London ➞ Edinburgh: January 26 - February 1

Hi everyone! Sorry for the late post. I'm still recovering from getting no sleep in Scotland but I felt if I waited to post this another day I wouldn't ever do it so here it is!

Monday, January 26th: 

I didn't really do anything today, which is a little bit of a disappointment because I usually spend Mondays exploring the city. But, instead I stayed in and worked on some homework and my CV and researched switching from a student visitor visa to a tier 4 student visa. After dinner, Lauren and I went down to New Cross Inn, a pub close to campus, to participate in Quiz Night that they have every Monday. We were doing pretty well until they played a round where you had to name the title and artist of a song from a 10 second clip and then we moved down the rankings significantly. One of us brought up wanting pizza so we ordered Dominos at like 10:30 which was an excellent decision. I ate pizza in bed at 11 o'clock and it was amazing.

Tuesday, January 27th:

I spent the morning catching up on homework (nerd alert!!) before heading to my British and American Musical Theatre class. Today we talked about concept albums that were turned into musicals which I enjoyed. What I like most about the class is that we watch clips of songs or parts of shows/movies and discuss them afterwords, it's a good way to break up the lecture from just being talked at.

Afterwords, we got tickets from our class to see the show Miss Saigon which I was extremely excited about. We got to leave class a little early so our class had dinner at Chipotle (the promised land) before the show. I couldn't wait to see the show after I had seen a preview of it when Lauren and I saw Into The Woods at Greenwich Picturehouse last week. It looked like such an amazing show and I was not disappointed. The staging and performers were amazing and I loved the story. All I wanted in my entire life was for Kim and Chris to end up together. My favorite part was the immigration scene with the helicopter OMG IT WAS SO INTENSE. If you are in London looking for something to see on the West End that isn't, like, Wicked or Les Mis I would highly recommend Miss Saigon. 10/10, A+. 

Wednesday, January 28th: 

After the amazing show yesterday I was excited to see how the show we see for London Theatre would compare. This class is interesting because we see more fringe theatre it's less commercial and usually a little more avant garde than I was expecting when I signed up for the class (and when I say usually I don't really know what I'm talking about because this is the third show we've seen). We spent the class period discussing the show we saw last week, The Chronicles of Kalki, and when we finished discussing I ended up liking the show a lot less than when I started the discussion, which kind of stinks but I think that I understood parts of the show that I just kind of relaxed through the first time.

After the show we went to the Barbican Theatre to see a show called Peeping Tom. Our professor basically set it up as "you might not like this, it's kind of out there" so I didn't have that high of hopes. Overall, the show was really weird and confusing and I didn't know what was happening most of the time. I felt like I needed someone sitting next to me telling me "ok now they are doing this which represents this" in order to know what was going on. Overall, I didn't really like it, wouldn't recommend. 

Thursday, January 29th: 

Today I woke up and pretty much stayed in bed before Lauren and I had to leave for Cultural Entrepreneurship class at Tate Britain. It's an exciting life here in London. We went to class and talked to the head of Visitor Experience which was interesting. I wish we had gotten more time to walk around the exhibit because by the time we finished class the museum was closed and so we just went back home. 

Fun story though, we went to the Victoria station in order to take the national rail home to New Cross Gate, but we got there so late that the train was about to leave and Lauren got on the train but then the doors closed before I could get on so I was abandoned at Victoria station and had to wait for the next London Bridge train, which wasn't for another 30 mins. So moral of the story is don't try and beat the train because one of your friends will be left behind. After I (finally) got back to Goldsmiths I had dinner and then started packing because I spent the weekend in SCOTLAND!

Friday, January 30th: 

I'll still tell you what happened each day, but, I filmed a video chronicling the weekend which is this:

I woke up this morning at the ungodly hour of 7 am because we had to take the tube into Kings Cross and be there by 9:15 which means we had to leave at about 8 due to the fact that we were leaving at rush hour. When we got everyone down to New Cross Gate and the London Bridge train came Lauren and I forced ourselves on it hoping to not repeat the incident that happened yesterday but, in the process, we left the rest of the squad behind (oops). The underground to Kings Cross wasn't terrible, I felt bad though because my backpack was so full it could have literally been used as a weapon (and probably accidentally pushed a couple people

over) so trying to allow people onto the underground when you were taking up the space of two people was awkward, but we got there. 

Our train left for Edinburgh at 10:00 and we got there with plenty of time to get some food and prepare for the 4 hour ride north before we boarded. The train was really nice and the ride was beautiful, I think it really made me realize that I was spending time in another country because we passed over rivers and cute towns and farmland and saw the sea and everything was beautiful. 

Once we got to Edinburgh the first thing I realized was that it was A LOT colder than London is. I was shivering with my hat and mittens, I was having war flashbacks to the Minnesota weather. Soon, we were on our way to our Hostel. Now, when they tell you Edinburgh is a walkable city, they mean for those used to climbing mountains, not for someone who's farthest walk is a flat walk across the street to the tube station. The trek from Edinburgh Waverly station is basically a long incline up windy paths and by the time we got to the top I could literally taste blood. It definitely made me appreciate the 4 flights of stairs I have to my flat. 

selfie @ edinburgh castle

After we checked in to the Castle Rock Hostel we had some free time to explore so some of the squad walked up to Edinburgh Castle. I love the fact that they have castles here because that isn't something we have in America so basically any time I see something about castle I'm like foaming at the mouth excited. I was not excited when I realized that we had to pay to explore the castle, but I was informed that we were getting tickets tomorrow which made me excited. Then we walked down to St. Giles Cathedral which was beautiful and one of the only churches in Edinburgh that hadn't been converted into a restaurant which I think is funny. 

hot chocolate @ elephant house

We continued our walk and stumbled across The Elephant House, which is where JK Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter book. Obviously as president of the Harry Potter club it was necessary to go and get something there. I got a marshmallow hot chocolate and it was divine. If I could marry a drink I probably would've married that hot chocolate. 

We headed out to dinner at about 5 at a traditional Scottish restaurant and wine bar. I tried haggis and despite trying to keep an open mind about it I just couldn't eat it. Plus I wasn't a fan of the texture. For dinner I had a burger which I wasn't a fan of either. But the chocolate torte I had for dessert was very good. 

Later everyone was excited to get out and explore Scotland so we walked around and found a club we were looking at online called Liquid Room which was SO FUN. One of the things I'm not a fan of here in London is that the clubs play all electronic/techno music with all beats and no top 40 white girl music, like I don't know about you but I like to sing along when I dance and that can't happen if there are no words. But, Liquid Room played all my faves including Taylor Swift and Fancy and Ignition and it was excellent. 

After I got back to the room I was feeling less than excellent though because my room had 12 people in it which made it literally the temperature of the sun. I sat in bed sweating so much and I couldn't sleep because I just felt so gross, it was not nearly as fun. 

Saturday, January 31st: 

We had a walking tour scheduled for 10 am so I got up at like 9 with pretty much everyone else in our room and got some breakfast before heading out. The tour guide was informative but he talked so much and it was cold and we just kept walking downhill and I kept thinking about walking back up. In the video above you can see exactly how far away we were from Edinburgh Castle and then we walked back up to it and I think by the end I had walked a marathon. 

After the tour we had the rest of the day free so we went to Nando's were I had a chicken sandwich on pita bread which was great but I was tired and everyone was tired so we went back to the hostel to take a nap before dinner. The squad ate at Greyfriar's Bobby which was named after a dog that after it's owner died used to come and eat where they used to eat lunch together and sleep on it's owners grave which is the saddest story I've ever heard. I had a stake that was cooked through and wasn't that great. 

Afterwords we had made plans to on a pub crawl but apparently the pub crawl they were advertising in the hostel hadn't been going on for a couple years so instead we had squad bonding at a local pub before we came back and played heads up before going to bed where, once again, it was literally what it must feel like to burn in hell.

Sunday, February 1st:

Today was almost completely a travel day. We got back at like 5 and then some of the squad went to Whole Foods and then Tesco to get food for dinner which we ate together before I went to bed super early. I was hoping to stay up for the Superbowl but that was definitely not happening because I was so exhausted from being out and about all weekend.

4/5 of the squad @ edinburgh castle

Throughout the weekend I fell in love with Edinburgh and even grew to not despise the stairs (even though I'm still sore from walking so much) and I can't wait to go back hopefully very very soon. I hope you all had an outstanding week and I'll be back posting at the regular time next week!