Cold was invented here

Location: Edinburgh, Scotland, UK

After we arrived in Edinburgh, we spent a lot of time walking around and getting our bearings in the new town. We ended up at a cute little restaurant on Rose Street where we met a nice old man who showed us exactly where to go for some good authentic Lothian food. After having a nice meal (cranberry and brie stuffed bread... yum) we went to a local pub which had no name on the corner of York Place (which was the street our cute little hotel was on).

After a good nights sleep we went on a day full of running around. We started at Edinburgh castle which was so interesting. We did an audio tour so we could really learn about the history of the place. The things I remember the most about it were the dog cemitary (which was soooo cute) and the part about the Hanoverian horses. The castle itself was HUGE and we kept getting lost. We even got the chance to go into this really neat tower that was destroyed in some war in the 1500's but it has since been excavated and the rooms are still in tact. It's incredible to think that people actually lived here at some point. Of course, it was drizzling the whole time we were there, so it was a little chilly, but definitely a good experience.

After that we went to this all boys school called George Hariot's School. It's an active school so you can't actually go inside, but the buildings are incredible. After this, we walked back to little internet cafe called the Elephant Room which is the cafe where J K Rowling wrote the first edition of the first Harry Potter. It was a cute little cafe and they had great tea.

Afterward, we went to the Palace of Holyroodhouse and the accompanying park which was my favorite part. The Palace is the place where the Queen goes to stay whenever she is visiting Scotland. The front gate was so beautiful and the palace itself was lie something out of your imagination. There were also some cute old houses in the park that you know had been there forever. We took a cute old cab back to the train station (it looked like a PT cruiser but older and way cooler - and it had fold down seats; 5 people could sit in the back seat facing each other). From here, we took a train to Leuchars where St Andrew's golf course is (the course where the British Open Gold Tournament is and the place where golf was invented). It was beautiful. The golf course was SOOO cold but it was really cool. We found the place where Van Der Velde shot the ball into the water on the 18th and ended up climbing in to shoot it out and blew his shot at the British open championship title. It was really interesting. Strange though because we got to just walk right out on the course. There were no boundaries or fences, it was just a public course, right off the road.

After we got back to Edinburgh, which took about an hour, we went to a really neat little restaurant in Old Town called Doric. It was a really cool little pub right off the main street. You could see the Ferris wheel, Sir Walter Scott's monument and the ice skating rink in the Loch from the front door. The food was also fantastic. We had a conversation inside about how we had always heard that Scottish, and all British food for that matter, left something to be desired, but this food was amazing. We had fish and chips where the breading on the fish literally melted in your mouth. The fish fell apart on your fork as you were trying to pick it up. After dinner we had this amazing desert with poached pear, in a raspberry sauce with clementine and starfruit slices on a scoop of vanilla cinnamon ice cream from the local dairy. Needless to say, mom had to command me and Andrea to not lick the plate because it was so good, and believe me... we wanted to.

Afterward, we headed back to the corner pub for one last local brew before heading to bed. Tomorrow, the train takes us back to London. I guess I'll give it a second chance!

XOXO

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Neeps and Tatties

Location: Edinburgh, Scotland, UK

Finally in Edinburgh. It is amazing here. The train ride was really eventful. We had a little book that told us things to look at while we were riding. Unfortunately, we missed every single one of them. I'm not realyl sure how because I felt like we were looking really hard but we just flew by them I guess. The country was beautiful. There were so many sheep and huge cottage farm houses. The land was so green and there were hedges that divided the pastures. IT made me understand why steeplechasing is an event. If you had been riding in this country, it would be extremely easy to jump over hedges, stone walls, gates and wells.

As we got further north, ice started to cover the ground. The cute little white sheet started to blend into the background except every once and a while, there'd be a black sheep. The black sheep were so cute Cheesy Grin. We finally got to Edinburgh after about 3.5 hours and checked into our hotel which is a really neat old house that hs been converted into a hotel. Our room is called a "family room" which is basically a huge old bedroom with 3 beds in it. The bathroom is VERY nice though. We walked down the main street in "New Town" to look at a couple little churches and statues and to be able to see the castle and the beautiful architecture of "old town." We met a really nice old man outside of the pub we ended up eating a late lunch at and he told us about the history of old town and new town. After talking to him, I think we're all really excited to be able to head to Old Town tomorrow. At the pub, me and mom split a wonderful brie and cranberry stuffed bread. Their "chips" were also very tasty.

I think the plan is to take it pretty easy tonight considering that we have been travelling all day and then do some SERIOUS exploring tomorrow. The castle looks amazing from accross the Loch, I can't imagine what it looks like up close!!

XOXO

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The Family is Here

Location: Liverpool, England, UK

I am freezing. Being back in Liverpool yesterday was a huge shock to my system. I've figured out how to convert temperatures. It was about 55F in Ireland and here's it goes from about 28 in the morning to no warmer than 34 in the afternoons. Plus there is this horrible wind that whips constantly. Brrrr!!!

Yesterday was very relaxing. I spent the morning walking around down on the docks. On the way, I visited two very different churches. The first, is the metropolitan church which (in the pictures I will post as soon as I can) is the one that kind of looks like a space ship. It was very unique. I'll just leave it at that. The second of the two was a medieval and beautiful dark stone church that was extremely gloomy. the fog was very thick and the church was so tall that you could barely see the top of it. There was very thick brush that ran all the way around it and then there was a moat (yes, an actual moat) that ran all the way around it. The moat was about a 100 foot drop from the road and then the church came up out of the ground there. It was beautiful.

At this point, I headed towards the river and visited Albert Dock which is the site of the Beatles museum as well as a historical focal point for liverpool. Aparently, back in the day, Liverpool was a huge slave trade port and there is a huge museum dedicated to it on this dock. This is also the site of most of the classic Liverpoolean worker images that come to mind (most notably, Accross the Universe... think the shipyards where Jude worked... Loved that movie Cheesy Grin) The docks are very well preserved and there are some fantastically old ships that still sit in the water nearby. It was extremely foggy yesterday which added to the mystery.

After all of this fun, I found the Pier Head (after much strife) and caught a ferry to the other side of the River Mersey. Mike met me here and his dad drove us back to their little house in Wallassey. It was exactly what you would expect. Cute little brick house with cute little rooms on a cute little road. I was instantly greeted by warm soup, hot tea and some mince pie. I met Lucy, Mike's sister, and her daughter Kira as well as Mike's mom. We sat and chatted for a long time and played with Amelia (Mike and Kimmie's daughter) and Kira. We went to dinner at a very cute little (of course) country pub where I had some sort of beef pie with mashed potatoes and gravy on top. It was very strange, but VERY delicious. After this we went to Lucy's house and sat around and played with Amelia and Kira for a little while longer before the Allens dropped me back off in Liverpool to meet up with my parents.

After I had completely exhausted Mom, Dad and Andrea's ear about Ireland, they ate some dinner and then we went to this brewery around the corner to have a couple more beers before bed. The place was very cute and very local. I'm so excited that they're in town, I've already taken Andrea on a crash course of Liverpool and I know it's going to be much more exciting to share all of the excitement with an actual human.

XOXO

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Turn her down the Rocky Road

Location: Killiney, Republic of Ireland

Ireland is literally my favorite place on earth. The cafe I'm in right now doesn't allow USB access so I can't upload my pictures, but when I do, you'll see what I mean.

Dublin is such a great city. There was so much character and so much to see. I went to a couple different churches, my favorite being St. Patrick's Cathedral. Even though it was under construction, it was absolutely breathtaking. It had this great little park behind the church with some great fountains and a wall devoted to famous Irish literaries. I sat there for quite a while and managed to get some great pictures of the fountain with the sunrise in the background as well as the cathedral which was very medieval. After this, I walked to the Guinness brewery which I didn't have time to go into, but I did down a Guinness real quick and move on. I went to another great church in the middle of nowhere called St. Augustine & St. John's. It was a Catholic church and it was HUGE. Right in the middle of this little residential neighborhood.

After that, I went by the Jamison Whiskey distillery (thanks fo rthat newspaper article about that dad) and then to what I thought was the Dublin Castle. I'm not exactly sure what it was but, it wasn't the Dublin Castle. It was still beautiful though and had a nice park as well that a bunch of people were sitting in reading the newspaper and what not.

After this, I went down to Mary Street where the main shopping area is. It's kind of like a 6th street of shopping. They have the street blocked off for most of the day so people can walk accross it while they're shopping. There are vendors in the streets with their little booths selling fruits and sweaters and blankets and homemade toys. Anything you can think of. All I bought was a sandwich (a sweet corn, chicken and cheddar cheese toastie :) cute name... I thought it sounded interesting so I tried it, it was wonderful!!) Right in the middle of the center is this HUGE spear thing. It looks like a 50 story flag pole. I can't even begin to guess how tall it is, but it is literally the tallest thing in the entire city. I believe it's called the Spire. The base of it is about as big as a car and it just gets smaller and smaller until it goes to a point at the top. Not really sure what the purpose is, but it sure does look cool!! :)

After this, as advice from the the hostel owner. I got on a train to go to Bray. It's this small coastal town south of dublin and I really wanted to get out of the city and see some country side. He had told me it was about a 30 minute train ride, and I had mapped out my timing based on this so when I had been on the train for 40 minutes, I started to get worried. Suddenly, we rounded a corner and there was the beautiful beach. I didn't know where I was, but I just got off. Turns out I was in this tiny little town called Killiney. I went through the town a little and then went down to the beach. The weather was fantastic (it was 10 degrees C which I'm not sure exactly what that translates to, but I do know that it was -3 in Liverpool yesterday, so this feels like summertime). The beach was all polished pebbles and the sun was setting over the mountains. I sat there for a good 30 minutes watching the locals walking down the beach and playing with a couple of dogs that were running with their owners.

After this, I went back to Dublin, visited Trinity college and then picked up my bag at the hostel and headed to the airport. My plane was delayed slightly, but I got in just in time to run into Kimmie and Mike heading to my hostel to meet me. I dropped off my bag and then we went and had a beer and watched the first half of the Liverpool vs. Chelsea football game which was really fun. It felt so good to have some meaningful conversation. Afterwards we went to this cute little Chinese restaurant that Mike really loved from when he was a kid and it was so much different from what I was used to. We had fried duck which was AMAZING. They were so great to take me out and I was so glad to see them.

After that we just walked home (since all the bars were closed at 11... so interesting... and people were okay with it?). The hostel I stayed at last night was wonderful. The rooms were much smaller, I just shared with three other girls and we had our own bathroom. The girls were all asleep by the time I got home and had left when I woke up so I never got to chat with them. But I'm not sure either, that they spoke any English. They were all from China (atleast that's what the cute guy at the front desk told me :)

Alright, it's off for another day in Liverpool. The family comes in tonight!! I'm so excited and I'm sure I'll have much to update about tonight.

XOXO

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Sweet Emerald Isle that I love so well

Location: Dublin, Republic of Ireland

The flight to Dublin was lovely. I flew on this airline called RyanAir (the ticket cost me $35 round trip from Liverpool to Dublin). If you had taken a plane out of the 1970's and replaced the one I rode on today (crew and all), I may have not noticed. The plane was neon yellow inside with bright blue plastic seats. There were no tray tables, no reclining seats, no seat back pockets... they were just chairs bolted into a plane. The flight attendants had on these lime green jumper things. There were also advertisements all over everything. Vodka ads on the overhead bins, hertz ads on the backs of every seat. It was a really interesting experience.

The flight itself was great. Ireland is literally, the most beautiful place I have ever seen. The countryside is this color of green that I would have claimed was fake if I had not seen it myself. The hills rolled forever, it seemed and every once and a while, we'd fly over a farm with a HUGE cottage house and dairy cows or sheep dotting the pasture. Amazing. Once I got into town, it was almost dark. The traffic was out of control (trying to navigate downtown Dublin in 5 o'clock traffic was not fun). I'm going to just call it a night for now. Take a much needed shower (I've never wanted one so bad) and get up early to go look at the stuff around here. We're literally within 100 yards of the Dublin Castle, some huge church and the Guinness museum and brew house. Yum :)

XOXO

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Not such a good day sunshine, not much sunshine at all...

Location: Liverpool, England, UK

I'm having a panic attack...

This is way more than I had anticipated. I need you to pep talk me and tell me to suck it up and finish this out. I'm exhausted, depressed, lonely, cold and did I mention exhausted?

:(

I need more sad faces. My eyes are closing too. I'm SOOOO freaking tired, and cold. Mostly cold... the cold keeps me a little more awake. I sat and waited for that stupid internet cafe to open up this morning for nothing. I sat on a freezing cold bench and ate buttery yummy toast that I hardly could taste because I was so cold. I am going to crash.

I'm obviously delirious.

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Good day sunshine

Location: Liverpool, England, UK

I am exhausted. My bus got in at about 6 AM this morning. I sat in the station and read until the sun came up (at about 8:30) and then I walked to the main square in Liverpool. The architecture is beautiful, and as soon as I am updating from a non-library computer, I will upload pictures. These buildings are HUGE!! I'm currently in one of them (the Central Library) and it's much less impressive from the inside. There's a student dormitory that I can see from here though, that is absolutely beautiful. It looks like a castle.

I spent the next couple of hours waiting for the "internet cafe" in town to open up (it didn't have a set time, it's just whenver the guy showed up). After waiting (and freezing) for a little shy of 2 hours, they finally opened and unfortunately... have no computers; just wi-fi. So I hiked to the library and here I am!! Unfortunately, Kimmie has not been getting my emails (I assume) because she never called me about doing lunch today. I guess I'll just have to wait until Thursday to catch up with her.

I'm a little down today. I can't figure out if I'm just tired from jet-lag or if I'm really freaking out, but I'm definitely looking forward to being in Dublin tonight in an actual bed. Hopefully there will be a pub in the hostel so I don't have to go far. I have to atleast have one beer while I'm there!! Hopefully another update tonight.

XOXO

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I've been to Europe

Location: London, England, UK

Yay!! My first official post on foreign turf. Today was EXTREMELY eventful and I am thoroughly exhausted. I still have a little over 3 hours to kill until my bus leaves, so I have plenty of time to catch up. I uploaded some of my pictures from today into an album. I've decided that to save time, and my sanity, I'm only going to upload a select few pictures onto the blog for each day. To put it into perspective, I posted 12 pictures and I took 79. I'll save you the trouble of redundancy.

So today started at about 11:00 when I got through customs at Gatwick airport. I took at train into London and wandered about aimlessly for about 30 minutes, completely overwhelmed by the Victoria train station. I finally managed to figure out that I would need to take a bus to the Waterloo station to catch the train to Windsor and that the castle closed at 3. So I had to hurry. I took the bus a couple of blocks and thought I needed to get off, but ended up in the wrong place. I stumbled upon Westminster Abbey and the Parliament building so I walked around and took some pics before heading back towards the bus stop. I found the train station and took the hour long train ride across the country. I made some realizations about how incredibly tiring this trip is going to be. We arrived at Windsor/Eton Riverside station where I walked up a huge hill and into the castle at about 5 til 3. The ticket man let me in and said that they usually didn't start kicking people out til about 4:30 so I had a decent amount of time to trek.

There were almost no people there. I talked to a tour man who was sitting alone and he informed me that most of the pictures I got usually have about 300 people in the foreground. I thought it was the perfect way to see the castle. I could really picture royalty walking around and being... well... royal. It was so quiet and the only noises were cute little British cop men chatting about things. Once inside the castle, there really wasn't much to see except walls and towers. St. George's Chapel was absolutely stunning. I literally cried when I walked inside. I guess it's a first timer's kind of experience but I really had never seen something so intricate. The wood carving, stained glass and beautiful marble tombs were breathtaking. After that I sat on a wall and ate a Tuna sandwich and watched tourist kids take their pictures with the guard and try to make him come out of character. After they left, he coughed, which I thought was really funny, and I laughed and I swear he winked at me. Haha... oh the things that entertain you when you're alone.

After that, I took the hour train back to London and met a nice man who kept me company. He actually had a very funny story and told me that the only time he had been to the states was when he studied abroad in college... And of all places, he studied in Madison, Wisconsin... strange. He said he loved it though. I guess anything new can be fascinating.

Once I got home, I got back on the bus to head back to Victoria station (because that's where my bus leaves, and I wanted to be close to here). I missed my stop and assumed that the bus ran in a circle. WRONG!! About 40 minutes later, I was in some town past Chelsea. So I had to get off, and get on a new train which took me back into town. Yikes!! Lesson #1: Do not assume that you know what's going on with busses.

I'm back in London now, about to go grab something to eat and possibly see if I can find a sports bar. Apparently, Chelsea has a football game tonight so I'm going to see if I can watch.

XOXO

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