Hanging with my BFF Catherine Tate: March 2 - 8

Monday, March 2nd:

This week I realized that I was actually attending school and that ALL of my assignments are due at the end of the month. So I unfortunately spent most of the day doing that. The rest of the day was spent watching Friends. 

Tuesday, March 3rd:

Today was a really exciting day that I had been waiting for since the beginning of the semester. I was going to see the musical Assassins through my musical theatre class. Assassins is a musical about the people who’ve tried to assassinate the president. I was really excited about this show because it seemed both really fun and really dark. Plus Catherine Tate is it and she is literally like my favorite human.
 We went to Chipotle first which was so good, a little taste of home.
 The show was amazing! It was definitely really funny but also really dark in the best way. The entire cast was phenomenal, Catherine Tate (Sarah Jane Moore) was so funny, Michael Xavier (John Wilkes Booth) was also really good despite not being Aaron Tveit. I loved the setup of the show, the way they used a carnival to tell the story.  If Assassins is playing in the area, even without Catherine Tate, I highly recommend you see it. It’s such a good show.

 Wednesday, March 4th:

Normally after London Theatre we go to see a show but our show is scheduled for tomorrow so Cheryl, Danielle and I bought tickets to see Once which is a show I’d always wanted to see but hadn’t gotten around to.
 Once was beautiful, the show was amazing to see. It was a wonderful story and the music was fantastic. The acting was incredible and I definitely want to see it again sometime soon.

Thursday, March 5th: 

Today I had class at four where we talked about sponsorship and education in museums and galleries. It was really interesting to hear my professor’s views on sponsorship in galleries. Afterword, I had to go to a show for London Theatre.
 The show we saw was called Fiction, which was probably one of the coolest experiences of my life. The way the show was set up was that it was made to seem like you were going to a seminar but then the lights were turned out so the whole show was listened to through headphones. The story wasn’t anything particularly brilliant but the whole experience was incredible. It’s amazing what happens when you lose one of your senses.

Friday, March 6th: 

Lauren and I on Friday Night

I had class today from 10 – 11, came back and took a nap, and then went back to class from 3 – 6. Fridays are so exciting.

Saturday, March 7th:

This week I was his with the crippling reality of the fact that I actually still am in school and this isn’t a 6 month vacation.  So I spent the whole day working on essays for one of my classes that’s due at the end of the semester.

Sunday, March 8th: 

Because I didn’t do as much work as I wanted to yesterday, I spent most of the day working on my essays.

Am I Famous?!: February 23rd - March 1st

Monday, February 23rd:

I had to turn in an assignment today so I had to get up and turn it in. Afterwords I had made some plans with myself to do some things around town but I literally just stayed in bed all day watching Friends because I was still so tired from traveling home from Wales and working on stuff yesterday.

Tuesday, February 24th:

Today I went to class. Not super exciting, but next week we’re seeing Assassins so next week will be SUPER exciting.

Wednesday, February 25th:

Today was the day that I’ve been waiting for since December. Lauren and I were going to the Brit Awards! It was hard to concentrate on anything beforehand but I managed to get it done when Lern came I was so excited.

We got to the O2 at around 5! We could hear some people screaming from the red carpet, which we tried to scope out but there was a line of people and we figured we might not even get to it, and figured that we were seeing the show anyway so it wasn’t worth it. So, instead, we walked the peasant red carpet and took some great pictures before heading to five guys for dinner.

We got to the O2 so early there was a lot of time to kill before the doors opened so I went to the Game of Thrones exhibit which I was convinced you had to pay money for but, pleasant surprise, you didn’t! Lern and I had a blast walking around the exhibit and sitting on the iron throne (a true dream of mine). 

Before we knew it the doors were open so we rode the escalator up to our floor but the doors weren’t open yet. Instead, we were given some preshow entertainment from a very talented Tom Butler before finally the real doors were open.

The show was amazing! Taylor Swift was pretty good (compared to other performances though it wasn’t exceptional) if you want a good performance of hers: Blank Space at the AMA’s was literally incredible, also Brits 2013 was excellent.

Overall I thought the show was good and it was incredible

to watch the winners accept their awards! Ed Sheeran won twice, Taylor Swift won her first Brit, Mark Ronson was adorable when he accepted for Uptown Funk (literally the ultimate jam, I can’t stop playing it).The one place I thought that this award fell short was that they were far more understated than the blow out performances they usually have. They had Ed Sheeran, Sam Smith, George Ezra, and Paloma Faith who were outstanding performers but they have very simple productions. Paloma Faith’s was beautiful with the falling rain piece, but hers along with the other 3 required on pure vocals and background. Royal Blood’s set was cool too, but once again was cool because they had cool lights and background. Where
 were the huge productions like Katy Perry, One Direction, and the Arctic Monkeys? Also, The Brit awards are famous for putting together amazing combo performances and this year there weren’t any. They seemed to put too much faith in Madonna to carry the evening and it (pun intended) fell flat (get it? Because she fell?).

But, I feel like I’m being a little too critical. It was an amazing night! I loved it so much and I’m so excited that I got to go and all I want to do is come back next year (that’s a casual weekday trip from Des Moines, right?).

Thursday, February 26th:

Today I was thrown back into the school atmosphere with a trip to the Victoria and Albert museum to have a talk there with my entrepreneurship class. The V&A is a beautiful Museum! I definitely plan to go back and see more of it, especially because I could take a lot of inspiration from it for one of my papers due at the end of the month!

Friday, February 27th: 

I had early morning class today where we just had presentations all day so it was a nice break from real learning and was cool to see just how much everyone else had done on their projects.
 That night a couple people hung out with some people downstairs before heading out to a pub down the street, which might not have been the best idea because we had to leave New Cross at 8:30 in the morning tomorrow.

Saturday, February 28th:

Today we went to Oxford! Oxford is such a cool town and the way that their school is set up is AMAZING. I would love to go to a school like Oxford in the states, even though prob wouldn’t make it in, lol.
 Afterwords, we had lunch and did some shopping downtown. I bought these really cool vintage rail promo posters that are now proudly displayed in my room right next to my huge union jack flag. You all really should be here; it’s like a giant promo for the UK but also a dorm room. Crazy. 

Sunday, March 1st:

I woke up today to the sound of the fire alarm. What a beautiful wake up call, right? But I had to wake up close to then anyway because I attended London Fashion Week today! 

I didn’t spend that much time there because most of it was shopping for clothes that I couldn’t afford. But I did buy a cute handkerchief and found a new love for the designer Emma Shipley! Also, the interior designer Anna-Grace Davidson gave a talk which I attended, it was very interesting to hear what she had to say about interior design. I possess a secret love of interior design and after the talk all I wanted to do was buy a cute London apartment and design it for myself.

I was going to spend the rest of the day doing homework but I decided to give myself a break because the rest of the week was so action packed. 

London Fashion Week -- Somerset House

TWO-FER: February 9 - 22nd

Monday, February 9th:

After a couple of Mondays spent not doing anything outside of my flat I was determined to do something today. I made plans to go to H&M on Oxford Street and just walk around and explore the area. 

I left at like 1 and took the bus all to Hamley's Toy Store on Oxford Street which was a long (about 50 minutes) peaceful ride to the other side of the Thames. I walked to H&M first and spent time wandering around their store, I eventually bought a couple pairs of jeans. Afterwords, I walked around Oxford Street, doing more window shopping. 

As I continued to walk around, I found myself on Regent Street and right in front of the BBC building. As someone interested in radio and television production, the BBC is like holy ground for me. For a while I was working on an application to be an intern at Radio 1 and Radio 1Xtra but I had kind of lost hope, assuming it would be too hard to get or too hard to work if I did get it. But, as I walked around the building and semi-creepily peeked in the windows I regained the desire to work for them, so I'm still working on that application, it's due on Sunday. Wish me luck! 

When I came back, it was about dinner time. I had a hearty meal of pancakes before opening the application again and working on it through dinner. Normally, Lauren, Kitty, Cheryl and I go to quiz night on Mondays but I wasn't feeling up for the competition of quiz night so instead Lauren and I went to the O2 to see Big Hero 6 at the O2 cinema. Big Hero 6 was so good, it was hilarious and heartwarming and everything you would expect from a Disney movie and more. I definitely want a Baymax of my own now.

Tuesday, February 10th: 

Today I woke up and got ready for class, wishing for Mexican food, specifically Chipotle. When I arrived I learned that we were going to see a show tonight, with I had forgotten about until I got there! Which means that I was getting Chipotle! 

During class we talked more about the mega-musicals, specifically Les Miserables and Phantom of the Opera. As a part of our class we watch videos of scenes of shows and musical numbers and after seeing a few from Les Miserables I've made it my goal to see the show while I'm here. 

Soon after, the four of us left to see The Scottsboro Boys at the Young Vic. I enjoyed the show, but not quite as much as Miss Saigon. But, it was interesting to see how the Londoners depicted  

Wednesday, February 11th: 

I went to class today where we talked about The Islands. Afterwords, we went to the play You Are Not Alone which was about loneliness in the 21st century. It was very interesting and entertaining. 

Thursday, February 12th: 

Went to class again. Today we were in the classroom discussing marketing and branding--my favorite things. This was one of my favorite lectures. It was cool to discuss the ways that museums market their exhibits.

Friday, February 13th: 

Friday has slowly changed from my favorite to my least favorite day of the week. I don’t like getting up at 10 am for class (I know I live such a hard life), but, like, 10 am class on Friday is a sin I swear. 

So after class I have a 4-hour break that I normally use to sit in my bed and watch Netflix and try not to nap, I usually nap anyway, before heading back to the lab I have at 3. 

The lab also frustrates me because it’s solely time to work on a group project that we normally do for the first two and a half hours and spend the last thirty minutes staring at our phones and waiting for class to end. I just feel like there could be a much more effective use of my time that didn’t require me to have class until 6 on Fridays. 

Anyway, after class I was really excited because Lauren, Carolina and I had tickets to go to this masquerade ball that was a mix between Friday the 13^th and Valentines Day themed. Lauren and I were joking that some part of the universe really didn’t want us to go to this ball because we had problems buying our tickets, printing them out, and getting on the bus to get there but we were determined to make it work. 

The only thing I can say about the Dark Side of Love Masquerade is that it was an experience. Overall, I’m glad I went but I definitely didn’t have the best time while I was there. It was really weird, they had strange string music that I can’t imagine dancing to, most people were in corsets or lingerie and were really drunk. They tempted us with food and the food was good but only bite sized and was fed to us by gold painted people (yeah I know right­), the venue was cold and drinks were expensive. Not my scene. So, we came back at like 1:30 and hung out in the kitchen for a while, we ended up going to bed at like 3 am which wasn’t the best idea because we had a CIEE excursion to Windsor Castle that we had to leave Goldsmiths at 9 for.

Saturday, February 14^th:

So when my alarm went off at 8 am you can imagine how I was feeling. I had planned to look nice but decided against that in the morning so I could get another precious half hour of sleep but at 8:30 it was still so hard to get up. Eventually I made it work and dragged myself out of bed and Cheryl, Lauren, Kitty and I made our way to Waterloo rail to meet up with the rest of the group. 

 

Windsor Castle was beautiful! We walked around the grounds, went on a tour of the state apartments, saw a massive doll house that’s probably worth more than like everything I’ve ever seen and had a fantastic time. One thing that struck me though is the sheer amount of wealth the royal family has here. Like before the state apartments they have sets of china on display that are gold and jewel encrusted that have only been used once, and there are at least fifty sets of china on display. Just imagining that amount of wealth blows my mind. We started calling the Queen “Grandma” which I’m sure isn’t at all offensive to the Brits, and found out that she does occasional “dine and sleeps” where she literally hosts sleepovers at Windsor Castle and my new goal in life is to be invited to one. 

After exploring Windsor we went to have lunch at an Irish Pub that was pretty good, and pretty cheap. We looked around at some of the shops near the train station before it started to rain and we decided it was time to head back. On the way back we talked about how much fun it would be to bake and Cheryl said that she had cupcake ingredients so we recouped before Cheryl and Kitty came back to our flat to do some baking. I only had about an hour and a half before I had to leave for All Time Low and You Me at Six at the O2 so I offered moral support for a while before heading out, thinking that I left myself plenty of time. 

I waited at the New Cross Gate stop for the 177 to Greenwich for 30 minutes I swear which is ridiculous because the buses normally run every 10 minutes and it was so sad to watch multiple 21s or 171s drive by and have to think to yourself that you can’t just get on those. 

But, I got to the O2 eventually and it was glorious. I ended up missing Walk the Moon which is fine because I’m not that big of a fan anyway. All Time Low played first and it was wonderful, the lighting, stage design, pyro, everything was outstanding. I loved every minute of it. You Me at Six played after and it was so funny to see how much the crowd increased which is the opposite of what happens in the states because they just don’t have as many fans in the states yet. They also played a fantastic set. I was amazed by the whole production. Literally no flaws.

Sunday, February 15^th:

I woke up this morning so sore from the day before and probably still from that ball that any sort of anything seemed totally out of the question. But, I had to do work before I went to Wales on Wednesday so I dragged myself out of bed and forced myself to start my entrepreneurship forward plan, which I spent the whole day “researching” but didn’t actually get that much done.

Monday, February 16^th:

Today I spent most of the day working on all my assignments before I left for Wales on Wednesday. 

At 8:30 the squad walked to New Cross Inn for quiz night. There was significantly less amount of people there than usual but the squad still didn’t manage to make it to the top 3but we still had a lot of fun anyway. 

Tuesday, February 17^th: 

Today was PANCAKE DAY!!! Aka the best holiday to ever exist (and it’s a real thing in the UK like it isn’t just IHOP it’s so beautiful. Lauren, Cheryl and I woke up early to meet Carolina and Katey and take the train to Shoreditch to eat breakfast at The Breakfast Club. I had American pancakes with berries and streaky bacon and it reminded me so much of home. It was so beautiful I will cherish it forever. 

After pancakes, we walked around Shoreditch for a while before pancake races started at noon. It was so much fun to watch the teams in costumes run relays with pancakes. 

When Cheryl, Lauren and I came back we were starving for guacamole (I’m always starving for guac) so we made plans to meet back before dinner and make some guacamole, which was excellent! 

Then, I packed for Wales!

Wednesday, February 18th: 

I woke up at 10 in order to get ready to leave and make my train at 12:15. I was so excited to head to Paddington and then to Cardiff to spend the rest of the week with Lauren. My train ride was pretty painless and quick. I finished most of the essay due on Monday on the train. 

supporting Ross during 6 nations 

Once I got to Cardiff, Lern and I had lunch/dinner at Wahaca, I had a burrito which wasn't as good as the tacos I had in London, but the chips and salsa were excellent as usual. We walked back to Lern's flat, which is a lot farther of a walk then I was used to. Props to her for walking that far when she goes to city centre. We started planning our spring vacation before heading out to Tesco to get stuff for dinner.  

Thursday, February 19th: 

Today I was supposed to meet Lern before we went down to city centre for shopping at about 1. I woke up at 1:25 so in typical Shelbie fashion I got ready in about 8 minutes and before finding my way to the student union. I managed to make it there without losing my way. 

We headed down to city centre to look for dresses to wear for the Brits! After a couple of stops at different stores both Lern and I found dresses at a store called New Look. We walked around city centre before heading to a pub for a Harry Potter society meeting


that Lern's a part of. The meeting was so much fun! We played a lot of really cool games. My favorite was Just A Minute where we had to talk about a topic for a whole minute without any repeats, hesitations, or deviations.  

Friday, February 20th:

Poem: "in these stones horizons sing"

This morning I was prepared to spend the finishing up my essay and waiting for Lern to get done with class at 5. But was happily surprised when she texted me saying that two of her classes were cancelled so I met her at the student union and we walked down to Cardiff bay. It was so much fun to see the ocean and explore that area. I saw some Dr. Who stuff I didn't understand and we watched these adorable kids work on their own houses in this neighborhood project for charity. 

We continued to walk around the bay and look at the shops. Lern bought some welshcakes before we sat down to dinner. I had a BLT which was excellent, and then we walked back to her room. When we got back to her dorm we decided to lock down the first part of our spring break trip. We had already made plans to meet Sydney in Rome so we wanted to book up to then. We ended up booking half our trip, Marseille, Rome, and Budapest. We had so much fun looking up places to stay and booking flights and now I'm so excited to explore parts of Europe that I might never get to see again. Booking this trip made the fact that I'm actually living in Europe for half the year.  

Saturday, February 21st: 

This morning Lern, Alyssa and I walked to Cardiff Castle and explored the grounds. There were a bunch of cool rooms each with a different theme. My favorite was the rooftop garden where the owners used to grow food and have parties. The whole castle was amazing and I loved how they also had an exhibit of the wartime shelters in the castle walls so you could see how the castle was used during the Blitz's of World War Two. 

We spent a long time in the castle, but we got hungry for lunch after a while so we ate downtown and walked down to a street fair. We had some street fair cupcakes that were amazing. After we got back to our flat we had a little bit of time before we had to turn around and walk back to city centre so I could catch the train back to Paddington.

Sunday, February 22nd:

I spent today looking over my forward plan and making sure that it's good enough to turn it and recovering from the weekend in Cardiff.

My Arms Hurt: February 2 - 8

Monday, February 2nd: 

I normally like to spend Mondays getting out and exploring London, but, after getting back from Scotland I was so tired that I wanted to sleep for about two more weeks that I just didn't feel ready to get out and explore. 

Instead, I spent the day catching up on the homework that I missed on Friday. Exciting stuff, I know. Living the high life in London. After dinner, the squad, Lauren, Cheryl, Kitty, Tanner, and I went to quiz night at New Cross Inn. Once again, the team was doing really well until the song category came up. We ended up being 6th to last, I think we got about 7th place. It was such a fun night, I love going to quiz night, one day we'll win. After quiz night, we were all feeling really hungry and wanted Dominos so Lauren, Tanner and I walked there only to realize they were closed. Such a disappointment.

Tuesday, February 3rd: 

Today was a weird day because I remembered that I actually had to go to class. Going to Scotland made this trip seem more like an extended vacation so having to go back to class was a really weird experience. But, nonetheless it was fun to go back and talk about Miss Saigon after we had seen it among other musicals. Now we are starting to get into the ones that I know more so I'm finding the class to be a little more relatable than it was before. Not that it wasn't to start out with because I've heard of everything we've talked about but we are getting into more of music that I've heard or shows I know the plot to, etc. etc.

Wednesday, February 4th:

On Wednesdays I don't have class until 4:30 so it's easy for me to get out and do things in the morning. So I took the bus to Deptford High Street to get some cleaning supplies at Poundland. I'll tell you, having your own space is a glamorous life, especially when you get to clean your own bathroom. When I got back I had just enough time to run to Sainsburys to get some groceries for a quick dinner before class. 

In London Theatre we talked about the show we saw last week, Peeping Tom, and honestly I didn't understand anything about that show so I wasn't very active in the discussion. But, afterwords I had a lot to think about on the way to our next show, Islands. Islands was a play about the rich people who get away with paying taxes by putting their money in offshore tax havens. This was shown very well in this play and I really enjoyed it, even if at points I felt uncomfortable or the show felt over the top. 

Thursday, February 5th:

 I woke up a little early today to get ready for my entrepreneurship class at the Tate Modern. Lauren and I got on the train a little early so we had time to stop for lunch and walk through a really pretty part of town with a market that I definitely want to go back to. Class was alright but once again we go right up until the museum closes so we don't actually get to look at any of the art. 

Afterwords Lauren, Tanner, and I ordered Dominos and it was excellent. 10/10, would recommend.

Friday, February 6th: 

I have class pretty much all day on Fridays, and after missing last Friday I definitely had to go and learn some coding. Overall it was a pretty uneventful day. Went to class, took a nap, went back to class. So exciting.

Saturday, February 7th: 

Today Lauren and I woke up a little early (12:00, super early right) because we had booked a taster session at a rock climbing wall in Mile End at 2. It was so fun and so tiring. My arms still hurt from it. It's definitely a workout but still extremely fun. I'm looking at maybe buying a monthly membership and trying to go to the rock wall as much as possible.

Afterwords, Lern got in from her day at Stonehenge so I met her at the underground stop near Goldsmiths and we went to dinner with Lauren and Tanner at the Big Red Pizzeria, which was good, but not quite as excellent as I remembered. When we got back from dinner Lern and I watched Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist as a part of my attempt to watch 365 movies in 365 days, a challenge I stole from one of my friends here. The movie was pretty good, I enjoyed it for the post part.

Sunday, February 8th:

Lern had most of the day here but she had to leave for Cardiff again at 6 so we didn't have an infinite amount of time for activities. I made pancakes for everyone in the morning (I make pancakes every morning, it isn't that much of a feat) before Lern, Lauren and I headed out to the British Museum. The British Museum was really cool! They had a lot of interesting exhibits featuring mummies and vikings and money and clocks (oh my!) and it was fun to walk around the building. I saw the Rosetta Stone in real life which was so cool to look at seeing as it was the way that we learned how to read hieroglyphs. Lauren and I got masks for a Masquerade Ball we are (hopefully) going to later. For dinner, we came back to New Cross to eat at New Cross House. I had wings and chips which were excellent. Then I watched another Netflix movie and went to bed.

          

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!