The Worst Part of Traveling

Oh. My. Goodness.

I have spent the past three hours trying to plan how I'm going to get to Wales and Scotland in the next few months. I've already booked the big parts, like plane/ferry tickets and tours, but it's the getting-a-bus-to-go-to-the-city-itself part that's killing me.

For instance: My lovely 5-day tour of Scotland. Sounds great. Of course, since the plane tickets direct from Shannon to Edinburgh are sold out, I ended up booking from Dublin to Glasgow--and even then, I had to book a couple days in advance and then after the trip ends too. I'll have to find a hostel in Glasgow, then a bus to Edinburgh, then another hostel, then some more at the other end of the trip. It's such a nightmare!

The trip to Fishguard is going a little more smoothly. Martha and I settled on a date today, so I booked the ferry for April 25, which gives me one day after my finals finish to catch a bus to Wexford, where I'll find a hostel for the night, then hopefully make the only bus of the day to Rosslare Harbour so I can make the ferry. Please cross your fingers for me!!

Tomorrow I'm planning on going to the tourist office in Galway to see if they can help me make sure I've planned everything correctly so far and to book some more bus tickets that I need to get to Wexford/Dublin at various points. I've basically killed my budget at this point, and all on travel. It's a really good thing I'm not going to Europe now.

Besides that, today was pretty uneventful. I had three classes: the first was an exam, which was a complete joke--it took 5 minutes, and since the professor left, everyone cheated (meanwhile, there were 120 seats for 160 students...); then my Women's Studies professor gave us Easter candy and free t-shirts; and finally, my King Arthur professor rambled about the Holy Grail for a while. I was also supposed to go to an Archaeology Society lecture tonight, but it is so decidely nasty and windy and rainy and gross outside that I didn't go. It's a half hour walk to campus, then an hour to listen to some guy, then another half hour back in the dark and rain. No thanks.

Hmm...what else. Well, Jackie (the one I live with) gave me her copy of a guide to Scotland since I'll be going there twice. She and some other API kids went last month, but she said she won't need the map anymore. I might try to find a Wales/England map tomorrow, but maybe I'll just print some off while I'm printing my million tickets from online bookings.

Oh--I found out why Seamus, the guy from my King Arthur class, has such an odd accent. His parents are from Donegal (in the north of Ireland; people from there have a very distinctive accent) but he was raised in Australia and only recently came back to study at Galway when his parents moved back to Ireland. I knew he sounded Australian, but now I know why. It's funny--I try to guess who is Irish when I see people, since it's surprising just how many Americans there are here. You can sometimes tell by their faces and their clothes...and also by the way they write the date, use several colors of pen in their notes, etc. I feel like I'm stereotyping, but somehow they can tell when we're American too. I look very American, always. I went to use my umbrella yesterday, which I grabbed from the mud room at home and had never taken off the cover of before. Much to my horror, it's covered in blinding stars and stripes--as if I didn't look like a Yank already. I voted for having wet hair and depending on my raincoat rather than using it. Sorry Mom.

Tomorrow is my last day of classes! It's exciting, but I'm nervous about all the traveling I plan to do. I don't know the details of when and where we leave next week, we don't have any details for the U.K. trip the week after, I am scared of all the buses and hostels I need to find while I'm in Scotland, and jeez--I haven't even starting looking at visiting places in Ireland yet. If I make it home alive and sane, it will be a miracle.

I've got to go revise my last two papers so I can turn them in tomorrow, so for now it's good night.