I am currently in Belfast, Northern Ireland. I just arrived a few hours ago and found myself a hostel to stay in, although I am not really sure how much I like it. I left my backpack in the dorm room all by itself. I hope nothing in it finds legs and walks away. At the present moment in time I have no idea where I will be going or what I will be doing with the rest of my travels.
In my last post I mentioned that I was trying to get into a school in England. I found out the day after my return from my tour of Scotland that I was rejected from the school. I then put a lot of thought into where it was that I was going to go now and Belfast is what I came up with. I am not really sure what is here in this city, but I suppose I will find out soon enough. Anyway, after I found out that I did not get into the school I felt quite down. I was fairly sure that I would not have much difficulty getting accepted into the school, but alas, I suppose I was wrong. I am planning on calling the school tomorrow to find out exactly why it was that I was rejected. Not really a conversation I am looking forward to, but perhaps I will be able to change their mind...maybe.
On a happier note, I absolutely loved the bus tour of Scotland that I took. I got to see a lot of things in a very short period of time. Many things that I never would have seen had I just traveled up on my own and did my own exploring around. We went to many locations on the tour some of which were: Stirling, Oban, Skye, Inverness, Loch Ness. If you are interested in seeing the route that we took on the tour I updated the travel map on my blog to show pretty much exactly what route we traveled and the locations that we stopped to sleep. The most interesting sleep location was Carbisdale Castle which is now a hostel. Supposedly the castle is haunted and has a huge list of strange experiences people have had while staying there. I and no one on this particular tour experienced anything out of the ordinary with this visit, however.
There were many parts of the tour that I found wonderful. We went hiking up to a waterfall; saw many many castles and old castle like structures; and in general just took in the amazing scenery that is the highland landscape. There are two experiences of the tour that stand out far above the rest for me. On the first day of the tour our driver, Greg, wanted to stop at a Loch so that he could skip stones. I am a huge fan of stone skipping myself and was quite pleased that I had my sandals on. I wadded into the water and found all the best skipping stones that I could. I never expected to skip stones on a completely calm and flat faced Loch in the heart of Scotland, but I did and it was fantastic. I have known for many years that I love skipping stones, but the second experience that stands out on this trip was completely new to me. I believe it was on the fourth day of the bus tour that we came to the "Bone Cave". As you can probably imagine, these were caves which happened to be halfway up the side of a hill in the highlands. It took about a little over half an hour to hike in via a riverbed then up to the caves via some rocky paths. On the way up I found that I was hiking faster than everyone else and was leading the pack even though I did not know where I was going. I had to slow down in order to not lose everyone else. On the way down I knew my way and jumped out in front of everyone. I started going quite quick down the rocky path and then I started running flat out. I experienced a true feeling of euphoria traversing my way down the potentially dangerous trail. I think it was at that moment that I felt like a true Scotsman, running as quickly as I could over jagged rocky, wet, up and down highland terrain. My instincts took over and my brain was concentrating solely on finding my next footing. There was no thought or contemplation about anything--only a sense of joy and happiness and for the first time in a long, long time I enjoyed running again.
Before I left for my highland tour and after I returned I stayed with couchsurfers. Both people I stayed with were very close to the center of town and more importantly they were very nice and welcoming people. Couchsurfing is an extremely valuable way to travel the world and it seems so foreign to me to have people be so friendly and trustworthy towards someone they have never met before. All three of my couchsurfing hosts have given me keys to their homes straight away and allowed me to come and go as I please regardless if they were home or not. That just boggles my mind.
One thing I have come to realize in my travels is that I really do not fit in with the travel crowd. Most travelers are big into drinking, drinking and staying up late while they drink. I like to go to bed relatively early and I do not drink a drop. It seems like the thing almost all travelers want to do is go out to the pubs and get plastered. Sometimes I feel like an extreme outsider in this respect and I am not quite sure how to react. There are times when I go along to the pub or bar and try to socialize as best I can. Being as introverted as I am, socializing is difficult enough already, but even more so when I am already set up as an outsider and different. Sometimes it is fun, but most times I just feel out of place and awkward. I highly offended a pub owner in Scotland when I asked if could have some hot chocolate. If only I got a picture of her face after she heard me; it would have been priceless. With a great amount of disgust and annoyance she promptly stated: "This is a pub...". I then asked for tea and got a blank stare that lasted quite long then an eventual roll of the eyes and a look away as she contemplated who knows what. Eventually I got my tea and all was well. There could have been a large highland ball of spit in it for all I know, but it sure did taste mighty good.
I have updated my England picture album with a few shots and have added a Scotland album as well. I think you will enjoy them.
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