Ed – In – BRRRRRRRRR- Uh

My friend and I had three nights total in Edinburgh, but really only had a full day and two evenings. We also didn’t stay there for three nights in a row. We stayed in Edinburgh two nights and then took a bus tour around Scotland and then came back and stayed for a final night before moving on.

Our first night pretty much consisted of us wandering around. We saw the beautiful Gardens on Prince Street and the Olympic Rings as shown below.

Our next day (the full day), we did a bit of exploring before going on an amazing free tour and met some equally amazing people. One of the University of Edinburgh buildings is below.

This photo shows an awesome church we saw while on our tour.

I, of course, had to take a picture of the Scotsman and his bagpipes. He just looks so adorable!!!!! I just want to put him in my pocket!

We spent some time in a graveyard during the tour and learned a bit about some of the things that inspired Harry Potter like names of the dead and the boarding school that JK Rowling saw from the café she wrote in.

Here is Edinburgh castle in all its glory. You can't even tell that it was raining for a bit while we were taking the tour!

After the tour, a few of us ate lunch together at a pub. We really bonded and ended up spending the entire day together. We walked the Royale Mile after spending some time in West Princes Street Gardens. The fountain in the Garden is shown below.

We went by the Parliament building and looked through the gates to see the Palace of Holyrood House.  The two main doors are pictured.

Then we decided to hike King Arthur’s Seat. It didn’t look too big, but as we walked along the path, we realized that we just saw the first hill and not the larger, more grand hill. The smaller hill is below.

This is a just a few minutes into our walk. It was obvious to us all that the view and pictures were going to be amazing.

Here are a few pictures from near the top.

This is one of many pictures taken at the very top.

Here are some ruins we saw on our way down the other side of the hill.

This is from part of our walk back.

After King Arthur’s Seat we went to join a pub crawl. It was very fun and we made some more friends, although we forgot to exchange information with them. It was a bit crazy and I am very glad my friend didn’t kill me because of my behaviour. Pictures shall not be posted to protect people’s identities plus most are ridiculously blurry.

Our last night in Edinburgh occurred after our Scotland Bus Tour (this shall be posted soonish after I determine what the places are called in my pictures). We went back to our hostel, dropped off our stuff, and headed to see Calton Hill. It was still nice out even though it was the evening and the weather was a bit gloomy.

There are a few buildings on the hill like the observatory building and it’s domed counterpart. The observatory is the small silver dome of the left.

On Calton Hill, we could see green roofs. They were literally just green grass. It was cute too because they had a cow on top of one of them. Look carefully Mommy! These are for you ;)

This is of the National Museum. We didn’t get a chance to go in, but eventually I plan on coming back and seeing it.

This is just a cool  church that we walked past.

I love Edinburgh! It is one city that I could go back to several times. I just love the beauty and the atmosphere of it. This trip to Edinburgh was even better than when I was in Edinburgh the first time. I think it is because of the cool friends I made while here plus I got to explore a lot more of the city than I had before.

Did you know...

1. That I made friends this trip? I am not talking about people that you call your friend and then two days later you dump them because they wore the same outfit as you (Just for the record I have never done that, but if I ever get married and you show up wearing my wedding dress, I will disown you). I actually want to continue to keep in contact with them. I feel invested in their successes and their failures (although I never want them to fail) and I just actually like them. I mean I like all my friends and I enjoy people's company, but normally I easily find reasons why not to hang out with people. Even though we spent such a large amount of time together in such a short time period, I wasn't sick of them. Is this weird? I think it is weird that I am so optimistic about the relationships I have just forged. Normally I am a bit of a realist when it comes to life and especially people and occasionally I get a bit Negative Nancy. Maybe I have grown up enough that I am confident in my ability to maintain relationships. No that definitely isn't it. Maybe it is because I am needy. Now that is a real possibility! hahaha! In all honesty, I do think I am a little needy, but not desperately so. It is an every once in awhile I would like some attention sort of thing.

OK that was a HUGE segue. Back to the point (if you could call it that). When I travel it is rare that I ask for people's contact information because most of the time I see them as vacation friends who I would never talk to after the trip. I don't share anything that personal with them or ask anything personal about them. They are just sort of people I got along with and hung out with until I went to the next city. Often times I think they think the same thing as I do, which is why they rarely ask for my contact info. I realize this makes me sound like I just use people and maybe that is true, but I genuinely don't often go out and seek out relationships. The people that I am still in contact with from my travels are the people that sort of snuck up on me and I think that is awesome! It makes it all the more fun! So I made friends! Go me! I guess that makes me sound like I didn't have any before, but hopefully you, my dear reader, know that is not the case! At least I hope that is not the case ;)

2. That every trip I take I get a trip crush? I hope I am not the only one who has these and I don't think I am, I just don't think that is what most people would call it. A trip crush has normally is just someone you wouldn't mind spending the majority of your time with during the trip. Someone who you just want to keep getting to know better and better. You would stay up all night talking or even just sit there with them just to hang out.  That made it sound really unhealthy and creepy. Let me try again. A trip crush is someone who you just like because you can and you find them fun. They also don't have to be in tune with your sexual orientation. For example, I am into men, but I can have both men and women as trip crushes. It doesn't mean you want to sleep with them or be their gf/bf (although it could be if you really wanted to go down that path). Anyway, normally I have a person or a couple per month of travel that I trip crush on and this crush is usually because I find them adorable and genuinely good people, but over the last two and a half weeks, I have had trip crush overload. Hence, the rambling above. Sometimes a trip crush is just something you entertain until you part from them and realize that it was silly to like hanging out with them that much and then you wait the appropriate amount of time to delete them on Facebook. This trip and my Spring trip just don't fit that mould though and it makes me so excited. Granted, this feeling of wanting to stay in contact could just be me and they could just be waiting until the appropriate time to delete me from their Facebook. If that is the case, so be it, but I hope that we are on the same page.

3. This post is already pretty long, so I think I will just say (and please forgive the mushiness): Did you know that I feel so grateful to my family, my friends, and everyone else in my life for helping me get to where I am today? There are days when I am ridiculously unhappy and angry and frustrated with life and with people, but without all of that and without all the love and support I have received I never would have made it here to Bath or the UK or Europe or University or anywhere. With that being said, please make donations to the Alex is broke fund. hahaha jk! Well I am broke, but I can survive the summer, so no donations are necessary!

Much Love! Hope you all are in as good a mood as I am! New posts about the cities I have been to should be up soonish! 

Leaving Leeds

This is my first actual summer journey post. It is coming well before the other trips and I do apologize, but you should just be glad that something new is happening here! Hahaha jk, except I am very, very serious.

As some of you know, my friend came to visit and travel with me for three weeks. I was very excited and slightly worried as I can get even more annoying and frustrating while traveling because I tend to want to do things my way and no one else’s. Luckily this trip has been pretty amazing. I have gotten a bit annoying at times, but I think my friend has handled my crazy pretty well.

So let us start with her arrival. She came to Leeds. We bussed back to my place and ate and then slept. The next morning we explored Leeds. Here are some pictures from Millennium Square. It is a pretty awesome place. We have a lot of events and stuff that occur here. In December, we have a German Christmas market and then after that we have an ice skating rink. They also have festivals and such there too! It is also cool because they have a huge TV on the side of one of the buildings and occasionally I have sat and watched a few football matches there.

After going to the free Leeds City Museum pictured above, we headed out to Clarence Dock to see the Royal Armouries Museum. It was awesome. One, because it was free. Two, because it was just so beautifully presented.

Here is part of Clarence Dock. As you can hopefully tell, it was named because there is an actual dock there.

Here is a photo of the central part of the staircase in the museum. It is photographed from the bottom floor to the top floor. The walls are covered in armour and weapons. It was so cool!

Here is a view from the stairs looking outside. It was such a rainy day, but it was still beautiful.

I love entertaining signs and this sign has got to be one of my favourites so far.

In the evenings, I was packing and cleaning and preparing my flat for me to move out. Here are some pictures of my room and kitchen completely cleared of any individualism it has ever known.

The following day, my friend and I waited for the shipping company to come and pick up my things. Once my boxes and bags were taken away, we did the final cleaning and then headed to the train station to travel to beautiful Edinburgh.

Here are a few pictures from our train ride. It took us so much longer than it was supposed to because quite a few trains kept breaking down and we would get stuck behind them. 

OMG AN ACTUAL POST?!?!?!?

This blog is always always ALWAYS hard to write. This difficulty arises from a variety of things. They are as follows:

1.     I am lazy. No that isn’t right. I am beyond lazy. Writing is hard and it takes work and I have no idea how anyone has written anything ever.

2.     This brings me to my second point. I am an awful writer. Give me a complex mathematical problem and I would be more than happy to struggle through it. Writing, though, is not something I will struggle through. It makes me uncomfortable and frustrated because I don’t understand grammar or spelling or words in general. (Sorry Mom and my multiple teachers. I know you taught me this stuff, but it never stuck) I would rather have many other terrible things happen to me than  to write this blog. Don’t get me wrong. I love being able to share with my friends and family, but actually physically getting the words from my head into the blog is excruciating.

3.     I have gotten busy and when I am not busy I like to go into a “coma”. This is not a real coma where people sit and hold your hand and talk to you and hope you do (or maybe don’t) wake up. I mean a stuff my face with food, watch TV, and sleep. I do pretty much anything I possible can do except write this.

4.     I have to remember what I took pictures of. My memory is awful. I see a picture I took two days earlier and I think, “What was that?!?!?” I also tend to just wander around and take some pictures of things I find cool, but I have no idea what they are when I am taking the picture. A good majority of the time, I don’t even know where I am, so determining what something is called takes a lot of time trying to google map my journey and then google things like “Old building somewhere around Union Street or maybe Commons Lane or maybe something else. Please just tell me what the heck I took a picture of.” As you can see, I am really good at finding these things.

 So you are probably thinking, “if this blog is such a pain, why did you start it?” That is a good question and here is a very simple explaination. I am crazy. Throw me in the mad house. Here is what I think I was thinking, but being mad, I really have no idea.

1.     I thought I would have no friends and my life would revolve around the computer. My life does revolve around the computer, but I actually made friends. It was a miracle of all miracles because let’s be honest, I am not the most friendly, kind, outgoing, wonderful, patient, and a million other words that are related to good people. I am, however, a very arrogant, stubborn, self centered, egotistical, beautiful, and most importantly ENTERTAINING person. Plus I can take a lot of shit from people and tend not to cry

2.     I wanted to keep in contact with my family with less effort. (Oh hey there laziness! Way to come back full circle to bite me) I thought it would be easier to inform the entire family where I was and what I was doing, but in fact it isn’t or more accurately, it hasn’t been.

3.     I wanted to brag. Not going to lie. Full honesty here. I wanted to rub some of my travels into people’s faces without actually having to seem like a terrible person by actually rubbing their faces in it. This of course is directed at a few people I am friends with or more accurately was friends with to see how much I don’t need them. Is it cruel? Hell Yes! Does it make me feel better? Occasionally.

Can I count this as an update? As you can tell I am still alive, Yay! I am currently writing one of the more recent trips up now, while it is sort of fresh, so there is a possibility that you may (or may not) see it soon. Go me! As for the older trips, I have all the pictures uploaded on the blog, but I haven’t published them as the words are still floating around my head. 

Exams...

I am sitting in my room with piles of papers and reminants of coffee surrounding me. I have multiple powerpoint presentations open and just as many pdfs of Science Direct articles. It is exam season. I have two exams this week. One on Thursday and one on Friday. Then next week, I have another one. Only three exams. Unfortunately for me, these three exams are so awful the fires of hell spit them out. Here I sit at 1 in the morning pondering whether or not I should sleep, but the real question has become whether or not my highly caffeinated body will let me sleep. 

I am the epitome of a college student during finals at this moment. I haven't showered, my hair is a mess, my face is full of stress acne, my eye is twitching from the  mix of stress, caffeine, and staring far too long at this screen, and I have chewed through approximately 20 pieces of gum in the last three days. So all in all, I look and feel fantastic. 

You may be curious as to why I am posting this instead of studying and that is a fair question. My response is this: If I were to continue at the pace I have been going at, my head would explode and you would not get to hear anymore from me or see the millions of pictures that I have yet to post from my travels. Granted you may not see those anyway as I have been too lazy and now too stressed/busy to do so. 

Ok this was a long enough break. Back to reviewing cognitive function in relation to obesity and maybe eventually take a shower (my flatmates will probably celebrate if I do).

Home of the Belgian Waffle...

and Chocolate! Yummy!!!!!

Sorry for the tragically late post of this adventure. It happened back in December, but being a procrastinator and somewhat busy, you will either have to forgive me and move on or just get over it. Your choice, of course.


The picture below is a cool building close to my hostel. Apparently it is the Basilica of Koekelberg and is the fifth largest church of the world. I just learned this and I mean right now at 11pm on March 24th. It is always cool to find out that wandering brings you to.

Below are some houses around where my hostel was. They just seemed so picturesque and really just reminded me of Mary Poppins. Granted that took place in England and well this is Brussels, but whatever!

This cool building reminds me of Stark Industries. If you don't know what I am referring to, watch or read Iron Man or The Avengers or you could even pay attention to Captain America. Ooooohhh Ahhhhhh! Yay Superheroes! Back to the topic at hand, this building is from the Brussels Expo, which sort of makes sense that it reminds me of Stark Industries because they had an expo too! I am aware that  there are expos that are not just from comics, but my mind often revolves around those comic book heros.

This also reminds me of Stark... errrr I mean oh wow! Look at the cool futuristic building that was also part of the Brussels Expo. Neat-o!

I went to this place that I guess you can call an amusement park because it provides a place to waste time and I was quite amused by it. It was a place called Mini Europe, which is a rather fitting tittle seeing as it hold miniatures of popular places in Europe. As can be seen below, there is the tiny eiffel tower and tiny little buildings and boats! Yay for tiny things!

For some reason miniatures have always intrigued and delighted me. Maybe it is because they make me feel like a giant and I can stomp around going "RRAAAAAWWWWWWWRRRRRR I EAT YOU TINY CARS AND STOMP AROUND!!!!!!!!! AAAAAAARRRRGGGGGHHHHHHH ME BIG YOU TINY! MWHAHAHAHAHA!" Of course, it could just be that I can't believe that people have that much time and patience, as well as a steady hand, to make such tiny and intricate things, but who really knows? Below is me trying to take a picture inside a fake suit of armour, but travelling alone makes such things quite difficult.

This majestic picture is one of the Atomium, which was discussed earlier. I didn't go inside of it because I didn't find that paying a large sum of money was worth it, but I did find great joy in looking at it and took loads of pictures of it. This one is my favourite because of the reflection in the Mini Europe lake.

This is part of a building I found when I got lost. Because I was lost and have an awful memory, I have no idea what the building actually was, but I do believe it had something to do with politics. I saw it somewhere around the European Commission I believe.

A cool old building! If you haven't figured it out yet, I love old and/or cool looking buildings and take a gargantuan amount of pictures of them. The ones I post are not even close to the amount I actually take. This is in the Parc du Cinquantenaire.

 As is this!

AUTOWORLD!!!!! It had never occurred to me how beautiful cars can be. I never really appreciated how far they have come or thought much about how they looked as long as they got me where I needed to go. Yes I had an occasional "Oh that is pretty!" moment, but then I would think of how much a pretty car would probably cost and how much or rather how little I have in the bank to pay for this trip and my tuition and my living expenses and then maybe eventually if I have enough left, a car. Nevermind about my expenses now as I am pretty well off and am not in need of a car and all of that. All I meant to say was that Autoworld has sparked my interest in cars and so now I will show you some of them! Hella Yeah! But first, the parking lot and the building that housed the cars.

Actually looking back, I think this is the building directly opposite, but they mirrored each other, so it is basically the same thing.

Old cars like this one are pretty nifty looking.

And look at that old motorbike!

This cool car reminds me of Mr. Freeze's car and so, I want it. If you didn't realise earlier that I love superheroes and, in turn, their villains, this post has probably solidified it.

Oooooo look this car only has three wheels!

This certainly isn't a car, but it is a royal carriage! And of course, I want this too!

And this sporty little racer too! Give me! Give me! Give me! I don't need it, I just want it like really, really bad.

An overhead shot of the inside of the building!

My walk home consisted of going through Leopold Park

This is the European Parliament building and looks better at night than it does during the day.

 The following picture is of Federal Parliament.

The picture above is from the Botanique. It was beautiful and fun to explore the so called green labyrinth.
The following pictures are from the Comic Strip Museum. Although I couldn't understand what any of the strips said, looking at the artistry was pretty cool and some of the set stuff was fun!

Another cathedral!!!! This one is the cathedral of Saint Michael.

Pretty gold filigree on a pretty cool looking building!

 The original peeing statue. Honestly, I wasn't that interested, but everyone that was at the fountain seemed so interested. My dad told me he remembers seeing it, so of course I had to go see it too!

 Another peeing statue. This one is more recent, but I think it is much cuter.

That's all for Belgium, but stayed tuned for Amsterdam! Whooo! This takes forever to type up!