Escocia

One of the first pictures of the trip, of course!

A couple of weeks ago, we had a long weekend.  My friend Steph and I took advantage and booked a flight to Glagow, Scotland.   I was really excited about this trip because I had never traveled to a country where English was the official language before.

We left on a Tuesday afternoon and got on our flight at 9:30pm.  We ended up arriving at our hostel around 2am and had trouble at the front desk.  When we arrived, the lady told us that we didn't have a reservation, when in fact we did have a reservation for a four person room.  What she did was book us a new place in a room of 14 people.  We were not thrilled to enter in a room with at most 12 other people already sleeping, to set up our beds and get ourselves settled.  In the morning, we ended up settling the conflict with one of the managers and she apologized because in fact, we should have been in the other room that we originally booked.

Other than that mishap at the beginning, things went really well.  Scotland was absolutely gorgeous and it was SO green, especially compared to Almería.  The buildings looked really old and gorgeous, we were completely charmed by every view around every corner.

Climbing Arthur's Seat-
an extinct volcano

The first morning we went straight to Edinburgh, the capital.  We mostly stayed around the area called ¨The Royal Mile.¨  This is one long road in the Old Town of Edinburgh with the important sites including the castle, the city museum and the Queen's palace for when she comes to the city.  We really enjoyed everything, but passed on a couple of things like going in the castle because it was extremely overpriced.  We were happy enough to see it from the outside.  One thing we did see, though, was the café where J.K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter!  She is from outside of Edinburgh and spent her afternoons in this café creating the novel that we all know and love.  Another really interesting thing we saw was Greyfriar's Bobby.  There is a story in Edinburgh about a man who died and was buried in the Grefriar cemetery in the city.  For the next 14 years, his dog went to the cemetery to visit the grave of his owner whom he loved so much.  The people of the city took a liking to the dog and took care of him, gave him food and shelther.  Now he is buried in the entrance to the cemtery with a little statue of him out front.  It was a really hearwarming story.

We took a day in between Edinburgh and Glasgow to do a bus tour of the highlands up to Loch Ness.  Unfortunately that day we had really bad weather, but we enjoyed the tour nonetheless.  The tour left at 8 in the morning and we got back at 8 in the evening.  The tour guide talked almost the whole time to point things out, tell us stories and legends and keep us interested.  I really, really enjoyed this tour because I learned quite a bit about Scotland and it´s culture & history.  The views were spectacular and we stopped to take photos along the way.  Finally, the highest point we got to was Loch Ness, but we could barely stand to be outside because it was extremely cold and windy.  Unfortunately we didn't see Nessie ;)

HIghland Cow- she was so lovable!

Gorgeous highland scenery

Loch Ness!

This was absolutely necessary

The next day we took our time and got to Glasgow.  There, we met up with a friend of mine from UNH who is living in Glasgow and finishing her doctorate degree.  We had a good time having tea and catching up in the warm café.  After, she brought us over to the University of Glasgow which is like a scene out of Harry Potter.  The buildings and cloisters were beautiful.  The next day, Steph and I got up early and went to one of the museums where we entered as soon as it opened and managed to get a free private tour.  We only had a limited amount of time there, and we happened to see that there were volunteer guides, so we took advantage!  Our guide was a lovely older lady who was very passionate about the museum and showed us many of the highlights.  It was actually  a much more interesting museum than we expected, which was a plus.

University of Glasgow building

One thing I haven't talked about yet is the food.  We ate really well in Scotland and probably gained at least 5 pounds each because everything was so heavy and filling!  We ate fish & chips, fried haggis balls, mac & cheese, paninis, warm soup with bread & butter, baked potato with beans & cheddar cheese, full scottish breakfast, etc...  I also drank my weight in english breakfast tea, which I couldn´t get enough of.  They served it to you in a large mug (unlike in Spain) so you could sit and savor it.  The one meal I want to go into detail about is the full scottish breakfast.  It was absolutely scrumptious.  It was a large plate covered in food.  It included baked beans, black pudding, sausage, bacon, a potato pancake, fried eggs and a tomato.  We each got one and ate everything on the entire plate, then later in the day we couldn´t eat again until 7 or 8pm.  It was one of the most filling and best breakfasts I´ve ever had.

Full Scottish Breakfast