I don't really know what I was expecting, but Catherine, Hailey, Ailee and I decided VERY last minute to take a trip to Scotland, bought train tickets, and left the next morning from King's Cross Station! After a short four hour train ride (I slept the whole way), we were in a different country. It's crazy, that's how long it takes to drive from Houston to Cleburne, and you don't even leave the state!!
But back to this whole 'not expecting much' thing. I'm not very versed in Scottish information, but I had no idea how beautiful Edinburgh is. All of the buildings are made of giant, old stones and everything looks like it was made hundreds of years ago... which it was. We dropped all our stuff off with Catherine's friends at the University of Edinburgh and went to grab a quick lunch. We learned of new language barriers- Scotland does not have grilled cheeses or pickles, they have cheese toasties and gherkins (not the little ones). The trip started out with lots of laughs, and they didn't end there.
Moving to a much less comical adventure, the four of us plus James and Richard (two of Catherine's friends) walked out of the bustling city and climbed up Arthur's Seat to get a better view. It was one of the most breath-taking scenes I've ever seen! From the peak of the mountain, you could see the entire city and how it was built to wrap around the mountain. And beyond the city, the North Sea. So, so cool.
After the hike, we went to The Pilgrim to collect ourselves and have a drink. This bar was really cool because everything was made from recycled materials, like the couch was made out of different denim pieces sewn together! Later, we went to Revolution for dinner. The food here was great and the entire table couldn't stop laughing throughout the entire meal, who knows why. Then we went to Why Not, a bar that a lot of local students go to. As we were waiting in line, a very over-served guy told us to tell the bouncers we were with John Allen. With those magic words, we were granted VIP access to the club. The place was filled with college aged kids and the music was loud, which made for a great night.
The next day, we tried to do as much as possible. We first got coffee at The Elephant House, which is the coffee shop that J.K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter in. The bathrooms were covered in Harry Potter graffiti and we probably spent a good fifteen minutes in the bathroom. Kind of gross, I know.
With our coffees in hand, we walked along the worn streets to the Edinburgh Castle. It's so weird how something built so long ago is still standing in the middle of the city. I can't even imagine what it was like living in the castle. We didn't want to pay the £16 to go inside, so we walked around the outskirts taking pictures for a while. You could get a really good view of the city from here too. Then we went to the Scottish History Museum and saw the exhibit about Mary, Queen of Scots. She was one cool girl. I went in not knowing much about her, all information from previous history classes forgotten. But she had such an intricate and exciting life, all to be taken from her because of her boy troubles. Go figure. If you don't know much about her, I highly recommend looking her up on Wikipedia or something, because she is so interesting. Her life would make a great TV series.
Edinburgh Castle
We went home afterwards to cook dinner- tacos! We got all the ingredients necessary at Tesco (who knew they had guacamole!? Except.. it didn't really taste like guacamole). I was in charge of cooking the taco meat, which I made to perfection. Thanks for all the practice, Dad! Hailey and Ailee were put on salad duty, and Catherine and James made the rice. To be clear, in the picture below, James is holding the rice in the bowl because neither he nor Catherine knew how to properly cook rice, so we ended up with white mush in a bowl which no one ate. Except James. We also had no napkins or paper towels, so we had to resort to using toilet paper, another comedic occurrence that had us doubled over for fifteen minutes. Definitely one of the best/worst dinners I've ever had.
The classic study abroad home cooked meal photo
After dinner, we all met up with John Melvin, a friend from UT, who is also studying in Edinburgh. He is on the club golf team, so we took part in Pub Golf with him and his teammates. It was a great night, and we got to see a lot of the pubs by doing this with them! When 8:30 AM rolled around, none of us were ready to get on our train and we had a bit of a hectic morning. However, we all concluded that Edinburgh was incredibly fun, but we were ready to head home (which is London.. weird, right?!).
Classes don't start until Monday, so hopefully I will do something blog worthy in the next couple of days!
x
lizzie
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