"It was sooo worth it."

Picture this: Lauren Doerner (my best friend and possibly the most un-outdoorsy and unathletic girl in the whole world) has just finished climbing up and then back down an 823-foot extinct volcano. She managed to fall several times on the way down, and one of the times she hit her knee on a rock, and now she claims that a large chunk of her knee cap remains somewhere on the side of the mountain. Our group of 6 friends reach the bottom of the steep volcano. Lauren's jeans are covered in grass stains and spots of mud. Her hair is flying in her wind-burnt face, and through all this she stops the rest of our group and we look at her worn-out, pathetic stance. As most friends would do in this situation, we laugh at her. Lauren looks like a train wreck (to put it nicely) and says in a very pathetic voice, "It was so worth it." We were rolling on the ground laughing. The setting is Arthur's Seat, an extinct volcano featuring spectacular views of Edinburgh, Scotland. (now, just in case you ever run into a Scot, I'm going to warn you... never pronounce the city "Edinburg".. it's more like "Edinboro"... just a tip or you might get laughed at)

Arthur's Seat was just one of the highlights of this Scotland trip. I can't begin to tell you how much I enjoyed this trip. I say by far it has been my favorite trip, but then again I've been here less than a month. We started our trip Friday morning, leaving the manor at 8 a.m. Lauren and I had a good ride up to Edinburgh. We slept, listened to music, and watched the movie "Billy Madison" starring Adam Sandler (one of my favorites). We arrived in Edinburgh at approximately 2:30 in the afternoon. Brittany, Lauren and I settled into our 3-person room at the Royal British Hotel. It was a very nice accomodation... but the shower's hot water was scalding (talk to Lauren for more details).

Friday afternoon Rhiannon (Asst. Dean of Students) walked with Austin, Lauren, Sara, Brittany, Erica and I. We walked the Royal Mile (street that runs between the Edinburgh Castle and the Palace of Holyrood House). We ate dinner at a massive Chinese buffet called "Saigon Saigon." Later that evening we went to the Stand Comedy Club. It cost us 7 pounds to get in with our Student IDs. There were 4 comic acts. There were only 3 we could understand. It was definitely an experience. Imagine a comedican speaking the English language, but with a Scottish accent so thick that you only understand every eleventh word or so. Next, imagine understanding the words coming from the other 3 comedians, but still not knowing what they're talking about... first of all it was British Humor (Humour) and second, they made so many references to cities, towns, people and events that the average American would know nothing about. It was still a very fun time, and when we did actually understand a joke you can be sure we laughed as much as we could.

Saturday morning found us rising early for a hotel breakfast followed by the touristy sightseeing. On our way to the Royal Mile we stopped at the National Portrait Gallery. It was interesting, and pictures were in chronological order, so it was kind of like getting a quick lesson in Scottish history. On the Royal Mile we stopped at the Museum of Childhood (Erica really wanted to make this stop). It wasn't quite what we expected. It basically looked like a bunch of toys people bought on E-bay. Some of the old toys were really neat though. The room full of the old dolls and clowns was really creepy. We only stayed at the museum for about 15 minutes before moving further down the Royal Mile towards the Palace of Holyrood House. This is the official Scotland residence of the Queen. Behind it, off in the distance a bit, sat Arthur's Seat (which you already know something about from the first paragraph). We (Austin, Lauren, Erica, Sara, Brittany and I) were super excited about climbing the mountain-volcano thing, but little did we know the kind of physical effort it was going to require. The journey up the mountain was steep and there were lots of steps made from rocks which made parts of the trip a little easier. We were sweating and the wind was blowing like crazy. I'm not scared of heights, but I'm not too thrilled of them either. This trip was a little bit of a challenge for me, I'm not gonna lie. I'd say it took us a little over an hour to make it all the way to the highest point of Arhur's Seat. (it only took us about half an hour to get down the mountain, if that tells you anything about the steepness of our descent) We were all sore and exhausted by the time we made it to the top, but we all agreed it was worth it. The view was magnificent. Despite the wind that wanted to blow us away, the weather was gorgeous and the whole setting was just beautiful. We took a ton of pictures before making our way down towards lunch... we were hungry! We stopped at one of the first food establishments we saw. It was a great meal, but the restaurant's claim to fame was this: Mary, Queen of Scots' tailor used to live there. Wow, I could hardly contain my excitement when I found this out. (*slightly sarcastic) :)

The afternoon was spent shopping, and later that night we went on one of Edinburgh's famous pub crawls. It's just like the name sounds: you basically "crawl" from pub to pub. There are different pub crawls, and the one we decided to do was called the Edinburgh Ale Trail. You recieve a passport with the names of 9 pubs on it and a very sketchy, not-very-helpful map. You have to buy a drink (alcoholic or non-alcoholic) at each pub and then they either stamp or sign your passport. At the end of the night you get a t-shirt for completing the crawl. I am so proud to announce that Erica, Lauren, Austin, Brittany and I completed the Edinburgh Ale Trail 2005 with flying colors. We have our ugly XL blue t-shirts to prove it. . .

Sunday morning came awfully quickly and we loaded our coach bus for the ride home. About two hours into our ride we stopped at the English/Scottish border for a group picture. One hour later on the bus we arrived at a section of Hadrian's Wall. For all of you who are not so keen about history, let me explain the significance of this wall. It was built in 122 AD by order of the Roman Emperor Hadrian. It was 73 miles in length and its purpose was "to separate the Romans from the Barbarians." So basically it's a very old wall of stones.

We stopped for lunch in the city of Durham (it's over 900 years old). It had a nice feel about it, like a college town. I wish I would've had more time there to look in some of the shops. Seven of us ate lunch at Pizza Express... a little sit-down pizza cafe located on one of the cobblestone streets. After lunch we returned to the coach bus for the last leg of our Edinburgh trip. We made it back to the manor by 6:30 for a dinner containing, yep, you guessed it, brussel sprouts. :)

To put it lightly, this trip was AMAZING. It was first of all an awesome city... mix that with a great group of friends, excellent shopping, delicious food, a steep volcano, and a late-night pub crawl... how could this not have been a wonderful trip?