Loch Lomond!

It's been so lovely here lately I can't stand it. I'm sitting outside under a tree behind my flat and trying to soak up this wonderful weather. Recently Martin and I have been spending lots of time outside. Earlier this week (Monday, I think?) we spent a good chunk of the afternoon at Kelvingrove Park, which is just down the street from where I live. It was sunny, warm and lots of people were out, so that meant lots of good people-watching for me.

And the river was pretty, too. 

So green! It looked a little odd to me. I'm so used to Scotland being three colors; green, brown and gray. This blue business threw me off. 

The next day (Tuesday) we headed out to Loch Lomond, which is the next closest lake to Glasgow. It took us about an hour to get there, but we got a little lost on the way. I didn't mind, though, it was a really pretty drive out there. Once we got there, we walked down a little path around the side of the lake to find somewhere to sit and have a picnic. 

We found this little beach. And it was gorgeous, so we claimed it as ours. Because it was a Tuesday, there was hardly anyone else around, so we basically had the whole place to ourselves. 

The other side of "our" beach. 

But we made some friends! They were super curious and walked right up to us. 

They even ate right out of my hands! I fed them some bread, a little bit of cheese and tried to give them a few strawberries, but they didn't like those. It was actually hilarious. They would snatch the little piece of berry, then shake their heads and spit it out. 

Here I am trying to find something else to feed them.

After raiding our picnic, they got very sleepy, so they crashed right behind us and hung out there for the majority of the afternoon. I tried at one point to sneak up on them and touch one, but Papa Duck wasn't havin' any of that, and hissed at me. So I just went back to my wine-drinking and beach-laying.

On the road down to the lake was this little B&B called Passfoot Cottage. It was so adorable! I really would have liked to stay there sometime. I'm guessing it's pretty expensive, though, being right on the lake like it was. We walked up this road after being on the beach for a while to check the bus schedule, and we found out we had lots and lots of time, so we went back to the beach. 

And we made new friends! Significantly smaller this time, though. Dawwww.

We sat on the beach for a few more hours, sunning and chatting. Finally we headed back to the main road to catch the bus. We were originally planning to take a bus to Alexandria, then a bus from there to Glasgow, but when we got to the bus stop, we saw a bus headed for Glasgow! We ran up to the bus driver and there proceeded a conversation that I didn't understand a word of. The driver had, as they say here, a broad Scottish accent. And by that, I mean it sounded like he had peanut butter sticking his tongue to the roof of his mouth. Thank goodness Martin was there, or I would have never made it back to Glasgow. Afterwards, I gathered from Martin that the driver wasn't supposed to be at the stop we were at (it was a city bus that is sometimes used as a school bus), but because he was headed our way anyways, he took us. And gave us a discount! Neat guy, that driver. 

So we made it back to Glasgow, ate burgers at a pub, drank buckets of water and then stopped at a little shop and I bought face masks. Yep, really. Martin was a really good sport about letting me smear funny-smelling green goo on his face. 

It was actually ridiculously fun, and I laughed A LOT at his expense. I also think I got him addicted to pore strips. Haha! So that was earlier this week. Yesterday and today were full of packing. I had to sort out a lot of things that I can't bring home with me. For some reason, it seems like my clothes were doin' the dirty in my dresser and multiplied over the semester. I donated three bags of clothes to the Salvation Army this morning. Three! And I still have some extra clothes I have to sort through. I might send myself a package before I go, or maybe leave some here with Martin and he can send them to me later. Gah, I hate packing! As a reward to myself, I'm having a wine and movie night tonight. I think Lord of the Rings is in the lineup. And tomorrow I'm seeing Avengers again. Yes, it really was that good. It very rarely happens that I would willing pay to see a movie in the theater... twice. 

My plane leaves Glasgow at 8:30am on Sunday, and I get to Minneapolis at 3:30pm the same day. Boy, is my schedule going to be messed up. I probably won't post anything else while I'm still in Scotland, so farewell until America! Much much love from Glasgow.

Aberdeen!

Over this past weekend, Martin and I went to Aberdeen, which is the third largest city in Scotland. It's on the east coast, which meant it had much much better weather than Glasgow. We actually saw sunshine! I'm surprised we didn't burst into flames. 

So. We left Glasgow on a bus early on Friday morning and arrived in Aberdeen around noon. It was a very pretty drive through the lowlands. When we got there, we got lunch at a neat little restaurant called Giraffe then headed to the hotel. Now, when we booked the hotel, it seems kind of sketchy. And by kind of, I mean really. We weren't even sure if there was going to be a shower! So we were very pleasantly surprised when we arrived to see this:

The room was huge! Nice big bathroom, big windows, on the fourth floor, huge bed. Seriously though, it was the biggest bed I've ever slept on. See? (Martin included for scale purposes)

The whole first afternoon was spent napping. We were totally beat from traveling and lots of walking. We only ventured out to get dinner at Wetherspoons, which is apparently a chain of pubs across Britain. It became my new favorite, because it was dirt cheap. Food wasn't half bad, either. That night, we watched Thor, which was pretty lame by itself, but it made Thor make more sense in the Avengers. Hint hint you should see Avengers.

The next day, Saturday, we decided we should actually venture into the city. Aberdeen has been dubbed "The Silver City", and for good reason. Almost every building is made out of granite, so the whole city was gray and sparkly. Thank goodness we had a sunny day and it was nice, otherwise I can see how it would get really dreary. 

This was a club. Inside an old church. We saw at least four of these. Kind of bizarre, right?

The city really was lovely, though. 

While walking around, we found this really cool old church and graveyard. And we all know how I feel about graveyards, so we had to investigate. It was very well preserved, which is definitely not the case of all Scottish graveyards. 

I have literally no clue what this building was, but we passed it a bunch of times, and it was really pretty. Maybe some sort of government building?

This was called Castle Gate, and I'm not quite sure why... there certainly wasn't a castle in Aberdeen. 

The other side of Castle Gate.

And finally, after tons of walking, some ice cream and lots of complaining about a bad choice of shoes, we finally made it to the beach. Gorgeous, right?

We got so lucky with the day. It was lovely and sunny. Pretty chilly still, though. 

The cold apparently wasn't anything to Martin, who insisted on building a sand castle. Before you ask, no, I did not partake in the castle building. I was happily perched on a wooden plank, away from the cold sand. 

It was a beautiful day! 

After the beach, we headed back to the hotel for a bit and got cleaned up. I was covered in sand and I didn't even touch it! We went to a really nice Italian restaurant for dinner and managed to get a table even though it was a busy Saturday night. Another stroke of luck! Afterwards we headed back to the hotel, watched Bridesmaids (which I did NOT like at all) and turned in early. The next day we packed up and headed out, grabbing lunch before getting on the bus. We got back to Glasgow in the middle of a downpour and had to walk home all the way from the bus station. And yes, we looked like miserable drowned rats when we got there. Not pleasant at all.

Even with the icky rainy ending, it was a really fun weekend. I'm really glad I got to see Aberdeen and a bit of the east coast of Scotland. They certainly have nicer weather over there. But I like Glasgow better. :) 

Did you know? I come home in a week and a half. It's really blowing my mind. I can't believe my five months went by so fast. It was a blink. It's going to be really bittersweet to go home. Heavy on the bitter. I don't anticipate an easy re-entry. So please be patient with me if I'm a cranky bear for the first few weeks! See you all soon. Love from Glasgow.

Ireland!

From April 29th to May 3rd, I was in Ireland with my mom and stepdad. We flew into Dublin and stayed there for the first two days, then went south to Cork to visit the Blarney Castle and traveled west from there to Tralee on the west coast. They traveled on from there, and I took the train back to Dublin. I had a final on the 4th, so I couldn't stay any longer. :(

Here is the plane we took from Glasgow to Dublin. I was terrified, to say the least. The guy I sat next to was very understanding, thankfully, and held my hand during the landing. Propeller plane + Ireland's "screw you, American" winds = a terrified Taylor. 

Once we touched down, bought bus tickets for the week and got to the hotel, we decided to go downtown and explore a little. I had a list of things I wanted to do in Ireland. It consisted of two things. See Trinity College's library and kiss the Blarney Stone. Very simple. And considering we ended up right next to the college when we got downtown, we accomplished one of those right away. We couldn't take pictures inside the library, but I took a picture of the outside of it. 

Everything was written in both english and gaelic, which was pretty neat. 

Here is the library inside, and here is the Book of Kells. Worth a look. Very very interesting bit of history. My mom and stepdad weren't too interested in seeing either thing, so I did that by myself while they got coffee and looked around the campus. 

After Trinity College we hopped on another bus and took it to the jail on the other side of town. On the way, we saw lots and lots of these:

And we passed the Guinness factory! 

Finally we made it to the jail. However, we showed up riiiight as it was closing. We were really disappointed, as we had to walk through a lot of rain to get there. But the guy at the desk took pity on us and ran through the jail to tack us on the end of the last tour for the day. We only missed the first few minutes, and he didn't even charge us! This is inside the east wing, which was the newer part (and that's a relative "newer". The jail closed in 1924).

This was the chapel. A really tragic story: a man who was to be executed for partaking in one of the Irish uprisings in the early 20th century wanted nothing more than to marry his girlfriend before he was shot. They were married here, in this chapel, hours before he died. That's all fact. The rumor is that after the newly weds spent a total of 10 minutes together with a guard watching them, the wife was led out. Apparently, she heard the shots that killed her husband as she left. *sniffle*

This is the very old west wing. A lot of people were held her during the potato famine from 1845 to 1852. Many were children being imprisoned for stealing food. It was really hard to imagine children being held in such horrible conditions. 

This was the courtyard outside of the west wing. The cross marks the spot where 14 men were executed for their roles in the Irish uprising. 

Alright, enough sadness! After trekking around all day in the horrid rain and wind, we had dinner at the Ivy House, which was right across the street from our hotel. And yes, it was as good as it looks. 

The next day we walked around downtown Dublin some more. This was inside a church at the Castle of Dublin, which I'm not entirely sure was an actual castle... 

The outside of the church.

This is Christ Church, which is a very very old church in Dublin. It's essentially been untouched except for restoration work since the 1800's. 

The inside.

It was a church-y kind of day. After Christ Church we went to St. Patrick's Cathedral, which was actually very very close by. Similar styling, no?

The inside. The ceiling was really neat. 

These are costumes from the TV show "The Tudors". I can't actually remember which church they were in... it all kind of blended together by the end of the day. Very pretty costumes though.

Downtown Dublin. I was surprised at how cosmopolitan it was. Bustling city.

Remember the Ivy House? This was on the other side. Basically a tiny little pub for locals that served only Guinness. Not really, but if you order anything but Guinness, they had to go to the other side to get it for you. My Bailey's coffee really threw them for a loop. 

That evening we went to the Arlington Hotel for a 3 course dinner, live Irish music and Irish dancing. And check out our table: 

(Yeah, that's a beer tap coming out of the table...)

My mom and I with our Cosmo's. Yummy. The show was wonderful and fun. 

The next day we rented a car and headed south to Blarney, which is right outside of Cork in the south. And here it is! Blarney Castle, in all it's glory. 

The nice men attending the Blarney Stone. They made sure you didn't fall to your death when you kissed the stone. I liked them. 

This is the view from the top of the castle. I have to say, I was pretty jealous of the people who lived there once. Although the weather was just awful. I got an ear infection this day because of all the drizzle. 

See that little square of light right under the top of the castle? Right above the row of windows? That's where the Blarney Stone is. No wonder it's considered brave to kiss it... You have to lay on your back and bend upside down to lay a sloppy one on it. And I did. 

PROOF:

We spent that night in Killarney, which was a pretty cute little town. We stayed at the Holiday Inn (hahahahaha), which had a steam room, sauna and hot tub. So we were all in heaven after the nasty weather all day. 

The next day we headed farther west. On the way, we stopped to hike up to the Torc Waterfall. It was a beautiful, warm, sunny day, which was almost scary after so much rain. It made me wonder what was brewing... 

Ireland is pretty...

And we made it to the waterfall! It was early in the morning, sunny and bright. Just lovely. 

After that, we carried on and kept driving. Our destination for the night was Tralee, which was on the west coast. But on the way, we decided to drive through part of the Ring of Kerry, which is a famous peninsula. And I guess now I know why it's so famous:

Helloooo gorgeous. And THE SHEEPIES! 

I turned into a squealing 12 year old when I saw the tiny little baby sheeps. Yes, I know they are called lambs. Just let me call them whatever I want. 

As we continued through the ring, we came across a little beach called Inch Beach. Very pretty. 

And then I found this guy lazing around in the sun. But he wouldn't let me touch him. :(

And a cow! It was the day of cute animals. 

Finally we reached Dingle (yes, that was actually it's name). A very cute little town on a bay. The marina was really pretty. In fact, the whole town was very pretty. Colorful, which I didn't expect. We stayed there for a pint, then headed on to Tralee. 

That's when we ran into some problems... the car we were renting was a diesel car. In between Dingle and Tralee, my stepdad filled it up with petrol. If anyone has ever done that, you know it's not good for the car, and causes it to ya know... not work. So we get to Tralee with no problems, stop at a pub for a little bit, get back in the car... and it doesn't start. So we shuffle back into the pub, call a mechanic and have him come out to look at it. He knows immediately what's wrong with it, but it can't be towed until the next morning. So we have to carry all the luggage to the hotel, which was thankfully pretty close. Thank goodness the train station was close by, too. We had a really good dinner that night at a place called Cassidy's and turned in early. The next morning I packed up and walked to the train station, where I took a four hour train ride back to Dublin. It was beautiful scenery, though, so it wasn't bad. Then I took another tiny propeller plane back to Glasgow (much easier landing this time... whew) and a bus back to my flat. And then that night, I saw Avengers Assemble, which I totally recommend, if you haven't seen it. Amazing!

So the Ireland trip was very pretty, full of cute animals and lots of potatoes. I guess it was very similar to Scotland in a lot of ways. The weather, the landscape... the people in Ireland swore a lot more. I did notice that. Whew, this was a beast of a post. I'm headed to Aberdeen tomorrow with Martin. It should be a really fun trip! Love from Glasgow.