Our whirlwind tour of the United Kingdom is over, and I've added quite the group of pictures below. Here's the rundown of what we did and saw:
Saturday: arrived at Central Park Hotel by noon; Bus tour- Big Bus tour of London; Trafalgar Square; St Paul's for Evensong
Sunday: More Big Bus tour (it was a 24 hour ticket); London eye; Tower of London; British Museum (saw the Parthenon marbles, egyptian exhibit and the ROSETTA STONE!!! Way cool.); got very intoxicated at the Black Lion on Strongbow.
Monday: Traveled to Bath, UK and visited Lacock, UK; Stonehenge; the Roman Baths; and a great Indian restaurant.
Tuesday: spent 3.5 hours at the Thermae Spa in Bath relaxing on my lonesome (2 hours for $40- can't beat that for pure and utter relaxation); traveled back to London and caught a flight to Edinburgh; hung out at the bars until late.
Wednesday: tried to see the castle, but it was closed due to a water leak; shopped the royal mile, toured Mary King's Close (buried under the present day City Hall; Sat in the Queen's seat at St. Giles cathedral (we had a nice tour guide) also the site where the fight for religious freedom began (a woman named Janet Geddes got bored during the service and threw a stool at the preacher, which led to widespread fighting over religious freedom back in the 17th and early 18th century); wandered down to Princess Park; ate good Italian food at Italiana Rustica and went home early to journal and relax at Castle Rock Hostel.
Thursday: Tour 7:45am-7:30pm with The Heart of Scotland tours to Loch Ness and the highlands. Tour Guide Graeme Gordon- a local who loves to travel. Way cool- he was passionate and informative, as well as quite funny. Memorable quotes: "The Labor party couldn't governa piss up at the pub, much less a government!", "The best state for a Cambell is DEAD", "A blind two year old with one leg could do a better job!" "They gave 'em a good old fashion Scottish arse-kicking". He was great! The scenary was lovely and the sun came out for at least half the day.
Friday: Finally got to tour Edinburgh Castle- it had been closed for 2 days. We toured it in a frantic and rushed hour before heading to the airport to head back to London. Resolved a dispute with the hotel staff at Corus at Hyde Park- I would not recommend this hotel to ANYONE- they tried to rip us off and it took an hour to resolve the issue to my liking (they tried to charge us $240 extra to have 2 additional people stay in the room despite it being a two bedroom booking). Shopped at Harrods. Ate at Wagamamas (I love this chain- want it to move here PLEASE!!!!)
Saturday: Headed to Heathrow Airport and underestimated the travel time. Opps... Pure panic at the airport when we saw the 200 plus people in line ahead of us- never underestimate the power of a panicked Kelly- we jumped ahead the check in line and the security line with the staff's permission in order to catch our flight. Arrived back in D.C. at about 3:30pm and back to good ol' Bal'more at 6:30pm after picking up the car from big bro's house.
Sunday recovery- and Monday will be going back to work with chocolate for long-term patients and my fellow speech staff.
I must, of course, start with the traditional picture of the Parliment clock tower that houses the bell named "Big Ben".
The girls and I on the London Eye:
For the architects: the leaning tower of pizzas in London. Guess what it is, and guess how much they spent. :-)
The house used in the Harry Potter movies for the scene where his parents die. Lacock trust village-- very cool little village that we saw on the way to Stonehenge on the Mad Max tour (highly recommend this tour!)
Stonehenge- I could have just sat and watched them for a very long time. They weren't going anywhere, but the changing light effected the shape and lines of the stones in a way that was indescribable.
Bath, UK- the Roman baths that gave this city its name. Green water with steam rising from it, with the gothic abbey next door reflected in the pool. The Romans used to soak here-- the lead lined baths still are functional and much of it is in good repair. I went the next morning to the modern baths, a spa a few blocks away that taps into the same thermal springs. for $40 you can soak for 2 hours-- top level is a thermal bath open to the air overlooking the city of bath; next down is the steam room complete with 4 glass encased infused steam rooms and an awsome shower 3 meters across; bottom floor is an indoor thermal bath the size of a swimming pool with a gentle current that floats you around and a bubble-jet pool in the middle.
In Edinburgh we stayed at Castle Rock Hostel at the base of Edinburgh Castle. Lovely hostel- I highly recommend it. Book ahead- it's quite popular. Clean, friendly, well placed and spacious, this hostel was the best one we came across.
"I fart in your general direction". This is the castle used in the filming of Monty Python Search for the Holy Grail. I was very excited to see it, not only because of fond memories of watching this movie with the Elmstreet group, but also because I had seen the musical Spamalot just 3 nights before heading to the United Kingdom. Our guide paused on the bridge across from the castle so I could get a snapshot. The cars behind us were honking- not great quality but had to post it!
Highlands. Very cool scenary. Very hard to capture the rough beauty of the land. Graeme Gordon, our guide, was extremely adapt at sharing history as we drove through different old tribal territories. This one was called the Valley of Death/ Valley of Weeping. It's located in Glencoe and is the location of a massacure by the Cambells. About 60 people died- some from a slit throat and others were left by the Cambells without shelter and they froze to death overnight. They filmed portions of Harry Potter around this same Glencoe area.
We found Nessie. Well, it had a curved neck and diamond flippers, uh, wings.... Seriously, that's Loch Ness in the background.
The water in the streams and lakes of the highlands was the color of guiness. It was pure and clean, but tinted from the local sediments.
I can't leave you without my silliest picture. This was taken in Edinburgh Castle- apparently there is a fundraiser event about to go on that involves wearing clown noses for charity. There were red circles on the London Eye, clown noses on some trees, we met a group on a savenger hunt raising money for the charity, and the best was this wax bag piper deep in the castle- randomly showing support for the charity.
