And so ends an era...

Today is my final day in Edinburgh, and while I'm really far behind on blogging about my adventures, I thought I'd quickly post a few highlights (of the things I haven't covered yet in my blog) before I head back to the states.



This is a picture of Edinburgh's Winter Wonderland taken from the German Market. Joe, Meg, Kevin, and I went to the lighting ceremony on Thanksgiving.

... then we ate Haggis...



I spotted Nessie in Loch Ness. And I met a guy that was convinced that plesiosaurs roamed the Loch.



My friend, Brit, came from Berlin to visit - and we spent a day in Glasgow with my friend, Jeff. That church behind us... it was retasked as a PUB. I love retasking!!



I've been enjoying a beautiful city, made even more picturesque by a plethora of Christmas decorations.



I've met some amazing friends. Without them, this trip would have not been nearly as much fun as it was.

I've also had a great experience at work - the guys in my lab (AIAI) at the University of Edinburgh are brilliant and I've learned so much in the short time I've been here.



I also got to climb at the largest rock climbing arena in the world!

...all-in-all, not a bad trip. ;-)

That's actually quite an understatement. I'm going to miss Edinburgh A LOT. This is a great place, the people are nice, and there are PLENTY of things to do.

Thanks to everyone who kept in touch while I was here - it was great to have friends/family to talk to. I'm looking forward to seeing everyone over Christmas break, so give me a call!



I'll continue to post new blogs for a bit - at least until I finish writing about all the fun stuff I summarized here. So... check back...

York

Well... I'm leaving Edinburgh in a week and I'm still writing blog entries about mid-November. Right now, I'm trying to enjoy every last second I get to spend here. At the same time, I'm frantically trying to finish my University project and get in my Christmas shopping.

On Nov 20, my friend Kristin and I left Edinburgh on a bus to York. The bus stopped in New Castle so we got off and grabbed a bit of lunch and took a few pictures.



When we finally got to York, it was already dark, but we found our way to our B&B and scouted out some fun stuff to do the next morning. The first thing we did the next morning, after a delicious breakfast (where a nice lady made fun of my pronunciation of "tomato"), was a boat tour of York. I loved this house.



Then we took a walk on the city wall. It's amazing! It has been there since 64 A.D.



From the wall, you get some great views of the city and the famous York Minster.



Then we went to the National Train Museum - it's exactly what you would expect.



Then we took another section of the wall to explore some more of the city.







Everything was decorated for Christmas - keep in mind, this is pre-Thanksgiving, so we were pretty psyched about Christmas decorations.



We also took a tour of the York Brewery - they had some delicious samples at the end!



Later that night, Tom met up with us!



The next day we went to the Castle Museum. They had an entire full-size model of an old city in the building - pretty cool. We only saw about half the museum, but it was nice.



Outside they had an ice-skating rink. I think I've seen one in every city I visited after the beginning of November!



Then Tom and I went to the York Minster - Kristin had already seen it on a previous trip to York which she had completely forgotten about until she got there and said "I think I've been here before."



There was a market in the center of the city - it got really busy at times.



The next morning, we woke up to a thin coat of snow on the city.



York was one of my favorite places this trip. These pictures don't really do it justice. There was a ton of stuff to do and lots of great places to go/eat/drink.

London

I remember a time when I was posting blog entries about things I did earlier in the day...

...that was a while ago!

I'm finally up to my trip to London. My friend, Tom, asked me a while back if I wanted to go to London for a weekend - of course I said "YES!" What made it even cooler was when my friend from the states, Jessie, asked if I wanted to meet her in London on the weekend I already was planning to be there!



I met up with Jessie and her Mom and Dad and cousin, Julia at her Aunt & Uncle's house. I got there pretty late - it took me a lot longer to get from London Luton to center city than I had anticipated.

The first thing we did was go to St. Paul's Cathedral (http://www.stpauls.co.uk). It was HUGE! They had one of the projected banners at the top of the dome inside. I thought the projection didn't really fit with the theme of the church and Jessie made fun of me because I said it looked like the Wachovia Center.



The views from the top of St. Paul's were fantastic. My favorite part was the whispering chamber, which is at the top of the dome where you can hear someone whisper from the other side of the dome. We couldn't really get it to work, but it's a cool idea and it's amazing that they were able to engineer something like this SO long ago.



Walking around London, we found a guy that was parked in a van that blows bubbles on the side of a road singing a ridiculously cheesy song. Needless to say... we loved him!



This is a picture of the indoor/outdoor market that we went to - it was really crowded and we got yelled at when Jessie tried to take a picture of some old-lady's display.



Outside of an art museum that we visited, there was a beautiful outdoor ice-skating rink. I got this great shot of the Lough parents!



Then we went to the London Eye - the giant Feris Wheel near Westminster!



We got tons of great night shots! This one is of Parliament and Big Ben.



This is another shot of London at night from the London Eye.



The Lough's (and Julia) were awesome - it was so great to see them and I'm looking forward to seeing them all again very soon!



The next day, I did a bit of exploring on my own. I went to Nelson's Column in Trafalgor Square...



...Westminster Abby...



...Saw a parade of Scots!!!



...Went to the Winston Churchill Cabinet War Rooms...

Winston had a quote about one of Julia's relatives!



...Then I met up with Tom. Down this path, there were like 10 of the colored statue people. I've never seen so many in the same place!



Tom and I went to the Globe Theatre and took the tour of the inside. They do plays there in the summer, but the tour was really interesting. We learned a lot about the people of Shakespeare's time.



Then we went to the Tate Modern, which is an old power plant that was converted into a modern art gallery. This was one of their largest works.



And it wouldn't be a trip to London without some Fish & Chips!!! Tom and I got some great food at this place before I had to get on the plane home.

It was a great weekend with great friends - what more can you ask for??

Fort William & Ben Nevis

My buddy, Tom, and I took a trip up to Fort William a few weeks ago. Our hopes were to climb Ben Nevis, the tallest mountain in the UK. It didn't exactly work out, but we had a great weekend anyway... here's what happened:



Our train dropped us off in town. It's a cute, little place. Only a few small shops, a couple pubs, a grocery store, and a church. We asked someone how to get to our hostel, to which they replied, "Oh... that's a long way away" ("way-away" being closer to a single word... if not syllable). So we set out to find our hostel, the Ben Nevis Inn.



It turns out that the Ben Nevis Inn sits at the foot of the mountain - very convenient for climbing Ben Nevis... not so convenient for walking to/from town. After our (~2 mi) trek, we finally found the Inn and got situated in the bunkhouse.



A friendly hiker asked if we planned to climb Nevis. We told him that we were a bit hesitant about the weather - the reports had not been good. He explained that we would be fine as long as we had good rain gear (my jacket was barely water-resistant), a reliable compass (we had none), and a detailed map (we had a map!! it was the one they give you for free at the train station... probably not as detailed as he was thinking).



There were sheep EVERYWHERE in Fort William. Lots of sheep.

When we woke up the next morning, the mountains were capped with a beautiful layer of snow. Great for the views... not so great for the hike.



So after a little bit of discussion, we decided to walk into town, grab a bite to eat, and see how the weather held out...



... it didn't ...

We got hailed on coming out of the cafe where we ate breakfast, and it didn't stop hailing for a while! We took this picture by putting my camera on a wall and waiting for a large enough ball of ice to fall directly on the trigger button.



So we decided that we'd do a long hike without much elevation - It was called the Cow Hill Path. It had a bunch of great views.



The Cow Hill Path dropped us "close" to our hostel... not that anything actually was close to it...
But we decided to "keep on trucking." A guy told us about a vitrified fort, which apparently is a stone fort where they somehow melted the stones together to make a more solid edifice. It sounded cool, so we started that hike - which we were told would take us no longer than 2 hours.




The reason I don't really know what a vitrified fort is, is because there isn't one there! We got to the end of the trail and found the signs for it, but it's completely covered over with grass. Luckily, the views from the top were totally worth it. The next picture is me standing on top of the vegified vitrified fort.



We were in Fort William during the Scottish version of Memorial Day. There was a nice parade in town. What was really amazing was that all the bagpipers you see here, are women. I hadn't seen any female bagpipers yet at that point in my visit. Pretty cool!



One of the best parts of the trip were the guys we met one night at dinner. Tom and I were having a beer and a bite to eat and watching a Rugby match. Neither of us had any idea what was going on in the game. We must have looked confused enough that a couple of guys that were learning how to do commercial diving at the local uni came over to our booth, sat with us, and explained what was going on. They were pretty cool guys and we ended up staying out with them til about 1:30am.



Fort William was a really scenic place and great for hikers, but I would probably recommend visiting it during warm weather. It can get pretty ugly in hail and gale-force winds.



This is the inside of the Ben Nevis Inn restaurant. They had some pretty good food there - but more importantly, there was an awesome fireplace behind us that kept us warm for the whole meal. Had it been a little closer to town, it would have been a *really* good place, but it was a bit too far off the path (at least for people without a car).

I'm trying to catch up on my blog posts... I'm still behind. I have so many great pictures from London and York. And tonight, Joe, Meg, and Kevin come to Edinburgh for the Thanksgiving holiday.

Everyone back in the states: have a great Thanksgiving - eat some extra turkey for me!!