Tattoos are good... festivals for them are better!

This was the beginning of our first time being away from adult supervisionJ And of course, being the inwardly wild girls we are, we went all out by going to the Edinburgh Tattoo Festival. No joke.

We took the train that would take us partially along the coast of northern England and southern Scotland. It was a beautiful 4.5 hour ride! 

When we arrived at the train station, we went straight to the accommodations office where Michelle helped us out tremendously. She immediately made some calls for us and found us a place for that night at the Old Waverly Hotel, then she also found us an amazing deal for a bed and breakfast room for the rest of the week, which then turned into a full-on apartment! We decided she was the sweetest Scottish lady ever.

We headed out to our hotel just a block and a half away on the main street, enjoying the street bagpipe player all the way. We couldn’t check into the hotel yet, but thankfully for our backs, they would hold our backpacks for us until then. There was a week’s worth of stuff in those bags, so we couldn’t get them off fast enough.

Lunch was the next order of business and we headed out into the big world of Edinburgh to find a good place to enjoy it. Michelle, from the accommodations office, had recommended we see the “best view of Edinburgh” on Calton Hill so we started wandering that direction. On the way there, we enjoyed the street scene. People dressed strangely, 

monuments,

and even street chess.

Jeanette took her on in a game of speed chess, and although she lost, the lady said she was surprised at how well Jeanette played :)

Although we didn’t go to any other big vista views of the city, it’s hard to imagine there could be a better one than at the top of Calton Hill. Having lunch overlooking a view of the entire city and bay was just fantastic. 

 There were a lot of monuments on the hill (and in the whole city actually), including the National Monument that looked like an attempt to recreate the Greek Parthenon. Turns out they started building it in 1822 as a tribute to the Scottish soldiers who died in the Napoleonic Wars, but when funds ran out in 1829, the building stopped and was never started again.

We went back down into the city to wander around a little more, since we still couldn’t check into the hotel room and saw a really old cemetery. One thing we’ve learned in our travels is that if we see something that looks interesting, we’d better stop right then and see it because if we wait, we’ll either not be able to find it later or the time will get away from us. So into the cemetery we went. Turned out Abraham Lincoln is buried there. Ok just kidding :) But they did have a monument dedicated to Scottish-American soldiers rather prominently featuring President Lincoln :)

  

Around this time, we remembered that we needed to find the ticket office and pick up our tickets to the Edinburgh Tattoo Festival! Thankfully we had discovered this festival months earlier and ordered our tickets to be held for us and picked up on the day of the event, but we now had to find the office before that evening. We started following the directions we had and searched for quite awhile without success. At this point it was time to check in, so went back to the hotel and got settled into our room.

Dinner on a budget is always a creative endeavour, and now was no exception (we got even more creative in Stirling!). On a student budget, going out to eat is a luxury. So we headed to the train station to find cheap food! Marks & Spencer grocery store ended up winning the prize that night with a delicious bread thing that we split before caving in and taking a nap. We were also able to figure out exactly where the ticket office was after we checked into our room, so we grabbed our tickets when we found dinner. 

After waking up from our respective naps and collecting all possible articles of warm clothing, we headed out to the Tattoo Festival.  Ok... so the Tattoo Festival is not what you might be thinking now.  The full name of it is The Edinburgh Military Tattoo Festival and a tattoo here in not meant as an ink marking upon the body but rather an outdoor military pageant or display.  This is an outdoor concert of military bands from around the world and is one of the most attended concerts in the world.  More than 12 million people have attended the Tattoo since its beginning in 1950 and the annual audience is around 217,000.  We were lucky enough to be one of those in attendance at this year's concert. 

We were ushered into the grand stands just outside Edinburgh Castle and waited with great anticipation and excitement for the show to begin.  It began and was the most amazing concert we have ever been to!!!  There's nothing better than live military bands and hundreds of bagpipers. 

Some of our favourite bands were the Dutch Bicycle Band, the Brazilian Marine Band, the Swiss band complete with Alphorns, and the SWAT team demonstration. 

The Finale, though, was the best part.  All the bands came out and filled the arena one by one until they filled the entire space.  We were so excited to hear them start playing various pieces from the soundtrack of How to Train Your Dragon which is amazing enough in recordings but absolutely astounding live!! 

We went back to our hotel very happy, very tired, and very glad we had a room nearby.  It's pretty near impossible to describe the beauty of the music and remarkable talent of all those who performed in the concert.  It was incredible and if you ever are going to Scotland in August we would highly recommend you go (if it's not sold out...)  : )  It will be worth every single penny you pay. 

-Chelsea and Jeanette

Stocks are good? Beds are so much better!

This was a very aimless day.  We didn't plan on going to Cardiff Castle, but we ended up there.  It was also a very relaxing day, for the  most part. 

We got to Cardiff nice and early around 9 and happened to notice there was a castle in town.  Being the castle experts that we are ; ) we decided to check it out.  Turned out to be one of the best decisions of the day. 

Welcome to Cardiff, where everything is in Welsh and in English.

The people in the gift shop must have been very happy as we wandered around in it for a good 20 minutes before the castle opened.  When the castle did open we were the first ones in.  We wandered through an information area where we picked up our audio guide and saw a very artistically creative (aka confusing) video showing the history of the castle.  At the end of the video all we understood was that some battles happened there... sometime.

After the extremely informative video (in which there was no dialogue) we exited the theatre (which did have an amazing sound system and screen!) and toured the air raid tunnels.  These were built by one of the owners of the castle because he enjoyed walking but didn't like walking in the rain.  He just so happened to have plenty of money and could build an underground walkway under the walls of his castle.  Later they were used during WWII for air raid shelters. 

When we exited we found some very nice, comfortable stocks.  : )  And no they weren't padded; they didn't have to be at that point.  They were great just the way they were.  Our backs hadn't recovered from the day before in which we carried our backpacks all day... Any opportunity we had today we took to take our backpacks off and rest our backs. 

It was while in this most comfortable position that we realized that we should head to our tour.   As we headed this way, we saw the "typical" Americans our English Mum had warned us about heading toward the tour too. She had told us "typical" Americans were loud and overweight, wore checked shirts and wore multiple cameras around their necks.  The father of this family we noticed, unfortunately fit this description to a "T."  Even worse were their childish attitudes toward their children.  The children would have been bearable on the tour; the parents, most definitely not.  We sat there debating (not for long at all) what to do.  Could we change the tour to the next time?  Yes. 

This is what we call rapid cloud movement- Sun to rain

Changing our tour time gave us another hour time for exploring and eating lunch.  We did both.  The lunch took place under a nice tree.  The exploring took us up into the central tower fortress and onto the walls.  Both offered great views of the rest of the castle.  By the time we were done in the tower fortress it was time to head to our "second" tour time.  We breathed a sigh of relief at the lack of bratty adults or children. 

Our tour guide was one of the best we have had yet!  He took us through the rooms in the clock tower side of the castle.  Every room was ridiculously elaborate.  The first room was decked out in time related symbolism, ranging from months of the year to signs of the zodiac to depictions of the gods the days of week are named after.  The duke who made the castle into a residence was very well educated and was fluent in 15-20 languages and made sure his children had a good start as well by hiring governesses from different countries all who spoke to the children in their native languages only.  Thus each of his four children knew 5 languages by the time he or she was 10. 

His dining hall was so elaborately and beautifully created that it is still used by UK dignitaries today.  It can also be rented out for wedding receptions for the maximum of three hours at the nominal rate of £1500 per hour.  No problem. 

Two other rooms were quite interesting because he was learning a couple languages at the time he was building them.  His napping room was decorated in the Greek language and had stained glass windows of the 7 churches referred to in Revelation.  One floor up from that was his outdoor covered porch.  The details of this room included Hebrew writings (since he was learning it at the time) and the stories of Elijah as well as one of the few statues of a smiling Madonna.  The tour ended in his library which was a feast for book lovers! 

The window depicting the goddess from whom we get our day of the week Friday 

The dining hall

We concluded our time at the castle with a rain shower and a short tour of the aforementioned tunnels.  We decided to head home sooner so we could a) get our backpacks off our backs and b) pack for our trip to Scotland the next day.  So we headed out and grabbed a bit to eat at a Cornish pasty shop.  These pasties are one of the best British foods we have eaten! 

Scenery on the train trip home

More coming on Scotland sometime. 

-Jeanette and Chelsea

Watching trains is good... Catching them is better.

A two-coach train pulls out of the station where two girls sit waiting for a train.

"That was our train."

"Really?"

"Yeah.  Well?  Lunch?"

Well those two girls just so happened to be two very tired girls who had spent the morning at Stonehenge, Old Sarum, and Salisbury Cathedral.  But we had to keep going to Bath so we could find a place to stay the night; other than on the street.  So, instead of eating on the train on our way to Bath, we had a lovely hour to eat lunch and laugh about our silly mistake in the Salisbury rail station.  When the next train came in we actually got on!  ; )

Arriving in Bath, we made straight for the tourist information centre in the train station to ask about accommodation for the night.  We found a grand Bed and Breakfast, that actually seemed more like a hotel.  We were pretty excited about booking our first hotel/B&B room by ourselves :) It was a very cute little room with two beds, a really big fireplace and our own bathroom!  We dumped our bags (very gladly) and went off galavanting!  Only problem, everything was closing and we were exhausted.

The Street of Bath

Outside of our B&B

We planned to go to the Fashion Museum that was showing British Costume Design from the Academy Awards, but it closed before we could get there, so instead we went to the Jane Austen Centre.  It is in a small building and the tour begins on the second floor with a introduction to the Austen family.   I enjoyed hearing that bit, since I didn't know that much about Jane's family.  The museum continued on the ground floor with displays showing some of the things of daily life during Jane's time in Bath.  I was a little disappointed though, because as I understood there were supposed to be costumes from some of the Jane Austen films but that turned out to be false.   : (

Entrance to the Centre

One of the few dresses on display

A letter from Jane to her sister Cassandra

After getting kicked out of the Jane Austen Centre at closing time, we went to the Roman Baths.  These are one of the only hot springs in England and was discovered and well used from Roman times!  It was an interesting museum, beautiful baths that made us both sleepy (of course maybe having already done so much that day had something to do with it too!), and a ton of info that definitely went in one eye and out the other. Apparently, there was also a temple built in conjunction with the baths (built around 63 AD), that was a worship center for a goddess, possibly related to the weather or the sun. 

The English people love flowers and display them in a variety of ways

The dome of the building entering the Roman Baths

Pieces from the original temple face

The goddess

After that, we headed back to the B&B to grab some dinner from the adjoining bar/restaurant, but when we asked at the bar for a menu, we were met with a slightly blank stare then a "Well, we actually don't serve food right now..." Nice. So we headed across the street on a recommendation, in search of fish and chips. We got the fish and chips, but not before waiting a considerable amount of time for someone to come take our order, then suddenly figuring out that they weren't going to, because we had to go up to the bar and order. Yeah, that was a really long day. We ate and went back to our room and figured out how to get to our next destination: Cardiff, Wales.

Walking back to our B&B we were reminded that "Water is Best"

Beautiful sunset ending the day

-Jeanette

[Sorry for the lack of posts, as always, we promise we'll get more up soon, but don't expect another post for at least 2 weeks... ; )]