Goodbye, Edinburgh

This past weekend, Becca had a friend visiting who had been living in Germany for a year and was now on her way home, but was traveling a bit before she went home. So we took her around Edinburgh. It really made me realize how much I'm going to miss this city. It's so beautiful. We went to Calton Hill, I'll post some pictures of that below. It was a gorgeous day. I definitely plan on coming back to Edinburgh one day. I leave a week from tomorrow. I'm beyond excited to be finally going home, but I'm equally sad about leaving the friends that I've met here. I really hope we can see each other in the States sometimes. I'm fairly certain I'm going to cry when I goodbye to them. Hard to believe it's almost over...

Things I can't wait to eat when I get home: Leona's, deep dish pizza, Ollie's, meatloaf

Things I want to find a way to bring home from the UK: Kinder chocolate, Irn Bru (for my brother) and just all the chocolate here in general (especially Kit-Kats!)!

I love the UK, I had an amazing time here, but I'm glad I was born and grew up in the States. I dislike the education system here, if only because the U.S. system is way easier. I'll be very grateful when I get home for professors who actually care about how you do in their class. I'm glad I now have knowledge of what life is like here, it was a great experience. It's also sort of strange to think that people grew up around all of this beauty, and that's it's normal for them. I wonder what they think when they travel to the States. As weird as this may sound, British people aren't just characters anymore. The UK is no longer a fantasy land.

I really miss Chicago. Edinburgh and Chicago are both beautiful cities, but in completely different ways, Edinburgh is so old and breathtaking, while Chicago has the lake and the huge buildings and parks.I miss the Sears Tower, I miss the shoreline of the lake, I miss Lakeview. I can't wait to move back in with my best friend, and I even miss UIC! haha. And Sycamore...I can't wait to go live in my parent's house for a few days and just hang out with my family. And definitely go to Ollie's. Maybe twice.

On the 30th of April, we went to Beltane, a Celtic fire festival, sort of like Celtic May Day. It was pretty cool, although sort of hard to tell what we supposed to be looking at at times, because there was a lot going on in different places. They had a parade, with lots of fire, of course, ha. I'll post some pictures below. It was sort of cold that night, so we didn't stay very late but we got to see the sun set from Calton Hill, and that was gorgeous.

I haven't been doing much else of note, I've been done with the semester since April 22nd, but all of my friends still have finals to study for, so I've only been able to hang out with them here and there when they're not studying. I was pretty sick about two days ago, anyway. I think I had a fever, it was not fun. Now I'm just sort of congested, I hope it goes away before flying home. I wanted to come home before this (since I was done with school so early), but Virgin Atlantic doesn't have flights to Chicago until May 9th, and I booked through the IFSA-Butler travel agent, so I have to fly through them. And then, by the time I wretched this information from the travel agent, all connecting flights to London were booked until the 19th. So I'm landing at O'Hare at 1:55pm on the 19th. Finally.

View of Edinburgh from Calton Hill at twlight

Fire Festival

Parade during Beltane

I think this is a Celtic knot?

View of Edinburgh from Calton Hill during the day

Memorial for soldiers on top of Calton Hill

View of Edinburgh Castle from Princes Street Gardens

London and the Royal Wedding!

Alright. Last one, for a while, I swear. Oh wow, this will probably be my last one before my closing statements, haha. Wow. Okay, so London. The Royal Wedding! Me and Becca came back from the airport from Amsterdam on Wednesday April 27th, only to get on a train down to London like 5 hours later. We just came back to our rooms to eat, repack and shower. It's about a five hour train ride, and on the way down we switched trains once, in Crewe. We got into London at about 8:00pm and then had to take the tube from the train station to our hostel. I had written down which tube stop was nearest to our hostel, and Becca had been to London before, about 3 years ago, so she was a lot of help =]  We made it there with no problem, and I really loved the London underground. It was so clean, and not really that hard to figure out, it was, of course, much bigger than the Chicago 'el' system, but just as easy to figure out. Becca (who goes to Vassar College, about an hour north of New York City) says the London underground is much easier to figure out than the New York subway system. We were really tired when we got to the hostel, so we went straight to bed so we could get up sort of early in the morning and try to squeeze all of London in in one day! ha One of the cool things about our London hostel was that the beds had curtains you could pull closed, so that it was all dark in your bed and no one could see you sleeping. I liked it. ha

We woke up, ate our breakfast at the hostel (they had cereal and toast for us each morning), and then headed out on the tube. We got day passes, which were 6.60, which isn't that bad because we were going to use them a lot that day, but it is kind of expensive compared to at home. But I suppose that's why it's so clean and nice on the underground. The first place we went to was Buckingham Palace, and this was a day before the Royal Wedding, so there were people in tents camped out along the mall, which is the road that leads to the Palace. It wasn't that crowded that day, so we walked along the mall and took pictures. On our way back down the mall we saw a lot of people queuing (the British word for lining up) up along this street that came from the mall, it seemed like they were waiting for something. We thought maybe we would hang out and see what it was all about. Eventually some cars came whizzing past us, we really had no idea who they were, but it really looked like one of the women in the car could have been Kate, or Pippa. So that was sort of cool, ha. We also saw lots of press setting up for tomorrow, they had a huge stand in front of the palace already. We then went to Piccadilly Circus, Becca said that was she was in London her and her parents found some cheap theatre tickets there. We had been seeing posters for 'Chicago' the musical and really wanted to see that. I love that movie, and the music is awesome. I'm listening to the soundtrack right now, ha. And we did find relatively cheap tickets for it! It was amazing. I'm so glad we went, and we were pretty close to the stage too, in the dress circle. We dressed up, wearing the same dresses that we wore to the wedding the next day. I'm so glad I saw a musical in the West End, it was great. Before the play, we went and saw all of the other famous sites: Big Ben and the houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, the London Eye, the Thames, the Tower Bridge and the Tower of London (we didn't go in, but we saw it). After all of these, we went to Abbey Road Studios to take the obligatory picture in the crosswalk, and to add something to the wall outside the studios. It was definitely cool to be there, and not hard to get to, it's not far from the St. John's Woods tube station.

The next day was the wedding! We wore our dresses, and headed down to Trafalgar Square. We tried to get into the mall, but I guess they closed it at dawn because there were so many people there already. Crazy. So we joined the crowds in Trafalgar Square, where the parade and the wedding were broadcasted live on a big screen. The energy was really great, with everyone cheering and waving their Union Jack flags. We even got programs, so we could follow along with the prayers and hymns during the wedding. We got flags too of course, with William's and Kate's faces on them. Our spot in the square was sort of right behind a fountain, so at times, we could only see one side of the screen, but it was a pretty good spot anyway. I got some good pictures and videos of the wedding, the Queen arriving and Will and Kate's vows. At the end, when they were officially married, they released red white and blue confetti in the square and everyone was cheering like crazy. They were also selling Champagne in the square, but it was 6 pounds, so that's a little to much for us, ha. After the wedding, we were really hungry from standing for like 4 hours, so we went and got some food in Piccadilly Circus and watched the kiss on TV with the rest of the folks in the cafe. After eating, we went to the Palace and the mall, which had cleared out, since the kiss and fly by (which apparently in the phrase they use for a military fly by of planes from the Royal Air Force) were done with. We mingled with the crowd that was still there, and took more pictures of the palace. We walked out through the park next to the palace, which was populated with people eating picnics and drinking. And a swan! ha We went back to Trafalgar Square after this, and there was a street party going on there, with a band playing and people dancing. Lots of people were drunk already, at like 4:00, ha. We decided to head back to our hostel, grab our stuff and go to King's Cross Station, where our train was leaving out of to go back to Edinburgh. So we got to see Platform 9 3/4, which was pretty awesome. And we picked up a newspaper with nothing but Royal Wedding pictures and articles in it, even if only like 5 hours after the wedding was through. That's a good collectible as well. Our train this time was straight through, no changes. But it seemed like a much longer ride than the way down there. We were really tired, but went out even after we got home at midnight! It's not often you're in the UK for a Royal Wedding =]  It was also a friend of ours' birthday celebration, so that was fun.

AJ was supposed to have gone with me to the wedding, and I really wish he would have been able to, but I know we'll have a lot of opportunities to travel Europe together in the future =]  Maybe even see another Royal Wedding? Harry's and Chelsy's? heh.

Entrance to the mall

Tents on the mall.

Media tents opposite the palace.

Buckingham Palace =]

I have never seen so many cops out and about in all my life

We saw a lot of people being interviewed

Big Ben

Westminster Abbey

The Eye and The River Thames

Tower Bridge

Door to Abbey Road Studios!

Becca drew, and came up with the concept, and I wrote the words

The crosswalk, haha

Screen in Trafalgar Square

One of my flags =]

Kate and Wills leaving the Abbey

The balcony where the kiss was <3

Me and Becca =]

Swan in the park next to the Palace

Love Amsterdam

Okay, now it's time to tell you about a new favorite city of mine, Amsterdam! Me, Julia and Becca left on Easter very early in the morning. Me and Becca had to leave the dorms at like 3 in the morning to get our flight at 6:05AM. We got into Amsterdam at around 8:00AM, because of the time change, the flight was only an hour and 25 min. We took a train to Centraal Station and then rode their tram system to our hostel, since we had our bags with us. It was strange to be in a country where I didn't even vaguely know the language. I had never experienced that before, having only been to the UK and Spain. Most people spoke English in Amsterdam, luckily. And Julia speaks German, so that's at least a little close to Dutch. We got to our hostel (which turned out to be quite nice, it was called The Flying Pig, haha) and checked in, and then went exploring! We just wanted to see what the city had to offer. It was an absolutely beautiful day, about 75 degrees. Amsterdam has so many canals, and everyone was out on their boats, enjoying the holiday. I have so many pictures of the canals. And the bikes! I've never seen so many bikes in my life. They were everywhere. And they have their own lane, between the walking sidewalk and the street. If you're not used to it, you often end up accidentally walking in the bike lane. And then you'll hear a ding ding! trying to get you out of the way before they run you over. It's sort of scary.

The first day we got some food immediately, since we were starving. And we learned that the Dutch love to put mayonnaise on their fries (or "frites", at the Dutch call them) and that mayo is just called "frite sauce". Frite is fuh-reet. After food, we explored the flower market in the middle of the city, which sold literally every possible type of tulip you could imagine, because Holland is the tulip capital of the world. Quick geography lesson: The Netherlands is the country, Holland is the county, and Amsterdam is the city. We did some souvenir shopping, got some postcards and such. Then we saw a carnival going on, we think for Easter weekend. It was right in front of the Royal Palace, which no monarch has ever really lived in. The Netherlands is weird like that, haha. They had a ferris wheel, and we thought about riding that, but it was 6 euro (like $12) which is way too much. Then we decided to go ahead and get in the very long line for the Anne Frank House. I really wanted to go, having read the book as a kid, like most of the world. You can't take pictures inside and all of the furniture has been removed, as per Otto Frank's (her father, and the only one who survived the Holocaust) request. It was an eerie experience, you saw Anne's room, with her pictures from magazines still hanging on the wall, of movie stars, of Queen Elizabeth II, not yet Queen. Also they had her original diaries. I'm very glad we went, but it was very sobering as well. Another thing the museum had was the Oscar that Shelley Winters won for portraying Petronella van Daan in the movie of the diary released in 1959. It was cool to see an actual Oscar, even thought you couldn't touch it.

Our second day began with a free tour of Amsterdam, meeting in Dam Square, right next to the palace, and then going from there to the Red Light District. This was about 11:00AM, but there was still, shall we say, ladies of the night, in their windows. Our tour guide told us, before going through the District, that we should not take pictures of them. Apparently a man on his tour had tried to before, and the women ran out of the building, chased him down and to quote our tour guide (censoring just a bit) "beat the living crap out of him". So taking pictures of them is a big no-no. We stopped at a church right in the middle of the Red Light District. Yes, a church. There is also a kindergarten near there. The church was massive. Our tour guide told us why: long ago, sailors used to come to shore here in Amsterdam, after quite some time at sea, and they would of course, go straight to those ladies in their windows. Waking up the next morning, remembering they had wives and children, and feeling very bad about themselves, they went to the church to confess. So in the church, they paid for these indulgences, and so many soldiers went and paid money for indulgences so many times that the church grew and grew, because of the money it was making off the sailors. I thought this was pretty funny, ha. Another story that our tour guide told us that pretty much summed up the Dutch way of thinking was about their buildings. On the very top of all of the buildings in Amsterdam, there are hooks coming out of the roof (pictures will be below). These hooks were to pull up goods to the top floors for storage. Stairs in Amsterdam buildings are very, very steep, it's almost like going up a ladder. They were like this in our hostel and the Anne Frank House. Very steep and very narrow, so really hard to carry goods up. So they would use a sort of pulley system to haul goods up to the top, slinging the rope over the hooks. But then they found that goods kept hitting the building on the way up, bouncing off the wall and sometimes hurting the goods. So, they decided in order to solve this, they would lean the buildings towards the street. So many buildings in Amsterdam lean. Our tour guide pointed out the ridiculousness of this, because they could have just made the arms holding the hooks longer, solving the problem. He called this way of thinking the Dutch way, ha.

Later in the tour, our guide pointed out the old Jewish part of the city, which was destroyed during WWII, not because of hate, but because it was emptied of people by the Nazis who had taken over the city, and because it was emptied, starving people left in the city raided it for firewood and food. Then, in the 60s, they decided to rebuild and gave the job to some architecture students, and they did a terrible job according to our tour guide. I thought some of the buildings were kind of cool, actually. Another thing pointed out later was some metal pieces put in some corners of buildings on the streets. These were to stop men from "relieving themselves" in the corners. See if you can guess why when you see the picture below, haha. After the tour, we decided it was a beautiful day to rent a paddle boat and go out on the canal. It was really fun, very relaxing, if it was a little hard to figure out where we were going because it was hard to read the street signs from the canal and we had to get the boat back to another rental place before our hour rental was up. Then we headed to the House of Bols, a cocktail museum, all about taste and smell and the history of bar tending. It was cool, and you got a cocktail with purchase of your ticket into the museum! ha. Then we got some famous Dutch pancakes, which were amazingly delicious, I got banana ones. After the pancakes, we had some wine in the park next to our hostel and explored the park, it was huge and lots of people were cooking out, and it didn't get dark until about 9:00PM, so that was really nice.

On our third day, we decided to go to the beach because our hostel owned another hostel down further south in Holland, on the beach. It was beautiful. The water was freezing, since the beach was on the North Sea, but it was very pretty. We had a nice relaxing time just sitting on the sand. We had some food there too, in the little beach town, but since it was out of the city people did not speak as much English as in Amsterdam. So that was interesting. I just sort of nodded, and he spoke the few words of English he knew. Oh! I forgot to mention that our driver down to the beach hostel, who worked for the hostel and drives the shuttle down to the beach, he offered to stop by a tulip field so we could take some pictures of them. So many tulips! It was great, he took a great shot of us in the flowers.

We left early the next morning, took a bus back to the airport. The airport experience was sort of strange, because you didn't go through security until right before you got on the plane. I didn't like that, I like to get security over with right away. And then after security, we took a bus to our plane. So that's weird. Also, we got to try out the body scanner machines. We were not very good at them. I think they were trying to phase out the metal detectors and go exclusively with the body scan machines in the Amsterdam airport. But apparently I don't raise my arms above my head the correct way, so she had to pat down my pockets anyway. Also, at least in the Amsterdam airport, the picture screen was right there, you could see it, as could the security people. Male and female. Honestly, I have no problem with this, I could care less. But I know some Americans would be losing their minds over that. It could possibly be different in the States, I don't know. So we arrived in Edinburgh, only to walk back to the dorms and repack for London! More about that in the next post...

Tulips at the Flower Market

Carnival, behind the Ferris wheel is the Royal Palace

Canal...and bikes!

The hooks on the tops of buildings

"Ugly" architecture in the old Jewish district

More canals! =]

To keep men from "relieving" themselves in the corners, haha!

Paddle boating =]

My strawberry vanilla cocktail at the museum

Pancake! Yum.

Tulip field

Beach on the North Sea

I know this is way late-but: Isle of Skye!

I think what I'm going to do to document these past few weeks is write at least two blog entries about everything, or maybe three. I'll start with the Isle of Skye. The Isle of Skye is up in the highlands of Scotland, and my study aboard program, IFSA-Butler, had a trip up there for a weekend in April. We left early on a Friday morning, and drove north until we reached our little motel on the Isle of Skye. We stopped at the Battlefield of Culloden, the last battle on British soil, on the way. We stayed in a town called Kyleakin (say kuh-lack-in) on the Isle, it was so small and cute. People were saying it reminded them of being in Alaska. It was beautiful with all of the lochs and cliffs. The town consisted of an Inn, a convenience store and two pubs. We hung out at one pub at night, along with most of the kids in my program, probably freaking out the people that live in this town. There were so many of us and it was fun to hang out with the locals. We were also sort of staying on a beach, even though it was cold. Still very pretty.

On Saturday we visited Armadale Castle, home of the Clan Donald. It was a castle ruin, but the grounds were very pretty. Lots of gardens and ponds. We took some pictures in some of the ruins there. Then they gave us an option of either a hike or a sightseeing tour on the bus. Obviously we chose the sightseeing tour, haha. In the past, choosing a hike on an IFSA-Butler trip, even if they say it will be very low maintenance and easy, it ends up being really intense. So we saw some waterfalls and some amazing cliffs over the ocean on the bus tour. I'll post pictures below. Our tour guide told us some great stories about the clans who lived on the Isle of Skye, there were two that were always battling, the Donalds and the MacLeods. He told us a Romeo and Juliet sort of story about two young people from each clan who fell in love, only to end in tragedy. Specifically she got her eye poked out and then her sweetheart wouldn't marry her, because she was no longer beautiful.  To be fair, our tour guide could have been making this all up, haha. At the end of the day, he told us a story about a fairy river that we were going to visit. There are lots of fairies on the Isle of Skye, according to legend. But this particular fairy river, at Sligachan, has magical properties. Our tour guide told us if you put your face in the water for 7 seconds (no more, no less) you will be youthful forever! But then, you have to come back every year and dip your face in the water to renew your youth, this was our guide's way of bribing us to come back to Skye after this trip, haha. So of course we dipped our faces in, and the water wasn't even too  cold!

On Sunday, we left the Isle of Skye and stopped on the way back to Edinburgh at Eilean Donan castle, which is absolutely breathtaking. And someone lives there! Crazy. So we couldn't go in or anything. After that, we headed to Loch Ness, specifically to Fort Augustus, a town right on the Loch. No sign of Nessie, but the loch was huge. And really cold. Apparently it's 744 feet deep at it's deepest point! The trip was great, I'm glad I got to take a break from my essays and go up there. Some of the most beautiful scenery I've ever seen. Most of April involved me writing three 3,500 word essays. I couldn't wait to be done. The day they were due, after I turned them in on campus, me and Becca went to Glasgow to do some shopping, because they have a Primark, which is like the UK version of Forever 21. Becca needed a new purse, and I was tagging along for shopping and lunch. And to see a little bit more of Glasgow. It's a bigger city than Edinburgh, and I really liked it. Very pretty, and lots of shopping =]   Didn't hurt that it was such a beautiful day. We took the train there and back, and it only cost 7 pounds (like $12). The trains here are really great, a very smooth ride and they get you places in less than half the time. And the ride is usually very pretty as well.  With lots of sheep, heh.

Culloden Battlefield

View from the beach near our inn

That's the pub we hung out in on the right

Ruins near Armadale Castle

Grounds of Armadale Castle

Cliffs over the ocean

They wanted you to be careful, ha

Becoming more youthful! ha

Eilean Donan castle

Loch Ness!