scotland.

We left for Scotland early Wednesday morning. After the 5 hour train ride, we dropped off our stuff at the hostel and walked up to the Edinburgh castle. The castle was fun to see and the view was beautiful! Scotland has become one of my favorite places that we have been while being here. I loved how fun the city was and how green everything was! After the castle we headed back to the hostel and checked into our rooms. This was my first experience staying at a hostel. It was actually a lot nicer than I thought it was going to be. There were 6 of us in a room, and although Kinsey's bed had weird hairs in it, and mine had holes all in the mattress cover and a cigarette burn (they handed us our sheets and we had to make our own beds) we felt pretty safe and it was in a great location! We were right on "royal mile" street (the street leading straight from the castle.. That goes for a mile- full of little pubs and souvenir shops) so we shopped for a bit and then got dinner at Mitre- a yummy pub. After dinner, we got shortbread and headed back to play cards & chat at the hostel. Scotland is known for their yummy shortbread- and we all went a little crazy haha.

[view from the castle]

[just copying how everyone was taking pictures around us]

[ash, kins, me & paige on royal mile street]

Thursday morning we ate breakfast and then attempted to hike up "arthur's seat" it was really muddy, but the views were great. We also saw the Holyrood Palace, which is the official residence of the monarch in Scotland; did some more shopping, and then went to the elephant house cafe. It was so cute & had yummy food. This is the cafe where J.K. Rowling (who is from Scotland) sat down for lunch and started writing Harry Potter. It was really fun to see where it started! Later that night, some of us went to see the play, "Annie." it wasnt the best thing we've been to, but fun to say we saw it in Scotland!

[Holyrood Palace]

[me sitting in the seat where J.K. Rowling sat when she wrote HP]

[the harry potter decorated toilet in the bathroom]

Friday morning we checked out of our hostel and took a bus to Sterling. On our way to sterling, we stopped off in New Lanark. This is an old town with a cotton mill. We got a tour and saw how they used to make the cotton. They even had a baby roller coaster/ride haha that just took you through the history.. And it was pretty boring considering it was going 2 miles per hour. After seeing everything, we walked along the Clyde River that runs by the town.. And we walked up to where the waterfall is. It was really pretty & made me miss all the pine trees from back home! After New Lanark, we drove the rest of the way to Sterling. We were all kind of nervous for the hostel this night, since our professors had told us it was going to be like "camping out" haha.. When we got there, we were relieved that although it wasn't as nice as our last one, it wasn't camping haha. We headed up to the Sterling castle, which had beautiful views.. But wasn't as cool as I thought it would be! After the castle, we were all cold & hungry, so we walked down to the center of town and found dinner at "frankie & benny's" don't worry, the name scared us too haha.. But when we walked in, it smelled like America. Haha basically tgi Fridays or something. It was actually really good! Since we were feeling really american, we decided to hit up a movie after dinner. We went and saw Gnomeo & Juliet. It just came out to Theaters here, and we all loved it haha. Maybe it wouldn't be as funny for people who have been able to watch tv for the past 7 weeks??

[mine and kinsey's luggage for the weekend. so heavy & everyone was joking that we had children in there]

[sterling castle]

[view from the sterling castle]

[me & ash on our "hike"]

Saturday we woke up, ate breakfast, and headed to the William Wallace monument. (William Wallace is the guy Mel Gibson played in brave heart if any of you guys have seen that) We hiked up the hill to the Monument, and then the 246 stairs to the top, and we once again.. Saw a pretty view of Scotland! After we rode the bus back to Edinburgh so that we could catch our train back to London (of course our train got delayed for an extra hour. typical!)

Overall, it was a fun weekend-- and I hope that I can go back to Scotland again in my lifetime!