A Little Help From My Friends

Last weekend Deirdre (one of my good friends from Gtown who is studying in Dublin) came to visit Edinburgh. Having someone from home around was really nice and also having some here to do touristy things with was good for me since I haven't been an Edinburgh tourist yet. Friday we met with another friend from Gtown for lunch and then toured the Scottish Parliament and went looked around outside (and at the gift shop of course!) Palace of Holyroodhouse where the Queen stays when she visits Edinburgh (which apparently is like twice a year so I'm hoping I'm going to get in on some Queen action!!). Friday evening my flatmates and I took Deirdre out on the town for a night of dancing which is always a good time...although my feet weren't crazy about it on the walk back. Saturday Deirdre and I did a 3 hour (free!) walking tour of Edinburgh which I was a bit skeptical about but it ended up being amazing! I learned all these cool facts about the city and where some famous expressions came from (including ripped off and shit-faced...you'll have to come to Edinburgh to learn those!) also learned about the guy Jekyll and Hyde is based off was Deacon Brody a Edinburgh locksmith. After our awesome free tour we decided to do a ghost tour in the evening to conclude our experience. Edinburgh is said to be one of the most haunted cities in the world and people regularly have encounters with ghosts. The ghost tour was quite spooky and we heard lots of stories of ghostly encounters and residents of Edinburgh's ghostly past (and our tour guide had a striking resemblance to Hagrid which just makes you know it's going to be good) although Deirdre, Zara, and I were hesitant to turn the lights off in the flat after we got back...and for the rest of the weekend. Monday Deirdre and I were suppose to go on a highlands tour but not enough people signed up :( so we decided to visit Portobello Beach instead. Portobello Beach is a little suburb of Edinburgh that's on the firth of forth (Deirdre even walked in the sea) and we had a delicious lunch looking over the sea, then headed back to home. Deirdre's visit made me realize that I should do more touristy things around Edinburgh I learned so much about the city in just the 4 days she was here...imagine what I could learn over the next year! Can't wait for more visitors I now have a full-sized air mattress (that Deirdre said was more comfy than my bed!) so come anytime you want!

Homeless In Stockholm

My European adventures officially started this weekend with a trip to Stockholm with my flatmate Zara. Stockholm on a budget was not easy but we made it happen our whole trip was slightly under £100 (including the flight)! We got in Friday night and stayed in a hostel that was on a boat it was my first hostel experience and it was really nice the people in our room were a bit loud but that's to be expected when you are sharing a room with 10 other people! Saturday we got up and saw the changing of the guard at the royal palace and then walked around the city and window shopped and also ate some delicious pastry. Saturday night we had a booking at the Absolute Ice Bar (total tourist attraction and totally worth it!) the whole bar was made of ice even the cups (that held our absolute vodka drink of choice) and we had awesome winter capes to wear! Saturday night we didn't pre-book a hostel (b/c we booked our flight so late every hostel we looked at was really expensive) so we started our night of homelessness. We found a cheap place to eat dinner and play cards. Then moved to a bar in Gamla Stan (or Old Town as we were told the locals call it!) that stayed open to 3am. After that we hit up a fast food place which was open to 5am and then moved on to what we lovingly called our "home" the City Terminalen Bus Station. Sleep, however, did not come easily to either Zara nor I so we played lots of cards in the bus station until we had to catch our bus to the airport. It was a long day of traveling on Sunday and after we got home and made dinner we retired to our beds for a nice 11 hours of sleep, which was rudely disrupted by class the next morning...Overall our homeless in Stockholm experience went really well but from now on I will know to book a hostel, sleeping in bus/train stations just isn't for me!

London Baby!!

Last weekend I visited my friends Malin and Sarah from Georgetown in London. As many of you know I LOVE London and this weekend just made that more so. My flight for London was really early in the morning (I had to leave to catch the bus for the airport at 4am!) but it was totally worth it. Malin is taking a leave of absence to work at Parliament and I got a personal tour of the castle (including the terrace where people don't usually get to go!)...if I had gotten there later in the day I may not have been able to. I walked around London for the rest of the day until I met Sarah at the train station (she was meeting up with me from Nantes, France) in the evening. Friday evening was pretty low key just dinner and drinks with friends of Malin's from Parliament. Saturday Malin and I shopped til we dropped (literally...I've been feeling under the weather and I had to take a nap afterward to prep for our night out). Saturday evening we hit the town right by going to the Kensington Roof Gardens (a swanky London club) fancy dresses, nice cocktails, and dancing it couldn't have been a better night! Sunday it was back to Edinburgh which despite my love for London it was nice to get home...London is too expensive for a student who wants to travel! When I got home my flatmate and I found a cheap flight to Stockholm, Sweden for next weekend (i.e. tomorrow!!!) and I'm super psyched! My time here is going by so quickly I can't believe I've already been here a little more than a month!

This Night Will Be Legend - wait for it - dary

On Thursdays one of my flat mates and I are done with classes for the week and one of the others doesn’t have class until 3pm on Friday so we decided to have a flat bonding going out experience which would include getting a poster from a pub that has a burning 13 on it (we’re in Flat 13). Joking about not wanting to get caught stealing the sign (and how we would take the policy every man left behind) the night started out as quite fun, however, towards the end of the night one of my flat mates was caught in the middle of a bar fight that turned into a street brawl (as a bystander), the police were called and a couple of people arrested. I luckily didn’t see too much of the fight but because my flat mate did (and got hit by flying glass) we had to go down and make a statement. Apparently in the UK, refusing to go to the police station and give a statement is a criminal offense (on a kind of happy note my one flatmate made did make it out with the poster!). From now on I’m going to try to avoid being involved in and witnessing any crimes (I don’t want anything to go on my record in the UK since apparently now Madeline does but being British it’s probably better than someone here on a visa!). Everyone involved who were giving statements had pretty good humor about it (I guess except for the men who were arrested…we weren’t in the room with them!) but it was quite the memorable experience. The eventful night out left me feeling a little under the weather this weekend…so nothing much to report on the weekend front. Hopefully next Thursday won’t be quite as exciting…but next weekend will be much more exciting because I’m taking my first weekend trip to London! I’ll try to be better about updating more during the week.

Castle/Maze/Brewery = Awesome

This Wednesday’s day trip was a visit to Traquair Castle the oldest inhabited castle in the UK. The castle it’s self was beautiful and because we are some of the few people that visit castles in the middle of the week the castle guides gave us excellent pointers for some other day trips (and sights in general) that we must see while we’re in Scotland. Behind the castle is a maze which we probably made to hard by paying absolutely no attention to where we were going we walked in circles for probably a good half hour just finding the center…and then chose to leave by the fool’s exit (sometimes you have to know when to give up!) Following our adventure in the maze we visited the kid’s play area where they had a intense obstacle course…Zara succeeded in finishing it without touching the ground, I however slipped off of probably the easiest part :(. After all our fun on the grounds we finally visited the brewery where they offered a tasting of their ales…and the guy in the shop recommended a pub in Edinburgh that offers more unique beers than the average pub. We visited the recommended pub on Thursday night…it did have incredibly good beers for relatively cheap but we probably brought the average age down by a good ten years. Next week’s excursion will most likely be in Edinburgh (for cost reasons) but I’m sure we’ll find something interesting to do!