You Guys, I Totally Ate Haggis.

For real. Wasn't the most delicious thing, but it was mainly a texture issue. Ugh.

Aaaaaaaanyway! Scotland was great. We took the train to Glasgow after our classes on Thursday, one of which was cancelled, which gave us time to buy our train wine. Whee! So we get to Euston Station and get our pre-ordered tickets, at which time we realize we're morons and are completely not sitting together. Well, the four of us managed to be relatively near each other, and by two hours in we were able to sit somewhat near each other. Finally, Bri finagled a table with four seats, so we proceeded to eat a dinner of Pringles and wine (and some nasty cider, in Matt's case) and play spades. We are kickass.

So we get to Glasgow and are, shall we say, underwhelmed. It's great that we were traveling as a group of four, because we were able to get our own room in a hostel for a beyond-decent price. Matt, Bri and I went out to find out what was happening - apparently, not much on a Thursday night! We found a wine bar with not-too-bad prices, so we got even tipsier before we finally headed back to the hostel.

Friday, we woke up and headed to the Glasgow cathedral - very pretty from the outside, but we didn't have the time or means to really make a major tour of it. The cathedral also seemed to be the only major old attraction, which was sort of depressing. We made it to the car rental place, got our car, and proceeded to have Matt shift while Heather tried not to stall (yes, it was a manual. Yes, Heather was on the insurance. No, she did not know how to drive manual. Oops). Surprisingly, that ended without any injury, and we only got a little lost on our way out of the city (and I would like to maintain that although I was the navigator, it was totally not my fault that we went the wrong way because someone turned where he wasn't supposed to, I think. That's what I'm sticking to).

We drove out of the city and headed north toward Loch Lomond, with me playing the role of mom and handing out food to everyone in the car. It was a gorgeous lake, full of swans and general prettiness. We drove around for a while, stopped at a little tourist center, got dangerously close to the end of a pier, took ridiculous photos (um, in my case), and got the best soup EVER (again, just me).

I moved to the backseat after that and immediately learned that windy roads + me + no direct view of the front = not so awesome. After that, we headed toward Stirling, where the William Wallace monument is located (and, more obviously, Stirling Castle). The town was incredibly cute, but we kind of got there a little late to actually DO anything besides troll the gift shop for bagpipe-related paraphernalia. Disturbingly, they were selling haggis in boxes. Ew.

After that, it was a smooth (and kinda short) drive to Edinburgh, where we ran into the fun that is rush-hour traffic. We had an adventure navigating the streets, managing to arrive at the rental car place at 5:58. No kidding. One of the employees clearly understood that we were ridiculously disoriented American students and offered to give us a ride to our hostel, which was WAAAAAAY nicer than he needed to be, for real. We made it safely there, trolled around the city for a while, ate dinner (which included my aforementioned haggis experience - only a bite, and nothing that I need to repeat) and learned that Edinburgh probably contains more Irish boys than the entire country of Ireland does.

Saturday was our "wander around the town" day, and we also met up with Amber, who made it early that morning. We made it to Edinburgh castle, which was lovely, then a little windy, then a LOT windy, then "kill me with a slap to the face" cold and windy. It was fun! Afterwards it started drizzling, as you do in Scotland, and we ran around to different shops. We checked out the House of Parliament, which is ... not so formal-looking as you would expect. It was windy as HELL, so we decided to hike it back up to a pub and watch the rugby (this week it was England v. Italy). Everyone in Scotland hates England, and an Irish guy kindly introduced himself to me, commandeered the conversation, was impressed by my slowly improving knowledge of rugby, and explained why England is so hated. It was also fun! England, of course, won.

After that we headed for an "Edinburgh Ghost Tour" - cheesily lame at the beginning, but the tour took us into the city vaults, which (a) freaked my shit out and (b) was just generally creepy. After that we found a nice Italian place and stuffed ourselves silly, which led to us all going back to the hostel and Heather, Matt and I watching the Family Guy movie - be proud, everyone who wanted me to do that.

Matt woke up early and wanted to hike to Arthur's Seat and watch the sunrise. As it was cloudy and we were all tired, we all crapped out on him except for Amber. Once we finally got up, he'd gotten back, and we all went out to go to the museum. Of course the museum was closed, so we wandered around (again, but Edinburgh is actually an excellent city for doing that). Bri, Matt and I made it to an *incredible* chocolate place, where we had quite possibly the best hot chocolate ever. I also bought four way-too-expensive hand-painted truffles, which I'm completely afraid to eat.

We managed to make it to our 1:00 train on time; Bri, Matt and I finagled seats that were relatively close to each other. Unfortunately, Heather had to sit in her assigned seat, but she was the only one with real reading material, so it probably worked out best for her, heh.

So, that's Scotland - gorgeous, kind of cold (but already had flowers growing, so totally not as cold as Wisconsin is right now), varied weather, an incredible amount of historical buildings, and haggis-filled. I am not eating that stuff again (but they DO make vegetarian haggis, which ... not so much, I think).