| AspiringPhilosophe 31.12.2007 05:20 |
Hello everyone!!! Long time no see since I've been able to post anything in my own account name, but I've been CRAZY busy over here in the UK. First and foremost...pics are coming, I promise! My laptop is back at Jenni's place in Croftamie (Jenni is my old roomate from last year) and when I can get it into Glasgow, probably tomorrow, I'll be attempting to put them online. I've been told you can get wireless in the dorm rooms I'm staying in, but if not I'm sure there has got to be some kind of cafe somewhere that has wireless internet. As some of you know I spent 11 days down in Cornwall with our beloved Joxer, and it was great!! Cornwall really is a beautiful area, and I hope I get to go back there someday. So what has happend since I left there? LOADS! On the 27th of January I got on a train in Penzance to make the 12 hour journey to Glasgow. It was basically a nightmare; everybody and their brother were traveling that day and the trains were over-filled. I had to change trains and when I did the new train to Glasgow was so full I had to stand with my luggage in the hallway where the doors into the cars are for close to an hour and a half until there was a seat available. But it was worth it to get to Scotland! Jenni and her mom came and picked me up at Glasgow Central Station, and we went to her house in a little village called Croftamie. My first full day in Glasgow was spent in the car; her parents decided to drive me around up there. I got to see mountains (though the mist was rather low so you couldn't see the tops of them), Loch Lomond, the castle at Invereny, eating Cullen Skink (fish soup) at Loch Fyne and seeing more random sheep on the sides of the road than you could believe! The only problem is that for the first time in my life, I got carsick. It was the narrow, windy roads that are anything but level; so the second half of the journey was spent with my eyes closed in the back seat until we got back to her place, where I laid down for the rest of the evening. In the meantime, Jenni spent the entire day trying to text our friend Jaap, who had that morning decided to get a plane into Glasgow for New Year with NO WARNING and was wanting to meet up with us; but for some reason she couldn't text his phone. The next day we headed for Glasgow by bus, meeting up with Elizabeth (our mutual friend from the department who is studying at Strathclyde) in her dormroom, where I'm staying now. We went shopping in the morning and then went to the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, which was fantastic! Then we met up with Jaap, who studied at CMU last year for a semester as part of our exchange program with Rotterdamn in The Netherlands, went to dinner and to a movie at "The Tallest Cinema in the World". Jenni left the next day for a meeting with her PhD advisor and then a family function in the evening, so it was me and Elizabeth on our own. We went to the Glasgow Cathedral, St. Mungo's Museum of Life and Religious Art, The Lord Provost House (oldest house in Glasgow) and The Willow Tearooms for tea and scones. Then we met up again with Jaap, who had been doing the same tour I had done the day before with Stewart (his roommate and the Strathclyde student at CMU last year) and Anne (his German girlfriend). We all went out for a drink; Stewart and Anne had to leave so Jaap, Elizabeth and I went out for dinner at Wetherspoons in St. George's Square before heading back to her place for tea and conversation. |
| AspiringPhilosophe 31.12.2007 05:29 |
Elizabeth left this morning for Aberyswyth in Wales, where she studied as an undergrad for a year. She is graciously letting me stay in her flat at Strathclyde so I don't have to pay for a hotel or hostel here; plus I can keep an eye on things, even though her roommates are all away. So today I'm meeting Jaap on Sachiehall Street (the main shopping area of Glasgow) and we are heading back to Kelvingrove Museum; Jaap hasn't seen it yet and I have NO problems at all going back to a museum again...plus I'm excited Jaap is here because he's great company and I was rather disappointed to think I wouldn't get to see him at all when I was planning this trip. Jenni is picking me up at 5.30 tonight and we are going to Stirling for the Hogmany celebration at the castle, complete with The Proclaimers (And I will walk 500 miles and I will walk 500 more....) and pipe bands and everything else you could think of! We are staying the night at her parent's place, and then grabbing the rest of my stuff and heading back into Glasgow tomorrow during the day. Then she will leave to get packed to go back to CMU (she's leaving before I am) so I'll be on my own again. Me and Jaap made plans to head into Edinburgh on the 2nd and meet up with Anne and possibly Stew if he's not working, and then he heads back to the Netherlands on the 3rd; I'm here until the 4th when I leave for London to fly back home on Saturday, just before the strike that is supposed to shut down Heathrow. I will keep you all posted and get pics up as soon as I can!! :-) |
| Freya is quietly judging you. 31.12.2007 06:33 |
HistoryGirl wrote: On the 27th of JanuaryI see you've picked up the concept of time travel while in Cornwall. Well done. |
| JoxerTheDeityPirate 31.12.2007 06:50 |
<b><font color=007788> ?Freya? wrote:lolHistoryGirl wrote: On the 27th of JanuaryI see you've picked up the concept of time travel while in Cornwall. Well done. thats Cornwall for you. everything is done "dreckly" here,time is meaningless. either that or 11 days with me and a mirage of pubs will make it seem like a month ;-] also glad to know that i managed to put Maggie on the right train to Glasgow.thats not always been the case with me.. |
| ***Marial-B*** 31.12.2007 10:23 |
Glad to hear everything's fine Maggie :D |
| The Mir@cle 31.12.2007 11:04 |
Have fun Mag! :D |
| Janet 31.12.2007 11:07 |
Glad to hear that you're having fun! :-) |
| Lisser 31.12.2007 12:16 |
Wow! Sounds like a whirlwind of a trip!! I hope everything continues to be fun and that you get home safely. Miss you!!!! Oh and thanks a lot for leaving me, I'm stuck with your files while your gone!!! ;) |
| AspiringPhilosophe 31.12.2007 19:11 |
**laughs** Yeah, time travel....can you tell I had just woke up when I typed that? :-) Miss you too Lisser...and I know how much you love the type of files I do! Well, today was 'typical Scottish weather'....meaning of course wet and chilly. I met Jaap and we quickly realized that NOTHING was open. The Kelvingrove museum was closing for the day 15 minutes after we arrived, so we didn't even bother going in. We did try to hit some other places, but it wound up not working. Everything was closed. So after walking in the rain/mist/rain (whatever it was doing at the time, it varied) we found a coffee shop and sat down for coffee and good conversation for a while. I never realized how much I missed having Jaap around the department...he's a great conversationalist and a LOT of fun. So then we headed back down to the center of Glasgow, deciding that our luck was shot so we were going to warm up by ducking into a restaurant for food and drinks. More conversation ensued, along with plenty of laughter on both of our parts. Walked back to the flat (still raining) and met Jenni. But honestly I wasn't feeling up for Stirling. After all of the conversation with Jaap I was feeling in a mellow mood...and I'm not much for hanging out with a bunch of drunks anyway. Plus the weather here is still shite (as they say) and I didn't want to be out all night in it. I've been fighting off a cold since I left Cornwall (THANKS JOXER) and I knew that after walking around in the cold and rain all day it was not likely to help me win the fight...especially if I stayed in it all night. So Jenni decided to meet up with other friends in Stirling and I had a quiet night in the flat by myself, which was actually kind of nice. Tomorrow me and Jaap both know that nothing will be open, but we are still going to The Necroplois (because you don't need a ticket for that) and maybe Glasgow Green if the weather is non-raining...though the weather forcast for tomorrow doesn't look too promising. Jenni is bringing my laptop down tomorrow when she comes back, so hopefully pics will come soon! |
| JoxerTheDeityPirate 31.12.2007 19:20 |
HistoryGirl wrote: ...and I'm not much for hanging out with a bunch of drunks anyway. I've been fighting off a cold since I left Cornwall (THANKS JOXER)LMAO! you spent 11 days with me in Cornwall getting you in training for the Scots! Scotland is just like Cornwall but with dodgier accents a better bus service and hairier legs!! my cold cleared up once i took down the xmas decorations so ive come to the conclusion that im allergic to santa.. |
| AspiringPhilosophe 03.01.2008 14:39 |
I promise that pics are coming as soon as I can get them!! Anyone who loves to travel and who has ever done it knows that you spend FAR more time seeing things and actually enjoying where you are than doing anything else at all. Within a week I promise they will be online, and hopefully sooner. So, it is basically the end of my trip now. I catch a bus tomorrow for London (an all day activity) and then spend the night in Heathrow before I catch a morning plane back Stateside. So what have I done over the last few days? Me and Jaap did go to the Necropolis and Glasgow Green. The weather was pretty misty but after the solid rain from the day before that was completely fine. We wound up having great conversation the whole time anyway, so neither of us were too bothered by the weather since we were too busy enjoying the sites, the conversation and the company. Yesterday we went to Edinburgh for the day, and it was AWESOME! I have to say I definitely prefer Edinburgh to Glasgow. There is a better atmosphere in Edinburgh, at least I think there is. The only thing that went wrong for the whole day was that the weather forcast had said that it would be raining all day, so I didn't bring my camera with me because I didn't want it to get damaged or anything like that (I have no idea if it's waterproof and really don't want to find out). Of course it never rained while we were there, so there were TONS of opportunities for pics that I missed, but oh well. The wind was freezing, but other than that the weather was good. We went to Prince's Street and some of the places around there, and then walked across the bridge and went up and down The Royal Mile. We decided to skip seeing Holyrood Castle since they were charging 11 pounds (approx $20) to get in the door for a student. But we did walk through some old graveyards and went through the Royal Museum there in the city just off the Royal Mile. Of course we also stopped in the St. Giles Cathedral and Edinburgh Castle at the other end of the Royal Mile (which we also didn't go in because they were charging the same price for admittance), and also stopping to admire the random memorials to people and things along the way, with Jaap usually providing a translation of the latin text on them for me if I was interested. The museum was great!! Once we grabbed a map, we both decided to see the same things and there was no complaint about how much time was spent in what gallery! For example, the first thing we both said was "I want to see the Gallery of European Art 1200-1800!" and we both spent an hour an a half in that gallery, with no one person waiting for the other...(is it obvious we are a museum/history Masters Student and a history PhD student?) We also hit the Portait Gallery and the Art Gallery in Ediburgh at the end of the day, and they had to kick us out because we were so busy admiring the beautiful paintings! We met Stew and Anne for dinner and conversation to wind up the night, and then caught the train back into Glagow. Jaap left this morning to head back to Haarlam (I think that's how it's spelled...that's where he lives) in the Netherlands so we had to say our goodbyes that night. Today I was completely on my own. But I was on a mission...had to get a souvenir from Scotland for my dad! So did some shopping in the morning for food and stuff, made lunch, and then walked back down to Kelvingrove Art Museum (something I've discovered about the UK that I love...ALL MUSEUMS ARE FREE TO ENTER!) after deciding that there was NOTHING in Sauchihall Street that fit him. I did finally manage to find something from the museum gift shop, after spending another two hours seeing things there that I had missed when I was with Elizabeth and Jenni. Walking back I was horrid and went into a book shop to see if they had the lastest book by one of my favorite authors, and walked out with 6 new books! :-S Now I'm doing laun |
| iGSM 04.01.2008 13:04 |
Sounds perishingly exciting! I'm in Cheshire at the moment. It's like all the worst things in my life in one county! Thanks England! |
| JoxerTheDeityPirate 04.01.2008 13:32 |
iGSM wrote: Sounds perishingly exciting! I'm in Cheshire at the moment. It's like all the worst things in my life in one county! Thanks England!lol! yep,thats Cheshire for you ;-] |
| AspiringPhilosophe 04.01.2008 18:48 |
I made it to London from Glasgow! YAY! By bus it was very interesting...though I have to admit I was very worried the guys weren't going to get my luggage onto the bus. They did manage to, so good for me!! Then it was a matter of dragging it to the Victoria Street Tube Station (since the bus let off in Victoria Station). Literally dragging it since my nice new luggage set my parents got me for Christmas is already falling apart! One of the wheels is busted on it, and it makes it a royal pain in the arse to drag around and makes the distance seem that much worse. So now I'm at Heathrow, and it's almost midnight. Only about 8 hours until I can check in for my flight back home, which leaves in 11 hours. I've never spent the night in the airport before, and I have to say it's interesting. I'm about ready to pull out my history text books for the class I GA and read them. Luckily there are a few other people here spending the night as well, so I'm not completely on my own. Anyway, time is rather short (and I'm paying by the minute to use this thing) so I'm off! I'll message again from the other side of the pond! |