The Before

In case anyone hasn't heard: I'm going to the British Isles in...103 days, 12 hours, and 11 minutes (as of typing this sentence.) I'm pretty excited to go to a place I've only dreamed of going to for several years now. However, I'm fairly certain that the England/Ireland/Scotland of my imagination is much different from the real thing. For instance, I have some known misconceptions about the three places:

Scotland: Every guy wears kilts and chews with one side of his mouth open. They have beards and those hats that look like berets except they have a fuzzy ball on top. When a Scottish man stands, he poses. There are no women in Scotland. It's always foggy, if not slightly chilly. Every Scot at least knows someone who plays bagpipes, or flute/fife. People there don't live in houses; they live in castles, especially run down ones. In fact, there's hardly any people in Scotland at all, just a lot of sheep.

England: This country has three time periods:

• the prehistoric age where Arthur was king, Merlin was his Secretary of Awesome, and Guinevere was...very pretty. Rome stopped by for a few visits but never stuck around long. They might have built a wall somewhere. 
• the Elizabethan era where Henry VIII made a terrible husband of himself and always won in divorce court. Bloody Mary killed a bunch of Protestants before tea, then died. Queen Elizabeth I took the throne after dying horses tails the color of her hair. She didn't have any love interests because she was too busy taking over the world and thumbing her nose at Spain. Speaking of thumbing noses, Shakespeare was Queen Lizzie's tea buddy and spent most of his time in the Globe Theater holding his pen artfully against his lip and nose between lines of his plays. 
• the era of World War II: where C.S. Lewis was a genius college professor and never slept because he had so many wonderful books to write. In his "spare" hours, he would drink with J.R.R Tolkien at a local pub and discuss profound topics like how many dwarves does it take to carve out a cavern and what Christ's favorite food was. (Hint: It wasn't blood sausage.)

 England has not aged since Lewis' death. People there still smoke pipes, still say things like "by Jove!" and "Great Scott!" Every guy wears thick and long trench coats everywhere and nice shoes. The girls wear skirts that at least go down to the knee and no one will ever see them in pants. Men still smoke pipes and do nothing but sit around and discuss the meaning of life. The Beatles, J.K. Rowling, and James Bond all came from some other England. Yeah, that one. Oh, and England is a continent, a rather massive one, in which London, Oxford, and Canterburry dominate. English people do not rap.

Ireland: Everything in Ireland is green. Besides the rolling green countryside, Ireland has a university and innumerable pubs. No Irishman or Irishwoman lives in a house or a cottage. They live in the pubs and drink. They also tell bawdy jokes. All Irish people play musical instruments quite skillfully.