A bit of background: my grandparents went on a cruise with their kids and grandkids as a way to celebrate their fiftieth anniversary. I'm not really a "cruise person," but I did my best to get with the program when I found out we were going. When I was reading up on where we would be stopping, my Anglophile boyfriend became rather jealous. So, as a compromise, I decided that his stuffed wooly mammoth — which he had creatively named “Mammoth” — would accompany me.
Here's an abbreviated version of Mammoth's journey.
We started out with a brief stay in London, to get the whole family together. We stayed in a rather lovely apartment, close to where my grandparents had lived a few years earlier.
Mammoth got hungry.
Of course, no trip to London could be complete without trips to some of the more prominent landmarks.
Mammoth attacks the Globe theater, where he saw both King Lear and The Merry Wives of Windsor.
Mammoth makes a new friend at the British Museum.
After about a week in London, it was time to head out to Southampton and get on...
The cruise line was very serious about safety. Within an hour of boarding the ship, we had our lifeboat drill. This consisted of grabbing the lifejacket stashed in my cabin, heading up to my "Muster Station" (which turned out to be the ship's cocktail lounge), and sitting on one of the stools in aforementioned lifejacket for about 20 minutes and feeling very silly.
Mammoth gets serious about safety.
Mysteriously, the first stop of the trip was to the French port of Cherbourg (which, as you may recall, was the stage for a few important battles, as well as a rather lovely movie.) Why mysteriously, you ask? Take a whole boat of British people. Now put them in France. What's wrong with this picture? Oh right. Brits don't especially like Frogs. Whoops.
The stop in Cherbourg was scheduled from about 8 AM-12 PM, which, with the time change (one hour forward) felt like 7 AM-11 AM. This is how it came to pass that Mare spent a grand total of an hour and a half in France. This was also where Mare ate what now lives in infamy as "The Best Sandwich Ever."
Mammoth pauses at a fountain in the city's center while Mare enjoys "The Best Sandwich Ever"
Mammoth enjoying the brilliant sun in the harbor.
Apparently, "Cobh" is pronounced "Cove." Bjarn Larsen, our captain, came over the intercom several times before we stopped in Cobh to make it very clear that the port's name was pronounced "Cove." Now I'm passing it on. So now that that's done...
Kinsale
A tourist trap cute village we stopped in while touring around the countryside. Who am I to object to yummy handknit sweaters and the occasional Mars bar on a dreary day?
Suddenly, Mare and Mammoth realized that all European port towns look exactly the same.
Random Countryside, somewhere in the vicinity of Cork
I'm not one of those people who's just nuts about Ireland. But there was something undeniably appealing about this part of the journey--something about the wet air and green hills that seemed to fit like a worn, forgotten shoe. Even with everything I know about myself (coffee-crazed, public-transit-using, Gap-wearing, Francophile) I could almost see myself trekking up and down the hills, herding the sheep, a trusty dog by my side and an old canvas pack on my back. The operative word here is "almost."
If you were curious, Mammoths do occasionally
"ooh" and "ahh"--for example, when looking out
over lovely vistas.
I'm pretty sure I was wearing a dress and slingbacks when I took that. So much for the rucksack and the rustic romance.
Okay. The big kahuna. Dublin's a city with a reputation for good food and a great party. (And Guinness, but please...) As such, I had some high expectations for it; namely, that it would be less lame than all of the other stops.
Unfortunately, there was also pouring rain the day we were there. And then it got interesting.
Discoveries:
- I am entirely incapable of reading maps. I spent the vast majority of my time in Dublin in the same five-block-radius, trying to find the street I had started on and failing rather miserably.
- Homeless men can be very possessive of favorite places. When I tried to take pictures of Mammoth on the steps of a gorgeous church, I had a bit of an altercation with a very loud and irate man.
I snapped this one and then scarpered. It's a pity; the rest of the building was really lovely. But you can see on Mammoth's face how scared he was.
In the end, I snapped the shot, scooped up my Mammoth, and was on my merry way.
3. If you buy cheap shoes, the heel will break off at the absolute worst moment possible. If you're wondering what that moment might be, it was while crossing the street, in the pouring rain, just as a gust of wind blew my skirt up to my chin. A flattering moment for me.
By the end of it, I was just so tired and cold that I was willing to pretend any building was a landmark, just to get out of there.
"It has a cupola... it must be important, right?"
So much for Dublin.
Skye may have been my favorite port of all. Everything was just clear and bright and beautiful. Of all the stops, Skye also felt the most authentic. So "authentic," in fact, that our enormous ship couldn't actually fit in the harbor. So we took tenders.
Mammoth looks out over Skye's harbor.
Tenders are smaller boats which ferry you from the ship to the dock. In the case of our ship, the tenders were a couple of our lifeboats. This was not especially reassuring to my hydrophobic father. Getting into the tender was pretty harrowing (camera + big waves = GAAAAAH) but apparently I have survived.
As a brief digression: Skye had the best harbor dog I think I've ever seen.
She was very sweet--and deaf as a post.
While on Skye, we took a tour through the countryside and then a walk through Dunvegan Castle. (Which, as my father pointed out, must have been an Olde-Time-y hangout for former vegetarians. Ar, ar.)
Mammoth keeps watch on the ramparts.
Sword-Mammoth! (This one was a bit of a joke--my boyfriend is fascinated by military history, which translates to me as "BIG SWORDS CLANG WHURR.")
Cannon-Mammoth!
And of course...
Mammoth on the heath, or Wuthering Heights with hand-puppets.
Lido deck Mammoth.
Just kidding! The day we were supposed to go to the Orknies, there were gale-force winds. The water was so choppy and the gusts so dangerous, we couldn't get a tug boat to come and pull us into the harbor. So instead of the events we had planned shoreside, we got...
Mammoth in Invergordon:
the most boring town in Europe.
Awesome.
Invergordon, if you've never been, is a single strip of street with a drug store, a post office, and a few random greasy restaurants. There is a train station with some rather interesting murals. And of course, a couple of tourist shops. Congratulations, I've just spared you the trip.
While I suppose docking overnight in Invergordon is better than being blown into oblivion up in the Orknies, it was an undeniable let-down. Still, we tried to make the most of it.
Inverness
Yes, that Inverness. Double, double, toil and all of that.
Mammoth loved how clear and shallow this river was--you could see clearly down to the round stones at the bottom.
Inverness has some fun shopping and yummy food. What more can you want from a Scottish city that oh, P.S., has its own castle. (Too bad it's now their jail.)
Castle Campbell
(Ooh ahh.)
I enjoyed the fact that a good friend of mine is related to these Campbells. No mammoth pics, though. The tour was one of those very clever ventures where you cram 30 or so of people into one of the rooms and then talk at great length about objects in the room that nobody can see because there are 29 other people in the way. For our final photo, we had to make do with the grounds...
Who's that?
