Updated To Do List!

More for me than you, so I'm sorry if this post is uninteresting. :D

• Shetland (already booked for May)
• Isle of Arran (also booked) 
• Orkney (if time, though probably won't be)
• Ireland (not sure where, just. Ireland. Maybe Northern if it's easier to get there)
• London (definitely happening in May)
• Iona (I found a good a boat cruise for this, and it's easy to get tours there from Oban)
• Stalker Castle (somewhere around Oban)
• Stirling Day (to see all the stuff in Stirling I haven't seen yet!): Old Jail, Doune Castle, Bannockburn, Church of the Holy Rude, Alanwater Brewery tour
• COWS WHERE ARE THE HIGHLAND COWS???

Highlands and Hockey

This weekend was JAM-PACKED.  So be warned, this post will probably equal the length of the past couple days.

Day 1:
Glengoyne Distillery

I woke up early on Saturday morning to catch the train to Glasgow, where the tour bus picked us up and took us to Glengoyne Distillery. There we got some free samples. The whisky was really nice and light, so even some people who don't normally drink whisky kind of liked it.
Our tour guide did a really good job of explaining how whisky is made (meaning I actually understood it), and it's a surprisingly fascinating process. Plus, she had one of my favorite Scottish accents that I've heard so far, which I'm assuming is from that general area of the Western Highlands. Glengoyne is located almost directly at the southern border of the Highlands because it used to be that the taxes were the cheapest there.
Glengoyne's whisky was actually the favorite of the Queen Mum (Elizabeth's mother) up until she died, so they used to have the royal crest on all of their products. The tour guide jokingly asked us to give Will and Kate a bottle if we see them so they can reinstate the honor. She also told us that one of the main differences between Scottish whisky (Scotch) and other kinds is that Scotch is only distilled twice whereas Irish and American whiskey is distilled three times. Moreover  Scottish "whisky" has no "e" in the name, while other kinds are spelled "whiskey." There's actually a whole list of rules that designate the differences between how Scotch and other whiskies are made. This is just a guess, but I'm assuming one of those is that Scotch has to be made in Scotland.
There's plenty more interesting stuff I could say about whisky, but other things did happen on the trip that I should probably cover. I guess.

Loch Lomond

We had lunch in Tarbet, which is pretty much a pit stop with a fancy hotel and a little cafe next to Loch Lomond. The Loch was super cold because of the wind coming off it it, but we got some pictures and then walked up the road to have lunch. We found a tearoom, where I got to talk with two really cool girls studying abroad in Edinburgh and the two program guides. We had a really fun conversation over our meals. I ordered an egg and sausage sandwich, but something about the sausage they make here doesn't really sit well with me. It seems like they add some kind of quinoa-type grain to the ground meat. I also had my first caramel wafer, which is kind of like those Voortman wafer cookies except with caramel between the layers and covered in chocolate. I liked it, but I've definitely had desserts in Scotland that I enjoyed more.

Dunstaffnage Castle

Dunstaffnage Castle was the first castle I've seen located right next to the water. There's a very small harbor right next to it and a pretty view of that from the top. I've heard that a lot of castles in the Western Highlands are situated beside water or on islands, which I think makes them the most scenic. Dunstaffnage is pretty tiny, but they probably just added it to the trip itinerary because it's right outside of Oban, where we were headed.




Oban

Oban is a really cute little harbor town where you can get ferries to a lot of the Western Islands, including Staffa, Mull, and Iona which is probably the most famous (and also a really common girl's name in Scotland). There's an old abbey there, and the landscape is supposedly really neat. I'm planning to go sometime in May.

Iona Abbey

There are also ferries which will will take you to see the local seal colonies. I'd love to do that later in the spring.

McCaig's Tower

McCaig's Tower is less of a tower and more of a coliseum overlooking Oban. It was built to create jobs in 1897 and took five years to complete. Although it's a pain to walk up to it, there's a nice view of the city from there. I could see the tower from my hostel room window, and it looks really cool at night when it's lit up with spotlights.

After we visited McCaig's tower, our guides let us go exploring, so I went with my two new friends from Edinburgh to find someplace to eat. We heard there was a good seafood restaurant on the ferry port, so we walked down there and got to see a cool view of the city. Eventually, we found the Waterfront Fishhouse, where I got some amazing clam and crab chowder (I'd never had the kind with little clams still in their shells before), and a lobster with some kind of cream sauce, potato wedges, and a tiny salad. I also tried a bottle of Estrella Damm, which is probably the best pale ale that I've had. I normally only like darker beers.

Dinner was really fun, and after that, we decided to find a pub to hang out in. For some reason, we couldn't find a lot of pubs, although we realized the next day that there were way more than we'd thought. The general problem in Scotland is that pubs are often divided between the young people and the old people ones, and the majority of them are exclusively frequented by old people. But we did manage to find one good pub called Coasters that had a mix of generations and seemed to be pretty happening. The one funny thing about Coasters was that, even though it looked like a standard pub with a lot of middle aged people, they were blasting top 40 dance remixes the whole time like it was a night club.

We didn't hang out at Coasters long because we were pretty tired, so we went back to our room at about 10pm.  The place we were staying was actually really nice for a hostel, and our room was fairly large for four people, though we only had three because one girl cancelled at the last minute. We hung out there and watched The Time Traveler's Wife on TV and had a rather good time making fun of how little sense it all made. I'm really glad that I was lucky enough to meet some great people to room with and hang out with.

Day 2: I got up early on Sunday to have breakfast, and as soon as I stepped into the hallway, there was this lady there yelling about how nobody was at breakfast. Apparently, there was some miscommunication, and everyone thought that breakfast was open for a certain length of time, whereas in actuality we were all supposed to come when it started at 8am.  We didn't miss it though, and the food was surprisingly good.  I had some of the bacon, which in Scotland is more like ham, and I liked that much better than the weird sausage.

After breakfast, we were allowed to either go to the War & Peace Museum or wander around Oban for an hour. However, nothing in Oban was actually open at 10am besides the museum, so we just ended up going back there. The museum was way too small (like one and a half rooms) to spend very much time in, so we looked around for an open coffee shop, which we finally found about twenty minutes before we had to leave. The whole experience was more funny than awful though, so it was fine.  Although the day's planned events turned out to be largely a bust by the end.

There was a lot of driving to be done on Sunday, so we rode a hour or two out to Fort William where we were supposed to ride a gondola partway up Ben Nevis, the tallest peak in the UK.

This is kind of what it looked like, but there was a lot more snow and mist, so it was hard to really see the top. I had the feeling that when we got up there, we wouldn't see much because of the weather. We didn't get to find out though because the gondola ride turned out to be closed due to high winds. One of my friends told me that she had been on it before, and it didn't even take you all the way to the top, and the gondola windows were so scratched you couldn't see very well anyway. So I guess we weren't missing too much.

When Ben Nevis didn't work out, we went to the visitor's center for lunch. Apparently "visitor's center" is code for "giant tourist shop." They had a cafeteria there, but the food was pretty expensive and not even that good. It was nice to sit and talk with my friends and the program guides again though. One of the guides had a really strong Canadian accent (I'd never met a Canadian who actually says "eh" before), and when I asked her if that was where she was from, she was surprised and happy that I'd noticed. She was really nice and friendly, and the reason she came along on the trip was to talk to us about this book written by a Scottish author from Oban. The book, Morvern Callar, sounded like a serious downer, but she was clearly really into it, and it's always fun to see someone talk about something they're passionate about.

After lunch, we drove another few hours or so to Glencoe, which is supposedly one of the major must-sees in Scotland. I was really frustrated to find out that it was also obscured by snow and clouds, so the view from the lookout point was hardly visible. When I got home, I signed up right away for a free student trip to Glencoe over spring break. I can't know for sure if the weather will be any better, but it's worth a try. Glencoe is one of the things on my list that I most want to see, so I'm going back as many times as I need to until I actually get to see it.

From Glencoe, we headed back to Stirling, and on the way, I could tell from what I could see of the mountains that they were really impressive and massive, just not very easily photographed because of all the snow blowing around. And that was pretty much the official end of the trip.

Edinburgh Capitals vs. Dundee Stars Game

(Dundee's logo is just like Dallas's, but Edinburgh has really cool jerseys that look like Scotland's flag)

We stopped in Stirling to drop people off, but I decided to ride through to Edinburgh and spend the evening there, since it was a free ride and we'd arrive by 6:30pm. On the way though, I remembered that the Edinburgh Capitals' final game of the season was that night, and I asked how to get to Murrayfield Ice Rink. The bus driver said we were going right past it and that he'd drop me off.

When I got there, I had to walk all the way around the Murrayfield rugby stadium to find the ice rink, which I didn't even realize was the rink at first because it was so small, especially compared to the massive stadium right next to it. I got there about 15 minutes after the start of the game, only to find that they didn't take credit cards. So I had to walk about 20 minutes, there and back, to the nearest ATM. I got momentarily confused and asked some guys coming out of the arena where the closest bank was, but they didn't know because they were a visiting curling team from Denmark. Oh well. I found the ATM fairly quickly, but by the time I got back, it was the first period intermission (I was so tired, I asked the guy if it was "halftime," haha). Any later, and I probably wouldn't have been able to buy a ticket. For students though, admission was only 11 pounds, so it was still worth it to see the last two periods.

The arena was super small, even smaller than WesBanco where the Wheeling Nailers play, and it looked a lot like the ones that high school teams use.  Considering how few fans the Capitals and ice hockey in general have in the UK (compared to North America, at least), I was expecting the game to be really gimmicky and low energy, kind of like a Blue Jackets game. However, I very surprised and impressed to see how passionate and serious the fans were. They had all kinds of cheers and chants and songs, one of which was a version of "Jingle Bells" about one of the star players, and it was a lot of fun to be a part of the crowd. It was also  really weird to be with a ton of people rooting for the Capitals, since I always automatically think of Washington, and in Scottish accents no less. But I did quickly come to think of these "Capitals" as a separate team.

During the second period intermission, I explored the arena (again, it's very small, so that didn't take long). I saw some framed jerseys from past local teams, and my favorite was "The Old Timers." I also saw a lot of people wearing Edinburgh Capitals jerseys and other stuff, but I couldn't figure out where they were buying it. I finally discovered that they had a little merchandise table right next to the rink. Unfortunately, they weren't selling the hoodies or scarves (they have scarves for the hockey teams like they do for soccer teams here), but I got a really quality baseball hat with the team logo on it and a Powerplay magazine, which is like the Hockey News for all of the British teams. It actually included the week's NHL stats, which made me kind of nostalgic for my own team, seeing the Penguins and Sidney Crosby at the top of the charts.

I noticed that Dundee's fans were also really crazy, and they had a rather large cheering section on the opposite side of the arena. They were all decked out in logos as well, and there was even one hilarious guy who had this homemade puck costume on with some catchphrase written on it that I didn't really understand the meaning of. There were also a lot of kids there, and one of them had on a Patrick Kane jersey. I saw some Habs and Leafs fans too, and an old green and purple Anaheim jersey. It made me so happy to see all these Scottish people, especially the kids, who were really into hockey. There were even some Scottish players on the teams, although most of them seemed to be Canadian, Russian, or Scandinavian transplants.

Anyway, the Capitals won, and I found out that they were already slated for the play-offs. I wouldn't have guessed because neither they nor the Stars were at NHL level (both teams constantly made a lot of really dumb, sloppy mistakes), but I was very happy for them, especially because it meant that I might get to see them play again.

At the end of the game, they had a really cute end-of-the-season thank you thing for the fans, who totally loved it. It was so great to see the connection that they had with the team, and I hope that the Capitals get even more fans and popularize the sport further in the future (haha, it's so weird to talk about the "Capitals" like that).

On my way to the train station, I stopped to ask if I was headed in the right direction, and the bus driver I asked told me that I should take the shuttle he was driving to Falkirk because the tracks were being worked on. So it was very lucky that I happened to talk to him! When I got to the Falkirk station, I met this really nice girl who lives in Stirling and has a sister at the university, and we had a great conversation on the train. She has a job in music at a church in Edinburgh, but she's originally from South Africa, and I was surprised to hear from her how dangerous it is where she used to live. For some reason, I'd always thought that South Africa was a safer part of the continent, but she said it's a really corrupt country, which is sad because it's such a physically beautiful place. She said that she feels so much safer in Stirling and is much happier here. Also, since she knows a lot about the area, she offered to friend me on Facebook so I could contact her if I ever needed help with anything. I actually found out she's mutual Facebook friends with someone I met in the Christian Union at the university, so that's a cool coincidence.

Anyway, that was my eventful weekend! Bless your soul if you actually read this post all the way through to the end. :) Next week, I'll have even more to talk about after Debbie and I visit Glasgow and the Isle of Skye, so get ready!

Song of the Day(s) (SO MUCH TRAVELING!):

Coming Attractions!

Include:

• Trip to the Western Highlands, including Glencoe and Loch Ness
•  My friend Debbie visiting for a weekend (probably going to see Glasgow and/or Edinburgh)
• Visiting Isle of Skye and Eilean Donan Castle with Debbie
• Going to radio conference in England
• Trip to Isle of Arran
• Shetland trip, which includes attending a Scottish folk festival!

I am so excited that I am going to hit all the major points in Scotland that I wanted to see! Plans are finally coming together. :)

Also still might visit the Stirling Old Town Jail, Bannockburn, Argyll's Lodging, Alloa Tower, Callendar House, and Doune Castle, but those are all close by and not necessarily must-sees. Anything else at this point is just gravy.

Oh, and I still have to make it to a hockey game!!!

St Andrews

(Note that, for some reason, I think St Andrews is officially spelled without a period after "St", although I am not sure why, but I never seem to see it spelled with one. Also I learned this week that a period is called a "full stop" in England)

So I went to St Andrews again, and for a decent length of time this time! I took the bus from Stirling at 3:10 on Friday afternoon and got there at about 5 to meet Moriah at the station. The group of dorm buildings she is in are about a 15-20 minute walk from the academic buildings and about 10 minutes from Market Street, which seems to be the main street in St Andrews where all the students go.
On our way to Moriah's dorm, we passed some really fancy old ones that are basically small castles.

Students actually live here.

Her room was in one of the newer buildings, but she has a really nice sized single (most dorm rooms are singles, as at Stirling). The bathrooms and carpeting and everything else was clean and spacious and up to date, meaning much nicer than Geddes Court at Stirling (so glad I do not live there anymore). St Andrews has a lot more money though, so it's not that surprising.

We had dinner at the dining hall downstairs (there's a dining hall in pretty much every residential hall, unlike Stirling which has no real dining halls but some little cafes/restaurants and a grocery store instead), and the food there wasn't bad. I had chicken satay, cooked broccoli, cabbage, and lentil soup with a wheat roll. The selection wasn't very big, but it probably didn't need to be. We ate at a table with some of Moriah's friends. They were all American abroad students except for one who was a full-time student from England. It was surprising to me that none of the students I met or saw seemed to be Scottish. They were all American or English, and for the most part, they were all ridiculously preppy (but not Moriah's friends). I was actually kind of disappointed by the largely non-Scottish demographic because it seemed to somewhat defeat the purpose of studying abroad in Scotland. But Moriah said the nice thing about there being so many American abroad students (there are seriously A TON every semester) was that it made it easier to make friends.

After dinner, I hung out in Moriah's room with some of her friends, and they were all really great people and fun to talk to. We mostly talked about different accents and the differences between American and English words and pronunciations (which seems to come up a lot whenever her English friend Jeremy is around). We waited there until the Union opened, which is a bar in the student union where many students go on weekends because it's so much cheaper than any of the many, many other bars in St Andrews. The Union was definitely bigger than the bar in Stirling's student union (but I never really go to that one anyway because it requires waiting for a late bus back from campus), and it was super busy that night. It was also really loud, so I had to do a lot of shouting to talk to anyone, but it was a good time. We did some people-watching, too, which was fun. Everyone was pretty tired and had to get up early the next day for various reasons, so we left at about 1:15, I think. It really didn't seem as late as it was because we had been busy doing so much stuff.

Moriah and I stayed up talking until like 2:30, so we were really tired the next morning. But we had promised we'd go to breakfast, so we got up at about 8:30. The food selection was pretty standard, except there were no scrambled eggs (sad). So I had two hard-boiled eggs, pineapple, and a bagel with nutella and peanut butter. I didn't eat very healthy that day, be forewarned. Since we were still really tired, Moriah and I went back to sleep for about an hour (I was so tired every time I went to bed there, I didn't actually mind sleeping on the floor). When we finally made it out the door for our tour of the city, we stopped at the free mini-museum about the history of St Andrews, on campus.

I asked the people there if the St Andrews Old Course was actually the oldest golf course in the world, and they didn't actually know, so they looked it up for me. Apparently, it is one of the oldest (from the early 1400s, like the university), but Musselburgh claims to be the oldest (I think it's somewhere near Edinburgh). The main reason the Old Course is famous is that it's where the rules of modern golf were formed.

From the museum, we went on to see Market Street, where I got a millionaire bar at Fisher & Donaldson, a really famous bakery that's known for its millionaire bars and fudge donuts.

The employees wear old timey pinstripe outfits.

I also went to the St Andrews retail store, where every single piece of apparel is ludicrously priced. So I bought the cheapest t-shirt they had (25 pounds!!), which is light blue with the logo and school name on the front and dark blue sleeves with 1413 (the year the school was founded, wow) on the sleeves. I'm actually afraid to take it out of the nice plastic sleeve they put it in when I bought it. At least it should be high quality. It also came with a tag that bragged about listed important things that St Andrews is older than (the Forbidden City in Beijing, Machu Picchu in Peru, Columbus in America, etc.). I used to think William & Mary was old (who, by the way, have a strong relationship with St Andrews so a lot of their students come abroad there).

Most of the stores and restaurants in St Andrews are crazy expensive, but it's a very wealthy community with lots of students from wealthy families. It must cost millions to buy one of the houses in town. 

There are only three streets in St Andrews, so it's kind of dumb that I don't remember what the name of the street the cathedral is on, but there are some really massive ruins there. The cathedral was abandoned after the Protestant Reformation, but what's left of it really makes you wish they had taken care of it. Even the circles of rubble where the pillars were are huge. Everything was way bigger than the abbey ruins I saw in the Borderlands, and I can't imagine how long and hard it must have been to build the cathedral.

Where a pillar was. I should have used my foot for scale.

Right outside the cathedral ruins is the North Sea. Normally, the water is very calm, but there was a storm coming in, so the wind and waves were crazy.

You can see the pier trailing off the end of the land.

On the pier. We didn't go all the way to the end because the waves were breaking so high. On a nice day though, you can just hang out here or on the rocks on Castle Beach.

Castle Beach is usually at the bottom of this outcropping (where the castle ruins are, obviously), and you can get sea glass there at low tide. But on this day, there was no beach to speak of.

Our Historic Scotland membership passes (courtesy of Arcadia) let us into the castle for free. It's definitely the smallest castle I've seen so far, not to mention the most ruined. But the view of the sea there is gorgeous.

The center of the castle. The area it covered wasn't very large.

Views from the castle:

After the castle, we walked down to the biggest beach, but the wind was really bad, so we didn't feel like walking on it. Instead we visited the aquarium there, which was very tiny and nothing special, but better than being outside in the cold.

They did have a blue lobster though.

And the cutest seals ever (seals are native to Scotland).

We walked along the road past the academic buildings. Denison could take some design pointers.

The philosophy department

A fancy academic quad

At some point, we stopped for lunch at Butler's which sells wraps with crazy fillings and funny names. The most famous wrap is called the Sofia Loren. Moriah got the Rock Ness, and I got something called The Classy Chick, which has smoked turkey, cranberry sauce, brie, avocado, and oakleaf. I normally don't love wraps, but this one was amazing, especially with the toasted, crunchy wrap.  

Near the end of the day, we went to the Beanscene, and I tried a London Fog, which is like a chai tea latte, but it tastes different and contains more milk or cream, I think. I also got a really great shortcake bar (there are many kinds of shortcake bars in Scotland) that had layers of lemon filling, crunchy vanilla meringues, and white chocolate. We hung out there for a while and talked to some nice, friendly guy. It seems there are a lot of random instances of meeting nice people in St Andrews, since it's such a small town. Although Moriah told me that, if you smile at random people on the sidewalk, like we do in Granville, they will think you're weird.

After coffee, we went back to Moriah's room for a hour or so, and I took a nap. Later, we grabbed dinner at a pizza place on Market Street on our way to the bus station. I forget the name of it, but it's one of only two food places open late in St Andrews (the other is a fish and chips place), so all the drunk people go there at night. We actually met another nice, random guy there who was also an abroad student, and he told us that he had just gone golfing at the Old Course (which is crazy expensive). He was really friendly, and it made me kind of sad that it's not as easy to meet people at Stirling as it seems to be at St Andrews. Also, I figured out at this point that, whenever you go to a pizza place in Scotland, you're supposed to get a 10" pizza all for yourself because they almost never sell single slices. Up until now, I have been going to pizza places and just leaving, annoyed that there are none where you can eat by yourself.

So that was my weekend trip. I think I successfully had the full St Andrews experience, and it was really a lot of fun hanging out with Moriah and meeting her friends. St Andrews is so beautiful, I'd love to visit there again if I ever make it back to Scotland someday.

Song of the Day (because it seems to describe St Andrews, at least in location):

Glasgow

Today was my second Arcadia-run day trip, and as you hopefully guessed already, I went to Glasgow. The train ride from Stirling to Queen Street Station was only about 30 minutes, and since I had some extra time when I got there, I bought a hot tea and a lemon tart, which reminded me how much I really like lemon curd. And butter.

The interesting thing about Queen Street Station is that there are only seven platforms all right next to each other, and the tracks dead-end at the station. You can see them all from the entrance. This just surprised me because Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland, but I guess they run trains often enough (every 10 minutes, it seems) that they don't need more platforms.

Once everyone met up at the train station, we headed toward the subway, since the tour was a "subcrawl" based on the route of the famous pubcrawl, in which you go to a pub at every stop. Passing by the buildings, I noticed how much Glasgow reminded me of Pittsburgh, probably because both cities were important in the Industrial Revolution and so were built up at around the same time. The architecture is very late 19th century, and the old buildings are sandstone, like the ones in downtown Pittsburgh.

Guess which is Glasgow and which is Pittsburgh.

If you're from either place, that's cheating, shush.

So yeah, the second one is Glasgow. But I could totally see it fitting in at home. Anyway, the first place we stopped on the way to the subway station was the Lighthouse, which was originally the Mitchell Street Building, designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh. He was a really famous architect in the late 19th century who pioneered the modernist style and built a lot of important things in Glasgow like the Herald Building and some other stuff we visited. Our tour guide, Andy, was actually a grad student in architecture, so he knew all about the history and designs of the buildings. Also, Andy had my favorite accent ever, and he wasn't actually hard to understand, even though Glasgow accents are supposedly the most difficult.

Andy took us up the tower in the Lighthouse to see what is allegedly the best view in the city. It wasn't very high up, but it was still cool.

The Lighthouse is  Scotland's national center for design and architecture, and the building is basically a museum about Glasgow's architecture. I think I'd like to go back sometime because it seems interesting. 

Mackintosh knows.

We rode the subway to the Scotland Street School, which Mackintosh built in 1872. It closed in 1979 when almost all of the shipyards had been closed and there weren't enough people living in the area where all of the laborers' families used to live. The school is a really cool museum now, and Andy told us that he used to go on field trips there when he was little. They do reenactments of Victorian class sessions for the students, and sometimes they accidentally make the kids cry because the Victorian teachers were so mean.

Victorian classroom

They had various rooms set up like classrooms from different eras. It was pretty neat to learn about the history of a school since the late 1800s, as I'd never seen a museum dedicated to that before. I also thought that the way the seats were arranged in levels like bleachers was interesting.

By the by, I saw this billboard outside the school. Pretty funny representation. It's odd to me how they advertise U.S. tourism for the entire country at once. It's such a huge place with so many different things, I can't imagine summing them all up in one advertisement. You really can't see all of America in a week. Or even a month. Or even possibly ever.

But I'm not in the U.S. right now, so back to Glasgow.

We got on the subway again and rode to Govan. There was a time when Govan possibly could have usurped Glasgow instead of the other way around because it was actually bigger. Again, this reminded me of Pittsburgh because the city of Allegheny used to be huge before Pittsburgh usurped it. 

The history of Govan is cool though because it used to be very industrial with a lot of shipyards, and when they couldn't compete with other nations anymore in the late 70s, they closed all of the shipyards except Fairfields. This also reminds me of Pittsburgh because there used to be a ton of steel mills until they couldn't compete anymore in the early 80s, and now there's only one steel mill left by Kennywood. In conclusion, Glasgow is Scottish Pittsburgh. Or Pittsburgh is American Glasgow.

The Glasgow Museum of Transport, where the shipyards used to be in Govan

Speaking of transport, I forgot to mention that the subway cars in Glasgow are REALLY tiny. This is because the rock underneath the city is super hard, so I guess they only carved as much as they needed to in order to make the tunnels.

Tiny subway cars! So cute. I also love that they're orange, and a lot of the stations are decorated with Very Seventies Orange Tiles.

While in Govan, we visited the Old Govan Parish Church, which is ridiculously MASSIVE and ornate. The church was built on the site of about four previous churches dating back to medieval times, I believe. The current one is only as old as 1888, and the reason it's so huge and fancy is that Govan used to be a really wealthy area. Then during the lock-in in the 70s, when people were protesting closing the shipyards, the workers would go to the Parish because there was a short path to it from Fairfields, so they didn't technically have to leave the area.

Nowadays, the church is a museum that houses a ton of really old stone carvings, mostly slabs and "hogbacks" that used to cover graves.

That hogback in the back is the oldest one they have. To me, they look like alien pods or something.

The people in the towns where the carvings came from apparently didn't find them very significant, so they used to re-carve and re-use them and do other weird things with them. One of the hogbacks has a dent in the top where someone used it to sharpen his plow, and another guy in carved his name on a slab.

After seeing the church, we stopped at a restaurant called the Ubiquitous Chip, which has some murals painted by the famous Glasgow artist Alasdair Gray. He actually did the paintings for free because the restaurant would feed him free dinners while he was working. 

The last thing we saw was the Glasgow School of Art, which was also designed by Mackintosh and is commonly considered his greatest work. Andy told us that you can take some really worthwhile tours of it, so I'll have to come back for that too.

I had a very fun, tiring day in Glasgow, and it made me really want to go back and explore some more later.

Other fun things that have happened:

1. Someone told me the other day that my accent was cool, and I was surprised because I thought American accents were considered funny here. But she said mine was different and had a sort of drawl that wasn't Southern. So I guess she meant that I have a slight Pittsburgh accent, and that is apparently cool. Although I bet if she heard a serious Yinzer, she probably wouldn't have liked it as much, haha.

2. I started listening to this London oldies station online that my friend recommended, and it's really great because they play all these songs I never hear on air or don't even know. It's interesting to hear what were the big hits and artists here and other songs by artists who were only one hit wonders in the U.S. They also have a late night 60s show wherein I haven't heard of like 70% of the songs and artists, so it's awesome to be introduced to that.

3. I also got to see St. Andrews for the first time last Wednesday at our rugby game there. It was kind of an ordeal because not everyone on our team showed up, so we had to forfeit and then push back the game when some of our players were coming late and got stuck in traffic and then lost. But the St. Andrews' team was really nice and they let us borrow some players, who turned out to be really funny people and fun to play with. The game started out bad but ended up being really fun, and the weather was gorgeous. I played better than I expected to after being out of it for so long, and my muscles hurt A LOT the next few days, so I must have played hard.

I'm really glad that I'm finally getting around Scotland more, and I'm planning to go back to St. Andrews on Friday. I've also signed up for a trip to Glencoe and the Western Highlands in a couple weeks, which I'm extra excited about. Now I just have to remember to work on those darned essay outlines....

Song of the Day (because I am going places!):

To Do List

I'm taking a break from all of the [largely boring] reading I have to do this weekend and am making a list of all things I actually want to do.

• Visit Alloa and Falkirk: these are small areas only a short bus ride from Stirling, so I might as well visit them, especially since I'd probably be able to cover each of them in a day or less
• Stirling Old Town Jail: it doesn't open for tours until April, so waiting on that
• The Pineapple: a building in Falkirk, built in 1761, that literally looks like a pineapple is growing out of the top

Awesome.

• The Callendar House: just a pretty, historical house that you can tour
• Falkirk Town Centre: shopping, yay
• Bannockburn: where Robert the Bruce defeated Edward II in 1314; there are various statues/memorials around the area
• Doune Castle: apparently really close to Stirling
• Argyll's Lodging: it's free with my Historic Scotland pass, so why not?
• Alloa Tower: also doesn't open until April, but it's from the 15th century, so I'd like to see it since there aren't any 15th century things at home

Alloa Tower

Things to see outside of Stirling area:

• Isle of Skye and Eliean Donan Castle: arguably the most picturesque castle in Scotland or, like, anywhere

Let's go, let's go right now.

• Shetland: there's a mountaineering club trip at the beginning of May, and it includes going to a folk festival there; definitely a must

Also they have short, fat ponies, who doesn't love that?

• Glencoe; there's an Arcadia weekend trip going there, and I think I might jump on that (I just emailed them to see if there are still spots open); I've heard the landscape is really beautiful, and it has an interesting history with the infamous massacre that happened there
• Loch Ness: right near Glencoe actually, so that's pretty much killing two birds with one stone
• Fife: I still really want to see a Fife Flyers game, but I haven't found any hockey fans to go with me (here "hockey" refers to field hockey, so it's a little disheartening when I realize they're not talking about ice hockey, which nobody cares about at all here)
• St. Andrews: I really need to go back there so I can get a good look around; I'm going to ask Moriah about good weekends to visit
• Aberdeen: I'm not sure what there is to do there, but it's a fairly large city, so there must be something!
• Inverness: the Battle of Culloden battlegrounds and Urquhart Castle are somewhere around there
• Castle Stalker: really pretty and Monty Python related, as I mentioned before
• Glamis Castle: one of the more talked about castles, it seems, so it might be worth going
• Northern Ireland: if I have time and can figure out how to get there

Sadly, I don't think I'll actually be able to do every single one of these things, but we'll see! I feel like I keep wasting my weekends by not travelling, even though I am actually doing homework and other stuff I need to do. Plus, I've got to find people who both want to and are able to do all this stuff with me.

Song of the Day (although I definitely haven't been to enough places, yet!):