travel bug pt. 1

So it's been a while and for a good reason; I've been traveling!!
The greatest thing about studying abroad at the University of Edinburgh is that they have what is called "Innovative Learning Week". Basically, it's a week off of official classes and there are just random seminars and events going on over the week that aren't required at all, but are there for learning purposes more for people who actually go to school here to learn about different aspects related to their major or other majors they may be interested in. At least that's how I see it. Thus, for us study abroad kids, it's obviously going to be pinned as a week of travel. Even kids that do go here go travel or back home. But apparently enough people go to the events so it exists. and it is fabulous.
So last Saturday, I went on a trip with the ISC to Aberdeen, Scotland. We were supposed to get to see two castles and spend time exploring Aberdeen, but things didn't work out that way and there was a lot of miscommunication so we ended up just seeing one castle [and having to pay again if we wanted to go in and see more of it! I ended up not doing that because I didn't know if we'd be refunded 100% and the castle was pretty spectacular without seeing the innards.] and spending 2 hours wandering around Aberdeen. It was fun to get to do some other Scottish city exploring.

Dunnotar Castle, Aberdeen

Then Monday, which was the start of Innovative Learning Week. My alarm woke me up at 5:30 am and I was sitting in a taxi on the way to the airport by 6. My backpack was stuffed and because the dining hall obviously wasn't open, I packed as many snacks as I could for breakfast and future breakfasts. Nothing like some multigrain Cheerios and weird apple bars from Tesco! So we got to the airport and got our passports checked or whatever, went through security [they didn't make everyone take off their shoes! It was so nice! haha], and then waited to get on our plane. Ryanair doesn't assign seats unless you pay so it was pretty much a mad rush to get our boarding passes checked and to get on the plane. We had to wait on this shuttle bus thing for forever, but finally it moved and we got to our plane and successfully found 3 seats in a row so Maddie, Elizabeth, and I could all sit together!

Grand Place, Brussels

Eventually, we made it to Brussels after a little confusion in trying to get bus tickets to the city. The station where the airport bus dropped us off was still a ways away from our hostel, but I'd printed out directions for the supposed 15 min walk. Unfortunately, we couldn't find the road we wanted to go on and wandered around for much too long, so we broke down and got a taxi. Pretty certain the taxi guy ripped us off, but at least we got to our hostel. Except when we got to our hostel, we had to wait until 4pm before we could check in and drop off our bags and it was only 1:30 so we spent the next couple of hours wandering around Brussels and trying not to kill our backs. Ha. We saw the Grand Place and I tried to do Ellen Degeneres' "Dance Dare" by dancing behind some random lady but she turned around really quickly [probably because I was wearing my backbag and it was clanging...] and I didn't notice. Awkward. Once it was 4, we got checked in at our hostel and settled in there a bit and then decided to head out to find somewhere to eat dinner. We ended up at this yummy Italian restaurant, but not after being accosted by multiple restaurant guys trying to offer us deals to get us to eat their food.

Showing how to make chocolates

Tuesday, we started our day by going to the Museum of Cocoa and Chocolate. This was fantastic, if only for all the chocolate samples we got to eat. We walked to the Central Station to look into getting train tickets to Bruges, and found Parliament and a strange statue park, as well as a bunch of museums. We went to this one called the Coudenberg or something like that. It was basically an underground palace. Really cool to walk below the city. After that we were pretty ravenous, so we found a place to get frites [aka french fries]. I love how they serve them in a cone, but I didn't like how the sauce really overwhelmed the top fries and then the poor bottom ones got nothing. I got mine with Andalouse [sp?] sauce which was pretty good. I don't really like fries to begin with but they're big in Belgium so I couldn't not have them, basically like a heart attack in a cone because the guy put so much salt on them and then slathered the top in the sauce, and obviously they're fried. Delicious. I think once we finished those, we went back to the hostel to figure out the public transport system so we could go to the Atomium. That's this crazy structure that was made for the World's Fair in 1900 something. Now it's just like the Statue of Liberty or the Eiffel Tower...a symbol of Belgium, but no real purpose. It was much larger than I expected it to be, but there was nothing else to do around where it was, so it was a quick trip. When we got back, guess what was on TV? BAYLOR VS UT! Granted it was a game that originally played Monday and it was Tuesday but go ESPN America for showing it and there weren't commercials. =) Baylor also pulled out a win which was awesome. We had a quickish dinner at a kebab [they spelled it 'kebap'] place because it was cold out so we didn't want to walk far and it was cheaper, too! Later, around 10, we went to Delirium Cafe, this crazy bar that has something around 2000 different beers and 3 levels. It was really a cool atmosphere as it wasn't just young people, but older people, too.  I actually tried several sips of beer; the first kind, Leroy Christmas, was a dark beer and not very appealing. We moved to a different room and Maddie and Elizabeth got a strawberry beer and a cherry beer. The cherry one tasted like cough syrup, but the strawberry was a little better. I think it's safe to say that I won't become a beer drinker ever, though. Ha.

Well, I'm gonna end this post here, so it doesn't get too overwhelming to read. I'll write about Wednesday and Thursday later this week!
Here are some more pictures to enjoy!

A view of Brussels

Coudenberg

Royal Palace, Brussels

Frites, a Brussels staple

Atomium

trains, aching feet, castles

Today I took a train with my two friends to a little town outside Edinburgh called North Berwick. This town was home to two castles we intended to walk to and explore, Dirleton and Tantallon. We had googled pictures of each before and noted that Tantallon was right next to the water [Firth of Forth] up on a cliff edge. Basically, it was the cooler one so we thought we'd go to that one first. I have this fabulous book about walking around Edinburgh and several places nearby and that's how we found out about these castles. So we took the train which was loads of fun and a pretty good deal. It was about 1.5 miles to get to the train station and then once in North Berwick, the book said it was about 2.5miles to Tantallon from the station. It recommended to take a taxi or bus but we didn't want to pay for that so we decided to walk. And walk we did. It took a bit of a turn around to find the right road and then we walked down that road for a bit until it weirdly ended and hit a golf course...we were unsure what to do from there, but there was a sign mentioning a path sorta through the golf course that people and their dogs could take. [complete sidenote but there are some crazy guys outside who just broke out into "You Give Love a Bad Name" HA.] So yeah. We tried to take this path but ended up like completely on the golf course and that was awkward and wasn't getting us much of anywhere. So then we saw this couple walking on this little path closer to the coastline. We headed down there and walked along the coast for forever and it was lovely. At this point we still couldn't see the castle. Here we are walking right along the water on a nice little bit of sand and it ends. It's pretty much just cliffs around us but there wasn't anything else we could really do sooo we climbed up what looked like the least straight up area and closet to the road. We made it up and reached the road! Walking along the road for a good 20 or so minutes we saw a sign that said "Tantallon Castle 1/4 mile" and we actually could see the castle in the distance! Upon making it to the castle, we learned it was £5 to get in. But there was no way to really get a good view of the castle without paying the £5 plus we were so glad we actually found the castle. We paid and then went in and promptly sat down to eat lunch...at like 2:45. ha. Then we went exploring! The castle was really cool! There were a lot of windy staircases, which I'm not a big fan of, but it was fine. The views were sweet and there were a lot of neat things to see within the castle. Worth it. When we left we just took the main road we discovered back into town. It was 3miles to the train station from the castle...ayiii. So all in all, at the end of the day, between walking to and from the train station in Edinburgh and then adventuring around North Berwick, we walked like 9 miles. Whoa, Nelly. My feet were killing me. It didn't help that I got a blister yesterday when we walked to another train station to see if we could find it without getting lost, thinking that was the one we'd be going out of, but it wasn't. Thankfully, the one we ended up going out of was not as far of a walk. =) But whose feet wouldn't hurt after that much walking?! It was great to get out of the city and just go exploring other parts of Scotland.

i danced. and liked it.

In fact, I'm obsessed. I'm not very good because, let's be honest, I've got horrendous rhythm. Throw multiple dance steps at me and things get wild. But I did it anyways even when I screwed it up terrifically. Tonight I ceilidh[pronounced kay-lee] danced and country danced. TWO HOURS. It was awesome! I'll post a video at the end of this of the ceilidh flash mob I mentioned a bit ago; the dance they are doing is one I learned tonight!
I'll probably end up joining the society and am definitely going to go to lessons again. Too much fun.
Today was actually a really good day. I've decided Thursdays are my favorite days. Really because I don't have Art History and have my bagpipe tutorial and don't have to wait till 4 to have class. haha Today, I was solo at my bagpipe tutorial so that was actually really nice. I improved so much and learned the first bar of "Amazing Grace"! Practicing is always awkward because the walls are so thin here so EVERYONE can hear when I play. That's probably why when I practiced this last week, it sounded so bad because I wasn't blowing loud enough. But now I know I have to put in a little more effort to make things actually sound how they're supposed to. Sorry in advance neighbors!
Welp, that's all I got for now. Happy almost weekend! Those of you who are in Indy, enjoy all the Super Bowl festivities! Those of you who aren't but still care about the Super Bowl, happy chips and queso/salsa nommin' at parties! =)