Scone Palace, the Royal Wedding and REST

The two weeks in Glasgow between spring break and resumed travelling consisted of some much-needed rest.  We were pretty tired out after our exhausting 15 day adventure around Europe.

Our return to Glasgow was quickly marked with disappointment.  We went to purchase tickets to the Isle of Skye, a little before the designated 4 p.m. time, to discover that they were sold out.  What the crap, Union?  Selling tickets early?!  Not fair!  We were rather unhappy about it.

I spent most of last week catching up on sleep and sorting photos from spring break.  I got my two essays back for my Adaptations of Literature to Cinema class.  They turned out quite well.  My grade for the class is in the second-class marks category (the equivalent of a B).  I'm satisfied.

On Easter Sunday, I decided to get out of my sleepy, flat slump and get some Costa Coffee.  While I was in Costa Coffee reading Middlemarch, Sleigh Bells "Kids" came on.  It was awesome!  :)  Glasgow, for the win!

I got my last essay back on Tuesday.  I also got second class marks.  Now, all that remains of class work is to take two finals--one in Victorian Literature (May 20) and one in History 1b (May 26).

On Thursday last week, Ashley, Andrea and I took a trip to Scone Palace, near Perth, for the day.  Perth is beautifully set in the highlands--near where we went on our Blair Castle excursion.  We grabbed lunch in a pub--The Tavern--before heading off to Scone Palace.

Scone Palace is the crowning place of Scottish Kings.  The inside detailed the infamous Scottish monarchs who were crowned at Scone, including Macbeth and Mary Queen of Scots.

We spent about an hour going through the palace.  It was beautiful.  But, like Blair Castle, pictures were not permitted.  We noticed that Scone was going to have an event for the Royal Wedding the next day.

Once we finished with the inside of Scone Palace, we enjoyed the grounds.  The grounds around the Palace were pretty awesome.  And, there were a number of peacocks strutting about, to Ashley's delight.  They were beautiful--bright blue and green!

We took a look at the little cathedral near the Palace.  To our delight, we found the Stone of Scone (different from the Stone of Destiny currently residing in Edinburgh).  Ashley and I had some fun taking pictures "attempting to steal" the stone.

Afterward, we walked through the graveyard before returning to Perth to catch our train home.

On Friday, we had a little flat Royal Wedding party.  We started watching the coverage at 10 a.m. (an hour before the ceremony) and celebrated by each making a pitcher--mimosas, mojitos, sangria, Pimm's lemonade, and cider.  It was quite a fun day.

The wedding itself was good.  However, William and Kate's balcony kiss was quite wimpy...it last all of .2 seconds.  Fail, William.

On Sunday, Anna, Jacquie and I went to the Scotia bar for a pint.  We had a good time sitting in the pub and chatting.  Although, the pub was a bit crowded and noisy for a Sunday night.

Monday's excitement was, in addition to prepping for London, waking up to discover that Osama bin Laden is dead.  Interesting news...

Anyway, Tuesday through Saturday, we'll be in London, then I'm going to Oxford and Stratford-upon-Avon to indulge in some literary nerdiness.  :)

remarkable Rome and a wee layover in Liverpool

Day 12 (April 14)


The travel day from Milan (Bergamo) to Rome was the worst travel day...ever.  It began with getting up at 5 a.m. to get a 6 a.m. taxi to Bergamo Airport.  We were checked in, had our coffee & breakfast, and were ready to go by 7 a.m.  Our flight was supposed to leave at 8:25 a.m.

We were in line to get on the plane around 8 a.m., when they announced that it was delayed until 9:30.  Shortly after, it was announced that the flight was delayed until 11:30 a.m.  Not cool.  We decided to grab a beer, since there was nothing else to do, and do some journalling while we waited.

The flight ended up not leaving until 12:30.  RyanAir's compensation for our four hours?  A 5 Euro coupon that could only be used at one restaurant in Bergamo Airport that only had meat sandwiches.  Our lunch was a brioche (croissant) and a can of Pringles.

By the time we got to Rome (Ciampino) and caught a bus into the city centre, it was after 3 p.m.  After we figured out the metro and finally found our hostel, it was 5 p.m.

We grabbed some pizza (that was kind of disgusting) and chilled in the hostel.  I got a text from Sam that he was coming to Rome that night, so I talked to the hostel receptionist and arranged for him to stay in our room.

Day 13 (April 15)


Our first day in Rome was spent exploring Vatican City.  After a long metro trek, we had to grab a bus for the final bit of our journey because a section of the metro was down.  We happened to be squished into the bus by two girls--Erica and Marion--from the States who are studying at Glasgow University.  They're our rivals, but it was still cool to run into a couple Glaswegians.

We ended up deciding to join their afternoon tour of the Vatican.  Beforehand, we grabbed a lunch of pizza and gelato.  Delicious.  Gelato is amazing--far better than DQ ice cream.

After lunch, we joined the tour.  First, we went to the Vatican Museum (and bypassed the line).  Our tour guide was pretty cool.  He was from the States and he knew a lot about Vatican City.

Apparently, Roman statues were not the plain white that we are accustomed to.  They were brightly painted--the paint just wore off with time.  We also learned that the water in fountains in Rome is potable.  Handy.

We saw a number of statues and tapestries in the Vatican Museum.  They were all pretty amazing.

The tour guide probably spent close to an hour explaining Michelangelo's art in the Sistine Chapel.  The infamous ceiling painting was only completed after being abandoned by Michelangelo in the middle of night--twice!  When the pope looks up, the panel in his line-of-vision moons him.  Classy, Michelangelo.

The altar piece, done entirely by Michelangelo, uses the appearance of one of the cardinals for the man deciding which stage of hell people are going to.

The Sistine Chapel itself was pretty cool.  However, there was a lot of security hurrying people through, saying "No photo.  Advance.  Shhhhhhhh!"

For the finale of our tour, we went to St. Peter's Basilica.  The tour guide told us a story about St. Peter and the palms used for Palm Sunday (which were in the basilica area while we were there).  We walked around St. Peter's Basilica a bit.  But, by this point of the trip, we were a little cathedral-ed out.

After we wrapped up at the basilica, we headed back to the hostel for the night.

Day 14 (April 16)


Our next day in Rome was spent in the general city centre area.  We began the day by setting out for the Spanish Steps.  Initially, we walked right past the steps, thinking that they weren't grand enough to really be the Spanish Steps.

It turns out, they were.  Ashley and Sam were in disbelief that those were actually the Spanish Steps.  Anna and I accepted it pretty readily.  Regardless, we climbed the steps and did the usual picture-taking.

There was a church at the time that we ventured inside.  It was small (by comparison to other cathedrals visited on this trip), but still beautiful.

After giving up on the Spanish Steps, we headed to the Trevi Fountain, where wishes come true.  Supposedly, tossing a coin into the fountain will ensure your return to Rome and grant your wish.

The fountain was pretty cool--it was composed of mythical creatures.  The water was a really bright blue.  It was beautiful.  Once we squeezed through the large crowd and made our wishes, we grabbed some gelato.  Again.  :)

The next stop for the day was the Pantheon.  The Pantheon is a domed, columned ancient structure that is architecturally impossible.  Apparently, if you put the design of the Pantheon into a computer, it will say that it is impossible.  The structure was really cool--and it had a hole in the top of the Dome for light.

Strangely enough, we ran into Erica and Marion again in the Pantheon.  Small world!

After we finished up in the Pantheon, we headed to Piazza Navona, where we planned to meet Ashley's friend from home and her two travel buddies.

Piazza Navona, much like plazas in Spain, was filled with street performers.  Ashley made friends with the cowboy statue guy.  But, she ditched him to go to dinner with us.

We ate dinner at a delicious pizza place near the Piazza Navona.  It was the best pizza that we had in Italy!

After dinner, we returned to the Trevi Fountain and got another round of gelato.  When in Rome...  :)  The fountain looked really cool at night.  Once we finished our gelato, Ashley and her friend said goodbye, and we headed back to our hostel for the night.

Day 15 (April 17)


Our final day in Rome was spent in what is quite possibly my favorite part of Rome:  Ancient Rome.

Our first stop for the day was my favorite:  The Colosseum!  It was gorgeous.  The building was ancient, decaying, and beautiful.  I could've spent all day just enjoying the Colosseum.

We had to wait in a bit of a line to get in, but it was SO worth it.  :)  We spent a good hour exploring both the first and second levels and taking in all of the Colosseum.  I loved it.

Unfortunately, we had other items on the agenda for the day.  So, we said goodbye to the Colosseum (though it popped in sight quite frequently throughout the day) and headed to the Roman Forum.

The Roman Forum was pretty cool, basically the lingering remains of what was once great.  It was pretty cool to see.  It took about an hour to go through the Forum.

After the Forum and grabbing lunch, we head to Circus Maximus, the old horse-racing track.  It turned out to be a field with a dirt track.  Sam was a bit disappointed and didn't believe that that was really it.  But, it was.

There was some sort of Renaissance Fair happening in Circus Maximus.  We caught what appeared to be the end of a faux sword-fight.  There were also a number of people walked around dressed in Renaissance garb.

After grabbing some souvenirs and supper, Ashley, Anna and I headed back to the hostel and Sam went off to catch a train to Florence.

Day 16 (April 18)


Our final travel day was another early one.  Our taxi arrived at the hostel at 6:30 a.m. and took us to Termini Station.  It was probably the worst taxi ride ever!  The company didn't warn us that it would crazy traffic on Monday mornings.  :S

We did arrive at the station just in time to catch an 8:00 a.m. bus to the airport.  However, RyanAir failed (again) and our flight to Liverpool was about 45 minutes late.  It's a good thing we booked our train tickets for a 7:30 p.m. train back to Glasgow.

Our afternoon was spent in the Liverpool Airport, with lunch from Subway and a couple pitchers of Carlsberg.

By the time we got back to Glasgow, it was after 11 p.m.

Spring break was a wonderful adventure.  We saw a lot of awesome sites and had many a good time.  Some of the travel days were bad, but overall our spring break was pretty much the best ever.  :)

breathtaking Bergamo, mediocre Milan

Day 10 (April 12)


For our flight from Paris (Beauvais) to Milan (Bergamo), we had to get up unreasonably early once again, at 3 a.m, in order to get a taxi at 4:45 a.m. to the bus stop, to catch a 5 a.m. bus to Beauvais.  When we arrived at the bus stop, it was crazy crowded with people heading to Beauvais Airport.  These people were not pleasant and rather pushy about getting on one of three buses heading to the airport.  :S

When we got to the airport, we had a bit of a wait before our flight.  We grabbed coffee and a brioche (croissant) for breakfast and waited for our flight.  This time, it was on time, and we were in Bergamo, on our way to our hotel at 10:30 a.m.

We had a shuttle from our hotel, the Holiday Inn Express, in Bergamo pick us up from the airport.  Luckily, we were able to check into our room early and were ready to head out to see Bergamo by noon.

We caught a bus into the city centre and headed towards the Old Town section, a beautiful old village-like area on top of a hill.  We took a cable car to the top and wandered around the Old Town for the afternoon.

Our views of Bergamo from the Old Town were gorgeous!  We spent most of the afternoon enjoying the views.

Before heading back to the hotel, we decided to stop at a restaurant and grab a lunch/dinner combo.  I had bruschetta and Ashley had a salad consisting of mozzarella, tomatoes, olives, and a wee bit of lettuce.  It was pretty good.

We were pretty tired from our long day when we got back to the hotel, so we went to bed pretty early.

Day 11 (April 13)


For our second day, we took the train from Bergamo to Milan.  The train ride wasn't bad--only an hour--but the train station was rather confusing.  We spent nearly a half hour following signs leading to bathrooms that kept disappearing.

Once we got a map of Milan, we headed towards the metro.  It was the most crowded, sardine-canned metro that we've ever been on.  There was no space at all in any of the cars, though a new train came every two minutes.

Once we got to the main area of Milan, Piazza del Duomo, the disappointment began.  The outside of the Duomo Cathedral was pretty cool.  It had very interesting architecture.  However, the inside wasn't anything spectacular, and pictures weren't allowed inside.  We went through the cathedral pretty quickly before heading to the nearby shopping centre, supposedly the first mall.

It was a cool building, but it was little more than rows of overly-expensive, famous brand stores.  In my opinion, that is very bleh.  We'd been in Milan little over an hour, and we were already running out of things to do.  Milan for the lose.

Once we grabbed lunch and did some wandering, we were ready to go back to Bergamo, which we established as the better city.  Unfortunately, the automatic ticket machine lied to us and told us there was a 5:25 train when really the next train wasn't until 6:10.  When we finally got on the train, it somehow ended up nearly a half hour late.

We were pretty glad to be back at our hotel.  After spending a bit checking our e-mail on the computers, we decided to grab a drink at the bar.  As we were sitting there, we noticed a man with a Scottish accent.  It turns out he was from Kilmarnock (only 20 minutes from Glasgow) and was in Bergamo on vacation with his wife and daughter!  Small world!

After chatting with the Scottish man a bit, Anna "the cheetah" arrived at our hotel to join us for the last leg of our trip.  We ended up going to bed shortly after she arrived, since we had an early flight again the next day.

phenomenal Paris

Day 7 (April 9)


Today was another travel day from Madrid to Paris.  It began well enough--our flight wasn't until late afternoon, so we got to sleep in a bit.  All seemed to be well with our flight.  We were on the plane and all appeared to be ready to go..except, it wasn't.

We sat on the plane for nearly an hour and a half before it finally took off.  The reason?  We suspect it was the two American girls around our age.  A stewardess kept coming over to them and saying something along the lines of "do ___ next time or it's going to cost you a lot of money."  We suspect they forgot to have their visas checked and didn't check their oversized bags.  Not cool!

By the time we got to Beauvais Airport, got to Paris via the bus, and found the metro to our hostel, it was after 10 p.m.  We settled in a bit before going (unsuccessfully) in search of food.  We ended up getting bread and cheese at a convenience store and making grilled cheese in our hostel.  Lame.

We did meet two girls--Charley and Louise--from Manchester, England in our room.  They invited us out to a club with them, but we were pretty tired and it would've involved an hour-long walk.

Day 8 (April 10)


For our first stop in Paris, we decided to tick the most important attraction off our list--the Tour Eiffel (Eiffel Tower).  After a quick metro ride, we reached our destination.

It was unreal to actually be looking at the Eiffel Tower in person, not in the movies.  And it was a beautiful day for it.  Though nowhere near the hot level of Madrid, it was a pleasant 65 F (20 C) and sunny.

Our short walk to the tower was filled with a number of guys on the street trying to sell us cheap Eiffel Towers.  They all had the same selection and seemed to know each other.  We ignored them and continued on to the Tower.

The line wasn't horribly long and moved fairly quickly.  We bought our tickets and took an elevator to the second level--the point above the legs.  We enjoyed the view and grabbed some coffee.  After taking a satisfactory amount of pictures, we decided to get in line to take the elevator to the third level.

We spent quite a while at the top of the Tower, enjoying the beautiful views of Paris and taking our fill of pictures.

On the way down, we took the elevator to the second level and the stairs to the bottom.  About halfway down the stairs, we were pretty glad that we didn't decide to take the stairs up to the second level.  The stairs were pretty never-ending!

After we reached the bottom and walked down the courtyard area, we had a great deal of fun taking pictures with the full tower in the background, including ones where it looked like we were holding the Tower in our hands.

After we got our fill of the Eiffel Tower, we went in search of lunch.  Since we were in the touristy Eiffel Tower area, lunch did not come cheap.  It ended up being about 16 EUR ($23-25) for a plate of fries and a glass of Coke.  :S

We spent a while of the afternoon doing some souvenir shopping and wandering about the Paris city centre before heading back to the hostel.

After dinner and it got dark out, we set out in search of a view of the Eiffel Tower by night.  We didn't intend to go all the way back to the Tower, but by the time we got in sight of it, we decided that we might as well go all the way back.  It was a bit of a walk, but worth it!

Our pictures didn't turn out the greatest, but the Eiffel Tower lit up at night is amazing--especially the light show that happens for five minutes of every hour.

Day 9 (April 11)


For our second and last day in Paris, we decided to go to Notre Dame Cathedral.  Before heading to the cathedral, we decided to stop off for coffee.  Ashley used her French skills to get us coffee--although, we ended up with espresso instead of actual coffee.  At least they brought us sugar cubes.

Notre Dame Cathedral was pretty packed with tourists.  The outside of the cathedral looked really cool.  The inside of the cathedral was also beautiful.  At first, we thought it was strange because there appeared to be a mass happening while tourists were going through the cathedral.  However, it turned out to be just a choir singing. It was still strange.

After we saw all of the cathedral, we headed to our next destination for the day--the Louvre and Royal Palace.  We paused on the bridge over the river to take enjoy the view and take some pictures before continuing on.

When we got to the Louvre, we were overwhelmed by its size.  We didn't plan on going in, since it was late in the day and we were a bit museum-ed out.  We walked through all of the Louvre courtyards, instead, and looked at the Arc di Triomphe du Carousel.

On our way out of the Louvre, we walked through a courtyard filled with statues.  Having had our fill of wonder at the Louvre (especially its size), we went in search of the Royal Palace.

The Royal Palace was not easy to find.  We probably walked around it three times before we  finally found an entrance.  Once we did, we discovered that the inside was under construction and apparently not open to the public.

Instead, in the courtyard, we found what appeared to be items for a strange game.  We weren't quite sure what the purpose of the varying-sized podiums (?) was, but it was interesting.

The gardens were beautiful.  They were lined with trees and benches.  We sat and enjoyed a bit of the afternoon there before heading back to the hostel to pack for another early morning.

magnificent Madrid

Day 4 (April 6)


This was another travel day, this time from Barcelona to Madrid.  We had an afternoon flight, so didn't have to get up ridiculously early.  Our flight went quickly, we got a bus, and were in Madrid between 4 and 5 p.m.

We found our hostel, not so easily.  Its sign wasn't prominent.  When we checked in, we discovered that the hostel was pretty sketchy--it didn't have lockers, we didn't get a key for the room, there was a kind of crazy lady in our room who alleged she was here to prosecute the U.S. for war crimes, and it wasn't very clean.

We headed to the metro to try to find another hostel and ended up bumping into an American girl who told us that her hostel was pretty decent.  She gave us directions to the area it was in, and we headed there.  However, all the hostels in that area looked like the same type of situation as the hostel we had checked into.

Just as we resigned ourselves to the somewhat sketchy hostel, we spotted a hostel that looked more like a hotel than a hostel and wasn't too pricey.  Luckily, we were able to get out of the sketchy hostel and into the nice hostel with only losing our 10% deposit.

Day 5 (April 7)


For our first day exploring Madrid, we decided to head to the Palacio Real (Royal Palace).  En route, we passed through some cool plazas, including the Puerta del Sol and Plaza Mayor.

When we got to the Palace, we enjoyed some time in the courtyard (where pictures were allowed) before heading into the Palace itself (where pictures weren't allowed).  From the courtyard, we had a beautiful view of Madrid and some hills.

The Palace was gorgeous!  Like the Royal Palace in Stockholm, it was draped in gold all around, in addition to rich colors, especially red.  There was also an abundance of clocks all around the Palace.

Once we had gone through the Palace, we returned to the courtyard where we sat and relaxed a bit before heading off to our next stop.

On our way back to the Plaza Mayor, I noticed a sign telling us that the temperature was 30 C (86 F).  It was quite the hot day!  We definitely needed to cool off, so we stopped at a restaurant in the Plaza Mayor for some sangria.  It was delicious and filled with fruit.

We enjoyed some of the street performers in the plaza before heading back to the hostel for the day.  Growing tired of the music channel, we went in search of a deck of cards (and found some just as we were about to give up!) so that we could play Rummy.

Day 6 (April 8)

The big sight to see was el Museo del Prado.  It was a pretty massive museum.  Once we were inside, Ashley and I were a little bit overwhelmed by the sheer presence of art in the museum.

We took on the second level before we even had our caffeine for the day.  There were so many paintings that we couldn't possibly take the time to really take in all of them.  So, we browsed past them for the most part.  In some of the larger rooms, there were artists doing replicas of some of the paintings on display.  It was pretty interesting to see.

Some observations of Spanish paintings:

1. It is obsessed with religion.
2. Nudity is rather prevalent.
3. Children are depicted like adults with baby heads.
4. Fat children were painted often.

After we grabbed some coffee from the museum cafe, we went through the first level, which had more of a sculpture to painting balance.  We went through this level pretty quickly before leaving the museum.

We headed on a somewhat lengthy walk through a couple plazas (including Plaza del Colon), stopping to rest and take some pictures a couple of times.  We tried to find a restaurant that serves patatas bravas (a common dish according to my Europe book), but no luck.  We ended up (again) getting pizza.  It was pretty good, but they charged us for bread that we didn't ask for, so we decided not to tip.

beautiful Barcelona

It's been nearly a month, and a busy one at that, since I last updated the blog.  From April 3 to April 18, I was travelling on spring break with Ashley and (partially) Anna.  My blog posts about spring break are going to be in the form of a blog post per city.  First up on spring break was Barcelona.

Day 1 (April 3)

Our first day of spring break was a deja vu to Dublin travel day--Ashley and I had to get up at 2:30 a.m. to catch a 4:30 a.m. bus to the airport, though our flight did not leave until 9.  Unfortunately, that was the only way of getting to the airport since buses and trains don't run in Glasgow until after 9 a.m. on Sundays.

We arrived in Girona Airport outside Barcelona in the early afternoon.  While waiting for our bus into Barcelona outside of the airport, we were surprised by a great number of mountains surrounding us.

The views on our bus ride into Barcelona were equally beautiful.  Spain is a really lovely country.

We didn't do much on our first evening in Barcelona, since we were tired from our travels.

Day 2 (April 4)

Our priority for our second day in Barcelona was to visit La Sagrada Familia, the infamous and incomplete cathedral, in progress since the 1800s.

When we arrived, we found the fairly huge line to get into the cathedral.  We ended up making friends with the lady behind us, who was from Cincinnati, and visiting Spain with her husband and elderly parents.  Our wait in line also made it clear why the cathedral is still in progress--we saw about four guys actually working on it.

La Sagrada Familia was a very beautiful cathedral.  The main hall was massive!  The details around the cathedral were very intricately done.  After we viewed all of the cathedral, we took a lift to one of the towers and crossed the bridge to walk down another tower.

We had very beautiful views of Barcelona from the bridge.  The spiral staircase down the tower was also a favorite of ours.  It was a kind of confusing tower staircase--it would  have hallways where you could choose two directions to go in, presumably both going down.  There were also a number of photo points along the way down, allowing us to take even more pictures with the backdrop of Barcelona.

Once we made our way down, we paused to take a picture with the statue of la sagrada familia, before grabbing a metro to our next destination:  el Estadi Olimpic (Olympic Stadium).

We had a somewhat desolate, rather woodsy walk from the metro to the Olympic Stadium.  When we reached the Olympic Stadium, we pleasantly discovered that it was free!  We took some pictures with the football (soccer) field and grabbed lunch at the Olympic Stadium Sports Cafe.

Outside of the stadium, there was a cool courtyard area.  There were two small and one massive fountains, stretches of grass, and an interesting tower.  We meandered around the courtyard for a bit before beginning the walk to Montjuic Castle.

Montjuic Castle was on top of a hill, so we decided to take the Teleferico (cable car) to the top of the hill.  The Teleferico was a little shaky, but it got us to the top of the hill safely.

Montjuic Castle, though not on par with Scottish castles, is in a pretty awesome location.  It is right by the Mediterranean Sea and has beautiful views of the city of Barcelona.  There wasn't really much to the interior of the castle--just an inner courtyard.  It had some massive cannons around the outer courtyard area, but that was about it.

After walking down the hill and back to our hostel, we decided to stay in for the night.  While hanging out at the hostel, we met two workers:  Chad the bartender from Australia who has been living in Barcelona for three years, and Peter from New York who just moved to Barcelona.

Day 3 (April 5)

We began our last day in Barcelona by souvenir shopping in the Placa Catalunya, a square filled with fountains and statues.  After finding our souvenirs and sitting in the Placa for a while, we headed to (initially) El Born, a medieval jousting place.

However, we missed our turn and decided to do Barceloneta Beach first, after grabbing lunch at a restaurant near the beach.  Barceloneta Beach was beautiful, but the Mediterranean Sea was freezing!  So, we sat on the beach (it was about 75 F and 25 C) for quite a while.

Once we tired of the beach, we decided to try to find El Born.  Either it was an unexciting square, or we didn't find it.  We did, however, find the Picasso Museum.  Maybe it's just us, but neither Ashley nor I found Picasso's art particularly "wow, this is amazing."  I think we just aren't big fans of modern art.

We were pretty exhausted by the end of the day, so returned to the hostel to pack up our stuff for our flight to Madrid the next day.

of Stockholm and soon-approaching spring break

Glasgow

After I returned from Dublin last week, I spent most of the week getting my work done before taking off for Stockholm.

I had a very productive day on Wednesday.  I finished my history paper and submitted it on Thursday.  On Thursday, Jacquie and I decided to attempt to go to Bothwell Castle, a 20 minute train from Glasgow.  We ate at a, as Jacquie phrased it, "little old man bar," for lunch before venturing to the castle.  When we got there, to our dismay, we discovered it is closed on Thursday and Friday.  Their sign and website said nothing about this.  Sad day.

Instead, we went for a walk/hike along the River Clyde.  It was a beautiful day, and Scotland looked beautiful as always.

Stockholm

Day One

Early last Friday morning, I left for my trip to Stockholm to meet my Beloit friend, Sam.  I took an early bus to Edinburgh to allow myself plenty of time to make my 12:20 flight.  Turns out, I allowed too much time and had to wait an hour before check in opened.  Note:  plan to arrive at the airport two hours (and not more) before RyanAir flights.

The flight from Edinburgh to Stockholm Skavsta was pretty smooth, until we began landing.  Then, it got a little turbulent.  We landed in what appeared to be the middle of nowhere.  We were surrounded by pine forests and plains--oddly like Minnesota.  Strange.

My bus to the city centre ended up getting stuck in traffic.  Once I got to the city centre, I got a little mixed up on directions to the hostel (Crafoord Place), but I made there safely around 7 p.m.  Sam had already been at Crafoord Place for a day.  Once I got some food, we headed out to explore Stockholm.

We walked through a large part of Gamla Stan (the Old Town) looking for a cheap bar.  Note:  inexpensive things do not exist in Stockholm.  Most restaurants charge upwards of 100 kroner ($15) for a meal and 45 kroner ($7) for the cheapest drinks.  Lame.  We found a Temple Bar in Stockholm (there was one in Dublin) and decided to stop there.  After grabbing a pint of Briska (cider), we headed into the hostel to call it a night.  

Day Two

On Saturday, we did some more walking around Stockholm, mostly through Gamla Stan and by the harbour. It was freezing!  In the sun it was pretty warm, but the wind was really nasty.  I think I got windburn.  We took an afternoon Winter (boat) Tour of Stockholm.  It was beautiful, but very cold.  We toughed out most of the tour before heading below deck.

Saturday night, we walked around Stockholm some more and went to the KGB bar that David (another Beloit friend) recommended.  It was strange and kind of goth, so we only stayed for one Briska.

Day Three

On Sunday, we went to the Royal Palace to catch the changing of the guard and take a tour.  The changing of the guard was pretty cool.  I caught a video of it.

The Royal Palace was beautiful--filled with all sorts of gold adornments.  Unfortunately, pictures weren't allowed inside.  Lame.  My favorite part of the Royal Palace was the Tre Kronor museum.  It would have been very cool to take pictures.  There was all sorts of historical stuff.

After the Royal Palace, we walked around Stockholm some more, seeing the city.  That night, we went down to Temple Bar and the Bishop's Arms for a drink before turning in for the night.

Day Four

Sam left early Monday morning and explored Stockholm by myself most of the day, since my flight didn't leave until Monday night.  I went around Gamla Stan and down a few random streets near the City Terminal.  It was fun.

It took what felt like forever to get back to Scotland and Glasgow.  But, I made it back to the flat around midnight on Monday.

Back in Glasgow

Most of this week, I worked on an essay for my film and literature class and prepared for spring break.  I finished my essay on Wednesday and went to the Charlie Sheen party at O'Couture with Anna and Ashley.  Clearly, even the Scots are fascinated with Charlie Sheen's antics.  It was a fun night.

Yesterday (Friday), we went on the EPIC international pub crawl.  Ashley, Anna and I were on the blue team (for the win).  We went to four different pubs around George Square/the Union before returning to the Union.  It was a fun night.

In five hours, Ashley and I are taking a bus to the airport for the first leg of our spring break journey!

We're going to Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, Milan, Rome, and Liverpool over the next 15 days!  It will be epic. :)