Edinburgh!

Now that I’m all caught up, I can write about my trip to Edinburgh at the end of last week (reading week). This trip was sort of a last minute decision between Mo, Katie, and I but I’m really glad that we made it happen because Edinburgh was such a cool city!

We decided to take the train from London to Edinburgh, which was about a 4 1/2 hour trip each way. On the way there, the overground train we needed to take to Kings Cross was cancelled and the next one arrived 20 minutes later, so we had to hustle through the underground making transfers until we got to Kings Cross and we ended up running to the track that our train was leaving from, only to get there just as it was pulling out of the station! We had literally missed it by seconds, so we were disappointed but we got our tickets changed for free and got the next train which came an hour later. It ended up working in our favor since we had time to get lunch and take cash out at the station. I was really glad that we ended up taking the train instead of flying because the train ride to Scotland was beautiful and I got a good view of the English countryside and the seaside. There were a lot of horses and sheep grazing along the way and everything was so green! I actually took a bunch of pictures while on the train but my camera somehow deleted those ones 😦

We got to Edinburgh around 3:30 so we had some time to get settled in our hostel and then walk around and explore a bit. We stayed at Princes St. East Backpackers which was one of the cheaper options on such short notice, but ended up being a pretty good deal at  £17 for two nights (princes depend on rooms and dates). The hostel was very centrally located, which was definitely a plus. We booked three beds in a mixed six-person dorm but it turned out that we were the only ones staying in that room for both nights so we had the room to ourselves, which was nice. The hostel wasn’t anything fancy but it had a lot of character and the people who worked there and who were staying there were nice. There were a lot of murals all over the walls in the hallways which was cool too! We were only staying for two nights so I didn’t bother showering (don’t judge me), but if you do end up staying there, they don’t provide towels so that would be something to bring. There is also no breakfast provided, but they do have self-catering facilities so you can get food at the grocery store and cook it there. The one thing that I wasn’t crazy about was that the doors had no locks for the dorm rooms. They did have lockers in each room but you had to either bring your own lock or rent one from the reception desk. But it didn’t end up being too much of a problem since no one else was sharing our room and we kept our valuables on us for the most part.

our bar food feast

 

Rose Street

So on Thursday we checked into the hostel (which was right across from the train station) and then headed outside to check out the city. We walked along Princes Street where there were a lot of shops like Primark (our favorite), H&M, and Top Shop, as well as some touristy Scotland stores. Then we walked around through the Princes Street Gardens, which is a fairly big park in the center of Edinburgh that’s located right at the base of the hill where the Edinburgh Castle is. We decided to come on a very nice day and the sun was still out, which was definitely a nice change from the dreary London weather that we’ve been having recently! We passed by the National Gallery and continued walking down Princes Street and onto Shandwick Place, where we stopped at a pub for some drinks and a snack. We all got different flavored ciders which were crazy good (I got wild berry, Mo got strawberry lime, and Katie got orange ginger) and we shared a humongous plate of onion rings, chicken wings, sausage, garlic bread, and potato wedges. After that we were tired and full, so we decided to walk around some more and head in the direction of the hostel. We stumbled upon Rose Street, which is super cute and has a lot of restaurants, pubs, and shops. At the end of Rose Street was a Sainsbury’s so we stopped there to pick up some alcohol and snacks for later.

Back at the hostel, we rested for a while and then went to the dining room for their Anti-Valentine’s Day party which we were told about. It was cute and they had someone DJ-ing and lots of candy. We talked to a few people- a woman from Australia who had just decided to come to Edinburgh, and a guy from New Castle (where Geordie Shore [the British version of Jersey Shore] takes place!) who was studying at the University of Edinburgh. We stayed there for a little while and then decided to go out and find Cowgate Street, where the guy said there were good places to go out at night. We headed in completely the wrong direction and were sent further in the wrong direction by two people that we asked for directions, so we didn’t find Cowgate but we ended up getting fries (or chips here) and pizza at this little shop. We then realized that we were exhausted and full again so we decided to call it a night and go back to the hostel.

the three of us in front of Edinburgh Castle

On Friday we got up early so we could do a full day of sight seeing. Our first stop was Edinburgh Castle which was amazing. The castle is located on top of a big hill in the middle of the city, so we had to walk up it to get there (we all have very nice calves now) but it was totally worth it because the castle was beautiful up close and you get an amazing view of Edinburgh from there! We thought going inside the castle would be free, but it turned out to be £14.50 for tickets. We splurged anyway and weren’t disappointed- the castle was beautiful inside and it was a nice sunny day again. They were also running free tours by the hour so we were shown around by an adorable tour guide who told us all about the history of the castle and all of the buildings inside of it. We got to see St. Margaret’s Chapel (which is the oldest building in the castle since it was once destroyed completely except for the chapel), the Scottish National War Memorial, the Royal Palace (where the Scottish Crown Jewels are), the Great Hall (soldiers’ barracks), the Prisons of War (where POWs were kept), and the One o’clock Gun (which was never fired for some reason…). It was a pretty cool experience and the views of the city were unbelievable.

view of Edinburgh from the castle

 

walking on our tour of the castle

 

St. Margaret’s Chapel

 

Scottish National War Memorial

 

Royal Palace

The Elephant House

After the castle, we decided to make our way to where Cowgate really was just to check it out for later. We walked down from the castle to the Royal Mile, which is the city center. There were a lot of shops there and restaurants as well as some street performers and a lot of bagpipers! St. Giles Cathedral is along the Royal Mile as well. We continued to wander around and ended up finding The Elephant House cafe, which is where J.K. Rowling wrote the Harry Potter books on paper napkins. This was one spot that Mo wanted to visit in particular, and we were going to find it on Saturday but since we stumbled upon it, we decided to go in and get some lunch. It was pretty crowded but we got a place to sit and the food there was amazing. They have a lot of lunch options and a whole case of delicious-looking sweets as well as coffee and teas. I got a sweet chili chicken sandwich, which was one of the best things I’ve eaten while being in the UK, and we all had to get dessert because it looked so good so I got what was called something like a ‘crispy Mars square’, which was basically a rice krispie treat baked between two layers of chocolate and it tasted vaguely like a Mars bar (although I’m not sure how that actually factored into it). The cafe was super cute and had elephants all over the place! There were pictures of them up on the walls, a case of little elephant figurines, and even wooden elephant chairs. Mo also told us that the bathrooms were a hot spot for Harry Potter fans to come and write on the walls so we all took turns going to the bathroom and looking at all the little notes that fans had written to J.K. Rowling as well as funny Harry Potter-related comments:

Once we were fueled up, we headed back out and wandered around some more. We made our way down to Cowgate and we found the clubs and bars that we had been looking for. We then followed the street onto Grassmarket where there were little cafes, shops, and art galleries. We stopped into a

a cow on cowgate street

vintage-y thrift shop, which had some cool clothes and a buy one get one free sale on belts so I picked up a couple of those. We also stopped into a joke shop, a cute little hand-painted tea pot/ tea cup store, and an old book store as we made our way back to High Street (the Royal Mile). It was getting later in the afternoon so we decided to make our way back to the area our hostel was in so we could drop off some stuff and get ourselves together before the ghost tour that we were taking at 7:15 that night. We made our way back to Princes Street and popped into a couple of clothing stores along the way to kill some time. None of us really got much but Top Shop was having a good sale on underwear so I got a few pairs and Mo got a cute romper there too! After shopping, we went back to the hostel to rest for a while before going on the ghost tour.

The ghost tour left from High Street at 7:15 so we went and got our tickets a little beforehand. Both Katie and I were nervous about going because we’re both scared of ghosts and graveyards at night, but Mo was really excited and agreed to let us both cling to her the whole time… so that’s what we did. The tour was led by a very theatrical Scottish woman who took us around some backstreets and areas of the city that were supposedly haunted by various ghosts and she told us some pretty gruesome (true) stories about everything from children who had the black plague and were taken away to be boarded up in houses together until they died, to a Scottish family who came to Edinburgh shortly before citizens began disappearing one by one until they were discovered to have slaughtered and eaten them and left their body parts in a cave that was discovered by a family that survived their cannibalism, to the story of two Irish men who came to Edinburgh and started a business of getting young people drunk and then suffocating them to sell their bodies to medical students for a hefty price. She took us through the oldest graveyard in Edinburgh, which was really creepy and is supposedly the most haunted graveyard since a tremendous amount of people were buried there. The tour ended with her showing us one of Edinburgh’s underground vaults which were used for many terrible things. The one that we went into was used to torture women who were suspected of being witches. We did make it through alive and we didn’t see any ghosts (thank god), so it was a good experience in the end and we learned a lot!

After the ghost tour we got dinner at a Thai/Indian restaurant on High Street that was actually really good. I got my Thai favorite, massaman curry, and it was great! After dinner we went back to the hostel for some drinks and then went back out to Cowgate and ended up at the Cabaret Voltaire which was a cool club. We got free entry vouchers from a guy outside and discounted drink bracelets so we gave it a try and found that the music and atmosphere were great. There were two DJs in different rooms and it was pretty crowded but the music and dancing were good and we stayed there for a while.

On Saturday, our last day, we had to be out of the hostel by 10:30 am even though our train didn’t leave until 5:00. So we got all of our stuff and left to go see everything that we had missed. We headed over to Calton Hill, which is a park where there are some monuments including the National Monument, Nelson’s Monument (which you can walk up), and the Dugald Stewart Monument. The City Observatory is also on Calton Hill and you can stroll along the Hume Walk for a panoramic view of Edinburgh. We also got a good view of Arthur’s Seat, which is the largest part of the Arthur’s Seat Volcano (which isn’t active, don’t worry). You can climb up Arthur’s Seat but we didn’t have the time or energy to do it so maybe if I come back I’ll make that hike.

National Monument

 

Dugald Stewart Monument

 

Nelson’s Monument

 

Arthur’s Seat

After Calton Hill, we decided to make our way towards St. Mary’s Cathedral, which is on the other side of Edinburgh, to the west. Luckily, Edinburgh is a fairly small city so although the walk took a while, it wasn’t too bad. Along the way, we stopped for lunch at a pub on Rose Street where I got another chile chicken sandwich (I must have a problem…) with chips. We left after lunch and found St. Mary’s and were able to go inside and admire the architecture and all of the stained glass windows. The inside was beautiful and they had a huge organ which was being played while we were there.

St. Mary’s Cathedral

 

inside the cathedral

After the cathedral, we walked down along the west side of the city because we hadn’t explored that part before. We passed by the Lyceum theatre and the Filmhouse and back towards Grassmarket Street again, where we stopped into a little cafe called Cafe Jacques (and since Jacques is Mo’s last name, we had to go in). I got some tea and Mo got cheesecake and we sat for a while. At this point, we were heading over to a shop that we had seen the night before called Miss Katie Cupcakes (and since, Katie’s name is Katie, we had to go in) that was closed then. Of course, we wanted to go get cupcakes there before we left so we made our way over only to discover that they didn’t sell cupcakes at all! The shop was cute though, and sold little gifts and cute jewelry, but we were still disappointed.

We had passed another cupcake shop on Rose Street that looked really good, so we decided to circle back around to that one since we still had some time before our train. When we got there, there was nowhere to sit but we still got cupcakes and all of them looked crazy good. I ended up getting a Smarties cupcake (Smarties here are an entirely different candy and are kind of like m&m’s but the chocolate is slightly fruit-flavored), which was amazingly good and Mo got a chocolate cheesecake cupcake 🙂

We then headed over to the train station to sit down and get food to take on the train with us, and we ended up making the right train that time!

The past week (and a half)

It feels like I haven’t posted here in forever, which is weird because I had this week off for what Goldsmiths calls ‘reading week’ where we have a week-long break to read (?) and start to get our final essays rolling. We basically just have reading work to do all semester until the end when we have a final essay due for each course. As an international student, my essay requirements are different so mine has to be shorter than full-time students, but it’s good to have some time to start thinking about which prompts I’m going to respond to and what sources I’ll be using. I did do some of that, but for the last part of the week I was in Ediburgh with Katie and Mo (I’ll do a separate post on that trip).

Harrods

A lot has been going on. Last week I made a trip to Harrods, which is a HUGE department store in London that has been around since the 1880s. It’s a pretty high-end department store that sells everything from bedding to toys to fresh food and groceries. I wanted to go and get gifts for friends and family, especially since Harrods teas are known to be very good! I spent a good while wandering around the store, which occupies a 5-acre stretch of the city. They had delicious looking baked goods everywhere, including in their tea room which I didn’t go into but I admired the little cakes they had displayed outside of it. I also went up to their gift shop where I got some gifts to bring back home. There’s a huge candy/toy shop which I went into, of course. I actually found a Papabubble stand right inside of the candy shop, which is funny because it’s one of my favorite little candy shops in New York (they make little fruit-flavored hard candies and you can watch them hand-roll and bake them right in the store).

little pastries outside of the tea room

the Queen’s Jubilee tea!

huge meringues!

the food courts

I also had to venture into the Harrods food markets which are expansive and include a full meat market, a produce market, a Godiva chocolate room, a copule of restaurants, and a prepared food room with baked goods, cakes, sushi, traditional British pies, sandwiches, salads, and a lot of other yummy things. I spent way too much time walking around trying to decide what to get for lunch, but I finally settled on a mini pie filled with turkey, gammon, and cranberry, which was really good!

After Harrods I wandered around London for a while since it was a pretty nice day. I walked towards Hyde Park and went through some nice neighborhoods right in the city as well as through my first subway (which isn’t a train station, like in New York, but a little tunnel under a busy road that acts as an underground crosswalk so traffic isn’t disturbed). I made it to Hyde Park and walked through it for a while, then exited and headed towards Oxford Circus where I got the tube back to New Cross. The walk was really nice and helped me get a better sense of the layout of London 🙂

some nice houses on my walk

the Wellington Arch by Hyde Park

On Thursday night, Maggie and I went to go see a play called One Monkey Don’t Stop No Show at the Tricycle theater by Kilburn in northeast London. Tricycle was actually a pretty cool space because along with the theatre there was also a cinema there where they show art films, mainstream flicks, and family-oriented movies, and they host creative learning workshops for young people. The theatre was set up really uniquely as well with sort of a cozy scaffold-like seating set up that was really intimately placed with the stage. And of course, the play was really really good! It was set in the 1970s and was structured like a 70s sitcom about a black family living in Philly. You can read about the plot if you click on the link above, but the play did a really good/interesting job of commenting not only on issues of race and class relevant to the 70s and also today in the U.S., but it was also a hilarious and provocative critique of the black family sitcom and representations of black people on TV. Overall, we were both laughing the whole time and we got a lot out of it, so it was a good night out! The only qualm we had was that the American accents could have used a little more work 😛

Last Saturday I met my second-cousin Laurie in Camden Town to get lunch and walk around for a bit. We met up and walked into Camden Market where we soon found a little Mexican restaurant called Cafe Chula where we got the best Mexican food that both of us have had while being in London (and she’s been here a lot longer than I have!). I got some great chicken tacos and we both got glasses of some very tart (but delicious) limeade.

After lunch, we walked around the markets a little bit more, although it was a dreary drizzly day so we tried to find the indoor part of the market but eventually just ended up walking to The Regent’s Park which was about ten minutes away. Even though it wasn’t the nicest day, the park was still beautiful and really big! Laurie told me that one nice thing about London is that there are a lot of big parks spread out all over the place so wherever you live, there’s probably a good park nearby. I’ll have to come back in late March and hopefully the gardens will be in bloom! We walked through the park and then found a cafe in the park where we got tea and scones and sat for a while. The scones were really good and were raisin scones sliced in half with jam and creme fraiche sandwiched in between the halves. We then had to leave the park because it closed at 5:00 (early because it gets dark early still) and we headed towards the nearest tube station, which was Baker Street (by 221B- Sherlock Holmes’ residence, where there is a big statue of him as well). It was really nice to see her, since I’ve been away from my family and I haven’t seen her in a while!

Abbey Road and a teeny bit of Camden…

Abbey Road Studios

So last weekend I didn’t do much because my throat hurt a lot and I practically lost my voice (but really, sounded like a middle school boy because my voice was cracking all over the place!). But last Friday before I fell completely ill, I managed to make it over to Abbey Road with Katie and Mo. Abbey Road is in Westminster, right outside of Camden, which is like northwest London. The iconic road/crosswalk is located right by Abbey Road Studios, which is still a fully-functioning recording studio and apparently doesn’t do tours or allow people inside. However, they do run a live webcam of the crosswalk so you can watch people taking the same picture on the their website- haha

We took the tube to St. John’s Wood where there was already Beatles memorabilia for sale in the station. We thought we’d have more trouble finding Abbey Road than we did, since Mo wrote down a complicated set of directions on her phone, but we asked a newspaper guy how to get there and he pointed us in the right direction. It wasn’t too far of a walk from the station and when we got there, we were surprised to find a fairly empty street aside from another group of boys who were standing outside of the studio. Here’s the thing: the crosswalk pictured in the Beatles’ cover art is not regulated by crossing lights of any kind so you just have to walk across as cars stop and because of that, the consistent traffic-stopping for tourists to take pictures is probably very irritating to drivers. So we crossed over to go look at the studio while we thought up a game-plan for taking our picture. We were already one Beatle short since there were only three of us (Grayson was going to be our fourth Beatle but he was having medical troubles that day) and we were nervous about holding up traffic.

The studio itself was pretty cool (the outside of it, that is) because there’s a wall/gate thing in front of the building where people come and write things to mark that they were there or to pay tribute to the Beatles. It was neat seeing all of the writing on the wall and all of the favorite Beatles lyrics from around the world! We made our own little mark on the wall too: 

this one made me curious…

one of my favorite Beatles songs…

our Argentinian friends outside the studio

The boys were standing next to us and I thought I heard one of them speak Italian so of course, Katie and Mo wanted me to go over and ask them to take a picture of us crossing the road in Italian. I was hesitant to do it because I barely remember any Italian since high school, but finally Katie asked them if they would take the picture and they said they would (in English), and it turned out they were Argentinian so it was probably a good thing that I didn’t try to speak to them in Italian! But they were very nice about it and one of them even volunteered to be our fourth Beatle 🙂 Since they had taken the picture before us, they tried to direct us and stopped traffic but despite a couple of attempts, our picture was not quite right. But it was still fun and funny and here’s our rendition of the photo: 

Katie and Mo

some Camden art…

stores with funky ads/art above them in Camden Town

After Abbey Road, we decided to hop on over to Camden Town, which was a short train ride away. We didn’t really spend too much time there but we were starving so we stopped at a Spanish tapas restaurant for lunch where they were having a special on tapas and sangria… so we got a few tapas and a jug of sangria to share. We left the restaurant and then walked down the main street which is full of stores and touristy shops and we stopped at an outdoor market with lots of souvenir stands and food. We kind of rushed through it  since we had to get back to New Cross, but I did get an awesome shirt with a big pocket that has a giraffe in a Hawaiian shirt sticking out of it (new favorite item of clothing). I will be back to Camden next weekend though, since my aunt offered to show me around and get lunch there!