Hiking in the Highlands

Mark and I set off with his friends Alex and Tiff for the long journey up to the Scottish Highlands- the others in the group picked up the 4x4, something we did not at first realize how necessary it would be! After a very rainy drive we eventually ended up in the most picturesque place I’ve ever been and definitely the most isolated place I’ve ever been. Nestled between rolling hills and impressive mountains sat our cozy cottage for the week. The sunny days of France seemed far away as we experienced our fair share of rain for the week, but it was a fun adventure nonetheless. We took turns cooking dinners for the group of 9 (something I was a bit nervous about- but managed with veggie tacos/rice and pasta/lemon chicken/bruschetta), and spent our time either out exploring or indoors during the rain playing a number of board games (including the always popular dominoes and bananagrams, charades, and a number of card games).

The first full day there we ventured out to the nearby ruins, saw some deer skeletons, and marveled at our surrounding before getting thwarted by showers. One of the most memorable adventures for me was when Mark, Alex and I spent the whole day hiking up to a beautiful loch nestled just below the peak of a 1000 meter mountain. It was a day of exhausting hiking, but the loch was beautiful (no signs of Nessie though). We considered climbing the rest of the way to the top, but the weather turned into unpleasant gusts and hail and the lack of lunch made us return home. The hike back down was quite exhausting and slippery, so we were really excited to get back home to our cottage. Mark ended up going back out the next day with a couple of other people and hiking up to the top of the peaks in better weather, so he got some nice shots. We finished off the trip with another long walk exploring the area surrounding our cottage in which Mark attempted mating calls with a cookoo bird.. an interesting experience for sure. As we packed up the car Friday morning, it was such a nice day that our car group went to a nice surrounding town (over some crazy-tall mountains) called Applecross. An interesting population inhabits the town of Applecross (inhabits may be an overstatement- I don’t think the local population is more than a few houses)- bikers and the elderly… and sheep of course. We went for a nice stroll by the sea and through the woods , waving to the passing bikers and elderly (sometimes a combo- elderly bikers… in leather… a shocking sight to be sure) and ended the trip with a delicious pub lunch overlooking the water. A very fun trip, but unfortunately I am back to intense working  on essays for the next couple of days; but then I’m heading off to Northern Ireland for a couple of weeks! A week of seclusion and I returned to 44 e-mails (a number of which were from my parents who I am pretty sure were flying the five helicopters we saw as we drove away from the highlands on a search mission for their long lost daughter), and no, mother- we did not elope. Here are just a few of the 600+ pics mark took during the week



that is our cottage we stayed at



ignore the watermarks...I had to convert two of these files

Merci!

That about sums up my extensive knowledge of the French language. Even this word proved difficult during my brief trip to France as I kept wanting to relive my Cortona days and say 'grazie!' Alas, despite my lack of knowledge of the French languge, there is one thing about the French culture that I have fully embraced, the food, thanks to my devout tour guide, Lauren (Man of Osch). Following a few weeks spent in the St. Andrews library and a quick trip down to London to run a group project, I was off to France for a week to visit my friend Lauren, relax, explore, and of course, eat.

Upon my arrival in France I had to take a taxi and a bus to Rennes (pronounced 'Ren'... yeah, the French add a lot of extra letters). Luckily, after awkwardly trying to make eye contact with a taxi driver and ascertain if he spoke English, I found out that he did, and I was off to Rennes. As we were approaching the bus stop, there was a bus preparing to depart. Before I could stop him, my taxi driver swirved in front of the bus to block it in case it was my bus. It was a gallant effort, but was not in fact my bus, causing an angry look or two from the bus driver.

On Friday, we explored Rennes, beginning with sitting at a cafe enjoying coffee and pain au chocolat, followed by lunch of a falafel wrap at a Lebanese restaurant, AMAZING caramel ice cream outside, and vegetable crepes and cider... oh yeah and there was some strolling, exploring, and visiting kitchen shops (they LOVE kitschy kitchen shops there!)  between all of that eating.

Saturday morning we ventured out early for the market in Rennes, the 2nd largest market in France, and bought all of the essentials for a French picnic in the park: baguette, cheeses, sausage, wine, caramel muffins (SO GOOD), and fresh strawberries. We headed to the park where we walked through a gorgeous rose garden and spent the afternoon relaxing and enjoying our picnic- though it was at this point that I made the unfortunate realization that I am allergic to France.

my lovely tour guide, Lauren

The next day, we headed off to San Malo, a beautiful beach town (I'll let the pictures do the talking for this one). The amazing part about this town is that when we arrived the water almost reached the town walls, with a fortress and tomb appearing to be islands; by the afternoon, the tide had gone out revealing a pathway to the islands. We enjoyed a chilly lunch on the rocky beach, walks around town, some delicious sugary crepes, and witnessed a lot of French loving on the beach- let's just say those Charleston southern belles sipping on their sweet tea would be mighty shocked if this was going down on the South Carolina beaches!

We then headed to Vitre, a cute town where Pierre-Antoine (Lauren's boyfriend) is from to help another friend of Lauren's move out. Her family took us to a nice Indian restaurant for lunch (a confusing experience figuring out how to order Indian food in French) and we wandered around town and visited the chateau.

The rest of my visit involved exploring more of Rennes, eating some more (galette saucisse- sausage wrapped in a wheat crepe), Tibetan food, fruity drinks at the Funky Monkey, shopping, and visiting the chatteau in Nantes.

So, the metro, train, bus, plane, another plane, bus, train, and bus, and I was back in St. Andrews for a day to repack for slightly different temperatures and activities for a week in the Highlands with Mark's friends.

Homeless

Well, lately I have felt a little too settled to merit my nomadic blog posting, so I have decided to resolve that issue by becoming homeless. I should have taken a picture of me moving out of my dorm and carrying all of my belongings up to Scotland; indeed it was a sight to see and an episode I have no desire to repeat anytime soon. As many of you know, I am heading back to Greenville, South Carolina in July to run my final project for my course. In order to avoid paying for my room in London until September, I had to find someone to fill my spot. I was very lucky to find someone, though she needed to move in a little sooner than anticipated (hence the homelessness). I was sad to say goodbye to everyone in London and finish my internship, but excited for new travel adventures! Luckily, Mark and his roommate protected me from a life on the streets and have let me stay here for a couple weeks! I will be based up in Scotland for the next couple of weeks (specifically the mustard coloured carpeted library, which makes an appearance on this you-tube video about the royal wedding- set in st. andrews-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAlnM7RUDcA&feature=player_embedded ) finishing up a lot of coursework to be mailed off to London. I also have to return to London for a day to complete a group project. Once I figure out what day I have to do that, I am booking a flight to Rennes, France to visit my friend Lauren for a few days! I am very excited to get another stamp on my passport, see a Furman friend, and have some fun French adventures! At the end of the month, Mark and I are going on a trip as well up to the Scottish Highlands with some of his friends from St. Andrews. Shortly after that, we are returning to Belfast for a relaxing two weeks in Northern Ireland with Mark's family!

Now, unfortunately my big blog update has been overshadowed a little bit by the whole finding Osama Bin Laden thing.... but, remember the Royal Wedding? A lot of people have asked me how I celebrated, and I must say that I am glad that I did not have to wake up at the crack of dawn to watch like at home (though my mother did say she made tea and scones, so that would have been nice :) ). As you can imagine, I had really close-up seats to the action...

ok so maybe not that close... and actually I was not in London for the big event. I was up in St. Andrews (aka the birthplace of the royal love) and the whole town was decked out for the occasion. Shop windows had congratulations displays and by far the best one was a giant portrait made out of jelly beans of the couple! Here is the masterpiece!

It was a fun day to be in St. Andrews! We watched most of the wedding from the library and then went to the quad to see the final kiss on the big screen. When the jets did a fly-over Buckingham Palace, we were very surprised when a perfectly co-ordinated jet flew over the screen in St. Andrews. Definitely a celebration to remember!

Since the big wedding, I have spent most of my time here in the library working on these essays, so nothing too exciting to post, but hopefully my upcoming travels will be relaxing after all of this course work is done!

Quite a Busy Time!

That is my random trivia for the day; the English say the word ‘quite’ quite a lot. In an average day I cannot even tell you how many times I’ve heard the word quite… and how did I come to this observation? I’ve realized that when I am talking to people I’ve started to use the word ‘quite’ a lot more. It’s as if we cannot commit to a definite feeling- it’s either quite sunny or quite cloudy, she seemed quite nice, I was quite hungry, he was quite distant, this food is quite nice….. and sometimes when you think, there is no possible way the word ‘quite’ could fit into this sentence, it has quite a way of sneaking in between quite a lot of words! Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a problem with the word ‘quite,’ I just think it was quite an interesting observation that I have made about my life here in England.

So the past few weeks have been super busy but at least the weather here in London has been amazing!! Sunny days for a week and a half- it’s amazing how many people were out and about and in the parks. As one person in my programme told me, his friends used to joke that all of the pretty girls in London are ‘solar powered’ – that all of a sudden they emerge when it is sunny out. It does seems as if Spring has happened overnight, and I am definitely not complaining. I had my intensive week for my course, which I was dreading, but it actually turned out to be not so bad and my group worked really well together so there was no major ‘intensive week’ drama for us. The whole week is about working in small groups to devise a workshop to deliver, and so I can definitely see how if personalities clashed it could indeed be a very intensive experience. It was exhausting, but luckily there were sunny skies and we worked outside a lot (now mind you, it was still in the 60’s Fahrenheit, but people were lathering up on sunscreen and saying how they didn’t know how anyone could function in this heat… I recommended that they didn’t consider moving to South Carolina). The other thing that kept my intensive week from being so ‘intensive’ was that Mark came to visit! He had to work on his dissertation so no doubt my room was filled with the sounds of seal calls all day while I was out but it made such a difference to have him to come home to after my intensive week. He did manage to clear out my fridge, but I loved having him here. J

This is going to be an especially long blog post as I had another group of visitors arrive on Sunday for a whirlwind visit to London- my parents and the shrimp! I never realized how exhausting being a tourist can be! I also have a newfound respect for Margaret and her itineraries- it’s hard work! We hit almost all of the heavy hitters in London and I think I wore my family (and Mark and I!) out with all of the walking across London. In a span of Sunday to Thursday we managed to… visit Kensington gardens and Kensington palace, explore the Natural History Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum and the Science Museum (these three were while I was at work), have fish and chips at a local dive, visit Covent Garden, walk around all of London in a search for food, eat an English breakfast, see the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace (way too many people!), wander through St. James’s Park, see the main attractions in Westminster (including all the set-up for the Royal wedding), take the Thames clipper along the river to Greenwich, visit the (closed- itinerary fail  L ) Greenwich Market, see the National Maritime Museum,  visit Greenwich Park and the view from the Royal Observatory, see Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square (and visit the Waterstone’s book store), visit Notting Hill and eat Hummingbird cupcakes in the Portobello Road Market, visit the British Museum, the National Gallery and of course, marvel at Harrod’s  department store, and finally round out the trip with a trip to the amazing Windsor castle.  And that incredibly long run-on sentence is about how exhausting the week was, but lots of fun! Here are some picture I swiped from the Shrimp of the visit!  No signs of royalty or celebrities (other then when I almost literally ran into my c-list celebrity neighbor) but a successful trip… now as the city prepares for the Royal Wedding of the century, I’ll have to decide how to celebrate…

Shrimp and I breaking in to Kensington Palace

Kensington and blue skies!

Spring!

Family's hotel

My mum likes all of these floewers on the railings

Looking for somewhere to eat... and talking to mark on the phone

Natural History Museum

V&A

We happened across the changing of the guards at Buckingham- too many tourists!



Shrimp and I at Buckingham



The girls

St. James's Park

My mum with daisies in her hair

Shrimp enjoying London

Westminster Abbey... where the Royal Wedding will unfold

On the Thamesclipper along the river

Passing by the Tower of London

Passing under the bridge

National Maritime Museum in Greenwich

Royal Naval College

Christmas card...Mark is a bit taller than us though

Much better! Sorry for leaving you out of the Christmas card, Joey

the 'rents

Greenwich park and view from the observatory

Imagining life as a tall person

Notting Hill

British museum

The shrimp wanted to show the scale of this fist, hence my fist

Rosetta Stone

Mummies in the Brtish Museum

Guy playing a flaming Tuba in Trafalgar Square after visiting the National Gallery

Amazing doll house in Harrod's that we wanted... that is until we saw the even more amazing one in Windsor castle!

Windsor Castle!!

My parents a little unsure of where we were leading them...

Ta da!

crooked restaurant

And there you have it, quite a nice visit! The next couple of months for me will be very busy as I am moving out of my halls here and heading up to Scotland and Northern Ireland for a little bit with Mark, hopefully squeezing in a trip to France to see my friend Lauren, going to the graduation ball with Mark, and heading back to South Carolina at the end of June to do my final project for my course... and doing a lot of work between now and then... yikes!