Tuesday, November 21, 2006

We are right now at the "Willy Wallace" Hostel in Stirling, Scotland. We arrived today from Edinburgh, where we have spent the last 4 days.
After London Edinburgh felt much closer to home, and I am blaming this mostly on the rain and very chilly wind that we hiked around in for most of our time there.
I didn't really expect much better, it is the middle of November in Scotland, after all. Besides the weather I enjoyed our time in Edinburgh very much, and I believe the others did also. It's an extremely old city, and as one of our aquaintances (who was a livley french girl whom chelsea and i will tell you more about once we return) put it, a "very mystic" place. We opted to stay away from most of the mystic stuff though, and after having a good run through of it all from our French friend, we thankfully knew where to avoid.
We spent most of our time wandering up, down, and around the Royal Mile, a road that runs from the bottom of town where the Queens Palace in located, right up through the middle to the hill on which Edinburgh Castle stands. The street is full of shops and museums and cute little pubs (where unfortunatley we ate most of our meals, we're really getting lazier the closer we get to home!). We toured the Castle as well, and saw the crown jewels of Scotland (which were much more impressive than those of France we saw in the Louve) as well as the room in which Mary Queen of Scots gave birth to her son James, who became kind of Scotland and eventually king of England. He was the first king of what we now know as the "United Kingdom". There's a little history lesson for ya:) Gotta learn something new every day!
Another day took us up "authors seat", a very large rolling hill type-mountain rising up on the edge of town. It was quite a climb and the top brought us amazing views of the city and lots of fun jumping around in the wind, which was about 3 times as strong as the wind at the front of a BC Ferry. I almost lost my hat a few times. I'm hoping Jord will get his Pictures of it all uploaded before we leave on Saturday so you can have a look:)
SATURDAY! I can't believe it's finally so close. Honestly none of us can believe it and it has not sunk in whatsoever yet. I dont think it will until we actually see our parents face to face. I knew it would seem as if it had all just flown by once it was over...But I'm not giving a goodbye europe speach just yet, as we have 3 more days of exploring to do before we actually climb onto that awful plane. Tomorrow we will see the famed Stirling Castle. We'll update again before leaving, See you all Soon!!
-Kait & co.