and Irish feel the need to put bacon in everything) we got in the (exceedingly long) line for the busses, and somehow squeezed on. Forty minutes later we were on a bus to the lovely Aran islands, off to see a bit of real Ireland at last, and thirty minutes after that we were climbing carefully over several boats and onto the pier at Inis Mór. If my jaw wasn’t dragging on the ground, it was only because traveling around Spain and France had given my jaw muscles such a workout that they could now withstand a bit of awe and remain decently closed. The islands were incredible.

There is something about islands that just grabs my gut and twists, making my eyes widen and my breath come faster, making me smile and smile and smile. Perhaps it is the knowledge of the sea all around, speaking, as my mom would say, to the fish in me, or perhaps is the distance and the isolation that islanders know. Perhaps it is the feeling of being cut off from the rest of the world, or perhaps it is the simple beauty of water on rock. Regardless, the Aran islands were particularly lovely that day, with a cloudless blue sky and a hot summer sun that belied the season (not the mention the place). After lunch – fish chowder with the most delicious bread for me (dear lord the Irish can bake!) and an open sandwich for Chelsea – we began to plot how we were going to make our way around the island. Sketchy vans were a possibility, but we really weren’t wild about that idea, and despite the cuteness of the equine methods of propulsion the horse drawn buggies were rather sketch looking as well, and likely expensive. At last, I cajoled and coerced poor Chelsea into agreeing to bikes. Chelsea had some serious qualms about this plan at first, mostly to do with the fact that she had not ridden a bicycle in several (ten?) years, but I convinced her anyway, in part due to my optimistic (though, it turned out, well-founded) faith in her, and my blithe insensitivity to her unease. If I had not been so dead set on bikes, perhaps the kinder thing to do would have been to cater to her concerns and opt for an alternative mode of transportation, but instead I put on my Face Your Fears and Live Life attitude (it’s pretty obnoxious, I’m sure) and we rented, mounted, and rode off on our newly acquired bicycles. And Chelsea did brilliantly. Apparently the old adage, “It’s like riding a bike – you never truly forget how” is actually true, and with only a few wobbly moments, a few hungry rosebushes and a steep hill or two, we managed quite well.

Something strange about the Aran islands - the Gulf Stream, for some inexplicable reason, got a little lost in the middle of the Atlantic and now flows all the way north past the western coast or Ireland, and thus the beaches of the Aran islands are as white as any in the Caribbean, and the turquoise waters of Galway bay could just as easily lap the shores of Cuba or Florida as Ireland, to look at them. An azure sky above, drystone walls crawling over the swelling green hills, sun hot on our faces and a breeze, barely cool, rushing past. Utter joy. 

Dún Aonghasa, (or Dun Aengus,) the ancient celtic hill-fort on Inis Mór, was built originally by some wild chieftains sometime in the 2nd century BCE, which makes the fact that it is standing at all quite impressive, not even taking into account the utterly incredible view. The fort was built on the edge of a 100 meter cliff, and the concentric half circles of stacked stone would once have defended the inner keep on three sides, while the sheer cliff on the fourth face would have needed no defenses at all. (Of course, in the case of an attack, that way would have provided no escape routes for the inhabitants either, unless they had some very very long rope ladders... and boats below... maybe there are caves somewhere on the cliffs? I thought about this rather a lot... Aaaand may have also spent a lot of time imagining the Dread Pirate Roberts scaling the cliffs as well... haha) After a short hike up to the hill, we clambered through the rock walls and then wriggled on our stomachs up to the edge of the precipice. It was a sheer drop, and the aquamarine waves crashing against the black rocks far below sent up a hissing roar, unmuffled by the distance. It was a sight to take your breath away, to speed your pulse to racing with adrenaline, but above all it was so, so beautiful. It was perilous and peaceful, utterly zen and slightly vertigo-inducing, and thrilling beyond belief. Chelsea and I spoke at the exact same time:

"I could die here."

"I could live here."

We lay in silence and breathed in the blinding sun on the water, and the rush of air flying hundreds of feet up from the surging sea below, and were still. 

..........................

It was hard to come back to reality. We managed though, and I fell asleep from pure exhaustion on the bus back. Pasta for dinner, delectable crisp for desert, and card games with the compatriots before bed. 

Sunday was easter, and a bit surreal - holidays away from home always are. I wandered listlessly about the city, listening to a singer with the most beautiful Irish accent sing "Black velvet band" (Her eyes, they shone like diamonds...) and a boy-band jamming along to their rendition of the Mumford and Sons song Little Lion Man which won my heart at once (I have, you might recall, rather an obsession with the band, and that song in particular. If I haven't said this before, go listen to them. Now.) I got to experience being hit on by an Irishman ("that's a fine arse on ye".... and I quote. I think having me bust up laughing might not have been his goal, but really, I couldn't help it.) and allowed myself to be schmoozed into buying a homemade doughnut (which was, without a doubt, the best I have ever tasted) by a fellow with a gold-toothed grin and twinkling eyes. Pancakes for dinner, complete with raspberries and nutella, followed by cardgames and goodbyes. We left the next day.

Dublin was my first experience with solo traveling, as far as staying in hostels by my lonesome goes. And it went alright, all round. The first night there I was in a room with three Italian men who spoke little to no English and were planning on getting up at four to catch a plane. Thus, they went to bed even earlier than I did, and within minutes were snoring like chainsaws. Musical the Italian language may be, but that apparently does not change the grating quality of their snores. It didn't help that the thunderous racket was coming from the bunk below mine, as well as the two bunks directly across the way... Eventually, with pillows firmly over my ears and a great deal of concentration, I at last drifted off to sleep. 

Exploring Dublin on my own the next morning was wonderful. I was staying in the Temple Bar area, which is full of quote bars and Irish-y Tourist-y shops, on the not-too-tacky end of things, and walking through there was quite pleasant. Revisiting St. Stephen's Green and Trinity College was grand, and made me remember the days when I promised myself that I would try to come to college at Trinity (still possible someday, I suppose). There is something incredibly liberating about wandering around someplace by yourself, especially someplace far away and foreign. No one knows who you are, no one has any preconceptions of you, and if you let yourself, you are practically forced to live in the moment and just be. Dublin in the early morning was like that for me - quietly thrilling and inescapably present. The pulse of the city beats almost too fast, with the staccato beat of the cross-walk indicators and the hasty strides of the businessmen brushing past on either side saying hurry, hurry, there is life to be lived, don't miss it, hurry - 


[Sometimes I think the Irish need to collectively take a breath and relax. ....Actually, I suppose they do, and that is why Guinness is the national drink...]

The Book of Kells exhibit in the Trinity college Library was amazing six years ago, and somehow it was even more incredible this time around (thanks in part to some medieval history and literature classes - thank you Ellen Arnold and Terri Krier!) and it honestly makes me imagine a great many inkstained cross-eyed monks wandering around Kells about 1,200 years ago... One of the signs there made me laugh a little; it read something like this:

814 CE - Kells Abbey burned by Vikings
859 CE - Burned by Vikings
917 CE  - Burned by Vikings
924 CE - Destroyed by floods
986 CE  - Burned by Vikings
1006 CE - Book of Kells stolen from the Abbey, returned two months later sans covers and opening illustrations
(Etc. etc.)
1250 CE - Destroyed in battle
1326  CE - Destroyed in battle
1327 CE - Sacked and destroyed
1456 CE - Land redistributed by the English
1479 CE - Land further redistributed by the English

Oh my. Poor Kells.

The manuscripts were amazingly beautiful, of course, and so detailed it made my brain hurt just trying to imagine drawing all of those intricate swirls and knots, let alone contemplating the added difficulty of doing so by the sketchy light of tallow candles, with goose quills and home made inks on textured calfskin... Whew.

National Museum - Bog people and far more shiny gold things than I had ever seen in one place at a time - then dinner and a pub in the Temple Bar area, traditional music and cider and general good times. Eventually Chelsea and her friend took off for their hotel, but I stayed and sat and listened, feeling all independent and grown up and stuff. :) I was euphoric, still to be in Ireland, though I couldn't help missing my Dad and wishing vainly that he could be there, to tell me about Irish ales and to sing along quietly to all the trad songs the band was playing - I knew about half, but I know he would have been familiar with just about ever tune.

I got back to the hostel, and was pleasantly surprised to see that my eight - bed dorm room was still empty, and all the beds were still untouched, no luggage to be seen anywhere. Considering it was ten o'clock, I figured it must simply have been a quiet night, and when no one showed up before I fell asleep at about 11:30, I assumed the room was mine - a comfort, considering I was planning on getting up at 4 to catch the 4:20 shuttle to the airport so as to arrive there shortly after 5, and thus to catch my 6:20 flight back to bonny Scotland. At 2:30 am, however, my hopes were dashed and I was rudely awakened by the dorm slamming open and a light being briefly switched on, quickly followed by darkness, a slurred apology, and some stumbling, banging and muffled curses. "Sorry for wakin' ye'" a distinctly Scottish voice said, and I told him it was quite alright. I should have left it at that, but my curiosity was piqued, so I asked where he was from. And that turned into a conversation about Edinburgh, the university, what I was studying, what he was doing with his life (traveling, at the moment), what I wanted to do with my life (travel, at the moment) and the imminent arrival of his Australian mate who was recently divorced and had a child. I kept trying to politely extricate myself from the conversation and hint that I really, really should go back to sleep and I was delighted that he had had such a good night and wanted to tell me all about it but I needed to get up in less than two hours! I  finally convinced him of this when in burst the aforementioned mate, sloshed and talkative and far too awake. After about 20 minutes of trying delicately to shut him up, I resigned myself to being awake, and heard far more about his life than I ever had any inclination to, a situation which was made only more surreal by the fact that the lights were still off and I hadn't really gotten a good look at the fellow. The Scottish man went to sleep, but the Australian stayed cheerfully, drunkenly awake and increasingly flirtatious (awkward, considering he was about 30 and had just finished talking about his ex-wife and son!) as I eventually got myself up and began to pack the last of my things. When, after a lengthy pause that made me hope he had at long last fallen asleep, he said, "...You have a nice bum, in the dark," I decided enough was enough, hauled my stuff together and went to wait for the shuttle, a little earlier and far less rested than I had hoped. It was funny, in retrospect, after I had finished feeling disgruntled about the utter lack of sleep. Hostels are strange places.

Flying back over Scotland literally gave me warm fuzzies, though it's entirely possible that that was due to my slight delirium of exhaustion. Home again, home again, jiggetty jog.

April in Paris: Thursday, and Friday

Thursday, April 7th
Adieu and Bonjour: Company and Solitude

I had thought Notre Dame was impressive from below. The massive arching ribs of the ceiling, the bell towers crusted with a thousand statues and carvings, the sheer height of the thing... But being inside it was something else altogether. Up the seemingly endless, tightly spiraled stone staircases (almost claustrophobic, were it not for the frequent slim windows, which bathed the dusky stone in light and offered momentary glimpses of the city) a brief respite in a chapel room (now a gift shop) halfway up, then higher and higher in dizzying circles until, ducking through the low doorway, we emerged out onto the narrow walkway between the two towers. Below us, the plaza stretched away, crowded with miniature people. The Eiffel Tower was visible in the hazy distance, and I have to admit, Katherine, Amy and I were a bit giddy at the sight. The excited internal chorus of, We are in Paris! We are in Paris!! had temporarily changed to, We are in the bell towers of Notre Dame!!! and we all resisted the urge to burst into Disney songs with some difficulty. I made friends with the gargoyles. They are all different, and each one is so interesting! Faces twisted in fear or pain or anger, stone eyes wide and wild in their sockets, jaws agape in silent screams or snarls or laughter, hunched bodies covered in carved scales or fur,  too expressive to be animal, too bestial to be human. Some were honestly quite cute, in the way that pug dogs can be cute - ugly and adorable at once. One dragon-ish creature was shown with his long teeth about to close in his lunch, another gargoyle, tiny, twisting, and serpentine; that gargoyle in turn had its stone jaws clenched determinedly in the corded forearm that held it, looking for all the world like one of the desperately biting creatures out of the book of Kells, curvilinear and hungry. The gap-toothed grins of the round-faced statues gazing down from the top level, the curving beaks and lolling tongues and fangs - still wicked-looking even after centuries - all fascinated me and made me long for the leisure to sketch. Instead, I just stared and stared, trying to memorize the way sunlight makes shadows on stone, the patters of pigeon-droppings and moss and water-stains, and I snapped far more photos than anyone else would care to see. Then, up, up, up, up, up the stairs we went (precious) and then, emerged out onto the top of the bell tower. The view was breathtaking. We stood in the middle of an infinite ring of vanishing points, as the streets of Paris radiated away from where we stood, the center of a star. Sun and white stone, azure blue sky and and river, pink in the trees and in our cheeks as we laughed, breathless, and breathed again and again, oh my god... No wonder the medieval architects, builders and priests believed that the cathedrals brought one closer to God, we thought. Heaven felt pretty darn close to where we stood, and it could only have been more spectacular for the men who made it, hundreds of years ago...

The script above one of Shakespeare and Co.'s doors reads:

Be not inhospitable to strangers

lest they be angels in disguise

It also appears on the front of the tote bags they sell - not the colorful happy one I had bought, but the one that I had wanted, which they had been out of. When we wandered over after our Notre Dame experience, still flushed and euphoric (and slightly dizzy - that was a lot of spiralling, and my knees were doing funny wobbly things) I discovered that not only did they now have the artsy black-and-white totes available, but they were a quarter of the price. I returned the colorful one, and had cash to get sandwiches and pastries to boot. Three cheers.

Lunch in the Luxembourg gardens again, hot sun and warm grass littered with cigarette butts and students, followed by amazing baked goods under a striped awning. I bade Katherine and Amy a reluctant goodbye - they were heading off to Spain that afternoon - and took off for the Louvre for the sencond time in as many days (shaking my head at the fact that my life is utterly amazing and ridiculous).  I loved every minute of my time there, and wished desperately that I could have stayed longer.

I gathered my things from the hostel, then hurried off to meet the wonderful miss Kerry Alexander, a compatriot of mine from multiple English classes at Mac, and one of those incredibly talented people whom you just know is going to be massively famous someday soon and I hope to goodness I get to know her well enough now to not feel guilty when I boast that 'I knew her way back when.' Just a quick note about Kerry -  in our Romantic Lit class, we were all required to memorize a poem by one of the authors we were studying, and to recite it either to the prof in private, or in front of the class. One day, Kerry walks into class carrying her guitarcase, and in response to the professor's question she smiled just a little, in her unselfconscious, honest way and replied that she was going to sing her poem. Here is what she came up with. When We Two Parted, Lord Byron Yeah, she is pretty much amazing. Also, quite quite funny. I was lucky enough to be invited to crash on her floor my last night in Paris, and I made my way to her accommodation in the evening, and spent a few minutes pushing buttons on the intercom and peering anxiously through the windows. A nice girl opened the door for me at last, and I proceeded to spent the next several minutes trying determinedly to convey to the security man at the reception desk that all I wanted was to sit and wait for my friend. He spoke not a word of English, and as I, alas, speak absolutely no French, this was slightly difficult. He looked increasingly confused, resistant, and mildly suspicious, and I found myself speaking more and more desperately, resorting to the embarrassing type of sign language that you know looks as silly as it seems condescending, but it wasn't quite working - he shook his head at me, frowning slightly. It had been established that there was a friend involved, and sleeping, but that was it, and I was on the point of giving up and calling Kerry when the pleasant gal who had opened the door came to my rescue, asked me, in only slightly broken English, what was the matter, then explained it to the guard whose face immediately relaxed. He gave me a broad smile and a nod, and seemed not to be too concerned when a friend of Kerry's found me, told me she was running late, and invited me to join a group of them in a movie (It was in German, with French subtitles, so I only caught about a third of the dialogue, but it was very good nonetheless). Kerry arrived, and with the help of the much more accommodating guard, we wrestled a mattress out of the spare room and into the elevator. The fellow shot me a look, then said something to Kerry, making her laugh a little in surprise, and respond briefly in French. At my enquiring look, she replied that apparently he 'liked' me and thought I was pretty, which, considering the difficulties he had been giving me before, made me laugh somewhat. "Yeah, dude," Kerry smiled, "Welcome to Paris."

We had a nice visit that evening, and the next day we said adieu, as I took off for the Pere Lachaise cemetery to kiss Oscar Wilde's grave, and she departed for her internship.

The rest of the day was a sleepy blur - after two full weeks of travel, even the excitement of the Arc du triomf, and the graves of Isadora Duncan, Sarah Bernhardt, Moliere, Chopin, Delacroix and so many others was outweighed by the thought coming home to Edinburgh, to my own flat, and bed, and city.

And that was one of the most amazing things about this trip. More wonderful, in many ways, than all the art and the beauty around me, and all the incredible places I went and things I saw was the realization as I walked up the hill to the Royal Mile, and as I gazed out over the Prince's Street Gardens at the castle, and as I trudged down niddry street past the cigarret-puffing crowds outside the Hive and Banshee and Bannerman's bar, that this felt like home. 


Edinburgh is not somewhere I am staying anymore. Edinburgh, in all its bustle and beauty, is (one of) my homes. And that, in the end, is why I decided to study abroad - not to visit some place, to but live there, to become at home there, to feel, upon returning, that this is someplace mine. My city. My home. Here.

April in Paris: Wednesday

Wednesday, April 6th

The Joys of Traveling Solo

• Katherine, Amy and I went in different directions on Wednesday, each with a specific goal in mind. Katherine donned a black skirt and Mary Jane's (and mourned her lack of a straw hat) as she set off to recreate nostalgic scenes from Linnea in Monet's Garden in the gardens and house in Giverney where the famous artist had lived and painted. Amy took off for Versailles to get sunburned amid the twisting and spiraling hedges and flower-beds after having absorbed all she could of the interior of the palace, while I set out to wander Paris at my leisure. I took the metro over to the Isle de la Cité, and wished that the line for the San Sulpice chapel was not so long (curse you Dan Brown and your sensationalization of pretty, historical churches!) but kept wandering instead, pretty much blown away by the sight of the riverwalls, washed white in the sunlight, slanting away from the water. 
• Notre Dame. It was amazing. Once again, words cannot do it justice, unless you are Victor Hugo and prepared to write a several-hundred page novel that is really just an excuse for rhapsodizing about gothic architecture; I am not, alas (hah). But I do need to say that yes, the gargoyles are just as individual and interesting and ugly-cute as Disney would have it, and yes the soaring flying buttresses are more graceful in their function than one imagines possible, and yes the ribbed ceilings on the inside makes one think of Roman tombs and ancient rites and long-dead architects, and yes the stained glass windows are breathtaking in the their dual beauty - they are gorgeous to look at, and the rainbow light washing over the pews and sculptures is equally lovely... Oh my. I just sort of gaped and walked and breathed in dust and cool air and tried to be as present as possible. I lit a candle in one of the side niches, not thinking twice about the 2 euro charge, and watched the tiny flame flickering in the gloom, feeling awe-filled and peaceful. 
• I left Notre Dame, regretfully I admit, and wandered around the whole structure, craning my neck to get a better look at the gaping gargoyles, then stared surreptitiously at the young gendarmes wandering around who would have been cute were it not for their MASSIVE machine guns and camo outfits and utterly silly hats. British family nearby~ Mother: "Do you see the soldiers, Danny? Look at the soldiers." Danny, (age 5 ish, literally hanging from her hand and staring at the sky, the ground, and everywhere but in front of him): "I caaaaaan't, I caaaaaan't seeeee theeeemmmmm! Where aaaaare theeeeeyyy?!?" Mother (exasperated): "Right in front of you, honey; right in front you! See the big guns?" Danny (still flailing, falling and dancing): "Nooo! Where aaaaare theeeyy?!" Mother: "Big guns! See the big guns! Right there!" Danny (sees them, stands stalk still, eyes like saucers, and begins to walk normally, a bit scared): "Oh... REALLY big guns." The gendarmes were unimpressed. 
• Across the river from Notre Dame, half-hidden behind clouds of pink blossoms covering the trees that line the street, is the most amazing bookstore I have ever been in. Shakespeare and Co. was begun by Sylvia Beach, a US expatriate, in the early 20th century, and it was this bookshop that originally published Ulysses when it was banned in the US and the UK. ...!!! Yeah. Also, Hemmingway, Ezra Pound, D.H. Lawrence, Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald and other incredibly talented artists spent rather a lot of time in and around the little book store. In case that wasn't enough, it is also perfectly quaint and cute and oh my, a book lover's dream. There were books stacked from the floor to the bare beams of the ceiling, teetering in piles and leaning against shelves and paint-peeling walls, covers shining and new or frayed and trailing little threads of ancient cotton binding. The rooms were tiny and cozy, and the titles that jumped out at me are the ones that fill my Really Glad I Read That and Really Need to Read That lists, respectively (far too many of the latter, alas. I need to get reading.) and seeing eight different copies of Jane Eyre displayed on one shelf and The Illustrated Guide to Shakespeare on the next made my heart happy. They have new stuff too, of course - not everything in this shop reeks of dust and age and antiquated language. Freedom (written, I think, by a Mac grad) and The Pale King are two titles recently recommended to me by some of my modern-lit inclined compatriots, and both were visible among the bilingual poetry collections and personal essays (handbound). The way through the shop is as convoluted and twisted as the plot of a good murder mystery, and the nooks and crannies that abound are chalk full of more books, in seeming disarray. The stairwell, decorated with the likenesses of the authors who visited Shakespeare and Co in its heyday, led to a second story that boasted not only faded velvet armchairs, a moth-eaten couch, a reading... closet (?) filled with notes from readers past, and a study room, but also a piano and a window with a petal-filled view of the Seine and Notre Dame. Oh my.  When I eventually dragged Katherine and Amy back there, later that evening, the piano was singing Chopin's sonatas softly from beneath its blanket of books, the couch was cluttered with University students studying diligently, a bilingual creative writing workshop was proceeding in English and French in the study room, and the multicolored party-lights in front swayed over the heads of the coffee-drinking, wine-sipping, pastry-nibbling, page-turning patrons perched on the delicate chairs that littered the walkway. But I am getting ahead of myself. While there I decided to indulge and get myself a tote bag, the better to tote about my tourist necessities - lunch, camera, sketchbook, paints, water bottle, wallet, phone (though it was dead), passport and ipod (since there were no lockers in the rooms, alas) and the invaluable map. The cool, artsy bag was all sold out at the moment though, leaving the too-colorful, not-quite-childish (though still quite wonderful) alternative. I didn't complain.
• Lunch in the Luxembourg Gardens, all hot sun and park benches, unsittable grass and thick shade under blooming chestnut trees. I sketched and munched my lunch, seated on the marble steps burning my left side slowly, and watched a family's snail-speed progress down the stairs. A little girl, 5 or so, hopped carefully from one step to the next, counting "Un, deux, trois, quatre..." while behind her her curly-haired brother, no more than three, danced anxiously on the edge of the step, shifting from one foot to the other, wailing high and incoherently. At last he stepped down, nearly toppled, righted himself, and began to prance and shuffle in misery and anxiety on the edge of THAT step, repeating this process twice more until his mother set down her bags and came to gather him up. A single strip of grass invisible beneath the carpet of bodies, bocce ball under sycamore leaves, a cat on a leash, flowers on the trees.
• The Rodin Museum was a bit of a walk from the Luxembourg Gardens, but a beautiful one - what part of central Paris isn't beautiful though. The museum was amazing. The gardens around the old chateau were full of beach trees and silent statues, and at the far end a fountain splashed quietly between the lilac bushes and writhing metal figures. I sat and sketched a little more, not because I thought I could capture any of the sculptures (I could not) but because I needed to just sit and be present. It was so incredibly peaceful. Inside the museum was beautiful too, with the wood floors, picture-windows and crystal chandeliers of the original chateau still intact; it was the perfect place for these sculptures not to be displayed but for them to live. Graceful hands, fingers barely brushing each other, and the smooth erotic Kiss that makes one's heart ache for love like that, and widespread wings stretching in an ecstasy and exultation of bronze, marble, iron. Lovely.
• A mosey, a wander, a meander, a saunter later, past the place where Napoleon is buried and over the bridge that separates it from the Tuleries, then through the gardens and past the long paths that stretched under the dun-colored sycamore leaves (tiny and thick with fuzz)... Eventually, I arrived again at Le Louvre. Oh my. I sat for a while in front of it, perched on the edge of the fountains, and peered through the segmented glass of the (in)famous pyramid to see how the light refracted images of ancient stone upon the brilliant surface. I won't try to write about the inside, merely that like the Musée d'Orsay the Louvre lets EU students in for free!!!, and that the paintings were more amazing than I had imagined possible, and that the Mona Lisa was small and perfect and crowded, and that twilight falling through the lovely windows cast shadows upon Greco-Roman sculptures that had seen the light of a thousand thousand days. So much beauty in one place, so many of the images that I have studied and copied and imagined for years... I discovered on this trip that Paris is a beautiful city, and one that I could learn to love, full of history and culture and elegance. But, even were the rest of Paris to be blasted from existence, leaving nothing but a radio-active ruin in its wake, if it were to fall off the face of the earth or be swallowed by storms or sands, or if the Louvre were plucked up and set down on a desert island surrounded by Shrieking Eels and Vermicious Knids, it would be worth braving the radioactive wastland/desert/lake/Eels/Knids/etc just to spend a few hours gasping at the marble hallelujah that is Wingéd Victory, or the sensual slouch of the Venus de Milo, or the war-cry of Liberty Leading the People. I was in awe.
• Back along the Seine to Notre Dame, golden in the evening light, and then back to Shakespeare and Co with Amy and Katherine (because, you know, why not) and then boeuf bourguignon at a little cafe in the Latin Quarter, under a striped awning and a brilliant crescent moon.
• Wine at a Montmartre cafe later, watching as the water streaming down the gutters lifted a crust of cigarettes and cherry-blossom petals and sent it crumbling about the tires of mopeds and vespas parked by the sidewalks. The moon swung up over Sacre Coeur, and the night was warm and perfect as we wandered back to the hostel. Paris, je t'aime.

April in Paris: Tuesday

Tuesday, April 5th

The Joys of Traveling with Friends

• Breakfast in the hostel, croissants and baguette, and lots of tea. We then hopped into the metro and emerged from the dusk of the interior by the banks of the river, blinking in the bright light. Waltzed and sashayed along the walkway by the banks, imagining the Amelie soundtrack playing, and reached the Musée d'Orsay around 11, and admired the massive clock faces and turn-of-the-century decoration. The museum was once a train station, built upon the ruins of of a palace, but was self-consciously constructed (circa 1900) so as not to clash with the grand Palais d'Honeur or the Louvre just across the Seine. It must have been the most beautiful terminus, ever. As a museum, it is still incredibly lovely, with the high, spacious center gallery that must once have been filled with the smoke and groaning of its locomotive inhabitants; now instead of tracks and ties there was a pristine marble floor, and the walls are lined with sculptures and paintings instead of newspaper stands and impatiently waiting travelers; the massive clock faces still remain, however. It was gorgeous. We waited in the expected, through not unmanageable line, and somehow, miraculously, got in for free. God bless EU student cards. The things are amazing. This meant that we a) missed a second 45-minute-wait line, and also did not have to pay the £10 ticket price. Renoir, Monet, Manet, Whistler, Van Gogh, Gaugin, Degas, Bouguereau, and so many more. It was overwhelming, but in a wonderful way.
• Divine pastries. Flan and apple tart, pulled apart with sticky fingers on a street-side bench, eaten hurriedly and greedily, crumbs flying.
• The Jefferson girls' school - Amy got all excited, and told us Paulie Jefferson's life story. 
• Schwarma and falafel sandwiches in the Latin Quarter, followed by gelato, because, you know, why not. 
• Met Katherine's friend, tried to go to the Pere Lachaise cemetery, but it was closing - crashed back at the hostel instead, then walked around after dark, saw the whirling scarlet arms of the Moulin Rouge windmill, glowing in the gloom, (resisted bursting into song, but only barely) and climbed Montmartre to stare at the lightwashed Sacre Coeur. Still gorgeous, and better to view in the company of two or three other people, I discovered. Late night dinner - French onion soup with a slice of cheese-coated baguette floating in the salty broth, and roast chicken served by a silly boy with dreadlocks and a cute grin, who didn't even tease us about our lack of French. 

April in Paris: Monday

Some times I get lost in my life; days merge and blend and I am carried along on the current of the moments; sometimes I catch myself fretting over what one of my friends calls "white girl problems" (I just had to spend four hours in the library studying my incredibly interesting Irish poetry for the Celtic Lit class I am taking in Scotland, my life is so hard; oh NO I had to spend a few hours in banks to fund my trip to Spain; oh darn how annoying that the flight landed in Beauvais instead of Paris and I have to take a bus; Gosh the line for the Musée d'Orsay is so long!; the sunburn that I got in the gorgeous, 73 degree weather stings when I carry around my new, indie tote bag. ... Whitegirlproblems. Hahaha). When that happens, I tend to forget, momentarily, just how wonderful my life is, and how incredibly lucky I am. Having the amazing opportunity to spend five days in Paris reminded me of that, and (puts on tearfully grateful Academy-award-winner voice) I would like to thank my parents, for giving me the opportunity to come here...

But really.

Mom and Dad, I do not know how to express how grateful I am to have had these amazing experiences, and to have been lucky enough to spend time in some of the most beautiful places it has ever been my good fortune to visit. Paris was amazing. Thank you, so, so much. I will try to share a little bit of it with you, despite my clear inadequacy of expression. But first, a bit of music. April in Paris: Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong. It was a feeling.

[I have too many words: I am going to break this up by day, since it is a massive post anyway. Words words words words... Love to you all.]

Monday, April 4th:

The Trials of Traveling Solo

• Madrid subway angst, duffle bag slamming against my side and pulling on my shoulder as I ran from one Ryanair desk to the next. But really, who puts a check-in-desk in the cafeteria?!
• Short flight, skimming the clouds over the Atlantic. The lemon-yellow backs of the chairs blazoned with inescapably large diagrams of all the disasters that could possibly occur in an airplane, and what one ought to do about them (because when the plane crashes a flimsy plastic bag of air, in either oxygen-mask or life-vest form, will totally make everything better...). Flight attendants trying to sell smokeless cigarets, perfume, jewelry, in addition to the usual food/soda/alcohol, with all the persuasiveness of born salesmen, hawking wares on a Barcelona street corner. French mixes with the English and Spanish announcements, and I start to realize that I am going to a country where I speak NONE of the language. The rest of the flight is spent flipping through the guide/phrase books, thumbing pages in excitement tinged with worry.
• Hurried walk through the Beauvais airport, and I worry a little bit when I leave the building and they have not yet stamped my passport, but decide there is nothing I can do. 15 euro later I am on a bus to Paris, seated next to a bright, though cynical New Yorker who I found interesting (he spent a year teaching English in Spain!) but depressingly negative. I resisted the urge to stereotype, with little success: well dressed, hip, slightly effeminate, intelligent and aware of it, pessimistic and confident, he seemed to fit the mold of the ivy-graduate New York resident pretty darn well. 
• Metro. Oh my. The Paris metro isn't really that complicated: the lines are color coded, there are maps pretty frequently, and the trains come with startling regularity. But to get onto the metro, one needs a ticket. And to purchase a ticket, one needs to operate the ticket machine. And to operate the ticket machine, one needs to understand French, OR to have absurdly good luck. Apparently I have the latter, because I get a ticket out of the machine eventually, but it took far too long, and involved a lot of me pushing random buttons, and struggling with the lack of direction-key buttons (instead there was a  cylindrical metal bar which one could roll to move the selection up or down. This took me several minutes to discover). I spend the whole ride double and tripple checking my map, angsting about whether I was on the right line, the right direction, etc. etc. I needed somewhere there to slap me upside the head and tell me to take a chill pill - I did know where I was going, I got off at the right stop, I found my way to an information booth, then wandered about until I found my hostel, checked in functionally, and all was well. Really, I should have more faith in my traveling abilities, apparently, since I haven't gotten really lost yet.
• Le Village Hostel was bright, clean, and quirky, with squeaking wood floors and colorful curtains, with cheerful student-age employees and a manager who was so incredibly French: mid-40s, tanned, with a bit of a paunch over which his skin-tight shirts stretched comfortably, a peach- or nude-colored scarf tossed carelessly around his neck and a hat perched jauntily on his balding head, which was perpetually threatening to slip off, due to his slightly nose-in-the-air saunter. I caught him singing in poorly accented English along with awful euro-techno-remixes of every bad American pop song you have ever heard, most of which should never, ever be synthed and put to a driving beat. It was hilarious. The only thing was, I was supposed to meet my friend Katherine and another Mac girl, Amy, in Paris, and we were staying in the same hostel, but due to my temporarily deceased phone and her lack of computer, we had not been in contact in days and I had no way of getting ahold of her. I left a note at the desk, crossed my fingers, drew a deep breath, and set off to explore Paris all by my lonesome.

[A brief rant.] Ordinarily, I like being alone. It's an empowering feeling, walking through a city on the other side of the world by oneself, knowing that you can go anywhere you please, on the slightest whim. Sometimes, however, being a young woman walking alone can be unpleasant, or even unsafe, and that is a feeling which I am at once unused to, and angered by. Saint Paul is, overall, a pretty safe city, especially in the Macalester area, and Edinburgh is pretty darn safe as well (too full of college students for anything much worse than drunken debauchery to go on), and to be honest I am just not accustomed to feeling as though a solitary walk in the late afternoon is something that I should think twice about. Probably I was never anything but safe, but as I wandered away from Le Village Hostel, I did not feel as though I was. I walked the half-block up to the steps that lead to the Sacre Coeur church (cathedral?), which shone white and pristine atop the Montmartre crest, looking for all the world like a misplaced bit of the white city of Gondor, Ecthelion transported out of middle earth and into France, brilliant and tall. All I wanted to do was enjoy the views of the city and the sight of this incredible building and breathe deep the Parisian air, but I found my wrist caught by a vendor trying to sell me string bracelets, who then wanted to talk about my life, and was just a little too interested for my taste. Moments after I extricated myself and hurried away, I was approached by two different men who wanted to practice their English and talk to me, despite the fact that I told them I was in a hurry, and was meeting friends, and did not make eye contact any more than I could help. It made me profoundly uncomfortable when the second of them would not take the hint and leave, and especially so when, after I barely acknowledged his comment that I had beautiful eyes (How could he know? I was doing everything I could not to look at him so that he would leave me alone; perhaps rude, but clear, I thought) he followed me down four flights of stairs to the street where the hostel was. Perhaps farther, but I stopped looking behind me and tried to go swiftly without appearing to run. My mother used to call me fearless when I was a child, and it wasn't incorrect~ I probably would have worried her less if I had been a little more afraid of the usual things - fast-moving vehicles, deep water, etc. I am still not used, truly, to feeling afraid. I hated it.

People talk about the cultural differences between America and Europe, or even between the UK and continental Europe, and they aren't kidding. There were no repressed, reserved, adorably shy Scottish boys on my travels, which was just fine, but the different sorts of attention my friends and I received in our wanderings was... interesting. Spanish men catcall and look more than any other people I have ever encountered, but unlike the guys in the states who stare and whistle there is, generally, no intention behind it, no aggression really, mostly just ... appreciation? I mean, when a fellow thrice my age with a fully white beard is making comments about my behind, it's hard to take it seriously. Generally, in Barcelona, I could just roll my eyes and keep walking, and was more on the flattered than the offended side of indifferent. In Paris though, perhaps because I speak no French and therefore felt just a bit more insecure and unsure of myself, and perhaps too because of the rather sketchy area where the hostel was, the comments and the looks were a little harder to shrug off, and felt just a little more persistent, a little more aggressive. It was only really a problem when I was walking by myself that afternoon, and only in that bit of the city, but it was just enough to make me think about all the Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies classes offered at Mac, and about all the talk of feminism and female empowerment. I appreciate them, in a general sense, but because I have lived a privileged life I have always felt like for myself, feminism was a bit moot since I have always been treated as an individual and not noticeably different from anyone else based on gender alone. In retrospect, feeling my femininity imposed on me, as it were, by the people around me was an interesting experience, though in the moment, wishing only to exist in my happy little world-traveler-bubble, I would cheerfully have forgone the cultural experience in favor of feeling more at ease. Anyway. Things to think about.

• Left the hostel, walking this time in the opposite direction. I realized rather swiftly that the Moulin Rouge is still the Moulin Rouge in function as well, and the area around it, while interesting, was full of signs and shop windows advertising products and services that I was slightly uncomfortable contemplating, so I turned and began to walk south toward the city center, the Seine, the Louvre, and the Paris of so many books and movies. I walked past churches and shaded buildings, a cathedral or two, and the shining façade of the Opera House, gleaming with golden statues and a hundred grinning or grimacing masks. Broad grey streets and tall white buildings bedecked with fragile, fanciful swirls and curls of plaster wound their way down to the river, and quite suddenly I found myself staring Lady Louvre in the face, shining pyramid and russet stone brilliant in the evening light. Every figure on the sides of the building was outlined stark against the twilight sky, grey clouds underlit with blinding light, and the realization that so many of the most beautiful paintings and sculptures in HUMAN HISTORY are inside this building! shook me to my core, and I could not stop smiling, even knowing I wouldn’t go in for another day or so. The poplars lining the Seine shivered in the breeze, and the darkly shining sky overhead gave the whole scene a surreal, magical feeling.
• I walked back through the darkening streets, feeling my elevated heartrate from the overwhelming loveliness and the realization that this was PARIS; I kept to busy streets, despite the temptation of narrow cobbled allies and sidestreets, residually cautious from my earlier scare, and found with pleasure that I could navigate the city with relative ease and a map. I love maps, and getting myself around with them is one of the finer pleasures in life, and despite the fact that mine was not a particularly GOOD map (it was one of those tourist ones, where the cartographer got all excited about pretty buildings and cool monuments  and decided it would be really cool to put in pictures of said buildings, etc. However, nice as the pictures are, they mean that you cannot see the streets. Unfortunately, streets are kiiiiiinda necessary on maps…) it was functional enough to get me the 7.5 miles from Montmartre to the Seine and back. Huzzah!
• Ate tons of carrots, apples, and apricots (purchased at a local grocery store) for dinner. ...You did notice all the baguette consumption that happened in Spain, no? Fresh produce tasted soooo good. Afterwards, 11:30 pm ish, went to bed, hoping to run into Katherine and Amy in the morning.
• 12:15 am, awoken to "JANE!!!" and an unidentified dark head bobbing excitedly at my bedside. Turns out, Katherine and Amy were staying in the same room as me. Either the hostel worker was being sneaky and REALLY nice and put us together on purpose, or else it was a brilliant, ridiculous coincidence. Chatted cheerfully and groggily for a while, then crashed back to sleep.