536 days around the world

The Guinness brewery, a cross between leprechauns and Willy Wonka, with a fabulous outcome.

Standing room only for the St. Patty's day pubs.

Ole Jim decides to partake in some of the festivities.

It's official, every Irishman has fallen off the wagon, assuming any were on in the first place.

St. Paul's cathedral, God has apparently been spotted several times making prank calls from the pictured phone booth.

One last hurray in London.

Randy and I spent our three days in Dublin mainly walking to and from the different pubs in order to watch football matches and receive our daily Guinness rations. We explored around the city as best we could, taking in Trinity College and the Guinness Brewery, as well as some fairly seedy parks, where the highlight was the intricate system that bums have developed in order to live untouched in the woods.

The Guinness Brewery, like the rest of Dublin, was actually a little disappointing. Instead of getting a firsthand look at some of the actual brewing, they just lead you through 4-5 floors of fairly boring details about the beer while the President of Guinness nervously talks to you from a looping video where he actually gets to walk around the brewing. The pinnacle of the tour was upon reaching the top floor, you're given the freshest pint of Guinness you'll ever receive (if nothing else, this redeemed the entire episode) and a "stunning" view of Dublin from the sky scraping 7th story. For those of you who have seen Dublin, you'll know that it's like looking out over a much larger version of Vancouver's East Side. The two of us stayed well after our tour was complete and made it a point to enjoy every beverage that Guinness brews, at discounted prices.

After staying three nights in a dorm of 18 guys (one of which stole my precious headlamp, may he rot and burn in hell for eternity), we were happy to be on our way south to the city of Cork. Due to late planning, our options for where to spend St. Patrick's day were quite limited. Our original choice of Galway wasn't able to work out and so we were forced down to Cork and because of the lack of accommodation, had to book two nights at a posh little B&B. Luckily a posh little B&B was precisely what the doctor ordered after weeks of sleeping in crowded dorm rooms, and it was nice to lie down and simply watch football and rugby instead of being forced out into the ever windy, ever drizzly weather of Ireland. The pub scene of Cork was obviously crowded but we always seemed to be able to squeeze in there, despite the annoying fact of the Irish folk apparently having the worst gas in the world. It seemed like every 15 minutes a new wave of someone's stench would permeate the crowd and force us to plunge our noses back into our pint glasses.

St. Patrick's day itself was pretty much exactly like the other nights, with the difference being far more people and a decent amount of leprechauns walking around. Conversation with the locals was given up at about 10:00 when they all became too drunk and therefore totally unintelligible. Attempts to speak with one would result in a flurry of slurs, spit and slang which you could really only nod in agreement too.

The morning of the 19th we grabbed an early morning flight and jumped back over to London. After doing a little shopping and walking over to St. Paul's cathedral, we met back up with Mike at his hotshot investment firm, before meeting Jason (who had just crossed the channel from France and whom I hadn't seen since December). After feasting once more on a few toad in the holes (the meal inside the yorkshire pudding!), the four of us hit the town for the last bash of the Journey. I'm not exactly sure how the rest of the night went, but I awoke the next morning with the taste of kebab and tequila in my mouth, so I'll scratch it down as a success.

The flight home was made far worse than it needed to be thanks to a long lasting hangover, but when I think about it, that's probably exactly how I would have wished to fly home from this trip. After 16 hours in the air with a small stop in Montreal to talk to a customs agent who was bewildered that Monsieur Blanchet didn't speak a word of french, I landed in YVR at 10:30pm, thus bringing the Journey to a close.

Not much seems to have changed at home really. Aside from my upcoming Unclehood, a much fatter family cat and a bank account that went from a healthy 5 digits to a very sickly 2 digits, it seems like life will pretty much continue where it left off. My last two days have been spent trying to reacquaint myself with the idea of not living out of a bag as well as getting a start on sorting the 9,263 photos I've brought back with me. Things will probably take a few weeks to return to normal, and aside from moving a few of the things of life from the necessity to the luxury column, I can't say that I'm really much different from when I left. As I've always thought, the trip wasn't about "finding myself" (contrary to many of the people I met), it was more about simply taking a look around. After a few months the shock of how awesome a place Vancouver is will wear off and I'll begin whining about everyday things like most everyone else. Life is relative like that I suppose. Eventually the Journey will die out as a conversation topic, and I'll resign myself to boring my family and friends with recycled stories, perhaps getting together with my two travelling companions from time to time to relive old times over some imported beers. Travelling is by no means done for me, but I must assume a trip of this magnitude is a once in a lifetime deal.

Anyhow, this is where my tale ends. For any of you who I managed to entertain a few times a week over the past 18 months, feel free to go on a trip of your own, write a blog and do the same for me. Thanks for tuning in, it's been great!

A few of the things I've picked up along the way.

The shoes that carried me around the world.

England, Scotland and Ireland!

Old Trafford - Home of the world's most famous sporting club, Gunchester United.

Why wouldn't this guy be stuffing his face with late night kebabs?

Gothic style cathedral in ye old York town.

Our ghost walk leader, who somehow evaded all attempts at photography, leading me to believe that he may have been in league with the spirits...

Cartoon-like streets of York.

A boring look down Newcastle's river.

Edinburgh Castle, the infamous location of the "missing Randy incident". Also the scene of several lesbian weddings.

Looking out over the windy Scottish capital.

Ireland!

Aimlessly wandering through the Portaferry graveyard.

West Belfast mural dating back to The Troubles.

So...much...Guinness...

I must apologize again for the lack of updates, but being in the 1st world again somewhat hinders blogs. Unlike poorer countries that have internet cafes on every block and let you do whatever you want to their computers, the internet here is somewhat harder to find and most of the systems are locked away, making it impossible to upload photos. Anyway, enough of that.

Randy and I left Liverpool for the city of Manchester in the afternoon and arrived a few hours later (one fantastic thing about this little island is the tiny, tiny travel distances between destinations). To put it bluntly, Manchester sucked. I had heard it was a bit of a grimy, thug ridden town, but I've heard that about other places and they usually seem to work out, Manchester...not so much. It didn't help that our accomodation was essentially in one of the city's ghettos, and to get anywhere we had to walk past gangs of ASBO collecting street toughs. Every guy we came across in the city seemed to want to either fight us or fight someone close to us. There was a plethora of overweight teen moms blowing smoke in their baby's faces while their "husbands" looked at every near by guy as a potential target. We spent the majority of our one night out in the city at a fairly low key pub and just when we were thinking maybe things weren't too bad a group of football hooligans burst through the door and started one of the biggest bar fights I've ever had the pleasure of watching. The bouncers were helpless as these guys ripped into a nearby table, stomping one guy, then another, and finally when the mom tried to stop them, they took her out too.

We happily left Gunchester, as it's known by locals, for the city of York, but first making a quick stopover in Leeds. We only had 4-5 hours in Leeds, but it instantly had a better aura to it then our previous location and therefore will forever go down as quite a nice city in my mind. Arriving in York, we quickly found our hostel inside the old castle walls then headed out for some Sunday roast. York is pretty much how you would picture a medieval English town or city looking and has little aspects of every army that has ever occupied it, including the Romans, Vikings and Scots. After reuniting with Steve (who flew back from Paris), we ventured into the city's nightlife for a bit before returning home. The next day was spent wandering around through the winding, cobbled streets of the old city and eventually enlisting in a Ghost tour, led by a local "ghost expert". York is apparently one of the most haunted city's in the world, and for an hour and a bit this guy basically tried to freak us out as he told a few of the stories with a staged voice and from behind his 1700's era cloak and hat. If nothing else it led us to the Golden Fleece, the most haunted pub in the world, for a few good pints.

Leaving York we travelled north to Newcastle for another two nights. Not much to report from this city, aside from their strange obsession with bridges. It seemed like a bigger, slightly cleaner version of New West, where we basically watched football and children's TV shows after we had seen the few sights. From Newcastle we grabbed a bus farther north and into the Scottish capital of Edinburgh. Every so often there's a city where you come to the conclusion that if necessary you could live there and Edinburgh fell into this category. After exploring the giant castle that dominates the centre of the city, eating some Haggis and sampling some of the local scotch, I left as a huge fan of the place, aside from the constant and powerful winds that never seem to take a break.

Steve left us in Edinburgh the same day Randy and I headed west to Glasgow. I hadn't heard the nicest things about Glasgow, with most people recommending Edinburgh instead, but from what I saw it looked alright. We only spent a single night there, so this opinion could be subject to change. Randy and I barely squeezed on a ferry the following day and headed across to the neighbouring island of Ireland. Our first stop in the land of green was Belfast, which was also quite a bit nicer than I expected. During one afternoon the two of us strapped on our flak jackets and ventured into West Belfast, which is infamous as the playground for groups like the IRA etc. during The Troubles. There are still a ton of signs to tell you that everything isn't quite alright up there, including the heavily fortified police stations, the police cars that look more like miniature tanks than land rovers and the numerous murals that are painted on almost every surface of the city. Walking around West Belfast you pass from Catholic neighbourhood to Protestant neighbourhood constantly with the only indication being the murals changing from IRA support to UFF support. The people didn't seem to mind two obvious outsiders walking through their close knit communities taking pictures of their artwork, but we were both happy to get out of there once the sun went down.

The two of us also travelled an hour or so out of Belfast to a quaint little village called Portaferry. Aside from acting as a reason for getting out of the city and into the Irish countryside, Portaferry is also the former home of a Mister John Scanlon, or the great great great grandpappy of yours truly. There were other nearby towns and cities with closer relations, but Portaferry seemed to be the most picturesque of them all. I had been told that Big John's gravestone was in the local cemetary, and so, upon arriving, we walked up to the Portaferry graveyard to try and find my resting ancestor. Unfortunately, after two hours of looking around, we came up empty handed. I eventually asked a few of the old men who seemed to be puttering about, and after calling over another old man, they held a council to decide what to do to help the lad from Canada. Much of their decision making was totally indecipherable to me as their countryside accents dipped to a level I didn't know existed. In the end it was decided that I should head over to the garage in town, turn left, walk down two houses and wake up old Ian ("cause he tends to sleep late ya know"), the undertaker. He could then provide me with some kind of index to the cemetary and help me find this Scanlon fellow's grave (which they had all claimed to have seen). I didn't actually follow up on their suggestion as I wasn't that inclined to do so, but regardless of finding the headstone, heading out to the little village was still a cool experience.

Yesterday we departed Belfast and bussed it south into the Republic of Ireland's capital, Dublin. The jury is still out on Dublin as it seems a little overpriced for what it's offering. After we leave this internet cafe, the two of us will be headed over to the Guinness Brewery for a tour of the drink that caused me so much pain this morning. I didn't think it was physically possible to drink more than 5 pints of the black stout in one sitting, but last night proved otherwise. Two more nights will be spent here before heading south to the city of Cork for our St. Patrick's day celebrations.

Kickin' it in the Kingdom

Foggy ole London town!

View overlooking Trafalgar square.

London, the city of reunions.

I see in my future...a naked Grouch.

The Grouch. SO much worse in person.

A meal INSIDE a yorkshire pudding! Brilliant!

Our B$G Firm already has an astounding collection of ASBO's.

Windy ole Brighton town.

Pint of shamrock engraved Guiness.

I must apologize for the lack of blog updates. England, as most know is ridiculously expensive and internet cafes are few and far between. I believe I left off in Germany so I shall continue my tale from there.

I had two final days in Berlin, spent much like the rest of my time there, walking around, listening to music and checking out the history side of things. Following that I jumped on a quick flight over to Jolly ole foggy London town.

Within an hour of arriving I was greeted by Mister Michael Lee, a travel partner from years ago (yet somehow I'm still on the same trip...) in the faraway lands of Central America. After a joyous reunion, we hopped on the Tube and made our way to the first pub we could find to catch up on the going ons since 2005. I spent the next two nights at Mike's parent's place (stereotypically located on Robin Hood Lane in southwest London). My one full day at their Coronation Street look-a-like house, was in the company of Mike's dad Eric, a retired British naval officer, who during our morning/afternoon together, brought me up to date on his hilarious opinions regarding Canada, Britain, Vancouver, Quebec, America, Rugby, Football, Hockey, Iraq, Afghanistan, Africa, Naval Ships, Royalty, Scots, Irish, Bush, Blair, Cats, Dogs, Computers, Celebrities, Meat Pies, Bangers & Mash and Mike. That night was spent with Mike and several of his 'mates', as we wandered through the Fulham district of London getting into trouble.

The next morning saw the arrival of Randy and Steve, two buddies from back home. Thanks to an unexpected headache, I wasn't as lively as I should have been, but once the first few pints were down this soon changed. After walking around a bit, we again hit the London nightlife, this time in the Soho district and with a new set of Mike's friends. After being denied access to a few places, closing down a few more places, we ended up at a nice club which had an astounding 10 pound cover charge (actually quite normal here, but still damn expensive). I thought something was wrong after buying my drinks and wondering why the two guys next to me couldn't take their hands off one another and I knew something was wrong when the male dancer came out and performed a nearly naked lapdance on a pole in front of us. On the principle of paying 10 quid to get in, we refused to leave the place, enjoying the rest of the night while getting steamy glances from our fellow club goers and at one point interrupting two who seemed to be having some kind of 'fight' in one of the bathroom stalls. Its probably better that alcohol has blurred my memories of this one.

The next day was spent doing some sightseeing, then another night out on the town with Steve's buddy from back home. After both of these nights, we would return to our hostel on the outskirts of central London to the awful personality known as the Grouch. For whatever reasons, this 60 year old was staying in a dingy hostel dorm room, chose to sleep naked and would periodically blurt out lines through the night as he slept in what must have been some kind of continuous, horrible nightmare. Although funny at first, the whiskey slurred yells of BAH and JESUS CHRIST ALMIGHTY were an awful remind of the naked, Scottish entity sleeping beside me.

We headed south out of London to the city of Brighton, which is situated right on the ocean and is probably the windiest place I've ever been. Not much to report from this place, other than it was sort of an English version of White Rock. Most of our time was spent leaning into the wind, eating at the pubs or simply enjoying our unusually pleasant hostel.

From there, the three of us returned to London, where Randy and I threw on some Beatles and jumped on a bus headed north to Liverpool (Steve went much farther south to Paris and will reunite with us next week). Liverpool isn't exactly the prettiest city, but it seems to make up for it in general fun. The bar district is among England's most famous and has helped continue our pub to pub tour of England. This morning we did a tour through the Beatles museum and are now awaiting to board our bus for Manchester.

Although not what one would expect really in a trip to England, probably my favourite part of the country has been the food. The pub atmosphere has created this perfect combination of pints of ale, mixed with Yorkshire puddings, sausages, roast beast and meat pies. We do find the constant surveillance of its citizens a little odd, but for the most part, aside from the brutalness of the Pound on my bank account, it's a great country.