Blogs from Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scotland, United Kingdom, Europe

April 23, 2012 - Edinburgh, Scotland! Wow! What a fabulous day today has been. After a quick breakfast at Starbucks (literally next door to our hotel) we explored the shops of Royal Mile. Shops selling kilts, cashmere, tartans, scarves etc abound, and I guess the locals find it all a bit twee (like we do at home about those shops selling Australiana stuff) but we thought it was good fun and bought a few momentos to take home with us. We then made our way up to Edinburgh Castle – it is about 5 minutes walk up the hill from our hotel. Everywhere in Edinburgh seems like it's “up the hill” LOL Jokes aside, Edinburgh is a very hilly place … We joked that Edinburgh locals must have thighs that can crack walnuts – the exercise ... read more

Our last day in Scotland started with a well earned sleep in. Our tour was amazing but I was completely exhausted. Luckily I had managed to snag a room with Natasha, Erikka and Sid. So we all headed up to Edinbrugh castle to get piccy's while the sun shone and the sky was blue. We caught up with Max and Matthew here and headed off to the markets Erikka had heard of...which were AMAZING!!! I am a big foodie and there was so much to see, taste, smell and devour. Lots of yummy stalls lined up with so many varieties of food, cheese, chocolate, pasteries, soaps, meats, everything! I was in foodie heaven. I ended up eating an oink burger with haggis and two cinnamon fresh baked donuts, not to mention the other taste testers I ... read more

I arrived in Edinburgh after a stopover in Manchester where I got a thrill seeing snow on the mountain tops in the mountain tops in the distance. To my delight, on my tiny 40min trip to Edinburgh they gave us lovley hot tea and shortbread - how very English I felt! To leave the airport I took my enormous 20kg bag & attached my hand luggage backpack to it & held my camera bag, hand bag and neck cushion. Omg I am such an idiot for taking so much stuff. I took the sky bus into town and bumped my head trying to see out the window at all the beautiful buildings and gorgeous flowers that are out, as it's spring!! 10 degrees and under does not qualify for spring in my opinion, but the architecture ... read more

So here's how it's going to work. I'm back from my week in Scotland, having covered most of the staples of Scottish Culture (except tree-throwing), and the abridged version of my upcoming entries is: fantastic. I'm going to do one entry about each day, except for the last two days of my Highland Tour, which will be done together. I'll publish one entry every day (at least, that's my intention), so that I'll finish just before I leave for London/Stonehenge/Cork on Sunday of next week. Obviously more entries will be forthcoming about that trip. Have not yet decided if I'm going to take my computer to London/Ireland. Will keep you posted on that. Anyway, boring stuff aside: Every time I visit Edinburgh, I am surprised at the number of Americans I encounter. Just walkin... read more

Things I've learned since my arrival... American stereotypes (basically think we're all Texans) we're loud fat and lazy (we are the most obese nation but Scotland is only 2 spots behind us in international statistics) cowboys we all live on huge ranches with big red barns Stetson hats we all drive large, gas guzzling vehicles we assume we know everything about everything Scotland is crazy liberal, they make American democrats look like conservatives Traffic and driving pedestrians never have the right away (good thing to know if you want to survive) look right when crossing the road instead of left; I found this to be very hard at first but now I do it without thinking Flipping the bird Like Americans, British will occasionally let people know that they are "number one" whe... read more

For starters, I am going to apologize for the lack of pictures in this post. I was just too busy having a good time to remember a camera. Some details that I think are extremely funny but I left out unfortunately from last Thursday (February 9). My group, that I had went to Edinburgh with, took the night bus home after bar close. It was a double decker; so of course we all had to climb up the stairs and go to the upper level (I believe this need stems from the lack of luxury of public transportation in rural Wisconsin and Minnesota). Anyways, we met a couple of chaps upstairs who were definitely a little tipsy but seemed friendly and harmless enough. Erin and I had the pleasure of sitting right in front of them ... read more

On Thursday afternoon I finished my last two assignments, giving myself a three day weekend between the end of Semester 1 and the start of Semester 2. I figured, with all this free time suddenly on my hands, that I should go somewhere to celebrate. Then it occurred to me that Julia, who you may remember from this entry and this one , had a birthday on Friday. So I went to Scotland. The University of Edinburgh structures its academic calendar around the strange concept that the stretch of holiday time in December and January should actually go BETWEEN semesters, rather than WITHIN one. So her semester has already st... read more