Friday, November 03, 2006

so scotland was great. we took an overnight bus from oxford to edinburgh which took about 9 hours. i got carsick on the bus- not a fun experience. we got to edinburgh at about 730 in the morning and got all bundled up to walk out of the bus station and it was pouring and really really windy. so we ended up sitting in burger king for a long time before we caught the shuttle to our hostel. then we watched braveheart, bc we had to wait a few hours before we could check in. then we took a nap. haha it sounds like we werent really taking full advantage of where we were, but we were just tired. that night we went out to eat with some americans we met at the hostel, and one of the girl's parents,grandparents and great grandparents had all gone to acu, but she ended up at belmont in nashville. that was kinda crazy. the next day we went on a twelve hour bus tour that took us into the highlands and loch ness! it was amazing, and made me really love scotland. the trees were all changing colors and it was just beautiful. our guides name was garry, and he had this speech problem and he would always say things like loch nessssss, riversssssss, mountainssssss, streamsssssss. he even did it on some th sounds and f sounds sometimes.

these are all pictures of the highlands. it was really foggy and cloudy, and some of them were taken through the window of the bus, so they arent all that great.

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this is a highland cow named hamish.

these are all from loch ness. garry told us some crazy facts about, which i feel compelled to share bc really they are sorta unbelievable. scotland has over 30,000 lakes, loch ness is 23 miles long, and in some places 900 feet deep! the eiffel tower would fit in the lake and not stick out. and this is the craziest one- you could double the worlds population and everyone would fit in the lake and there would still be room. we were in shock when garry laid that one on us, i dont know how you could really even figure something like that out.
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this is urqhart castle, with loch ness in the background.

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we took a boat out on to loch ness and it was COLD and windy.

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thats when i saw nessie.

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we ate lunch at the cafe where jk rowling wrote a lot of the first hary potter book.

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we went to the national museum of scotland, and this is a mask that a guy would wear so that no one know who he was when he was preaching against the catholic church.

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"do you know how to spell guillotine?"-me
"g-i-o-t-i-n-e"-bryan

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edinburgh castle.

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the royal mile.

ok sorry it took me forever to put up these pictures, i had a lot of stuff due right when we got back, and then i went to switzerland, where i just got back from a few hours ago. ill put up some of those pictures in the next few days.