Not Hadrian's Wall

Wow. I did not realise that it has been 12 days since I last posted a blog. That'll tell you how busy I have been. :) I love it here. Glasgow has become like another home for me.

Last weekend Annie, Sean, and I went to England to see Hadrian's Wall. We took the train on Friday afternoon to Edinburgh and hopped on another train to Newcastle. When we arrived in Newcastle, it was already dark so there wasn't too much that we could see. We decided to explore the nightlife, which Newcastle is notorious for. We checked into our hostel, Albatross Backpackers Inn, which was right down the street from the train station. The hostel was really nice. While walking around the city we found a mall that was more like a huge two-floor club. The restaurants there were even playing loud music. I loved it. We ate at the TGI Fridays there. Annie and I split a plate of boneless buffalo wings and a chicken, bacon sandwhich. So good to have buffalo wings again. :) The people there were crazy on the streets. Lots of people dressed in costumes, whom we giggled at and also saw a few people get sick on the street, whom we also giggled at. A guy came over to us after we said we from the US. He had to shake our hands. He was excited to meet us. He was kind of sketchy at first until his extremely intoxicated friend came over and we all had a good chuckle at his expense.

We did quite a bit of walking around and we decided to head back to the hostel at 11pm so we could get up earlier the next day and start our travel along Hadrian's wall. Annie and I found a couple of TV rooms downstairs. I loved the stone look of the basement. Annie and I thuroughly enjoyed being down there, so I called Sean to get out of bed and come join us. We watched a bit of Dirty Dancing: Havanna Nights. (DUMB) After a bunch of rowdy guys came down to play pool, we decided to go upstairs and hit the hay only to find that we wouldn't be able to sleep anyway. A large group of people were constantly warned they would be thrown out if they didn't keep it down. But, their barks were worse than their bites. We got maybe a total of an hour or two of good sleep. We got up at 9am and had complimentary tea and toast and also leftover buffalo wings in the kitchen whilst we decided our plans for the day. We found that there was a Roman fort in South Shields, just 20 minutes East of Newcastle by Subway. We weren't a fan of South Shields, but liked the Roman Fort, Arbeia. They reconstructed a lot of it, which was nice but we kind of agreed that it should have just been kept the way they found it.

When we got back to the Newcastle train station, we bought our train tickets for the day so we could hop on and off the train as much as we want between there and Carlisle. We stopped first at a village called, Hexham. It was a very lovely town. We bought sandwhich meat, cheese, and bread at the local food store to make sandwiches. We explored the town a bit and visited the Hexham Abbey. Absolutely beautiful inside. I even lit a candle and said a prayer while we were there. When we found the visitor's center, we found out that the Hadrian's wall tour actually didn't start until the end of March. The train doesn't go to the wall itself, you have to get off in these little towns and catch buses to the wall. The buses weren't running. But, the lady was really nice and told us that there was a Roman fort that we should go to in Corbridge. It'd be an easy walk from the train station. So, we did.

When we got off the train in Corbridge, I dropped a fiver down below the bridge in a gated area, we went around the gates where Annie jumped it and grabbed my money for me. Phew. :) It was about a 10 minute walk to the village of Corbridge. Corbridge was an even more lovely place. We took the scenic route and walked along the river to get to the Roman site. It was about 15 minutes to get there and we got there with 1/2 hour left before closing. We had the whole place to ourselves to look at it and take our time exploring and we also had free audio guides which had sound affects, giving us a feel of what we might have been hearing if we were really there during the Roman invasion of Breton. (Britain) Hehe, I am actually learning in my Celtic Civilisations class.

We were extremely tired after that and hopped back on the train to Carlisle. When we got to Carlisle we found out that they don't actually have trains from Carlisle to Glasgow. You have to hop on a bus to Lockerbie and get on the train there to Glasgow. We didn't stay in Carlisle for very long, because we were exhausted and it was dark and it was starting to rain. When we got back to Glasgow, I stayed with Annie that night at Cairncross because Liane was in Ireland and her bed was free. :D I actually spent the whole weekend with Annie, which was a nice break from being in Murano Street.

So, that's the jist of my weekend in England. Tomorrow, my friend Lauren from Stout is coming to visit me. She arrives in Edinburgh and will be in Glasgow around 10am and we are going to catch a plane to Dublin, Ireland. We are going to stay in Dublin the first night and then we are going to the other coast and staying in a smaller town of Galway for two nights, and visiting the Cliffs of Moher. Then spending Tuesday (St. Patrick's Day) back in Dublin and catching our flight back to Glasgow on Wednesday morning. I'm gonna have to get a lot of rest tonight, because I'm going to be wiped after this trip.

Here are my uploaded albums to Facebook from my trip.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2041764&id=215700014&l=b2f56
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2041795&id=215700014&l=7fa1c

Cheers!