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 33 & 34 - Shakespeare Town & More Castles

 Days 33 & 34 (Saturday, October 23, 2010 & Sunday, October 24, 2010):

Weekend trip away with the girls to Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwick and Windsor!

Our Saturday started out extremely early - I think we were up by 4am! To add onto the stress, we had some trouble getting our tickets; in addition, Elmira and I had to get our 16-25 railcards so that was really hectic.  The ticket booth wasn't open when we got there because it was too early, so we had to wait around. In the end (as always), things all worked out and we were finally on our train!

I took this picture on our train trying to emphasize how dark it was outside, but it's hard to tell because of the reflection from the inside:

Everyone looked really tired in the pictures we took, but as this blog is set on public mode, I don't put up pictures of people...Anyway! Alisha did pretty much all the navigation on this trip, so kudos to my roommate! :) I was astonished at how many times we had to transfer trains...

I can't remember now how we got to Stratford-upon-Avon (we transferred like 4 times, literally), but I remember at Birmingham, we had to walk from one train station to the other - we were huffing and puffing the entire time with all our bags.

As the sun came up... :)

I realize how much I'm going to miss traveling on trains when I go back! It's so wonderful to see the beautiful landscape...

You can't have a landscape picture in the UK without SHEEP!

We finally arrived at Shakespeare town...:

We were at Stratford-upon-Avon for only about 2 hours, but I fell in love with the city. It was so cute!

Shakespeare's Birthplace!!

It was really surreal to see Shakespeare's birth house and the house he spent most of his childhood in.  We even got to see the exact room that he was born in; unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take pictures. I really couldn't believe that...it was just right there.  Having extensively read Shakespeare due to my AP English Lit class during my senior year in high school, it was really fascinating to see that he was there and just...real. I'm not sure if I'm making much sense, but anyway, it was really cool.  Little did I know back then that in less than 3 years, I'd be making a journey to where he was born... :) It's funny how life turns out sometimes!

Afterwards, we grabbed some 'butterbeer' from this 'magical' store:

It tasted...interesting. It was kind of cool though because on top was this sticky foam!

We then headed to Warwick on a bus from the train station!

We had a lot of memorable moments on this trip, but one of the funniest moments came on our way from the train station to Warwick Castle. Alana and I really needed to pee badly, so we were pretty much in hysterics trying to look for a toilet! There was one point when we had left the other two girls behind and screaming "We're TOILETING!" across the street and pointing (because we had found a toilet)...yeah, people were definitely looking at us.  And then we ended up not using the toilet at the end because we thought it was nasty! Ayy...

We spent most of our time in Warwick at the Warwick Castle:

Warwick Castle was DEFINITELY worth a visit! There were sooo many people there (it reminded me of Disneyland) but lots to see as well.  Unlike other castles we've visited, Warwick was more geared toward children and had lots of activities for us to be engaged in.  We spent a good 5 hours there.

Since it was close to Halloween at this time, they had a special Halloween theme going on:

The gaol was really interesting in particular because we got to see where prisoners were actually kept and tortured. Some of the torturing devices still remained - one particular striking one was on the ceiling, where prisoners were kept hanging until their bodies stretched/rotted or something like that...O_O

We also went into this exhibit called 'Secrets and Scandals' where we were greeted by these two ladies dressed in costumes.  They treated us as if we were special guests of a house party - as the name implies, the party showed how scandalous those times were. Basically we found out that everyone was sleeping with each other's married partners...

Even the men were gossiping!

Some more views of the castle

This was like the 'backyard' of castle grounds...

We went to the Peacock Garden:

We climbed to the top of the tower - over 500 steps!

The main house:

Afterwards, we grabbed dinner at a pub and then were on our way to Hounslow, where our hotel was...little did we know then that we were about to embark on a ridiculous adventure trying to look for it!

I think we got incorrect directions like literally 3 times from different people!  We had to transfer over a bunch of times...I can't remember why, but I think we had issues at the Reading Station, so we decided we didn't like Reading (haha). This REALLY confused us as well:

The instructions told us to go from Reading, get on the London Waterloo train, get off at Straines, and then get on the London Waterloo train, then get off at Hounslow....

We were all very confused as to why we needed to get off the Waterloo train and then get back on! After asking the conductor on our train, we figured out that there were multiple Waterloo trains....

When we (finally) got to the hotel via a taxi (from a number we read on a sticker stuck to a bus stop), we were all pretty much drained.  We had a 'family room' in our hotel - we had had no idea what it was going to be like, but it was actually awesome (kudos to Alisha, again).

The hotel had a couch and two double beds.  I ended up sleeping on the couch - it was really, really comfortable :) 

We woke up early in the morning and headed to Windsor.

At the station in Hounslow....

We took a picture of the Hounslow stop sign because we struggled so much to find it! 

We got to the Windsor Castle without much trouble.  It's the biggest castle in the UK and is still used by the Queen as a residence. The line was quite long:

We even had to go through metal detectors and put all our stuff in x-ray machines before going in!  Craziness...

We were really disappointed, though, because the State Residences were CLOSED on the day.  We were told that someone of the royal family was in Windsor when we visited...we later found out that the Queen was there!  Blah.  It was cool and not cool at the same time; it would have been very nice to see the State Residences.  We didn't get to see the chapel either because it was Sunday =( I hear it is gorgeous inside...

We were able to go into only a couple of the rooms that were open - we got to see Queen Mary's Dollhouse, which was magnificent (no pictures allowed).  There were such intricate details for each of the rooms. Apparently, the plumbing inside the doll house works!!!!

According to the Wikipedia page:

"The carpets, curtains and furnishings are all copies of the real thing, and even the light fittings are working. The bathrooms are fully plumbed; that includes a flushable toilet and miniature lavatory paper." 

I would have loved to 'flush' the toilet...but of course we couldn't do that, haha.

The State Residences..which were closed that day, booo...

Afterwards, we went on a boat tour of Windsor on the Thames River...

A view of the castle from the river:

We then had dinner at this really cute cafe and headed back home!

I think the difference between Warwick Castle and Windsor Castle really speaks volumes about how each castle has its own personality :)