Remembering the Good Days...

Hey all. I know I said I wouldn't post here again, but I have to tell you how much I miss Edinburgh. I'm glad I could share my adventures with you, but reading through my previous posts makes me very sad to have left such an amazing and truly magical city. I hope you fell in love with it through my words as I did with all of my senses. This whole experience was so wonderful and I can't wait to continue to share that experience with my friends and family.
Do you have questions for me? I'd be happy to answer them. Post them in the comments box. Perhaps you want to know what food I miss most? What activity? What people? Anything!

The End

If you know my schedule, you’ll know that I am home by now. Yep. Home, safe and sound in my own house and my own bed. It’s nice, I have to say. More space to move around, healthier food… Let’s face it; I was living the college student diet which is “whatever’s convenient, easy, and fast.” But I’m home now. It was an adventure just getting home too. Want to know? Of course you do. Otherwise you wouldn’t be reading. So, if you don’t care, stop reading. That’s right. Stop. OK. The rest of you, continue to live my story through the following words.

As many of you know, if you read back a few blogs, I messed up my sleep schedule, so leaving for Edinburgh Airport at 7:15am was really like leaving for the airport after a really long day. Originally, my plane was supposed to leave at 9:25am and get in around noon local time in Newark. From there, I was supposed to catch a 2:30pm flight to Kansas City and land at 4:37pm. But… best laid plans… and all that jazz.

The first flight was delayed and ended up taking off at 10:35ish. Well, of course that damn volcano made it so that we had to fly up and around it, adding on more time. I slept a little, but I was too worried about making my connection to really relax. Those of you who know me… well, you know stress and worry keep me awake. But normally, being that tired, I should have been able to sleep. Apparently not.

So we land in Newark just before 2. No big deal, right? 30 minutes to get my bags, go through customs, re-check my bags, and get to a whole other terminal. Fat chance. Getting the bags alone took more than 30 minutes. Well, my original flight was delayed by nearly 30 minutes. Great, right? Wrong. When I went to re-check my bags, the lady told me I would have to get on another, later flight. Eff. I still had 15 minutes. I had every confidence that I could make it to the terminal and through security in that time. She wouldn’t let me try. Eff again.

So I am now booked for a flight that is supposed to leave at 4:30pm but is already delayed to 5:44pm. I can deal with that. Puts in me back in Kansas City a little before 8. Late dinner. I can deal. I’m sitting by the gate and, as I’m writing the rough draft for this particular post, I see that the stupid plane is now delayed to 6:25. A whole 2 hours. So here I am… tired as all hell, going on very unhealthy food for the last 24 hours… oh and about 4 hours total of sleep for the last 34 hours. I know I get frustrated easily, but this just seemed ridiculous.

On the bright side, I was already in the US. I wouldn’t have to find a way back into my flat or anything back in Edinburgh and I knew I had a flight out no matter what. The question remained… “Would the flight get delayed again?” Did I mention that I did not have my cell phone? I left it at home and simply bought one in Edinburgh. Of course that cell phone did not work once I got back to the US, so I had to buy a phone card. Mom and Dad could not get a hold of me, so I had to keep lugging my backpack (which was heavy due to the lap top) over to the phone booth area. But I couldn’t see my gate or the screens at the gate from there, so I would have to come back to the gate to be sure of the departure time.

All in all, not one of my better days. Sad thing is that it was the end. Well, I have had no good experiences with Newark Airport. None. I hate the damn volcano in Iceland that has decided to really mess with my travel.

Oh, but let’s get back to the actual travel. Shall we? So 6:25 gets here and we haven’t boarded yet. Want to know what the announcement was? “There’s a problem with the plane. We’re currently fixing it and will update you in 30 minutes.” Well, by this time, the screen said we weren’t scheduled to depart until 8pm. Great. Wonderful.

Luckily, by 6:45, we’d boarded the plane and were about to pull away from the gate. It ended up that I landed in KC about 5 hours after I was originally supposed to. I was tired as hell, but I was home. Thank goodness!

For those of you wondering, my ingenious plan to stay up all night before leaving worked. No jet lag. I slept 10 hours when I got home, then 9 hours the next night. But I was rested when I woke up and I haven’t had any problems. So, I was not a happy camper during my travel time, but I was back on a decent sleep schedule as soon as I got back. WOO HOO!

That is all, readers. Thank you for your time and attention. I’ve been glad to share my adventures (fun, frustrating, and fantastic) with you, but my Scottish adventure is over. Ta!

Eyjafjallajökull

Eyjafjallajökull. It is the source of many problems, especially for study abroad students at this time. Eyjafjallajökull. Can you pronounce that? Didn't think so. Neither can I. Thus, I cannot formally curse the freaking volcano which is causing so much trouble and misery. I cannot shout to the sky "Curse you Eyjafjallajökull!" because I cannot actually say "Eyjafjallajökull".
How long has this been going on, now? A month? Yeah. I got back from Easter Break just in time to not get caught by the first disturbances. Dana and I flew in the night before it erupted. I was up at the castle last week, though and people were talking about how Edinburgh Airport was closed. CLOSED! Well, now... I've been checking. Apparently I'll be OK. They're putting extra fuel in the planes so they can go around all the ash and stuff, but this makes the flights longer.
Eyjafjallajökull. You are troublesome, Eyjafjallajökull. $20 to the first person who can pronounce that correctly. Well, this was just a rant for me. Not really informative. You can copy and paste the name of the volcano into Google or Wikipedia and get more info. Remember... Eyjafjallajökull. Bah!

Sleep? What is that? *twitch*

Not sure if it will say, but I'm writing this at nearly 4am local time. Why, you may ask? Well, it's a terrible logic. Basically, 4am here is 10pm back home. That's a reasonable time to go to bed, right? Too early for me, so I'm staying up a little later. I figure I'll just stay up all night before the flight home (sleeping in really late on Tuesday which is the day before) and then sleep on the plane. I function more (if not better) on 2-4 hours of sleep. Weird, I know.
Again, I know this is a terrible logic, but it might put me on a schedule faster. We'll see. Check for an update in a few days on the jet lag status. I have no faith in this plan, but I cannot change it now. Wish me luck. That is all, readers.

Final Adventures in the Land of the Scots

OK. Most of you know that I'm coming back to the States next week. I went on two more day trips this past week with a friend of mine and that's about all I'll be doing during my last few days.

The first trip was on Monday to Castle Campbell which is just outside a town called Dollar. Dollar is only about 30 minutes, by bus, from Stirling which we took a train to in about an hour. Not too much travel time there. It's a pretty cheap trip too. Once you get to Dollar, the way to the castle is pretty well marked so on we went! No one told us it would be a 30-minute hike up hill to get there, though. My legs were screaming at me when we reached the top. Then, of course, there was scaffolding covering an entire side of the castle, so that was very uncool.

Really, Castle Campbell is quite tiny. It's mostly just a shell of what it used to be and quite unimpressive if you've seen other castles such as Dunnottar and the like. If you get to Scotland and you want to go to Castle Campbell, make it your first castle. Trust me. The hike up and back was gorgeous though. Everything was so GREEN! I can't say I've ever seen anywhere so green before. There was a little creek running along the entire trail and every once in a while there would be a waterfall. The water was so clear. Everywhere you looked, the view was breathtaking.

As I said, the castle itself was unimpressive, but the views from the top of it and from the hillside above were amazing. It was a beautiful day for a walk, too. Sunny, but not too hot. If I had been going on a nature walk/hike, my day would easily have been fulfilled. Not much else to talk about there.

Tuesday, Dana and I had booked a bus tour to Rosslyn Chapel and part of Hadrian's Wall. We booked through "Heart of Scotland Tours" and ended up with a medium-size bus. That does not mean it was small, though. It was still quite large and there were only 9 people in our group including Dana and I! We had a great tour guide. His name was Davey. Very entertaining, though he did tend to ramble sometimes.

Our first stop, once we got out of rush hour in Edinburgh, was Rosslyn Chapel. Unfortunately, there was scaffolding all over the roof and inside the ceiling here too, but it's for preservation purposes. The chapel is over 600 years old and after 1592, it wasn't used for 270 years. The St. Clairs who had built it refused to use it as a Protestant church and wished it to remain Catholic so they closed the doors, boarded up the windows and took out many of the relics and the altars. Before it was restored, Oliver Cromwell stabled his horses there while attacking the nearby Rosslyn Castle. I don't know the exact date of this. However, one thing which baffles many people is that Cromwell did not order the church to be destroyed. He had attacked many castles before and left them as piles of rubble, but for some reason he kept this one standing.

In 1862, Queen Victoria told the Earl that she wanted it to be used again so a restoration of the chapel was begun. However, it was not enough to save the chapel. Even through the 1950's, if you have entered, the walls would have been green and black with mold. Know why? It's the sandstone. Sandstone is a very porous stone. It absorbed the water throughout the centuries and during the first restoration, a sort of cement wash was painted onto the walls. This did more damage than good, though. It trapped the moisture and did not allow the sandstone to dry out. So now the cement wash is gone and 14 years ago, a £13 million project was begun to dry it out, save the carvings and ultimately save the entire chapel. You see, the Earl was told that if he did not do something soon, the chapel would not be standing for much longer. Now, they are almost finished. The walls are gray-tinted thanks to that cement wash, but they are drying out. The first order of business when the restoration began was to put an enormous metal canopy over the top so as to keep the chapel from rain and snow. This has allowed it to slowly dry out. The canopy is supposed to come down in June of this year.

They have been restoring every inch of the chapel. If you've heard of the famous "Prentice Pillar", you may have also heard the rumor that the Holy Grail is actually hidden inside it. In recent years a man came in with an axe intent on finding the grail inside the pillar. He was restrained, but to be sure, x-rays were done of all the pillars. They are simply stone. As I said, every inch of the chapel has been restored, including the floor. When doing a scan of the ground below the tiles, they found vaults beneath the floor, some even as deep as the chapel is high. Men, women and children of the St. Clair family have been buried there since the chapel was first built. There is an entrance in the floor of the chapel to the vaults, but it was known to be sealed as early as 1750. For 250 years at least, no one has been down there. Many people speculate about what is also hidden down there besides the bodies of past St. Clairs. Some say Templar Treasure, the Holy Grail, the Ark of the Covenant (Indiana Jones has been looking in the wrong place). No one is allowed to investigate though. The current Earl wishes his ancestors to remain undisturbed. So we'll just have to keep speculating until someone does get access.

Well, on to Hadrian's Wall! Have you seen Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves? With Kevin Costner? There's a scene in the beginning where Robin Hood is attacked by knights and it was filmed at a place along Hadrian's Wall called Sycamore Gap. It's literally just a dip in the land at the center of which grows a Sycamore tree. Very steep walk. Very... steep. We had to park quite a ways off and then walk down a hill, back up, then down slightly and back up, then down two more steep hills and up to get to Sycamore Gap... If you'll remember, I had a bit of a hike to and from Castle Campbell the day before. I was still in pain. I'm proud that I made it, honestly. It was worth it, though. Very beautiful walk, beautiful views and such a feeling of being in history.

For those of you who don't know, Hadrian's Wall was built by the Roman emperor Hadrian's legions at the original border between Roman-occupied Britain and the part of Britain occupied by the Picts and the Celts and other tribes. It was never meant to withstand a siege, but rather to control the flow of people. After all, it would have been easy just to sail around it. You can look up more history, but that's the gist.

On the way back to Edinburgh, we stopped in Melrose and saw the Abbey there. Beautiful ruins. We got there just before 5 and the last admittance is at 5. We were sort of out of luck with the rest of the town too when it came to getting a coffee or souvenirs or anything. Every place closed at 5.

I had a final the next morning. That's not relevant to this blog, though. Just setting up a time line. I finished the exam, turned in my last paper and headed for the Royal Mile. Dana and I ate at the Elephant Café. It's where JK Rowling first began writing Harry Potter. Some of you may realize that I ate there at the beginning of my time here, but Dana hadn't gotten to yet. And I like it. It's a cute little place.

After lunch, I was finally off to see Edinburgh Castle in all its splendor. It was a sort of dreary day, but it was warm and not too windy. I couldn't believe how beautiful the views from the castle walls were. For those who do not know, Edinburgh Castle is built on an old volcanic plug. The formation it makes with the Royal Mile is called a crag and tail formation. When the glaciers cut their way through, the volcanic rock was too hard for them to grind down so they parted around it. On all three sides, the softer rock was ground away, but the last side created the tail part of the formation. Stirling Castle was built the same way. This is a great defense as well.

Not all of the castle is open to the public, of course and I saw as much as I could, but it did not take me as long as I expected. I think quite a bit more was roped off then than normally is off limits. Not sure why, but it definitely looked like many of the areas that I was unable to get to were usually open to visitors. Oh well. I still enjoyed myself a lot up there. Beautiful views, rich history... can't really ask for much more.

I finished up my souvenir shopping after that and headed back to my flat. As of now I have only 5 and a half days left in Edinburgh. It's been my favorite place out of everywhere I've visited. I love this city. It's not too big, but you still have that feel of being in a major city. It's the second largest in Scotland. I love that I can walk 5 minutes or less in any direction and find so many different things. I'm maybe 10 minutes from the Royal Mile and/or Princes Street so shopping is easy. The transportation is wonderful. I really have loved my time here and I'm sad to leave, but I'll be glad to be home and see my friends and family... not to mention eat the foods I've missed like Chipotle... and those tacos in Fayetteville. Well, I believe that is all for now. I'll post maybe once more, but otherwise this blog has reached its end. Thank you for reading!

Kilts checked to date... 123

That was the Longest 12 Days of My Life! (Easter Break Part 3)

I promise this is the last Easter Break post.

The next morning was our last in Rome. We packed up our things, took them to the train station for storage, and headed out for the Pantheon. One tip about storing luggage at Statzione Termini in Rome: you are not supposed to have a bag over 20 kg. I don’t think they really enforce that, but do all you can to keep it under. The Pantheon is actually a quick stop. It’s beautiful and ancient, but there is not that much to do except walk around the inside and the crumbling outside. There’s a fountain in the piazza with an obelisk shooting up from the center, but the only other thing to do in the piazza is eat or shop. We ate. I believe we ate a place with the name M. Agrippa in it, but there may be multiple ones like that since those words (the name) are on the front of the Pantheon. Very good pizza there, though.

On the way back, we stopped for some gelato, but that was it. We headed for the station and got on a train to Venice, which leaves every hour. The train is about 4-5 hours in length, so make sure you leave time for that, whether you’re doing a day trip or just traveling around Italy. I did not want to get into Venice at night since I did not know the city so we left at 1:45 and got in at about 5:30.

Luckily the tourist information desk was still open or else we might not have done so well in Venice our first night. Tip number 1: buy a map!!! It will come in handy and the money (they're cheap) was well worth it. By train, you come into Venice via Venezia St. Lucia. It's at the western part of the island which is cut somewhat in half (more of an 's' shape than an outright cut) by the Grand Canal. From the train station, we took a water bus, or vaporetto, to a pier very close to our hotel. We stayed in Hotel Alla Salute which is almost to the eastern tip of the southern half of Venice. Once Dana and I had checked in and dragged our stuff to the room, we quickly headed out in search of food.

Instead of heading into the heart of Venice, though, we headed for the southern most part of our side of the island. We saw the lovely sunset, although clouds were coming in, and we ate along the water. By the way, in terms of flooding and smells, we went at the perfect time. The only places you could actually smell the not-so-nice-smelling water was right at the edge of the walls. Sometimes you actually had to be sitting there. Also, Venice floods in the fall. We were there in the spring. Perfect. And the first thing to flood is Piazza San Marco, Venice's lowest point. Anyway, we got gelato after dinner and continued to walk down the side of the canal between the main island and Giudecca which lies across an even larger canal than the Grand Canal. Giudecca is still part of Venice, though, technically. We did turn eventually, to lead more toward the heart of the city, but we sort of weren't sure where to go from there and didn't want to backtrack. So we kept going and going and going. This is where a map comes in handy. Luckily, I was able to get us out and back to the gelato place. Once we found it, we knew where we were. However, it had started to rain lightly at this point so we headed back as quickly as possible.

The next morning, we went to Piazza San Marco. The basilica in the piazza is gorgeous. It literally just springs up almost out of nowhere. It doesn't seem to fit with the architecture of the other buildings, but it's phenomenal all the same. Next door is the Doge's Palace. The Doge was a political title and he held the same sort of powers as a president, but the Council began to diminish these powers and eventually the position was done away with. It's kind of expensive to get in, but I liked it a lot. I had just read a book called The Book of Unholy Mischief which is set in Venice. The main character is an orphan who begins to work for the head chef in the Doge's Palace so it was neat to see the places described like Piazza San Marco and the Rialto.

Speaking of the Rialto, as Dana and I headed that way to find lunch, we decided to stop by a gondolier who seemed to be taking a break on a bridge (one of many in Venice) and asked what the price would be. Average is about €80 for 40 minutes. That was for two people. We said we were just curious and were going to eat lunch. As we began to walk away, the gondolier must have thought we were trying to make him go lower in price and lower he went. We got to take the same amount of time in the gondola for only €60 total. That meant only €30 per person. We liked that. And it was neat. He gave us some interesting facts as we passed buildings:

Did you know that the Rialto bridge is the oldest on the Grand Canal dating back to 1588? Yep. Cool, huh?

Anyway, there was more but that's all I can think of at the moment. The rest of the day seemed to pass uneventfully. We ate lunch, did a little souvenir shopping, the usual. That night, we ate in a little piazza that we had stumbled across on the first night and we came back to get gelato.

The next morning, we checked out of the hotel, hopped on the vaporetto once more, and took the train to Pisa, having to first switch trains in Florence. Once in Pisa, we stored our luggage and headed back toward the tower. This time, however, we did not do quite so much picture-taking. Dana and I got some gelato (which seems to be the theme throughout this break, doesn't it?) and sat in the fading evening light while watching the other tourists take the stereotypical pictures of trying to either push the tower over or back up. We did take a couple more pictures, but that was all. There were a ton of souvenir stalls along the street by the tower and it's accompanying duomo. We had to get a few things, of course. They have shot glasses that are actually leaning over. Do you realize how difficult it would be to pour anything into one of those when you're drunk? Yikes! Of course, I bought one.

That night (late) we flew back into Pisa via Ryan Air. I have nothing good to say about Ryan Air except that it is cheap. I have been treated like an idiot by their agents at the ticket counter and they are terrible about ever starting anything on time, although they pride themselves at landing on time. Still, I do not recommend them.

One more night and day in London was all we had left of that trip. A tip when re-entering the UK? Make sure you have the correct documentation with the correct dates. If you're studying from January 2010 to May 2010 and do not have a student visa, make sure that whatever papers you have with you (and you had better have some) have the correct dates. If it says Jan. 2010 to Jan 2011, you must have a visa or they cannot let you back in! If you have to, call and ask, but please make sure you have what you need. My letter of acceptance got me through, but a friend of mine only had a paper from the school saying where she was living and what she was studying. The problem was that it said she was studying in the UK for a year. Whoever had issued the paper did not bother to check the date.

Anyway, Dana and I got to the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square and made over to Buckingham Palace. We caught a glimpse of Hyde Park and saw Harrod's quickly before heading to the airport. If you're doing like we did and wish to store luggage at a train station, beware that St. Pancras International charges £8 per bag for the first 24 hours (or part thereof). Just sayin'.

May I also add that I am so glad to be back? I mean, I had a great time and the weather was beautiful and I really enjoyed the sun even with the burn I got, but I'm so tired. This vacation was exhausting! I knew I had to blog before I forgot anything, but I can't wait to go to bed. I hope I gave as detailed an account as you hoped for. For 12 days worth, I think I did all right. And now you know what I've been up to for the last 2 weeks or so. Thanks for reading! There should be more to come, but for now... Ciao!

Kilts checked to date... 118