Oh The Places We’ll Go

We left Manchester on the 1st of September and headed to Glasgow to check out where I’m going to be going to school for the next year!  Very exciting.  Our bus journey was much more pleasant than our last one.  A double decker bus and a lot fewer people, likely because it was a Tuesday (?) afternoon and less people were out and traveling than on a Sunday before school starts from London!  Gee, imagine that.

Scotland is absolutely beautiful.  Just seeing the countryside from the bus window heading up here, there is so much green, so many animals and farms, just rolling hill to rolling hill of green as far as the eye can see.  It’s pretty amazing, nothing like in California.  The weather here is a little bizarre too.  Sunshine, and then rain, and then pouring rain, and then sunshine.  All in one day.  Very bizzare, nothing like it is in California and it’s like that here all the time.  The accents are pretty fantastic too.  So far we haven’t had any problems understanding people since most of them are pretty easy to understand, Scottish accents aren’t THAT insanely different from anything else we’ve heard, but I’m guessing sometime along the next year I’m going to run into someone that I don’t understand at all.

My friends, Erica and Molly, get here on the 7th and the 8th so by that time I’ll be officially done backpacking and more in the mode of getting prepared for school.  I get to pick up my key on the 8th, which is very exciting since I’ll finally have a bed and my own ROOM to put all of my crap in (yay!), and then on the 9th I get my computer!  Thank GOD!  After that, Thomas’s travels back to the States are pretty wide open as far as when he goes and everything since he’s just leaving straight from Glasgow to Vegas. 

I’m definitely going to keep the blog up and running, especially since I know I’ll be going around Scotland a lot exploring everything around here, and there will definitely be a lot more pictures posted on a regular basis with my computer coming and all.  I definitely want to make it up to the highland parts of Scotland to explore and look around, and of course I’ll make it over to Edinburgh at least once while I’m here.  I think the plans as far as out of Scotland goes includes a journey back to Barcelona with my friends from California, and then Christmas is wide open.  Right now the idea is maybe Greece?  Who knows.

We haven’t been doing much here in Glasgow since we’re just relaxing and waiting until football (World Cup Qualifiers) start in the next few days.  There’s a lot to do I guess if you want museums and exhibits and things, but Thomas and I are all touristed-out so we’re just hanging out and relaxing.  We definitely want to see Celtic Park where Celtic FC plays, but other than that I’m guessing we’re going to hermit until the 6th when Scotland plays Macedonia, I believe, and the 7th when Erica gets in from California.  We’ll see what happens.

The hostel we’re staying at was IMPOSSIBLE to find after we got into Glasgow, by the way.  The only directions on our reservation confirmation were to follow the signs after a certain bus stop.  There was 1 sign.  1.  In an entire neighborhood.  Didn’t really help all that much, let me tell you.  We ended up asking a local, and then 30 minutes later finally found the damn hostel.  Jesus, you’d think they’d give better directions to people who have never been in their country before, don’t you think?

Also, people in my room (separate womens and mens dorms, urg) are REALLY LOUD.  These two German girls woke me up at the ass crack of dawn this morning after squeezing every imaginable kind of plastic bag into their suitcases.  So annoying.  Very rude, really.  The other girls in my room are pretty easy going and nice.  2 of them are from Canada, so that’s cool.  They’re from Alberta, so they say ‘eh’ which I think is pretty funny, and definitely have the Canada accent going on.  Love it.

I’ll post more when I have more to say… it’s been pretty laid back for the last few days and will likely stay that way until my friends get here and my Mom and Grandma do too! 

I’ll try and get Thomas on here again, also.  He can tell everyone all about Old Trafford (which was awesome, btw).  I promise. 

-Catherine

This is going to be a super quick post since I want to let everyone know about the photos and I’ve been uploading just a few for the last HALF HOUR.  Turns out… takes a long time to upload photos onto the internet.  I could only add a few from Vatican City and ONE from Rome but they’re up for people to look at:  flickr.com/photos/cat1brad

I’m most likely not going to be able to add any more until later (likely until I get my computer back) but if I can I’ll try when we get another computer available to us. 

Old Trafford today was awesome- will write more about it later!

Again, flickr.com/photos/cat1brad.

And…

This is probably just going to be a quick update since we haven’t really done a whole lot since I last posted about our adventures.  Last night in London we ended up meeting some really cool people and stayed up talking with them until 2 in the morning.  We met a really nice girl from Holland who was telling us all about foreigners and Amsterdam, where to go in Holland and how exciting California seems.  We also met a guy from Australia who just got into London after bussing around the entire US for 4 months.  He did it on the GREYHOUND BUS, and I told him I’m surprised he’s still alive after that.  Haha.  Could you imagine going through the whole US on a GREYHOUND?  Sounds insanely scary and sketchy.  Don’t know if I would recommend that one, but he told us California was cool and he liked SF, so it was all good.  We also met a nice guy from Vancouver (yes, another west coaster!), whom I dazzled with my Canadian TV knowledge and my hockey knowledge.  Pretty cool.

Our day today was pretty much entirely spent on a bus.  We got to the Victoria Coach Station (they call them coaches here, not busses) and it was CHAOS because there were so many people and not enough spaces on one bus to Manchester, so they got 2 busses going.  Thomas and I sat in front and behind of each other, which was fine.  What was not fine, however, was the African man sitting next to us who was playing his radio/cellphone REALLY LOUD so the whole bus could hear it, talking on his cell phone the entire bus trip.  We both wanted to kill him by halfway through the trip.  Plus, the bus was stuffy and smelled weird, but it got us to where we needed to go so I guess it all works out in the end.  It took probably 5 hours for us to get to Manchester from London, which isn’t too bad, and after getting in we found our hostel really easily and settled in.  So far we are the lone occupants of our room so we’re crossing our fingers it stays that way!

Other than that, it’s a little gloomy and rainy outside, but everyone has been telling me I had better get used to it because that’s what Scotland is like all the time.  If I had waterproof shoes I think I’d be more excited about the rain because I don’t mind not having the sun out all the time, but since my Pumas are cloth instead of leather… they aren’t too much fun to walk around in when it’s wet outside.

The plan for tomorrow is to go to Old Trafford at 12:30 because I have our tour reservations (yes, I made sure I made reservations, haha), and we’re going to tour the stadium so Thomas’s life will be complete and he can finally get some new Manchester United gear.  I, on the other hand, will try to refrain because I will be a convert to the green and white (Celtic FC) and I need to save myself for their gear so I can wear it when Manchester United plays Celtic in October!  I can’t wait.  There isn’t much else to do in Manchester so I think we may hit up the movie theaters tomorrow to see something, and other than that just sleep in and relax.  London was a lot of walking and not much resting so it’ll be nice to sit back and enjoy the ride for the first time in a while.

Other than that, we’re just waiting to get to Scotland and see Glasgow so I can get myself situated and ready for the arrival of my friends from school and get going with orientations and everything!  Can’t wait.  Will let everyone know how Old Trafford goes.

Catherine