Break was, in a word, awesome. Giving a play by play of 3 weeks of travel just wouldn't work out, so instead, I'll just write a few things about every city I went to.
London - This was part of my study tour, so I went with my core class and we had a few academic visits along with the cultural ones. I got a chance to see all of the typical things, like Big Beg, Buckingham Palace and Parliament. I saw the crown jewels, including the biggest diamond in the world. The trip made me come to the conclusion that my real goal in life is to amass enough funds to buy myself a scepter. While a sword would obviously be more practical, I think scepters are classy, especially when adorned with giant diamonds. We also got a chance to eat a fancy dinner then go see The Lion King, which definitely did live up to the hype. I ate fish and chips with beer, obviously,
and successfully navigated the tube. And, as you can see, I got my picture taken in a phone booth, which was obviously a necessity. We also made a stop at King's Cross Station, where after a long and rather tiring search, we found Platform 9 3/4, and a photo shoot ensued.
Edinburgh - Probably the favorite place I've been so far. So much so, that I've been telling everyone I'm moving there as soon as I get the chance. It's sort of hard to explain what exactly made me fall in love with it, but I guess I can try. The city was absolutely beautiful, and just had a very friendly feeling to it. The people were moderately crazy, in a good way, and they have stores which sell fried ... everything. Seriously, you name it, and they'll fry it for you. These stores were especially plentiful on the street with all the bars. Go figure. Again, because I went here as part of my class trip, we had some academic visits, one of which was really interesting, while the other actually made me want to gouge my eyes out with a spoon. We got to go on a walking tour of Edinburgh given from a medical perspective, so we heard all about the development of new medical technologies, and more interestingly, body snatching. Our tour guide knew a lot about Harry Potter, and she showed us the hotel where JK Rowling completed the last book in the series, the school which she based Hogwarts off of (it's also the school her daughters currently attend) and the cafe where she wrote the majority of her books. At night we had a haunted ghost tour of the city which ended in the underground vaults. In all honesty,
it was almost too scary for me to handle! We climbed up to the top of King Arthur's Seat, which is a big mountain-ish thing. It was a lot tougher than I expected, and I definietly got my
exersize for the next 3 weeks. By the time we reached the top, it was so windy that it literally took our breath away, and you had to crouch down and brace yourself so that you didn't get pushed off the mountain. I wasn't really looking forward to the hike, but it was probably my favorite part of the whole trip. Also, I feel it's worth mentioning that I ate haggis while in Scotland. It used to be cooked inside a sheep stomach, but isn't anymore. Now it's just ground veal, heart, liver, and one of those other organs it's only moderately gross to eat. It was actually pretty good, but I was all to aware of what I was eating, and inevitably got a little grossed out.
Paris - This was the first part of my vacation I had on my own, and I traveled with two of my friends from Gettysburg. We went to the Lourve, saw the Eiffel Towel
lit up at night and ate ice cream under it during the day, saw the Arc de Triumph, went into Notre Dame and saw some famous church which I can't remember the name of for the life of me. Paris was pretty and I had a good time, but I was honestly fairly unimpressed. I expected to love it, but I sort of left with the feeling that since I had been there once, I never really needed to go back.
This entry is taking a bit longer than I expected it to, and since I really should attempt to get some work done today, I'm going to postpone writing the second half. I've covered a week and a half so far, although not quite half the cities I went to. I swear, I'll write more later, and I'll even throw in an entry on what Copenhagen has been like since I got back!
