London, Edinburgh, and Dublin are FREE
>> August 30, 2010
Oh what a delight it is to realize one's worry and travel expectations rise to frenetic and paranoid levels only to be relieved to discover the opposite is true: London, Edinburgh, and Dublin are FREE!! We spent months worrying about our time in Europe. A friend, Andy H., had smartly told us that we had a great beginning to our itinerary, 'You are smart to begin with Tokyo, Shanghai, China and Hong Hong,' he said, because if you start with the more expensive countries it makes it much easier to enjoy your travel. Everything seems to always get cheaper.'
While it is true that after India, entering Africa, the prices started to tick up; the transition from Ethiopia, to Ghana/Togo, and then Egypt was acceptable, a mild expenditure curve. The curve got steeper traveling from Turkey through the Balkans into Europe (however, we had a brief but very scary insight in Greek southern Cyprus - and thus were prepared. Again, between Italy, France, Spain and Morocco the prices seemed to by consistently high and arbitrarily excessive at times. But, as our readers know from previous blogs, we found wonderfully inexpensive ways to thoroughly enjoy such exquisitely costly locales as Barcelona and Paris. Thus we had a sense of confidence crossing the channel.
London (the British Pound) is quite expensive. But, all of its National Museums are free. I cannot begin to cover all the other great aspects of London which are free but save it to say that between very reasonable theater tickets, the Oyster Card transfer option on buses (maximum £3.50 per day usage charge), the Globe Shakespeare Theater and the numerous local performing acts daily across the city; there is no reason to avoid London because of costs.
It is expensive to buy food, and even more expensive to eat out. If you make friends, use social networking (sites like couchsurfing.com or hospitality club are great for finding hosts really interested in meeting travelers - or if you find camping or cheap hostels), once you get past the daily costs of housing the rest can be very same, close to home. We will definitely consider house-swaps the next time we visit Europe so that we can both stay in one place a while and share our own empty place back home with someone who can enjoy it (and water the plants).
We have written numerous times about how our best experiences of nine months of world travel are those that are free (friendships, public space, sharing meals, and attending public museums, libraries, parks, graveyards and the like always bring us heightened joy). There is a corollary side effect to this philosophy - when people are not paying for activities they take them more lightly. People want to get there money's worth even if they are disinterested! Those who are paying for special exhibits in museums, for example, try and nurse every minute out of the painting and clog the view points (we saw a Turner exhibit at the Prado that was hard top enjoy - whereas the whole Turner wing at the Tate Britain in London was nearly looked over by passersby.
Dublin, like Edinburgh and London just before it, for us has been an utter delight because we wander in and out of public space, museums, libraries, graveyards and the like unencumbered. There is a nice flow. IT is not so crowded as London. Certainly not nearly as crowded as Edinburgh during its myriad of simultaneous festivals happening in August (Fringe, International, Literature, and Tattoo just to name a few). Some of our own favorite finds here have been the campus of Trinity College, the Pub near us in continuous service from 998, Glasnevin graveyard (a graveyard containing many dead including over 1 million plague victims, the museum is modern and disneyesque - to be skipped) and Chester Beatty Library next to Dublin Castle. The Beatty library is easily one of the best overviews for understanding the worlds major religions that we have come across in nine months.
Both of us felt that if our round-the-world adventure through lands of Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Dadaism, Maoism, Jainism, Confucianism and more had been informed early on the trip by this museum it would have been a lot easier to feel that we had some fundamental understanding both of the culture and the morays. Dadaism and Maoism I added. Just wanted to see if you were paying attention. In the graveyard there are much more simplistic examples of the world's religions including Scientology and humanism but I find Dadaism and Maoism just as poignant.
We entered Dublin knowing it's rated by travelers as Europe's most expensive city. Having passed through Monaco, Nice, Venice this seemed really scary. It's as expensive as you make it.
Enjoy Dublin, it is almost free.
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