Tentative Itinerary for Ireland

38 days and counting!

Okay, so thanks to the magic of couchsurfing.com, I am officially staying in Ireland totally for free! Here's a breakdown by date of where I'll be and what I'll be doing:

June 29: Arrive in Dublin. I'm staying with Ronan and his two housemates near Dublin city center for two nights while I do all my initial touristy things, and have arranged to meet up with several others who have offered to show me around. This is the fun part: meeting people and seeing Ireland with the locals!

July 1: Leave Dublin for Cork to see Blarney Castle (and the Blarney Stone, obviously). I'm going with Jenny, another Cambridge program participant, and her friend. We've given ourselves two full days to travel back and forth, with a full day to sightsee. Apparently, hitchhiking is legal and quite common in the more rural areas of Ireland, so we're going to give it a go once we get outside of Cork. I'm currently reading Tom Robbins' Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, which is about a girl with a natural talent for hitchhiking, so it's pretty appealing to me, even more so that it's illegal and generally unsafe in the States. You only live once, right? If I get sliced up by a traveling serial killer, at least I'll be out in the gorgeous green hills of Ireland when I die. We are currently looking for a Couchsurfing host in Cork, but it shouldn't be too difficult to find one.

July 3: Back in Dublin, and this is the only night I don't have a host yet. I'll either extend my stay with one of my two other hosts, or I'll find someone who can put me up for a night. There are SO MANY couchsurfers in Dublin, it should be a breeze!

July 4: Staying with Mick for the rest of my time in Dublin. He's promised to do something special to help me celebrate the 4th of July, even though fireworks are probably out of the question. I'll be fine with a hot dog and a Budweiser, and will probably run into some of the many American backpackers in the city for a proper holiday!

July 7: Doing a sail-rail combo to get me from Dublin to Cambridge. It'll be an all-day journey, but a scenic and worthwhile one. Several other Cambridge students will be joining Jenny and me on the 6th, and we're traveling as a group out of Ireland. We'll take a ferry from Dublin to Holyhead, Wales, and from there take a train (or several) to get to Cambridge. The ferry takes about two hours, and the train about 6, so we'll catch some great scenery along the way and have time to chat and get to know each other before we arrive at the University. If we time everything just right, we'll arrive in Cambridge that night just in time to see the Olympic Torch passing through. This means extra tourists and crowded buses, but it's worth it for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. We can't check in to Caius until after noon on the 8th, so we'll likely split the cost of a B&B or just find a hostel in the area. Pointless to try and couchsurf when you're a group of nine people.

July 8: Arrive at Gonville and Caius, already with tons of travel stories and new friends to start the semester out with a bang!

Staying with local hosts along the way will guarantee that I have Internet access to write blog posts, so expect frequent updates from Ireland. It will be rather spotty when I get to England, but I will do my best to keep on top of my updates.

Summer in Cambridge

As of this writing, there are 57 days left until I grab my backpack and set out on yet another adventure. This time it'll be six weeks in England, studying at Cambridge University, preceded by a week or so in Dublin and interspersed with a few weekends of leisure travel in and around England, with a possible trip to Paris or Prague.

I've always wanted to do a semester abroad, and now in my senior year of college I'm finally making it happen. You can't do much better than Cambridge, the number one university in the world, especially for an English Literature major. Among Cambridge's literary alumni are John Milton, William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, and A.A. Milne, to name but a few. I'll be staying at Gonville and Caius College, founded in 1348, and will have the opportunity to experience Cambridge student life while studying Shakespeare, J.M. Barrie, Lewis Carroll, and Phillip Pullman. I'll travel to London to see the 2012 Summer Olympic Games, to Stratford to see two Shakespeare plays in performance, and to Grantchester to have tea at the Orchard, where Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group spent their summers. I can't imagine a more perfect summer for an English student!

Right now I'm in the planning phase: making packing lists, sorting out airfare and rail tickets, and soaking up as much information about Cambridge as possible. It's the end of Spring Semester now at UAB, and my enthusiasm for the coming summer has become quite a distraction from the paper-writing and studying that should be consuming my time these days.

Right now, my travel plans are as follows: I fly from Birmingham, AL to Chicago, IL on June 28th for a long layover with an old friend before setting off for Dublin. I arrive in Dublin early the next morning, and will be there until July 6th or 7th. As a new "Joycean", I'm disappointed to be missing the great Bloomsday celebration, but I'll make up for it by exploring Sandymount Strand, the James Joyce Museum, and taking the Leopold Bloom walking tour through Dublin. I'll also visit the Guinness Brewery, the Jameson Distillery, and Trinity College to see the Book of Kells. From Dublin, I'll take a ferry and a train straight to Cambridge, and from there, my plans will probably be made on a day-by-day basis. I hope to explore England, as I've never really been out of London before and I'd love to see the English countryside. I also hope to travel to Europe, possibly to re-visit Paris (it's close and familiar) or explore Prague (I've wanted to go there for ages), or possibly somewhere else.

I'll try to update as much as possible, with pictures and stories, or you can keep up with me via Facebook. If you'd like my mobile number, e-mail or inbox me and I'll be glad to hear from you! I will post sporadically as my plans solidify, until June 29 when I arrive in Dublin. I'd love to be able to bring gifts back for everyone, but as my funds are extremely limited, I'll have to settle for postcards. If you'd like some real mail this summer, e-mail me your address and I'll be sure to send you something!