Neeps and Tatties

Location: Edinburgh, Scotland, UK

Finally in Edinburgh. It is amazing here. The train ride was really eventful. We had a little book that told us things to look at while we were riding. Unfortunately, we missed every single one of them. I'm not realyl sure how because I felt like we were looking really hard but we just flew by them I guess. The country was beautiful. There were so many sheep and huge cottage farm houses. The land was so green and there were hedges that divided the pastures. IT made me understand why steeplechasing is an event. If you had been riding in this country, it would be extremely easy to jump over hedges, stone walls, gates and wells.

As we got further north, ice started to cover the ground. The cute little white sheet started to blend into the background except every once and a while, there'd be a black sheep. The black sheep were so cute Cheesy Grin. We finally got to Edinburgh after about 3.5 hours and checked into our hotel which is a really neat old house that hs been converted into a hotel. Our room is called a "family room" which is basically a huge old bedroom with 3 beds in it. The bathroom is VERY nice though. We walked down the main street in "New Town" to look at a couple little churches and statues and to be able to see the castle and the beautiful architecture of "old town." We met a really nice old man outside of the pub we ended up eating a late lunch at and he told us about the history of old town and new town. After talking to him, I think we're all really excited to be able to head to Old Town tomorrow. At the pub, me and mom split a wonderful brie and cranberry stuffed bread. Their "chips" were also very tasty.

I think the plan is to take it pretty easy tonight considering that we have been travelling all day and then do some SERIOUS exploring tomorrow. The castle looks amazing from accross the Loch, I can't imagine what it looks like up close!!

XOXO

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Now playing: Alexi Murdoch - All My Days
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The Family is Here

Location: Liverpool, England, UK

I am freezing. Being back in Liverpool yesterday was a huge shock to my system. I've figured out how to convert temperatures. It was about 55F in Ireland and here's it goes from about 28 in the morning to no warmer than 34 in the afternoons. Plus there is this horrible wind that whips constantly. Brrrr!!!

Yesterday was very relaxing. I spent the morning walking around down on the docks. On the way, I visited two very different churches. The first, is the metropolitan church which (in the pictures I will post as soon as I can) is the one that kind of looks like a space ship. It was very unique. I'll just leave it at that. The second of the two was a medieval and beautiful dark stone church that was extremely gloomy. the fog was very thick and the church was so tall that you could barely see the top of it. There was very thick brush that ran all the way around it and then there was a moat (yes, an actual moat) that ran all the way around it. The moat was about a 100 foot drop from the road and then the church came up out of the ground there. It was beautiful.

At this point, I headed towards the river and visited Albert Dock which is the site of the Beatles museum as well as a historical focal point for liverpool. Aparently, back in the day, Liverpool was a huge slave trade port and there is a huge museum dedicated to it on this dock. This is also the site of most of the classic Liverpoolean worker images that come to mind (most notably, Accross the Universe... think the shipyards where Jude worked... Loved that movie Cheesy Grin) The docks are very well preserved and there are some fantastically old ships that still sit in the water nearby. It was extremely foggy yesterday which added to the mystery.

After all of this fun, I found the Pier Head (after much strife) and caught a ferry to the other side of the River Mersey. Mike met me here and his dad drove us back to their little house in Wallassey. It was exactly what you would expect. Cute little brick house with cute little rooms on a cute little road. I was instantly greeted by warm soup, hot tea and some mince pie. I met Lucy, Mike's sister, and her daughter Kira as well as Mike's mom. We sat and chatted for a long time and played with Amelia (Mike and Kimmie's daughter) and Kira. We went to dinner at a very cute little (of course) country pub where I had some sort of beef pie with mashed potatoes and gravy on top. It was very strange, but VERY delicious. After this we went to Lucy's house and sat around and played with Amelia and Kira for a little while longer before the Allens dropped me back off in Liverpool to meet up with my parents.

After I had completely exhausted Mom, Dad and Andrea's ear about Ireland, they ate some dinner and then we went to this brewery around the corner to have a couple more beers before bed. The place was very cute and very local. I'm so excited that they're in town, I've already taken Andrea on a crash course of Liverpool and I know it's going to be much more exciting to share all of the excitement with an actual human.

XOXO

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Now playing: Rick Springfield - Jesse's Girl
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Not such a good day sunshine, not much sunshine at all...

Location: Liverpool, England, UK

I'm having a panic attack...

This is way more than I had anticipated. I need you to pep talk me and tell me to suck it up and finish this out. I'm exhausted, depressed, lonely, cold and did I mention exhausted?

:(

I need more sad faces. My eyes are closing too. I'm SOOOO freaking tired, and cold. Mostly cold... the cold keeps me a little more awake. I sat and waited for that stupid internet cafe to open up this morning for nothing. I sat on a freezing cold bench and ate buttery yummy toast that I hardly could taste because I was so cold. I am going to crash.

I'm obviously delirious.

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Now playing: Ben Harper - Whipping Boy
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Good day sunshine

Location: Liverpool, England, UK

I am exhausted. My bus got in at about 6 AM this morning. I sat in the station and read until the sun came up (at about 8:30) and then I walked to the main square in Liverpool. The architecture is beautiful, and as soon as I am updating from a non-library computer, I will upload pictures. These buildings are HUGE!! I'm currently in one of them (the Central Library) and it's much less impressive from the inside. There's a student dormitory that I can see from here though, that is absolutely beautiful. It looks like a castle.

I spent the next couple of hours waiting for the "internet cafe" in town to open up (it didn't have a set time, it's just whenver the guy showed up). After waiting (and freezing) for a little shy of 2 hours, they finally opened and unfortunately... have no computers; just wi-fi. So I hiked to the library and here I am!! Unfortunately, Kimmie has not been getting my emails (I assume) because she never called me about doing lunch today. I guess I'll just have to wait until Thursday to catch up with her.

I'm a little down today. I can't figure out if I'm just tired from jet-lag or if I'm really freaking out, but I'm definitely looking forward to being in Dublin tonight in an actual bed. Hopefully there will be a pub in the hostel so I don't have to go far. I have to atleast have one beer while I'm there!! Hopefully another update tonight.

XOXO

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Now playing: Elton John - Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting
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I've been to Europe

Location: London, England, UK

Yay!! My first official post on foreign turf. Today was EXTREMELY eventful and I am thoroughly exhausted. I still have a little over 3 hours to kill until my bus leaves, so I have plenty of time to catch up. I uploaded some of my pictures from today into an album. I've decided that to save time, and my sanity, I'm only going to upload a select few pictures onto the blog for each day. To put it into perspective, I posted 12 pictures and I took 79. I'll save you the trouble of redundancy.

So today started at about 11:00 when I got through customs at Gatwick airport. I took at train into London and wandered about aimlessly for about 30 minutes, completely overwhelmed by the Victoria train station. I finally managed to figure out that I would need to take a bus to the Waterloo station to catch the train to Windsor and that the castle closed at 3. So I had to hurry. I took the bus a couple of blocks and thought I needed to get off, but ended up in the wrong place. I stumbled upon Westminster Abbey and the Parliament building so I walked around and took some pics before heading back towards the bus stop. I found the train station and took the hour long train ride across the country. I made some realizations about how incredibly tiring this trip is going to be. We arrived at Windsor/Eton Riverside station where I walked up a huge hill and into the castle at about 5 til 3. The ticket man let me in and said that they usually didn't start kicking people out til about 4:30 so I had a decent amount of time to trek.

There were almost no people there. I talked to a tour man who was sitting alone and he informed me that most of the pictures I got usually have about 300 people in the foreground. I thought it was the perfect way to see the castle. I could really picture royalty walking around and being... well... royal. It was so quiet and the only noises were cute little British cop men chatting about things. Once inside the castle, there really wasn't much to see except walls and towers. St. George's Chapel was absolutely stunning. I literally cried when I walked inside. I guess it's a first timer's kind of experience but I really had never seen something so intricate. The wood carving, stained glass and beautiful marble tombs were breathtaking. After that I sat on a wall and ate a Tuna sandwich and watched tourist kids take their pictures with the guard and try to make him come out of character. After they left, he coughed, which I thought was really funny, and I laughed and I swear he winked at me. Haha... oh the things that entertain you when you're alone.

After that, I took the hour train back to London and met a nice man who kept me company. He actually had a very funny story and told me that the only time he had been to the states was when he studied abroad in college... And of all places, he studied in Madison, Wisconsin... strange. He said he loved it though. I guess anything new can be fascinating.

Once I got home, I got back on the bus to head back to Victoria station (because that's where my bus leaves, and I wanted to be close to here). I missed my stop and assumed that the bus ran in a circle. WRONG!! About 40 minutes later, I was in some town past Chelsea. So I had to get off, and get on a new train which took me back into town. Yikes!! Lesson #1: Do not assume that you know what's going on with busses.

I'm back in London now, about to go grab something to eat and possibly see if I can find a sports bar. Apparently, Chelsea has a football game tonight so I'm going to see if I can watch.

XOXO

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Now playing: ACDC - Back In Black
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