Blog #4

12th Day in Scotland

     This blog post is a few days later than I had intended, but it's been a crazy week so far! Monday wasn't anything too special. Just normal classes and then a lot of procrastination on my part later that afternoon. However, Tuesday was jam packed with all sort of adventures! Tuesday was a field trip day, so we didn't have to have any class. Instead we went to Melrose Abbey. Melrose Abbey is a super cool place to visit. Essentially it is the old ruins of, what used to be, a giant church. Its in a great location, out closer to Stirling where there are lots of giant grassy hills and ravines on the way there. What's even better is that there is a staircase in one section of the abbey that takes you to a rooftop area from which you can see all of its surroundings. It was in a gorgeous location. 

     Later that day we went to Scott's View. Scott's View was a little viewing area from the top of the hills. There wasn't much to do there, but it was a great view of some of the more rural parts of Scotland, which we haven't really had a chance to visit at this point. After that I headed to Edinburgh Castle with some of my friends. It was cool to see, and something I would definitely suggest, but it gets a lot of hype for what turns out to be a lot of museum type exhibits. It was definitely a great way to keep busy seeing as you can spend from about 2-3 hours there looking at everything. Probably the coolest part about the castle was being able to seen the Scottish crown jewels. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take pictures, but it was definitely a 

must see tourist attraction. Overall the castle was really cool, but not as exciting as the outside makes it look. After we finished up at the castle we got some much deserved Japanese/Cantonese food. It wasn't anything crazy adventurous, but it was probably one of the best meals I've had since I got here. 

     Wednesday was similar to Wednesday, but instead of procrastinating I completed my first 2 page paper for Global Politics. The work I had to do for it was far more intensive than I had expected, but I was able to finish everything I needed to, and even get some of my laundry done. 

     Moving onto today, today was probably the best day so far this week. We had Global Politics in the morning, which was painful as per usual, but we got to go on a field trip for Scottish Literature afterwards. We went to The Writer's Museum and learned some more about three of the writer's we're learning about Robert Louis Stevenson, Robert Burns, and Walter Scott. We did a lot of standing and listening, which was rather tedious, but I thought that the information was really interesting and its definitely one of those experiences that you can't have anywhere else; seeing as two of the writers were born here in Edinburgh.

     After we left The Writer's Museum we went to the famous Gothic tower in the middle of the city to climb to the top. It was a long climb to the top, and the staircase was so small that we had to strap our backpacks onto our fronts so they wouldn't get stuck. We also could only go up a few at a time with people either going up, or going down, but not at the same time. Most of us felt a little claustrophobic, but we felt accomplished after reaching the top. Although it was a bit daunting at first, the Gothic tower ended up being a lot of fun.

     Once we climbed back down the tower our legs were all rather shaky, so we did what anyone would do to relax, we got ice cream. :) We got it at an ice cream stand just down the road from the tower. It was the first time I'd had Scottish ice cream, and it was great! Whats so cool about Scottish ice cream is that its basically the same as any other ice cream, but they stick what they call a flake into the top of the ice cream. A flake is pretty much just a piece of chocolate formed into the shape of a swirl. What was great about having ice cream was that we got to sit in grass in the center of the city and just enjoy Edinburgh. Especially after being cooped up inside the previous day due to our torturous two page paper, it was nice to actually be able to spend some time outside. 

     As soon as we finished our ice cream we went shopping at the mall. The mall here is amazing and they have great clothes. Although I didn't buy any clothes I ended up getting a blanket (or a rug as they like to call them here) for my mom as a gift. After that I was pretty much done for the day. Seeing as we have an early start tomorrow (8:15, so not down with that) I figured I would try and get some rest before a big day tomorrow. 

That's it for now! Hopefully I can get in at least one more post until the week is out. 

Until next time!

-Bryn