Scotland!

Hey ya'll! Sorry I'm being such a slacker about updating and then writing really long posts haha. I'll give a brief overview of what I did last week....

I went to see Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, which was really great, James Earl Jones (voice of Mufasa/Darth Vader) was the main character "Big Daddy" and he was really good. And in Art we went to "The Real Van Gogh" which was really cool and then this past Thursday we went to the National Gallery and saw a lot of Western European art including a lot of Monet, Renoir and a few by Van Gogh. We were supposed to go to a soccer game on Tuesday but it got rained out which was a bummer, but we're going to go to a different one, I'm not sure when yet but I'll let you know when I find out!

Alright so my trip to Scotland was amazing! It went by so fast and I am now exhausted but I had so much fun and it is absolutely stunning there. I literally felt like I was in a movie the entire time. We took an overnight bus there and back, so Thursday night we went to this Radio Show in London at the Globe Theater (which was hilarious, it was like an old time-y show where they make all of the noises and tell stories and it is actually on the radio in London). And after the show we went back to our flat and got our bags and took the tube to Victoria Coach Station (the bus station). I only took my bookbag for the 3 days we would be there, I was very impressed that I fit everything into one bag! Our bus left the station at 11:00pm and we got to the station kind of late so we all had to sit next to different random people on the bus, I sat next to a girl from China named Gogo (well im assuming that is how it is spelled haha) We talked a little bit but mostly she just slept and listened to music, unfortunately for me I couldn't fall asleep on the 8 hour bus ride, so I just listened to music the whole way there. We got to Edinburgh around 7am and we walked to our hostel which wasn't too far away from the bus station. When we got there we went to check in and I found out that I was in a separate room from everyone else in my group. We booked separately and we didn't think there would be a problem putting us into one room, but I guess they couldn't change anything around so I stayed in a room with 5 people I didn't know and it was a mixed dorm, meaning that there were 2 scottish men and 1 french guy and 2 other french girls, needless to say it was quite an interesting stay. If you want to hear more about it, just ask haha,I have plenty of good stories. I took a shower and got some coffee at the bar and then we headed out into Edinburgh for the day. The first thing we did was tour the Edinburgh Castle, which is built on volcanic rock, it was really cool.

At 1:00pm everyday they fire a shot from the castle across Edinburgh and so we stayed to see that and we also saw the Crown Jewels and old Prisoner of War chambers underneath the castle.

There was a really great view from the top! :-)

Afterwards we walked down the Royal mile which is the road that leads from the top of the road when the castle is, down through historic Edinburgh. We stopped in a few stores and a church and slowly made our way down the rest of the Royal Mile. When we got to the bottom we decided that we wanted to climb "Arthurs Seat" which is supposedly the best view in Edinburgh and I definitely would say that held true. It was formed from an extinct volcano and then was eroded by glaciers.

This is before we decided to climb it

The View!

After we did that we went to a place call The Worlds End for dinner, I had fish and chips (for the first time since I've been in Europe) and it was so good. We were all exhausted from the long day of traveling (I was going on about 36 hours of no sleep) and so we headed back to the hostel.

On Saturday morning we got up early because we were taking a bus tour to Loch Ness and the Highlands. Our bus drivers name was Gary and he liked to tell corny jokes and play lots of Scottish bagpipe music haha including this song...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frCt63-v-9Y

But it was so much fun, we stopped at a place for coffee about an hour into the trip and saw a Highland Cow named Hamish, and it was his birthday.

Hamish :-)

And then we headed up into the highlands which were absolutely beautiful, there are a couple of pictures for you guys to see, but I really don't think they do it justice. We traveled through Stirling and saw where William Wallace (Braveheart anyone?) fought in the Battle of Stirling Bridge. We went to a ton of different places so I'll spare you the time it would take to write about all of it and just hit the highlights.

You can't tell in this picture but there are tears streaming down my face because it was so cold haha

We also went to Loch Ness and took a boat ride, it was really cool, unfortunately though I did not see the Loch Ness monster.

Picture from the boat on Loch Ness

We stopped at dinner in a really small scottish town, and the restaurant we ate dinner in all of the waiters were wearing kilts! That night when we got back into Edinburgh we went to a pub called "The Globe" which was a lot of fun, and we got to watch some of the Olympics which was fun. I have a funny story about when I got back to the hostel that night, but I don't feel like typing the entire thing out on here, so ask me about it if you want to hear it haha. Sunday morning we checked out of our hostel and went back into Edinburgh for our last day of touring. We visited Calton Hill which included the old National Monument that was supposed to look like the Parthenon from Athens, but they never finished it, so its just a half finished building.

If you can see in the picture on the right side along the bottom of the National Monument there is a little hill and it was very muddy and I slid and fell all the way down it,it was funny at the time, but my pants were muddy for the rest of the day, including the 8 hour bus ride back to London and I'm kind of sore from it haha.

Great view from the top of Calton Hill

After we went to Calton Hill we ate lunch and then went to Holyrood Palace, which is where the Queen stays during the summer, it was really cool and definitely worth visiting.

Holyrood Castle

Afterwards we got some coffee and did some souvenir shopping, I got a plaid scarf and a bunch of postcards! Then we went to dinner at a place called Monster Mash and had dinner, two of the people on the trip got Haggis and I tried a little bit of it, it wasn't too bad! You don't really want to know what's in it though. Afterwards we had a little bit of time left before we had to go to the bus station, so we went to The Elephant House and had dessert, which is where J.K Rowling wrote Harry Potter.

It was a really cute restaurant with a great view of Edinburgh Castle and we just hung out there until we caught our bus back to London. Our bus left around 10p.m and we got into London around 6:45 this morning. Oh and no trip to Scotland would be complete without a picture of one of the MANY men playing bagpipes on the street...

I took a long nap today but I'm still pretty tired, I'll try and add some more pictures and stuff later but I wanted to write about the trip before I forgot everything! I miss everyone so much and hope you had a great weekend!