The Loch

I am back from Scotland and have a very eventful weekend to update with!

On Thursday, I took the train to Oxford and went to see a play with Hiroki that his friend was in. There was this old guy who was in the play and had a coughing fit during a song and it was the most hysterical thing I've ever seen. I was silently laughing through my scarf and I could feel my body shaking profusely from the laughter. Then I got a nice elbow from Hiroki as he turned to me and said, "he looks like he's about to die", and I completely lost it and put my whole face in the scarf for the rest of the act.

Friday we took the train to Scotland. It was long but I slept a lot so it didn't really matter. I swear I can sleep anywhere now. It's like I'm epileptic or something. Anyway, we got to Edinburgh (pronounced, Edinborough) and got this walking tour from a man with a kilt. He told us a bunch of Scottish history and took us around the town. It was nice but it was raining so it was slightly miserable; but since I live in Wales I bring an umbrella everywhere so I was ready for action! (Speaking of which, I need to get another umbrella...)

After going lots of places in the city and hearing crazy stories, (like once story about this building that had rusty nails in the wall because people used to get their ears nailed to it and they had to rip them off), we were on our own for dinner. We went to this place called Frankenstein's and it was this cool restaruant and of course, I had a burger. It was delish. We also visited the cafe where J.K. Rowling began writing Harry Potter. After this, we ended up going to see some local music, (this guy played cool cover songs and he covered the Killers, the Kinks, and some other songs), we hit up the hostel and went to bed. The hostel was really quaint and we had beds that were named after Happy Days and I was in the Richie bed. Brianne was in the Fonzie bed. That was Friday.

Saturday we were off to basically the whole Scottish countryside. We travelled via bus and saw canyons, valleys (which are called Glens in Scotland), and castles. For lunch we ventured to Loch Ness and my friend Monica ended up feeding swans that ended up walking after her. We all put our feet in the Loch and it was super cold. Loch means Lake in Gaelic but Lake doesn't mean Loch. It's weird. Our tour guide said Loch over 50 times that day. And the day before, he said Edinburgh (he said it like, EdinBRA!) a gazillion times and it made me chuckle.

Ending up in the quaint city of Oban, on the western Scotland coast, we had dinner and stayed overnight. We saw some local music but other than that it was a small town with virtually not much to do.

Sunday we saw some more Castles, St. Conan's Kirk, The Ivernary Castle, and some more stuff that I can't remember. I fell asleep on the bus everytime we got on and off. We also went to Stirling and saw the William Wallace monument. It took awhile to walk up to it but it was nice and you got to see the whole town of Stirling which was really nice.

After Stirling it was time to go home. We headed on the train and someone I got walked in on by two guys in the bathroom because even though the door was locked it still was able to be opened. I was so embarassed because both times I had no pants OR underwear on so basically I flashed these two people. My face was so red and the worst part was one of them was sitting directly in front of me on the whole 5 hour train ride. Sigh.

I also ended up navigating this old Asian man at the train station because he had no idea what was going on because he didn't know ANY English. Somehow I got stuck with an Asian invasion and it was hilarious.

That was Scotland. Here are some pictures.