Since I’d been in a tizzy, I now had over an hour to kill before I needed to be at the bus station. I ended up going to Buchanan Street and listening to some of the buskers. It was really nice to be able to enjoy my cup of tea and listen to some music before I got on the bus.

I haven’t traveled by bus in the states since the summer of 1996, so I don’t know what it’s like these days. I was surprised by how many people travel by bus in the UK. I suppose it makes sense here. Not as many people own cars, and it’s cheaper than flying. The buses here are very nice, as well.

I sat on the wrong side of the bus from Glasgow to Manchester. I’d forgotten that all the road signs and scenery would be out the left side windows. It was still a nice trip. We drove through southern Scotland and the Lake District. We also stopped for lunch at a wayside, where I had the best potpie of my entire life.

The trip from Manchester to Liverpool was much shorter than I expected. My sense of distances is all askew. We arrived in Liverpool just in time for rush hour. I was immediately struck by how similar Liverpool seemed to Belfast. The architecture and atmosphere were very similar. It makes sense, though. They’re both port cities, and they both used to house enormous shipyards.

The hostel in Liverpool was a renovated church. It had also served as a boys home at one point. There was weird ambient music piped into all of the common spaces, and the lighting in the dining room was odd. The bathroom was huge and clean, however, so I was more than content. I went down the street to the Tesco and got some dinner, then tried to find a laundromat. I had no luck. I stayed up quite late, talking with one of my roommates about the financial crisis in Ireland and the United States.

The next morning, I got an early start. I walked down to the docks, to see the Mersey River. Once again, I was surprised by the size of something. Though I knew Liverpool was a port and had shipyards, I hadn’t thought about how big the river would have to be. In Liverpool, the Mersey is about as wide as the Mississippi River is in New Orleans. There aren’t any bridges over it, though, so it seems a bit wider. I got to the river just as they were loading the ferry to Belfast. It’s a massive boat, nearly as big as the cruise ships that dock in New Orleans.

I went to the new Liverpool museum, which opened July 19. It’s a very interesting building right on the riverfront. Like all the museums in Liverpool, admission is free. I learned a lot while I was there. For example, I didn’t know that one of the oldest Chinatowns in Europe is in Liverpool. It’s all to do with the shipping. There were also riots in Liverpool in the 60s that I’d never heard about. I want to do some more reading about that.

Of course, there were lots of things about The Beatles. They had the suits they wore on the Ed Sullivan show. They also had John and Yoko’s bedspread from their honeymoon. The good thing was that they had lots of things from other Liverpool musicians like Cilla Black and Gerry and the Pacemakers.

From the museum, I walked past the three most famous buildings in Liverpool. They sit right next to one another along the waterfront. They are the Port of Liverpool building, the Cunard building, and the Royal Liver building. The Royal Liver was my favorite, not only because of the name, but because it has statues of birds on the top. Surprisingly, I didn’t see any live birds perched up there.

I walked up the hill, past City Hall to Matthew Street, which is where The Cavern Club was. It still is, I suppose. The original Cavern Club, where The Beatles played 222 shows closed in 1973. They were going to build an underground station in that location, which never happened. They destroyed the building, and when they wanted to rebuild it, they figured out that the site couldn’t support the building they wanted to put there. So now there’s s fancy apartment building on the site of the original Cavern Club, and the new one is two doors down. It was still interesting to see.

I sat and wrote some postcards in an area they call Liverpool 1. It’s sort of an outdoor shopping area combined with an entertainment complex and park. Scattered through it, they have a bunch of pianos that anyone is welcome to sit down and play. While I was sitting there, I heard “Heart and Soul” about fifteen times. I also heard “Fur Elise” and “The Entertainer.” It’s a pretty cool idea, when you think about it.

I was in a mood to keep walking, so I decided to head for Liverpool Cathedral. On my way there, I passed an old church called St. Luke’s. It was heavily damaged during the Blitz. Instead of tearing it down, they left the shell of the building and keep the gardens maintained. It’s actually quite beautiful. There are lilac bushes growing out the windows.

Liverpool Cathedral was started in 1904 and completed in 1978. It is the second largest Anglican cathedral in Europe. (I’m guessing the largest is St. Paul’s in London.) The cemetery around the back is called the St. James Garden. It is the coolest cemetery I’ve seen in the UK. I really hope my photos turned out.

After all that walking around, I had a decent curry and headed back to the hostel. I was leaving in the morning for Cardiff.

The train was a mob scene. I was glad I was early, because I found a seat. People who came after me weren’t so lucky. It was standing room only for the duration of the trip. Nobody seemed to mind. Some younger guys had brought beers along, and sat on the floor in the aisle, drinking and teasing one of their friends. It wasn’t until the journey was half over that I noticed that most of the people on the train with me were men.

It’s only about 50 minutes on the train from Edinburgh to Glasgow. The Queen Street station was twice as busy as Waverley had been an hour previously. I followed the signs to the subway entrance and was met by a bunch of police officers directing people where to go. I got in line to buy a ticket, and the guys behind me started singing songs and chanting things about the Glasgow Rangers. There were two boys standing in front of me with their dad. Finally, I couldn’t resist asking one of them, “who are the Glasgow Rangers?”

The kid looked at me like I was the stupidest woman he’d ever met. “They’re a football team, aren’t they?” His dad smiled and asked where I was from. “You’re obviously not from here,” he laughed.

A moment later, the police yanked the chanting guys behind me out of line. They’d been passing around a bottle of whiskey, a behavior I was told was “bang out of line.” I couldn’t believe it. I’d been in the presence of real Scottish soccer hooligans, and I hadn’t even known it.

I had to walk to the hotel. The subway didn’t go as far south as I needed to go, and the buses were running on a special schedule. I didn’t mind. It was a sunny day and the hotel was only supposed to be 2.2 miles. Unfortunately, the iPad walking directions were crap. It took me much longer than it should have. When I arrived, they let me check in early.

The best part: I had my own room!

I went across the street to Queens Park and enjoyed the sun for a while. Then I got some dinner and went back to the hotel. I fell asleep ridiculously early, happy that I didn’t have to climb anything to get into bed.

Sunday was pretty quiet. I went in search of somewhere to print out my bus ticket to Liverpool, but couldn’t find any place that was open. I took some pictures around the city center, browsed though some bookshops and spent most of the afternoon in the park across the street from my hotel, reading. It was great. I fell asleep early again, watching the BBC news report on the killings in Oslo and the death of Amy Winehouse.

I felt drunk with reading as I walked through the airport. I could understand every headline and sign. It was great after a week of struggling to comprehend the words written all around me. I got my bag, got on the bus to the city center and promptly got off at the wrong stop. Thankfully, Edinburgh is a fairly compact city. It was also rush hour, so I could see the bus way off in the distance and sort of trailed it until I got my bearings.

My hostel is just off the Royal Mile, about midway between Edinburgh Castle and Hollyrood Palace. It’s very nice, very clean, and the bathroom and shower are separate. The whole room smells like Axe body spray because I am the only woman in an 8-person dorm. That might change today, because some people left and I’m sure others are coming in for the weekend. The guy in the bunk below mine got lucky last night. How I wish I didn’t know that.

I’ve done a lot of walking in Edinburgh. I went to the top of Arthur’s Seat yesterday. That’s a dormant volcano in what used to be the Queen’s private hunting grounds. Today I went to the top of Calton Hill, which is where the National Monument is. They were trying to build a replica of the Parthenon up there, but ran out of money and ended up with about 1/4 of a Parthenon. The view was beautiful. I watched the rain blow in from the east, which was fantastic.

As you can imagine, there’s lots of plaid, I mean different Tartans, and there are a lot of bagpipers. I think I’ve heard enough bagpipes to last me until next St. Patrick’s Day. The people here are friendly. Last night I went to a pub quiz and ended up on a team with a woman from New York. We had a great time, though we didn’t even place in the results. The “name that tune” round was our undoing. Did you know there’s an Elton John/Tupac song out there? We certainly did not. Surprisingly, we did well in the sports category.

Tomorrow I head to Glasgow for a couple of days. I’m really excited because I was able to book a single! For two nights, I don’t have to overhear other people’s sex lives, see their underwear, or negotiate a time to recharge my camera battery! It’s going to be fantastic.

Meanwhile, I’m going to get a shower while my roommates are gone. I was eating a sandwich next to the Scott Memorial today, and a huge seagull whacked me in the head with it’s wing and then took my sandwich out of my hand. For a minute I thought I was Tippy Hedron. Then I realized I was merely the lunch entertainment for the locals and tourists lunching in the park. It’s always good to remember your place in the world.

I had a three-course lunch in the Latin Quarter at a beautiful little restaurant that had a clear canopy over the courtyard where I sat. The filet of salmon was delicious. The Coke was warm and served without ice. The waiter called me Shakespeare because I read as I ate. I had just visited Shakespeare & Co., and couldn’t wait to dive into the book I’d gotten there.

Meanwhile, back at the D’Artagnan Hostel, things weren’t going so well. The bathroom was tiny, the shower was gross, and sharing it with eight other people was a bit of a challenge. Some of my roommates were also using the bathroom as their personal laundry room. So I stood there morning and night, brushing my teeth amongst the drying unmentionables of my cohorts. I took showers in the middle of the night, when no one else was vying for the bathroom.

I also walked into the drama of someone else’s life, simply because I spoke English. It all started out innocuously enough. I was sitting on my bunk, writing postcards on the evening of July 15. A couple of people had already gone to sleep. Two women I hadn’t met yet came in. We started talking for a few minutes, when a third woman came in. We all introduced ourselves, and went back to our respective tasks. About 15 minutes later the last woman that came in started asking us where we were from. I told her I was from the states, and went back to writing.

The quiet lasted for about ten more minutes. Then Ms. M started a soliloquy that was a bit difficult to follow. Part of it was about how scary and violent the United States are. Part of it was about serial killers. Part of it was about the appropriate age for one to lose their virginity. The other three of us traded looks, tried to be polite but non-committal, and tried to go about our business. But Ms. M was not going to be denied. She kept talking and talking. Finally I couldn’t handle it any more, so I went and took a shower.

By the time I came back, Ms. M had pretty thoroughly freaked out the other two that were awake. It turns out Ms. M had set out for Paris from Krakow 14 days previously. She didn’t really have a plan, and she didn’t really have much money. She had slept on the couch in another hostel’s reception area for a few days before a friend had wired her some money. Now she didn’t know what to do. She was running low on funds, but didn’t want to go back to Krakow. None of us had any great suggestions, so we all went to bed.

The fire alarm went off at 4 a.m. that morning. Most of the women in my room got up and left the building. Ms. M didn’t even wake up until someone turned the light on as she left the room. I was putting on my shoes and helping another roommate find her glasses. Ms. M didn’t want to leave the room, but I insisted that she come downstairs with us. We stood outside for an hour while the alarm continued tripping every time they shut it off. The fire department finally came (French firefighters wear helmets that make them look like Apollo astronauts). Ms. M talked the entire time. I was only partially paying attention, and sort of nodding along. Eventually we got the all clear, and went back to bed.

I woke to find that I’d unwittingly made a Paris friend. Ms. M was determined that we should be besties. The more I learned about her situation, the more confused I became. I couldn’t get a straight answer out of her, and she seemed to think that as long as she went to the Polish or American Embassy (she was a dual citizen) and explained her situation, she’d get whatever assistance she needed to go home or someplace else. I tried to explain that you only get help from an embassy if you’ve been robbed or lost your passport or something. Going on vacation and not having sufficient funds wasn’t a diplomatic issue. Ms. M was undeterred, and decided to go visit the Eiffel Tower again, and then visit the Louvre the next day. She told me she’d go to the embassy on Monday and get everything taken care of. That was the day she had to leave the hostel anyway.

When I got back to the hostel on Monday, July 18, Ms. M was waiting for me in the lobby. She’d been to both embassies. She was told at the Polish embassy that they couldn’t do anything for her. The Americans had let her send an e-mail to her family. We walked up the street to McDonald’s so she could check her e-mail on my iPad. There was no word from her family. I gave her the €15 I had on me, as well as all the food I had just bought for dinner and lunch the next day. She went to go find a different hostel to stay in.

The next day, I got back to ye old D’Artagnan, and who was there but Ms. M. She’d heard from her family. They were going to wire her some more money to go back to Poland, but she’d decided that she wanted to go to England instead. I showed her what the exchange rate was in Britain at the moment ($1=£.62). She suggested she could come with me to Edinburgh if I’d just front the money for her plane tickets. This is where Ms. M and I parted company. I told her I wasn’t going to pay for someone I didn’t really know to come with me. Thus ended my Parisian friendship.

The thing is, I wasn’t mad or upset. I could only imagine how difficult it would be to find yourself in a place where you didn’t speak the language and had very few resources. I would have been relieved to talk to anyone who would have been willing to listen to me and understood what I was saying. It’s one of those situations that I will probably ruminate over for a while. I don’t know if I should have done anything differently. Maybe so.

Paris is not the place I’d expected to find from all I’d read about it. I think I’d romanticized the place so much in my head that it was never going to be what I’d imagined. Of course, I’m also 90 years too late for the whole Lost Generation vibe to still be hanging around. I will say this: my favorite part of Paris was the musicians and poets on the Metro. These writers and musicians will jump into the train car with you, recite a poem or play a song, take a quick collection up, and head for the next car at the next stop. While I was in Paris, I heard 13 poems this way. I also heard a great a violinist, a cheeky accordion player, two guitarists, a guy with a steel drum, and a man who played the hammer dulcimer while riding along under the streets of Paris. All of these words and music gave me a sense that the artistic Paris I’d imagined wasn’t gone so much as transfigured for the 21st century.

I am not saying ALL French people don’t wear deodorant. I’m saying that enough people don’t that it’s noticeable when it’s a hot day in Paris and your smashed into a Metro train headed to the 20th arrondissement. It’s a wall of people-smell that I don’t think most Americans are accustomed to. It sort of reminded me of when I used to take the bus out to UNO before the storm.

Anyway, I took the wrong exit out of the Metro station at Port de Bagnolet, which left me wandering around looking for the hostel for about half an hour. If you take the correct exit, there is a sign directing you to the hostel. If you take any of the other three exits out of the station, you wander through lots of random apartment blocks. There wasn’t anyone out on the streets where I was walking, so I couldn’t even attempt to explain my predicament in broken French. Finally, I decided to walk down a hill through a park and ran into the hostel.

Now, the hostel had a strict lockout policy between noon and three. They let me check in, but I had to put my bag in the baggage room because it was only 2 p.m. That was fine. I made my way back to the Metro station (the super fast way, this time), and took the train to the stop closest to the Eiffel Tower. There were tons of people there because they we’re having a concert, followed by fireworks. I walked down some side streets and crossed the Seine. I walked along the river until I saw something shiny and loud on the other side of the river. I crossed the river again and ended up in front of the Army museum, which is in L’Hotel Invalides. Basically it’s a palace with a huge park in front of it. On the grounds of the park, there were a bunch of helicopters and tanks out for the French people to check out.

A bit later the helicopters took off and flew over the city. They moved the tanks back toward Invalides, and people flooded into the park. I found a nice bench and watched the people go by. There were lots of National Police around, and they were all wearing these shin guard/boot combinations that made them look like Imperial Storm Troopers from the waist down. They were also carrying machine guns, which made me wonder what they were expecting.

It didn’t get dark until quite late, around 10 p.m. That’s when the fireworks started over the Eiffel Tower. It was beautiful. I refrained from taking any photos, because I just knew they’d turn out blurry. I took some advice from the people sitting on the same bench and left about ten minutes before the end of the show. I had no problem getting on the train and getting back to the hostel. All in all, it was a great first impression of a city I’d only read about before.

There is a cannon from a Dutch ship, as well as a scale model (which is about 10′ long) of the ship it came from. There are pictures of burghers and their wives. There is a collection of silver plates and ewers made here in Holland. There are tons of paintings, and a really cool exhibit comparing the self-portraits of Degas to those of Rembrandt. There’s Delft tiles on display, and there’s this gigantic dollhouse that’s this size of two armoires put together. The dollhouse was commissioned by a rich woman as a scale replica of her home and possessions. She was so rich that she had the house and all the stuff, the dollhouse and all of her stuff in miniature, and then she commissioned a painting of the dollhouse so she could treasure it always. Some people have More money than sense.

Finally, you walk into a room and one whole wall is taken up by Rembrandt’s “The Night Watch.” Now, I’ve seen the Simon Shama BBC show about Rembrandt. At one point he’s standing in front of “The Night Watch,” talking about it. But I didn’t understand how large it was until I got into that room. The men in the foreground of that painting are as tall as me. It’s crazy. Its also great because the room was packed, but I could still see everything because it was so big.

It was raining harder when I got out of the museum, so I got a canal taxi pass to use for the day. I went to Rembrandt’s house again, to see if the line wS any shorter than the other day, but it was still a mob scene. I tried to see the exhibit at City Hall about how they keep the water out of the city, but it’s currently closed while they update it. Eventually I just decided to ride around on the boats and listen to as much history as I could. Plus, it was fun to look at all of the houseboats. Now I’ve added some Amsterdam trivia and one cheesy Amsterdam joke to my repertoire.

I leave for Paris on the train in the morning. When I arrive there at midday, I should be able to join in on the Bastille Day festivities. I can hardly wait!

All I could think was that Anne Frank never even got to be as old as this girl in front of me. She never had the chance to go on a holiday with her mom or tour “boring” museums in foreign lands. I almost said as much, but I’m glad I held my tongue. There’s nothing worse than a preachy older person when you’re in high school.

It was interesting and so sad to a go through the tour. You climb through the secret passage behind the bookcase. The “secret annex” was so small and dark. They have the windows blacked out just how they were when the Franks were in hiding. It really speaks to the tenacity of humans when you walk through that space and realize that eight people survived there for two years.

There was a video of Otto Frank talking about how Anne’s diary came to be published. He said that he never read it until after Anne was dead. He said that through reading it, he learned that no matter how well a parent thinks they know their child, their child is always a stranger. That made me cry.

I was in a spin after finishing the tour. I wandered down to Dam Square and watched all the people for a while. There were two “statue” guys dressed as Darth Vader, and one dressed as Kali. There were also two college kids with huge smiles and “free hugs” signs. I got a free hug from each of them and felt a little better about things. While I was standing in Dam Square, a girl walked by wearing a “Breesus is my homeboy” t-shirt. New Orleans represents!

Later, I walked through the Red Light district. The composition of the crowd reminded me of Bourbon Street. I didn’t stick around for very long- some tourist was puking in the canal, the prostitutes all looked tired and depressed, and it felt like a bunch of people were trying to force themselves to enjoy this. It was starting to rain, anyway. I got a paper cone full of French fries smothered in cheddar cheese and walked back to the hostel.

Monday morning I felt much better. I bought a ticket to the Van Gogh museum from the front desk at the hostel, which turned out to be a very smart plan. After breakfast, I walked through Vondel Park to the Museumplein. At twenty to ten, the line for the Van Gogh museum was down the block. Since I already had my ticket, I was able to get in a much shorter line and breeze through the entrance when the museum opened at ten.

It didn’t take long for the museum to be a mob scene. There was a couple from Michigan that basically followed me through the entire place in order to stand right in front of me every time I stopped to look at a sketch or a painting. The guy was a giant, at least 6′ 3″, so there was just no getting around him. In spite of them, however, I had a great time. I saw a bunch of Van Gogh’s work that I’d never seen before.

By 12:30 p.m., it was so crowded that people could barely move, so I left and sat outside in the park, watching people hover around this gigantic sculpture that says “I Amsterdam.” It looks like broken English when I write it down, but it actually ties in with Amsterdam’s marketing campaign, the slogan for which is “I am Amsterdam.” I’ll amend this post with a picture when I get back to the States so this makes sense. Meanwhile, just close your eyes and imagine every time you’ve seen gigantic letters somewhere. Kids crawl all over them, school groups mob them for pictures, etc. That’s what I was watching go on.

After lunch, I walked back to the central station, because I don’t have a fancy European bank card, so they wouldn’t let me book my train ticket to Paris online. In fact, when I got to the station, they made me pay in cash because the hi-speed rail company doesn’t take anything other than European bank cards anywhere. They also charged me a 20 Euro “convenience fee” because I had to talk to an actual person and give them cash. Very convenient for me, to be sure.

I spent the rest of the day walking and watching people. When I got back to the hostel, I spoke with an awesome woman named Anna from Brazil. She’s traveling through Europe with her six year old daughter, Louisa. They were some of my roommates for the night. Anna works as a travel agent back home. She was incredibly friendly and easy to talk to. Louisa was super cute and reminded me of when I was a kid. She kept telling her mom that she shouldn’t have to go to bed because it wasn’t dark out. Poor thing. That argument never works.

There was a Socialist rally in Stockholm on July 4. It was held in the plaza in front of the Nobel museum. As we were passing through, someone handed me an anti-American pamphlet with a really derogatory image of President Obama on it. It sort of bothered me. The U.S. isn’t a perfect place, but neither is Sweden. The previous day, we’d walked through a square near Stockholm’s central station and run into a rally of Iraqi asylum seekers. Hannah explained that Sweden has been struggling with an influx of political refugees from Iraq, and that a few have been deported recently.

This is not to say I didn’t have fun in Sweden. I got to swim in a river at midnight. I got to see a huge owl and walk down picturesque country roads. I got to sleep on a boat, just like in “Pirate Radio.” I got to watch “The Simpsons” with Swedish subtitles and eat student food, which is what they call ramen.

Best of all, I got to hang out with Hannah and watch her negotiate life in a place completely different from where we grew up. She speaks Swedish fluently and helped me through some uneasy moments when I didn’t know what was being said to me. She knows the best sushi restaurant in Stockholm. She also turned me on to a couple of great Swedish bands. It was great to see her, and it was sad to say goodbye. I miss having Hannah around at home, but now that I’ve seen what her life is like overseas, I can see why she likes it so much.

PS: it is very expensive to live or visit Sweden. Recently things became so costly in Sweden that they took their smaller coins out of circulation. The smallest change you can receive at the moment is one Krona, which is worth about 16 cents in the U.S.

I’m sitting here, waiting to board my flight to Newark. A family with unruly children sat down beside me about twenty minutes ago. One kid want his GameBoy, which is currently being withheld for unknown reasons. The little girl is mad because her parents made her wear the same t-shirt as her brother. Maybe if I get lucky, they’ll sit far away from me on the plane.

Though I just had lunch at the Beach Corner with Scott, I think it’s time for a snack. It’s also time to find a seat away from this family.