Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Londres, part two

After Scotland, we took a short ride down to London and stayed with Kels for a few days before heading back to Granada.

(Parliament and Big Ben)

(London Eye)

(trafalgar square)

(Christmas tree donated by Norway in trafalgar square)

St. James Park

(Buckingham Palace)

(MI6, where Bond works)

London was really cool as well. It was great to get to explore more of the city and have Kelsey show us around. While we were there we spent one day walking all around the city seeing all the touristy things but it was still a lot of fun to explore.  Also while we were there Kelsey showed us this pub basically dedicated to Winston Churchill with a cool Thai restaurant in the back. We walked through Kensington Gardens on the way there which was fun to see in the fall.  We also went to Borough Market which was a little outside market that sold lots of organic food like cheese and meats; it was fun to walk around and try free samples of different things. I think my favorite thing we did was go to Winter Wonderland. I forgot my camera that night but it was incredible. Hyde Park is filled with a Christmas fair with a market and carnival rides and fried foods, it was great to walk through everything and get in the holiday spirit. I couldn't stop thinking about how much fun it will be to show Kelsey around Granada later this month when she comes to Spain.

Escocia (Scotland)!

November was definitely my hard month for school but as soon as I finished that nonsense I got to start December which is definitely my easiest month for school. We had a break in the very beginning so Bret and I went to Scotland to meet up with Kelsey, we met in Glasgow and spent most of our time in Edinburgh. After that we went to London for a few days before coming back to Granada. It was a good start to a month that should be a lot of fun with my family and Kelsey visiting later on.
Here's some pictures from Glasgow:

(downtown looking all Christmas-y)

(there wasn't much to do there, but this is the world's tallest movie theater that we went to)

Pictures from Edinburgh:

(view of Edinburgh and Arthur's Seat, the mountain in the back that we hikd later on)

(Castle Rock- named because it's a castle on a rock haha)

(view of downtown Edinburgh)


(Bret and Kels in front of the world's largest whiskey collection!)

(view of Arthur's Seat on the hike up)

(view from the top)

Scotland was amazing! I think it was my favorite place I've been so far while I've been in Europe.  Glasgow was a little slow and not super exciting in my opinion but Edinburgh was one of the coolest cities I've seen.  We could walk practically anywhere and there was so much history everywhere you looked. The only downside was how cold it was there, but we sort of got used to that as we were there longer. We did a lot while we were there. We visited the Castle which was really cool, plus we saw the 1 o'clock gun where they fire a cannon at 1 pm every day (it used to be used as a way of telling the sailors what time it was), went on a Scotch Whiskey Experience Tour which was both ridiculous and awesome, got a tour of the underground network of streets that exists intact underneath Edinburgh because it was built over later on, ate some great food including Haggis (sheep's intestine) and neeps (mashed turnips) at some really cool pubs, and went to the Christmas market in town.  My favorite thing we did was definitely hiking Arthur's Seat though. It was a completely ridiculous experience. My shoes had absolutely no traction so as we walked higher up it became snowier and icier til it got to the point where I couldn't move whithout sliding backwards. So for the rest of the hike I wore one of Bret's shoes and completed the hike to a great view of the whole city and the bay. I really loved Edinburgh but I think a huge part of it was hanging out with Kelsey and Bret again.