GREAT SCOT!!

SCOTLAND

"Connectin with me roots, one country at a time."

So I decided to hit up Scotland over our 3 day break from our "classes" and I'm jolly glad I did! It was a 4 hour train ride from London, but the ride there went rather quickly being that I slept for a good portion of the time. We ended up getting into a hotel that was literally right next to the train station which was most convenient! And we still even had a great view from our room on the 5th floor of a really cool castle across the way.

This is Edinburgh Castle, just a 5 minute walk from our hotel, and this is the first place we went. We didn't actually go inside of it because of the cost, but we were able to snap a few cool pics from the outside so we were happy :)

Just a view of our surrounding area.

We decided to visit this weaving mill shop place, and they had an armory inside, pretty cool! We weren't allowed to take pictures of it however... even though I have this one, (he told me I couldn't take pictures after I'd already taken this one... whoops..)

Okay, so I was REALLY wanting to get some legit scottish food, and it turned out to be quite a difficult task to accomplish! We asked around and a few locals told us they really aren't big on the culinary scene. Apparently they eat a lot of indian food and kababs and things like that. I KNEW they were known for haggis, and I was determined to find some somewhere.... luckily, some of the girls wanted to go to this bakery to get shortbread or something, and inside the PieMaker they had "Haggis Pies"! :) I didn't hesitate to buy one and give it a try... pretty delish I must admit. Go Scotland.

For dinner we found the only restaurant around that offered "Original Scottish Food" which happened to be a bar/restaurant (we end up eating at quite a few of these).

Steph was pretty excited to be there...

The food was most delicious! Dani and Stacie split one of their burgers, which looked mouth watering.

This is my entree, I got a Steak & Ale Pie. It was very tasty! Not quite what I expected it to be, but it was basically a light and fluffy pastry served on top of a meaty ale gravy with cooked carrots and french fries. Yum :)

Mary got the fish & chips which she had long desired. Pure goodness.

Me and Mary trying on some scottish hats in a little shop :)

Riding the elevator... always a good time!

Cool castle

Steph and I had to ride back an hour earlier than the rest of the group so we could make it back to our show by 7:30.

After half off entrees at some bar/restaurant (we got bacon cheeseburgers, fries, and ceasar salads, they were divine!) We ran over to the New London Theatre to see War Horse! It wasn't your average musical "New York" broadway, but it was still excellent none-the-less! Great night!

Bath, Fashion Museum, Street Performers

ROMAN BATHS

Today we went to the Roman Baths, located in Bath, England. Pretty cool experience overall! Apparently these pools of water are heated by a hot spring to this day, you can still see the bubbles coming up in the middle of some of them, so thats pretty interesting.

I think this is just a wishing pond for tourists, so no biggie here, but it looks pretty cool right? :)

This guy taught me how to welcome people... an open hand to someone is welcoming :) We're pretty neat.

FASHION MUSEUM

So we went to the fashion museum, it was pretty interesting. They even had the latest stuff that had been on the runway in a past few years, all of it was rather weird, not exactly my thing, therefore not too many pictures. However the one below is of a modern wedding dress... I think from 2006 ish.

There was a little station where you could design your own clothing, but I'm guessing it was for kids, since all of the pictures posted up on the magnet board were done by 5 and 6 year olds... but don't worry, that didn't stop Steph and I from designing our own! Mine is the green on and stephs is the black on in the middle. Honestly I dont know why we're going into interior design... fashion is obviously our forte.

British Museum & Kitchen Italia

British Museum - Well... I took a few pictures in there, but they're all sort of random cool things, and the picture I tried to post of the Rosetta Stone wasn't really working, so I'll have to hold off on that for now. But know that it was awesome full of some really cool very very very old things!

Lunch afterwards was most excellent! Kitchen Italia is where we decided to have lunch and it we all decided afterwards that going there was a good idea!

The design of this place was awesome! They accounted for every little detail! The table display was so very cool! We sat in a huge booth (it fit all 8 of us) and there was a huge natural wooden table. As you can see below, there was an indentation in the middle of every table that held the assorted olive oils (kinds like basil, E.V.O.O., rosemary, lemon, chili pepper, etc.) fresh ground salt and pepper, fresh parmesan cheese, and two live basil plants at the end of each table. We ordered some bread to start off with, and I started whipping up different mixtures of oils, like lemon olive oil, pepper, parmesan cheese, and drizzling that over the bread and tearing a basil leaf from the plant and placing that right on top...... SO GOOD!! Why don't people do stuff like this everywhere in the U.S.?? I'm sure there must be a few cool places like this... but in London they're EVERYWHERE!

Unfortunately I can't remember the name of my dish right now, but it had tiger shrimp, with a tomato based sauce with fresh basil on top. It was simple, but most delicious. The presentation was quite impressive as well!

COOL STORE OF THE DAY:

AllSaints Spitalfields

I couldn't get this picture to rotate unfortunately but this was the entrance, a very cool staircase surrounded by hundreds of antique sewing machines....SO cool!

Everything in the store is antique, down to the clothing. Of course its brand new clothes, but they distress everything like I'd never seen before. I wanted to buy something here but I think the style is so specific here that one article of clothing would just look out of place by itself, not to mention t-shirts were about 60 pounds.... almost $100.00. Not exactly in my budget, but I sure loved walking around and taking pictures of the place!

Boo, this picture didn't rotate either, but I LOVE these chairs! They were in their shoe department.

Salisbury Cathedral-Wilton House-Stonehenge!

Today we went to Salisbury Cathedral, the tallest in England.

Cool architectural details :)

This is part of the beautiful courtyard in the middle of the grounds.

This was our tour guide, haha, he was a little speedy man. He would explain something too us with lots of excitement, and then he would say "moving along now!" and then he would like run over to the next place in the cathedral that he wanted to explain to us, it was pretty funny. It definitely made the tour more exciting though. Usually things like that are always better when the person who is doing the explaining is passionate about the subject. :)

There were these cool engravings when we started our climb up into the spire. I forgot/I'm not really sure what they meant, but they were carved by the people who built the original cathedral.

Getting higher into the spire.

The higher we got, the more internal support there seemed to be to make sure the walls didn't collapse in. Kind of nerve racking, but pretty awesome looking at the same time.

Craaazy little spiral staircases we climbed up.

At last, the view from above! What a beautiful little city!

Me and Steph

My part of the tour group.

WILTON HOUSE

STONEHENGE!! :)

Just some sketching

Yeah... about this, haha. So first of all Laura wanted try and stand of my feet and have me push her up in the air or something...but of course, that didn't really work out. So then Benae asks me if I can give her an airplane, so I did. And then Laura decides she wants to do that too, so I did it for her (their pictures were pretty cool, haha) But then afterwards everyone convinced me to try it as well, so here I am.... doing the airplane... in front of Stonehenge. Cool right?.... I mean, this has always been my dream afterall...

(Laura, looks like crossfit has paid off for you afterall ;) )