"Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold, and many goodly states and kingdoms seen"

My dear readers,

I apologize for the tardiness of this post.  Life here in London has been extremely busy and we are approaching the deadline - two weeks from tomorrow I'll be hopping on a plane back home to the United States!!! I don't know where the time has gone.  I am both extremely excited to be home as well as sad to be leaving London, England, Europe, and this incredible experience and all the wonderful people I've met.  I've been up to a lot these last 3 weeks that I need to update you on first though before I get too sentimental and caught up with leaving.

After Scotland, I decided to stay in the London area for the most part and had an absolutely amazing time.  Tuesday I went to see The Noisettes in concert, who were out of this world.  Talk about a performance! Their opener was Marques Toliver, who is my new obsession.  Check him out! That weekend Emma and Hannah came down from Reading to visit and we went to see Les Miserables at the Queen's Theatre.  It was Emma and Hannah's first time seeing this musical, my second, and it was incredible and I cried, as expected.  Les Mis is my favorite show of all time so I was so happy I got to see it in London, as I grew up listening to the Original London Cast Recording.  If any of you don't know any Les Mis, this will change your life.

After Les Mis we ran back across to the east side of town to go see the midnight premiere of Breaking Dawn Part II, the final installment of the Twilight Saga.  Go ahead, judge all you want.  It was great, and I am not ashamed.  We were one of maybe 30 people there - by far the least crowded Twilight midnight show I've been to - so strange!! I guess the Brits aren't as big fans?

The next day Hannah and I went to Camden and walked around the Locks and market.  Camden is a really neat area of London - very post-industrial and funky.  We then went to Hampstead in search of John Keats House.  Hampstead proved to be the most adorable area of London ever and if I ever live in this city again, that is where I am residing.  It has a nice quiet, residential vibe to it, with families strolling around and lots of shops and restaurants, but it's close to edgier Camden and obviously easily accessible to the central city.

Keats House was an unreal experience.  He is one of the most important poets of all time and to be in his house was a little emotional for me.  I finally purchased a book of his poems, which I've never actually owned because I've just read assorted material in classes.  There was a book club of older people having a meeting in the house and I have to say, I'd be quite satisfied with my life if I could join them and do that for the rest of time.  The title of this post is a line from Keats's poem "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer."

That evening the three of us went to St. John Bread and Wine for dinner, a restaurant I had read about in Bon Appetit or something a while ago and had found in London and been dying to try.  It fulfilled all expectations.  Inside, the walls are stark white and the tables are bare wood, a very stripped down feel to place all the focus on the incredible food.  Their theory on food is "nose to tail eating":  they believe in using all possible parts of the animal or plant to their best advantage.  We ordered Foie Gras and Duck Liver on toast; Butternut Squash, lentils, and  Yoghurt; and Plaice (a fish) in a apple juice browned butter sauce with croutons and some leafy green; as well as a bottle of their own red wine and for dessert, Quince and Sherry Trifle! Oh my goodness, it was one of the best meals of my life.  Everything was so fresh and delicious.  I'm so glad I can check "posh British dining" off my to do list!

Saturday was a day of work, but Sunday I went with my friend Evan to Bath!  We toured the Roman baths, which are incredibly well preserved, and just an awesome museum with lots of relics and historical information.  I wish we could have gotten in the hot spring water, as it was quite chilly out, but alas, we weren't even allowed to touch it!! They did have a part where you could taste the waters, as that is what people came to Bath to do, believing the waters to be healing with their mineral contents.  It was DISGUSTING.  It tasted like swallowing coins. Gross.

After the baths, we went to my real purpose in visiting - The Jane Austen Centre!! Jane Austen resided in Bath for a few years of her life, during which time she was relatively unproductive as the city was overwhelming and uninspiring for her. (Good thing she didn't try London, as that would have been REALLY overwhelming! Bath is nothing in comparison!)  The Centre had many interesting displays and I was completely nerding out and in a very happy and emotional state.  We had afternoon tea at the Jane Austen Tea Room, where I ordered Catherine Morland's Savory Tea.  She is the main character from Northanger Abbey, for you non-fan readers out there. :)

The rest of the day we wandered the city, seeing the Royal Crescent and taking in the surroundings which were filming locations for Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, both of which have parts that take place in Bath.  Persuasion is my favorite of Jane Austen's novels, so it was really magical to be there and understand what she was talking about!

Monday I hosted a Thanksgiving Dinner for my flat and Evan since I would be gone for the actual holiday and wanted a feast!  I was assisted by my lovely flatmates who became my sous chefs.  My British flatmates loved it and want to have Thanksgiving everyday.  We had to do a chicken instead of a turkey, but it was my first whole roast chicken and it came out perfectly!  I feel much more confident now in my housewifery abilities/future knowing I can throw together a whole Thanksgiving meal.  Although I was across the pond to celebrate, I had so much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving and was surrounded by some wonderful people. :)

Skipping ahead to Wednesday, I headed to York with Brigitte and Carolyn to meet up with my friend Dan and see the town.  After missing my train due to the unreliable Hammersmith and City tube line, I made it there a little later and having spent more money than I desired, but it did not ruin the day!  We toured York Minster, the cathedral there, which is gorgeous!  We even did the rooftop tour which was worth the steep spiral staircase climb that nearly took our lives.

We also went to the museum Barley Hall which had a movie costume exhibit that featured COLIN FIRTH'S MR. DARCY COSTUME AND ALAN RICKMAN'S COLONEL BRANDON COSTUME AND KATE WINSLET'S MARIANNE DASHWOOD WEDDING DRESS and a bunch of hats from Pride and Prejudice as well, and Colin's outfit from The King's Speech!!!!!!  It was one of the most exciting moments of my time here, as well as my life.  Colin Firth's stature is perfection.  I can't handle it. Of course, we weren't allowed to touch it, unfortunately, but I did steal a graze of the King's Speech one. Shhh!  York also had a great milkshake place, which is hard to come by in England so that was great!! Overall, it was a really cute town and quite "English" as you would picture, which was lovely.

We all parted ways in the evening, and I was off to Harrogate to visit my brother and sister-in-law, Mark and Anne!!  We went out to dinner the first night and I ordered a whole pheasant - and ate the whole thing!! It was quite yummy!  Thursday we went to Betty's Tea Room for breakfast, a Harrogate standard.  I had quiche, which was delicious.  I hardly ever have good breakfast food here so it was really nice to have a quality meal! We then headed to Fountains Abbey, the ruins of a monastery built in 1132 and destroyed by Henry VIII, which in its prime was one of the richest abbeys in Europe where over 600 monks lived!!! It was MASSIVE, jaw-dropping, and inspiring.  The roofs were removed by Henry and many of the other parts were removed stone by stone by pillaging farmers and other locals for building materials years ago.  Now it is preserved by the National Trust.  It sits on a huge plot of land where sheep still graze and are farmed and a lovely river runs through the heart of the park.

That evening we went into Harrogate for their first annual Christmas market.  Harrogate is really cute.  It's almost a cross between York and Bath, because it was a bath spa town with mineral springs and has a lot of the stone buildings like in Bath, but it is smaller and more charming like York.  There were lights strung all over the town, even a manger and the words "Merry Christmas" which are hard to come by in the US!! Christmas here in England is much more authentic, I must say.  I find I'm enjoying seeing all the decorations and loving that I'm here for it while simultaneously thinking I should be home for it! It's a tough split.  Anyway,  we went to the grand lighting of the Christmas tree and even stood in the rain for it - an authentic Northern England experience.  They had bands playing, one of which was a Blues Brothers imitation, which I thought was rather random but they were entertaining nonetheless.

We bought some cheeses at the market and headed home to have a feast of cheese, Club crackers (which I hadn't had since I left home - so exciting!), jalepeno popper type things, and a whiskey tasting!  Mark and Anne are quite the scotch connoisseurs.  I tried eight different whiskeys in a progression from sweetest to smokiest.  Other than the burn, I like whiskey and am looking forward to becoming a real fan.  I finally tried Wild Turkey, which was kind of awful.  But the smokey ones I actually liked, which was surprising since I hated the one I had in Scotland!  I was glad I gave it a second chance.

Friday Anne had planned for us to tour a castle, but we got there and it was closed.  However, the drive there was stunning so it was well worth it.  It was great to be in a car driving through the Yorkshire Dales and really getting up close and personal with the English landscape I've come to love.  Yorkshire is the area where the Bronte novels as well as The Secret Garden, and many other works, take place, so it was great to absorb that scenery which I've always read about!  The moors were incredible.

We then went to Jervaux Abbey, which was much smaller than Fountains but still interesting and the best part was...it had a GRAVEYARD!! First graveyard in Yorkshire wooo!! After the abbey we made our way to Black Sheep Brewery and tasted a few brews.  Mark educated me as to the art of beer making and tasting, what hops are and do, etc. It was all very interesting and nice to be drinking with an informed person with refined tastes.  That night we had a beer tasting of which the finale was Mark's favorite British brew, Punk IPA, which was my first IPA, and phew was it hoppy!! It tasted like freshly mown grass, which wasn't a bad thing, just incredibly different from everything I've tasted before.  I liked it enough though to know that I want to like it, so I'm determined to have more IPAs.  My favorite was Guinness Extra, which is one of Mark's standards as well.

Saturday was a day wonderful beyond belief, as we journeyed to Haworth, hometown of the Bronte sisters.  Jane Eyre is my favorite novel and role model so going to her home was a complete out-of-body experience.  I am not ashamed to say i teared up quite a bit throughout the exhibit.  The Parsonage is well-preserved with many of their personal items, and attached is an exhibit with more information and original publications and other cool things.

It was really incredible to learn about the sisters' lives and find the parallels in their novels.  They truly faced a good deal of tragedy and it was heartbreaking to know that.  Charlotte Bronte's description of Jane as "poor, plain,and little" is quite similar to her own person.  They had a dress of hers and she was tiny!!  We couldn't take any pictures inside, which was upsetting, but I highly recommend going if you are ever presented with the opportunity.  On the main street still exists the pub in which Branwell Bronte, their brother, drank himself to death.  We didn't go in, for fear of being tempted to do the same. ;)

Next to the Parsonage is the old town graveyard that has over 60,000 bodies!! It was declared unusable by Queen Victoria because it was poisoning the water supply and people were getting seriously ill and dying.  The Brontes are buried in the church crypt though, so we didn't get to see their graves. The church was really lovely though!

After Haworth we ventured to Saltaire, a town founded by Titus Salt, a textile mill owner.  He bought land and created a tiny dictatorship essentially, where he owned every industry and controlled all housing and schooling.  The man was pretty awful but an absolute genius business man.  He created underground tunnel systems to get people quickly and efficiently to work.  He had indoor plumbing in the factory for the workers to use so that the river would not be a site for rubbish and waste, as in Haworth, lending to the success and well-being of his town.  He even created washing machines but people refused to use them and they would disappear again until the 1940s or whenever! On every corner and in the middle of every block was a high lookout tower house where the managers and higher position workers lived, so that everyone was always monitored.  There was no crime and no police system.  Titus Salt was the system, and the people. The design of one's doors and windows alerted the town to one's class level, therefore everyone always knew where everyone stood in power.  It was super interesting to learn about, however it was absolutely freezing and by the end of the hour and a half walking tour my feet were in pain from the cold, so I was glad to be on our way back to Harrogate. 

That night we went to see the town's Christmas Panto Play, an English tradition which is an audience-interactive show that caters more towards children but is still really entertaining for all ages.  This year's was Jack and the Beanstalk and it was really cute and quite humorous.  It was a little strange to be part of such an interactive audience because I'd never really been to anything like that before - strange but exciting! The little children's reactions were absolutely priceless and adorable. It had nothing to do with Christmas, but it put me in the Christmas spirit regardless as it's a communal activity, which is generally the point of Christmas traditions.

Sunday after mass, Anne and I went to a crepe place and had delicious crepes and I had a milkshake which was actually pretty good. Two good milkshakes in one week is quite a feat in England, let me tell you, as they generally miss the mark on the art of milkshake making.  Then I was off on the train back to London, and work, but in just two days would be off to Italy for 4 nights!! But I'll write that in the next post. Thanks for reading! :)

I Lost My Heart in Scotland

"It will come to you, this love of the land. There's no gettin' away from it if you're Irish."

Gerald O'Hara in Gone with the Wind was right when he said this.  I'm Irish, and I've fallen in love with land.  The only problem is, I fell in love with what some might think is the wrong land in light of my Irish heritage, for I've fallen in love with Scotland. However, since I've never been to Ireland, I can't really be judged for this flaw, so perhaps Scotland is just Ireland's substitute for the time being. The point is though, I just spent five days in Scotland and had an absolutely incredible time. 

The trip to Scotland started out roughly.  We were to take a 7 pm train from King's Cross on Tuesday the 6th but the Hammersmith and City line on the tube decided that it didn't want to work efficiently and caused us to arrive at the train station at 7:10, just missing our train.  Trains don't give refunds or transfers, so we just burned forty pounds and had to buy whole new tickets. Due to availability, the four of us had to split up what trains we would take, and Carolyn and I purchased tickets for an 11:50 pm train that night leaving from Euston.  Thus, we picked up our bags and headed to another train station to camp out for four hours.  We found a waiting room and took up residence, only to soon be accompanied by two mice, who we not-lovingly named Winston and Wally.  We were both squealing and staring down these mice as they scampered about the room.  No one else was reacting though! Reader, the British have developed an amazing (and rather sad, honestly) stoicism.  They are completely unaware of their surroundings.  The mouse was right under a man's foot and he didn't notice or flinch, while we're across the room staring right at him and it!! It was absurd.  Finally one family noticed as well as an Asian girl around our age, and we all deserted the room for other accomodations, which turned out to be the Burger King sitting area.  11:40 finally rolled around and we boarded our train, only to be thwarted yet again by a problem in the overhead wiring, preventing our train from leaving the station until 1 am. Ironically, both the family and the Asian girl were in our train car as well! At long last, Carolyn and I settled in for our nine hour ride on a sleeper train to Edinburgh.  I slept decently (better than the St. Ives train!) and we arrived in the city around 8 am.  

We were in a slight state of delusion and after a few directional errors finally found our way to our hostel, Castle Rock, on Johnston Terrace, right off the Royal Mile.  Even in my tired state I felt a connection to the city of Edinburgh immediately.  Its stone buildings and hilly roads were charming and just the sort of thing I like.  Once at the hostel, I showered as soon as we got there and then we passed out for a good 2 1/2 hours.  Brigette and Lydia were getting into the city around 2:30 so we had nothing to rush off to. 

Carolyn and I got some shopping in while we waited for them and once they arrived we headed off to tour Edinburgh Castle.  The elevation of the castle provides a lovely view spanning to the water's edge.  

There were some neat displays in the castle of old soldiers' uniforms, the Scottish crown jewels, and lots of information on Mary Queen of Scots, whom I did a report on in fifth grade and have had a slight obsession with ever since. I guess it shouldn't be a surprise I liked Scotland so much...One thing in the castle grounds that I found particular interest in which I think you'll all appreciate is a graveyard for soldiers' dogs. 
 It was quite small and touching, and my first graveyard in Scotland! Win!

By the time we finished seeing the castle it was dark, rainy, cold, and we were starving, so we ducked into a nearby pub in hopes of food, warmth, and drink.  These hopes were dashed though, as the woman would not accept our driver's licenses as legitimate ID and then claimed we could not even be on the premises! We awkardly had to put our coats back on and head back out into the rain, now concerned we wouldn't be able to drink at all in this country, the land of scotch whisky.  
We went to another restaurant though, and had absolutely no problem, and I got my first real scotch!! ...And I didn't like it! It was a very smoky flavor and while I managed to stomach it, it just wasn't my favorite. 

 However, I did have haggis, neeps (turnips), and tatties (potatoes) for dinner, which was delicious!!! Being adventurous pays off for sure. :)   After dinner we headed off to The Jazz Bar, as recommended by my friend Katie who had studied in Edinburgh last spring.  The bartender accepted our IDs no problem.  Apparently that woman just hates Americans. 

 I got "Kind of Blue" which was some combination of Blue Curacao, vodka, orange, and pineapple juice I think...I don't quite remember, but it was really good!  A jazz band played with original music by various band members and they were quite good! It was a really fun and chill night.

Thursday morning we woke up early and headed off to meet our bus for a day trip to the Scottish Highlands, Glencoe, and Loch Ness! Our tour guide, Emily, was perfection: thick red braids sticking out of a winter snow hat with a fabulous Scottish accent.  Our bus was the most diverse group of people of which I've ever been a part: a couple from Germany, a man from Luxembourg, a woman from India, a boy from South Korea, three women from Australia, one woman from Tazmania, and three women from Russia.  We were all in for a long day, which Emily promised to be both exhausting and exhilirating.  What I wasn't expecting from the tour was the amount of history, cultural information, and lore and legends we would be told.  Emily knew her stuff.  To try and regurgitate it all would be impossible so I'll just name a few highlights:

• The city of Edinburgh is divided into two parts (side note: this reminds me of my Latin translations of Caesar - "All Gaul is divided into three parts"): old town and new town. Old town is the original area with the Royal Mile, the Castle, and the Palace, but as society changed the rich wanted to not be intermingled so closely with the poor and so the city expanded across the river and the rich developed what it known as "new town."  New Town is clearly for the upper class as the buildings are Georgian and the streets are wide.  Old Town has very narrow streets and old stone buildings.  
• This dichotomy was one inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson's novel "Jekyll and Hyde."  Another inspiration is thought to be a man Deacon Brodie who was pious on the outside while simultaneously robbing people's homes.  Another inspiration is thought to be Stevenson himself, who had many conflicting personality characteristics apparently. And drugs, obviously. I didn't know Stevenson was from Edinburgh, or even Scottish, so I found this really interesting.

• The tour company is called "Rabbie's" which is named after the great Scot poet Robert "Rabbie" Burns, who is responsible for making haggis Scotland's national food because he wrote a poem about it. 

As we continued on the ride out of the city we soon passed Stirling castle of which it is said if you hold Stirling, you hold Scotland.  This is where William Wallace fought, I do believe.  Speaking of Braveheart, the namesake for that movie actually comes from a story about a Scottish King who had his friend remove his heart and take it to battle and the man threw the heart at the oncoming enemy. The heart was retrieved and is buried now somewhere in Scotland. Kind of gross, but rather inspiring.  
We stopped at the little town of Callender at the foothills of the Highlands for a quick toilet break.  I purchased a butterfly cake at a local pastry shop, which was a cupcake with two cake chunks on top as wings. It was quite delicious, and the man who served me was quite handsome. I have to say, the Scottish accent is unbelievably adorable and I saw more handsome men in five days in Scotland than the entirety of my time thus far in England.  Anyway, we soon were back on the bus and headed into the Highlands, and let me tell you, they took my breath away.  Even though "purple mountain majesty" is an American lyric, the idea applies very much.  The mountains are so rugged and majestic.  

Being an Appalachian girl and then going to flat ole' England, I've missed mountains terribly and it was wonderful to see them.  We made a few stops during the ride to get off the bus and take pictures of the landscape.  We also took an impromptu stop to take pictures of Highland cows on the side of the road, with which I now have an obsession.  Their long shaggy fur is far too cute. We learned so much on the ride about the Highlands.  Here are a few highlights:

• The Highlands were occupied by the Clans of Scotland, which were based off territory not family lines.  These clans are responsible for kilts (the outfits of their cowboy equivalent), tartan, bagpipes, and essentially everything we identify as "Scottish."  However, with shifts in royalty and industry, the population of the Highlands has dwindled and now only 1/3 of the population lives above the Highland line.
• The population of Scotland is a little over 5 million.  That's less than the population of LONDON!!! 
• 1% of Scots speak Scot, the Gallic language similar to Ireland's Gaelic.
• Scotland and Ireland used to interact and shared more culture.  The divide occurred when the Norse  came to Scotland and influenced the culture.  The mixing of Norse and Scottish genes is actually responsible for the mutation that created red hair which we associate as an Irish/Scottish characteristic.
• The highlands now are used for timber farms.  The fir trees on the mountains are not native and are only for industrial purposes.  I WANT TO WORK HERE. 
• There are no threatening wild animals in Scotland, only deer and fox and the like.  Therefore, as a hiker, one's biggest threat is the weather, which can change at any moment.  
• There's no such thing as trespassing on private property in the Highlands, so walkers and hikers can walk across land without having to worry about that. I AM PLANNING A HIKING TRIP HERE ASAP.
• Ben Nevis, Scotland's highest mountain, sits at 4, 409 feet above sea level and the summit can only be seen about 30 days in the year because of the fog.  We didn't see the mountain at all because the fog was so dense.  While Scotland's mountains are certainly not the highest, you see them directly at sea level and therefore the entire mountain, which is pretty impressive. 

 We finally made it to Loch Ness after passing through the Great Glen and the three lochs (lakes) that precede Ness.  There are 31 THOUSAND lochs in Scotland!! We went to the little town of Fort Augustus and took a boat ride on Loch Ness.  Loch Ness's water is pitch black because of the peat content.  On the boat they had sonar detectors to monitor for monster sitings. Unfortunately, the only monster we saw was a wild goat on the hillside beside the loch.  But hey, I'd never seen a wild goat before so that was pretty cool!

After the cruise we were back on the bus and headed down the Eastern side back toward Edinburgh.  It starts to get dark around 4:30 so we didn't have many more stops due to lack of sunlight but it was lovely to see nighttime in the Highlands.  Emily played us bagpipe music which included Highland Cathedral, a favorite of mine, as well as Scottish poems put to song.  I discovered that Robert Burns wrote "Red, Red, Rose" which I had sung in choir!! Scotland was getting more and more perfect. 
We made it back to the city around eight and had dinner at The Villager, where I ordered my first Martini, the Zhivago - very yummy!!  

Friday was dedicated to Edinburgh.  We had breakfast at The Elephant House Cafe where J.K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter.  It was delicious and a really cute interior with lots of elephants, my favorite animal! In the bathroom, people signed the walls with all sorts of messages about Harry Potter, which was quite amusing.  

After eating, we wandered the city and did some shopping.  Then we did a tour of Mary King's Close.  A "close" is the narrow street that is between the tall, medieval buildings.  At one time there were 800 or some absurd number in the city; now there are 31 because they've been built over.  This tour was an underground exploration of one.  I tell you, I'm glad I don't live back then.  The Bubonic Plague, Black Death (which apparently are different things, though I've always thought them interchangeable terms), streets filled with excrement and blood for Black Pudding...life back then does not sound pleasant. I'll take modern hygiene, please.  It was a very neat tour. 

 After that we went to St. Giles Cathedral which has some of the most stunning stained glass I've ever seen.  Then we went down the Royal Mile to see Holyrood Palace, residence of the Queen when she's there.  It's a cute palace; much quainter than Windsor or Buckingham.  The Windsor family has a private home further north in Scotland that they frequent more, though. 

 Later we did the Scotch Whisky Experience, a tour of how whisky is made with a tasting at the end! We had four choices: Speyside (tropical fruit), Lowland (citrus), Highland (vanilla), or Islay (smokey). I tried a Highland whisky, Ancnoc, which I liked much better than my failed earlier attempt.  We also saw the largest collection of unopened whisky, which was crazy, one of which included a chess set in which each piece was full of whisky! What a game that would be!  The best part was we got to keep our tasting glass, so I now have an official Whisky glass for all my future drinks. :)

Later in the evening we went on a Literary Pub Tour, which hit up four pubs and gave us some interesting literary background of the city.  I rather enjoyed it, as an English major, and we met some people from the States as well as London, which was neat.  We grabbed a Chinese dinner afterward and then turned in for the evening.  

Saturday we met up with my friend Kim who is studying in Edinburgh and we all headed to Glasgow.  Glasgow is much more post-industrial than Edinburgh.  It is more sprawled out and had lots of (expensive) shopping. 

 We went to the cathedral, which was beautiful, and saw an AMAZING graveyard on a big hill behind it. I took way too many photos. We also saw the oldest house in Glasgow.  


Otherwise we really just wandered the city and got some food, until Kim, Brigitte, and I headed off to see BON IVER in concert!!! He was AMAZING and his opener, the Staves, was fabulous too!!! It was a great time.  

We caught the last train back to Edinburgh and then Brig and I walked Kim back to her residence, which is the furthest point in Edinburgh possible it seemed.  However, the extremely long walk proved rewarding when we arrived at her apartment and looked up to the sky to see STARS!!!!! I hadn't seen stars in eight weeks and it was simply the most magical moment. Thank you, Edinburgh, for giving me that gift. 

Sunday we woke up to a beautiful clear blue sky, which is just what we needed as we were to hike Arthur's Seat that day, a large hill/mountain/thing in the city!  The climb was amazing, the view stunning, and exactly what I needed.  I have missed hiking, and looking at the Highlands without climbing them was slightly upsetting, so it was very rewarding to finally fulfill this craving.  

"What are men to rocks and mountains?" says Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, and I ask the same question every time I climb.  They are nothing. haha.  After the hike, I ran off to find St. Mary's Catholic Cathedral for mass.  After getting a little lost, I finally found it, and settled in for a Polish mass, which being Polish, I was very excited for.  I really wanted to get to Poland during my time abroad, but that won't be happening, so this was a pleasant and unexpected substitute.  I did not understand I single thing in this mass besides "Amen" and "Hallelujah" but luckily, a Catholic mass is always the same, so I knew what was going on, although all I heard around me was "dzhdzhdzhdzhdzh."  I have no idea what the readings were but it was still a fabulous experience, and a beautiful church!  I was shocked by the amount of people there.  Apparently Edinburgh has a large Polish population, which seems random, but I'll take it! After mass I found my way back to the girls, we grabbed one last meal, and we were off to the train station and headed home to London.

Scotland exceeded any expectation I ever had of it.  I was excited to go, but I had never really thought about Scotland in any way and did not expect to have the reaction to it I had.  I honest-to-goodness teared up at times just at the pure beauty of the country.  I've never felt such a connection to a place in my life, and it was a really exciting experience.  I'm so glad we had a full five days to really absorb some true Scottish culture and flavor and take in such beauty.

And thus, I leave you with these last three pictures to contemplate :)

Loch Ness Monster!!

"Sing out the silence, fill for ever and ever the emptiness."

 Thanks for reading; til next time!