| I'm Back |
[Aug. 29th, 2005|09:11 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  tired | ] |
Well, I am back from England and Scotland and I loved it sooooooo much. I am going to have a massive picture update once I get the pics on my computer, but for now, I am just going to give you a little summary of my trip. If you want to skip to the part where my sister Jamie and my dad and I almost died and not read the other boring stuff, see Loch Lomond.
-London-Walter Cronkite was staying at my hotel and I saw him! That was awesome. My dad said good morning to him, but we didn't say anything else cause we didn't want to bother him. He actually said good morning back, and that was pretty cool. My family did the London Eye, you know, the big ferris wheel type thing, and saw all of London. London was so amazing. I miss it so much and I want to go back right now. We went to King's Cross Station where we saw Platform 9 3/4 (You'll see when I show you the pictures) and we saw Big Ben and St. Paul's Cathedral. I LOVED London. We also went to Greenwich one of the days we were staying in London and we put each foot on either side of the Prime Meridian. It was super geeky, but fun. Basically, we only had three days in London but we saw all the sights and did a lot of walking around the city. I did take a double decker, but my dad was too scared to take the underground.
-Cotswolds-The Cotswolds is the English Countryside and it was beautiful. My dad decided that since we were doing so much traveling, we should rent a car and he should drive. HAHA. We the first day of him driving (the day we left London) we almost sideswiped 20 cars and who knows how many trucks. We decided to see Windsor Castle because it is the official residence of the Queen, but we got lost so we asked this guy where it was, little did we know it was taking up the whole skyline right behind us. The guy was probably thinking "Stupid Americans, but he answered really politely with, well, first you have to park, and then you walk to the castle. We were seriously two feet away when we asked him. We felt so dumb. We also saw Stonehenge and did a hike to Tinturn Abbey, which is featured in a William Wordsworth poem. We also went to visit Oxford University, and it turns out that some Harry Potter scenes were filmed there. That was pretty cool.
-York- On the way to York my mom wanted to see Alnwick Castle because, in case you haven't noticed, she loves castles. When we got to the castle I thought that it look like a perfect Hogwarts and wondered why the Harry Potter movies weren't filmed here. Then we get inside the castle and it turns out that the a few scenes from Harry Potter were filmed there...really cool. Anyway, York was the most rowdy city I had ever seen. I mean they did a good job naming New York after this place. It was like the whole city was Greenwich Village or something. There were big groups of girls walking around in bunny ears and slutty clothing. I just couldn't believe it. It was the most rowdy city I had ever seen.
-Edinburgh-Edinburgh was aside from London my favorite place. We were there during the festival, so my mom and I saw a show (Catch-22). We also went into the Edinburgh Castle which was amazing and if you ever go to Edinburgh, definitely go in the castle, you get an amazing view of the city.
-Loch Lomond-Loch Lomond is a big lake in Scotland (Loch means Lake) and in this part of the trip you really get to see how crazy my family is. We decided to climb Ben Nevis, the highest peak in the British Isles, and we didn't think it would be that bad because we have climbed higher peaks that this one, which was 4406 feet. It took us 5 hours to get up because it was a steep 5 mile hike up (ten miles round trip) and three hours into the hike it started to hail. Thats when my mom and my sister Stacy decided to leave. That was about 4:00pm. Now one of the things we really did wrong was we started too late in the day. It says to start the hike at 9:00am and we started 1:00pm. Anyway, my dad was wearing shorts and none of us had gloves, so by the time we got to the summit, the 65 mph winds plus the hail and snow and freezing temperatures really took a toll on our bodies. My dad's legs were bright red and bleeding because the hail was striking it so hard, all of our hands were bright red and we thought frostbitten, and all of our clothing was soaking wet. It was 6:00pm and there was no one else coming up the mountain anymore, so we couldn't ask for help. Our only choice was to hike down. The only problem was that the whole top of the mountain was in a cloud and we couldn't see ten feet in front of us. We had no idea that there were 2,000 foot drops on either side of us. If we wondered off the trail we would have fallen off the side of the mountain. As we were walking down I really thought we were going to die. You have no idea how scary that is. My dad's legs were so cold that they started to spasm and he couldn't walk. We really thought we would be stranded on the mountain and were going to die. Many experienced hikers have died on that mountain, so many that there is a whole section on the summit with plaques of the names of the people who died on Ben Nevis. There was no one on the mountain who could hear our cry for help, but my sister and I helped my dad up and we walked off the spasms. We were going down the mountain slowly because it was so steep, and since it had been raining, slippery. Once we got below the giant cloud, the sun was out and it got a little warmer, but we were still worried about getting down before dark. Luckily, we made it down by 9:00pm, just as it was getting dark, and we met up with my mom and my other sister in town. We really thought we were going to die, and it was so scary, all we could think about was how smart my mom and other sister were to have turned back at the first sign of hail.
-Loch Ness-The last place we were was Loch Ness, the largest lake in Scotland, where the Loch Ness monster (a.k.a Nessie) resides. We looked for the monster but couldn't find her. There have been photos taken of her and "sightings" of her, but these have all be made out to be false. I was hoping to see her, but knew I wouldn't. Wouldn't it be cool if the Loch Ness monster really did exist? Anyway, that is my trip to England and Scotland summarized. There will be more when the photo update comes. As they say in Britain...Cheers. |
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