The Dutch really pride themselves on their people, as they should. My family and I stayed at the Rembrandt hotel while we were in Amsterdam. Just thought I should bring it up since the room was so aesthetic. I feel that I truly did have the whole Dutch experience given that I was sleeping under Rembrandt every night!
I crossed one major to do in Scotland off my list and that was getting a chance to tour the highlands. We started our trip visiting Doune Castle which apparently is one of the only untouched castles left in Scotland with the others lying in ruin due to the British. Then we pressed on into the thick of the highlands. Completely not what I expected at all. My only impression of the highlands was one of rolling hills probably in a similar vein to the Great Plains in the midwest with a bit of a rougher feel perhaps, maybe a colder wind. And there was a good amount of that (mainly dotted with giant, fluffy, Scottish sheep) but the highlands that I saw was something far more cinematic and epic. I saw massive, snow-topped mountains. These mountains were even more bizarre to me as they gradually faded from opaque white snow on the top to lush grasslands as their base. It felt like you could be driving though the tundra at some points and just change back to mild hilltop in an instant. We stayed overnight at Fort Augustus as the mouth of Loch Ness, basically at the most famous view. Then we drove through Inverness which was quite a strange place to me too as it was a fully developed, cosmopolitain city just randomly set up in the midst of these harsh mountains and northern highlands. I got to see Culloden battlefield which vaguely reminded me of home in Virginia with all the Civil War battlefields. Then we finished our journey at the Hermitage. It was an amazing trip given how much I saw that I probably would not get to experience on my own.
So this time, for this post, I wanted to experiment with a different format for my photos. Some will be the same that they have always been, but others are formatted slightly differently.
My work is just starting to pick up, but before it did, I managed to get away for the weekend to London. First of all, I think next time I go, after having gone twice now by train, I will be flying. No longer will I take this five hour train ride! The plane rides are so cheap and would literally take thirty minutes. it is just not worth it to wait this long anymore. The one advantage was getting to see all the beautiful British cites and the coast in passing. I think I would like to go Newcastle. But I have bigger fish to fry in England(get it, fish and chips)! I need to go to Brighton first.
When we pulled in finally, it was about 3:30. So my friends and I decided to go to the hostel and set our things down in our room. Our hostel was located in Borough which ended up being an interesting little corner in London that I never experienced last time I was there. By the time we got settled there, we were starving from the train since we decided to not eat lunch at the little cafe they had on board. We went to Piccadilly Circus for dinner, which was coincidental since last time I was here, that was the first place my family and I went after getting off the train. This time it was different however as there was not a Taylor Swift concert that had just ended in Hyde Park which was an absolute disaster last time. Just floods of people in the tube and no clear way to compose ourselves in a new city. This time we could take it slow and just explore more. We really wanted Chinese so Chinatown was the obvious place to go. I do not think I mentioned this since last time but I am trying to go pescaterian and that was such a success on this trip. I had the mixed seafood noodles from the Chinese restaurant we went to and it was excellent. After that we explored Soho and got desert at a little Korean ice cream cafe where I got a green tea ice cream with all sorts of sweet fixin’s.
The next day was the touristy day. We caught a walking tour group through Westminster. That was a nice deja-vu for me since we went to Big Ben, Trafalgar Square, Westminster Abbey(although not inside), Buckingham Palace(the queen just never wants to be there when I come by), and a boat ride down the Thames as well as a tour of the Tower of London. But I decided to cut out of the tour during the boat ride and the tower as i had already done that and I decided that I wanted to see something else. I went to the National Gallery instead which was something I never saw last time. I was so happy I went because they had an excellent amount of pieces of art by some of my favorites. They had Caravaggio, Da Vinci(it is crazy how we only have one in the whole of the western hemisphere but Europe literally has hundreds), Turner, Van Gogh, Picasso, Cezanne, and Rubens. That night we went to Camden and got Italian for dinner. I got a margarita pizza which was delicious.
The next morning, on Sunday, my friends and I went to the Breakfast Club for breakfast which was fairly close to where we were staying. It, of course, had an eighties theme but it was not obnoxiously loud which made it so enjoyable. I got the most perfect chocolate banana pancakes that hit the spot and satiated my sugar tooth. From there, we made the trek to Greenwich to go to the Royal observatory with the Prime Meridian line where the coordinates are exactly (0°, 0′,0”). There was the most amazing park and vista of the whole city. I did not get to go to Greenwich last time and I discovered that it was my favorite area in London. We went to little shops in the town and that was a blast because they were the kind of grungy but charming little shops where everything is used and vintage and you just have to buy yourself a unique keepsake. We went to this used bookstore where everything was a pound and I got four pounds worth of books. Then we went to this outdoor market where I bought a dark, denim mini skirt. The man who sold it to me was the most interesting character. He was dressed like he steeped out of 60s London which made sense since he was selling some unique vintage pieces. He wore a head to toe colored corduroy bell bottom suit and he had a shaggy bowl cut—needless to say, it was perfect.
After that we had to get back to Kings Cross station to catch our train and make the long voyage back to Edinburgh. That trip was longer for me as i also had to take an hour long train ride back to Galashiels. The good thing about that train was that I did not purchase tickets before getting on the train because I was going to buy them from the ticket collector. But he never came around so I got a free ride back, making everything feel better.
I arrived in Scotland only two days ago, and already, I am thrown straight into school. I was supposed to arrive in Edinburgh on Saturday, but the lovely Baltimore airport canceled my flight. So instead of flying to New York and then getting on a direct flight, I instead had to go to Frankfurt, Germany first and then fly to Scotland. It was fun, in a way, to fly on a German flight where the pilot and flight attendants all spoke German. It was also entertaining to try to pick the passengers that I believed could be German and who was visiting or passing through. But overall, it was annoying to go to an airport that I had not planned for, where everything is in German for the most part and try to find my gate throughout their maze of an airport despite my drained jet lagged mind and body. It was even more annoying to arrive in Edinburgh late as there was a woman waiting for me to take me to the town where I needed to be for classes. She had to come all the way from Dublin twice as there were other girls in my program who managed to make it to Edinburgh on time. The whole thing was just a hassle. I suppose I am being overdramatic because I had never experienced such annoying flight delays and cancellations before. The most seasoned of travelers would probably think I am whining.
However, despite all my trials, I made it to Scotland and I am currently trying to get adjusted as best as I can.
The time differences, while inconvenient for communicating with loved ones, makes posting so much easier. I can go through my whole day and not think about it until the night because it is still only late afternoon at home. I have not made an opinion of the people in Scotland yet because I have barely made friends. And making friends is hard here considering I only have two days of class a week. I just barely meet some girls and suddenly class is over and it’s just, “well see you guys next week!”. The class scheduling is perhaps the biggest change for me. I am not used to such little class time. I do not know what to do with myself with so few classes. And they say it covers the same amount of credits as five classes in the U.S. And that is just unnatural.
I need more time here before I can give a true assessment. Everyone expects me to be oozing excitement and be bursting with happiness. It is not that I am unhappy or unexcited. I am still just so out of it. I am learning everything and taking it all in. I am not wearing a huge smile on my face all the time because I am still processing everything. Also I do still miss home. I miss my family and my friends so much and it is only the third night, yet is is hard for me to understand that I will be staying here for the next five months. I am a whole ocean away…
But then again, everyone says that I will absolutely love it here and never want to leave. I think that will be true. I will hopefully come back fully adjusted like Scotland is my second home.
I needed an opportunity to post photos with all of the fall vibes of a Pumpkin Spice Latte. Thank goodness that Halloween has passed, and so the pumpkin craze has gone the way of actual pumpkins rotting on November 1st doorsteps.
I thrifted this sweater a week ago and I am simply in love with it. It is a men’s sweater so it is oversized on me. And to be honest, I think I need oversized everything this winter because I cannot seem to produce my own body heat. With so much extra fabric overflowing from my closet this winter, it will be hard to pack up in a suitcase when I bring it home for the summer or travel anywhere this coming winter. But I honestly feel that I need so much extra fabric. I want so much fabric in my clothes, that I want to be able to wrap it around my body at least five times! Just layers on top of layers so that I can pretend that I am still in my warm bed.
My issues with winter aside, my friend, Bailey and I, went to Cold Harbor Battlefield in Mechanicsville, Virginia. The leaves were so pretty on our hike through the fields. And the trenches were so deep that you can almost imagine the soldiers huddled under them for weeks.
Great day of adventure getting away from Richmond for at least a few hours.
Over the weekend, I was able to visit a Tudor revival manor house and garden. Agecroft Hall in Richmond is unique because it was built using pieces of an old Tudor mansion from England and shipped to Richmond by the Williams family. It was a bit confusing listening to the timeline of the house while on the tour because it was originally three times the size of the one currently standing in Richmond. And there were many times during the tour where one would have to ask specifically if any given piece of furniture, or window, or house detail was original. And a lot of the furniture was donated and from several different periods of history other than the Tudor period. And still, it was important to keep in mind that the house was rebuilt in around the turn of the century so there was still some of that influence present within the house. But overall, the house was gorgeous and well worth the tour and confusion:)
Unfortunately we were not allowed to take photos inside the house(not like I would be outright posing in the middle of a tour anyway) but the outside of the house and the gardens were free game.
I tried to match my outfit to what I considered the Tudor period to be, and it just so happened that the color combination I chose of beige and black happened to be the exact color scheme of the house. And of course I had to wear my cape because what else are you supposed to wear at a Tudor-era manor?
Still at the beach, and I honestly do not want to leave!
I went out with my father this morning to run a few errands. You know your father is obsessed with Kitty Hawk when he just has to go to the visitor center and stock up on every leisure brochure and map ever made! But I do not mind indulging my dad in all of his Carolina guilty pleasures, as all of them end in enjoyment and delight.
At the visitor center, there is a separate little trail that leads to the Monument to Flight, which is basically this sculpture dedicated to the evolution of flight. As North Carolina is home to one of the greatest contributions of technological innovations in human history, or flight, they are quite proud of their history. And as their license plates will tell you, North Carolinians are obsessed with the concept of flight. I was joking with my father earlier that the monument was the North Carolinian Stone Henge, or something out of Brave, the Pixar movie. From where the stones’ placement begins corresponding to the start of flight in 1903 with the Wright Brothers, the stones then grow in height with more time and progress and seem to ascend closer to the sky! I really appreciate that motif:)
HOUSE OF HERONS 