No, not everyone in Scotland wears plaid

After a 6 hour bus ride we arrived in Scotland. The landscape had changed, the weather had changed, the accents had changed - it was clear that we had arrived in a different country. It was cold and drizzly but we warmed up with some hot food at a Jekyll and Hyde themed bar, complete with Goth clientele and a secret bookshelf doorway to the bathroom. We went and hung out at our hostel (the best we had stayed at for sure!) and ran into a friend we had met at our London hostel! They played music in the bar/common area all night and this encouraged us to stay up too late (but the music was so good!).

The next day we went on a walking tour of Edinburgh and learned all about its gruesome, gory, spooky past. Witch burnings, battles, haunted graveyards. It made me realize how despite all the violence and issues we grapple with today, generally, as a whole, we have all become a lot more civil. People back then were absolutely ruthless and brutal. We learned the etymology of "shit-faced" (chamber pot dumping from high windows down to the street as everyone was getting home from the pubs), saw the cafe J.K. Rowling first wrote Harry Potter in, and saw a whole bunch of other interesting places and monuments.

The most exciting part of the tour for me was what happened at the pub after the tour ended. After 13 years of being a vegetarian, I decided to eat haggis- a mixture of spiced sheep organs that had been cooked in the sheep's stomach and then served with potatoes and turnips (neeps and tatties). It was surprisingly good, and no, I didn't get sick. Not even a stomach ache! I did feel really strange afterwards but I'm pretty sure this was just shock.

After all of this excitement we went to go meet our next couch surfing hosts, a delightful couple from France. We were having such a nice time we didn't want the night to end. And it didn't. It was still a little bit light when we got back home (after a visit to a pub and consuming a deep fried Mars bar) around midnight. We had never been this far north before, and this time of year the hours of daylight far exceed those of darkness. It was so strange to be walking around at dusk and then look at the time and realize it was 11pm.

See below for the cutest bagpiper in Scotland, the Elephant House Cafe (where Harry Potter was written), rubbing Hume's big toe for good luck, drinking Irn Bru (Scotland's very own soft drink- outlawed in the States) and other various scenes from Scotland. I dedicated an entire post to haggis, so stay tuned!

A few reminders...

1. I'm blogging entirely on my phone- including all the pictures you see. (Also booking hostels, finding couchsurfers, getting directions, changing flat tires...)
2. I have been taking lots of pictures on my camera but with no computer I have no way to upload them
3. It's really hard to blog on a phone (my thumbs hurt) so I can't get things to be beautifully formatted, my pictures aren't in order and they are lacking the captions I so badly want to put on them
4. There are more pictures of me on Facebook for those (ahem Mom and Dad ahem) who need to see my face ;)
5. For all those who rode camels with me, see below.

Beatlemania!

(or as it's known in France: Beatlemania!, Germany: Beatlemania!, or most exotically, in Spain, ¡Beatlemanía!)

We spent the morning roaming around Liverpool searching for historical information about Lizzie's family, and found ducks. Lots and lots of ducks.

Then we went to The Beatles Story museum and spent hours wrapped up in complete Beatles fan ecstasy.

After the museum it was absolutely necessary to grab a pint at the Cavern Club and we sang along to Beatles covers. We had dinner and then it was home to rest up for an early bus ride the next day.

All the lovely Liverpudlians!

One of my favorite things about being out here is the way people speak. Not just their delightful accents, but the fact that everything is "lovely" or "brilliant" (or "dodgy.") There are a few words and phrases that make me smile no matter how many times I have heard them said."Proper wonky" is a good one too.

After London we took a bus to Liverpool (whose inhabitants are referred to as Liverpudlians. Yes really). I realized a few things about myself and this trip:
1. I packed too much
2. I don't know why on earth I insisted on carrying everything on my back. I must always do things the hard way! It builds character I suppose...
3. It's difficult to meet up with someone when you have no phone and no way to contact them

We waited for over an hour before someone was kind enough to let us use their cellphone. We eventually met up with our host for the night and all turned out well. She took us around to explore Liverpool nightlife and we popped into a few different pubs with live music. One place had a sign behind the performer that said "Where there's tea there's hope." We stopped into the Cavern Pub for some fabulous people watching (inebriated older folk enthusiastically dancing to Beatles covers.) We also met some interesting characters on the streets...

The house at the sea and last night in London

Lizzie's cousin and his partner (two of the most fabulous, generous, and wonderful people) took us to their house in Whitstable. It was two days of decadent indulgence and comfortable relaxation. We ate and drank and ate and drank (etc). I did laundry and hung it all out in the garden to dry. We walked by the sea and ate fresh oysters that tasted like the sea. I slept in a huge bed with clean white sheets. It was the first time in almost 3 weeks that I had slept in a comfortable bed in a room alone. It was an extraordinary luxury compared to the lodgings from the past few nights (3-tiered cubby-hole hostel bunk beds with curtains as your only form of privacy). We woke up relaxed, I helped water the plants and then it was back to the city.

Driving through London was essentially like playing a video game (you never knew when someone or something was going to swerve into your lane out of nowhere). It was really nice to see much more of London than we had, albeit through the window of a car.

We spent the evening on the north side of the city in Highgate. At one point we were ushered out of a park by a man riding in a small car ringing a handbell. Everything in England is just so quaint!

Interlude (more London posts to come)

I'm on a bus to Liverpool that has wifi (magic, I know) and I'm listening to The Beatles (super dorky, I know). The super green countryside is speckled with fuzzy white sheep and black and white cows. Under the bright blue sky and fluffy white clouds, across the endless green expanse, farm animals have never looked so beautiful before.

Fun at Museums

On this day we nearly got swallowed up by two (out of many) of the amazing, expansive, and free(!) museums in London. We explored nature (the inside of a camel, giant ground sloth, lemur skull... You know the usual) at the Natural History Museum. Then we felt overwhelmed by the enormous collection of pretty much everything at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

We ended the night with delicious British Indian food. I didn't eat the chicken, but I did try the sauce of the Chicken Tikka Masala and it made me realize how many flavors I've missed out on by being a vegetarian for the past 13 years. I wonder if I'll have the guts (both sense of the word) to eat meat on this journey.

Iconic Sights

This was a super touristy day. We attended a 2.5 hour walking tour snapping photos of all the London-y things. Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square, The National Gallery, Big Ben, The Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey. The list goes on. When we visited a palace guard even Dora couldn't get him to crack a smile. One of my favorite things was the horse crossing traffic signal. And the beauty of all the buildings took my breath away. You can't really imagine what it's like to stand in the shadow of Westminster Abbey until you are... and then all you can really manage to say is "whoa."

(I still don't know how to put my pictures in order or add captions. But when I do this blog will be AMAZING.)

We went to the Tate Modern, saw some art I didn't understand and then ended the day on an absolutely wonderful note by having a delightful dinner with some of Lizzie's cousins she had never met before.