We (boyfriend and I) flew down to NYC on Friday, and took the train out to Rhinebeck with Ysolda. The house we rented this year with friends was amazing! So huge, with a great kitchen, awesome view and comfy couches. Saturday morning was a bit of a rush as we had to get the Ravelry buttons to the meetup and were a bit stuck in traffic. It all worked out though, and I had a lovely day checking out all the barns and navigating through the crowds. I picked up a bowl from jennie the potter, and a fun sheepy mug.

And I saw kits for my Sweet Bunting Cardi! Super cute.

Sunday morning we decided to go to the farmer’s market – this is the sixth time I’ve been to Rhinebeck and I’d pretty much never been able to explore the town! The farmer’s market is held in a parking lot, and is quite small but really cool.

Managed to actually get a good coffee in town (as opposed to the fairgrounds coffee) and had a nice walk to town. The day was pretty long, and a bit warmer than Saturday – definitely calmer as well, in terms of the crowds. Sunday night was spent relaxing, eating, and doing a swap with my housemates! I actually didn’t buy any yarn at Rhinebeck this year, but I did come home with some from Wild Apple Hill Farms, thanks to Sarah!

Monday we took the train back to NYC, and spent the rest of the week walking, seeing the sights, and eating ever so many delicious foods. It was the type of vacation where you need a rest afterwards!

So what did I bring back from my travels? Not very much! I was carrying a 40L backpack, so I couldn’t carry much extra – it never went over 14 kg (airline max is 23 kg). I did mail back a few packages of random things that I picked up, mostly maps, magazines and a bit of yarn too.

From Loop in London, just a few skeins of Wollemeise! I’m hoping to make a little lacy cardigan with the green, and maybe a shawl with the purple.

From Alice at Socktopus, some of her fabulous hand dyed fingering weight yarn! Can’t wait to play with these.

And from Purl City Yarns in Manchester, a fabulous assortment of local Manchester yarns and some other British stuff including Natural Dye Studio and Fyberspates. Yum.

As you can see, I picked up a lot of single skeins – it really wasn’t the time to be buying sweater quantities of anything. I do enjoy the challenge of dealing with single skeins so I’m hoping to come up with some fun accessories in the coming months. I’m starting work on my fall collection, which I’m hoping to release in August or early September. It’s a bit tricky to think about in the summer, but after a couple days of hot weather (and broken air conditioning, d’oh) today is lovely and cool. I’m hoping to draw some inspiration from things I saw on this trip, and put together a set of patterns with a little something for everyone.

I can’t believe it’s June already though! Better get crackin’.

From Belfast Central station I hopped on another train to get to Botanic station, where my hotel was – I stayed at Tara Lodge, a B&B I’d highly recommend if you’re ever going to Belfast! The rooms were spacious and clean, the bed was comfy and they have free wifi too. Oh, and breakfast was delicious. I felt really comfortable there. It’s a bit outside the city centre, but it’s very close to the University and the Botanic Gardens, and it’s just a 10 or 15 minute walk to the city centre anyway.

I was a little early to check in, so I left my bag and had some lunch, and checked out the Ulster Museum. It was really rainy and windy (my umbrella kept flipping) so lots of other people had the same idea of going to the museum! I also walked to the city centre and looked around, but by then it was getting late enough that many of the shops were closing. I ended up getting takeaway, going back to the hotel and catching up on Doctor Who.

Belfast is really a lovely city. But by this point in the trip I was having a bit of sightseeing fatigue, and I have hardly any photos. Plus the rain and wind didn’t make for great conditions! Sunday is a very quiet day in the city, and if businesses are open at all, it’s limited hours like 1-6pm. It made for a pretty relaxing weekend, actually, since I didn’t feel a lot of pressure (self-inflicted, of course) to really go out and about and see a bunch of things. In the morning, though, St. George’s market is open so I went and had a look there. It’s a lot like St. Lawrence market here in Toronto. The Saturday market has the fruit + veg, which I’m sad that I missed, but the Sunday market is pretty interesting too. It’s mostly ready to eat foods, crafts, and vintage stuff. There was even a yarn booth!

The only thing I bought was a bag of hand-fried crisps (potato chips) with sea salt and pink peppercorn – they were frying right there in the market. Yum!

Then I went and hung out in a coffee shop for awhile with my Kindle and my knitting, before heading to check out some of the shopping areas. I decided to do a bit of a spa day, so I bought some body scrub and stuff at the drugstore and also got a manicure and pedicure. Unfortunately the woman who was doing my nails really didn’t do a very good job – I ended up buying nail polish remover and a bottle of polish too, and redoing my nails in my hotel room.

Victoria Square has a dome at the top with a viewing platform – it’s a really lovely view of Belfast. And that day was mostly sunny and clear, so you could actually see!

There wasn’t much else to do that night – I went out for Japanese food (udon soup and some sushi), did my nice long hot shower body scrub thing, and repacked my things. It was a really short stay in Belfast, but I enjoyed it. It felt really restful and was perfect for recharging before my long journey home.

The first leg of my trip home was on Monday. I had breakfast in the hotel again, hung out and then left my luggage and had some tea at a cafe, and sat in the park reading for a little while. Though it was sunny, it was VERY windy! It was almost hard to walk at some points. I took the train and the bus out to Belfast International Airport, which is quite a ways outside of the city – I’m glad I didn’t try to take a taxi! It was a pretty straightforward trip out there, but then I ended up spending rather a long time in the airport. My plan had been to fly to Edinburgh, pick up some things I’ve left at Ysolda’s flat, then take the train to Glasgow and stay the night there. Then I’d fly home to Toronto from Glasgow on Tuesday morning.

Well. The flight to Edinburgh kept getting delayed, and finally they just cancelled it altogether! It was quite a large plane, so there were a lot of irate people. We had to go back through to the check in desks in order to talk to someone about our options. I gather that the wind and storms were worse in Edinburgh, and something happened at the airport that made them cancel a whole bunch of flights (a roof coming off a building? something like that). Luckily I was near the front of the queue, and was able to rebook onto a flight to Glasgow that evening. It actually worked out fine, though I had to leave a few purchases in Edinburgh (I’ll get them later sometime, mostly whisky!).

I spend from 3-9 in the airport, got my 25 minute (!) flight to Glasgow, then went straight to my hotel, which I’d booked right next to the airport. Got in around 10:45pm so it was convenient to just walk to the hotel from the airport! It’s pretty much on the airport grounds, I think. My flight home from Glasgow the next morning was slightly nerve-wracking, because many flights were canceled due the volcanic ash cloud! Sheesh, when it rains it pours. Lots of people were being bussed down to Manchester (which isn’t super close; about 4 hours’ drive) to catch flights out. Luckily, my flight seemed to be just fine. It was a little longer than usual, about 8 hours, because had to take a more southern route to avoid the ash. Due to the magic of time zones, I left Glasgow at 10:30am and got home to Toronto at 2:30pm.

Though I had to cut my trip short, I’m glad to be back home. I missed my bed, my shower, my laundry machine and my own cooking! I saw lots of great sights and had fun walking around cities that I hadn’t been to before. I don’t know if I’m cut out for really long-term travel, but after going around under my own steam for 3 weeks, I think I’ve got some good travel confidence built up. I was definitely lonely sometimes, and I think it would’ve been fun to have a companion to share experiences with, but all in all I’m glad I went on my own. Now I know that I can do it in the future if I want to!

I caught a taxi to the city centre and had a nice chat with the driver, who was a bit gruff but had lots of Dublin info to share. The hotel itself was really basic, with a single bed, but there was free internet and the proximity to things was good. The street itself (Talbot st) is a tiny bit sketchy but I had no problems. And it’s really easy to get places from there.

I didn’t intentionally plan for my trip to be while the Queen was there visiting – how was I supposed to know that? Heh. Unfortunately it did kind of screw things up. As I went out for my first walk, headed into the city centre, I found that the quays were all closed by the Garda (police) and no one was allowed to cross because the Queen was driving around, or something. People in the crowd were pretty irritated, and lots of people were on their phones saying that they couldn’t get anywhere! I wasn’t held up for very long that time, and did manage to do some wandering around.

Also unbeknownst to me, there was a really big rugby game on that night, so there were a lot of tourists around for that too, drinking and such. Temple Bar was a mess! I got stuck again later on by the barricades/traffic restrictions, but since I wasn’t really in a hurry to get anywhere, I just took lots of photos.

(note: this was before 6pm)

On Thursday I met up with a friend from home – we were best friends in middle school, but drifted apart later on with university and all that. Wendy just happened to be in Dublin on vacation at the same time, and we managed to arrange a meetup via Facebook! Oh, the magic of the internets. We went for breakfast (for me, snack for her) and then went on a bit of a random adventure that involved walking through the Liberties (not a great area). Oops. We went to the Chester Beatty Library, which was lovely, and had lunch in the cafe there.

Unfortunately we weren’t able to check out Dublin castle, because it was closed! The Queen really messed things up in the city while she was there – we certainly weren’t the only tourists sad that things were closed. We also went to the Bank of Ireland building, the old post office, and the Garden of Remembrance.

In the evening I headed back to the yarn shop in the Powerscourt Towncentre, This is Knit. It’s a lovely shop, and we had a bit of a trunk show and knit night rolled up with tea and biscuits. It was great to hang out with the knitters and there were several projects from my patterns! Yay! Afterwards some of us headed to a hotel bar to continue the knitting festivities, which was super fun.

(Classic yarn shop workers’ pose, no?)

Friday I suffered from a severe bout of camnesia and I have no photos! I met up with Diane, who is a displaced Torontonian knitter living in Dublin. She used to come to knitting at lettuce knit so it was great to see her! We met up in the morning and went to the Museum of Decorative Arts, which was really great. Lots of awesome textile-y exhibits too! I especially liked the Neillí Mulcahy exhibit.

Then we went to Cornucopia, a really lovely vegetarian restaurant that was really busy! Lunch was delicious, and a good dose of veggies for me. After lunch we went to Trinity College and checked out the Book of Kells and the Long Room, which was pretty great. I had to run back to my hotel for a bit, but we met up again afterwards for a knitters’ meetup with another knitter visiting from the UK (but she’s actually from Australia). Went for dinner to a Filipino restaurant where we had lots of laughs and great conversation.

I headed back to my hotel early to pack up to head to Belfast on Saturday. While I was in the hotel that night though, I received an email from my cousin saying that my maternal grandmother’s condition was worsening and that she would probably pass away soon. She did pass away that night, and though I have spent the weekend in Belfast as planned, I’m cutting my trip short by about 5 days to head home to Toronto on Tuesday morning.

I’ll catch you all up on my time in Belfast once I’m back home. It’s a really nice town. I should be able to get the website completely sorted with the malware stuff this week as well – sorry it’s taken me so long, I can’t figure out what’s wrong with it! Despite the circumstances I’m actually pretty ready to go home. I had a great 3 weeks in the UK and Ireland.

We finally got there and I wandered around trying to find my hotel – I didn’t have a map, which wasn’t very smart! There were lots of city centre maps around though, and I did find it eventually (it was just sort of tucked in behind some other buildings). I stayed at a Premier Inn in a brand new building, so everything was lovely and new and clean. I really enjoyed my stay there.

That afternoon and evening I walked around and went to Jamie’s Italian for dinner (that’d be Jamie Oliver) – I went quite early and only waited about 10 minutes, but by the time I left around 18:00 there was quite a queue at the door! The food was delicious – especially this bruschetta, which I really must try to replicate at home. It was topped with smashed beetroot and ricotta with basil and orange zest.

Random Cardiff photos…

That evening since things closed early, I ended up going to the cinema and watching a pretty crappy movie (“Take Me Home Tonight”). It occupied the evening. Had a late snack in the hotel restaurant because everything else was closed!

The next day I headed to the castle, which is really quite lovely. I had an audio guide, which I’ve actually grown to appreciate – I used to think they were unnecessary, but they do provide lots of interesting information when you need a little something. I climbed up to the viewing platform on the top of the keep, the highest building in the castle. It’s on a mound surrounded by a moat. It was 100 stairs to get to the top, but the view was great.

Took a brief look around the Cardiff story (museum) and had lunch at the cafe in the Old Library. Then I walked to the National Museum only to find that it was closed on Mondays! It was a bit of a theme of the day, unfortunately.

I caught the bus down to Cardiff Bay and wandered around. Any Torchwood fans?

Bought some yummy Welshcakes and went over to Techniquest, a science and technology museum…also closed on Mondays.

I walked the mile back to the city centre, and then decided to go check out a restaurant I’d heard a lot about and guess what? Yup, closed on Mondays. Argh! I ended up eating dinner in a random Italian restaurant in the mall, which wasn’t amazing, but it was good and had vegetables.

When I went back to the hotel I made a decision to change my plans. What’s a trip on my own if I can’t change my mind, after all? I decided to cancel the next night in Swansea and just stay put in Cardiff. I was tired, and I really needed not to pack up, take a train, check into another hotel, and explore another city for 1 day only to have to come back to Cardiff the next morning (in a rush) to catch my flight out. I was really relieved after I went downstairs and got an extra night.

It gave me time to go back to the National Museum the next day at a leisurely pace. It’s a pretty nice museum, but by this time I was suffering from a bit of museum fatigue! Especially with Natural History museums and historical art galleries, they all tend to run together after awhile. The museum tried really hard to tie things into Wales and Welsh history, but it was only mildly successful.

I also did a little bit of shopping, picking up a new wallet to replace my ageing and falling apart one, and went to the oldest record shop in the world on a tip from Mary-Heather!

That evening I went for Indian food, and to the movies again – this time, I saw Water for Elephants. It was actually better than I thought it would be, and I enjoyed it. I like going to the cinema in different places, I’ve been in Edinburgh and Delhi as well. It’s such a familiar experience, something I really appreciate when I’ve been going around doing and seeing things that are unfamiliar.

As I’m writing this, I’m coming to the end of my time in Dublin – so I’m still one destination behind my blogging! I’m leaving for Belfast in the morning, but due to some family circumstances I may be cutting the rest of my trip a bit short. I’m sort of in wait and see mode, which is a bit unsettling.

Then I headed out to the bus to go check out some museums – I went to the Natural History Museum and the V&A. Sadly, the textiles room at the V&A was closed! But apparently they are being moved to a new museum which will be focused on clothworkers and textiles. Just up my alley! Maybe in a few years I’ll come back to visit it. I pretty much looked at the entire V&A, quickly. It’s great. I want all the books in the gift shop!

Saturday morning I worked my way around numerous Tube closures to meet up with Kate to hang out. We went to Borough Market first – super awesome! If I lived in London you bet I’d be at the market buying veggies and cheese and stuff. Yum.

Then we walked along the Thames a bit to the Tate Modern and wandered around there, and we recorded an interview for Kate’s podcast! So keep an eye out on her blog for that. After some lunch, Kate went home and I….wandered around more. Went to the National Gallery, the Portrait Gallery, Seven Dials, and walked to Euston tube station. That is a lot of walking.

The Orla Kiely store is so pretty!

I walked by the British museum, but I didn’t end up going in because it was the end of the day. From Euston I headed out to see Kate again, this time at her flat! A few of her friends were round for some nibbles and a Eurovision screening party complete with scorecards (but not the drinking game). I had to head home about halfway through, but I had a ton of fun. Thanks so much Kate for a great day out!