Hello, sorry that it’s been so long! Lots happened since my
last post! First, I had a normal week of class. I also had clan kitchen duty.
That means that our clan was in charge of helping prepare dinner, serving it to
the rest of the group, and cleaning up the kitchen afterwards. It took away a
lot of free time for doing homework and relaxing, but I’m glad that we got our
first week done. We only have one other week of clan kitchen duty, which will
be the first week of April. I also had to do my house job. For that I have to
clean the main entrance hall and the marble hall. People don’t do much in those
rooms besides pass through them like hallways, so I mostly just have to sweep
and mop the floor.
Then on Friday morning we left for London! The night before,
I tried out a new way to do my hair so that it would be “beachy waves”. Well, I
made the little buns a bit too tiny, so the next day when I took my hair down,
my hair was poufy curls like a poodle! My roommate Gabrielle helped me fix it
after about 5 minutes of laughing her head off. We left from Waverly Station in
Edinburgh around 7:15 and pulled into King’s Cross Station in London around 1.
Then we took the tube to our stop at Russell Square on the Piccadilly Line. We
stayed at a hostel called “The Generator”. It was definitely an experience
staying in a hostel. It’s very similar to a hotel, except there are backpackers
from all over the world staying there. The walls are very thin so you can hear
pretty much everything people say in the hallways (even if you can’t understand
what language they’re speaking)!
After we arrived at the hostel, we put our stuff away and
Gina, Demi, Gabrielle and myself took the tube to the Borough Market. The
market was full of food for sale and everywhere we walked there were delicious
smells! There was such a variety of foods, I swear you could find anything that
your heart desired! We tried some hemp cheese…the vendor asked us if we would
be doing any driving before giving us our sample. The cheese was unusual and
the hemp seeds were really nasty. After the market, we found our way to Tower
Bridge, “the most famous bridge in the whole wide world” according to the shop
worker there. Tower Bridge is the most iconic bridge in London and everybody
mistakes it for London Bridge, which it is not. After walking across Tower
Bridge, we saw the Tower of London, the place that bunches of famous people,
such as Marie Antoinette, were put to death. I wish we could’ve gone inside to
tour the building but it was too expensive and didn’t fit into our itinerary.
From the Tower of London, we walked all the way back to our
hostel (which was a VERY long way away!) On the way back we saw London Bridge,
which is very nondescript or famous-looking at all. We saw Millennium Bridge,
the bridge that is featured in the Harry
Potter and the Order of the Phoenix movie. It was pretty neat to see. We
walked past St. Paul’s Cathedral, too and a bunch of other buildings which
weren’t as notable.
That night, almost our whole group participated in the New
Europe London Pub Crawl. It started at a bar called “The Verve”. We made our
way to other clubs called “Ruby Blues”, “Mia Bella”, and “Rumba”. We met a
bunch of people from all over the globe, some from Spain, some from Australia,
some from the UK, and some from the US. It was definitely worth the fee and the
money spent on drinks; it was a very fun experience.
The next day, Saturday, we found our way to Liverpool
Station and did our own self-guided bus tour through the city. We got off the
bus at Westminster Abbey and walked back up through Parliament Square to
Trafalgar Square. We saw Big Ben and Parliament, the London Eye, and lots of
monuments on our walk up the road. We stopped at a small touristy shop and
bought a few trinkets and then we found a small pub where we got lunch. At that
point, it was pouring outside, so we decided to take the tube back to our
hostel. Then we got ready for the play! We had to find our way to the Apollo
Victoria Theatre to see Wicked. It was my third time seeing the play but it was
just as good as the first two times. After the play we just headed back to the
hostel because we were warn out.
On Sunday, we went to the changing of the guards at
Buckingham Palace. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen so many people crowded at one
place before! Then we walked through Green Park to Trafalgar Square over to the
London Eye. The view from the Eye was absolutely amazing, the city sprawls for
miles! After our ride, we walked on the path right on the Thames River so we
went by Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre and we walked across the Millennium Bridge
over by St. Paul’s Cathedral again. Unfortunately, I had not been feeling well
all morning, so I tossed my cookies on the sidewalk by the bridge. Yep, I left
my mark on London! But at least I felt a bit better afterwards. After that, all
I wanted to do was to go back to the hostel so my group of friends dropped me
off there and went on their way while I slept.
The next morning, I woke up with quite an empty stomach and
no motivation to do anything since we were set to leave in the afternoon. So my
friend, Katlyn, and I sat in Russell Square Park for a while, went to the tube
station to ride over to King’s Cross, and we sat in a Starbucks nearby the
train station for a couple of hours. Then before our train was due to leave, we
found Platform 9 & ¾ because we absolutely HAD to take a photo there! I was
so glad once we got back to Edinburgh and rode the bus back into Dalkeith. It
really feels like home now!
We had a short week of classes since we got back on Monday
night, so that was quite alright with me! We had poetry workshops in both of my
writing classes so poems have been on my brain lately. On Friday, we had a trip
to Glasgow for our Scotland Globalization class. The city was a mix of old and
new architecture, which was different from our old Edinburgh landscape. We got
to tour Celtic Football Club & that was really cool. We also went to the
transportation museum and the Kelvington Arts Museum and had free time to shop.
I bought a Celtics jersey and a really cute dress for clubbing (only 7 pounds
because it had a slight rip in it—it was a quick fix!) We didn’t do much
yesterday besides hanging around the house, but last night we went on the New
Europe Edinburgh Pub Crawl and it was a good time. They brought us to 6
different venues—The Bank Bar, Belushi’s, Whistle Binkies, The Globe,
Frankenstein’s, and Dropkick Murphy’s. We’re hoping to find other crawls in the
area, but we’d be willing to go on this one again. Today has been a lazy day; I
was supposed to go to the Scotland vs. France rugby game but I woke up feeling
sick. Instead I did laundry and watched movies all afternoon.
There’s nothing exciting planned for this weekend, so we’ll
see what we end up doing!
I will upload a post of only pictures because they are not ready to be uploaded yet! Cheers!
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