On our way down to the next stop (Billericay), we had a few hours to spend in Edinburgh and decided to spend it climbing Arthur’s Seat- one of the beautiful hills in town that was also used as a filming location for The Chariots of Fire :) We had read somewhere that it would take a couple of hours to climb, but then heard somewhere else that it would take less than an hour. We decided to bank on the latter estimate and headed out to find the base of the mountain. Trekking around town with our backpacks on felt like Cardiff all over again- but we pressed on. After a few wrong turns (how hard can it be to find the bottom of a mountain? You’d be surprised), we came upon the trail and decided with the limited time and the apparent intensity of the hike that the first time estimate was probably more correct. It was disappointing, but the hill is now on our “To go back to” list!
Our next stop was Billericay, home to another family friend of Chelsea's and wonderful host! She welcomed us with open arms and wonderful food, which we enjoyed thoroughly. Our first tea time with her included an amazing dessert she referred to as Millionaire’s Tart.
The rest of our time with her that afternoon and the following day consisted mainly of homework and more wonderful food. Fish and Chips for dinner the following night made our trip to England complete in the food department :) She gave us a short tour of the city center (aka downtown), whose most important landmark is the building in which the original Mayflower pilgrims gathered before departing the country.
The next day was our last day in London and we enjoyed it by hitting one of the sites we didn’t get to on our first round through the city: the Sherlock Holmes museum!
It was really cool but also slightly confusing to be in such a realistic environment creating all surrounding completely fictitious characters! We saw his pipes, his fiddle, a bust of the man himself and his and Watson's rooms.
Following the museum, we tried to find the Churchill's Cabinet War and after getting the typical vague English directions from a few people, we finally found it. But alas, it was to no avail because we only had 45 minutes before our goal time to leave and the museum was more than we wanted to pay. I (Chelsea) was pretty disappointed, because I remembered going there with my parents on one of our previous two trips to London and loving it! But, yet another thing for our list to come back to. At this point, we headed back to our friend's flat that we had stayed with before our Scotland excursion. She was kind enough to keep our luggage while we were up there so we didn't have to lug it around with us. And she was letting us stay with her one more night before we headed out to meet our AMBEX group in Munich! We got the key to her flat from the neighbor and went in to start packing up the UK in our suitcases :)
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