Scottish Highlands!

Yesterday I went on a guided day tour of the Scottish Highlands. Our ultimate destination was Loch Ness, but we made lots of little stops along the way and traveled through a beautiful area of the Highlands called Glencoe. It was with a company called "Rabbie's Trail Burners" (for Rabbie Burns, the Scottish poet) and the tour was 12 hours! I had to get up at 7:30, which was hard since I had only managed to fall asleep around 5am. On my way to meet the tour group, I planned to stop by the coffeehouse near my flat to wake myself up, but was surprised to find that apparently coffeehouses here aren't open before 8am! Thankfully, Starbucks was open. I know some people hate Starbucks, but all I'm saying is if it weren't for that grande mocha I probably wouldn't have made it through the day. So Starbucks, you're all right in my book!

Our first stop was at a loch (their word for lake). I can't remember the name of it. This one was smaller than Loch Ness, but was very pretty!

Along the way to Loch Ness our driver made a bunch of quick stops at scenic places where he thought we might like to take pictures:

Finally, we arrived at a tiny town (population: about 500) that calls itself the "Gateway to Loch Ness" since Loch Ness borders it. Here we got an hour to walk around and eat lunch. These are the pictures I took of the loch itself:

On the drive back from Loch Ness we made several more quick stops at scenic spots to take some pictures. One of the stops was at a very old Scottish kirk (their word for church) and graveyard on top of a hill that had great views.

Some other stops along the way:

The tour guide was AWESOME. His name was Ali (pronounced like Allie), short for Alistair, and he was relatively young and just very cool. He did make some groan-worthy puns, but he knew everything about Scotland's history and was an interesting person to talk to.

Went to Glasgow yesterday!

As mentioned previously, I have to find things to do to fill the time between now and when I go home. So yesterday morning I took a bus to lovely Glasgow.

 On the way to the bus stop. Foggy Edinburgh!

I feel like it was about time that I went there, considering it's only a little over an hour away by bus and is, by all accounts, an awesome city. I really didn't get that full a picture of it since I was only there for about 7 hours, but I'll be going back there in February for a Spoon concert, which, side note, I am REALLY excited about. Spoon concert in an intimate venue the day after my 21st birthday sounds like a pretty sweet deal to me. But I digress.

Anyway, a friend of mine who has been to Glasgow had explained that there's not a whole lot of tourist-y attractions there (such as in the way Edinburgh has the castle, palace, etc.). They do, however, have good shopping, which is what I did. Before I came to the UK, I looked forward to going clothes shopping here because I've always thought of European clothing as stylish and chic, but oh LORD are clothes expensive here. It's ridiculous! Basically my day of shopping really wasn't very successful because any time I found something I remotely liked, I would look at the price tag and think "I could easily find something like this back home for much less, and I go home in a week". But even so, unsuccessfully shopping in Glasgow is better than sitting in my flat in Edinburgh with nothing to do!


Pictures of Glasgow:

Next week I think I might go on a tour of the Highlands. I will update if I do!

Two More Weeks!

It's hard to believe the semester is almost over! I fly home in less than two weeks. Lectures and tutorials are over; exam time has begun. Believe or not, though, I have no exams at all this semester. Which seems like a great thing, and it is great right now, but it means that all of my exams are at the end of the year. That's going to be especially stressful considering the fact that exams in the UK are worth so much more of your overall grade than in the US. So I would much rather have my exams spread out. What's particularly annoying is that one of my classes- Edinburgh in Fiction- is only a semester-long class and I took it this semester, and yet the exam is at the end of the year. It makes no sense!

The upside, of course, is the free time I have for these next two weeks. Unfortunately, my abundance of free time is not shared by most of my friends, who do in fact have exams right now. So I'll just have to amuse myself for two weeks. I plan to take a day trip to Glasgow at some point this week (bus tickets to Glasgow are ridiculously cheap), and possibly elsewhere on separate days.

That's all for now I suppose, more later!