Days 54 & 55 - EDINBURGH.

Okay, by now it's pretty clear that I suck at updating this...anyway on with the story!  I need to update on my study abroad adventures (yes, I am fully aware that half a year has passed by now...) before I forget them permanently :(  My bad memory will fail me soon, so I'm going to try to update as much as I can as soon as I can now that I'm on *gasp* summer break!

Day 54 (Saturday, November 13, 2010):

So this weekend I was off to Edinburgh, Scotland - one of the most beautiful cities I ever visited in my study abroad adventures.  I was joining Alisha and Alana who were had gone together to Scotland before I did (because they were on 'reading week', which my department unfortunately did not have in my stay there) - so that meant traveling to Edinburgh all by myself from Cardiff!

Due to the nature of planes and airlines and stuff like that, my route was more complex than I would have liked it - I remember replaying my schedule over and over again in my head throughout the night to make sure everything went to plan!

This was the route:

Leave Cardiff via Megabus -> Arrive in Bristol -> Take taxi from Bristol bus stop to Bristol Airport -> Board airplane to Edinburgh -> Arrive in Edinburgh -> figure out somehow to get from Edinburgh Airport to meet Alana and Alisha at City Centre (which, I realized, was not too difficult - there was a shuttle that went directly from the airport to the city centre) -> successfully meet Alana and Alisha!

According to transactions in my email records (yay!), I left Cardiff at 4am, which meant that I was walking to the bus stop (~40 minutes) in the midst of (obnoxiously) drunk people, but I remember the walk not being too bad.  Once I arrived in Bristol, I called a cab from a number I had looked up right before leaving (good call on that, as I found out that it was PITCH BLACK with no one in sight when I arrived at the bus stop).  The cab came pretty quickly, and it cost £20 to get from there to the airport, which wasn't too bad.

The taxi driver was quite nice and friendly (as most of them are in the UK) - we talked about a lot of things.  He had immigrated to the UK from Turkey, and he talked to me about how he had once driven up to Edinburgh from Cardiff, and how much he loved the city.  He also warned me about men in kilts - "they're not wearing anything inside! so when they bend down, you know...*insert a grunt of disgust*" :) He also talked to me about how much he wanted to visit America and go to Las Vegas ("are the lights really as they look on TV?") and asked me whether I liked Kebabs or not.  It was overall a very friendly and pleasant drive - thinking back now, I really miss the friendly cab drivers in the UK.

ANYWAY, back on track.  The flight from Bristol to Edinburgh wasn't anything meaningful.  Once I got off the plane, I took a shuttle bus to City Centre, which took about 35 minutes (if I remember correctly).

I also successfully met up with Alana and Alisha, which was really awesome because we had been separated for quite some time!  Nice to see friendly faces after a long journey alone :)

I. absolutely. fell. in. love. with. the. city. at. first. glance.

beautiful.

Parliament building - a cool modern structure

One of the first places we stopped by was the Holyrood House - the Queen's official residence in Scotland!

There were really cool Abbey Ruins:

gorgeous.

We couldn't take many pictures actually inside Holyrood House, but I remember there were a lot of really cool things there.  If I remember correctly, a lot of the furniture stuff there were dedicated to Queen Mary of Scots - and we also got to see a room where a lot of scandalous things happened.  Something about her husband killing her suitor?

Just looked it up in Wikipedia:

The suite of rooms on the first floor of the north-west tower comprises an audience chamber, accessed from a lobby next to the Great Gallery, and a bedroom, leading from which are two turret rooms or closets. These rooms were occupied by Lord Darnley in the 17th century, and later formed part of the Queen's apartment in the reconstructed palace, before being taken over by the Duke of Hamilton from 1684.^[31] Queen Mary occupied an identical suite of rooms on the second floor of the tower: the bedchambers are linked by a private spiral stair. The Queen's outer chamber contains her oratory, and was the scene of the murder of David Rizzio, after he was dragged from the supper table in the northern turret room.^[32] In later centuries, tourists were often convinced that they could see his blood stains on the floor.

So yeah, I think her husband, Lord Darnley, went into the room where Queen Mary and David Rizzio were having dinner, dragged him out, and just killed him right outside with a pregnant Mary watching.  It was super cool to stand actually at the place where he was killed!  Oh, royal Brits...

We then ventured onto climb this volcanic mountain:

It was kind of ridiculous because we saw a bunch of tourists (Spanish?) dragging ALL THEIR SUITCASES up this mountain!! Okay, so it wasn't THAT steep, but still - it was such a bad idea.

Once we got up just enough (haha, we didn't even get close to actually going up to the highest point), we were rewarded with a beautiful view of Edinburgh.

See how happy I look? Haha

Afterwards, we were all hungry and cold so we found a cute little cafe to sit down at:

I MISS AFTERNOON TEA SO MUCH.

There's a picture of me with a scone and a cup of tea but I look way too disheveled in the picture - so I'll save your eye and not put it up :)

We wandered around for a bit and found this:

The museum was free, so naturally we went inside!

There was some free demonstration going on by a woman who was acting as someone from the past (something about old Edinburgh and new Edinburgh...clearly I wasn't listening too well, but it was entertaining).  Alana got chosen to be one of the reenactors :)  The woman taught us how to drink tea and enter the carriage in a 'proper' way!  Gotta love the British ;)

We got some fudge at a fudge shop - the three of us each got a different piece to share, but I think we all decided they were SO rich that we needed them in very small doses:

Saw this dude:

Wandered for AGES looking for the Greyfriars Bobby Statue (because of Alana, a HUGE animal lover, hehe):

Then, we ventured into the national museum because...we all needed to pee. Hehe :)  We played around in the museum for a bit, went upstairs to this wonderful view:

this takes my breath away, even now

Found a restaurant to grab dinner at!

I remember that this wine really hit the spot after an exhausting day

THESE FISHCAKES WERE SO YUMMY. I can still taste them...

That evening, we went on an underground city tour of Edinburgh that Alisha had booked us!  It was actually really cool :)

Basically, this street (Mary King's Close) was an area inhabited by people during the plague...but they ended up building a street above ground level (I know, it's like...huh?) so now it's underground.  From the Close's official website:

The Real Mary King’s Close is a warren of underground streets and spaces.  It can be a strange concept to understand – back in the 1600’s, Mary King’s Close and neighbouring Closes were at the heart of Edinburgh’s busiest and most vibrant streets, open to the skies and bustling with traders selling their wares to the Old Town’s residents.  Why would this street find itself underground 400 years later?

Bizarre, yes, but now it's making money for these people, so I guess it's a tourist attraction?  They tried to make it scary and stuff....and I must admit, it was kind of weird at times, but overall nothing too terrible.

We then headed to the hotel for some well-deserved rest after a very long day!

Day 55 (Sunday, November 14, 2010):


This was my second and last day at Edinburgh (come to think of it now...wow, these short weekend trips, flying to a different country...I MISS BEING ABROAD).

On our way to the Edinburgh Castle, we got to encounter a veteran's parade!

Also stumbled upon JK Rowling's thingy:

And...hello, Castle!

More gorgeous views of the city from the Castle:

Inside the castle were some really cool historically significant rooms, such as...

rooms where POWs were kept, including ones from the INDEPENDENCE WAR! :) Yay for American pride.

woot!

We got to see the crown jewels, which were gorgeous - but couldn't take any pictures :(

Some more Britishy royal stuff:

Making a wish:

SO CUTE:

We ended up eating at this place:

Cool building.  Yummy food.

I remember we then wandered around, and I wanted to buy this super cute kilt skirt thingy that was PINK, but it was £120 and I was like, okay never mind...

According to my records, our flight left from Edinburgh at 7:55pm and landed in Cardiff at 9:15pm! (Yes, it landed in Cardiff this time because we took a different airline, even though I had left from Bristol).  I remember waiting for the BUS forever and contemplating taking a taxi, but it came just in time as we exhausted all our patience.

YAY for another great trip :)

Like I said, Edinburgh was one of my favorite cities to visit.  SO GORGEOUS. :)

...now for two more months of updates O___O oh dearsies...

Days 14-17: Classes, Dragons, and a Giant Ship

October 13, 2010

Day 14 (Monday, October 4th):

Classes started! Dun dun dun...I had my first lecture, "Writing with Light", early in the morning. "Writing with Light" is a "module" (class) I'm taking that analyzes photographs throughout time in relation to history and media. I am really enjoying it so far!

I then had a couple of hours for break, which I spent very wisely back in my room napping (I was tired from the weekend's adventures). I then had my second lecture for "Media, Racism and Conflict" - this was a full-blown lecture (not an introductory one) to my surprise! I ended up having to leave early and could not stay for the movie screening, but more on that later...

There were two big differences I noticed between classes at Penn and here in Cardiff. 1) To sign up for modules, there wasn't a process like Penn's advanced registration (this might be because I am an exchange student). It was kind of confusing. I had to log-on to Cardiff SIMS website and request "optional" modules, then wait for approval from the school. My first choices got rejected and the assistant told me to come in to talk with her. When I went to see her, she basically had to call different "lecturers" (professors) checking whether a lecture had space...once we checked through and chose the ones I was most interested in, she told me to go back through the online SIMS system and that she'd approve them.

Signing up for "seminars" attached to these lectures (seminars = recitations in Penn terminology) was very informal too; there basically was a wall of sign-up sheets and you just had to sign up with a pen. How weird is that!

Another big difference I noticed was that student didn't bring their laptops to lectures!!! That was very different for me since at a given Communication lecture at Penn, 90% of the students bring laptops - half of which are on Facebook or chatting the whole time. I have 3 hour lectures here in Cardiff and is sincerely worried about how I'm going to survive without my laptop (this is kind of sad, I know).

I think it's good in a way that people don't bring laptops to class - it is very distracting.

After lecture, I headed to Taly Social to meet up with other CU people living in the area for "Grub Crawl" - it was a lot of food, fun and meeting new people :) We basically went to two different houses and ate...and ate...and ate.

Days 15 & 16 (Tuesday, October 5th & Wednesday, October 6th):

Nothing more exciting on these two days other than classes, more CU stuff and hanging out at pubs. On Tuesday, Alisha and I headed to the postcard to finally mail our postcards to people back home - it cost around 67 pents for international mail, which isn't too bad at all. They also have these "international" stamps which are convenient (so you don't have to count 67 out with a bunch of different stamps or anything). I sent around 7 postcards (if you received one and didn't tell me yet, please do let me know you got them safely!) I've really gotten around to buying postcards from everywhere I go, so expect lots of postcards!

On Wednesday, I went to the CU international cafe, which was very nice - the CU at Cardiff hosts an International lunch every Wednesday at the Chaplaincy for international students. I've gone every week - it's a great place to socialize and meet new people (and free food)! I hung around in a pub for a while with friends and then headed to the CU Wednesday meeting - I'm realizing a lot of things from CU here and how it differs from RCF back at Penn...I wonder how it would feel when I get plugged back into RCF in the Spring (or Fall 2011...).

Day 17 (Thursday, October 7th):

Since this entry has thus far been very text-heavy (I really need to take more pictures of everyday happenings), I'll include Day 17, which has lots of pictures!

On Thursday, my seminar had not started yet (since it was week 1), so we planned a quick trip to Bristol! The day started out absolutely BEAUTIFUL:

We took a train to Bristol, which took about 50 minutes or so. The Bristol Temple Mead Station was absolutely gorgeous:

The city itself was quite similar to Cardiff (at least from what I can see). It was cute and small. 

We initially had planned to go on this full replication of John Cabot's Boat (when he sailed to Newfoundland) but ended up going on the S.S. Great Britain instead:

The ship was magnificent :) It was the first iron-clad ship in the world, had traveled over a million miles (I think...) and was now displayed for us to see. We got to see the inside and outside - even go "under water".

I could not get over how tiny these rooms were.

Here's first class:

Second class:

Third class:

The First Class rooms were so tiny as well. 

After exploring the ship for a good couple of hours, we went to explore Bristol, which constituted of eating, looking at pretty buildings, you know the normal stuff.

OH! Exciting new addition to my family here in Cardiff. Introducing...

CARDIFF THE WHALE.

Alana and I had fun the entire way to Bristol and back with Cardiff the Whale...and naming my (at that time, still nonexistent) bigger dragon. After much contemplation, we decided to name it...

CAERDYDD DRAGONWHALES.

Yeah, they're called Whales because of a word slip on my part, but now it's become pretty much an inside joke.

I ended up buying Caerdydd Dragonwhales a few days later - more on that on another entry!