Hello everyone! Last weekend we went to Scotland from friday the 10th until sunday the 12th of October and it was a BLAST...we all loved it so much! We left at 8 am from King's Cross here in London and got to Edinburgh around 12:30. We met out tour guide Mike (who wore a kilt the entire time) and had lunch and then he took us on a walking tour of Edinburgh, which is divided into 2 parts- the old town and the new town. We stayed mostly in the old town and learned a lot about the history of the city. After the tour, we just walked around the city and went into all the little stores. Katie and Kat both have friends studying at the University of Edinburgh, so we met up with them and went out for dinner and drinks. After, we walked to their flat at school and had more drinks, I promise we do more than just drink here! haha! But it was a really fun night and we were sad to leave Edinburgh in the morning! The pictures from the first day/night are in the first Scotland album.

Saturday we left Edinburgh at 9 am and started driving up towards the Highlands. We stopped on the way to see the William Wallace monument, which was really nice but at the top of a gigantic hill, which explains why those scottish men have such nice legs under their kilts! haha but the monument was beautiful, it was only built in the 18th century, which is new for anything in Scotland, but it looks a lot older from the outside. Our next stop was at a roadside farm to see Hamish the hairy coo! (coo is scottish for cow) Hamish was famous for going around and visiting schools. During the mad cow disease outbreak, Hamish was supposed to be put to sleep because they weren't sure which cows had the disease or not, but the schoolchildren formed a petition to save him. So now he has his own little pasture all to himself! We then traveled up into the Highlands to Inverness, which is where we stayed for the night. The Highlands were beautiful, all rolling hills and rocky mountains. We saw like 8 rainbows too, it was too much! Our tour guide was telling us stories of all the old clans who used to live up in the Highlands so that was really interesting.

We stopped at Loch Ness too, no signs of the monster though! The water was so dark it looked black, which is why its so easy to believe all the stories about Nessie. Our friend Joe and another boy went swimming! It was really funny and I have a bunch of pictures too. They were freezing after because it was probably about 40 degrees out and they were soaked but it was worth it. I put my hand in but that's it! We spent the night in Inverness, which was also a really cute town. After dinner everyone was pretty tired, so we just relaxed at the hostel for the night. On sunday, we started our journey back to Edinburgh. We stopped at Culloden battlefield, the site of the last great battle between the Highlanders and the English government, and then we had lunch and took a tour of a whisky distillery. The tour was really interesting, we did a whisky tasting at the end, and it was disgusting but still fun! The train ride back from Edinburgh to London was extra long because the fastest route was being worked on, so we left Edinburgh at around 4:40 and didn't get into London until about 11:30. We needed to take the tube and then another train to get back to school, but of course we missed the last train at 11:45 by about 30 seconds after sprinting through the train station like madmen. So we were thinking about taking the night bus back to school, but the night buses are known for the really weird people who ride them and we discovered it wasn't even coming until 12:50 am, so we decided to just suck it up and pay for a cab back. But all in all, it was really exciting to go somewhere other than the local pubs on the weekend, so now I'm even more excited for Paris this weekend. But now I should probably get started on one of the three essays I have due next week...if only we could just live here without having to do any work!!