The cities I would have never have seen...

Well... I have good news and I have bad news. The good news is that I have figured out a way to be able to put pictures into my blogs!! The good news is my friend Nyree has a camera with a cord to get pictures onto my computer. So I just took my memory chip out of my camera and popped it into hers and then I was able to download my pictures onto my laptop!! So yaaaay the pictures are on my laptop so I can in theory get them into my blog! The bad news is... I had to pay for the Wifi I'm using tonight... it was 4 Euro for an hour... which kind of sucks but I'm in the middle of nowhere, and even if I found a place that did have free wifi I'd still have to buy a drink... so it kind of evens out... BUT the wifi I paid for here SUCKS! It doesn't work and it moves really really slow... And I had to sign my life away to get it. Apparently, it's the Italian law that a copy of my passport has to be made and kept on file and that everything I do will and is being monitored on here. It's an anti-terroism thing I guess. Stupid big brother societies... I'm not doing anything wrong, but I still don't like being watched. This world is crazy now a days. But moving on... the internet is so bad that I can't even upload pictures onto here because it moves too slow. :( Sooo that sucks, but once I get a good internet connection somewhere I'll post a bunch of them up.

The past couple days have been really intense and a lot of fun!! A few days ago we went to Lugao in Switzerland which was a beautiful relaxing place. We were only there for a couple of hours, but it was very pretty and was nice to see. Then finally we made it into Italy! Yay!! I've really liked Italy so far!

The first city that we went to was the famous Verona... which is where Romeo and Juliet was set. Did you know that Romeo and Juliet were actually based off of the life a real couple? One family supported the king, and the other supported the pope. They actually have the graves of both Romeo and Juliet in Verona... they are on the outskirts though and I didn't actually get to make it out to see them. BUT I did get to go to Juliet's house and see her famous balcony. I also rubbed her statue's right breast for good fertility!! Everyone was lining up to do it, and I have the picture of it! So I jumped up and did it as well :) When we walked off of the road there is a walkway that is filled with declarations of love. You can see that people have written that they were there and were in love with each other over every single inch of this area... and then when they ran out of room on the walls they started pinning up notes, and there are tons and tons of them all over the place!! I will post the pictures in a couple of days! I don't know if I'm going to have internet in Rome or not, but I'll be super busy and doing a lot in room... so I don't know if I'll be able to sneak on or not... But Verona was a nice city to stop in at. I got to try real gelato there which was AMAZING!! I had banana flavored it was very yummy!!

I also go to go to Venice! Venice is called the "Wet City" for numerous reasons... I have to say that Venice is unlike ANY of place that I've ever been to... For one thing Venice is a series of 180 islands, and it doesn't have any roads in the entire city... it is all canals and water... and it has bridges connecting the islands. It was incredibly hard to get into Venice. We had to take a 20 minute bus ride and then a 45 minute boat ride to get into the city center!! Only extremely rich people stay in the islands of Verona. At the moment Brad Pitt and Angelina are here shooting a movie!! And the first night in Venice I got to watch them filming... although neither one of them were on the set.

With Venice being so hard to get to you might wonder why it was built in the first place. A long time ago main land Europe was getting attacked by the Huns, and they were destorying and stealing everything that they could get their hands on. Well the people that lived on mainland Italy were fisherman and knew the waters of Venice really well... so they decided to pack up and move across the water where they would be safe.

While we were on our boat ride our tour guide was telling us information about Venice and one thing that he mentioned was that it has a lot of problems with flooding when the hide tide comes in, and we all kind of nodded and was like... ohhh okay. Well when we were eating dinner it started to pour down rain, and the wind really picked up as the high tide came in and the streets flooded!!!!!!! We had to walk on staffolds to get around the city because we couldn't walk down any of the flooded roads. It was really crazy, but kinda cool to see. I took some pictures that I'll put up later on!!! Definetely an interesting experience to say the least.

Today when we went into the city it was mostly dry until the end when it rained a little bit... but it was a great day in Venice. I got to go on a gondola ride!!! Yippee!!! :) It was really cool. I'll post up some pictures so you can see what it was like... but you really can't get to parts of venice without a boat/gondola because like I said there aren't any roads there. I'm sorry that this post isn't that thorough, but I only have an hour on here... and my time is almost up!! Ahhh!!! I'll give a lot more details when I can post pictures!!

Today I also got to go into St. Marks Catherdal... which was by the FAR the most gorgeous church I have EVER been inside of... it was simply breathtaking to see. The walls were made up of different colors of marble, and there were decorations and paintings on the ceiling in pure gold... and it was just a fantastic site to see. Best of all it's free to get into it... you just have to pay to go to the top of it, and to go into a musuem they have and what not... but just getting into the church and looking around is free... It would have been worth paying though. I thought St. Paul's was gorgeous, but this one was a lot nicer!! You can tell that the Ventians were really really rich at one point, because this church is extraordinarly decorated. I really really enjoyed it. The outside is really really nice as well, so you'll get to see a sample of it later on!!

Without pictures and my time limit I'm afraid this is about all that I can tell you about Venice at the moment. But it really was a chance of the lifetime, because I don't think I will ever be able to make it to Venice on my own. It was soooo hard trying to get into the city, and it's a very complicated city. The roads are very very easy to get lost on, because they aren't straight roads... they twist and turn throughout the city. So without a guide arraigning stuff it would be really hard to do. It was really nice though. I'm happy I got to go, because I know had I not come on this trip I wouldn't have seen any of the marvelous cities that I got to see for the past couple of days!! But I'll tell you some interesting stories later on, because I have to go now!! :)

Switzerland!

Alright so the blog that I wrote for Amsterdam is very very long. It was over 3 pages long in a Word document... so I am not going to retype it all out until I can figure out how to import it into my blog. If anyone has any insight into this please please please help!! I am also going to skip over the blog that I wrote for last night as well which was about Germany. They are both really good blogs in my humble opinion... I have a lot of great stories in them... but they'll hopefully be posted within the next couple of days. I have a great hope that my friend Michael will be able to help me figure out how upload my blogs. No pressure buddy... hahaha!

Anyways! Today we will move onto Switzerland! SUCH a gorgeous, friendly, safe place... Of the places I have been I loved Switzerland the most. I've had a great past couple of days here, and my hotel is in a great location in the heart of the city. The Swiss Alps are really beautiful, and they are surrounded by a huge lake that is crystal clear. You can see all the way to the bottom of it, and there are ducks and swans swimming all of the place. I took SO many pictures today of the Alps! I had the chance to go on a boat cruise around Lake Lucerne (which is where we are staying) and it was really peaceful and nice. I met an older couple from Arizona and they loved Danny. Apparently, there grandson gave them his own Flat Stanley a few years ago and they were talking to me about it. After the river cruise I went on an exucursion to the top of the Alps!! It was pretty cold up there, but the view was really great. I took a bunch of pictures up there too!!

In the middle of the alps there was a glacier that had been craved out, and we got to go inside of it. It had lights that changed colors all throughout it and you were able to play music inside of it. It had all kinds of different types of music, and we put it on "popular" and the song "Ice ice baby" came on, and I thought it was hilarous!!! I couldn't stop laughing, because of course we were surrounded by this beautiful ice. I took a lot of pictures of that too!! Sorry that it will take so long for you to see them. I'm super bummed about it.

The only downfall that I've seen of Switzerland is that things are soooo expensive here! For a reference 20 chicken nuggets at Burger King were 19 franks! Which is crazy!!! They had an under 8 frank menu instead of a dollar menu! The exchange rate for Euro to Franks are like 1.40 so I get money here!! Yippeee!! About time!! But the prices in Switzerland don't make it very good... They do take Euros here in some places though. It was sooo awesome. I bought a keychain and a postcard in a gift shop with 20 Euros and got 24 franks back.... and I was like yippeee!!! Haha. At first I thought that the girl made a mistake, and I stared stupidly at the money she handed me. I understood once I looked at the receipt. Happy days! I saved most of my Switzerland money as suverniors though haha.

Oh wow! I just tried to do a spell check and just about every word is highlighted as spelled wrong! I guess because I'm in a different country??? I don't know. So if I have misspelled words you'll have to excuse me!

The coffee shop that I am currently in plays awesome music. It makes me really happy. They are playing Kokomo right now. :)

Before I came on this trip I thought that I was doing pretty good with being a well traveled person, but after talking to some of these people on my trip I realize there are a LOT of places in the world that I still need to make it to! Almost everyone here has been thoroughout all of the United States, most of Asia, and a bunch of other places. It's pretty impressive talking to these people... a lot of them have been on multiple trips like this, but most of them are at LEAST 20 years older than me haha. So I guess I have time...

But I would highly reccommend Switzerland to anyone that was looking for a nice happy place to take a vacation. It's very laid back, and only speaking English hasn't been a problem at all. I tried to speak German in a shop today, and the girl was like... ughh you can speak English here you know. And I was like ohh gee haha It was funny.

I'm super excited about tomorrow. I'm making my way into Italy!! Yippee!! We are going to Verona and ending up in Venice tomorrow :) which should be great. Hopefully my hotel there will have free wifi haha. My tour director said that some do. If so maybe I'll actually be able to Skype some! Yaaay! I have a really early day tomorrow. 6 am wake up call again! Ugh! it's alright though I'll just have to go to bed at a reasonable time haha. I wish that I had pictures on me of back home to show everyone. They all want to know about Ohio, and they want to see what it looks like. It's nice for me because they are all mostly Australians and I've been to their country before so when they talk about their home I reasonably know what they are talking about. It's nice meeting different people.

I've been doing a new thing with Danny. I've been taking pictures with him with the people that he meets. Danny has met people from New Zealand, France, Switzerland, Arizona, Colorado, Indonesia, Australia, and etc... So it's pretty cool to take pictures of him and then describe the people that he's met, because everyone has a different background and it's interesting.

But today has been an absolutely fantastic day. It's only 6:37 pm but I'm exhausted! I'm ready to go to bed soon haha, but I'll probably be on my computer for a little while longer. I hope everyone thats reading my blog has a guten nacht! Or good night in German! :)

Darn it...

Due to the fact that Europe does not have free wifi in their hotels yet... my internet access is pretty limited. So what I am going to do is write my blogs ahead of time. Instead of waiting until I find internet to write my blog I am going to write my blogs the night after I go to the places in a Word document, and then I'll mass post them once I get internet!! So if you don't get a couple of blogs for a couple of days don't fret... you'll get caught up eventually!!!

Second sad thing is I just realized today that I forgot my camera cord to upload pictures onto my laptop. I was suuuuuper bummed when I realized this, because I have been taking pictures all along with my blog in consideration... and half of the places I've been just aren't as good without the pictures that go with them. :( I'm sorry!! I can't believe I forgot it in Aberdeen. But instead of just waiting to post my blogs with pictures in Aberdeen I think I'll just post the blogs now, and then when I get to Aberdeen I'll post the pictures. Sorry everyone :(

Uh oh!! I'm having some issues. My blog won't just let me copy and paste my pre-written stuff right into here :( it is saying that I have to save my word document as a .xml and I can't figure out how to do it!! My word document is currently saved as .docx and I can't figure out how to change it over. Does anyone know how to make this work?? If so please Facebook me how to do it so I can post my blogs.

Arrival!

WOW! The past 28 hours have been full of traveling! I left my room in Aberdeen yesterday around 5:30 and have only just now (9:22 pm) arrived at my hotel in Amsterdam. First I took a 12 hour bus to London, and I had the pleasure of sitting next to a very strange guy!! I was trying to sleep and the guy just wouldn't leave me alone. He was 33 years old and he didn't speak English that well... so we both kinda only half understood each other, and it was very strange. Every time I looked over at him he was staring at me with a creepy smile! All night long ... At one point I woke up at 4:30 in the morning and there he was creepily staring at me... I almost yelled at him at that point, but I just turned away from him. He kept trying to get me to listen to his music too. I had my ipod in and he keep putting his earbud in my face and poking me asking me to listen to his music... I guess he wanted to talk to me and I was ignoring him when I had my own ipod on haha. I don't know it was strange! But regardless I got off the bus and didn't say anything to him and just walked away.

Then I had to find my other bus for my tour, and boy did I have with that!! I had to drag my luggage around London, and I hopped on the tube station, but I wasn't exactly sure what line I had to take. As I was looking at a map a nice worker man directed me where to go... I felt like such a tourist with my big suitcase and map in hand. Once I got off the tube station I walked completely in the wrong direction, and ended up doing a full circle to where I had to go. The map I had was really confusing though. I thought I was going in the right way... But regardless of how it might sound I was pleased by the fact that I recognized quite a few things that I passed while in London. I'm glad Julia and I went there before or I would have been totally lost. I had my bearings about me and made my tour in time.

I met a girl for Australia who is 24 and she is traveling alone as well so we're going to travel around together. I was really worried at first because I didn't see anyone my age on the tour... but it worked out well in the end. There is a wide variety of ages on this tour... From my age, to newlyweds, to a woman in her mid thirties, to retired people... Mostly retired people. I'm the only American on my tour bus... everyone else seems to be from Australia and New Zealand, but that's okay with me. My tour guide seems really great. I can tell that I'm not going to have much internet time here... I'm not even sure if all of the places I am going to go will have free wifi. It seems like I passed several places that have free wifi today, but my laptop was in my luggage so I couldn't get on all day. :( I don't really want to carry my laptop around with me either because I don't want anything to happen to it. So I'll get on when I can, but don't be worried if you don't here from me for a few days... it's probably just because I'm not able to get on. I have a 7am wake up call tomorrow... I guess our tour starts bright and early haha. But my guide seems really great, and he's been telling us all kinds of obscure random cool facts about the places we've just been driving through. He seems pretty knowledgable about the area... tomorrow I'm going on a canal cruise and going to a diamond cutting factory... and then I have some free time in Amsterdam before we move on! So I'll hopefully have some updates tomorrow if I can get onto the internet! Don't worry I'm writing down all of the stories he's telling us so I'll have a better report when I'm in an area that has a longer supply of Wifi... it's only free here for 30 mins, and I feel like I have a lot to do with my time right now!! So sorry for the brief verison!

Amazing!!!

So today could not be a better day! I just learned when the Wizarding World of Harry Potter is coming out!! It's openning on June 18th!! Back in Decemeber I booked my hotel for $20 a night for the week of June 21st-28th! So I'm going to be there during openning week!! Yippeee!!! How amazing of luck is that?

My song of the week is blaring across of my flat right now! So I'm just about packed up here.. I'm really excited =) I can't wait for my trip to begin! Tomorrow morning I might be meeting up with Julia and her mom for breakfast in London... How awesome is that?? Haha. I'm just finishing up packing now and heading off to my classes really quick then I'm OUT of here!

Also I just realized that there was a huge protest on campus the other day, because Aberdeen wants to charge a couple hundred pounds next year to go to school here. And before I thought that meant an increase in tuition... today I realized that the people that go school here don't pay anything to go here! College to them is just another part of the education.. just like high school would be! And they were protesting having to pay a couple hundred pounds a year to go to University! That blew my mind! I learn so much about people in Sociology haha... There are a lot of Scottish people in my class and we usually just talk the whole class period about different people and places and stuff like that... It's really interesting. =) Hopefully I'll be learning a lot more about people over the next couple of weeks!

Song of the Week!

This week's song of the week explains itself!! "I'm so excited" by the Point Sisters :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKlvNv2iQCo

I can't wait for these next three weeks! They are going to be intense but I think it's going to be great! =) I'm very excited and I feel very lucky for getting the chance to go on this trip... I know a lot of people that even study abroad don't get the chance to go everywhere I am going to be going to!! I hope that I'll be able to take some great pictures to show everyone!

Itinerary!

So I have had a couple requests for my itinerary for my Spring Break trip :) I decided that I would put it on here so everyone knows what blogs to look foward to! :)

Day 1: London, channel crossing to the Amsterdam area

Day 2: Amsterdam area and Rhineland

Day 3: Rhineland, Heidelberg, and Lake Lucerne

Day 4: Lucerne

Day 5: Lake Lucerne, Lugano, Verona, and Venice area

Day 6: Venice

Day 7: Venice area, Assisi, Rome

Day 8: Rome

Day 9: Rome, Pisa, and Florence area

Day 10: Florence

Day 11: Florence area, and French Riviera

Day 12: French Riviera, Avignon, and Carcassonne

Day 13: Carcassonne and Barcelona

Day 14: Barcelona

Day 15: Barcelona and Madrid

Day 16: Madrid

Day 17: Madrid, Burgos, and Bilbao

Day 18: Bilbao, Bordeaux, Poitiers

Day 19: Poitiers, Orelans, and Paris

Day 20: Paris

Day 21: Paris, channel crossing into London

Day 22, 23, 24, and 25: Edinburgh

After the tour I am heading to Edinburgh for a long weekend. I'll get there around 8:30 am on Friday and I'll leave around 5:30 on Monday. :) Also before I catch my bus I'll have about 6 hrs in London. So get ready for the adventure to begin! I'll try to keep my blog as updated as I can, but it might be challenging! I don't know how much down time I'll have. Too bad I probably won't have WiFi on my bus :( But I'll try really hard to keep this blog up to date for everyone :) If you want a postcard from anywhere imparticular please let me know now and I'll try to pick one up for you! :)

Accomplishments!

I feel like I got a lot done today! First of all I woke up and wrote my Celtics paper that is due the Friday after break. I feel really relieved to have it done ahead of time. Now all I have to do is write my knowledge and mind paper! It's the paper that I'm looking the least forward to writing. I don't even know how I'm going to get resources for it, and I don't even know how I'm going to write about the topics I've been assigned... but hopefully I'll prevail! It's worth 50% of my grade so I have to do well on it! Haha. I'm sure I will though... I usually do pretty well on papers.

After writing my paper I snuck some Castle Age time in and I reached 200 max energy today and I got a dragon helm... which is really good for those that don't know. It's the best type of helm that you can get in the game! I'm about to hit some other achievements in the game as well so I'm excited about that too. :)

Jessie came over today for a little while and we hung out for a bit. We made dinner together and had to scarf it down really quickly because we went to see Alice in Wonderland in 3D at 7. It turns out the bus comes every 30 mins on Sunday instead of the regular 15 mins it does on regular days so we didn't even have to rush. The movie was pretty good! We got there just in time. It was an interesting movie... I was a little worried that it would be extremely weird like the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie was, but it wasn't bad at all. Maybe it was because Alice and Wonderland is just an odd movie altogether or maybe it is just that I haven't watched the regular Alice in Wonderland in a long time so I don't really remember what happens in it that much... BUT whatever it was the movie wasn't too bad. I thought it was decent. I'm not going to say it was my favorite movie of all time... but it's a Disney movie so of course I liked it. :) I'm excited there is a new Shrek movie coming out in the summer! It's called the Final Chapter I think so maybe that means this will be the last one? What is it with movies that are coming out with numerous multiple sequels lately? It seems like there are more sequel movies out now a days than there are stand alone movies... But I don't want to complain too heavily because some of my favorite books are being made into these said movies :) I digress...

The overall point of this blog is that I'm happy with how my day went today. Tomorrow I have some plans because it is my roommate Jeanne's birthday :) I forget exactly what we are going to do tomorrow, but I think it involves going to a Mexican restaurant... bleh! Oh well I'll suck it up... maybe I'll find something to to eat there... I kinda doubt it! But maybe I'll get lucky! Hope your day was a good as mine was!!! :)

Scary Situation!

Due to the fact that I am not coming back to school until Tuesday after spring break, and I have two papers due on that Monday I am writing both of my essays that I need to turn in next week this weekend. So in order to write the paper I needed books for research... so yesterday off to the library I went. I was searching for references to Queen Margaret of the Scots who lived in 1043 and let me tell you finding books on her is no easy feat! I did find two books that were purely about her, and then the catalog said that another book was in the "lower ground floor" and I was currently on the ground floor so I was really confused for a moment. I ended up asking a librarian what it meant and she was like ohhh that's the bottom level you just have to go down those stairs. That section is where we keep the older books.

I was like oh alright thanks. So unsuspectingly I went down into what should have been called the basement. It was full of EXTREMELY old books. I felt like I'd walked into an ancient tomb and was staring at priceless artifacts. I was the only person down there and it was super creepy! The creepiest part was that they had so many books selves that they were closed bookshelves. I should have taken a picture because you can't really understand what I'm trying to say if you can't see it... I've been in a lot of libraries and this is a first for me!

The shelves were compacted onto each other and there was one open aisle you had to turn a level which in turn moved all of the levelers of all of the other book cases and the book case started closing in on the open aisle and opening up the aisle you wanted to go into. Talk about the walls closing in on ya! I had my ipod on and I started winding away because I was confused as to what was going to happen. After I'd gone halfway through I saw a sign that said "Please check open aisle before turning knob" and I was like oh crap! So I ran over to the now halfway aisle and checked it and luckily no one was in there! I would have squashed them into the bookcase! How horrible would that have been. And the book shelves move really slowly so you really can't even tell that they are closing in on you until it gets tight!

Talk about the perfect murder scene type of place. You should squash someone in and then just walk away. It's in the bottom level of the library that probably no one ever goes down into very often, and I doubt anyone would even hear someone yelling that was trapped down there!

With this flashing threw my mind I was looking around for anyone and then I briskly started scanning the shelves for the book I needed. I was praying the whole time please don't be in the middle of the shelf... please don't be in the middle of the shelf... and luckily the section I need was at the very end of the bookcase haha. But I was still rushing through trying to get out of their as soon as I could because it was really freaky down there. The books were ancient, but I'm talking about an ancient civilization so I'm sure it would have been revelant haha. In the end though I decided that those books were to fragile and old I didn't want to take them out of the library because I didn't want to damage them.... and quite frankly I didn't want to scan the shelves searching for some obscure book that I'll quote one line in my paper haha.

But yeah I hate the library on this campus. Once again I was trying to find a book that I needed, and the shelving system here makes no sense! It jumps around to different sections and it's really hard to find the book that you need. Also they don't have any books to read just for fun there either so it's a boring library. Now add on the cryptic basement with the wall closing bookcases and I'm quite glad that I'm finishing up my last papers in Aberdeen so I don't have to go there anymore!! I'll stick with public user friendly libraries from now on!

Flat Danny

Before I left Becky told me about a project one of her fellow teachers was doing with her class. They have a project called "Flat Stanley." Flat Stanley was a little boy that got flattened and went all across the world, and had his picture taken at each place that he went. So the kids in the class are to make their own Flat Stanley, and they mail it to someone in a different country. That person sends them one as well, and they each take pictures of each others flat Stanley and then they write to each other about what their country is like, and stuff like that...

Well I agreed to take on a flat Stanley for their entire 2nd grade class. You might ask why the title of this message is flat Danny instead of flat Stanley, and that is easily explained because my flat person is not Stanley. A little boy in the class made my flat person, and I believe his name is Danny. So alas I have flat Danny!! Here are some pictures with Danny's adventures in Aberdeen and Glasgow! Due to the fact that EVERYTHING in Glasgow was made out of stone Julia and Kris were my helpful assistants while I was taking pictures of Danny!

Yes. Julia is hilarious!

Danny was thinking about buying a kilt.

He isn't afraid of heights!

It looks like they are hitch hiking! But you can see the red stone buildings in the background which is typical of Glasgow buildings.

A close up of Danny. Only a little bit scary haha.

But he liked the highland cows too!

Don't worry he is being careful while crossing the street too.

These are just some of Aberdeen.

I don't know if I've mentioned in my blog yet or not that Pizza Hut is considered a sit down restaurant here. You call tell how big it is if you look on the second floor.

Just showing off the stone work in Aberdeen!

Just the city

He sticks on poles in Aberdeen! Yay!

But yes that is Danny!! Glad that you've been formally introduced now! :) Danny will be coming with me on all of my adventures so you might see another picture or two of him!

Trip to Glasgow!!

This weekend the gang and I all went out to Glasgow!! Glasgow is the biggest city in Scotland, and we learned this weekend that there really isn't any reason WHY Glasgow is the biggest city in Scotland... It's not like the industrial capital or have any great draw to the city at all... people just decided to come there. Apparently people just decided that they wanted to live in Glasgow and financial markets grew because of it. Now there is a large night life and shopping industry in Glasgow, and that is what it's known for!

This is Nathan and Jessie at the Chinese Buffet that we went to for dinner. :)

This is Kris and a girl that we met at our hostel. She is traveling all around Europe by herself and meeting up with people in hostels. She has a book that she's having every person she meets right advice in. This way she'll have advice from all over the world. It's a pretty cool idea. But yes, she's very brave!! I don't think I could do what she's doing, but we adopted her right into our little group and we had a lot of fun for the couple days. :)

I got the waiter to take a picture of us all. :)

This is on the main road in Glasgow! I loved the lights in the trees! It reminded me of the Magic Kingdom :)

This was later on in the night at a pub we stopped in at. We were waiting for Julia to get off of her bus so we could pick her up, and this place happened to be right near it. :) Notice the classy candle in the Morgan Spice bottle haha. I guess it's cheap decorations?? It was actually pretty cool, definitely different!

This is Julia holding onto my Flat Danny for me!! I'll make a post tomorrow explaining him! Yikes! I guess I really HAVE been slipping on my blog posts!! Sorry guys! Haha. But yes this is the museum that we made our journey to see. It took forever to find this place!! It was in the mist of a park/forest, and it wasn't the easiest place to track down! If we wouldn't have had a Rick Steves guide we'd have never found it/known about it.

This is a quick picture of the inside of it. The museum was half way made of glass, and it was right outside of the woods. It was done on purpose to be a nice mix of art and nature. The result was a nice effect, but personally I'd rather stare at nature then at art! Bleh! I am not a huge museum fan. I'm like the little kid that says "Can we go now? Are we done yet?? Anything else you want to see??" Haha. Julia and Kris are the ones that I went to the museum with and they are both art history majors, so I'll walk around the section of the museum and be ready to go on my way and they'll still be at the same piece. I love them though. Julia is the only person I'd ever want to go to a museum with, because she's so fascinating! She knows sooo much about everything, and she points out things I would have never thought of/considered. So it's pretty cool to go browsing about the museums, but 2-3 hrs is just too much for me! So you can imagine my happiness once we left and walked outside and found.......

COWS! Or as they are called here Highland Cattle! There are BEASTS! I feel like they are some type of creature that I would fight on castle age or a game similar to it! They are really hairy and have huge horns! When I was driving on the bus to Glasgow I was sitting next to a Scottish boy that is from Glasgow, and as we were just casually driving along we passed a field full of these babies, and it was all I could do not to gasp and point at them. I was so shocked to see them. I really tried to restrain myself, because I didn't want him to laugh at me, and be like awww silly American girl gets excited by the sight of a cow hahaha. But it was really cool!

Mmm hmm... up close and personal! Don't mind my hair it was SUPER windy out!

Just proof that I did in fact find COWS in GLASGOW! Haha. Michael will get the reference.

This is Julia and Kris in front of the cows. I did have them line up for a bunch of shots throughout the trip haha

Here you can see part of the city. I'm not sure if you can tell in this picture of not, but all of the houses and buildings in Glasgow are built out of stone! None of the houses have points or siding it's all stone! Quite a few of them have the red stone that is behind us.

This is the cathedral in Glasgow. It is the oldest cathedral in Scotland, and it's the oldest building in Glasgow. I would have taken a better picture of it, but it was under construction on the other side so this picture was the best I could do.

We were able to take pictures really quick so this is a picture of the inside of it. I'm afraid that you can't see the stained glass, but the church was FULL of it. It was really pretty.

Did you know that the difference between a cathedral and a church is that a cathedral is a bishops headquarters.

This is an old map of the area we were in near the cathedral.

Ah ha! My favorite part! St. Mungos! I was extremely excited and geeked out about finding this place and taking a picture by it. For those of you that aren't aware St. Mungos is the wizarding hospital in Harry Potter. Here it is a museum of life and art. I didn't really go inside of it, because as I said before I'm not a huge museum person, but it was still cool to take a picture by it! I got teased a lot by Julia and Kris for wanting this picture so badly, but later on when we walked by it again we saw some other people posing by it similarly to me! So HA I'm not the only one haha.

Here is a closer up view.

This is a picture of the whole building. St. Mungo also happens to be the patron saint of Glasgow and he founded the city. So there actually is a praticle reason for this building being here.

Now at first I didn't think that there was anything magical about the building and I was slightly disappointed, although admittedly I don't know what I had expected to find here.... but I was just DELIGHTED when I saw this door! This is the door leading into the building, and if you look closely you can tell that it is full of magical symbols! SCORE! :)

Moving along into the center of city, in this picture you can see the shopping district of the city!! I tried to take a picture so that you could see just how many people there were on this street but it was impossible. It was a sea of people all the way down the street as far as the eye could see people were jammed back onto this street. It was very intense.

"To Let" Means to rent in Scotland. Jessie and Nathan were joking that it looked like toilet. But despite the jokes these signs were on every single street in Glasgow, and it was quite sad. You can really tell this recession is global. Aberdeen is an oil city, and oil happens to be one of industries that is recession proof, because no matter what people will still need oil and will buy it... so you don't really see too many places closed down and for rent/to sell in Aberdeen, but in a retail based city the effects were wide spread. You literally couldn't walk down a street without seeing at least one to let sign.

On a lighter note... Yes they do exist. I was walking down the street in the day and I saw these three guys stopped for a moment so I took a quite discrete picture of them!! Haha. Now I won't have you thinking that every guy walks down the street wearing kilts, but it does happen! The first night we got here we saw a man wearing a kilt playing his bagpipe panhandling on the street. I would have taken a picture of him, but my flash would have given me away. Also, we passed quite a few kilt stores while walking around the city!! I'm pretty sure I have a picture of a kilt store a little bit lower in this post.

Now I'm not sure if you can make it out or not, but this building is called "The Light House" Kris and Julia told me that we were going to go to the light house to take some pictures, because the light house offered some great views of the city. In my mind we were going to go to an actual light house, so you can imagine my surprise when Julia turned down this little alleyway and pointed at this building. I had to squint my eyes to make out what this sign said. Guide book or not I have no clue how Julia found this place!!! I would have NEVER found this place on my own.

This was probably the funniest bathroom sign I've ever seen! Julia, Kris, and I were cracking up when we saw this. So of course we had to take a picture!

This is one of my "light house" view pictures.

This picture is really dark, but this is Julia and me!

Julia is going to love me for posting this picture! But she was sitting down on the bench and suddenly she jumped up really excitedly... of course I was like what's going on?? And she said that she finally caught a seagull flying in one of her pictures. Apparently she's been trying to get a flying bird into one of her pictures for quite so time now... So I started laughing and I was like all you had to do was just take a picture of me, and I made my hand into a beak and started squaking like a seagull, and Julia started laughing and she started taking pictures of me! So in return when she started doing it I caught one of her to post on here. I don't have any pictures of me doing this, but I'm sure they'll be on Facebook!! Of course during this whole ordeal Kris was looking at us like we were crazy. We tried to get her to do it too, but she wouldn't hahaha. So not seagull impresonation picture of Kris :( The best part of this was when we were leaving we noticed that there was a CCTV camera behind us. If you look up in the top you can see it in my picture. Of course we busted out laughing. It was around closing time and we were the only people left in the building so we know that the guy at the front desk was probably watching us!! Darn Big Brother Society! Haha

This was a cute little coffee shop that we sat down in for a little while. Places close very early in Scotland. By 5pm on Saturday all of the musuems, shops, and other places such as that were closed for the day. We tried to find a resturant/pub to sit in to get some food... but every single place was packed to capacity. And I'm not exaggerating. We walked up and down the main strip walking into every sit-down food serving establishment that we passed, and none of them had a table open. Apparently once everything closes up people go into a pub and snag their seats for the night, and just sit there and chat and drink all night long. I guess since everything closes so early pubs is the only form of entertainment here. No wonder why people drink so much in these countries compared to the United States.

I had to take a picture of this car! Oh my gosh. I saw so many cars driving past like this that I finally had to take a picture of one. They are hot pink and they look so strange. It cracked me up everytime one passed!

Ah yes. The American woman. This was on front of a candy shop. Now she might be dressed wearing little clothing, but let me tell you what... some of the girls that I have seen here where ridiculously short dresses! And I'm not talking about just one or two, but every single girl that I saw walking down the streets was wearing a really short dress, leggings, and high heels. I felt short of strange to be the only girl (besides the girls in my group) that were wearing jeans! I'd say that the dresses the girls here were wearing is pretty similar to the one wonder woman there is wearing!

This picture does not do this field much justice, but it is enormous! It was bought by the crown for the Scottish people. Apparently to this day any Scottish person that wants to craze these sheep, hang their washing, or etc.. have the right to do so in this huge field. Apparently it's mostly used a large park now-a-days, or for important events. But I thought that it was funny that people had the right to hang their washings or to graze their sheep there!

This was a very interesting looking bridge so I snapped a picture of it. :)