Today was a lot of fun, minus the terrible weather we had on our tour up to Loch Ness. The tour itself, was rather drawn out, with several stops along the way. While we were on the bus it was rainy, and it only stopped when we got off. And of course when we got off, it was very windy and cold. The first stop was at the small village of Callendar, where we visited a rest stop / tourist shop. The highlight of stop was the Highland cow named Hamish. We then proceeded for a short stop in Fort William for lunch, where I had fish and chips. Out next stop was at Urquhart Castle, on the banks of Loch Ness itself. We toured the castle for about a 1/2 hour before heading on ... read more

One down, one to go Europe » United Kingdom » Scotland » Edinburgh By bsmurf77 May 24th 2007 Brian Murphy Well, I've got the remaining Rome pictures now, and will have them uploaded soon. My first Scottish exam went rather well I think! Plus it helped that much of the test was a combination of questions from a previous exam plus some of the test prep questions, both of which the professor provided. Well, I nice weekend of rest and starting on papers begins. I'm going to try and hit the zoo and maybe a couple other places tomorrow, but it's all open. My Whale & Dolphin Biology ... read more

Most of the day has been spent studying for my Animal Behaviour final exam, which takes place on Thursday. Nothing much else going on here. The weather's taken a turn for the worse. While the temperature's been remaining pretty steady (around the low-mid 50's), the rain and wind have picked up a lot. After several weeks of relatively nice weather, the past week or so has been pretty nasty. Today has been pretty cloudy, but extremely windy; yesterday was pouring off and on throughout the day. This past thursday was my last day of shadowing at the vet. It was a lot of fun. Most of the clinic's renovation has been completed, and I got to see some work on a couple of exotics, a guinea pig & 2 rabbits. The only thing that was ... read more

It was another fun-filled day in Rome. I took the Metro and stopped at San Pietro in Vincoli (St. Peter in Chains), a very nice church/basilica. From there I walked a few blocks to tour the Colosseum. The entire place was crowded, and extremely massive, and I got in free. Apparently I lucked out on the time of the trip, as most places had their normal entry fees waved for the weekend. After finishing the Colosseum, I headed to the Foro Roman (the Roman Forum), the ruins of which are quite extensive. Of course, in the middle of the ruins my digital camera's 1GB memory card maxed out. So until my film gets developed, the remaining pictures from the trip won't be posted. Next to the ruins, were the remains of the Circus Maximus (where ... read more

Well, I arrived in Italy, finally!!! Getting to the Edinburgh Airport, and the flight from Edinburgh to Dublin, was quite easy and everything went fine. However, Dublin airport was a huge mess this time around. We were in a holding pattern for about 15 minutes outside of Dublin, and when we landed there were hardly any planes at the RyanAir terminals. Then, even after getting my luggage and going through customs, RyanAir still hadn't started ticket booth for the Rome flight, so I had to wait for 45 minutes. After getting my ticket, I went through the airport's very annoying security checkpoint. They had to run my backpack and camera twice because they thought they saw something resembling a can-opener or pocket knife. A) I'm not dumb enough to do that B) I didn't have ... read more