London's Bloomsbury Neighborhood (Also Keats and Harry Potter)

Undoubtedly my favorite area I've explored in London is the Bloomsbury neighborhood. Today it's a lovely area filled with local university students and those seeking a break from the bustle of busier areas of the city, but about a century ago, it was a little less fashionable. The amount of literary and artistic connections with this neighborhood is baffling; Charles Dickens lived here for some time, T. S. Eliot worked at Faber & Faber publishing company near Russell Square, and several members of the Bloomsbury Group lived near Gordon Square and Tavistock Square (two adjacent parks) in their younger days.

Gordon Square, a quiet park in Bloomsbury, is the perfect place
for a picnic or for reading.

Part of the character of the Bloomsbury neighborhood is its well-preserved charm. The quiet streets are lined with narrow stone apartments, each marked with a bright blue or red door. Trees and parks are plentiful, and while still a busy area, it feels much more relaxed than other parts of the city. One of my favorite things to do in this area is to go "plaque-hunting"; because of the various literary and cultural associations with the area and its historic buildings, there are countless blue and brown plaques on the buildings to mark that X lived here, Y worked here, Z once glanced in this direction . . .

Plaques like these are everywhere in the Bloomsbury neighborhood.

Virginia Woolf (then Virginia Stephen) and her sister Vanessa moved to Gordon Square after their father's death. While Woolf wrote that the square was "not one of the most romantic of the Bloomsbury Squares" but that "in October 1904, it was the most beautiful, the most exciting, the most romantic place in the world." So my top priorities upon visiting this neighborhood were strolling through these squares and also finding the plaques and statues that commemorate Woolf and other Bloomsberries.

After my first visit to Bloomsbury, I took a trip to the suburbs of London to see Keats House, a lovely white house in Hampstead where Keats lived for a few years of his short and tragic life. This was where he fell in love with Fanny Brawne after she moved into the adjoining house -- she was, quite literally, the "girl next door." This was also where he wrote works like "Ode to a Nightingale," one of my favorite of his works. In the upstairs bedroom was where Keats first coughed blood and realized that his death by consumption was approaching. He was only 25 when he died, and he was not recognized as one of the world's greatest poets until after his death.

Keats's study looks a lot like it did in his day. The chairs are even
arranged in the same way as in a famous portrait of Keats while
he is lost in thought.

Holly and I also made sure to visit the Charles Dickens House, as he lived in two places near the Bloomsbury neighborhood during his time in London. The house has been converted into a museum, and my favorite part was stepping into Dickens's study. Part of the exhibit was Dickens's writing desk upon which he wrote my two favorite of his novels: A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations. When there was no one else in the room, I touched the desk to soak up some literary magic.

Speaking of magic, I took a couple of side trips due to my love of the Harry Potter Universe. I went on a Harry Potter walking tour of the city to see places that inspired J. K. Rowling to write the novels, and we even saw some of the spots used in the films. I made sure to stop at Hardy's candy shop near the street that inspired "Diagon Alley," and it did not disappoint.

I also visited King's Cross Station to see the famous Platform 9 3/4 -- this is quite embarrassing, as I waited in line for about an hour just to get a picture with the trolley and then visit the overpriced Harry Potter shop. It was worth it.

Was it worth an hour-long wait? You tell me.

Shakespeare's Stratford-upon-Avon

The day after our Charleston adventure, I took a solo trip to central England to the town of Stratford-upon-Avon, which is the town where William Shakespeare was born and spent his early years.

It was easy to find the heart of town; it's busy and it most closely resembles the town as Shakespeare probably experienced it, with cobblestone streets and weathered-looking cottages. I took an obligatory picture with the building where Shakespeare was born.

It is important to remember that much of Shakespeare's professional life blossomed when he moved to London as a young adult, but his time in Stratford-upon-Avon influenced much of his work. I visited the schoolhouse where he spent much of his time as a boy. While he never finished his education, Shakespeare's time as a schoolboy likely instilled in him a love for classical stories of magic and heroes. He even used passages from classical Latin and Greek texts in some of his greatest plays.

This was apparently the room wherein Shakespeare first developed
a love for the art of theatre.

I tried to visit his grave in one of the town's churches, but I arrived fifteen minutes after the church had closed its doors to visitors for the day. I wasn't too upset about it; looking at a plaque above some rusty old bones won't instill me with poetic genius. I breathed in his essence from outside of the church walls instead.

Probably my favorite part of the day was seeing the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of Romeo & Juliet. This had never been one of my favorite Shakespeare plays -- it always seemed too silly and dramatic -- but this performance certainly changed my mind. One of the only set pieces was a large, industrial-looking metallic block in the middle of the stage that characters could climb and go into. It ended up functioning as Juliet's bedroom, her balcony, Friar Lawrence's chambers, and a few other major settings.

What I really liked about it, besides the incredible acting, was its modern nature. There was no trace of Elizabethan attire and stuffy ballrooms; instead, all of the characters wore casual clothing like hoodies, pants, trendy dresses, and sneakers in shades of black and white. Even the music was grunge-rock -- Romeo and Juliet met at a night club-like party (not a ball) with dim lighting and rock music playing. All of the language was Shakespeare's original language, but it surprisingly went well with all of the modern adaptations of the performance.

I loved that some of the strong male roles were played by women. It added an interesting gender dynamic to an otherwise archaically sexist play.

Stratford-upon-Avon is a lovely little town that does a great job of keeping its rich history alive. It has been an enlightening experience to trace Shakespeare from his roots to the height of his professional life in London, and visiting his birthplace revealed how the Bard's legacy is still very much alive.

The Charleston Farmhouse and the Bloomsbury Group

Much like I did in Co. Galway when I visited Yeats's old tower, I wanted to visit the dwelling places of some of my favorite British writers. My first stop was the Charleston Farmhouse, a picturesque building near the south coast of England. This was the home and meeting place of several members of the Bloomsbury Group, a group of writers, artists, and thinkers during the early 20th century who ushered in the modern age and rebelled against the prudish and claustrophobic nature of their Victorian upbringings.

Lewes is a small, lovely town on the River Ouse,
located a few miles away from the farmhouse.

This group included one of my favorite authors, Virginia Woolf, her husband Leonard, her sister Vanessa Bell (an artist), Vanessa's husband Clive Bell (an art critic), artist Duncan Grant (Vanessa's lover), writer E. M. Forster, writer Lytton Strachey (who also was cousin and lover to Grant), and a few others. Woolf pioneered a new style of modernist writing in her fiction and her essays, and post-impressionist painters like Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant challenged traditional art techniques in favor of bold, fresh techniques. Some members of the Bloomsbury group were related by blood, others by marriage, and many of them had both marriages and affairs within the circle itself. It's quite a messy and compelling history -- I first learned about the "Bloomsberries" for a research project, and I've been interested in them ever since.

This is what took me to the Charleston Farmhouse, the home of Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant and later Clive Bell; it was a sort of necessary pilgrimage for me, a recently converted scholar of modernism (I use the term "scholar" quite loosely here). Only a few miles away from Virginia Woolf's late residence, the Charleston Farmhouse served as a meeting point for intellectuals and artists with a new mode of art. Woolf was a frequent visitor at her sister's farmhouse, and I learned on my tour of the house that one of my favorite poets T. S. Eliot had visited and had even recited his masterpiece The Waste Land in the parlor of the home.

Part of the fun of this journey was getting to the farmhouse. Located near Lewes, a small town about 1.5 hours' train ride from central London, the farmhouse is only served by one bus service on some days at very particular times. I was happy to be accompanied by Holly, another huge fan of the Bloomsberries and of Virginia Woolf, although she's a little more art-savvy than me.

**Edit: Here lie the remnants of an embarrassing story about my dear friend Holly. I have removed it for her comfort and dignity.

So once we arrived safely, it was well worth it. The Charleston is situated amongst acres of farmland and is surrounded by beautifully maintained gardens. The house itself is filled with color and original decorations (including wallpaper, tables, light fixtures, paintings, and plates) painted by Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. Grant's old art books still line the shelves, and the painting studio looks practically untouched since the artists last used it. Unfortunately, no photos were permitted in the house, but I got plenty of pictures of the outside.

While the Bloomsbury group was named for where they first formed -- in the London neighborhood of Bloomsbury -- the Charleston Farmhouse largely serves as a symbol of the group and the intellectual and artistic progress for which the group is responsible. I made sure to stop for a piece of cake (have I mentioned how wonderful the cakes are in the UK?), in this case a divine orange cake. It was surreal and humbling to be standing in the same places as some of the most formative thinkers of the twentieth century, and it was a visit I won't soon forget.

London, England

I'm writing to you from London, my new favorite city! While it's still way too hot here to be comfortable, I like everything else about my journey here so far. The Tube is the city's underground transportation system, and I like it almost as much as I liked the Paris metro; it's fast, simple, not too expensive, and I also like pretending to know where I'm going like a native Londoner.

I've spent a lot of time here with my friend Holly, and we coincidentally have the same interests and accidentally lined up the dates for our London stay, so it has been nice to have a buddy! It certainly makes going out to eat a lot less awkward.

The food scene in London is great. There isn't a lot of distinctively "English" food unless you go to a place that targets tourists for overpriced fish and chips. Restaurants and cafes line every street, and there's something tasty for every budget if you look hard enough.

On my first full day in London, Holly and I went to the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery. The former housed priceless works of art from medieval times until the late nineteenth century. My favorite of these, naturally, were the van Gogh paintings on display.

This is one of van Gogh's famous Sunflowers paintings.

I never knew this painting, van Gogh's Two Crabs, existed. It was painted
early in his career and, while different from the subjects that made him famous,
I found the painting to be quite lovely.

The National Portrait Gallery had portaits dating back to the 1400s with the Tudor family, so it was interesting to see a history of British royality. There was also the only portrait of Shakespeare known to be painted from life (and not just painted based off other models). My favorite room was the one with the Romantic artists, which took me back to last year's Magellan to Lake Geneva. The room had original portraits of Byron, Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, and Coleridge, but the best part for me was seeing the "life mask" of the poet Keats; the poor, sentimental guy had a tragic life and a premature death, so seeing his gentle face in a plaster mold and knowing that that mold had touched his face was cool. 

Then we walked down the road until we reached the Thames river, where we found the London Eye and Big Ben.

What's funny is that Big Ben, an iconic building in the London landscape, is actually undergoing construction to keep it looking fresh, so it's completely covered in layers of scaffolding. You mean to tell me that I came all the way to London and have been robbed of this opportunity? Someone please get me an appointment with the Prime Minister. Or Her Majesty the Queen.

Not really... what this is supposed to look like...

The next day, I went to see the British Museum, which is a huge museum of world history dating back to ancient times. It was really cool, if a bit overwhelming. I spent a while learning about Egyptian burial rituals and mummies as well as marble statues from Ancient Greece and Rome. The British Museum houses treasures like the Rosetta Stone, the Easter Island statue, a mask from the Sutton Hoo burial ground, and samurai armor.

I had to sit down a lot to even get through half of this museum, it was so expansive. Finally, I found a series of carved marble slabs called the Parthenon Marbles (also called the Elgin Marbles) that once inspired Keats to write his poem "On Seeing the Elgin Marbles." I learned about this poem in my Romantic Mythologies class last year, and after seeing glossy photos of the marbles in a book, it was amazing to see them in real life.

There is so much to see and do in this city, so I know I won't be short of adventure.

Blarney Castle and Back to Dublin

I realized that I completely forgot to talk about seeing a performance of Ulysses at the Abbey Theatre. Going to the Abbey was already on my list due to its rich history during the arts revival, but once I found out that a play based on a book by James Joyce would be featured at the theatre that housed plays by Yeats and Synge, I knew I had to go. To give a shortened version of events, the Abbey Theatre was founded by a few theatre enthusiasts including Yeats and Lady Gregory due to the need for an Irish national theatre and the writers' desire to rejuvenate the scene of Irish literature. The Abbey has been a site of both political and artistic statement and is still at the heart of Dublin's theatre scene today.

The Abbey is a small, intimate venue where the audience
can sit directly in front of the stage.

I was curious to see how Ulysses would be adapted into the form of drama; the work is considered to be one of the greatest (if not THE greatest) novel of modern times, but it is infamously long, confusing, and difficult to get through. The entire novel takes place over the course of a single day, providing several different characters' perspectives on intertwining events. With no clear plot lines, very little accessible language, and bits of meaningless nonsense, Joyce's masterpiece is hardly something easily adapted to the screen or stage.

However, I really enjoyed this performance at the Abbey. I had a front-row seat due to booking so far in advance, and the show was at times haunting, at times ridiculously crude, and at times uncomfortably revealing of universal experiences. A core cast of about five actors performed all of the different characters, rotating seamlessly and skillfully between roles to create a fast-paced, jarring experience that matches the experience of reading the novel.

Luckily, I was sitting next to a lovely local couple who gave me some tips about the city. Anne and Brian, frequent visitors of the theatre, told me which areas of the city to avoid, which attractions to visit, and other parts of Ireland to visit. They even kindly offered to give me their phone number in case I needed anything during my stay. Meeting such kind people makes traveling alone a lot more bearable. I ran into Brian later in the week while he was heading back to the office, and he made sure to say hello and wish me well.

I saved some of the things about which I was most excited for the end of my time in Dublin. My main priority was to visit Trinity College, its beautiful library, and the Book of Kells, a medieval masterpiece of a book from about 800 AD. It contains the four gospels of Christ adorned with colorful drawings and letters in an ornate script. Pictures wouldn't do it justice, and photos weren't even allowed in the room with the artifact. Take my word for it: it was beautiful, but I wish hundreds of calves hadn't been needed to create the vellum pages.

Probably one of my favorite parts of my trip so far was seeing the Long Room at Trinity College; one of the most beautiful libraries in the world, it is open for visitors' viewing, but during the evening hours it can only be accessed by students of Trinity. Is it too late to transfer?

in my preferred habitat

I stayed up until closing time and very skillfully lingered until it was
just the guards and me. I snapped a few pictures undiluted by my fellow
humans and left before the guards could yell at me.

The next day, I went for another day trip, this time to the south of Ireland. I saw the Rock of Cashel, the ruins of an old fortress that was converted into a cathedral. Arguably one of the most historic sites in Ireland, the Rock of Cashel lies at the top of a hill and overlooks the beautiful Irish countryside.

The bus stopped in the "rebel city" of Cork for about an hour. I wish I'd had more time to explore, but I ended up grabbing lunch at a Subway, petting a local dog, and getting back on the bus to go to Blarney Castle.

Blarney Castle is located not far from Cork city, and it is mostly famous because of the Blarney Stone. This "magical" stone bestows the "gift of the gab," or eloquent speech, upon the  person who kisses it. So, after a climb up the steep, slippery stone stairs of the castle, I joined the line to kiss the stone. And I kissed it. (Did you know you have to lie down and lean backwards to even reach it? Don't you think the people who placed it there could have put it somewhere more easily accessible instead?) I haven't noticed any improvements to my speech, but maybe it takes a few weeks to settle in!

The castle itself was beautiful! In wonderful condition and complete with tiny doorways and tinier staircases, the castle is surrounded by beautiful gardens and pathways perfect for exploring. I ended up meeting another solo traveller from Canada, so we explored the castle and the grounds together.

After that exhausting but rewarding day, I only had a bit of time left in Dublin. I made sure to visit the James Joyce Centre, a small museum dedicated to the life and works of Joyce. It was a lovely and informative exhibit; on display were some furniture pieces that Joyce and some friends used while editing Ulysses, a copy of his death mask, and a small art exhibit of pieces that modernized scenes from my favorite Joyce work, Dubliners.

I loved my time in Dublin. Between the lovely museums, the historical cobblestone streets, the Georgian buildings, and the sprawling green parks, Dublin made me feel right at home (except for the wild pub culture -- the collective pint I had throughout my week and a half was plenty). Ireland's beautiful countryside and winding urban streets revealed a new context for my favorite works of literature, and I'll always be grateful for that.

Galway and Thoor Ballylee

W. B. Yeats is one of the primary poets I have been studying in Ireland, and his works have always interested me because of their acute political and social resonances. His relationships with women are particularly interesting; it is arguable that his work would never have amounted to much had it not been for the women (especially political revolutionary Maud Gonne) who scorned his advances. It would seem that this heartbreak and misery inspired much of Yeats's best work.

After trying to visit one of the museums in Dublin and finding it closed for the day, I stumbled across the National Library of Ireland by accident. This is when I got really lucky: there was a temporary exhibit of the world's largest collection of Yeats material! I spent hours in the exhibit, paying special attention to the poet's drafting process and the nearly indiscernable nature of his handwriting.

These are the final lines of the poem "Under Ben Bulben." Yeats wrote
his own epigraph, and these words are now engraved on his
tomb near the mountain Ben Bulben.

The Yeats exhibition provided valuable insight into the poet's life and his relation to the people and events that surrounded him. This was the perfect way to prepare for my brief journey to the west coast of Ireland. After finally adjusting to Dublin, it was time to travel to County Galway in pursuit of Thoor Ballylee, the stony Norman tower in the countryside that was the summer home of Yeats in his later years. The tower is Yeats's self-proclaimed symbol, and it appears in many of his works of poetry, my favorite being "Meditations in Time of Civil War." This poem is included in a collection of poems called, well, The Tower, published in 1928.

I was nervous for this journey due to the necessity of coordinating three different types of public transportation in one day to arrive at a site situated in the midst of miles of farms and country estates. I took a coach bus from Dublin to Galway (only about 2.5 hours to travel across the entire country!), a city bus from Galway to a small town called Gort, and then a hackney cab from Gort to Thoor Ballylee. A local Irish guy about my age offered to call the taxi service for me, which was nice until he offered me some weed and suggested we get a drink together later that evening. He gave me his contact information, which I willfully forgot as soon as I got into my cab.

Thoor Ballylee was beautiful, and the people who volunteer there were wonderfully hospitable. I loved walking up the winding staircase and seeing the very rooms where Yeats lived with wife George and their two children. I was even offered a complimentary cup of tea and some cinnamon toast just for visiting.

Yeats's wife George used to hold a fishing pole out of the tower
windows to catch fish from the river.

This is the winding staircase that appeared as a symbol
in many of Yeats's late poems.

The lovely reception room brings guests from all over the world
to discuss their journeys over tea and toast.

When I finally got back to Galway city, I was relieved for successfully navigating and not getting lost/stranded somewhere. Galway is a beautiful, small coastal city known for its great food scene and its nightlife. I spent most of my time sitting in Eyre Square park and breathing in the fresh ocean air.

I sat along the bay for a while, which earned me a nice sunburn.

I left Galway without having had much time to explore the city, but it was nice to get back to Dublin. Next I'll be going to a few other museums and exploring the modern resonances of my favorite Irish writers.

Dublin, Ireland

After arriving in Dublin a few days ago, I'm finally adjusting to life here (and to the five-hour time difference). I packed for chilly, rainy weather, but it has been sunny and cloudless every day that I've been here! A local man I met in the beautiful St. Stephen's Green park told me that this is the nicest weather he has seen in Dublin in 15 years. I'll take his word for it, as he has lived in Dublin for 71 years. On my first day in Dublin, I was so tired from traveling that I had no energy to do anything at all. Instead of going to bed in the middle of the afternoon, I went to the local movie theatre to see the new Jurassic World movie, which, let's be honest, I would have done even if I had had the energy to go to a thousand museums.

I'm staying in a hostel on the south side of the Liffey River, which is an ideal location for walking to all of my places of interest. A friend told me that Dublin was a very "walkable city" when she visited last year, so I made the executive decision not to bother with public transportation when I can easily travel by foot.

However, my visit to the Kilmainham Gaol a couple of days ago threw a wrench into these plans when I thought that two miles would take me no time at all, but I ended up having to hurriedly hail my first taxi on the wrong side of the road in order to make it in time for my sold-out tour. I didn't realize that "two miles along the river" meant "will probably take you over an hour and land you on the outskirts of the city," but I made it in time!

The Kilmainham Gaol was never part of my itinerary, but after reading reviews about it and learning its close connection with the revolt against British rule, I knew I had to visit. The jail housed hundreds of prisoners in poor conditions, and after the Easter Uprising of 1916 in central Dublin, the jail was home to several radicals who advocated for Irish independence. Only a few days after their arrests, these political prisoners were executed. These unjust executions threw the city, and the entire country, into even deeper political turmoil, but a halfway-solution would not be negotiated until 1922 with the separation of Northern and Southern Ireland, the former remaining a part of the United Kingdom and the latter claiming independence as a free state, the Republic of Ireland. I learned all of this on my tour of the jail, a cold, stony, eerie building with blood and violence as the mortar between the stones. Ireland's bloody political history is pervasive in Irish literature, not only from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries but also in contemporary works, so this tour gave me some helpful context for my research.

After my tour of the jail, I opted to walk back to central Dublin at a leisurely pace this time -- quite a lovely walk along the Liffey, which only smells a little bad when the wind blows in the wrong direction. I do like Dublin a lot so far. It's not so much a city with "sights" to see but rather a city to wander and experience. The winding cobblestone streets filled with pubs and coffee shops have a unique history that is worth unraveling.

St. Stephen's Green, a lovely park in central Dublin
where I spend a lot of my spare time.

I'm here in Dublin primarily to study the dwellings and landscapes that are immortalized in the works of my favorite Irish writers, including but not limited to James Joyce, William Butler Yeats, Elizabeth Bowen, and Samuel Beckett. Between my long walks and too-frequent coffee breaks, I do try to do some research. Yesterday I went to the Dublin Writers Museum, a small building with a two-room exhibit at the exorbitant price of 12 euro. While the museum did include a self-guided audio tour, interesting information about the evolution and revival of Irish literature, and some very old books, I think it could be much better considering the rich history of the city. I did find a beautiful copy of Joyce's Ulysses printed in 1930 by Sylvia Beach, the founder of Shakespeare & Company, which was my favorite place in Paris during my trip last year! Lots of connections being made purely by accident.

To take a break from the bustle of the city, I took a trip to the west coast of Ireland to see the beautiful Cliffs of Moher. Over a million visitors flock to see the cliffs each year, and it's not hard to see why -- towering over the Atlantic at just over 700 feet at their maximum, the Cliffs of Moher are breathtaking and exhilarating. Before we got to the cliffs, the bus let us off at a small fishing village for a quick break, and I found a couple of donkeys resting in the shade!

When we finally arrived at the Cliffs of Moher, I ventured beyond the boundary walls with the other brave tourists and tried to find the least stable cliff ledges to sit on. I can't explain how incredible it was on the top of the windy cliffs. It was such a beautiful and sunny day, and I now face the ultimate irony: my fair Irish skin was burned by the hot Irish sun. But it was absolutely worth it.

I made a new friend at the cliffs, Iya. She's from Japan, but
she has been working with horses for a year in Ireland.

Now I'm back in Dublin, and I have plenty of things planned for the next few days. Tonight, I'm seeing a production of Ulysses at the historic Abbey Theatre. I won't be doing much else, though -- a half-pint of Guinness was plenty for me for a while.