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!

this story just keeps getting funnier & funnier.

40 hours in paris.

such little time.. but somehow we climbed hundreds of stairs, got mooned 6 times, walked, and walked, and walked some more, ate 3 crepes, attended a ysa fireside/activity, stayed at a sketchy hotel... then got as far away from the sketchy hotel as we could (and fast)..... and much, much more.

ps. this post is picture overload. beware.

it all started on friday morning (or maybe some of you consider waking up at 2:30 am still night time?) haha, we finished packing and were out the door. our group is split in half-- the girls who are time, and the girls who are late. i bet you guys can't guess what group i'm apart of, haha. by the time me, kinsey, and carly got downstairs to meet the group at 3:30, we found out that they had already left us and went to the bus station. after kinsey forgetting her coat, and running up our 4 flights of stairs to grab it, and us running down the street to catch the bus-- we were relieved and kinda mad that we had to wait for the bus to even come for 10 more minutes haha. needless to say, we got to the train station dark and early and everything worked out! we took the chunnel to paris and by 8:30 am (paris time) we were ready to go!

[me & elise on the chunnel]

we then walked to the louvre museum, saw the saint chapelle, climbed to the top of the notre dame, went to my families favorite crepe place, saw the eiffel tower, and ate too much bread and cheese. me and kins made the best decision of our lives-- and decided to share a backpack for the whole weekend. we loved being able to trade off the whole time haha we're dorks. dad- you'll be proud of me. while i was at the mall the day before we left, i bought a small lock that goes on the zipper of my backpack! so we were safe the entire trip! haha, kinsey made fun of me for buying it- but secretly she loved the lock the whole time.

[me & liz at the louvre]

[saint chapel]

[climbing to the top of the notre dame]

[at the top of the notre dame]

[view from the top]

[baby door leading to the bell tower]

[the center point of paris, all distances of paris are measured from this point]

[just best friends sharing backpacks]

[fam-- saw our old apartment, missed you guys!]

we had a great day- and by 7 pm we were all exhausted. one of carly's friend is on the byu study abroad in paris, and she invited the 9 of us to go to a "crepe party." we met up with them and went across town to get to their institute building. the girls were walking quite fast- and NONE of us could catch up to them. haha, we were literally running after them. by the time we got there, our feet were aching and our faces were bright red because it was so cold and windy. haha, me and kinsey about started crying when they handed us hymn books. (not to mention, in french) overall, it was a funny night, and although we were so so tired-- we have some pretty good & funny stories from the whole day/night.

just when you thought that our day couldn't get any better-- haha don't worry it does.

our group of 9 girls split in half-- one half planned to stay in a hotel (my group), and the other group planned to stay in a hostel. me, kins, ashley, paige, and elise headed to the hotel. we took the metro and got off at our planned stop. little did we know that once we got off the metro, we would walk around the scariest part of town for almost an hour, haha and the best part is that we asked at least 5 people for directions, and no one had heard of the hotel. red flag alert!!! we finally found the hotel, and walked in (there was no lock on the door, and the door was wide open). the place was so little, creepy, and smelt so gross. we checked in, and walked up the windy stairs to our room. by this point, we were already feeling scared haha. we walked into our room and after struggling to find the light switch, we saw our bedroom for the night. we all looked at each other and all knew what each other were thinking haha. grossest & creepiest place we've ever been. ashley immediately falls to the bed and starts sobbing. my first reaction was to tell her to get up because we have no idea where those comforters have been! (i hate those things!) we didn't have a good feeling about the hotel and after talking through the whole situation, we concluded that we were all too scared, emotional, and tired to make a good decision of whether to stay at that hotel for the night. kinsey said a quick prayer for us, and after trying to get it out through the tears hahaha, we waited to see if it was safe for us to stay there. we didn't get a good feeling, and once elise (the most responsible & least emotional of us all) told us that she did not think we should stay the night there... we all jumped to the opportunity and started calling our parents back in the states. luckily i have the funniest mom in the world, so instead of having a worried phone call with her- she simply asked where we were and looked up the ratings of the hotel. this is what we found out about our hotel. not only did they put up fake pictures of what the hotel looked like on their website, they have an overall rating of 0.1 stars. how is that even possible??? here's one of the comments someone left on trip advisor after staying at this hotel:

"A PLACE FROM HORROR MOVIE"

Hotel de Hollande

July 21, 2010

"I booked this hotel via internet. On their website it looks small but clean and bright. I was really scared when I saw IT myself! It is one dark stinky hole in the wall! Everything is old and dirty! Floors and stairs are falling appart. Rooms (including superriors) are little closets with shortest beds I ever seen and with old yellow wall papers, that come off the walls, and with cracked ceilings, and with black mold in the bathrooms! On top of that everything is so dusty!

We didn't stay there. After we saw THAT we ran away. We found another hotel near there and it was nice.

Don't let Hotel De Hollande spoil ur trip to most beautiful sity in the world!!!!"

(sorry for the bad spelling, i copied it straight from the website!)

here's what the hotel is supposed to look like:

yep, none of that is real. haha. they googled pictures of "nice hotels in paris" and copied it over to their website. i give them props for being able to figure that out!

this is what our hotel really did look like:

[ya that phone was just a decoration, didn't even work]

[claw marks]

[well i guess the blowdryer looked nice??]

[my personal favorite.. and although the bed looks big, don't let it deceive you-- it was smaller than 5 feet]

[ashley so mad in this one hahahaha]

when my mom read this to me, i couldn't stop laughing, and there was no need to describe anything else to her. haha a place from a horror movie is exactly what it was. with help from all of our parents, kinsey's dad booked us 2 rooms at the marriott. we left the hotel without even checking out, and took a 20 minute cab ride to the marriott. i have always loved marriott's, but now i have an even bigger love for them-- if that is even possible. once we checked into the hotel, we all were so relieved (by this point, we had almost been up for 24 hours). after 10 minutes of relaxing in our room, paige comes into our room and tells us that elise has lost her wallet and is freaking out. hahaha just what we needed, right? luckily we found it 5 minutes later, and she came into our room bawling. haha we had all had our breaking points throughout the night haha. after that, we all couldn't stop laughing about our crazy night and all the memories we had already made in paris. thank you john & julie grant for the best night sleep of our lives at the new hotel. we passed out!

[have you ever seen me so happy? thank you marriott]

[elise beaming after finding her wallet]

[clean & refreshed the next morning]

saturday morning, we ate breakfast and then met the rest of our group at the arc de triomphe. me, kins, and ash then went to lauduree's for macaroons. after we took a boat cruise on the seine river and then went to the eiffel tower again. we only had about an hour after that till we had to get back to the train station to catch our chunnel back to london- so of course we went to the yummy crepe place again and hit up some tourist shops.

[the princesses haha]

we made it back to london safely and although i love paris so much- it was so nice to come back "home" to london. this trip made me realize a few things:

1. how much i love london. london is so clean, their underground system is amazing compared to other cities (not confusing and doesn't smell like rotten eggs), people speak english, and we all feel very safe here.

2. how much we are all learning about each other. a) being friends- you already learn so much. b) living with each other and experiencing the ups (being excited to live in london) and the downs (occasionally feeling homesick). c) traveling to a foreign country together. but luckily for me, i love them all even more after this past weekend... hopefully they feel the same for me haha.

3. how much i appreciate my family. mom & dad... i will never complain about a trip we go on ever again. i never realized till now how much work it is to plan a trip and how stressful it can be. thanks for everything you do!!!!! i couldn't help but miss you guys on this trip. too many memories with you guys in paris! love you.

[october 2010]

one month mark.

this week has gone by fast and it is officially february!!!

monday we went to les miserables. i had seen it before when i was in new york, and sadly to say i had no idea what was going on the whole time. but this time, i actually got the story and i ended up liking it so much more! it was really fun!

on tuesday we had class, then went to kensington palace for high tea. they served us little sandwiches, a scone with jam & cream, little pastries, and of course herbal tea. it was so much fun and such a cool experience!

wednesday we went on a 9 mile hike through the countryside. we were walking up slippery hills and muddy grass fields. during the hike/walk, we saw 2 old castles. it was so beautiful, even though it was a cold & long day!

some of my friends and i are going to paris for the weekend! we catch the chunnel at 5:25 am... haha so we are leaving our house to take a bus at 3:30. we'll see if we get there. haha but i'm so excited! love and miss you all!