On the Search for Nessie

March 9, 2010 10:22 a.m.
Another successful weekend trip! Thursday morning Kristen O'Connor and I met up with Kristen Granzow at the airport in Dublin to catch our early flight to Glasgow, Scotland. We were worried about Kristen G. because she recently got diagnosed with vertigo, she is ok now but flying with that much dizzyness is not a good idea! She was given motion sickness pills though so all was well. We arrived in Glasgow and immediately sought out to buy a metro ticket to get to the Kelvingrove Museum. It is the 2nd most visited museum in the UK, and it's free so that is an amazing plus! The walk from the metro station was beautiful. It was a huge, but pretty and clean city with a university, and parks with little cafes scattered around. Museums and churches were huge stone buildings. I was struck again by the massiveness of churches and museums in Europe! Upon arrival at the Kelvingrove we walked into a beautiful room that up above housed a HUGE beautiful organ. With a sign that said free concert at 1:30. Kristen G. was quite excited to say the least! We walked around a little bit, then saw a sign for free tours. We met up with a group of 6-7 older ladies that reminded me of the Red Hatters in Monroe. I hope I am like that someday when I am older, traveling around with my friends, making snide, clever comments to the tour guide. They were hysterical but so intelligent. They knew a lot about each painting and each piece our tour guide described. They were all very interested in why we were in Glasgow and why we were studying in Ireland. They were very disappointed that we were just in Glasgow for a few hours because they listed off tons of places we should look into, they informed us that we HAD to come back. When they discovered we were from Iowa, they all looked at each other and chuckled, "Ah, the farmers!" They were quite excited about that. One woman informed me that the Scottish know so much about the U.S. but we know nothing about them. Which I have discovered is true in so many cases with so many different countries, it's quite sad really.
The museum was wonderful, housing many paintings such as Salvador Dali's Christ of St. John of the Cross painting, a mummy exhibit which was fascinating (even had mummified head and hands which was really creepy), many Scottish paintings such as the Glasgow boys, and exhibits of all the fossils and things found in Scotland, the biggest turtle, elephant, to crocidiles and fossils of fish from millions of years ago. I wish I could have stayed longer. We listened to a little bit of the organ recital but by that time our backs were starting to kill us from carrying our bags around all day. And our stomaches wanted food, so we found a cafe and had some lunch. We then decided to just walk around in the park instead of going to another museum. We wandered the Kelvingrove park for awhile, playing on some toys, getting attacked by pigeons, and walked through the University area where they were holding their student elections. I guess it is quite the ordeal over there. There were signs EVERYWHERE to vote for people and people walking around in banana outfits, I'm still not quite sure why on that.
Afterwards, we got on a train and headed to Edinburgh where we were to meet up with Amanda Buckingham! When we got there, Amanda was no where to be seen. We were having slight freak outs because we had no idea where we were going and Edinburgh is a huge city. After a half hour of me trying to frantically dial her phone, she ran into the train station. The poor girl had gotten lost and couldn't find her way there so took a taxi. I feel so awful about it! But yay, manda and I were reunited! We took a taxi home, met her roomates, then crashed. The next morning we got up for a full day of sight seeing. We walked the Royal Mile which is the mile long stretch that has the Edinburgh castle on one end and the Palace on the other. They were both pretty neat, we just snapped some pictures. Walking into the city centre of Edinburgh though is fascinating because it is divided into two, the old city and the new city, and the new city is lower than the old city, it is on a hill and the new city goes downhill. Walking around Amanda pointed out her University in which the student center on it is where J.K. Rowling got her idea to model Hogwarts off of. We also saw the Elephant's House, the coffee house where J.K. Rowling wrote the first harry potter! It was SO cool! We went in later that day and had coffee just to say that we had! She also pointed out the Grayfriar's Lounge which is based off the legend of "Scotland's dog," supposibly there was a dog that went with his owner everywhere and waited for him and after his owner died he would just go to the grave everyday and everyday a different person would feed him and take care of him until he died too. So that was pretty neat!
After filling up on coffee and a snack to get energy, the girls and I headed up to climb Arthur's Seat, a dormant volcano. I guess it takes climbing up Arthur's Seat 60 times to make Everest, that is why I now have a lot more respect for mountain climbers. Halfway up the volcano was not that bad, we all just cruised up it and chatted. There is a road and sidewalk that lead halfway up. The rest of the way up there is no trail, it involves climbinb up a steep rocky slope to reach the top. While singing Miley Cyrus's The Climb, we all started up, losing our breath and stopping a few times, we finally reached it! What a sense of accomplishment, and the view was amazing! On one side was the mountains and the other was the ocean, with cute little houses dotting in between. We stayed up there awhile before attempting to head down. We decided to take a different path...bad idea! Going down involved us scotting on our butts and dangling off of rocks with one slip that would send us tosseling down the rocky slope, we were slightly terrified some of the time. We all put our purses around our necks and started the slow process down the volcano. By the time we reachted the bottom all of us were extremely dirty and tired, but felt accomplished! By this time it was sunset, so when we returned to Amanda's apartment, we collapsed in the kitchen while we talked to her roomate Kat. She was really nice. Amanda lives with all Scottish roomates, all in which were wonderful.
The next morning we got up at 5:15 so we could make some pancakes before being out the door to meet our tour that was going into the Scottish Highlands. We got there to be greeted by a minivan bus thing and our tourguide. We also had a lady from India, three french people, and two other american girls who were studying in Galway in Ireland. The tour was amazing! It started at 7:45 and we didn't return to Edinburgh until 6:30 that night. We went into the mountainous area of Scotland, while Bill, our tourguide explained the history of Scotland and Edinburgh, he pointed out spots where bloody battles had taken place and castles where Mary Queen of Scots was born and her son James. The mountains were breathtaking. My pictures do nothing to describe how I felt when I looked out onto the loch (water) and saw purple and blue mountains being reflected on it's black depths. It was amazing. We stopped in little villages here and there, such as St. Augustus, a town on the loch ness. We ate lunch there, the pb&j sandwiches we had packed, and went monster hunting. I didn't realize that the loch was 22 miles long and 180 some feet deep. It was interesting because I guess scientists had come there trying to prove that the monster did not exist, but they caught things on sonar that they can't explain...interesting. Nessie was first spotted by St. Columba and ever since then there have been hundreds of sightings. So who really knows?
When we returned to Edinburgh we went to try haggis, which is pretty much intestine stuffed with sausage. It was really really really good!! After eating that we went back to amanda's apartment to get ready because we were going to a club on edinburgh university campus called the Big Cheese. It's called that because it plays cheesy music such as the spice girls and backstreet boys, aqua, ext. But it was AWESOME!! It was so fun, and packed with college people. At 2:00 a.m. when we left we went to a kabob place and tried frlafel. I don't know how to spell it, but it was good as well!
The next morning we got up and went to church with Amanda. It was a Presbyterian church and everyone was so nice. The message was amazing as well. After the service we were introduced to friends of Amanda's and invited to the student lunch. We went and had some amazing food, then listened to a lesson presented by a young married couple from the states. They are over there because the guy is getting his masters in Scotland. They were so nice, and the lesson was great as well, I took lots of notes! After helping clean up, we headed out to do some shopping. That night then we just hung out, ate some popcorn, and went to sleep to be on the plane early the next morning. It was a great weekend!! Next weekend in Galway with the school, so that should be really fun. The next few weeks are going to be insane so I don't know the next time I will be able to write! I have a ton of homework, and right after Galway, Kelcie Freeman and Malorie Seaman will be here. And Tuesday Amanda and Kristen are coming up as well as Chelsea and Andrea from Poland. The last people will leave on Sunday, then Devin comes Monday, so this is going to be an intense but amazingly fun month!