One of my best friends, Sarah, had decided to visit me from the States. We courageously planned to teach ourselves how to drive a manual and rented a car to take us on an epic journey up the East Coast of England to Scotland and back down the West Coast. My parents and friends tried to talk me out of it. Knowing me, it was a losing battle. Sarah and I have a knack for having hilarious and completely random adventures together and this one was by no means an exception, but the icing on the cake.
Sarah flew from the States and landed at 7am and drove from London to Leicester for the first time driving on the left hand side of the road... Did I mention it was in LONDON?? This girls has some cajones. If you don't know what that means...look it up but don't use google image unless you want a vulgar surprise ;-)
Back to the trip. Sarah and I spent the two days exploring Leicester. We went everywhere that anyone could possibly go in Leicester like the Newarke Museum, Cathedrals, Leicester Uni, New Walk Museum, parks, Guildhall, etc. We then discovered Leicester had assembled ping pong tables everywhere and we quickly took over a table for 2 hours. That may seem like a long time to bounce a small ball across a net with wooden paddles, but I'm guessing you have never played ultimate ping pong with no paddles. Sarah and I became bored with the normal version and decided to ditch the paddles and whack the ball as hard as we could without paddles and even if it went off the table we still smacked it around. This led to the ball being lost several times and us playing in the bushes at one point. Everyone else got some entertainment too, so it was a win win situation.
Here's a demonstration of the shenanigans and the extent to what we had to do to retrieve the ball.
Sarah and I know how to have fun doing just about anything. One of the many things I love about her.
The next morning we had a lovely 5am wake up call and hit the road to Edinburgh. Poor Sarah had to drive the entire 6 hours because I hadn't learned how to drive manual yet. When we arrived at the parking lot after getting lost we decided to go to Edinburgh Castle first. On the way we saw a bagpipe parade that started the second we crossed the street in front of them. Thanks Edinburgh for welcoming us like that. No where else gave us a parade :-p
It was a hike and a half up the hill where they used to torture people. Great thoughts to get you encouraged enough to keep going... Once we got there it starting raining... SHOCK. We toured every single room you could possibly go into including the: dungeons, royal jewels, war memorial, canon area, and one of the halls.
The pictures do it so much more justice than words. Next on our list was to just walk around outside and enjoy the view and we did just that. We could literally see ALL of Edinburgh from up there. How in the world people would decided it was a good idea to storm that castle is beyond me. I think they were a little wr
Next on our tourist to do list we went to the National Museum of Scotland. For those of you who read my previous blog about the trip to the Irish National Museum you will be pleased to know Scotland knows how to build a fantastic museum. There was only one flaw to this plan. Sarah decided we should start at the top of the museum and work our way down. Folks, never do this. They put the boring stuff on top and the ridiculously fun and interactive things on the bottom to rope people in. We discovered that sad fact 10 minutes before it was closing. We walked downstairs expecting to find more boring things only to find we could've spent our time looking at cloned sheep, mega sloths, rockets, and racing formula 1 cars. It was a sad and slightly embarrassing moment in the lives of Sarah and Emma as we realized our stupidity. Oops. BUT never fear we came back 2 days later, which you'll hear about later.
We did get to see these things on our journeys at the top of the building:
In case you're wondering the top left picture is a bear claw necklace. The bee picture is a creepy but fascinating perpetual motion clock. The bottom left picture is a really complicated locking trunk that I'm convinced was the inspiration of Mad Eye Moody's trunk. Last but not least is the bottom right picture of an Anglo-Saxon Brooch.YAY history! At this point Sarah and I were TIRED from walking over the entire castle and all over Edinburgh after getting no sleep and driving for what felt like decades. We decided to get one last picture and the Olympics statue and then make the 30 minute drive to our hotel. For those of you who think all hotels in Britain are typical... think again.
As we drove to our hotel up the driveway we had to compose ourselves before going inside. It was a flipping CASTLE. The reception area had an enormous fireplace with suits of armor flanking it with a gigantic moose looking skull mounted above it. If that doesn't scream castle then the stuff boar in the living room does.
We were in love. We had dinner inside before heading to our rooms in another building. We met the owner and were given permission to explore the whole castle. He obviously didn't know what he had just set loose in his beloved castle. We sang songs in the music room as I accompanied myself on the piano in a very unprofessional sounding way since I'm awful at playing piano. Then we pretended to be philosophical in the library and climbed the ladders to look for more books, but we were really just taking pictures. We also walked around with ridiculously stereotypical British butler accents. It just felt so right, but seeing as we were dressed in jeans and sweatshirts it probably looked like a bunch of nutters were meandering around the castle.
Then we let ourselves into the garden and discovered.. SLUGS. Slugs were EVERYWHERE. We went for a walk and I'm pretty sure I accidentally killed about 50 just by walking. They are surprisingly camouflaged.
In case there are slug lovers reading this blog, I really did try to avoid them but it just wouldn't work. I like to think I helped the human race by protecting them from slug invasion, which was obviously being plotted.
Look out for next week's blog for part 2 of the trip!
“We must go beyond textbooks, go out into the bypaths and untrodden depths of the wilderness and travel and explore and tell the world the glories of our journey.” – John Hope Franklin
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