A Brand New Day...

So this post will catch you up to today, June 10th.

A couple weekends ago I went on a fantastic tour called the "Fab Four Taxi Tour," which drove us around Liverpool showing us where the Beatles grew up. I have seen all of their childhood houses and even went inside Ringo's where a lady named Margaret bought, preserved, and keeps it.

I saw the schools they went to. The next day I went back to Liverpool's City Centre and saw The Cavern. It is now my dream to perform there, even though it's not the original Cavern (the old one was torn down and the pub was moved). I'm also a pretty big Beatles fan now. I'm learning several of their songs on guitar and my friends here have me play them quite often. I've had several sing-alongs and a couple very interesting musical experiences.

I've walked quite a bit around the city centre and been to several museums.


After that weekend, I went to London (this was last week). There I saw all the sights there are to see in the city. I went to the British Museum, Harrod's department store, and several other places. London Tower, Tower Bridge, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, you name it I saw it. I also went on a Jack the Ripper tour where our very animated guide, Toby, showed us the streets where Jack used to haunt and the locations where the bodies of his victims were found. A very interesting tour, I liked it quite a bit.

I ate in a nice Italian and and a nice French restaurant. Good food, good times. I also saw the musical The Lion King. It was phenomenal. The music and the stage performances were so well done. I am now a fan of theatre as well.

After three intense days in London (I walked and rode the tub (the subway, if you will) all over that damn town), I flew to Cork, Ireland with two companions. We couch-surfed here as well. I should mention that the last night in London we had an emergency couch-surfing experience because we could not get our hotel for a third night. It worked out well but we had to traverse a very ghetto part of London late at night and were given bad directions. But we made. The next day was just as bad trying to get to the airport from the train station but we finally made it.

So we went to Cork, Ireland and couch surfed there. Our host was a very nice guy, he picked us up from the airport and everything. That first day we hung out with Paul, that's his name, and met some of his friends. I played three straight hours of football (soccer to us Americans) with him and his friends, all of us being musicians. It was quite the experience.

The following day I went to Blarney Castle, kissed the Blarney stone, but most importantly traversed the gardens around the castle which were huge and magnificent. Then we went back to Cork and did a little bit of shopping.

The day after that I went to the Jameson Whiskey Distillery and took the tour. I got a free sample at the end and now love Irish Whiskey. Then I went back and just hung out. It was a very wonderful experience. The Irish countryside is beautiful.

This is my last week of classes. The next three weeks, Monday through Thursday, I will be in a British school teaching year 6 (which is like our 5th grade, so 10 and 11 year old kids). Then after that is a full week of travel. I'm excited and anxious about all of this.

I decided not to post pictures in this particular post because there are soooo many to choose from. Instead, all of my photos are posted on my flickr page, organized into sets (which you can browse on the right-hand side there).

http://www.flickr.com/wjclements