ARDE LONDRES! (With Pictures!)

At about 4 am on Thursday November the 27th, Ellen and I woke up to the sound of an alarm in order to catch a flight to LONDON!! Anne (Ellen's mother) did another of her selfless acts by waking up with us and giving us a lift to the airport.

Around 8 am the same day we arrived at London Stansted Airport. To my surprise, I wasn't even asked for my passport; I just showed my boarding pass! Nuts! We then took a bus to Liverpool Street and had a quick bite to eat at a local Tesco market.

The rest of day 1 entailed loads of walking and sightseeing. We pretty much walked the entirety of London in one day. Walking by the Parliament, the Buckingham Palace, the Eye of London, the British Museum, briefly stopping by the National Portrait Gallery, Westminster Abbey and the Admiralty Arch. Late that afternoon we met Shiv (Ellen's friend), had a lovely dinner at an Italian restaurant and spent the night at her house. A lovely apartment on the outskirts of London.

Day 2 did not start until noon. We were quite exhausted to say the least. We still managed to get some touristy things done; we spent around 2 hours in the British Museum (poor Smithsonian!). This museum is absolutely fantastic! It is not only the size of a football stadium, but it's also overwhelmed with artifacts from virtually every civilization that ever set foot on Earth. This includes the Rosetta Stone, part of the beard of the Sphinx and a Statue of Cleopatra; among countless Greek, Assyrian, Chinese, Roman and other civilization's artifacts. I must remark the fact that there is quite a bit of controversy regarding the actual ownership of these items. Many countries are starting to claim ownership of these items and it seems that quite a few of them will be returned soon enough. But, until then, if you would like to have man's history at your fingertips, the British Museum is the place to go.

The rest of the afternoon entailed a bit of shopping at Mango (a Spanish clothing store) and meeting Shiv and Elaine (another of Ellen's friend, who went to London for the weekend) for a drink at a British bar and dinner at Garfunkel's.

On our last day in London, Ellen wanted to do some shopping while I wanted to continue my adventures in the British Museum. So, splitting up seemed to be the most diplomatic solution. And so it came to pass and that is what we did. Ellen, Elaine and Shiv went shopping while I stayed at the Museum. I got a free tour through the Assyrian civilization and some of the late Greek periods, LOVELY!

Before meeting the rest of the crew, I decided to complete my visit to London with a brief stop at the Tower of London and the Tower Bridge. Spectacular scenery. This part of London is far less crowded than the downtown area and inhabited by tiny coffee and candy shops. A nice place to relax and wind down a bit.

The Queen's Home

The Parliament

My man!

Just guess...

Nuts!

The British Museum

Landscape view of London

Old old!

Eye of London watching us!

A recent addition to the London landscape.

Tower Bridge.

A few things about London

London is one of the most beautiful cities I've ever been to. It is loaded with historical sites as well as the highest-end-shops in the world. The landscape is a homogeneous mixture of 1000 year old building and strikingly modern skyscrapers. The City of London (or The City) is about a square mile and only 6,000 people reside in it, while about 300,000 people commute to London for work purposes everyday. The subway system (the Underground) is quite efficient and stretches for many many miles outside the city limits. This is quite an international city (very much like D.C.), you really can't walk a few yards without hearing a language other than English. It was also notable the amount of Spanish and Italian tourists; there were actually loads of Italians working in London, I'm not quite sure why that is.

I was fortunate enough to visit London while the British pound was at it's lowest in about a decade. A good meal at a good restaurant could range from £10 to £15 (15 to 23 dollars), while a subway 3-day ticket costs £17 (25 dollars).

Londoners are lovely people, really! They go out of their way to help you in any way possible. En fin, lovely city, food and people. A must visit place! Pictures to come soon!

Immigration Issues Solved!

After a few minutes at the Garda Station I was given permission to stay in the country for 90 days!! The immigration officer at the station was lovely. She asked me for an address of stay and a phone number; I knew neither of those things. Nonetheless, she just smiled at me and stamped my passport with a 90 day pass. YEY!!!

The Irish

I have decided that I should write a few lines about the Irish culture, language and country. Let's first start with the Irish version of the English language. To be honest, their written form is surprisingly similar to that of the UK; no news there. Nonetheless, the spoken form is quite different!

NOTE: my subjects are inhabitants of the city of Limerick; accents, cultures and such change as you move around Ireland.

The accent is one of the main differences; I must apologize to the readers, but there is absolutely no way I may describe the accent, even less reproduce it. Another difference can be seen in their expressions. For example, the younger generation has some expressions that the older doesn't. Expression such as putting like at the end of a sentence; this is analogous to America, where something rather similar is done (in which case "like" is placed at the beginning of a sentence).

Example:

"The weather is nice; I might go for a run, like."

"Like," is nothing but a space filler and can be removed from any sentence without any harm whatsoever. The older generations, as well as the younger ones, also use "so" at the end of a sentence. This is also a space filler and plays no mayor role in the grammatical structure of their English.

Example:

"Go on, so." or "Will you fix that for me, so?"

Expressions

There are several expressions used, commonly, everywhere in Ireland. For example, to be "taking the piss" means to be "joking around" or "f!@£$%^& around."

Example:

Fellow 1: "I failed the test."

Fellow 2: "Are you taking the piss? You have got to be taking the piss!"

Also, "your man" and "your one" refer to "that man" and "that woman" in a sentence.

Example:

"Did you hear about your man Bush the other day?"

"Your one, Hillary, is absolutely nuts!"

Notice that the person being referred to may be known personally, by either the speaker and/or the listener, or not.

The next expression may seem a bit strange to many American English speakers. It is commonly refereed to the "craic" (pronounced like "crack") as the fun in Ireland. When placed accordingly in a sentence this word might seems a bit extreme.

Example:

"Where is the craic?" Pronounced as: "where is the crack?" (see what I mean?)

There is a big difference between the Irish and the U.K. use of the word "grand." In the U.K. "grand" is commonly utilized to refer to an event or thing that is above average, maybe even outstanding. While in the Irish English it means okay, yes just okay.

Example

"My day was grand." "That movie was grand, like."

There are, almost, a countless number of other Irish expressions in existence. Although, I feel that I have remarked the most important or most common ones so far.

Gaelach

Irish (Irish Gaelic) is one of the, only, four remaining Celtic languages (Scots Gaelic, Breton and Welsh are the other three); Celtic languages are a sub-family of the Indo-European family of languages. Before the Germanic invasions of the British and Irish islands, the were many Celtic tribes with their own languages and cultures. There are written records of almost 10 other forms of Celtic languages.
Nowadays, there are very few areas of Ireland where Irish is used as the primary language. And not even a decade ago Irish was considered to be on the very verge of extinction. Nonetheless, quite recently, there has been some effort done by the Irish government in order to bring Irish Gaelic back from the dark side; similar efforts have been seen in Scotland, Wales and France. These efforts include bilingual public signs, all Irish schools and funding for students majoring in Irish.
I have come to appreciate the beauty of this language and decided I would really like to learn some of it. Quite frankly, I have no idea how far I will get but I have the moral support of the Murphy family; as well as their knowledge of the language.

Arrival!

I have successfully set foot on Irish territory! The flight was grand (about 6 hours); an absolutely packed flight though.

As usual, I had to deal with some immigration problems. The Irish immigration authorities (a lady in a terrible mood) decided to only give me 20 days of stay in Ireland. This was since I had no return flight?!?!?!? Her concern regarding my stay in Ireland was focused, mainly, on the possibility that I might decide to stay in Ireland and work, illegally. Let me expand on this topic a bit further. My passport is a collection of Visas and stamps from, practically, everywhere in Europe and South America. In particular it can be easily seen that I had studied in the US for about 5 years. Moreover, it can also be appreciated that I have visited Ireland a handful of times; in both cases I have given a legal address of visit to the Irish authorities (which turns out to be quite the same as this one). After a few, intense, minutes of conversation with the immigration officer I was allowed to extend my stay in the country if and only if I can show proof that I will leave the country eventually. This can be done at any local Garda station (police station). I shall do so tomorrow, since I will be flying to London on Thursday and must be sure that I can enter the country safely. It never ends!!!

And now, the weather: Ireland greeted me with some lovely weather. Although, I must admit, I have been informed (and pa, pay attention) that the weather in Ireland through out this year has been particularly rainy and cold. Notice that this was said and confirmed by Irish citizens whom are quite accustomed to rainy weather; which leaves me with one question: will I get to  experience sun light while in Ireland?

As for future plans, we will be heading to London on Thursday and coming back on Saturday. Needless to say, we will be providing our readers with some pictures as a form of proof. Hope everyone is doing well, more to come.