Exploring the Land of Scots

Sorry for the terribly uncreative title of this post... I meant to write this three hours ago, but then I got distracted with laundry and dinner and packing and such. Then I looked at the clock, realized it was 8:30, and decided to update y'all about my first part of spring break!!

For those of you who didn't know, my dad, brother, and Jackie came to visit me this week! They got here last Friday and left this morning. We decided to explore Scotland since I hadn't really done that a lot and Scotland is awesome. There's definitely a lot to see, and it's full of history and everything!

We started the trip on Saturday in Glasgow, obviously. And, as usual, I took them to the exciting main building of the University. We took a lot of pictures of Hogwarts and practiced our ET heads. (To those wondering, the ET head is apparently the latest trend in photos, and basically all you do is stick your forehead out towards the camera to minimize the neck/chin fat. It looks good in pictures but SO AWKWARD when you're just sitting there like ET. Obviously, my family loved it). This provided a lot of laughs, and it was also amusing when my dad managed to walk backwards into a giant pole and also trip going up the steps as he was trying to take this picture of me and Brendan. 

After stopping at the University, we wandered down to the Kelvingrove Art Gallery! I had heard many good things about Kelvingrove but I hadn't actually been there ever, so it was fun to walk around. We saw lots of cool things and learned that it takes three of us to reach the weight of a baby elephant. Kelvingrove Art Gallery is basically like any other museum, so I won't bore you and tell you that we saw stuffed animals, old Scottish house layouts, and famous paintings. If you want to look at the pictures, you can look here.

We stopped for some ice cream, took more pictures, and then continued on to Edinburgh! More exciting things happened in Edinburgh, for example, we actually went into the Edinburgh Castle!! I'd been up to the top before (so many stairs.) but I've never actually been inside, so this was really awesome. Unfortunately, it was reeeally foggy that day, and you literally could not see anything. At all. I'm sure the views from the castle were great, but all I saw was a bunch of grey stuff. Being inside the castle was pretty neat, they had a lot of artifacts and such from a really long time ago! Most of the rooms were empty (why fill it with fake furniture?) but it was still awesome just to be in a castle. I was very excited at the prospect and decided that I am going to build my own castle one day. Most likely in good ol' Orange, California. 

After the castle we stopped for some dinner, and then headed off to wander through Mary King's Close. Mary King's Close is the only still well-preserved close in Scotland. Long story short, most of the people lived in close's down High St way back in the day. (A close is just like an alley, basically). These closes went up to 11 stories high, and a zillion people lived in one room if they were really poor (talk about overcrowding!). Then one day, the Scottish Government decided they wanted to build the new City Chambers on top of three closes, one of them being Mary King's Close. The other two close's collapsed but Mary King's didn't, and now people go down there for tours to see how people lived. It was actually quite terrifying. It was very small and dark and cave-like, and I don't particularly like caves at all, but it was cool to be down there and see how people used to live. It's really strange being in a place with so much history! Sometimes I can't even imagine having to live how other people used to live. It's weird.

Palace of Holyrood House!

We then took around half an hour to find our way to our hotel that was 1.6 miles away, and that ended Saturday! Saturday was probably our fullest day. We woke up Sunday morning and headed off to the Palace of Holyrood House, and yes, we actually went inside this one too! This was definitely one of my favorite parts of the trip. It was absolutely incredible to be in the place where royalty still lives (at least, for ten days in June). For most of it, we were the only people there, so that was really exciting too. We weren't allowed to take pictures in the Palace, and because we were the only people for the guards to watch, I didn't want to risk it. But it was actually incredible walking through the Palace and I definitely want to be a princess. PLF.

After the Palace, we headed off to Rosslyn Chapel (Da Vinci Code, anyone?)! I don't have much to say about Rosslyn Chapel because I missed the first half of the guided talk and mainly Brendan and I just walked around the outside and threw rocks. I was also really hungry (this was a 2-meal a day trip, no lunch involved) and tired. It was really gorgeous, though. And the views from the outside were amazing! There was also this little cat that followed us around. It was adorable.

Then we headed off to Stirling! Stirling was cool. The castle, like many others, was on top of this giant hill, so obviously the views were stunning. I don't think I'll ever get used to seeing an entire city from one point. My old house is located on the highest point in Arlington Heights, soooo those of you who live in suburbia should understand what I mean when I say you don't get a whole lot of great views in Chicagoland. But that's alright, because it just makes it that much more special when you get to travel to a place with amazing views, like Stirling Castle!!

Stirling Castle was cool. It was at this moment that I realized that once you've seen one castle, you've pretty much seen them all. They are all large and with empty rooms. They all are on big hills. They all have gardens, a Great Hall, King and Queen Bedchambers, and dungeons. I was not too impressed with Stirling Castle. It was just re-done in 2010 so everything seemed kind of fake to me. But hey, it's a castle, and you definitely don't see those in Arlington Heights.

the view from Stirling Castle

Monday was also a pretty full day. We stayed the night in Ballater, which is a lot like Keystone, South Dakota except smaller. Their shops were called "The Butcher" and "The Chemist" and "The Baker" which reminded me a lot of The Hunger Games and District 12. And then I just pretended to be Katniss a lot. I bought a cookie from The Baker and then we went on our way to Inverness! Inverness is situated right on the River Ness which leads to Loch Ness which is the home of Nessie!! I think the thing I was most excited for on this whole trip (aside from seeing my family) was going monster hunting! I absolutely would not go on a Loch cruise, though. What if Nessie came and ate the boat! Instead, we walked through one of the many Nessie museums and then I stared out the window as we drove around the Loch. Unfortunately, no real Nessie sightings for me. :( Later on we explored Inverness, which is actually a really cute town and literally on the River Ness, so that was exciting. It was also warm enough for us to walk around without jackets! That never happens!!

The next day, we decided to go to Urquhart Castle on Loch Ness. It was mostly ruins, which was very cool and not like the other castles we had been to. Instead of being empty rooms, or rooms with the walls fake-painted and what not, it was actually just the ruins of Urquhart Castle. There were signs in each "room" with what used to be there, and pictures of what it probably looked like. It was actually really cool and very informative. Of course, Urquhart Castle happens to be located on the deepest part of the Loch, which happens to be where Nessie is most likely to be found, so I spent some more time Nessie-hunting as we wandered through the ruins. Still no sightings, but that's alright. The loch was beautiful just to look at! Since it was early, there weren't very many boats out either. It was very quiet and calming just to stand on the top of the castle and search for giant sea dinosaurs.

After Urquhart, we left Inverness and headed up towards Isle of Skye!! Isle of Skye was absolutely beautiful, and a very scenic drive. I literally felt like we were driving through a fairytale. There were flowers and bushes and waterfalls and it was so magical! Once we got to our hotel, we tried to check in but it wasn't time yet. So we got some lunch (the only lunch we had all trip), checked in, and then went on a two hour scenic drive that has a name that I can't remember. It was around the peninsula. And it was gorgeous. I also listened to The Hunger Games soundtrack (songs from District 12 and beyond!) on the drive and it was actually perfect. The folk-y music and the Highlands/Isles just fit so nicely together! The odds were definitely in my favor in terms of music selection.

Portree, Isle of Skye

Finding dinner turned out to be a bit of a challenge. By the time we got back, it was almost 7:30, and most restaurants closed at 8. We ended up finding the one place open for dinner, a pizzeria. Unfortunately, they had just run out of cheese, so no pizza for us. The waitress was very, very kind and called up the one other place in town that served pizza (and happened to still be open) and had them save a table for us. We walked up the rather large hill (after passing signs that advertised this place as having a bouncy castle as one of it's main features) and eventually found the restaurant. We made sure they still had cheese and were going to serve us pizza before sitting down. They did. We had pizza, trekked back to our hotel, and then went to sleep!

We spent most of Wednesday driving back to Glasgow, stopping every so often to take pictures (and go to the bathroom). It was really a scenic drive. We stopped at Eilean Donan castle, although we didn't go inside this one. We also drove through Fort William and Loch Lomond, both of which are beautiful places, along with most of Scotland. We ate dinner at place along Byers Road, watched an hour of Keeping up with the Kardashians, some magic shows, and then went to bed! They dropped me off this morning, and are now headed back to Chicago. I came home to a rather pleasant surprise - a package from Phi Sig!! It included a card, some food, a notepad, and a DVD of retreat :) It definitely made my day! I miss you all so much!! I'm leaving for Barcelona tomorrow morning, and then I'll be back for a few hours before leaving for Rome and my Mediterranean cruise!! Thanks for reading this, I know it was really long but y'all should be used to that by now :)

Love you!
Mel