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. (At least...landmarks this nerd finds prominent!)

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. (Soon to be remedied by a term abroad, however.) 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." (But really, with a name like Bjarn Larsen, how could you object?)

Kinsale

A cute little village we stopped in while touring around the countryside. It was pretty blatant that it was one giant tourist trap, but who am I to object to yummy handknit sweaters and delicious, made-with-sugar-not-corn-syrup Mars Bars? (I was pretty cold, wet, and cranky this day. Typical American! Mammoth--and my mother-- had a lot to put up with.)

Suddenly, Mare and Mammoth realized that all European port towns look exactly the same.

Random Countryside, somewhere in the vicinity of Cork

Driving through the countryside, I could sort of understand why people have such an obsession with Ireland. There was something about the wet air and green hills that seemed to fit--like a worn, forgotten shoe you find seasons later at the bottom of your closet. Even with everything I know about myself (coffee-crazed, public-transit-using, Gap-wearing, Francophile) Ireland was undeniably appealing. 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 being almost.)

If you were curious, Mammoths do occasionally
"ooh" and "ahh"--for example, when looking out
over lovely vistas.

The entire coach--and our scruffily-handsome tour guide--were pretty amused by Mammoth.

Okay. The big kahuna. Dublin's a city with a reputation for good food and a great party. (And Guinness, but please. I was sixteen and very innocent. As opposed to now--I'm seventeen and still...very innocent.) Of all the stops, Dublin was the only one I really knew anything about. As such, I had some high expectations for it.

Unfortunately, there was also pouring rain the day we were there.

Theoretically, my brother Ben and I were going to explore together. Ben, then a feisty almost-nineteen-year-old, was definitely NOT going to be hampered by his kid sister, and I, a reasonably-spunky-sixteen-year-old, was perfectly fine exploring alone.

Discoveries:

1. 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.
2. 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.

This was the first time I felt the need to keep my mouth shut because I was American. I felt a bit angry and a lot scared, and those are both emotions that tend to make me speak my mind. But what if my accent had made him angrier? I was clearly a tourist, but an English or Irish tourist would have been far more palatable than an ugly American, or so I thought. 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. At the same moment I broke my heel, a big gust of wind blew my skirt up à la Marilyn Monroe. Some passers-by had a pretty good laugh at my expense.)

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. (Unfortunately for him, his fear of water was so great that it prevented him from taking a tender--or seeing Skye.) Getting into the tender was pretty harrowing (camera + big waves = GAAAAAH) but once I was in the boat, I greatly preferred it to the actual ship. Mysteriously, my body had no problem bobbing up and down in the waves in the little boat, but the slight movement--and consistent lack of a horizon--made me unbelievably seasick onboard the cruise liner.

Onboard the tender, I was recognized by a few of my fellow passengers as "that girl with the beast." Since I was one of the four people on the boat under the age of 50, I was already pretty conspicuous. Add a Mammoth to that, and I suppose you become rather memorable.

After the brief (and chilly) ride, we found ourselves on solid land once more. 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.

Invergordon was our next planned stop, so we pulled away from the Orknies and headed that way a little early. As we watched the land slipping away, I heard a man behind me sigh. I turned around and said,

"I know. I'm so sad I don't get to see the Orknies. I can't think when else I'll really see them."

The man made a you-ain't-seen-nothin'-yet face and replied,

"The stop in the Orknies was the reason we chose this cruise."

Yikes.

Onwards and upwards, I suppose. 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. As an actress, I'm a bit to skittish to say the name of the play (even online), but this is the same Inverness that is referenced repeatedly in Shakespeare's "Scottish Play."

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. I did not enjoy the fact that our tour guide was of the bossy sort. (He would cram all 30 or so of us into one of the rooms and then talk at great length about objects in the room that none of us could see because, surprise, surprise! there was a person in the way.) There were also no photos allowed inside. Mammoth had to make do with the grounds.

Who's that?

Thanks for sticking with me. I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed making it!