Prologue

You know, I considered not writing about this trip. I got to see some great things, and I got to hang out with some great friends. But there was definitely a little bit of trouble on the trip that left a bad taste in my mouth. After thinking for a long while, though, I think it’s worth talking about. Onward to the UK!

The Planning Phase

Mistakes were made is the short of it.

The long of it, since I’m typing and nobody’s reading, starts with neighbors. I’ve got a good bunch of neighbors. We watch out for each other. We hang out with each other. And generally speaking, everyone is on great terms. We also have a good group of neighbors that like to travel. Given that we have this shared interest, and some of us have traveled together, we discuss travel plans to see what we can potentially do together. Thus spawned a discussion about the UK.

One group (we’ll call them Group T) wanted to do a trip to the UK with some of their friends. They had a really good plan to spend a handful of days in London, Edinburgh, and Dublin. This sounded like fun, but I’d already been to London about 6 months prior to this discussion, and I didn’t really want to spend a whole lot of time there. So I started planning my own trip. I decided I’d prefer to visit Edinburgh, and, while I was in the area, I figured I’d pop over to Belfast. After Belfast I figured maybe I’d check out Dublin.  Dublin ended up by the wayside unfortunately, so it’ll be a later destination.

Now, a little backstory before I go on. Some members of my family are pretty big into heritage and roots and all that. Those folks have traced my lineage back to this tiny town in County Donegal, Ireland, named Castlefin. Castlefin happens to be about a 3 hour drive from Belfast. This is why Belfast was in my plan.

As time moved along and I started doing a bit more planning, another neighbor expressed interest in joining my plans. Having spoken to this neighbor about travel before, it seemed like a fine idea at the time to let her join. However, this is where mistakes started to be made. While this particular neighbor enjoys travel, her husband does not. I’ll spare you the details, but in the end her husband joined us as an unwilling participant on the trip.

The Flights

Oh the flights. As we started looking into flights that would get us to and from where we wanted to be we quickly ran into a problem. To get from Seattle to Europe or the UK you basically fly through London, Amsterdam, or Reykjavic. We also wanted to fly between destinations in the UK to quickly move between regions. So, we ended up with this crazy flight schedule:

• Virgin Atlantic from Seattle to London Gatwick
• British Airways from London Heathrow to Edinburgh
• FlyBE from Edinburgh to Belfast City
• KLM from Belfast City to Amsterdam
• Delta from Amsterdam to Seattle

Let me tell you, for a 12 day trip that’s way too many flights.

Luckily, all of the flights except one went off without a hitch. The only one that had problems was when one member of my group went to the wrong airport in London.

The Actual Itinerary

Probably shouldn’t have waited 550 words into this post to tell you what we actually did, but here’s that. For anyone with knowledge of the original plan, this is what actually happened.

• 36 hours in London
• 2 days in Edinburgh
• Rent a car, drive to St. Andrews, spend a day checking out the Scottish countryside, stay in Dundee.
• Check out St. Andrews, drive back to Edinburgh, spend the rest of the day checking out things we missed in Edinburgh.
• 3 days in Belfast (included a day trip to see the Giant’s Causeway and Carrick-a-Rede)
• Rent a car, drive to Castlefin, spend a day checking out the Northern Ireland countryside, stay in Londonderry/Derry.
• Drive back to Belfast, have more drinks.
• One more day in Belfast
• One night in Amsterdam

If I had to do it again, I’d probably give myself at least another day in Edinburgh. That being said, I had a great time in each city. It was especially fun meeting up with the various friends who were also traveling in the area.

On to the actual trip.

London

I really like London. The food is pretty good. The people are rowdy. Beer is flowing. And the sights are great. I had one goal for my 36 hours in London. I wanted to visit the British Museum. I missed it over Thanksgiving 2017 when I was there. I was in Egypt in February 2018 and the tour guide there went on and on about all of the things the Brits had “borrowed” that are in the British Museum. So I had to go.

Upon landing at 7am we went straight to the hotel to drop stuff off and freshen up a bit. After that, we set out to find food and beer. The group splintered a bit, since it was 9am on a Sunday and not many places were open, but we finally found a place. Eventually we set out toward the British Museum. I can say without a doubt I’m glad I saw that. So many cool artifacts and history in that museum. About 200 pictures later, we emerged and started wandering the city.

The weather in London was beautiful, so we ended up seeing a ton. I think by the end of the day we’d walked 13 miles (per the health app on my phone). We hit up all the normal sights, and then when we ran out of time, The Shard’s observation deck allowed us to see the rest of the sights.

The second day in London I was able to meet up with Group T for breakfast before we all went our separate ways to get to Edinburgh, since Group T was taking the train and we were flying.

Edinburgh

Edinburgh started with my group splintered again. One third of my group missed their flight and generally had a bad attitude, so the rest of us carried on. Upon landing in Edinburgh we found this neat little cellar bar with a bunch of locals in it. About 20 whiskys later, we were sloshed and having a grand old time.

The next day we met up with Group T again and checked out a bunch of sights, including the Scotch Whisky Experience. That ended up being a great history lesson about whisky, and taught me that I really enjoy scotch from Campbeltown. Later that evening we went to a local karaoke bar called Opium. Opium was, without a doubt, my favorite karaoke bar anywhere. The crowd gets into every song, and the energy is just amazing. We had a great time.

The next day we finally met up with the third member of my group, rented a car, and headed out into the Kingdom of Fife. I drove this first section. That was an experience in itself, but we didn’t hit anyone or anything, so I’ll call it a success. We stopped in Anstruther for lunch, which is a beautiful seaside town that claims to have the best fish and chips in the world. I may have been recovering from a hangover, so I can’t speak to that. But I will tell you the food was good and the people were friendly.

We moved along from there to Scotland’s Secret Bunker, which was neat if you’re into WW2 history like me. It was built for shelter in the event of a nuclear attack, and actually still had some military working in areas we couldn’t get to. If you ever end up in that area of Scotland I’d give it a stop. It’s a cheap tour and will take you about an hour.

From there we headed up into Dundee. Dundee ended up being pretty tame. It’s a college town, so it seemed like there were clubs on every corner. Pubs weren’t in huge supply, so we mostly used this as a rest day.

The next day it was straight back to Edinburgh, as we’d all had some sights we wanted to check out. We ended up climbing Arthur’s Seat and getting some great pictures up there before heading back to meet up with Group T. After meeting back up with Group T we said our final goodbyes and eventually hopped a plane to Belfast.

Belfast

The capital city of Northern Ireland has been known for its troubles, but we didn’t have any while we were there. Belfast was a beautiful city, and we had the best AirBnB there. We were smack in the middle of the Titanic district, right next to SSE Arena. We had an amazing view of the city and the marina, and we were walking distance from the downtown area.

When we arrived I split off to meet up with another friend, Rae, who was visiting the area. The walk through downtown and around City Hall was stunning, and most of the people were super friendly. As Rae and I wandered around we met back up with my group and all started checking out the city, the sights, and the pubs. The pubs are fun here. There’s actually a 10 pub bar crawl you’re supposed to try (that I don’t recommend) while you’re here. I think we ended up catching 8 of the 10 over the 3 days we spent here, but even that was enough. The pints are properly sized and the people are super friendly. I think I drank for free at least 3 different times.

The next day was spent mostly wandering and checking things out. We checked out the Titanic Museum, which was really neat. They have a map set up and signs looking out over the marina that show where each of the Titanic slips were. There is also a huge shopping area in the middle of town, so we spent a lot of time wandering around there and grabbing souvenirs.

The following day we hopped on a bus for a day trip out to the Giant’s Causeway (stone formations on the Northern Ireland coast), Carrick-a-Rede (a single-person rope bridge), and the Dark Hedges (which you Game of Thrones fans might recognize). We got a great tour guide at Giant’s Causeway who told us all about the area and the history. It was a bit of a hike, but totally worth it. Carrick-a-Rede was also a pretty good hike, but the weather was so nice that it made everything amazing.

The next day we rented a car and set out into the Northern Ireland countryside. Our first stop was a cute little town called Omagh, where we found Bogan’s bar. This bar being my namesake, I had to check it out. The bartender, who was obviously bored on a Sunday morning, gave us some great history about the area and the name. We had such a good time hanging out with him that one beer turned into three and lunch!

Moving on from there we finally made it to Castlefin. A local at the pub was nice enough to show me to the local graveyard, where I found a memorial to my namesake. After checking that out and getting some pictures around the town we headed up to Derry for the night. We ended up staying in Londonderry right on the river. We had a great view from our AirBnB, and the downtown area of Derry was just across the river. We had a pretty good time hanging out with the locals around town before grabbing some food and calling it a night.

The next day we headed back to Belfast, but not before stopping at the oldest distillery in the world! We made a side trip to the Old Bushmills Distillery, where we found out that they only send Americans the cheap crap and their stuff is amazing. I ended up taking home about $100 worth of scotch it was so good. This place should definitely be on your list of places to visit, especially if you’re up by Giant’s Causeway. It’s literally a 5 minute drive from it. After that we made our way back to Belfast, checked into our hotel (Dream Apartments in Belfast is great too), and called it an evening.

Amsterdam

Talk about a whirlwind tour. When we finally got to our hotel in Amsterdam it was close to 10pm and we were all exhausted. But, not too exhausted to wander the streets a bit! As one does in Amsterdam, we were able to find a “coffee shop”, avail ourselves to the wares of said “coffee shop”, and then wander the Red Light district. For a Tuesday night during the off-season, the touristy areas were packed. It was pretty surprising to me, but I guess when Amsterdam is such an easy getaway for most of Europe, there might not be much of an off-season.

Being not one for crowds, I eventually found myself in what had to be a mafia bar on some side street. The bartender was nice, but I’m absolutely positive the guys next to me were plotting something sinister. They looked the look and talked the talk anyway.

My stereotyping aside, Amsterdam ended up being really pretty and the people were all really nice. I’d definitely want to come back here for a few more days though. 12 hours in the city is nowhere near enough to really see anything.

The next day we hopped on the plane back to Seattle. Another successful trip in the bag.

Epilogue

This was a good trip. There were times where I was certainly frustrated and other times where I wished I’d planned the trip solo. I travel a lot solo. I’d prefer to not travel solo, but sometimes that’s just how it works out. My mindset when I travel is I like to take things easy, maybe make a list of sights to see, and compromise when necessary so others can see what they’d like to see. I like finding like-minded individuals to travel with, and luckily I have that in Group T and Rae.

Unfortunately I was unable to find that in the group I planned my part of the trip with. Out of three people in my group there was me, who is happy to travel with any like-minded individual, another who had a similar mindset, and a third who just hated being there. On multiple occasions during the trip the third member was disrespectful, antagonistic, and downright nasty. Even more unfortunate is they come as a package deal.

My final thoughts here – Despite the fact that the trip ruined a friendship for me, I had an amazing time. I’d come back to all of these places in a heartbeat, and I hope to be able to do so later. Thank you for reading this tale of exploration.

joebravo