the last days in Scotland: Glasgow and Edinburgh

After Joe left last Thursday, I spent most of the weekend catching up on sleep and editing photos from all my travels.  I also spent some time with my flatmates, since all of us were finally back in Glasgow at the same time.

On Tuesday, I went with Jacquie and Andrea to Edinburgh.  Edinburgh is quite the lovely city!  We began our visit by wandering down to the cafe where J. K. Rowling wrote parts of the first two Harry Potter books:  The Elephant House!

Exciting!  And their cappuccinos weren't bad either.  No wonder J. K. Rowling frequented the place.

After lunch, we wandered down the Royal Mile to Edinburgh Castle.  It looked nice, but castles with car parks in front of them disappoint me.  It takes away from the castle-ness of the castle.

After taking in the outside of the castle, we wandered back down the Royal Mile and found the Edinburgh Writer's Museum.  One thing I really love about Scotland's museums is that they tend to be free.  It's wonderful.

The Writer's Museum is housed in a really cool old mansion from 1622.  It featured permanent exhibitions on Robert Louis Stevenson, Robert Burns and Sir Walter Scott, as well as a temporary exhibition on philosopher David Hume.

The exhibitions were quite lovely!  Visiting Writer's Museums always makes me want to buy a ton of books and spend all my time reading.

After the Writer's Museum, we wandered down the Royal Mile and past the Scottish Parliament.  It is in the strangest building, where Old Town meets New Town.

It looked, as Andrea said, more like a modern art building than a government building.  Strange indeed.

Anyway, we decided to climb one of the hills near Holyrood Park--part of the Salisbury Crags and Arthur's Seat.

We didn't really follow the regular path up the hill.  Instead we followed what was probably water's path down the hill.  It was quite the fun adventure though!  I felt kind of like I was part of The Lord of the Rings--on an adventure to destroy the ring!

We had quite a fun time on top the hill, enjoying the lovely views of Edinburgh, the sea, and other hills.

As the afternoon came to a close, we made our way back through Edinburgh along the Royal Mile.  Edinburgh really is a wonderfully lovely city.  I think if I were to move to Scotland, I could see myself living in Edinburgh more-so than Glasgow.  It's just more of a literary city.

As my final days in Glasgow passed by, I spent most of my time with my flatmates and packing for my trip home.  On Friday, my last day in Glasgow, I went for a final Glasgow walk along the River Clyde to the armadillo shaped building--the Scottish Conference Center.  My flatmates and I also had a final flatmate dinner and pub night.

I leave early on June 4 (Glasgow time) and return to Fosston late on June 4.  I will miss Glasgow and my new friends quite a lot.  It's been quite an adventure this semester.  Study abroad has been an experience that I wouldn't trade for anything.

Scotland: Glasgow, Inverness and Stirling

Glasgow
May 19

On Thursday, Joe and I flew from London back to Glasgow.  Since I needed to do laundry, grocery shop and study for my exam the next day, we kept to the flat for the night.

May 20

After my morning exam, we did some Glasgow sightseeing.  We walked from my flat in the city centre to Glasgow Green, a park by the River Clyde, and visited the People's Palace and Winter Gardens.

Glasgow Green was beautiful and so was the exterior of the People's Palace.  In front of the palace, there was a Victoria Fountain that reminded me a lot of the Victoria Fountain in front of Buckingham Palace.  Clearly, Victoria loved to have fountains made in her honor.

However, the inside of the People's Palace was disappointing.  There was an interesting section on tenement housing in Glasgow, but overall the museum felt like it was really random and targeted towards children.  The Winter Gardens were also strange.  Somehow palm trees in a Glasgow Winter Garden make sense?

On our way through Glasgow Green to the subway, the clockwork orange, we spent some time along the River Clyde.  Strangely, it is a much cleaner river than the Thames.

We took the clockwork orange to the Kelvingrove Museum.  Along the way, I finally got my reading A Clockwork Orange on the clockwork orange picture.

We went through the Kelvingrove Museum, which is really massive, pretty quickly.  Some of the exhibits, like the one of armor and weaponry, are really cool, while the rooms filled with painting after painting really lose my interest.

After we finished at the Kelvingrove and walked through the West End, we took the clockwork orange back to the city centre.  We went to the Lighthouse and up the spiral staircase to get the near 360 degree views of Glasgow.

After the Lighthouse, we spent some time in George Square.  I did not realize until then that the super tall statue in the center of the square is not of George, as I had assumed, but Sir Walter Scott.  Why exactly it is called George Square, I do not know.

On the way back to my flat, we stopped at Tinderbox for some of the best coffee in Glasgow.  We had dinner in my flat and then went out to a few Scottish pubs--The Scotia, The Piper and The Ark.

May 21

It turned out to be quite a rainy day on Saturday.  Since we knew it was going to be rainier as the day went on, we decided to get the interviews for Joe's Joe Goes... pieces before doing any sightseeing stuff.  We spent most of the morning and half the afternoon on Buchanan and Sauchiehall Streets.

We took a break to get lunch at the Willow Tea Rooms, which I had been meaning to go to for months.  The tea was delicious!  We had Scottish Breakfast Blend.  And, Joe got to try haggis.

After we finished filming, we went to St. Mungo's Museum of Religious Life and Art, my favorite museum in Glasgow.  From there, we went to the nearby Glasgow Cathedral, another favorite Glasgow spot of mine.

Inverness

We went back to my flat for dinner and to pack up to take the evening train to Inverness.  When we arrived at 11:30 p.m., to my surprise, my flatmate Andrea was staying in the same hostel as us!  Crazy!

May 22


Our day started pretty early and with some disappointment.  It turns out the bus service is infrequent between Inverness and Loch Ness on Sundays.  The information lady said that the bus schedule we found that did list bus services started "tomorrow."  Lame.

So, we were forced to take a Jacobite tour of Loch Ness, which included the bus to/from the loch, a 30 minute boat tour of the loch, and two hours at Urquhart Castle.  And, we ended up on the same tour as Andrea.

Loch Ness is huge!  As a result of its size, I think, it is really wavy.  We sat up on deck for a while, but it got a little too rainy and cold to stay up there for long, so we spent most of the boat tour looking through the windows below deck.

My favorite part was probably the castle.  It was pretty much ruins, with a few rooms and a tour still intact.  The setting is probably my favorite setting of all Scottish Castles--both in the highlands and on a loch.  How much more Scottish can it get?

The interior of the castle wasn't quite as awesome as Dirleton Castle because there wasn't as much of it.  But, overall, the castle was pretty awesome.

After the tour was over and we were back in Inverness, we still had three hours until our train left for Glasgow.  Joe and I went to a pub for lunch and then walked around Inverness for a while.  We walked along the River Ness and saw Inverness Castle, and then roamed around Inverness for a while.

Glasgow
May 23


Our first stop on Monday was the Necropolis, one of the coolest places in Glasgow.  We walked up the hill and around the various graves of the Necropolis for a while.

Stirling


After the Necropolis, we took a train to Stirling to see Stirling Castle and the Wallace Monument.  It was a super rainy, windy and overall cold day.

Stirling was a lovely town, though.  We walked to the Old Town district where we found Stirling Castle.  Since we were just in Urquhart Castle the day before, we decided to just walk around the outside and grounds of Stirling Castle.  However, it was hard to find a good view of the castle.

We ended up going on a bit of a hike behind Stirling Castle in a woodsy area.  After following the path for a while, we decided to take it down to a field that doubles as a public footpath to see if the view was better from there.

It was, but the view of the castle was not all that impressive.

We decided that while we were down in the field, we might as well try to find a field of sheep.  Unfortunately, there wasn't any fields like those in Hatton that doubled as footpaths.  By the time we were back to our Stirling Castle path, it was starting to get pretty rainy.

So, we walked to the Wallace Monument.  It was a kind of long walk, and the rain sure didn't help.  When we made it to the Monument, we found out that the viewing platform was closed due to the severe winds.  But, we could still see the other three floors.

We decided to hike rather than take the shuttle to the top of the hill.  It was a bit of a hike, but the trees sheltered us from the rain pretty well.  It was pretty windy when we reached the top of the hill.  There were some pretty awesome views of Stirling from the top of the hill.

The inside of the Wallace Monument was pretty cool.  They had a floor about William Wallace's life, including his sword, a floor about other heroes of Scotland, and a floor about building the Monument.  It was really interesting.

The staircase going up the Monument was another one of those stone spiral staircases.  There were also window slits along the way up, and the wind definitely got worse the further we went up.

When we came down and were about to leave the Monument, the wind had really picked up.  It was nearly blowing me away and was almost pushing Joe a few steps, too.  Since the wind strengthened, we decided to take the shuttle down the hill.

The walk back to the train station was pretty miserable because it was pretty rainy.  When we got to the station, we got on a train to Glasgow pretty quickly.  However, we were only five minutes away from Stirling when a tree fell onto the track, stalling us for an hour, when they told us that they were suspending all train services and taking us back to Stirling.

We ended up getting a refund and waiting for nearly an hour for a very packed bus to Glasgow.

Glasgow

After we finally got back to Glasgow and made dinner, we went to The Ark for what we thought was Joe's last night.

May 24

However, when we woke up the next day, it turns out that the Iceland volcano that erupted over the weekend had an ash cloud hovering over Scotland, cancelling all flights to and from.  After going to O2 where the manager kindly let us use their phone after my O2 cell ran out of minutes, Joe got a place on a new flight on Thursday.

Since Joe now had some more time in Glasgow, we decided to visit Provand's Lordship, the oldest house in Glasgow. 

Later on in the day, we went to the Barony Bar in the Union, where we hung out for a while.

May 25

Since I had an exam the next day, I spent part of Wednesday studying.

After I finished studying, Joe and I went for a walk around Merchant City/City Centre.  We also visited the Gallery of Modern Art.  Unfortunately, we caught it at a bad time.  Two-thirds of the museum was closed for (un)installment of exhibits.

That night, we went to a pub I hadn't visited before called Blackfriars.

May 26

Joe left in the morning.  I had my exam in the afternoon and spent most of the rest of the day enjoying being done with school work for the semester.

lustrous London

London
Day One (May 17)


After a very early flight from Dublin, we arrived in London before noon.  We checked into our hostel and grabbed much needed coffee from Costa on our way to a whirlwind walking by many of London's sights.

We first headed along the River Thames towards the Millennium Bridge.  Near the bridge, we viewed St. Paul's Cathedral and Shakespeare's Globe.  Since Joe and I had both been before, we didn't really go in anywhere.  It was just nice to be walking in lovely London once again.

After the Globe, we continued our walk towards the Tower of London and Tower Bridge.  From here, we took the Tube up to King's Cross station so that Joe could see Platform 9 3/4.

We headed to the Charles Dickens Museum after King's Cross, because Joe hadn't been yet.  Unfortunately, it was closed for the week for refurbishment.  Lame.  Since our plans were no more, we decided to go to Hyde Park to see Speakers' Corner instead.

Near the corner, we found the most ridiculous statue ever.  It looked like gummy bears and was labeled as "Jelly Baby Family."  Ridiculous.

We walked around Hyde Park a bit, but found Speakers' Corner to be not exactly booming.  Probably because it was late afternoon on a Tuesday.  

After Hyde Park, we took the Tube to Chelsea, the neighborhood of London where Joe studied abroad when he was in college.  It was a pretty wealthy neighborhood.  We headed back to the hostel after we had our fill of walking around.

Day Two (May 18)

We began our second day in London by going to Big Ben and Houses of Parliament.  Pictures of aforementioned landmark works much better on a cloudy day than on a sunny day, like the one the last time I was in London.

We headed across the Thames and went by Westminster Abbey.  The line was much shorter than it was the week after the Royal Wedding.  It may also have been because it was while most tourists were at the changing of the guard.

Buckingham Palace was our next stop.  We happened to catch the beginning of the crowd-herding for the changing of the guard while we were there.  

We took the Tube to Soho after Buckingham Palace.  Soho is essentially the theatre district of London.  I don't think I have seen that many theatres in one place...ever.  Soho was interesting, but not quite so good for Joe Goes... interviews.  I did, however, find a pub called The Round Table!

Instead, we ended up going to Covent Garden, a shopping district filled with street performers.  We got all of the interviews that Joe wanted pretty quickly.

On the way back to our hostel area, part of the Tube was down, so it was kind of annoying.  After we got back to the hostel, we headed to the Westminster area again to go to a few pubs.

delightful Dublin

Dublin
Day One (May 14)


We arrived in Dublin in the late afternoon.  After checking into our hostel, we walked around the Temple Bar area for a while.  Somehow, we ended up getting dinner in an American-themed restaurant:  Thunder Road.  The Irish pubs were all pretty busy since it was Saturday night

After dinner, we went to a few pubs, including the famous Temple Bar.  Though it was Saturday night, we were pretty tired from our flight/travel, so we headed back to the hostel pretty early.

Day Two (May 15)


We spent a very Irish morning for our first day of sightseeing in Dublin.  Our first destination was the Guinness Storehouse.  On a cloudy Sunday in May, the Storehouse is far less busy than on March 18, the day after St. Patrick's.  There wasn't even a line!

The self-guided tour was exactly as I remembered it from March.  We went through the various stages and got our samples of Guinness Draught, like I did before.  However, Ashley, Anna and I must have skipped a few floors when we were here, because Joe and I also went through the advertising section.  Apparently, nothing says Guinness like a toucan.

At the pour your own pint section, the lady was much more helpful than the guys at the little stand was in March.  We enjoyed our free pints and made a quick stop at the Galaxy Bar for the 360 degree views of Dublin.

Our next stop was the Jameson Distillery.  The tour here was guided.  The distillery in Dublin is no longer in use, so it was set up to look like it would have when it was in use.  One of my favorite parts of the Jameson tour was how they did samples.  Unlike the Famous Grouse/Glenturret Distillery, the samples here were genuine drinks rather than plastic shot cups.  You also were given the option of straight whiskey or whiskey with mixer.

We headed to Temple Bar area after the distillery, where we grabbed a quick lunch before we began filming for Joe's Joe Goes... piece.  It turned out to be more difficult here than in Amsterdam to get interviews.  It also began raining, so we only got half of the filming done.

That night, we went to a few pubs in the Temple Bar area again.  In one, we met some Englishmen on a stag night (bachelor's party) who recognized Joe from Beauty and the Geek six years ago.  Crazy!

Day Three (May 16)


Our last day in Dublin began with finishing sightseeing, the first stop being Christchurch Cathedral.  We decided not to go inside, but walked around the exterior of the cathedral.

Instead, when we went to St. Patrick's Cathedral, we went inside.  We also spent some time in St. Patrick's Green--the park behind the cathedral.

After we went to the cathedral, we attempted to go to Dublin Castle.  However, it appeared to be closed off and there were a number of policemen around.  It turns out that it was closed off because the Queen (of the UK) was going to be arriving in Dublin the next day.

As we discovered throughout the day, it's a pretty controversial issue in Dublin, since a monarch hasn't visited since before Elizabeth was alive.

Since Dublin Castle wasn't open, we decided to walk around by Trinity College--which turned out to be a better area to interview people for Joe Goes... 

After we finished filming, we decided to head to the Writer's Museum.  However, as we headed up O'Connell Street, we were stopped by police who questioned us and searched our bags.  Security for the Queen's visit was quite the big deal.  But, they let us through and we made it to the museum.

For dinner, we went to the oldest pub in Ireland, The Brazen Head, est. 1198.  We went to Temple Bar area after dinner for a final pint before turning in.