Edinburgh: Take Two

This past weekend I went back to Scotland for the study centre's Thanksgiving. They put on a Thanksgiving for the UC students in Edinburgh. I went up early Friday morning since I don't have classes on Fridays. I ended up taking the day to check out Glasgow.

First thing when I went to Glasgow, I stopped at a Starbucks to get directions and I met a girl from the SF Bay Area who actually coached at a rival high school. I went to the Glasgow Cathedral and Provand's Lordship- the oldest house in Glasgow. I randomly found the Glasgow Necropolis and explored there. It's right by the cathedral and up on a hill so you get amazing views of Glasgow. Luckily it didn't rain and it wasn't too cold when I was there either.


Since it gets dark around 4pm now, I just took the opportunity to walk around the city centre and look at all the Christmas lights. Scotland in general is one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. Glasgow seemed to have more of a modern feel to it, reminding of San Fran with a Starbucks on every other corner. But, if you walk less than a mile, you're surrounded by history.

The rest of the weekend was spent having Thanksgiving dinner and hanging out with UC friends. Unfortunately the dinner was only mediocre but they had Ceilidh which ended up being a lot of fun. The hostel was fun too and we ended up making some new friends.

This week my friends and I plan on having our own, more traditional Thanksgiving dinner. Hopefully that goes well...it should be interesting to see how the turkey turns out! Next week I'll be going to Copenhagen!

xx

Dublin, Ireland

This month has been pretty busy for me, what with elections, gigs, papers and traveling. It's been a good month though. I went to see MGMT on the 5th, not realizing when I had bought my ticket back in the States that the 5th is bonfire night. I did get to see some fireworks though. The fireworks went on basically all week.

On the 6th I flew out to Dublin, Ireland late at night. I got in around midnight and just went straight to my hostel- which was pretty nice actually. I had to go up about 6-7 flights of stairs to get to my room and I had a 10 bed female room. Everyone was pretty courteous of each other though and it was a good first hostel experience. I was there until the morning of the 10th. A friend of mine from the study abroad course went as well. We ended up going to the Dublin Castle, the archeology museum [where they had actual preserved corpses!], the Guinness Storehouse, a medieval church [from the 12th century that had one of the original city walls around it], and to Kilmainham Gaol [the old, unused prison that was used during Easter Rising]. We went on an Irish musical pub crawl too.


Dublin is actually pretty expensive, and cold, but it was a lot of fun. The Guinness Storehouse is really nice and I was actually able to pull my own pint after going through the tour. Afterwards, they let you drink your pint up in the Gravity Bar, which is one of the highest points in Dublin, if not the highest, and it has a 360 degree view of Dublin. Unfortunately not too long after we got up to the bar, it started raining so I couldn't get as many good pictures. It was really nice though.


The pub crawl was really neat too. It's led by two guys that are professional musicians and they sing traditional Irish music. I took a few videos, mostly for my Dad, and they're dark but the sound is okay. We frequented Temple Bar which was pretty expensive and touristy but it was a lot of fun. Everyone seemed to take really well to us in Dublin too. I suppose it was probably because of the election results and we were there the weekend after. We had several people ask if we were American and when they found out, they just proclaimed their love for us. Everyone wanted to discuss politics and Obama too. They seemed really pleased with the outcome though.

Pub Crawl 1
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=gX6TfhSIBwg

Pub Crawl 2
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=109aiKw3ohI&feature=related

Pub Crawl 3
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=iTL2ZyEJhx8&feature=related

Pub Crawl 4
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=A9zYk7w7S5o&feature=related

I came back to Leeds and then I had a couple of papers due. I went to a venue in Leeds, The Cockpit, to see Ladytron on Friday. I went last night to the same venue to see an LA band, The Airborne Toxic Event. That went really well. I talked to a few of them and they took to me since I had seen them quite a while ago and I was a fellow American.


This weekend I'll be going back to Edinburgh since they're hosting a Thanksgiving event for the all of the UC kids. Since I'm getting there early on Friday, I'm going to take the day to go up and explore Glasgow.

I also found out that I'll be spending Christmas with a host family in the Lake District, not too far from me. It's a really small, quaint area and it looks almost farm-like. Their description said they had a dog, two cats, some goldfish and some hen in the yard. And then my flatmate invited me to Madrid with her since she's from there and will be going back for break. So, I might go there in January.

xx