Mad about Madrid!

Dustin and I are in our hostel in Madrid now. We arrived about an hour ago after a long night of traveling, and for Dustin, no sleep. (I tend to pass out whenever I'm sleep deprived...bobbing the head up and down, almost falling over because I've fallen asleep standing up...you know, the usual.)

I'm sure Dustin will not agree with me, but overall, I did not like Dublin. The evening I previously wrote about was nice, but the next day was worse than the beginning of the first day. We missed the bus to Boyne Valley and the only other one we could catch was a tour that would get back way too late for our schedule. So, we had breakfast and headed out to see Trinity College.



Trinity College is the oldest university in Ireland. Historical masterminds such as Jonathan Swift and George Berkeley. There are two identical buildings that sit across from each other in the main yard. One is the chapel and the other is the exam building. The chapel was one of the only chapels to have services that were for Catholics and Protestants in Ireland. The library was amusing as the books are arranged by size rather than topic or alphabet. The Book of Kells, one of the oldest copies of the Gospels, was in the library, and it is the main attraction to the campus for tourists. The old pages were adorned with beautiful, colorful drawings of people and parts of the stories written in the texts.

After Trinity College, we stepped back over to Temple Bar, where we saw some impressive live statues among thousands of people shopping in the area. One particularly talented statue was dressed as a wizard, and he would hardly blink his eyes, none-the-less move. There was one man dressed as Charlie Chaplin that just confused Dustin and me. He would sit in a chair with his costume and make-up on and just smoke the entire time. He doesn't act like a statue, and he doesn't act much like the character (aside from the smoking). He has a CD player of which he uses to play music from the era, but we didn't really understand the point of it all.

We left the Temple Bar to go to Dublin Castle, and we never made it there. The streets in Dublin are unmarked much of the time, and the maps we had were not complete, so we kept walking in circles trying to find this supposedly huge building. It started raining and it was windy, and it was just not a pleasant day to walk around; however, we were walking around...for three hours. It was so cold and rainy that we started aiming for the old buildings in hopes that there would be significance to it. We ended up at St. Patrick's Cathedral, luckily, and we toured through that while our clothes dried, slightly.



We got lost on our way back to the hostel after St. Patrick's Cathedral. We finally made it to the airport to find that our flight was delayed almost an hour. I was glad to leave Ireland when we did.

London
We made it to London around 10:30 and got to our hostel at midnight. We roomed with two Australians who were finishing their last three days in Europe. They were very good for giving advice and sharing some stories. While they were nice, the hostel was not, but luckily, we only stayed there one night.

We slept in Tuesday morning, and headed out to Stonehenge about 11 a.m. Stonehenge was amazing. I thought it was just a bunch of rocks before we went out there, but to see it and learn about it really opened my eyes to why this monument has been such a tourist attraction.

Most of the free audio tour talked about theories surrounding the monument...Was it a calendar? Was it a temple to a sun god? Were aliens involved?...However, the most interesting parts to me were the heal stone and the slaughter stone. The heal stone, or the Friar's Heal, is named from a fairy tale about the devil. The slaughter stone is named as such because it turns red when it rains. The guide said that all the rocks would do that if they were lying flat because of the type of stone it is. The grave mounds around it were also interesting, but we've seen those before in Indiana.

We hurried back from Stonehenge and went straight to Leicester (pronounced "Lester") Square to go see a show. We saw Avenue Q, which was absolutely amazing. Avenue Q is an adult comedy using puppets to act out a show about a recent college grad who has no clue what he's doing with his life (as explained in the song "What do you do with a B.A. in English?").
We had really good seats too because the theater had a deal for students where we get the best available for 20 pounds. We had 35-pound seats in the Royal Section. It was one the most wonderful experiences I've ever had.



After the show, we had dinner, went to the hostel to pick up our bags and walked around Victoria for a bit. By this time it was dark out, so we headed across the bridge by Embankment to see the skyline, which was spotted with different colors of light on several recognizable buildings. We also went by the London Eye, although it was closed, Big Ben, Parliament and other historical sites in that area. I think we'll try to take a tour when we go back to London on the 26th.

We didn't know the underground closed at midnight, so we had to walk about a mile to the closest train station to catch the train to Gatwick, and the stay in Gatwick was completely awful. They would not allow us to have a carry-on bag and a personal bag, so Dustin and I had to stuff all of our things (including my purse) into our bookbags, thus making mine too big for the little cage they measure bags in. So, I had to go check in my bookbag. When we came back, no one was checking bags for size, which upset me quite a bit. Also, we had no clue what gate we had to go to until about 10 minutes before boarding. The screen with the departures said "Please Wait" on it for our flight for more than four hours.

The plane ride was smooth, I think...I'm not quite sure because I passed out before the stewardesses started the safety instructions. But, Dustin couldn't sleep, which is why he's passed out in our room right now.

My camera battery is charging, so I'll add pictures to this later, but I thought I'd put in an entry to update you all about where we are and what we're up to.