A Bit of Traveling... Manchester, Liverpool, & Dublin

Blogging location: the good ol' flat; it's sunny outside! AMAZING.

.:NHS:.
Before I get to the traveling part, I would like to announce that I've gotten my flu shot. Momentous, I know. But the difference between getting a flu shot here and getting one in the States, thanks to the National Health Service, is the paying for the thing. As far as I know, I just walked in, checked in and got my flu shot. It's weird not having to pull out the insurance card or the wallet. I really don't have any further comments because I'm not one for politics. Oh and I also qualified mystically to get the swine flu shot... A flat mate of mine can brag about surviving the swine flu, so I guess I can always live vicariously through him.

.:Traveling:.
Now, for traveling! A few weekends ago (boy, has time flown!) myself and more study abroad students from the EAP traveled via coach to Manchester on a Friday and Liverpool the following Saturday for kicks and giggles. And because I've always wanted to see those areas since 1) Manchester was originally my first choice for study abroad (but it was replaced by Leeds when I read up on Leeds' Communication dept) and 2) one word: BEATLES.

To prep for the trips, I maniacally utilized Google to it's full extent, searching for Top 10 Tourist attractions lists and then Google mapping places... I'm questioning whether I'm more neurotic than I think I am...

.:Manchester:.
Had to get up before the sun did to catch the coach! But considering that the sun doesn't really rise till like 8:00, this doesn't say much... Here's a video to summarize the trip!:




.:Liverpool:.
Ah, yes, Liverpool, home of the Scoucers and the Beatles! :) Yet another really early departure; unfortunately my battery in my camera was dying, so there's a lack of photos in this slideshow video, but hopefully, you get the idea. We visited some museums, both art and natural history museums and then hit the town for lunch (I had steak and ale pie for the first time!) and to look for Beatles landmarks, which we found! We hit the Cavern, where the Beatles played their first gigs (the original Cavern was torn down to construct the underground and the bricks were auctioned off-- but they rebuilt it anyways.) Next we sought out the Liverpool Cathedral, the biggest cathedral in the UK. Photos and videos cannot show how MASSIVE the building was. Though it wasn't very old, it still retained the style of an older cathedral. Next we went hunting for a Tesco's (basically one of cheapest supermarket chains in the UK) to buy munchies. To tie up the day, we went back to Mathews St. to the clubs and pubs and hit a couple of those places to peer about. Though their nightlife is not at all comparable to Leeds (this comparison is both good and bad), we still had a fab time and even caught a decent cover band playing in the Cavern. Here's all of that in audio visual format!:


.:Dublin, Ireland:.
Our decision to go to Dublin was partially based on Halloween having come from Ireland. While we were there, we hit loads of the tourist sites. I thought the city was pretty cool... till I was told it was the most expensive country in Europe. Boy, were they right... Dublin uses the Euro, but that aside, the prices for everything were nuts. For food we settled with buying cheap groceries at Tesco's. I personally went with 1 euro's worth of french bread and a hunk of brie cheese for a day, but I enjoyed every bit of it. :)
While Dublin was a cool place to see, there were probably more gift shops than there were actual attractions of interest, which is why I'm glad we went on the particular weekend we did. There were special events going on such as the Dublin Chocolate Festival and there were just tons of people around for Halloween weekend. Our trip also included a visit to the Guinness Storehouse. I admit that I don't actually care for Guinness and I would never use my own money to buy myself a pint, but it was just awesome to see the storehouse. Very impressive. And yes, it does taste noticeably different from the Guinness in Leeds (or anywhere else, I suppose).
Being in Dublin for the weekend, I decided to visit a church for Sunday service. I ended up going to Christ Church Cathedral, an Anglican church. It was a pretty traditional sung eucharist service, and the choir was more than amazing, not to mention the acoustics. Just being in there for the experience was truly awesome. Again, here's a video, because my writing isn't nearly good enough to be able to share my trip in just words:



.:Leeds:.
I don't have to travel far to get to Leeds, so I figured I'd go see a play my friend was in. :) The play was Grimm Tales and it was a fab production; the performances and the storytelling were very good and it was just a great time sitting on the stage (this play stresses a lack of a proscenium arch, breaking the bounds between audience and actors and basically, the actors are pretending to be wild crazies, so you can imagine the personal space boundaries they're breaking, haha). It really did make me want to do theatre (ha, look how I spelt 'theater').

As always, I'm taking questions from anyone about living in Leeds/England or suggestions of things to check out. Till next time...
<3 Raechel