Heaven with Adam Lambert

On Saturday night, Mika, Jess, Rachel, and I went down to Charing Cross to go back to Heaven, aka G-A-Y, to go see Adam Lambert. After heading into the club around 11pm, we took our spot on the main floor and started to wait until 2am when Adam Lambert came on stage. By 1am, the crowd was getting beyond packed and inebriated making for a hilariously good time. By 2am, it was absolute insanity, until Adam came out at 2am. He came out and did a good half hour set, but then headed back offstage after his set was over. After the crazy performance, we stayed around for about two more hours, dancing on the stage and just being crazy. At 4:30am, we all headed to the N5 by Trafalgar Square and got back to Colindale around 5:45am and finally got to bed around 8am.

Hyde Park Ramblings + Heaven

So, after turning in two papers this week, Jess, Mika, and I headed into the city on Tuesday to officially go to the Natural Science museum to go look at the Dinosaurs that we keep on missing every time I have been thus far. So, we descended on the tube towards Marble Arch and arrived at Hyde Park. As it was beyond gorgeous thanks to the Iceland volcano, we ultimately spent about three hours rambling around the park taking pictures and just goofing off. After a couple of hours, we just decided to head back to the dorms to get ready to go back out, ultimately, we never actually left the dorms. Haha.

Fast-forward a few days, the same group headed out to our final weekend in London together to go clubbing at the infamous Heaven nightclub, down by Charing Cross station at around 11pm. From everything that we have been told about this club, we have heard its amazing if you can get through the security and front desk. They wind up basing your cover charge based on who you are and when you arrive. We happened to arrive half an hour after opening and were admitted after a very thorough pat-down, at least on my part, and headed to the register. After entering, its hard to not notice how massive the place is. There is like 5 rooms, over two levels, which is relatively insane for a London nightclub. After coat checking, which was only £1, shockingly, we more or less meandered for the next couple hours between the two floors and the several rooms. Apart from the numerous ass-grabs, I would say it was a very successful night. We headed out around 4:30am towards the Tesco Express to grab some muchies and drinks for the neverending ride back to Colindale aboard the N5 from Trafalgar Square. At around 5:30am, we were back to dorms greeted with the newly rising sun and the silly British birds who are consistently confused on when it is appropriate to start singing each day.

Eyjafjallajökull Volcano

Well, it has been an interesting past couple of days here in the UK. On Thursday, this volcano under this glacier in Iceland decided to erupt sending ash everywhere. Well, after four days, the volcano is still erupting and sending tons of ash into the atmosphere effectively closing almost all of the European Airspace, meaning that any air travel is pretty much halted. Well, this is kinda bad since the volcano supposedly has no sign of stopping anytime soon and the UK is by far one of the countries being hit the hardest by the volcanic ash. So, right now, I'm starting to worry about our plans for traveling the rest of the summer. At this point, we can use the trains, but honestly, the trains just take such a long time that it is starting to annoy me considerably that this is happening. Hopefully, in the next couple of days, the ash will dissipate and airspace will open up. Until then, I'm just going to post a bunch of pretty pictures of the now infamous volcano that no one can pronounce. :)

Ireland

First Day – April 8^th,

We left Colindale at around 2:30am in order to catch the N5, heading towards Brent Cross in order to catch the EasyBus to Luton airport. After arriving at the airport, we headed towards the RyanAir desk in order to complete a random passport check and headed to the terminal. After a rather short flight on the somewhat sketchy RyanAir plane, we landed in Dublin about 45 minutes later. We went through customs quickly and wound up getting this ridiculously large stamp from Dublin. After leaving the airport and taking an AirExpress bus into the center of town, we arrived on O’Connell street and headed towards the hostel for the first night – the Four Courts Hostel. We ultimately wound up checking in and then meandered around for a couple of hours taking in the Dublin scenery. After a couple of hours wandering, we finally managed to make it to the Guinness Storehouse and moved around it for about two hours. We received our free Guinness and choked it down unconvincingly. After leaving the Guinness factory, we ended up getting dinner. We wound up visiting Christ Church and St. Patrick's Cathedral, ultimately paying some money to see the cathedral. Ultimately, the price wasn't worth the admission as the outside wound up being more beautiful than the inside. After a long walk back, we finally headed towards the hostel to get a good nights rest before the early morning tour.

St. Patrick's Cathedral

Chester Beatty Memorial

Second Day – April 9^th,

After waking up very early, we headed to Heuston train station to get onboard the train headed towards Limerick. We ultimately took part in Viator railtours and had the most adorable old Irishman as our tour guide. It literally made the entire trip. After taking the early 6am train towards Limerick, we arrived about two hours later only to hop onto another bus. The bus wound up taking us to Bunratty Castle, an old Irish castle. The castle was impressive from the outside, with a mock up of how the feudal system was in the surrounding lands. The inside was very sparse, but had some very interesting rooms located throughout the upper levels, which were actually somewhat difficult and cool to get to. After the adventure at the castle, we headed back to the bus, which took us to this quaint little Irish village for lunch. After getting somewhat refreshed, we were back on the bus heading to the Cliffs of Moher. About an hour later, we were at the Cliffs of Moher, which were impressive. The cliffs were insanely high and the seaspray was coating us. We wound up climbing both the touristy path and also the more "dangerous" side, which was without the railing. Either way, the hiking was amazing and the views even more spectacular. After retreating back to the bus, we were onwards to the Burren, a rocky place that borders the ocean. It was billed as the lunar surface of the Ireland and was pretty cool climbing over all these rocks, and braving the ocean to the side. After a good bit, we were back to the bus heading towards the final destination of Galway. With only about an hour in Galway, the best decision was to just grab some dinner there, ultimately not seeing too much outside of the main train station. After about an hour or two on the train, we were back in Dublin Heuston Station, and headed towards the second hostel, Isaac's Hostel.

Third Day – April 10^th

After another night at Isaacs Hostel, we headed for Connolly Station to take the highspeed train to Belfast. The train was relatively smooth for the 2.5hrs that it took to arrive in Belfast. After arriving around lunch time and grabbing a big lunch at some craft store, we meandered around Belfast, trying to scope out anything interesting. Happens to chance that we were in Belfast during the 98th anniversary of the Titanic sinking. So in order to commemorate the fatal crash, the entire town was decked out with exhibitions and the like. We casually made our way to the docks to check out this Titanic harbor cruise. After £6 later, the sailing was kinda a wash in that it was relatively boring and uninformative. The ship kinda just made a big loop around the harbor spouting off facts about Belfast, barely showing anything Titanic related. After a good hour or so wasted there, we came across the most interactive bathroom ever. After 20p, the machine opens up all futuristically and gives audio commands on how to pee, literally. After your visit, it washes everything in the self contained stall. It was kinda neat. After that excitement, we headed back to center and grabbed some dinner from Marks and Spencer and sat around the Town Hall watching the locals congregate. About an hour later, we headed back to the train station where we boarded the train back to Connolly train station. However the trip was completely hilarious due to three very intoxicated Irish women and our almost empty train cabin. We arrived back in Dublin around 10 o'clock and headed to bed around midnight.

Fourth Day – April 11^th

The next day, we took an OverTheTop tour to the Wicklow Mountains and Glendalough. We left Dublin around 9am headed into the mountains of Ireland. After spending about 30minutes in the mini-van, we were already in the Irish country side looking at the winding hills. For about the next three hours or so, we came across rolling hill after hill on the most beautiful day we had the entire time in Dublin, which ironically was sunshine every day. After hiking to all these different fun little lakes and getting muddy, we were back in the van heading to this small little village for lunch. After lunch, we were on the way to a waterfall on the way to Glendalough. The waterfall was more or less a river down the mountainside, but it was still neat to see all the sheep surrounding it too. After a while, we finally made it Glendalough, apart from about every Dubliner there to enjoy the sun. Glendalough is basically a large park with an old monastery that has a very interesting history. We explored the old ruins and then took to the paths to hike some more. We wound up going to both lakes and then ventured our way to the waterfall. Ultimately, my clutzy side took over and I slide down part of the hill coming down from the waterfall, but otherwise, it was a very good stop on the tour. After about an hour on the bus, we were back in Dublin ready to venture out to the Temple Bar district to see the nightlife. After taking a gander at the prices of dinner, we ultimately headed back to Isaac's and hit up a SPAR to make dinner.

Fifth Day – April 12^th

On the final day in Dublin, we checked out and lockered our bags at Isaacs hostel setting out for the 11am free walking tour of Dublin. We meet up with the tour guide outside of City Hall and ultimately wound up getting a really interesting look at everything from a Dubliner's prospective. We ultimately went around and saw all the highlights that Dublin has to offer within the scope of about three hours, including Trinity College that we didn't get to visit earlier in the week. After the tour, we headed to Connolly train station to get on the DART train system to go to the coast prior to going to the airport. We wound up getting on the train and about half an hour we were by the coast. We ultimately decided to keep going past Booterstown and just saw the ocean and the beach from the station. After about an hour running around on the trains, we had to head back into Dublin to grab our bags and get on the AirExpress bus back to the airport to catch our RyanAir flight back to London Luton.