Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Hi all,
Apologies for not updating this for such a long time! Last you heard from me I was in Edinburgh staying with friends of Alexs. Since then we've been through York and Cambridge on our way back to London.
York:
On our last day in Edinburgh we went on a day trip up to the scottish highlands to see Loch Ness and lots of beautiful scenery. We arrived back in Edinburgh at about 7pm where we went to collect our gear from the boys' apartment and headed back towards the train station. We caught a 9pm train to York on the way making friends with a lovely guy named Ross who is studying at the University of Aberdeen and was on his way home to Newcastle for the holidays. We made it into York at midnight and caught a taxi to our hostel, which turned out to be only just around the corner. This particular hostel has to be the nicest so far. It used to be a Georgian mansion and it still looks quite beautiful on the inside and outside each of the rooms is a plaque that explains what the room used to be and what major events took place in there.
Waking up the next morning we made our way to the York Minster, which is a smaller but no less extravagant version of Westminster Abbey. We thought it would be a great idea to climb the tower not realising that it was 275 steps in a spiralling staircase. You couldn't see the end so it just went on for ever and ever and ever. I almost consider making everyone in the line behind me stop so I could take a nap. Luckily the view at the top was worth it and we had great sunny weather to be able to enjoy it! Climbing down was less hard but with the jelly legs from walking up it was hard to keep upright sometimes and not just roll down the stairs.
We spend the rest of the day wandering about town and (window) shopping. Snow began falling, which we got fairly excited about and started taking heaps of photos.
Next morning we looked out the window and the whole place was absolutely COVERED in snow. It made the previous days photos look pretty poor in comparison. We frolicked in the snow and made snow angels but when we were trying to walk around and snow kept covering us and getting into our eyes it began to get less exciting and more annoying. We decided that snow was better to look at than be caught in.
We visited the Castle Museum, which had lots of exhibits about Christmas through the ages with rooms from way back when and what they would have looked like in the festive season. After some last minute wandering about the town we headed back to the hostel where we napped for about an hour till we walked around the corner to catch the train to Cambridge.
Made it to Cambridge at about 11:30pm and hit the hay.
Cambridge:
Woke up and had a shower in a bathroom that was so incredibly overheated it felt like a sauna. Yuck. Then our luck changed! Alex got a call from Molly, a school friend of ours, saying that she was in Cambridge staying with some family friends of hers and they would love us to come spend the day at their farm. Huzzah! We jumped at the offer of home comforts (the fact that 8 boys were also spending the day there hunting didn't hurt either). We caught the bus out to their place and met Susie who is just lovely. The family of 4 live on a farm in Cambridgeshire and it was just beautiful. The boys came back for lunch and they looked so funny. Their hunting clothes consist of a tweed jacket and pants as well as a hat and high woollen socks. It just got funnier when they opened their mouths and sounded so pompous as they talked of the days shoot so far and how many pheasants they had each killed. We decided to join them on the afternoon session but I couldn't look. The banging of the gun and the thud as some of the pheasants hit the ground close to us was just a little bit much! Molly, Alex and I eventually retreated to the fire inside. We had 'supper and pudding' with the boys and the majority of the them were really lovely (one or two were so completely pompous that the novelty wore off and it just got irritating!)
After a lovely day we found ourselves being invited by Susie to stay the night, which we graciously accepted. The beds were so warm!
The next morning I even had a bath! It was so lovely having cooked breakfast, lunch and dinner and Susie enjoyed having girls around so much that we ended up staying another 2 nights before we had to leave on Tueday 22nd because Alex had to fly home!
Both of us absolutely adored Cambridge because of the lovely family we were staying with and have decided we would return in a heartbeat if the opportunity ever arose!
London:
Alex and I parted ways at the station where she went on to Heathrow to catch her evening flight home and I met up with my friend Wilson to stay at his place for a couple of nights. He was working most days so I didn't see much of him while I was there on the 22nd and 23rd. On the 24th I stayed with Chrissy and Lauren, other friends of mine who have moved to London and had a wonderfully food filled lazy Christmas with them. We spent the next couple of days watching bad Christmas movies and eating left overs but last night (28th) we went to Oxford Street to attempt the Christmas sales but the crowds were just so massive! We went to the Hyde Park Winter Wonderland instead where we went ice skating - thankfully I didn't stack it once but there were so many people on the ice that it was precarious most of the time!
Today I met up with Tash and Mike! Lovely to see the guys but boy were they wrecked! After a hectically long flight and a 10 hour stopover in Singapore I'm surprised they stayed awake as long as they did! We went to the National Portrait Gallery and saw the Tudor section (it was very nice to have Tash there to appreciate it with me - Mike was bored to death). We came back to their place at about 4pm to have a nap and I got them up again 7pm to go out for a small dinner at a pub down the street. After dinner we came back to their place again and they are now completely unconscious as I write this!
Up to date once again! I'll be home in about a week - scary!
Lots of love to all,
Ellie xxxxx
- comments