Give me but one hour of Scotland

Trapped in Edinburgh Castle

I find that writing large paragraphs is getting dull and I feel bad I haven't updated since I've been busy. I didn't know writing about my awesome adventures could be so complicated and tiring. There is just so much I want to tell you guys! Knowing that my loving family eagerly awaits hearing about my awesome adventures inspires me to continue, though I really can't wait to tell you all about the places I've seen in person. If you're not sick of my travel adventures by the time I get back!

Anyway, this trip is probably better shown through pictures with captions rather than me typing 10 paragraphs telling you what we did. So here we go:

Ok so first I don't think I ever told you how Casey and I conquered the lions in Trafalgar. We did.

This reminds me of the "Long Live the King" stampede
scene in The Lion King. 

Oh yeah, we rock

Ok so Edinburgh. Summary- 5 am wake up for 7 am train + Drowsiness inducing motion sickness medicine = exhausted Tina

Still worth it.

DAY 1

Cool walkway

Rose Street- fun times!

Where JK apparently started HP

Scotland has the right to print its own bank notes
they look really different from England's

Every time I ask them to smile I get something like this

We stopped at Edinburgh Castle

It's just chillin there in the middle of the city

So after a walking tour of Edinburgh, my friends and I headed over to a Ceilidh. Which is pronounced Kaylee. Yeah, I don't get it either. Anyway, this was a night of traditional Scottish music and dancing. Complete with kilts.

This is Liz and I being partners at the Ceilidh

aaand inevitably screwing something up

Cuties at the Ceilidh

Coolest old Scottish guy ever. We Scottish waltzed together

Anyway, if you ever get to go to a Ceilidh, in the States or anywhere else, do it. It is so much fun. The lack of pics is a combo of laziness and the fact that we were dancing almost the whole time so there was no time for pics. This dance lasted well past midnight and I didn't get to bed till like 1:30. So. Worth. It.

Scottish flag car/taxi. Cool stuff. 

Please add Edinburgh to the list of "Places Tina will probably end up living if she gets the chance" because I would LOVE to live here.


DAY 2

Soreness kicks in. Hours of walking ahead of us. Let's do this.

Holyrood House, the residence of the Queen
when she visits Scotland

Destroyed Abbey- common theme in the UK

Bein a guard. I'm cool like that.

The gardens were BEAUTIFUL

We have to climb that!?!?!?

yes. Yes we did. But not before stopping at:

The tree themed Scottish Parliament building.
I'm serious. It is tree themed

I wish I could remember some of the interesting things about the Scottish Parliament. I mean, they basically told England "HEY, WE WANT TO MAKE LOCAL LAWS FOR OURSELVES," and England/Westminster said "Ok." And that is the story of the Scottish Parliament.

On to more fun and painful things: Climbing Arthur's Seat.

The beginning of the walk

scaling rocks to get to the top

Then we got to the top and took about 500 pics. Here is a sampling of them:

lovely views

We conquered it. With silly poses

and some dangerous ones

Bill is a beast. He danced all night at the Ceilidh AND climbed
the seat. Did I mention he just turned 65?
He's the director of the London Centre

Oh you know, just relaxing on top of the world

so we decided to do an awesome jumping shot

Then Casey and I decided to be brave. Really brave. And do what my father before me did not even attempt:

Diggin in to my Haggis, Neeps and Tatties

It actually wasn't bad at all. It doesn't look gross and was pretty tasty!

Then I got cake with ice cream. Of course!

DAY 3

A short day, as we had a 5 hour train to catch at like 2, so we got some snacks then headed to a car boot sale that Bill had directed us to. The boot is the trunk of the car, so basically it's a sale where people drive to this parking garage and sell stuff. Giant garage sale. I only bought a few small things, but Andrea, Casey and Liz came across something, er, larger and more useful... I think.

Yes, that is a foot bath. They got it for 3 pounds

Casey and Andrea also got some cool stuff for their apartment next year. It was a good time. Satisfied with Edinburgh but exhausted, we hopped back on the train to King's Cross and headed home. 

3 weeks left, YIKES.

No planes? Buses? Rushing around???

Finally this weekend we had a break. Well, not Casey, she headed off to Germany in the middle of class on Thursday. But the rest of us did.

This weekend, none of us had anything really planned. Sure, there was some stuff I was thinking about doing, but the beauty of it was I could do it whenever I pleased. No running to and through airports, carrying 3 days worth of clothes in my backpack then waiting for hours because Ryanair is unorganized and stupid. No need for motion sickness medicine for every day because we weren't taking any long bus rides to or from airports. So nice.

Friday I was totally lame. I slept in, watched some TV with Liz, then went to work and did an essay on absolute advantage vs comparative advantage. Yeah, I'm livin' the dream. No seriously, it is due next Monday but we're going to be in Edinburgh this weekend!!!! That promises to be an excellent (but very long and exhausting) trip, since we have to take a train there so that means its a couple hours at least. We don't get back until Sunday, which limits my homework time. But I'm not gonna worry, the essay is almost done, and who cares??? It's bright and sunny here!


After lounging around a bit Saturday, I headed out to the Imperial War Museum just for the heck of it (since Dad told me to go). The museum isn't massive, but it has a lot of stuff. Like a huge WWI and WWII collection, plus exhibits on MI5 and MI6 and the Holocaust (which I skipped because you had to pay for it, there was a huge class of young teens there, and I've seen the Holocaust museum in DC so I figured it wouldn't be that different). What I found most interesting was that there was so much more history in the WWI and WWII parts, where I spent most of my time. Because the war actually happened over here, there is a lot more that was preserved. No offense America, but you joined both late. So it was interesting to see the British perspective on things.

The cannon outside the museum

Nazi uniforms. Scary.

They had lots of cool stuff, from guns to gas masks, uniforms to letters. I even got to walk through a WWII fighter jet! It was tiny. I can't believe someone used that to fight. I could barely stand in it!

However a few hours is about all I can take of museums, so I called it a day and headed home. It was a nice trip to take though. I really enjoyed it.

That night, in the interest of using all of our pasta before we leave, Liz and I made a big spaghetti dinner with garlic bread that Liz made herself. This segment is only funny because Liz and I are terrible estimators of how much pasta to make... Both of us when we're home generally just pour the whole box in the pot because so many people are gonna eat. We can't estimate dinner for two. So of course, we made enough for about 4. Meh. I did successfully make a normal portion for myself the next day for dinner. Maybe next time I will do the measuring and let Liz stir it or something.

Sunday was another beautiful day so we decided to go adventuring. We went to King's Cross to find Platform 9 3/4 of  Harry Potter fame. Warning. It is neither between 9 and 10, nor it is a real wall. It is a painting of a brick wall on some plywood waaaaaaaay away from everything near Platform 8. Still fun, but not as cool as I thought it would be.

so classy they didn't even cover the whole wall

Then Sarah and I wandered through Hyde Park/Kensington Gardens for a while. Because the weather was just wonderful. It was absolutely gorgeous as we walked along the water looking for the Peter Pan statue. We found it, and on the way soaked up the sun and the smell of the beautiful flowers. We watched couples and kids frolic in the park, and saw the cutest dogs! It was a nice, relaxing stroll.

The park

Along the water in the park

Apparently these are the Italian Fountains

Peter Pan statue!!!

Later that night, when all of us were done with our Skype dates, we decided we didn't want to do homework so we played a game we all love. If you've seen Inglorious Basterds, they play this game in a bar. Basically, each person write the name of a character or person on a card, and then you stick it on someone else's forehead. Then they have to guess who it is, by getting clues in the form of yes or no questions. This game is fun when you get creative. Among my favourite characters, The Kool Aid man, The Great Stone Dragon from Mulan, Cesca, Abe Lincoln, Barbie, The Eiffel Tower and Barack Obama. Fun times.  

I laugh in the face of danger. Ha ha ha ha!

So, how's the weather over there? It is a bright and sunny 70 degrees today, and it has been for the past few days. I don't need a coat, even at night. How brilliant is that? What? It's still snowing over there, oooh, geez, my bad.

No seriously though, the weather has been beautiful, which makes it hard to stay down, even though it is getting close to finals time and I'm starting to have more work and life is getting a bit more stressful. Oh well, you can't be sad when it is sunny in London!

On Monday at work, we had to start putting up Easter stuff, so we spent most of the day making origami rabbits and chicks. Please note: origami is not one of my strong points. At all.

Chicks!

Chicks and rabbits

Nothing really crazy happened this week except that Andrea and I went and checked out a performance of The Lion King on Wednesday. I'd forgotten how awesome the show is, though there were some parts I wasn't a fan of (Timone wasn't as good as the one I saw before, and some of the additional songs/scenes were a bit overkill). But what I do remember the costumes being awesome, and they totally blew me away again. If you get the chance to see this show, dooooo it.

The Lyceum Theatre

Not bad seats for 21 pounds. Safety rail in view, in the way a bit, but better than back row

Favourite parts: The beginning where all the animals come out (the giraffes were andrea's favourites) and they march down the aisles

the opening of Lion King, The Circle of Life

The stampede- still gives me chills

the costumes in general, especially Scar's and Mufasa's

"I know it sounds sordid, but you'll be rewarded when at last I am given my dues!"

The masks move and cover their faces when they move their heads a certain way. So. Cool.

Most of the songs

Rafiki

Seriously, just watch this to be shown, or reminded, of the awesomeness that is The Lion King







Andrea and I then had fun running down the 193 spiral stairs of the Covent Garden tube station, since there isn't any escalators and the elevators were packed. Fun times.

Check it out here: http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10150258760511632&saved

Yesterday, our friend Rachel invited us over to her flat. Her cousin is doing a dissertation for Psychology and she needed people to be part of her experiment, which was basically a math test with some psychological meaning behind it (I think it had to do with competitiveness). Anyway, with the promise of a free meal to get us to come, I was hooked. I have food in the house, but a nice meal I don't have to cook or pay for? I'm down.

It was nice to just relax and not have a hectic Thursday of running to buses and catching planes. We're hanging around this weekend because of that reason. We're exhausted (well, except Casey, she went to Germany to visit a friend) so I'm gonna hang around here this weekend, maybe check out King's Cross. It will be prime.

In Dublin's fair city where the girls are so pretty

To introduce the wonders of this blog post, here is a picture of Casey and I with an awesome statue in Dublin

So, if you couldn't tell, I went to Dublin this weekend. Let me say, it was amazing.

First of all, the morning prior, Casey and I had to give a presentation on Airbus vs Boeing for our International Business class. Not the best presentation I've done, but we looked good in our business casual and I think my teacher sort of likes us anyway, cause he knows I speak Italian and he lived in Italy for a while. Yeah, we have a bond. Not really.

Anyway, then we watched the 39 Steps in my Drama class cause we're seeing it in a few weeks, soooo that's pretty cool. It's an Alfred Hitchcock film and it is pretty awesome, so I'm excited to see the show.

Then we high tailed it outta there so we could catch our bus to Stanstead, since all the airports in London are like an hour + outside of the city. Lame. Liz was also sick like a dog which made dragging a 20 kilo suitcase around 3 tube stations a great time. yeah. Glad that's over with.

So yeah, we got to the airport no problems, but our flight was obnoxiously late. Ryanair doesn't have an amazing record in my book. Only one of my flights on Spring Break was on time.

We didn't do anything Thursday night because we spent like an hour trying to find our hostel because the directions weren't wonderful, but we got there. Not the most amazing hostel in the world, but for our purposes it was alright.

We picked up a map in the morning and decided to spend the day walking the city and exploring. We hit up things like the Ha'penny bridge, the Viking part of town (not that cool), St. Stephen's Green, which is a park, and some other stuff.

The next day we went on a tour of Wicklow National Park, which I wanted to do and got my friends to come  do also. It was amazing and totally worth it. We stopped at a pub for some grub and I got this amazing guinness and beef stew. Ah. Mazing. We saw sights from a lot of movies like P. S. I Love You, Reign of Fire, Braveheart and others. We saw Glendelaugh, which was an ancient monastic, er, monastery? Pretty much the countryside of Ireland. It was really refreshing to get out of cities for a day.

Basically, I'm really bad at describing this trip because it is totally indescribable. The pictures don't even do it justice, but they're better than what I'm saying right now so I'll just post a bunch of pictures and try and describe them anyway. Maybe that will help.

 

K so first of all, this lady had a Grommit backpack. So. Cool.

Moving on

I wanted a nice picture of them and the Ha'penny bridge... yup

Litter is disgusting

We bought rings! So pretty. Andrea and I each got a claddagh ring, Casey a Celtic something

Entry into the beautiful park

St. Stephen's Green

Pigeon man!!! Seriously, he had like 100s surrounding him

Street performer WALKING ON FIRE

AND SWALLOWING IT

Sidewalk art

The cool Irish bartenders we met. Darragh and Lemons

Our tour bus. Small but pleasant

Plus our adorable guide who made us tea on the side of the road!

Just outside the city

Sheep! Saw tons on the tour

Such a beautiful site on a beautiful day

So many cool hidden things

Can't remember the name, but this was amazing!!!!

Unbelievably beautiful

The P. S. I Love You bridge

Of course I had to take a pic. Please don't mine the hair, it was incredibly windy

My scrumptious Guinness and Beef Stew

A bunch of the ruins of Glendelough

Giant rock while we were hiking in Wicklow

It was a torrential downpour about 15 minutes before this, if you can believe it

Goodbye Dublin! I'll be back!

My souvenirs... Irish candy haha

So yeah, I totally want to come back. Add Ireland to the list of places I could totally live when I'm older. Apparently, if you leave Ireland wearing a claddagh ring, you're destined to come back. I sure hope so!